The Paper Eater

THE FESTIVAL OF CHOICE

Hannah Park’s brain was different from other people’s: her mother was sure of it. It made her incapable of certain things. Love, for instance: the romantic love you see on television or read about in books; that was one of them. Social grace was another.

By the time Hannah was eleven, she’d lost track of how often she’d heard Tilda tell the specialists, in the hushed whisper reserved for embarrassing information, that her only child was unfortunately not quite right.

– But I feel normal, Hannah would object. Normal-ish, anyway.

– Is it ‘normal-ish’ to draw rude cartoons of your own mother? Tilda would snap back. Is it ‘normal-ish’ to wear a giant cardigan day in day out? Is it ‘normal-ish’ to collect thirty thousand peanut-butter labels?

The setting for these prickly discussions was usually a hospital canteen, following another fruitless consultation with a man in a white coat.

– Would I be normal if my cardigan was smaller? Hannah would ask, as she divided and sub-divided the food on her plate into the usual categories: Protein, Roughage, Carbohydrate, Things I Don’t Like. Cool colours to the left of each section, warm to the right. Would I be normal if I collected stamps instead? Would I be…

– Those things are just symptoms, Tilda would retort, fumbling in her little green handbag for her pills. For a clever girl, Hannah, you can be stupid beyond belief.

It was a recurring theme of Tilda’s. How was it possible for a child with an IQ of 148 to prefer disfiguring glasses to contact lenses, and read encyclopaedias in the way ordinary people read mail-order catalogues? Having an abnormal child had taught her the meaning of exasperation. Oh, for a proper diagnosis! How much longer would this thankless odyssey grind on? Hannah had been wondering too. Her whole childhood was a blur of waiting rooms, interspersed with trips to the orthodontist to get her teeth fixed, in case she started smiling. If she bared her metal brace in the mirror of a darkened room, she looked like an oncoming train.

Tilda heard of Dr Crabbe by word of mouth. He was a retired psychiatrist in Groke, who had written several works on disorders which fell within the spectrum of autism.

– Come up to Groke, Dr Crabbe had urged on the phone. Let’s suck it and see.

His surgery was housed in a small portable bungalow made of the new recycled cardboard, which scored marks with Tilda. As Hannah and Tilda sat in Dr Crabbe’s waiting room flicking through style magazines, they could hear his voice booming through the wall. Hannah strained to listen, but couldn’t make out the words.

– Well, he certainly sounds authoritative, remarked Tilda, not lifting her eyes from the gazebo spread in Sweet Home.

Hannah sighed. Her mother always built the doctors up in her mind beforehand. She stared out of the window at the big shock of pampas grass in Dr Crabbe’s front garden, plonked in the centre of the lawn like a failed hairdo. Something about the way the pale tips of its feathery brushes waved in the breeze stirred up an unaccountable but familiar current of melancholy inside her. The feeling was called Weltschmerz, according to the psychiatrist they had seen last week.

Everyone gets it.

Hannah was just beginning to feel an asthma attack coming on when the booming stopped suddenly, the door opened, and Dr Crabbe emerged. For a retired psychiatrist, he was surprisingly young. Short and square, he had a powerful, muscular face, and a dark moustache. He reminded Hannah of a keg of explosives. She fingered the little mask attached to her oxygen inhaler.

– Mrs Park? And this must be Hannah!

He grinned and shook their hands forcefully. Hannah bared the oncoming train.

– I was just talking to my voice system, said Dr Crabbe.

Tilda made a little impressed grunt and nursed her crushed fingers.

In his office, which was decorated with bloodthirsty hunting pictures, Dr Crabbe scanned through Hannah’s medical record on his little laptop, and made knowledgeable noises as he recognised names of doctors and hospitals they’d visited.

– I see she’s done the rounds, Mrs Park, he said. Quite a strain for you.

The tears sprang to Tilda’s eyes as though he’d tweaked the plumbing of a secret tap.

– How can I help? he asked gently, as Tilda dabbed at her eyes. She took a deep, careful breath.

– All I want… Her voice caught and Hannah looked up sharply. Dr Crabbe had talent. – All I want is for someone to –

– To take you seriously, he said, nodding slowly. And you deserve it, Mrs Park, he said softly.

That did it. When he patted her arm, Tilda began to sob. As she snuffled into a hanky, Hannah looked at the wall, where a bloodhound was mauling a rabbit next to a dead pheasant. Dr Crabbe said it must have been very distressing, and he couldn’t promise a diagnosis but he would see what suggested itself; autism had a far wider spectrum than anyone realised. There followed the usual background questions, the testing of the reflexes, the chat about feelings. How depressed did Hannah get, on a scale of one to ten? Did being the product of donor sperm make her feel stigmatised? Had she ever thought of taking her own life?

– Well, said Dr Crabbe, after Tilda had replied to all the questions at length. I have a diagnosis.

Tilda stiffened, and gripped the armrests of her chair. Even Hannah was taken aback.

– It’s a very rare syndrome, he said. Known as Crabbe’s Block.

– There was a tiny silence. Hannah wondered if her stomach might gurgle.

– Crabbe… as in, Doctor Crabbe? asked Tilda faintly.

Yes, he affirmed: having discovered the disease himself – only very recently – he had awarded it his own name. It was the norm in medicine.

– How many people suffer from this, then, Tilda asked him anxiously, as he wrote down the name of Hannah’s disorder on a piece of paper and stapled it to the bill.

He looked up then, his face grave.

– Mrs Park, your daughter is… unique.

Tilda instantly began to glow with pride.

Life improved after that. Hannah felt less guilty about the time she spent on her peanut-butter-label collection, less self-conscious about her need to wear the cardigan, less inhibited about her habit of popping bubble-wrap blisters when she was under stress. She studied hard for her multiple choices, and did well. Tilda thrived too. She developed a plethora of small ailments which kept the diary chock-a-block with doctors’ appointments. Then, when the Liberty Corporation took over the management of Atlantica, she joined a shoppers’ circle, collected loyalty points, and soon climbed the ladder to become a VIP Customer.

– Meet my daughter, she would smile to new members of the shoppers’ circle. She suffers from a rare syndrome.

Hannah felt like a new product that had hit the market. One with special features. She would smile slightly and show her flashing teeth.

– She’s got agoraphobia now too, Tilda would add. This development was a recognised component of the syndrome, according to Dr Crabbe. – It doesn’t bother her though, said Tilda. She’s never liked outdoors.

And it was true. She hadn’t.

Now, fifteen years later, Hannah Park sits on a swivel chair in an open-plan office sectioned with low Perspex screens and phalanxes of potted ficus plants on the nineteenth floor of Liberty Corporation’s Head office, doodling a cartoon of the man who diagnosed her. She had a strange dream about Dr Crabbe last night, in which she was married to him, and had taken on the name of Mrs Hannah Crabbe. Without ever having had sex, she and Dr Crabbe had produced a baby that Hannah wheeled about the pedestrian walkways of Groke in a state-of-the-art buggy. In actual fact, according to a pink fluerescent message that gradually wrote itself across the sky, the baby belonged to another man. She must return it immediately. But she couldn’t, because a chasm full of boiling water and geranium-scented oil had opened up in front of her. It split the city of Groke in half. She would never be able to cross it. Dr Crabbe knew about all this, and did not hold it against her because he was a trained psychiatrist.

As Hannah began drawing the individual hairs of Dr Crabbe’s potent moustache with small experienced flicks of her pencil, the Customer Hotline droned in the background. The call she was half-listening to was from a regular, who liked to play games. Hannah recognised the customer’s voice. A wheezy, smoker’s voice with cracks in it. Sometimes he’d pretend someone was strangling him.

– I woke up this morning with a bad feeling, he said.

Hannah took a sip of her coffee. Warm and vile, but in a familiar way.

– And how did your problem begin? asked the Hotline responder in the female medium-register voice known as ‘Dolly’. The machine used the Dolly mode mostly for men. Dolly was highly effective. From complaint to confession in five minutes flat, the Hotline co-ordinator liked to boast.

Silence.

The machine moved on to the next question.

– How about giving me a call back later, when you’re more in the mood for a chat?

– Hey, sweetheart, said the customer. Don’t hang up on me. I’ve got a problem here.

Hannah began shading Dr Crabbe’s cheeks, but she pressed too hard and her pencil broke. The cross-hatching was too thick and tight, turning the doctor’s complexion a smudgy black. Customer Hotline duty made her tense. She reached for a sharpener.

– Do you have a worry that you’d like to share? asked Dolly.

Silence.

– Do you suspect anyone of sociopathic or criminal activities?

Hannah took another sip of coffee, replaced the cup on the daisy coaster her mother had made in her pressed-flower phase, and began scribbling a dark background to Dr Crabbe with her newly sharpened pencil.

Monitoring Hotline calls was considered ‘core work’. How better to make use of the flood of customer comments, ran corporate thinking, than to haul up all calls containing trigger-words and their variants – kill, hate, cheat, steal, blackmail, etc, and then laboriously fillet them in case one contained a diamond? It cut out the usual middlemen of paid informant and forensic evidence. It rendered hunch obsolete.

This customer, whose ex-wife Kelly had ‘poisoned his life’, was one of the classic attention-seekers, sufferers of that great contemporary ailment, Social Munchhausen’s Syndrome: over-zealous citizens trapped in nobodyhood who’d do anything – fake their own murders, suicides or muggings – to get noticed. There were twenty, thirty such callers per shift. More, at certain times; pre-Christmas, the Silly Season, and now, the Festival of Choice. On the door of the cabinet where data on the calls was stored, Hannah’s colleague Leo Hurley had scrawled a caricature paranoiac in marker pen. Googly eyes, flared nostrils, jug ears, flying droplets of sweat.

The customer was still playing hard to get with the responder.

– Are you choosing by phone today, Dolly pursued, or will you be going to your local shopping mall? Hannah had programmed this line of questioning specially for the Festival of Choice. It wasn’t a festival, so much as an electoral referendum, but it embodied the spirit of the day better, according to Strategy.

– Look, sweetheart, said the customer. This isn’t easy.

– I’m listening, said Dolly. I value what you have to say.

– I’m in danger, the customer blurted. His voice shook slightly. Dolly attracted masturbators.

– Does your problem relate to the Festival of Choice? asked Dolly. Her voice had gone husky and soft. She encouraged masturbators.

He took another deep smoker’s breath.

– I’m in danger of putting my cross –

– In the wrong box? Dolly responded, after three seconds of silence. I can help you with that. If you’d like to tell me more…

As the customer droned on about his phoney indecision, Hannah considered giving Dr Crabbe glasses. But like hands, they were hard to do.

– Nice talking to you, sweetheart, finished the customer finally. I feel a lot better.

– You’ve made the right choice, said Dolly.

A nice touch, that. Hannah had thought of it herself. As the next call kicked in, she lowered the volume and let her eyes flicker to the window. The forecast for the Festival of Choice was good. Clear blue skies and clear blue water, the weather channel said. From this floor the panorama was never less than stupendous. The big, shining coil of the Hope River snaking into the estuary, flanked by the Makasoki bubble-buildings, translucent egg-boxes of reflected light. Above them, dancing rainbows, condensing and dissolving like pastel sugar, pale and buffered by distance. The light they cast – a pellucid yellow – spread with a shimmer out to a glassy sea dotted with ships and tankers bringing in cargoes of waste. Even from this height, separated by fathoms of glass and chrome, you could still feel the city’s electric zing like a shiver in the blood; and still subliminally hear the distant honk of ships, the sing-song whisper of the Frooto windmills, the smooth hydraulic whish-whish of trams. The island tattooed itself on you; a great techno-organic edifice in perpetual motion, its infrastructure jewelled with sports centres, malls, and waste facilities, its simple geography zigzagged with transport systems, and fringed with lush plantations of coconut, pineapple, and lemon grass. Beyond Harbourville, the fried-egg island lay circular and gently humped by the swell of St Giddier’s Mount. Beneath the crust of the artificial land-mass, the deep invisible mechanics of the waste-disposal system, feeding the hungry rock below. And all around, the clear blue ocean – wide as the sky.

The phone rang.

– Customer Care? answered Hannah.

– It’s me, said Tilda. Have you chosen yet, or aren’t associates allowed to?

Immediately, Hannah’s thoughts contracted and she began drawing small, tight squiggles next to Dr Crabbe on her pad. It looks so unprofessional, being phoned at work by your mother. If someone came in – someone like Wesley Pike – it would be embarrassing.

– I’m just about to, said Hannah.

– I did, first thing, said Tilda. And they were round an hour later with the most gorgeous bunch of flowers – they’re giving them to all their VIP Customers, to say thanks. And I got a box of chocolates! Tilda couldn’t hide the pride in her voice. So are you coming to St Placid? Better hurry up, before I’ve eaten my way through them.

– Yes, sighed Hannah. While other departments worked overtime, staff in Munchhausen’s had been given a half-day off. She had promised Tilda a visit.

– I’m on my way. I’ll be there by lunchtime. Must go now. Got to choose.

Unlike the customers heading for the malls and parcs today, Hannah preferred to do her admin electronically. It saved time, and it saved bumping into people. She typed in her password, and the questions appeared on screen.

A. Do you want Atlantica to continue being serviced by the Liberty Corporation for a further ten years? There was a box you could click on.

Keeping human error out of people-management, was their Festival slogan. Actually, Hannah’s memory of the time people called ‘the bad old days’ was pretty fuzzy. Strange, the way history had become a bit of a blur, and you needed TV documentaries to remind you how poor the island had been, how full of violence and despair, how similar to the frightening, other world you thought of simply as ‘Abroad’. Strange, the way the past had just sort of stopped being a factor.

Perhaps that’s what happens when you’re finally in safe hands.

B. Do you want Atlantica to slide back into the control of a potentially corrupt political system, run by ambitious but flawed men and women? Another box.

Swiftly, she clicked A, then switched to the news, where the angel-faced commentator, Craig Devon, was talking facts and figures.

– The latest Festival polls show the choice for Libertycare is 95 per cent in Harbourville itself, with 93 per cent of Groke also choosing yes, and Mohawk and St Placid, 97 per cent.

He was pointing at some graphs. Craig Devon was one of Atlantica’s most trusted pundits. Tilda said there used to be a boy who did soap commercials who was his spitting image. She’d like to have had a son like him.

So a resounding victory for Libertycare’s customers, I think it’s fair to say at this stage, said Craig Devon. And although a Corporation spokesman stressed earlier that they’re not being at all complacent, it would be a surprise to us all, I must say, he blahed, if the no choice were to increase by any significant…

More blah. Hannah switched channels. Here they were doing vox-pops; there were Shop ’n’ Choose promotions in the malls, with fifty extra loyalty points if you polled.

– Yes, I’ve been very happy with them, especially the complaints procedure…

– I remember what things were like before. That documentary the other night reminded me – I mean the corruption was just so rife…

– The way they’ll send back a whole lorry-load of produce if it’s sub-standard – little details like that really make you respect it as a system. We’ve certainly benefited as a family from some of the special offers…

– The thing I like is the way the rest of the world’s had to really pay attention to us in recent years, and the loyalty scheme really does…

Hannah flicked channels again; more news. This time there was an item about the US response to the Festival of Choice, featuring a taxi driver from Michigan, called Earl. He’d been popping up on TV quite a lot recently, as the leader of a new campaign to get the Libertycare system servicing the United States. The clip showed a man in his fifties, in a blood-red shirt and checked golfing pants.

– OK, so call me a mug, said Earl. His supporters jostled around him, grinning and waving banners. – Or correct me if I’m missing something important. The camera panned in on Earl’s earnestly perspiring face. – But it isn’t communism we’re talking about here. It’s capitalism. And I like what I see over there on that island. And I’m thinking, heck, that could be us! We don’t want another asshole President! We don’t need all that human error bullshit! There were cheers.

Hannah switched off.

She had heard about this Earl character before, in-house. Leo Hurley reckoned he was a Libertycare initiative, an ambient plant, disguised as a grass-roots punter. But Hannah was less sure. A hypermarket model of people-management was fine for parcs, complexes, penitentiaries and small territories like Atlantica. But containability had always been at the heart of its success. There was no way you could apply the same software system to a superpower.

– So who d’you think’s behind Earl, then? Leo had asked her.

He’d been behaving oddly lately – jaded. He’d better watch it, Hannah thought. Personnel will pick it up on his next need-profile.

– No one, said Hannah. He’s an ordinary American. He’s seen us on TV, like everyone else on the planet. People are beginning to see the results. They’re impressed, that’s all.

Leo’s problem was cynicism.

As the tram slid out of Harbourville, the nerviness Hannah had been experiencing since her first glimpse of ground level became shot through with pure panic. It was six months since she’d left Head Office. It gave her a shuddery sense of inverse vertigo to be this low down, a stab of danger, as though the ground might chasm on you, suck you in: whoop, gone. Flushed down, like waste. A gaggle of elderly people at the front of the tram were chattering excitedly and waving scuba equipment. Members of the Harbourville Over-Sixties’ Feel Real Club, according to their sweatshirts. Hannah’s mother had toyed with the Feel Real Club, but decided her health wouldn’t allow it. She approved, though. It showed that you didn’t have to go to Florida, she said, to live high on the hog.

Hannah stared out at the flat farmlands. This was pineapple country, the fruit growing in spiky rows. When the tram passed an ostrich farm, a whole flock of flouncy-bummed birds scattered in panic on muscular legs. Their brains were smaller than a chicken’s. The nerviness wouldn’t flatten itself. Hoping for a distraction, she opened her laptop and trawled through the transcripts of a few more Munchie calls. There was a woman accusing her step-daughter of stealing her artificial nail kit. How had that got through? A man whose twin brother refused to enter into a timeshare, threatening fratricide. A crater worker complaining of skin eruptions and balance problems: Hannah marked it for referral. There had been a lot of those lately.

Mass hysteria again, like the geologists.

As the tram slowed, and the pineapple fields gave way to okra and lemon grass, the agoraphobia inched upwards, constricting her lungs and throat. She clasped her mask and applied it to her face.

– All right there, love? asked the tanned, dapper gent sitting next to her. He was clutching a wheeled caddy filled with golfing clubs.

Hannah nodded through the translucent mask that covered her nose and mouth. Breathed rhythmically. If she stayed that way, she wouldn’t have to talk to him.

– I chose this morning, first thing, he said eagerly. Cos I want to make sure they finish that golf course, I do! The thing that puzzles me is (he leaned closer to her, conspiratorially, and looked at her with bright eager eyes set deep in his tanned face) who are they, these people?

Hannah looked blank. What was he on about? What people? She tried to convey her question with an eye-movement above the mask.

– Who are they? he repeated. Who are this five per cent lot? The ones choosing B and not A?

She’d wondered herself, in an idle way, but knew she’d find out soon enough: Munchhausen’s would be processing their questionnaires, afterwards. They’d probably turn out to be the usual suspects – the ‘difficult customers’ classed as Marginals. You can’t have winners without losers.

– Mystery, said the man, more to himself than to Hannah, and sighed. One of the seven wonders of the world.

He got off at the next stop, his clubs chinking.

Hannah took off her mask, yawned, and peered out of the window again. She could smell the lavender of St Placid.

– Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, she murmured, echoing Wesley Pike.

Her boss liked to quote poetry. Outside she could see pylons, and the air-crystals glittered mauve.

Tilda was smaller than Hannah remembered. Hannah spotted her through the window, on the platform, scanning the carriages. Her tilted face was the narrow, questioning shape of a papaya.

– Hello, Ma, said Hannah, stepping out into muggy warmish air.

An awkward moment followed: Hannah bent to kiss Tilda’s papery, powdered cheek but somehow bungled it because of the crush around them and it turned into a fumbling embrace which they both shrank from.

– I came under my own steam, said Tilda, taking a step back and smoothing her mauve shell-suit. She nodded in the direction of an electric buggy parked on the kerbside, its disabled sticker prominently displayed.

– How are you health-wise? asked Hannah dutifully.

– Well, the laparoscopic investigations continue, sighed Tilda. We’re coming up to the tenth anniversary of the start of that. I’ve got more keyhole surgery booked for March, but in the meantime the doctor who deals with my connective-tissue question is taking long leave. And d’you remember that polyp I told you about?

It was after Hannah was diagnosed with Crabbe’s Block that Tilda’s health problems came into their own. Internal organs, usually. Nothing visible. It was only when Hannah was head-hunted into Head Office’s Munchhausen’s Department that she realised her own mother counted as a classic seeker of attention. Munchhausen’s by Proxy, to begin with. Then the real thing. The Liberty Corporation, it dawned on Hannah, had known about her Munchie mother from the start. That’s why they’d recruited her.

She wasn’t offended. She was pleased to have been spirited away from home like that. Pleased to have been given a role.

As Tilda continued the story of her latest medical adventures – the scheduling of appointments seemed to be a key feature – Hannah looked round at the neat fuchsia’d borders of the tram station. The pressed rubber chips of the platform felt different under her feet, as though they were full of packed energy.

– Anyway it’s my kneecaps now, finished Tilda. The plastic’s fatigued.

– I don’t remember it like this, said Hannah. Something’s changed.

– Well, what d’you expect? Tilda ducked into her buggy and gripped the little steering wheel.

It made her even smaller, Hannah thought, like a toddler in a pretend car.

– St Placid’s had more makeovers than any other city, Tilda said proudly, starting the ignition. Even we can’t keep track!

But it wasn’t a makeover thing – it was something else, something less tangible than a revamp, Hannah thought, oddly aware of a springy feeling underfoot as she trailed her mother’s electric buggy on foot down the residential streets past rhododendron hedges, mail-boxes, and tidy lawns dotted with miniature wells, windmills, and bird-baths with plastic ivy. Water features were big this year, and lawn furniture with pop-up parasols. The lavender smell gusted out from the gas pumps. It seemed more potent than usual, as though it were fighting a competing perfume from a rival source.

Tilda’s ground-floor apartment comprised a box shape within the larger box of the block itself, which was painted in variegated pastel shades. Inside, Tilda had chosen lilac as a theme, to complement the lavender. Here the smell seemed more voluptuous and luxuriant, like a bath-house.

While Tilda fussed in the kitchen with her little percolator, Hannah glanced around the living-room. Her mother’s latest craze was for Japanese flower-arranging, and the occasional tables were cluttered with cut palm leaves, wires, secateurs, dried-out sticks and other Ikebana accoutrements. On the shelf by the CD rack was a hologram of Hannah as a child, clutching a Marilyn doll in one hand, and in the other, a plastic monster, a gorgon with multiple heads. The small face overwhelmed by glasses, the pale eyes not meeting the camera’s stare.

– You probably can’t even remember what it was like before, said Tilda, returning to the living-room with the coffee and re-arranging her flowers, a big bouquet of blue irises and orange tulips. See? They’re in Liberty colours. That’s a nice touch, isn’t it?

– What? asked Hannah. The heat in Tilda’s apartment was already making her sleepy and confused.

– You can’t remember politics. D’you still drink it black? You were barely an adult. All that incompetence. I can’t believe we put up with it. Look at the Americans. Look at the mess they’re in. Then she lowered her voice and whispered proudly – Have you seen how jealous they’re getting?

She reached for a plastic box, with twelve individual drawers. Pill time. She had labelled the little drawers neatly, in felt pen.

– You remember I phoned the Hotline when the neighbours were making all that noise with that idiotic mixing desk?

Hannah forced her eyebrows to make a questioning shape.

– Gone.

Tilda arranged a row of five pills before her, then poured a glass of spring water. She gulped the first pill, swished it down with water, and covered her mouth to give a small ladylike burp.

– Gone?

– Transferred. The second and third pills. – The rep was on to it straight away. Next day, literally, they were gone. They were borderline Marginals, he said. He said you were right to call us, Mrs Park, it’s people like you who enable us to do our job, and on behalf of all of us at Libertycare, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you personally.

Hannah recognised the wording. The Hotline used it.

– I’m a satisfied customer, I told the rep, Tilda went on. You can guess how I’ll be choosing!

Through the triple-glazed window, a clutch of fit seniors jogged by in masks and pastel track-suits, goldfishing laughter.

– HRT trash, snorted Tilda. That’s my tax dollar. I’ll fix us lunch, shall I? I ordered the Gourmet Special, two minutes in the microwave. They do me a daily delivery, with my knees.

It was a platter for two, with plastic knives and forks: something white with plenty of fat and carbohydrate, and sprinkle-on vitamins from a sachet. Comforting.

– Breaded turkey escalopes, Tilda said after they’d finished it. With cauliflower dauphinois.

Hannah pictured a bird in the shape of the country called Turkey, flattened like a lumpy pancake.

– Can they fly? she asked Tilda abruptly.

– I think they’re like ostriches, said Tilda, after a moment. Talking of which, Chunky Choo-Choo on tomorrow’s three-thirty at Mohawk. Fancy a flutter? You can borrow my code. You need to watch her form though, she laid an egg on the track last season!

She laughed, throwing her head back, then looked at Hannah and stopped smiling. She sighed – a small, pained exhalation. In the silence that followed, Hannah had a sudden, sinking sense of what was coming next. She could almost see the words forming themselves in her mother’s brain.

– I don’t know how someone like you ends up as a psychologist.

Hannah folded her arms, pulled back from the table.

– I’ve told you before…

– Well, I don’t understand the difference. Psychologist, statiwhatsit. You need to know about people for that, don’t you? Don’t you? And you’re hardly what I’d call a people person.

There was no real point in replying. Slowly, Hannah pulled at one of the elastic bands on her wrist, then let it snap sharply against her skin. It hurt.

– Industrial psycho-statistician, said Hannah.

She looked away from her mother, out through the window at the rhododendrons and the camellias. Go, she thought. Go now. Escape. Out. Clouds freighted with the beginnings of rain.

– You don’t need people. I’ve told you. It’s all on paper. Or on screen. Or on CD ROM.

She took the elastic band off her wrist and swiftly scrunched her wispy hair into a little ball. With the elastic around it, and bits sticking out, it sparkled like nylon hay.

– So what are you working on now then?

– It’s confidential, said Hannah, reaching for her mask. Using the inhaler was a tactic she’d adopted in childhood, to gain – quite literally – breathing space. Sometimes the need was genuine, and urgent, but often, with Ma, it was more complicated.

– You could give me the gist, Tilda reproached her plaintively.

Hannah felt a flash of anger. Her mother always did this.

– Just Hotline duty, she said reluctantly.

– Oh really? asked Tilda, smiling. It’s a lovely service! I get special rates.

Hannah felt the annoyance mounting.

– Do you realise that when you ring up it’s a machine asking you the questions? she blurted. Then instantly regretted breaking protocol.

Tilda flushed deep red.

– Well, they’re very clever, aren’t they, these computer programs, she said finally, twisting in her seat. A good sight cleverer than real people, I reckon. They’ve done an excellent job.

But she looked slapped. A small itchy silence.

– Nice arrangement, tried Hannah, indicating some red sticks emerging from a flat vase on the television cabinet.

– It’s not finished, said Tilda defensively. It needs pods. She pulled off a fluffy slipper, laid it on her lap and stroked it like a cat. Her lips puckered into a knob.

– What happened to that young man at Head Office then, she asked, the technical one who you were on that course with?

Hannah fingered the plastic tube of her inhaler. She should have seen this coming.

– Nothing happened, Ma, she said tersely. You know that. We’re just friends.

– Friends, spat Tilda. That’s very trendy, isn’t it, to be just friends with a man.

Hannah said nothing. Looked at the Ikebana. Wondered what kind of pods you’d –

– I expect you’re still a virgin then, blurted Tilda. She flushed. Looked shocked with herself, but pleased too.

Hannah swiftly shoved the small mask over her nose and mouth and inhaled deeply.

A terrible silence flapped its wings between them.

An hour later, Hannah was back in Harbourville, breathing in the zestful, wake-up smell of peppermint. Walking from the tram station along the estuary embankment, watching the reflection of Head Office ripple out in broken stars, she felt a little zing of relief to be home. In her small apartment on the tenth floor of the ziggurat, she watched the news. The yes choice had been over 95 per cent. The nos would be questionnaired.

The departmental celebration party was at six.

As she cut herself a strip of bubble-wrap from the big roll by her bed, and then fought with the flaps and zips of her yellow party dress, she again tried to picture a turkey. Annoyed at her lack of recall, and curious, she flicked on the encyclopaedia and ran a search. And there was a bird-creature called a turkey, its bottom-feathers arranged in a curious flip-out fan at the back, its wattles red. She clicked to hear its cry, and the turkey jiggled its red wattles and opened its beak to release a low chattering bark rising to a squawk.

The bird-creature looked nothing like what she had eaten at lunch.

Life kept doing this.

She shared the lift with a tall blond man, youngish, wearing earphones: a field associate. He was handsome, with the soap-sculpted face of a mannequin, but he had a defeated look about him. His strong jaw swivelled as he chewed gum. When he asked her which floor, she could see the crinkled blob of it in his mouth: a bright, frightening green.

– Nineteen. Please.

– Festival party? he asked. His eyes were blue.

She nodded and looked at the floor, feeling his eyes on her as they shot upwards. Always too fast; she hated the lurch of it. Yet you were never quite sure when you were in motion, and when you’d stopped.

– It’s Hannah Park, isn’t it, he asked. She saw the blob again. I’ve seen you before, he said. Planning meeting. You’re in Munchhausen’s, right?

– Yes, said Hannah. She felt uncomfortable. She never ceased to be puzzled by the ease with which her colleagues struck up these mini-encounters with each other. She’d seen it happen time and again; people beginning a conversation with a virtual stranger, like this, and ending up friends, or enemies, or lovers. Fleur Tilley had slept with fifteen people in Customer Care alone, according to e-mail gossip. In lunchbreaks. On office floors. Someone from In-house Surveillance tipped her off about the spot checks in return for –

Hannah reached in her pocket for her bubble-wrap.

– This may be the last time you see me, the man volunteered, chewing more fiercely. I’m being questionnaired.

He must have done something or said something quite serious. Hannah wondered if he might be drunk.

– What happened? she asked reluctantly. The lift stopped. She wasn’t used to this.

– I said we were drones.

– Drones? she asked, as they stepped out.

– You know. Like worker bees. Servicing the queen. It was just a quip. But I said it to the wrong guy.

– Uh-huh, mustered Hannah. Drugs maybe, she thought. You could get them.

– Catch you later, he said, sauntering off ahead of her.

Just a boy really, she thought, seeing the way his jacket hung limp on him.

– Hi, people person! Leo Hurley greeted her hoarsely.

Hannah started, jolting her tonic water. Some splashed out and fizzed on her wrist, and she reached for a napkin. It had the Festival logo on it – a big square with a bold cross in it, the Bird of Liberty flying above. She always felt ill at ease at these functions. Leo had a crisp-crumb stuck to his beard. His hair was dishevelled, and there was something restless about his eyes. They were gleaming, like he was asleep, and she was the nightmare.

– How are your Munchies? he asked. Hannah sensed he was just making small talk; his glance kept shunting about the room. They were standing in a corner, away from the throng that crowded round the stainless-steel bar. The place was rapidly filling.

– Irritating, replied Hannah. If I hear one more faked suicide, I’ll scream.

– Fleur told me about one today, threatening to kill his whole family with dry-cleaning fluid, said Leo, still scanning the room. But there must’ve been a programming error, or a mis-route, because Dolly kept asking him about brands. What brand of dry-cleaning fluid he was planning to use. Whether he’d like it delivered, or would he be going to his local parc. Was he aware of the loyalty discount.

This wasn’t new.

– So what happened?

– Don’t know. He hung up. Leo gave his barking laugh. He said it was like talking to the wall. He –

Hannah followed the line of Leo’s eyes.

The room had hushed.

Wesley Pike stood framed in the doorway. Some people have a magnetic presence. They inch their way into your subconscious and you think about their bodies more often than you’d like to.

He was taller than almost everyone else in the room, but not only taller; broader, bigger. It was as if he were built on a different scale, out of different materials – not banal gristle and blood, but something more potent, more valuable. Just looking at him – he’d begun working the room now, up and down, like the shuttle of a loom – made Hannah blush. It was unnerving that she could so easily picture his torso beneath. Hairless, muscular. He spent about twenty seconds on each interchange, clutching an arm just above the elbow, patting a shoulder, gripping a hand for a tight, stimulating second. It was like receiving a small electric charge – one that was weirdly prone to trigger a sex thought. He flashed his smile like a fat wallet. It made you feel special. She knew she wasn’t the only woman to feel violently attracted to him. Men were too, apparently. Even those who weren’t usually that way inclined.

– He uses a pheromone spray for sexual charisma, murmured Leo, picking up on her train of thought. Someone saw him in the Mens’, once, doing his armpits.

She laughed, then cupped her hand over her mouth, embarrassed. The idea was bizarre, ridiculous.

– Why would he do that?

After all, Wesley Pike was famously celibate. The only rumour about him that remained consistent was that he had a relationship with the Boss herself. Not a physical relationship, obviously. Something more mysterious. Almost spiritual.

– Just for the hell of it, said Leo, smiling crookedly. It’s the only power he’s got really, when you think about it.

He didn’t look powerless.

He was making his way to the small platform now. As the chatter dipped and faded to a respectful hush, all eyes rested on the Facilitator General’s flat, smooth face.

– Well, he began, smiling. A big wide smile, and at the same time he stretched out his arms as though to embrace them all. The customers have spoken. Euripides said – he signalled quotation marks – that mobs in their emotions are much like children, subject to the same tantrums and fits of fury. He might have added that when they’re pleased they’ll shout it from the rooftops.

A small cheer and a bubble of murmurs.

– We at the Liberty Corporation are honoured to have been chosen to service this island for a second ten-year term. None of us is surprised by today’s result.

He gave another wide smile. The room seemed to froth with the chemistry of it.

– But it’s gratifying nonetheless. He paused.

Hannah wondered whether he was about to get lyrical. He was capable of it. Sceptred isles, enchanted paradises and whatnot. Might he choose this moment to voice the word that hung at the back of Atlanticans’ thoughts, more and more? Or was it too early, even after ten years, to talk about Utopia? No; instead, he was praising ‘the organic hermetics’ of the Liberty principle. What other service had gone so far in pleasing all of the people, all of the time? You only had to look at history. The system was nothing more than a blueprint for freedom. Freedom within freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. Freedom that nourishes itself.

– We take pride in our customer-care programme, he continued. Those of you who work in Munchhausen’s will know just how valuable our customer feedback is. The customers like to see those figures published.

He smiled.

Yes; they liked to see those simple graphs. Up for good, down for bad. She’d heard it all before – about how it made the customers feel safe, to know that what they said counted. About how feedback helped keep Marginals off the streets, put hard-core losers offshore, didn’t threaten the fragile physics of the eco-climate. Et cetera et cetera.

– People need a system they can trust. A system that doesn’t let them down, Pike was saying. With Libertycare, what you see is what you get. Which is why other nations – he paused, looked meaningfully around the room – are now beginning to take an active interest in adopting the software.

More cheering. People were getting quite drunk, Hannah noticed. There was a feeling of well-being, relief, joy even. Life at Head Office had its moments.

Wesley Pike was grinning now, the pleasure radiating out, blessing them all with its warm glow.

– So this is an important victory for what may one day become – why not? – a new world order. And I’m sure if the Boss herself could join us in a drink – a smile quirked at the corner of his mouth – she would.

There was laughter. Yes; people were genuinely happy, thought Hannah, relaxing slightly. We’ve worked hard for this.

– So I’m going to propose a toast to Libertycare, he finished, raising his glass. And the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

A cheer went up, and Hannah caught sight of Fleur Tilley, sozzled, lifting her glass. Soon the room was awash with babble.

– Listen, Hannah, said Leo. He was easing her towards an area of the room where the crowd was thinner. Still darting his eyes about, as though looking for someone.

– There’s something I found out.

Hannah wondered what was different about his eyes. They seemed to sit at a tilted angle in his face. Uneasily, she felt for the strip of bubble-wrap in her pocket, and popped two blisters.

– What?

– It’s a… gossip thing.

A gossip thing? Leo didn’t gossip.

– What d’you mean? What’s up?

– I was on the top floor earlier, with the Boss, and –

But suddenly he was gone.

When she turned round she saw why: Wesley Pike was heading towards her, smiling and purposeful. He moved like a car. A big smile; next thing, he’d parked and his hand was on her shoulder, thrilling and frightening.

– The Boss is pleased with you, Hannah, he said. Your Profile’s up.

Hannah felt her face redden and she reached for her bubble-wrap. More than anything else, she wanted to pop another blister. His hand on her shoulder felt like a heavy sexual moth.

– Go ahead, he said. If it makes you more comfortable.

He noticed everything.

– It’s a bad habit, she muttered, shoving it back in her pocket.

– There are worse ways to deal with tension, he said.

She followed his eyes. Fleur Tilley was already well past the tottering stage.

– At least we won’t have to send you to rehab, said Pike.

He had made a joke, Hannah realised. She tried to make a noise like laughter. Then gulped at her tonic water.

– Anyway, I have good news for you, he said.

His eyes were grey, clear like glass. She wondered how he could see through them. She felt the sweat prick her armpits. He smiled, his glance whizzing expertly across the room, then returning to her and resting – surely just for a brief, flickering moment, actually resting on her breasts? She felt a burning sensation, low down.

– The Boss has decided to move you.

Her heart caught, and she moved her weight from one foot to the other.

– Reward success, questionnaire failure, he said, smiling at the quotation. She was being praised as well as flattered, she realised suddenly. She stared at his chest and pictured running her hands all over it, like a blind person feeling a wall.

– There are going to be some changes. Now that the Festival’s behind us.

– Changes? She immediately felt stupid, echoing him like that. But what did he mean? What was she supposed to say?

– You’ll be part of a new venture. A short-term project. It’s beyond your normal remit, but the Boss reckons you can cope. He smiled. Big, broad. – So how d’you feel about doing some people-work?

What?

She felt panic rise within her like vomit. She clutched her bubble-wrap fiercely, feeling the air-pockets strain with the pressure. She felt trapped, conned. No, she thought. Not that. Reward success, you said.

– I don’t have the experience. I can’t –

– At Liberty, there’s no such word. He smiled, his eyes floating over her.

– But my Block –

– It’s nothing threatening. You’ll find it interesting. What do you know about Multiple Personality Disorder?

Not much, thought Hannah, trying to focus. Almost nothing.

– It’s quite rare, she said, searching her brain for stray knowledge. I mean, hardly anyone gets it. It’s a – she fumbled for the words – a rare delusional thing. That’s all I know.

– Well, you’ll be discovering a lot more. He paused. – It’ll stretch you, socially.

Hannah felt herself not stretching, but shrinking. She supposed that she felt flattered, deep down, below the inappropriate sex thoughts and the panic. Reward success. So why did it feel like a punishment? She looked into her glass. At the bottom was a lonely sliver of lemon.

Multiple Personality Disorder. That was when a person thought they were lots of other people. Ran several identities in their head at once. She couldn’t remember the statistics, but it was an unusual condition. You had to be pretty disturbed. There was a proxy version too, where you imagined the people were semi-independent of you. Orphans were prone to it.

– I’d better say yes, then, she mustered.

It came out gobbly and savage, like the noise the turkey made.

Leo Hurley must have been waiting, because as soon as Pike had powered off he was there next to her, clutching his drink, the crisp-crumb still sticking grimly to his beard. Hannah was popping the bubble-blisters, one by one, not caring now who saw her, her mind churning miserably.

– What’s up?

She gulped air. Forced herself not to look in Pike’s direction, so as not to stoke it up again, that awful invasive thing he’d done to her.

– Nothing. I don’t know. Some new project. I’m off the Munchies. Look, I don’t want to talk about it. It’s people-work. The words tasted like poison. – You said there was gossip.

Leo’s eyes slid sideways, and he coughed, then turned his body to shield them both from the rest of the room. The tall handsome man from the lift came to the table to reach for a drink. Odd, thought Hannah, the way he wore headphones at a party. Perhaps it was a field-associate affectation. The young man nodded distractedly at Hannah.

– I was in the Temple earlier, said Leo. His eyes were gleaming again. He looked slightly mad. – Just after the Festival.

The Temple was where the Boss was housed. On the top floor.

– And?

Leo lowered his voice.

– You mustn’t say anything. But she’s switched modes.

– How d’you mean?

Hannah wasn’t aware the Boss operated in modes in the first place.

– Altered focus.

– How? What to?

– Well, the last ten years, she’s been running in default mode. Democratic auto-pilot.

– And now? Hannah realised what had happened to his eyes, now. They were frightened.

– A new code’s kicked in. He licked dry lips, and swallowed. – I’m pretty sure she’s switched to damage limitation.

And then he was gone.

Damage limitation.

Next to Hannah, closer than she’d thought, the pale man with the headphones was pouring himself a drink.

– More tonic water? he offered Hannah.

– No thanks.

She’d popped all the bubbles by now. She’d have to go back to her apartment, and cut another strip from the roll. Or better still, go back to her apartment and climb into bed and try not to think about what Wesley Pike had said.

– We meet again, the man said, holding out a hand to shake. Benedict Sommers.

He’d got rid of the green gum somewhere. His eyes were the palest blue. Like swimming-pool water, the shallow end. She hated this. Leo understood, only because he was the same, or sort of. But no one else did. Benedict smiled, and held out a packet.

– Gum? he offered. Hannah shook her head.

– No thanks.

He put the packet away.

– I’m sorry, she blurted. But I can’t talk to people I don’t know. I just can’t do it. I have a sort of – allergy. It’s not you. It’s – me.

– Hey, he said. It’s been a long day. I understand.

And he flashed her a rueful smile. Hannah couldn’t think of anything to say, or any reason to say it, so she turned and walked off.

Benedict Sommers watched her.

Everyone knew about Hannah Park. The brilliant mind, blocked by the antisocial personality, and trapped in a body she hadn’t a clue what to do with. Not a bad body, in actual fact, he observed. But she wheeled it about like it was a trolley for her head. An interesting case, but not so unusual in Head Office. The Boss had a talent for targeting the right brains to fit the right task. The Munchies, in Hannah’s case. Her mother had used her as a proxy all through her childhood, apparently. There was something pitiful about her.

But if Hannah Park had problems, she wasn’t alone.

A bad attitude to authority, was the phrase being memo’d about, following his remark earlier today. The questionnaire was going to focus on that. The whole thing had been blown out of all proportion. But there it was, a black mark, and one that wouldn’t be erased easily. He’d have to work hard. Show willing.

Or bugger off altogether, he thought suddenly: leave Atlantica. Get rid of his terrible Munchie flatmate in St Placid and sell the place. Seek his fortune in the big wide world.

He adjusted his headphones thoughtfully.

Activating them at parties was a little game he played. Wear your surveillance gadgetry on your sleeve, and they all assume it’s something else. Even people who should know better. You get to hear all sorts of stuff.

Tonight, Benedict had picked up Hannah’s conversation with Leo Hurley by accident. But the content of it interested him. He knew about Leo Hurley. His screen-maintenance work gave him access to the nerve centre beyond the firewall. He’d be one of the few people who regularly saw the Boss.

A mode-switch, right on the heels of the Festival. That’s what he’d said. Damage limitation. And he was worried. Useful information, if you knew what to do with it.

Which Benedict didn’t. Yet.

But slowly, as the conversation between Hannah Park and Leo Hurley began to settle in his mind, the sense of possibility grew. It formed a ball of energy inside him, made him feel handsome, successful, proud. As he smiled, he felt the energy shine from his mouth like a child’s pumpkin blazing a serrated grin of fire. Outside, in the fading light, a glittering plane scraped the orange sky. It could be going anywhere, thought Benedict, weighing up the day. Anywhere.

He was getting steadily more drunk. From fast track to questionnairing, just like that. It wasn’t fair. Fine, OK, have rules, but hell –

He must have been thinking about Melissa subconsciously before she even touched him, because he got an instant erection when he felt the palm of a hand pressing in the small of his back, through his shirt. She was from Human Services. An appropriate department, for someone with her talents. Talents which he’d be more than willing to put to the test, now. Right now. End the day with a bang. He swung round, grinning, his mind still sore from the day’s defeat, his prick aching with greed. But it wasn’t Melissa.

– Think of me as your fairy godfather, said Wesley Pike.