The Heart Goes Last - Страница 7

In view of the racket and the lumpy mattress they have trouble getting to sleep, so Stan hears the tapping at the window immediately. “Yo! Stan!”

Fuck, now what? He draws back the ragged curtain, peers cautiously out. It’s Conor, with his two looming sidekicks watching his back.

“Conor!” he says. “What the fuck?” At least it’s Con and not some lunatic with a crowbar.

“Hi, bro,” says Con. “Come out. I need to talk to you.”

“Fuck, now?” Stan says.

“Would I say need if I didn’t need?”

“Honey, what is it?” says Charmaine, holding the sheet up to her chin.

“It’s only my brother,” says Stan. He’s pulling on his clothes.

“Conor? Why is he here?” She doesn’t like Con, she never has; she thinks he’s a bad influence who will lead Stan astray, as if he’s that easy to lead. Con might get him into behaviour she doesn’t approve of, like too much drinking, and darker stuff she’ll never elaborate on, but she most likely means whores. “Don’t go out there, Stan, he might …”

“I can handle it,” says Stan. “He’s my brother, for fuck’s sake!”

“Don’t leave me alone in here!” she says fearfully. “It’s too scary! Wait, I’ll come with you!” Is this an act, to keep him tethered so Con can’t spirit him away to a den of vice?

“You stay in bed, honey. I’ll be right out outside,” he says with what he hopes is gentle reassurance. Muffled sniffling from the bed. Trust Con to turn up and mess with everyone’s head.

Stan slides himself out the door. “What?” he says as irritably as he can manage.

“Don’t sign into that thing,” says Conor. He’s close to whispering. “Trust me on it. You don’t want to.”

“How’d you know where to find me?” says Stan.

“What’s a phone for? I gave it to you! So I traced it, dum-dum. I tracked you on that bus, all the way here. Lesson one, don’t take phones from strangers,” says Conor, grinning.

“You’re not a fucking stranger,” says Stan.

“Right. So, I’m telling you straight up. Don’t trust that package, no matter what they tell you.”

“Why not?” says Stan. “What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s wrong with it is, unless you’re top management, you can’t get out. Except in a box, feet first,” says Conor. “I’m just looking out for you, is all.”

“What’re you trying to tell me?”

“You don’t know what goes on in there,” says Con.

“Meaning what? Meaning you do?”

“I’ve heard stuff,” says Conor. “It’s not for you. Nice guys finish last. Or else they get finished. You’re too soft.”

Stan juts out his chin. That would have been the signal for a scuffle, once upon a time. “You’re fucking paranoid,” he says.

“Yeah, right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” says Con. “Do yourself a favour, stay outside. Listen, you’re family. I’ll help you out, the same as you helped me. You need a job, some cash, a favour, you know where I am. You’re always welcome. And the little lady, bring her along too,” Con grins. “There’s a place for her, any time.”

So that’s it. Con has his poacher’s eye on Charmaine. No fucking way in hell is Stan falling for that one. “Thanks, buddy,” he says. “I appreciate it. I’ll think about it.”

“Like shit,” says Conor, but he smiles cheerfully, and the two of them do the back pat.

“Stan?” comes the anxious voice of Charmaine from inside their room.

“Go comfort the little wifey,” says Conor, and Stan knows what he’s thinking: pussy-whipped.

He watches Con walking away, with his two bodyguards; they get into a long black car, which slides off into the night, silent as a submarine. Most likely the same car he saw at the trailer park. Guys like Con who score some money always want cars like that.

Not that Stan would mind having such a car himself.

Twin City

The next morning they take the final step. Stan barely even read the terms and conditions, because Charmaine is so eager to get in. After all, they’ve been chosen, she says, and so many have been rejected. She smiles mistily at Stan as he signs his name on the form. “Oh, thank you,” she says. “I feel so safe.”

Then the workshops begin in earnest; or, as one of the leaders quips, they’ve had the shop, now they’re getting the work. They are about to learn so many astounding new things, and it will require their full concentration. Men’s workshops over here, ladies over there, because there will be different challenges and duties and expectations for each, and besides, they’ll be separated for a month at a time when they’re in the prison part of this project – a feature that will be explained more fully to them shortly – so they might as well start getting used to it, their first workshop leader says with a chuckle. Anyway, abstinence makes the heart grow fonder, as he is sure they know from experience. Another chuckle.

Be a loner, get a boner, thinks Stan. A rhyme of teenaged Conor, who’d had a collection of rhymes like that. He watches as Charmaine and all of the other women in the group leave the room. Sandi and Veronica don’t look back, but Charmaine does. She smiles brightly at Stan to show him she’s confident about their decision, though she looks a little anxious. But then, he’s a little anxious himself. What are these astounding new things they’re about to learn?

The men’s workshop leaders are half a dozen young, earnest, dark-suited, zit-picking graduates of some globally funded think tank’s motivational-speaking program. In his past life, the part of it he’d spent at Dimple Robotics, Stan encountered the type. He disliked them before; but, as before, they can’t be avoided, since the workshop classes are mandatory.

In a jam-packed day of back-to-back sessions, they’re given the full song and dance. The rationale for Consilience, its history, the potential obstacles to it, the odds ranged against it, and why it is so imperative that those odds be overcome.

The Consilience/Positron twin city is an experiment. An ultra, ultra important experiment; the think-tankers use the word ultra at least ten times. If it succeeds – and it has to succeed, and it can succeed if they all work together – it could be the salvation, not only of the many regions that have been so hard-hit in recent times, but eventually, if this model comes to be adopted at the highest levels, of the nation as a whole. Unemployment and crime solved in one fell swoop, with a new life for all those concerned – think about that!

They themselves, the incoming Positron Planners – they’re heroic! They’ve chosen to risk themselves, to take a gamble on the brighter side of human nature, to chart unknown territories within the psyche. They’re like the early pioneers, blazing a trail, clearing a way to the future: a future that will be more secure, more prosperous, and just all-round better because of them! Posterity will revere them. That’s the spiel. Stan has never heard so much bullshit in his life. On the other hand, he sort of wants to believe it.

The final speaker is older than the zitty youths, though not that much older. His suit is of the same darkness, but it looks lusher. He’s narrow-shouldered, long torso, short legs; short hair too, clippered around the neck, combed back. The look says: I am buttoned-down.

There’s a woman with him, also in a dark suit, with straight black hair and bangs and a squarish jaw; no makeup, but she does have earrings. Her legs are good though muscular. She sits to the side, fooling with her cellphone. Is she an assistant? It isn’t clear. Stan pegs her as butch. Technically she shouldn’t have been here, in the men’s sessions, and Stan wonders why she is. Still, better to look at her than at the guy.

The guy begins by saying they should call him Ed. Ed hopes they’re now feeling comfortable, because they know – as he does! – that they’ve made the right choice.

Now he would like to give them – share with them – a deeper peek behind the scenes. It was a struggle to get the multiple permissions needed to set up the Positron enterprise. The powers that be did not decide easily; more than one policy guru’s ass was on the line (he smirks a little at his own daring use of the word ass), as witness the howling when the scheme was first announced in the press. The spokesmen, or rather the spokespersons – Ed glances at the woman, who smiles – have braved a lot of indignant screaming from the online radicals and malcontents who claim that Consilience/Positron is an infringement of individual liberties, an attempt at total social control, an insult to the human spirit. Nobody is more dedicated to individual liberties than Ed is, but as they all know – here Ed gives a conspiratorial smile – you can’t eat your so-called individual liberties, and the human spirit pays no bills, and something needed to be done to relieve the pressure inside the social pressure-cooker. Wouldn’t they agree?

The woman in the suit glances up. What’s she looking at? Her gaze sweeps over them, calm, cool. Then she turns back to her cellphone. Without a phone himself, Stan feels naked: they’d had to turn in their cells at the beginning of the workshop. They’ve been promised new ones, but those will work only inside the wall. Stan wonders when the new ones will be issued.

Ed lowers his voice: serious stuff coming up. Sure enough, on comes a PowerPoint with a slew of graphs. The financial big guns have concealed the true statistics to avoid panic, he says, but a shocking 40 percent of the population in this region is jobless, with 50 percent of those being under twenty-five. That’s a recipe for systems breakdown, right there: for anarchy, for chaos, for the senseless destruction of property, for so-called revolution, which meant looting and gang rule and warlords and mass rape, and the terrorization of the weak and helpless. That is the grim prospect staring everyone in this area right between the eyes. They’ve already noticed the symptoms for themselves, which is – he is sure – why they saw the desirability of signing in.