The Red Men (34 page)

‘And now?’

Stoker handed me a champagne cocktail, gold leaf drifting in the bubbles.

‘No hard feelings.’

‘Speaking of which, how is your Dad?’

He clasped his hands over the thought of his poor redundant father. The old man was out of the picture. The son must carry the burden of the family business alone now. Taking a moment to brush
down the lapels of his Donna Karan jacket, Jonathan Stoker considered his reply.

‘Dad would have loved to be here tonight. I did ask. No go. He was forced out. Like that, over what? An organ transplant? As if his guts were going to inform on us? As if his pig’s
balls were being used to store our company secrets?’

‘How about Bruno Bougas?’

‘
Persona non grata
. He was Hermes’ right hand man! They’d worked together for decades. Out. Like that. Cantor insisted. Absolutely.’

I remembered travelling with Bruno Bougas down to Iona when he was full of excitement toward Hermes’ new project, the secret deal that was going to pull us all out of the recession. The
dawn of the unreal age. Even then, there were cracks appearing in their relationship. Bruno Bougas had, in many ways, invented Hermes Spence and the Monad brand. But his appetites and attitude were
a liability in the kind of circles Hermes now moved; dinner parties attended by a cabinet minister and his mistress, prayer meetings with the under-secretary of defence, that kind of thing. If you
want to be taken seriously, you don’t take your magus to civil service briefings. Bougas had done well to last as long as he did, finally undone by a pair of transplanted kidneys.

The next to arrive was Morton Eakins. The anti-psychotic drugs had caused a crash weight gain. I put my hand on his shoulder as much to steer him as to greet him. Morton hugged me. After a beat
of hesitation, I reciprocated, feeling the drooping adipose sections either side of his tailbone.

‘I’m sorry they took me away,’ he whispered, barely getting the words out.

‘Morton works from home now,’ said Jonathan Stoker Jnr.

If he had always been something of a corrupt cherubim, the violence Raymond and The Elk had done to his mind had returned Morton Eakins to innocence. Chubby, his lips wet with milk, Eakins had
completed his long evolution into babyhood. I pointed him in the direction of the buffet while Jonathan Stoker, keen not to be seen near the gimp, assumed his father’s mantle as the man who
works the room. He planted himself beside a trio of new arrivals, turning their triangular conversation into an awkward square. I recognized one of the party, Alex Drown. She was one of the
marketing mavens, a brand enforcer beating the drum so that the company stayed on-message and under-budget. She introduced the two young executives flanking her with a theatrical flick of her
palm.

‘This is Josh, and this is James. Do make an effort not to confuse

them.’

Alex worked hard at such playfulness. She was a confidence vampire: her assistants lasted six months before retiring to the Lake District to run organic delicatessens. Her weapon of choice was
the tight perm, each curl meticulously screwed into place. She had come straight from the office in a black trouser suit and would no doubt return there later, while the men indulged themselves. In
a previous age, she took me to dinner and told me about her upbringing in the Glenbryn housing estate in Belfast, her alcoholic mother, her dead father. ‘She didn’t raise me. She
lowered me. I had to raise myself.’ That long-lost candid moment, a decade ago, from before the shutters came down, flared up between us as I leant forward to kiss her once, twice.

‘I didn’t know you still worked for Monad,’ I said.

‘I don’t,’ replied Alex. ‘I work for Numenius Systems. We grant the

licences to interact with Cantor.’

‘Monad’s owners.’

‘Partners, Nelson, partners.’

Then she was on her smartphone, backing away from the party.

Josh and James, brothers from Dallas, had already come up with a few ideas on how to improve Britain, even though they had only been in the country for as long as it took their limousine to
drive them from Heathrow. The finer points of their plan to improve our national character were lost on me, as Alex, their commander-in-chief, went off like a Belfast brawler.

‘Sterilize. Sterilize,’ she barked into the phone.

‘Trouble at work?’ I said, when she returned to the party.

‘My husband,’ she replied. ‘I should never have let the nanny take the night off.’

The two American lads stood close to me.

Josh said, ‘We’re psyched to start working with Redtown.’

James added, ‘We were spitballing parameters on the red-eye. We want to focus on family friendly policies –’

‘– look at schooling.’ Josh was nodding in the most disconcerting manner.

‘Prayer is not allowed in public schools. Is that a good thing?’

‘What if you put in some parameters that weighed against certain lifestyles.’

‘– rewarded others’

‘How would that alter our outcomes?’

‘– societally speaking.’

‘Welfare.’

‘Exactly. Does welfare facilitate positive life outcomes or would people be better off without a safety net?

‘We have think-tanks and policy units queuing up to run their ideas through Redtown.’

‘It’s an amazing thing that you’ve done. You are amazing.’

‘We’re in negotiation with the Dallas suburbs of Garland and

Richardson to populate our own Redtown.’

‘I’m sure your Maghull is great but we need one with Americans in it.’

‘We want to learn from you. You’ve cleared a path for us to bring about change.’

‘Lord knows the world needs it.’

‘You know the phrase “blue sky thinking”?’

‘We have our own version.’

‘‘‘Red sky thinking.”’

‘Imagining the bad stuff.’

‘More than that, though. Sometimes the unthinkable is the right thing to do. For example, what if civil rights were a bad thing? I mean, I don’t believe that. But what if all races
were better living apart and not intermingling. That’s red sky thinking. Thinking about the fire.’

‘Creation and destruction are part of the same cycle.’

‘Fire Nature Incessantly Renews.’

This odd phrase snapped me out of it.

I looked at Josh, at James.

‘What did you just say?’

‘It’s something Hermes said in our prayer meeting.’

‘On the cross, Pilate inscribed four letters I.N.R.I. We translate this as Jesus King of the Jews. You see the I stands for Iesus, because they didn’t have a J.’

‘Who didn’t?’

‘The Latins.’

‘You mean the Romans?’

‘Maybe it’s Hebrew that doesn’t have a J?’

‘Perhaps it’s Greek,’ I chipped in.

‘The N is Nazareth, the R is Rex which means King and the I is Iudaeorum which means Jews.’

‘So INRI is an acronym for Jesus, King of the Jews.’

‘That’s what we learnt in Bible class but Hermes suggested a different explanation.’

‘And you didn’t burn him for it?’

‘That’s very funny,’ said Josh, not laughing.

‘Ignis Natura Renovatur Integram. Fire Nature Incessantly Renews. Through fire nature is reborn whole.’

‘Birth comes out of death.’

‘Change needs fire.’

‘Exactly. That’s what we’re saying. Redtown is our fire.’

The room shivered.

Jonathan Stoker Jnr interrupted. ‘What if you don’t get the results you expect?’

Josh was not interested in this question and turned the conversation onto the matter of our missing host. Jonathan Stoker Jnr’s pale smile registered the insult. Under the tungsten light,
his anxious sweat gave his skin the texture of wet plaster. He would not be deflected.

He leant in to say, ‘Religion doesn’t belong in the boardroom. Religion belongs in the desert.’

Josh and James did not immediately rise to this bait.

Stoker continued. ‘Faith is provincial. Kicks for hicks. You can’t maintain a belief in God while living in a city. There are so many gods worshipped here, the diverse multitudes
rebuke monotheism every single day. You look at London and think, how could this illimitable sprawl be God’s plan? Where is fate and destiny in a hundred thousand streets?’

‘Sodom,’ said Josh.

‘Gomorrah,’ laughed James.

Then Hermes Spence arrived with an obsidian robot at his side. He shook hands with Josh and James, ticked off Jonathan Stoker with a warning shot from his index finger, then leapt in one
extravagant motion up onto a long table. Dr Hard tapped a champagne flute with a teaspoon so that the room fell silent.

‘What a long strange trip this has been!’ Hermes shrugged off his jacket and passed it to Dr Hard. The tie similarly discarded, we were to be treated to shirtsleeves. The last time I
had spoken to Hermes Spence he had threatened to destroy my life data if I failed to deliver Redtown. As his eyes played over the expectant audience, his gaze hopscotching from acquaintance to
underling to the American contingent, I tensed in anticipation of contact. What would I say to him? What would he say to me? He did not acknowledge my presence and started on his speech.

‘First of all, I would like to welcome the delegation from Numenius Systems, whose generous licensing of their technology is what makes all our work possible. They have flown in from
America to see what we have achieved with Redtown. It doesn’t seem like a year since I first embarked upon the Redtown project.’

Pause for comic effect.

‘It seems like ten years!’

Obedient laughter from the faithful.

‘When I first envisaged Redtown, I realized what a colossal undertaking it would be. Could I face that kind of sacrifice? At first, I doubted it. Simulating one mind is a miracle.
Simulating twenty-two thousand? Surely a miracle too far. But it seems that nothing is beyond the genius of Dr Ezekiel Cantor. Every day, I thank God for his presence among us. Before Cantor, the
world seemed too chaotic to influence. Decisive action was hampered by the unpredictability of its consequences. Our government was paralysed by debate. The West was decaying in the face of this
inertia. It is our duty to reach into society and fix it. The nihilist shrugs, the pragmatist shakes his head. Where do we start? What do we do? Finally, we have the answer. Redtown is not just a
model village. It’s our story about society. We can decide how that story ends. Where we once saw chaos, Cantor shows us an order.

‘We will snap the political elite out of their torpor by discovering which policies can produce a greater good. Redtown will reawaken action in a West that has settled for good-enough, a
West that has learnt to live with its failures, that is content merely to manage its own decline. We are the radicals, you see. We are the revolutionaries. We are the force that will renew our
society.’

As he spoke, screens expanded to cover the walls and ceiling of the room. There, suddenly, was Redtown, finally up and running and producing realistic results. For the benefit of the crowd,
Spence re-ran the final test we had conducted a month earlier. On the left wall we were invited to watch live footage of the real town. On the right wall, a live feed from Redtown. The experiment
was crude but effective. You inject a dog with stimulants and let it loose in Maghull square; Redtown accurately predicts the scatter pattern of fleeing citizens, and which citizens would actually
be there. And what they were intending to buy in the shops, and had already bought. Where they parked and how they parked. The dog’s claws skittered on the roof of a car, in both realities.
The same woman screamed, in both realities. The experiment ran for ten seconds before Dr Hard stepped out of the Post Office and shot the dog with a dart. If the experiment ran for longer, for
twenty seconds or even a minute, then there was a risk that the simulation would deviate markedly from the reality. Ten seconds was good enough for me. Ten seconds meant that my work was done.

The Monad employees applauded and whooped, the young middle managers punching the air, the tails of their shirts untucked. Hermes accepted their applause and, with the help of Dr Hard, stepped
down from the table.

That he had not once acknowledged my role in the creation of Redtown did not surprise me. Had I not bowed my head and accepted every humiliation heaped on me during the project? Had I not been
pragmatic in collaborating in my own degradation? There was a gap within me where my will should reside. A gap Monad filled. When did I lose my volition? There was a hole within me. It made me
susceptible to the imprints of others. A natural servant to the strong-willed.

I was very suggestible. I had sat beside a bonfire on Formby beach and agreed to Raymond’s plan to destroy Redtown. I put my hand over my eyes and turned away from
Dr Hard. The robot would sniff out such a terrible idea. I was fortunate there was a crowd in the Heart. Their clamour drowned out my secret.

There are two halves of a bomb. A logic bomb.

We need you to bring them together.

You are the fuse. You have access. You have influence.

You must do it.

El was telling me about her nightmare,

‘I shouted at people to follow me. They agreed but didn’t stir. Then it starts and we’re in a crowd together, stuck underground, shouting. The worst evil is upon us. It has
been slinking around and now it leaps like a panther. My head is on fire. All our heads are on fire. Burning us away.’

El shivered, her smooth arms aqua under the night light.

‘The same dream?’

‘Everything was blood. Just the worst feelings inside me.’

‘We dream to prepare ourselves for the worst. It keeps our survival instinct sharp.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘I thought it might be comforting.’

‘A hug would be comforting.’

‘Come here.’

Underground, in the cellar bedroom, we rediscovered our marriage.

The old house moaned all night about its aches and pains. Mice skittered overhead in the space beneath the floorboards of the lounge and the ceiling of the bedroom, their claws raking for
purchase against the vinyl partition. In her dreams, my daughter heard the buzzing of giant bees and awoke screaming. I sat on the side of her bed and held her long after she had fallen back
asleep. In this way I ministered to my family in the deep of the night, shepherding them through the bad thoughts. There was a high pressure front of psychic weather – El felt it in the
bridge of her nose. A build-up. A blockage. We slept underground with the city bearing down upon us.