The Gone-Away World (18 page)

“But my dear boy,” says C.T. Hoare, “surely not with us?”

Yes, it has been my life's ambition.

“Do you know what we do here?”

This is something of a poser. It is either so obvious that it needs no explanation, or so secret that it may not be mentioned, because nowhere in the many pages of literature I have scrutinised in order to isolate the name of Crispin Hoare and obtain his coordinates have I been able to ascertain the precise function of his office.

“Looked at intelligently,” I say, looking at Crispin Hoare intelligently, “this is the most important branch of the civil service.”

“Oh yes, undoubtedly,” says Crispin Hoare, very pleased, “but what drew your attention to us? Not a lot of people,” he says sadly, “are even aware we exist. Necessary, of course, but sad.”

I have no idea what ought to have drawn my attention, and no desire to lay claim to having had my attention drawn by routes either improper or unfeasible, so I agree with the necessity and dodge the question, and so it goes on, and with every one of my evasions Crispin Hoare seems to get a little more tired and sad, and each of my non-responses is a springboard into another question I cannot answer, and finally he holds up his hand for a halt and I know, absolutely clearly, that I have been busted wide open like a cantaloupe, and the only thing left is whether he takes pity on me or throws me out on my lying, untouchable arse.

Crispin Hoare looks at me across the desk and takes stock. He lets out a long, slow sigh.

“Forgive me,” he says. “I think the reason you came to me is that you have no other choice. You are here,” Crispin Hoare says, “because someone has given you nowhere else to go.” He nods to himself, and I realise that his satellite head is not one of those ones which beams long-distance phone calls from Estonia to Kashmir, it is one of the ones which can photograph your hair follicles and read your mail from up there. C.T. Hoare is not someone you can kid with some unrehearsed blather and a Gonzo grin.

“There is an annexe attached to your record. I would imagine,” C.T. Hoare says, over his cluttered, amiable desk, “that not one of the other people you went to for employment even talked to you about the job.” He gazes at me steadily, with sympathy. “I would imagine that they talked about everything but the job. And despite some splendid prevarication, I would venture that you have no notion of what I do. Very good effort, though.” At which point I nearly burst into tears, but manage instead a manly nod which is intended to convey that none of this is now or has ever been my fault, and yet I carry the cross without complaint or expectation of redress. Crispin Hoare opens a Manila folder and studies the single page contained therein. It takes him not very long at all. He reads it again, just to make sure. He shrugs.

“Would you like to see what it says?” And he slides the file halfway across the table towards me.

I consider several options, most of which are not options at all. I dismiss instantly all the ones which involve screaming, shouting or beating him to death with the heavy stapler by the window. Similarly I discard the possibility of kissing his hands and swearing my firstborn daughter to him as a handmaiden, or my son as a footrest. The only real question is whether I will reach across and accept the file and find out why I am unemployable, or leap to my feet and flee, and spend the rest of my life cleaning windows and wondering. It is a closer thing than you would think. The white page is mighty scary, and I glance down to assess its magic, only then realising that I have accepted it.

“REFER TO GEORGE LOURDES COPSEN” in large print, and then a note, in Lydia's father's wandering script: “Stat filler. Send him over if you like the cut.” This last is a naval expression, the cut of a ship's jib being the angle of her foresail, the defining feature of her character as a vessel, hence also a man or woman's bearing, and thus by overextension possibly the jib becomes the nose. It seems improbable to me that George Lourdes Copsen is concerned with the formation of my nose, he being the possessor of a set of grade A epicanthic folds and hence a man well aware that the soul's complexion is not readily legible in the face. It seems more likely that he wishes Crispin Hoare to exercise his judgement, and that my future prospects hinge entirely on the decision of a man I have just failed to gull, who has seen through my impoverished blarney, who has no cause to love me and whom I have secretly likened to a geosynchronous shrew. C.T. Hoare looks at me, and allows the full weight of his intelligence to appear for a moment behind his genial, ugly little face, and like Master Wu he finds in me whatever it is that he is looking for.

“Stat filler,” he says, sounding like the Evangelist (in her genuine, profane mode) talking about cross burnings. “Do you know what that is?”

I do not.

“Come with me.” And Crispin Hoare gets up from his desk and leads me out of his office, down one corridor and up another, until we are in an office almost exactly like his own with a man named Pont. Pont has no first name, or no last. The little banker's plate on his desk reads “PONT” in capitals, so I wonder whether PONT is his title. Person Of Natural Talent. Political Organiser for Nebulous Treaties. Penguin Officer, North Territory. This last one sounds improbable, but it would explain why Pont's wallspace is covered in meticulous graphs and charts. I am looking for signs of Arctic birdlife and blubber studies, when Crispin Hoare speaks again.

“Pont,” says Crispin Hoare, “I propose a Socratic sort of dialogue, culminating perhaps in a brief
excursus.
”

“Oh, right ho,” says Pont gamely, and, laying down whatever data set he is reading for his personal amusement, he gives every indication of pricking up his ears. Pont, like my new friend Crispin Hoare, has a distinctly small-mammal thing going on. Unlike Crispin Hoare, he looks to be nocturnal. He blinks and rubs at his nose with a cupped hand, and communicates his readiness to proceed. Crispin Hoare leans against the wall next to the door and begins.

“Hobbes [the political thinker, not the rather delightful cartoon tiger of the same name] asserted that the natural state of mankind is war. What say you?”

“I say he was a pessimistic old fart with a bee in his bonnet about the need for big government.”

“Pont . . .”

“All right, all right. The position is not utterly baseless. Proceed.”

“I should be delighted. Thus, the creation of the state, with its first duty being essentially to prevent one man from preying on another. Yes?”

“Hnqgglflmmpf.”

“I shall take that as a ‘yes.' Now, are those engaged in the business of governing any different by nature from those they govern?”

“Yes. They're prideful and tend to sexual misconduct. Also, the situation of being in government tends to drive you mad.”

“But are they more virtuous or more intelligent? Or more compassionate?”

“Ha!”

“Let's call that one a ‘no.' So, in order to protect the populace from their own governors, the law must be universal. More, it must require transparent and consistent behaviour from those appointed to rule. Hence the rulers must function, not as individuals, but as applicators of perfect justice, the willing part (and here I use the term ‘willing' meaning intending and asserting rather than merely accepting) of a machine for good government. Personal considerations are inadmissible, lest the whole structure be compromised by
privi lege
—private law. We are talking about a
Government Machine.
Yes?”

“I hope you're going somewhere with this, Crispin, because I've got a whole exciting pile of reports on potassium purchasing to get through.”

“Trust in me, stout Pont. I am but a little way off my goal.”

“Forge ahead, then.”

“Such a mechanism cannot function without accurate information. Quite obviously, with every degree of imperfection in the
input,
the
output
will be wrong by that degree multiplied by whatever other relevant false information is already there,
and
by whatever drift is inherent in the system's construction (it being impossible according to the laws of thermodynamics to build any engine which does not dissipate energy in the process of performing its task). Since this machine is informational, of course, that loss of accuracy will not produce heat, but rather nonsense. Yes?”

“Garbage in, garbage out. Or rather more felicitously: the tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster.”

“Oh, my dear Pont, that's rather good!”

“Potassium-purchasing reports are so exciting, Crispin, that every so often I have to pull myself back down to Earth with a bit of hard labour at the creative coalface. But please, continue.”

Crispin Hoare nods. “To recap: it is possible to put decent information into a Government Machine, have ordinary, good people running the thing, and a reasonable system in place, and still get utter idiocy out of the dispenser.”

“More than possible. Likely.”

“So let us look at a specific hypothetical case: let us suppose that the machine were looking for enemies within its own population.”

“Well, inevitably it
will
have enemies. It's unfair, so people will inveigh against it. The question is how it perceives those enemies. Initially, it will see them as legitimate opposition, because that's written in. But each time it looks at them, the predisposition established in the last investigation towards the possibility of criminal activity will be emphasised.”

“More plainly?”

“It's like taking a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. What's actually going on gets less clear. Shadows get darker. Faces are blurred. Eventually, it's all in the interpretation—but the interpretation is being done by people whose job is to look for danger. So they will err on the side of caution. Eventually, a photograph of a child's birthday party becomes a blurred image of an arms deal. The pixelated face of Guthrie Jones, under-nines balloon-modelling champion, becomes the grizzled visage of Angela Hedergast, infamous uranium seller. Each investigation of the same facts increases the likelihood that something will be found which is frightening—or rather something
will be found to be
frightening. Eventually, the mere fact that something or someone has been investigated eleven times becomes suspicious.”

“And therefore the numbers of suspected enemies of the people?”

“Would explode. The Government Machine is looking at itself in the mirror, of course; it's seeing an image of its own weaknesses.”

“So what, practically speaking, would be the upshot of this?”

“You end up with a machine which knows that by its mildest estimates it must have terrible enemies all around and within it, but it can't find them. It therefore deduces that they are well-concealed and expert, likely professional agitators and terrorists. Thus, more stringent and probing methods are called for. Those who transgress in the slightest, or of whom even small suspicions are harboured, must be treated as terrible foes. A lot of rather ordinary people will get repeatedly investigated with increasing severity until the Government Machine either finds enemies or someone very high up indeed personally turns the tide . . . And these people under the microscope are in fact just taking up space in the machine's numerical model. In short, innocent people are treated as hellish fiends of ingenuity and bile because there's a gap in the numbers. Filling gaps in the statistics . . . Oh. Crispin?”

“Pont.”

“Did you just drag me through that entire fandango to get an explanation of ‘stat filler' for one of your chums with a secure annexe?”

“I always enjoy our little talks.”

Pont sighs heavily.

“Leave me, please, Crispin and friend. I have a futility-induced migraine.”

“Thank you, Pont.”

Crispin Hoare leads me back to his office. I sit.

“Is it true?” I ask.

“Broadly,” says Crispin Hoare. “It's more nuanced, of course. The system is more reflexive than that. People are permitted a degree of freedom to express opinions. Usually the witch-hunt stops after a few iterations and we can all go back to what we're doing. Except for Pont, of course.”

“Why him?”

“Oh, didn't I say?” Crispin Hoare smiles thinly, and there is a flicker of warning in his genial face. “Our friend Pont is the witchfinder general. The real one. He goes through the numbers. He reads the confessions. He tracks and he traces and he never forgets anything. Very clever man. He finds the really dangerous people and he deals with them.”

“How does he find them? If it's all so messed up?”

“Sympathy, of course. Pont agrees with them. He loathes the Government Machine. Despises it. Anarchist, is Pont. But . . . he hates violence more, d'you see? Thinks it replicates and alienates. No answers in violence for Pont, just more rules, which of course he hates. So Pont . . . well, Pont thinks like the enemy, from our point of view. And from his, he turns in notional allies who think like us, and lets us deal with them. If you were ever thinking of getting involved in a real insurrection—not some student thing—you should be very afraid of Pont. He's never wrong.”

Brrr.

“We tracked down your chum Sebastian, you know, offered him a job in Pont's office. No go. He and his wife—I think you know her too—are content with their new professional direction. One can only say it takes all sorts.” He shrugs. I imagine vaguely that Sebastian and Aline must have opened an antique shop or started a business selling hand-woven linen goods.

“Sign,” Crispin Hoare says. He slides a form across the desk. It is long and fairly complicated and it is filled out already. It is titled, with magnificent redundancy and majestic self-importance, “Form.” At the bottom there is a space for the signatures of refugees from hostile interrogation who are lost at sea.