The Power(52)
Ricky and Bernie had had some ideas for what Roxy should do when she got home, fencing maybe, or one of the fronts up in Manchester, but she had an idea for Bernie that was bigger than anything he’d heard in a long time. She’s known for a while now what to ask for to make her last the longest, and how to mix it up. Roxy sat on a hillside for days, off her face, trying out different combinations her dad’s people had concocted for her approval. When they found it, they knew it. A purple crystal, as big as rock salt, fiddled about with by chemists and derived originally from the bark of the dhoni tree, which is native to Brazil but which grows pretty well here, too.
A snort of the full thing – pure Glitter – and Roxy could send a blast halfway across the valley. That’s not what they ship: too dangerous, too valuable. They save the good stuff for private use, and maybe for the right bidder. What they’re shipping is already cut. But they’ve done well. Roxy hasn’t mentioned Mother Eve to her family, but it’s because of the new churches that they’ve got seventy loyal women working on their production line already. Women who think they’re doing the work of the Almighty, bringing power to Her children.
She tells Bernie the week’s totals herself, every week. She does it in front of Ricky and Darrell if they’re there; she doesn’t care. She knows what she’s doing. The Monke family are the sole suppliers of Glitter right now. They’re printing money. And money can turn into anything.
On email, a private account bounced around a dozen servers, Roxy tells Mother Eve the weekly totals, too.
‘Not bad,’ says Eve. ‘And you’re keeping some back for me?’
‘For you and yours,’ says Roxy. ‘Just like we agreed. You set us up here; you’re making my fortune. You look after us and we’ll look after you.’ She grins as she types it. She’s thinking to herself, Take the whole thing; it belongs to you.
Mass grave of male skeletons found in a recent excavation of the Post-London Village Conglomeration. The hands were removed pre-mortem. The marked skulls are typical of the period; the scars were incised post-mortem.
Approximately two thousand years old.
FIVE YEARS TO GO
* * *
Margot
The candidate is puffing himself up in the mirror. He rolls his neck from side to side, he opens his mouth very wide and says, ‘Laaaa, la-la-la laaaa.’ He catches his own Caribbean Ocean-blue eye, smiles faintly and winks. He mouths at the mirror, ‘You’ve got this.’
Morrison gathers his notes and, attempting not to meet the candidate’s direct gaze, says, ‘Mr Dandon, Daniel, sir, you’ve got this.’
The candidate smiles. ‘That’s just what I was thinking, Morrison.’
Morrison smiles back, thinly. ‘That’s because it’s true, sir. You’re the incumbent. This belongs to you already.’
It does a candidate good to think that there’s some lucky-omen, stars-aligning thing going on. Morrison likes to pull these little tricks off if he can. That’s what makes him good at his job. It’s that kind of thing that makes it just that little bit more likely that his guy will beat the other guy.
The other guy is a gal, almost ten years younger than Morrison’s candidate, hard-edged and hard-nosed, and they’d pushed her on that in the weeks of campaigning. I mean, she’s divorced, after all, and with those two girls to raise, can a woman like that really find time for political office?
Someone had asked Morrison if he thought politics had changed since the – you know – since the Big Change. Morrison put his head to one side and said, ‘No, the key issues are still the same: good policies and good character and, let me tell you, our candidate has both,’ and so he went on, guiding the conversation back round to its safely railed-in scenic route past Mount Education and Healthcare Point via Values Boulevard and Self-Made-Man Gulley. But in the privacy of his own mind he admitted to himself that, yes, it had changed. If he’d allowed the odd voice in the centre of his skull operational control over his mouth, which he’d never do, he knew better than that, but if he’d said it, it would have said: They’re waiting for something to happen. We’re only pretending everything is normal because we don’t know what else to do.
The candidates hit the floor like Travolta, ready with their moves, knowing that the spotlight is going to find them and illuminate every glistening thing: both sequins and sweat. She hits it out of the park with the first question, which is Defence. She’s got her facts at her fingertips – she’s been running that NorthStar project for years, of course, he should push her on that – but his guy’s just not quite so easy with his comebacks.
‘Come on,’ mouths Morrison at no one in particular, because the lights are too bright for the candidate to see him. ‘Come on. Attack.’
The candidate stumbles over his answer, and Morrison feels it like a punch to the gut.
Second question and the third are on state-wide issues. Morrison’s candidate sounds competent but boring, and that’s a killer. By questions seven and eight she has him on the ropes again, and he doesn’t fight back when she says he doesn’t have the vision for the job. By this point, Morrison’s wondering if it’s possible for a candidate to lose so badly that some of the shit really will spray off on to him. It might seem as if he’s been sitting around eating M&Ms and scratching his ass for the past few months.