Read Online Game Control by Lionel Shriver - Free Book Online Page B

degradation, for you can only see what you are, and squalor was what these deformities were made of. Piper would never perceive the canniness of the planet or the ingenuity of his own race, for his vista was smeared with greenhouse gases and acid rain. Would Calvin ever bother to read articles about new high-yield hybrid crops? Or Simon's irrefutable evidence that far from being a drag on a poor country's economy, population growth was its greatest asset?
      For as often as nihilists concocted 'solutions', they raised
    the prospect of any salvation to prove it wouldn't work. All progress was palliative, and their favourite phrase was 'too little, too late'. Some were content with keening, others with debauchery. Clubs of Rome lived high, having already consigned their people to the trash heap. There was money in fear, but you had to move quick— Famine!
    1975 didn't sell well in 1976. How many copies of The Limits to Growth and The Population Bomb now yellowed in Oxfam outlets? These gremlins had squealed that civilization was finished ever since it had started. They were a waste and an irritant, but they were decorative.
      Should they remain in self-important think-tanks competing over who could concoct the most gruesome scenario for the year 2000, Wallace was content to let them hand-wring their lives away. Another sort of dread merchant, however, he could not conscionably ignore.
      Because Calvin Piper had never been all talk. To give credit where due, the man was bright, effective and fantastically well connected. He was a seducer. His ideas, in their extremity, had a sensual thrill. He would never be satisfied with predicting disaster—he would help make it happen.
      Wallace might have relaxed when Calvin was fired, reduced back to the Bacon spoiling on the walls of his Karen lair, unemployed. Wallace knew better. The very appearance of inactivity over at that cottage gave him chills. Calvin could not bear to be still; he did not have the spiritual sophistication. Released from the constraints of bureaucracy, Calvin was less demoted than unleashed. Why, that scoundrel had had no visible means of support for the last six years. But look at him: his slacks were linen, his shoes kid and outside the A-frame undoubtedly sat his new four-wheel-drive. What, pray, was he living on? Wallace may have dwelt in the realms of the ancestors for most of the day, but he was still aware that it was on the detail level that you found people out.
      It was late enough for Wallace, who liked to be in bed by nine o'clock, to make his exit, but he did not want to appear to be fleeing because Calvin had arrived. Wallace might be repelled but he certainly wasn't frightened. And there was one woman creeping over to his side of the house who stood out from the rest, if only because of her outfit. Long hem, high
    neck: she was hiding. Brown hair sloped either side of her face as she tiptoed towards the veranda, hoping to make it the distance of the living room without being caught. When he looked closely, he thought her rather prettier than much of the Lycra-nippled competition, but she did not have the conviction to match. That was half the game with beauty, keeping your head high, and she stared at her sensible shoes. Beauty was deception, and you had to have the shyster's smooth sleight of hand to pull it off. This one thought of herself as ordinary; consequently, she was. Wallace didn't think about these things any more, though as the theory fell to hand like the drop of an apple there must have been a time when he thought of little else.
      He almost left her alone, so apparent was her desperation to be overlooked, but were she allowed to achieve what she thought she wanted—solitude—she would be miserable. More, he couldn't resist a woman whose instinct with Calvin Piper on stage was to sneak in the opposite direction.
      'Pardon—' At his hand on her sleeve, she jumped. 'Have you a clue where I might get a spot of