At the Edge of the Game Read online

  Now he picks up a parcel, points at the x-ray machine. ‘Put the fucking thing in here.’ He slams the package into the drawer, shoves it closed. ‘Press this.’ He punches a large green button. ‘Look at the screen. See anything that looks like a bomb?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Chemical agent?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Biological agent?’

  ‘No.’

  He presses a large red button. The machine beeps. He opens the drawer, takes out the package, flings it across the room into a bucket. ‘Do the rest of them.’ He walks off.

  ‘What about the franking machine?’

  ‘I’ll show you later. Just get that fucking stuff done first, right?’

  So now I’m going through the pile of parcels, one by one. Here’s a box wrapped in brown paper. Put it into the machine, look at the overlapping squares on the screen. What are they? No idea. Must be fine. I take the parcel out and put it to the side. Get the next one, repeat the process. Now the next. This is going to take half the morning at this rate. Behind me Al continues the grumbling and cursing as he stabs letters into pigeon holes, kicks bins this way and that to get around to all parts of the sorting wall.

  ‘Hey,’ he shouts at me. ‘Here’s Len’s cart. Go and do his run.’

  ‘Right.’ I’ve got a parcel in the machine.

  ‘That means now.’

  I finish x-raying the parcel slowly and deliberately, and then I take the cart. Have a map here drawn by Candy to guide me around his route. It covers a few buildings, none with more than two or three drops. Need to put a plastic cover over the cart. The wind is from the north, driving along wet sleet mixed with freezing rain. Absolutely shockingly cold. Have to go back inside to get my gloves.

  The route goes halfway around the site. I stop at the first building, D-2. Pick up stuff from the receptionist, go through to an office floor, do a circuit, making a couple of more drops and pick-ups. On to the next building, D-4, do more or less the same thing. Next is a lab. One drop at the security office.

  ‘Thanks, bud,’ says the guard. ‘Where’s Len?’

  ‘He’s not in today.’

  ‘No? Sick, is he?’

  ‘Not sure,’ I say, moving on. I have no stomach for this sort of exchange right now.

  Squint at the map, turn a corner to a security gate. Yer man opens it for me from the office. Rattle forward a few paces.

  Some sort of distorted squawk comes from somewhere. The wind is loud. Not really sure what it was. Push the cart ahead, through this insult of a climate, towards D-6 across the way.

  Another loud squawk. I stop, look around.

  ‘HEY!’

  It’s an intercom, sticking up out of the ground beside the security gate. I leave the cart where it is and trudge over, lean to the grille.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘YOU IGNORING ME, BUD, ARE YA?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘DIDN’T YA HEAR ME CALLING YA?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘BRING A STACK OF INTER-OFFICE ENVELOPES NEXT TIME, RIGHT? LEN ALWAYS KNOWS TO BRING EM.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Push into the gale, tack across the road to D-6. Just another couple of drops there. So it goes, building after building, just minor little adjuncts to the main plant. The run is actually even easier than mine. All done and on the way back in twenty minutes. You’d swear from talking to Len that he has it really tough.

  ‘You’re back,’ says Candy in the warmth of the bright mailroom. ‘Good.’

  The stuff I’ve brought back, I drop into various bins, which adds amusingly to Al’s burden. Now time to get back to the x-ray machine.

  ‘No, do the franking now,’ says Candy. ‘Al, have you shown him yet?’

  With a throw of eyes to the ceiling he takes me to the far corner where the franking machine is. Slams the Outgoing bin on the counter, picks up a letter. ‘Stick it in here. Standard postage, right? See the table here? Tells you the prices and the codes. Type it here. Press Go. Letter goes through. Franked. Throw it in here. Got it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, just to annoy him. Won’t allow him the satisfaction of having confused me.

  But the franking is quick. Half an hour and it’s done. I head out on my own run, then get back to the x-ray machine. When that’s done, I do Len’s next run.

  Finally, Candy surveys the room. ‘Very good, lads. We’re back on track. Head away for lunch.’

  Al looks fit to explode. He’s been on non-stop sorting since dawn, broken only by his own three runs. He flings away the letters he has in his hands, stalks out.

  As he disappears down the corridor, she turns to me: ‘You did very well this morning. Keep it up.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. I pick up my coat. There’s a shop down at the end of the industrial estate road where I will buy a sandwich.

  ‘By the way, don’t forget to do your time card this afternoon and put it in the post.’

  ‘Oh yeah. I won’t.’

  ‘Ask Al if you’re not clear on anything to do with it.’

  Yeah, I’m sure he would be most helpful.

  Walk to the shop through the drear of concrete and grime. Stand in a slow, dejected queue to get my food slab. Back up the dirty, noisy road again. Eat it perched on the mail-sorting counter, sipping a plastic cup of profoundly bad tea from the Avatan machine. Then, Al and Candy back from wherever they were, it’s back to the toil again, and not in any way refreshed either.

  Another four hours of this.

  More external mail comes in. Another pile of letters to be sorted by Al. Another fifteen or so packages to be x-rayed by me.

  But here – what is this? The first package is showing up on the monitor with something weird. Something with what looks like circuitry and wiring. I stare at it for a long time, then look over at Candy and Al. Open my mouth to say something, change my mind, stare at the monitor again. This is very much what I imagine a bomb would look like. Starting to sweat here. Silly irrational fear.

  ‘Uh – Candy? Can you take a look at this?’

  Candy takes a look, calls Al over. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Dunno, Candy,’ he says.

  ‘It’s a pretty big deal, calling an alert, you realise that?’

  What’s this? I’m not calling anything. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’ll have to evacuate the building immediately and let Security come in to sort this out.’

  ‘But – ‘ I look again at the monitor. It’s really does look like a bomb. Going on what I’ve seen on TV, anyway.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Right, you two, get out of the building.’

  She makes the call as we get our coats. Moments later the alarm goes off.

  Dozens of us stand at the end of the car park in the driving sleet, looking like penguins huddling against an Antarctic storm. Have to stand shivering next to Al, who ignores me. There’s Candy, over there, talking of a fella with a walkie-talkie and a clipboard. Security jeeps and the site ambulance arrive.

  The alarm finally stops.

  ‘Right,’ shouts yer man with the clipboard. ‘All clear. You can go back inside.’

  There’s an immediate bad-tempered rush for the warmth of indoors. I try to skip past Candy, but she nabs me.

  ‘George. There’s something you’ve got to sign here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re the one who made the call. You’ve got to sign for it. Standard procedure.’

  I sign. What choice do I have?

  ‘What was it anyway?’ I ask the security man.

  ‘Dictation machine and headset. Next time, think before you get the building evacuated, all right? You’re a temp here, aren’t you?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Just think next time, okay?’

  Back inside, Al is looking very smug. ‘Alright, George?’

  Just ignore him, that’s the only approach. I resume my position at the x-ray machine.

  ‘No, I’ll d
o the rest of them,’ says Candy. ‘You help Al with the sorting.’

  So, humiliation compounded, I trudge over and pick up a pile of envelopes.

  Bradley… where is Bradley? I scan up and down the wall. Should be able to remember this one. Just can’t. The wind’s been taken out of my sails completely. Al snaps the envelope out of my hand, shoves it into the Bradley pigeon hole. He starts whistling.

  ‘By the way,’ he says, ‘you need to do your time card.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ I have it in my pocket.

  ‘Just write in 8 on each row, Monday to Friday. Stick it in an envelope, address it to the agency and frank it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I run it through the franking machine and put it in the Outgoing bin.

  One more mail run today, and then it’s home for a precious couple of days of rest. Darkness is closing in outside now. Cars splash by on the wet roadway as I shove the covered cart over to D-3.

  ‘You the lad that called the alert?’ the D-3 security guard says.

  Jesus. ‘Why?’

  ‘Listen, you’d want to watch it here, mate. You’re only a temp, you know.’ There’s a cleaning woman in the corridor running a machine over the floor. ‘Tracey! Here’s the fella who called the alert.’

  ‘God love ya,’ she says.

  I move on.

  This is the lightest run of the week. Not a lot to drop, and almost nothing to pick up. I take the time on the top floor to take a look at the view. The lights are coming on in Dublin city. For miles the vista is one of grim industrial development. Vast majority of those buildings are shut down these days. Avatan is a shining light of corporate vitality in an economic wasteland. Will west Dublin ever again fill with workers, become choked with traffic and fumes, break the skyline with columns of smoke and steam or hanging tall cranes? Further off to the south, beyond these dead zones and the foothill habitations, are the rising forest and gorse slopes, today white-on-dark with the persisting sleet or snow driven in turbulent shock out of the dense roof of tumbling cloud. The higher peaks are beyond view. There’s a sliver of sea to be seen over to the east, identifiable by a few gliding lights in the deeper dark. Below in the car park, the first drivers are departing for home. I long to be in mine. I grip the cart handles and get moving.

  Ten minutes of sorting in the mailroom when I get back. Then, at last, Candy turns off her computer, gets her coat.

  ‘See you on Monday, lads.’

  ‘See ya, Candy.’ Al gets how own mouldy old blue anorak and scarf, takes off without a word to me.

  I switch off the mailroom lights, close the door. At last. Free.

  The bus windows are fogged with human breath. Up front the wipers are on full, sweeping away layer after layer of sticking sleet. There’s a hold-up – again – at the Red Cow. I wipe a patch clear on the window to see the police and army transports heading up the hard shoulder. Whatever’s going on ahead must be fairly serious. If the driver saw fit to turn the radio to the news, we might get some idea, but instead it’s some horrible old pop station. The fella sitting beside me sticks his nose further into his paperback, totally uninterested in happenings outside. An old hand. Probably seen it all before dozens of times at this junction, this strategically vital nexus so beset by terrorist sabotage.

  I phone Helen. ‘I’m going to be a bit late, I’d say. We’re stuck at the Red Cow. Nothing’s moving either way.’

  ‘Oh, right. I won’t put the dinner on yet, then.’

  ‘Has there been anything on the news about it?’

  ‘I haven’t seen anything,’ she says, evincing no inclination to check for me.

  I try to settle back into the corner of this uncomfortable seat – almost an impossibility. The tiredness of the day is starting to hit me now, made all the worse by the carbon dioxide level in this overheated bus. Feel like gravity has doubled. I close my eyes, try to tune out the noise and the jabbing of the seat back into my vertebrae. Red flashing of passing police chopper penetrates my retinas. I open my eyes but already the aircraft is gone. I can only hear it now. Hot breeze hits my face, gusting through the window ajar. White-painted bars run across to prevent one from falling out, to smash on the hard black pavement below. The end of the day, the sun now below the horizon, the hot, violet, dusty afterglow its last vestige before true night. The city lights are truly as nothing compared to the emerging galaxies above. They shine through the thin veil of high-altitude wisps, seem almost radiatively intense enough to burn them away themselves; an illusion, of course. Beside this old leather couch is a table on which I have my Oceanus wine. I take a sip. It does not taste like wine at all – more like the taste of fresh bread. I take another sip. Now it tastes of aniseed, but has the scent of pipe tobacco. Sour, blue smoke is rising out of it. I take the glass into the kitchen, empty it into the sink. I check the label on the bottle –

  OCEANUS

  From the vineyards of Queen Gerana

  I try to remember where we got this bottle, but it will not come to mind. I cannot remember pouring it; nor can I remember what I was doing before I sat on the couch. I return to the living room. There is no couch, no table. We’ve never had a leather couch.

  Fear stirs in me. I need to sit down. I go to the dinner table by the balcony doors, sit down, hold my head in my hands. In the building across the street, lights are coming on in the windows. People are arriving home from their jobs. Where do they all work, out in the expanses of the Far City and beyond? My consciousness is a burning light, but my selfness is a floating wisp that eludes every attempt to grasp it. Do I have to work? Do I have a job somewhere in the Far City? Perhaps I commute to the Near City every day, or even to the Cylinder. How would one go about doing that? Maybe I have a car.

  I call for Helen, but she’s not here, not anywhere.

  I wake up on the floor, emerging from a euphoric hallucination, the details of which are gone as soon as I open my eyes. I lost consciousness in an attack of intense panic. My body is cold, quaking. I’ve hit my forehead against something. I push myself across the floor and sit against the wall, watching the room take shape again around me. Minutes go by as things solidify. Finally I feel strong enough to stand. I push myself out onto the balcony to get some fresh air. This, like the wine, or whatever it was, carries the scent of cinnamon, blown from the unlit, sloping scrublands of the African Wall.

  I could jump over the railing, right here and now. Call the bluff of the universe. One moment - then resolution.

  The floor jolts. I look around. The bus is moving, swerving through lights, stopping at my stop, close to the Avatan main gate.

  Christ, here we go again. Another five days of this.

  I disembark into the sharp coldness of this clear blue day. An improvement on Friday anyway. This is the sort of weather they have in the winter in civilised countries. Wonder if it’s weather that gives nations their character. Scandinavian countries: Predictable, orderly winters suitable for enjoyable activities such as skiing, but requiring forward planning to survive. Ireland: Chaotic, changeable, uncomfortable winters when no matter what you do, it’s going to be crap.

  Through the mailroom double doors.

  ‘Morning,’ I say, aiming for cheerfulness.

  Len is back. Neither he nor Al answer my greeting.

  Candy looks serious. ‘George. Over here.’

  I take off my coat and go over to her cublcle.

  ‘We got a call from PeopleFirst this morning about you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They got your time card on Saturday. They say you franked it.’

  ‘Ah, yeah.’

  ‘Why did you frank it?’

  ‘Al told me to.’

  ‘Right, well that’s considered theft from the company, so we’re going to have to let you go.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry. You were doing well here.’

  ‘But he told me to do it.’ I see Al glancing over sneakily.

  ‘I’m sorry, George. We alrea
dy have someone coming in to replace you.’

  ‘Come on, Candy. This is my life you’re messing with here. I have a pregnant wife.’

  ‘Well you shouldn’t have franked your time card then, should you?’

  ‘Jesus Christ. This is ridiculous.’

  ‘To be quite honest, George, you were on thin ice anyway after that security alert you called.’

  ‘I did not call that alert. You did.’

  ‘Goodbye, George. You’ll be paid for last week.’

  ‘See ya, George,’ says Al.

  God, this is going to hit Helen hard. I can’t believe it’s happening. I’ve let her down again. How am I going to be able to face her?

  As I pass through the main Avatan security gate, I pass the fella who stole my old bike in Talbot Street. He’s heading the other way.

  I stand at the side of the wretched road, vans and battered cars tearing past. Against the noise of these I press the phone against my ear.

  ‘Helen,’ I say when she picks up.

  She knows immediately, just from this single word.

  ‘Oh George,’ she says, and I know tears are already pricking in her eyes. They are in mine too.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll be home as soon as I can.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says like a child.

  She hangs up.

  So I begin my last journey from this place.

  I’ve got back what I wanted to lose, then longed for again. I’m free, free from the torment of paid labour. Free to fling away the hours of my life in idleness. Free to engage in another thorough contemplation of the agony of being who and what I am.

  OUT OF PHASE

  ‘Follow me,’ said Dexter. ‘If you get a slight odour inside, well… The air has been recycled on board for a very long time. But I’m sure there won’t be a problem. I don't notice anything myself.’

  The Unquiet Spirit was the first manned interstellar craft ever to have left the Solar System. Its recycling systems were primitive, inadequate by the standards of my time. As soon as I stepped into the gloom I could feel a foul, sticky coating of fine particles begin to form on the inside of my mouth. I struggled to accustom myself to the vileness of it. In the end I had to step back to the doorway to fill my lungs with clean air.