Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk

by James Lovegrove

  She rolled over, leaning up on one elbow. Her breasts pooled weightily against each other. “What is it about that sort of thing that bothers you so much anyway?”

  “Feminism?”

  “No. Spiritual matters.”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t bother me.”

  “You seem dead set against anything that isn’t empirical, straightforward, factual, practical.”

  “Are we having a row?”

  “A genial postcoital discussion.”

  Barnaby reached for the wine glass on the nightstand. They had been drinking Domaine Ramonet Montrachet Grand Cru immediately prior to tumbling into bed together.

  “Right,” he said, taking a swig. “Since you broached the topic... I don’t believe in nature as this sort of entity, this sentient, holistic super-being. I don’t subscribe to that point of view. Never have. When I look at a bunch of trees or a mountain or a valley, I don’t sense some sort of spooky magical presence there, the way a lot of people do. I just can’t understand that at all. Trees, every kind of plant – they’re just organic machines. Animals and insects too. There’s nothing to them other than their basic imperatives, which are to consume and survive and procreate. And to see the hand of God – or whatever – in a landscape or a pastoral scene, that’s just absurd. It’s rocks and grass and earth. It can be pretty, yes. Dramatic, even. It can have aesthetic appeal. But to come over all misty-eyed and reverent and talk of ‘majesty’ and detect a living intelligence buried within... Well, I find that airy-fairy and foolish.”

  “So the natural world is just stuff to you. No more significant than – I don’t know – this mattress we’re lying on.” She thumped the bed.

  “Yes. Yes, it is. Let me tell you a story.”

  “Oh, do.”

  “A story from my childhood.”

  Lydia sat up, wrapping the duvet around her. “You never talk about your childhood.”

  “It wasn’t that interesting, frankly. It was just a pointless interlude, a period of waiting until I was finally old enough to get on with my life.”

  “Jesus, you poor sod.” She rolled her eyes. “You were born an adult, weren’t you?”

  “Pretty much. I used to roam a lot when I was little. Those were the days when a kid could. There weren’t so many cars. There weren’t paedophiles lurking round every corner, ready to pounce. There weren’t videogames and twenty-four-hour TV to keep you indoors the whole time. I had my own front door key, and would go out on my bike for hours on end. It was good to be away from home, where all my mother did was drink all day and bitch about my father when he wasn’t there and squabble with him when he was.”

  “Only child?”

  “Yes.”

  “Explains a lot.”

  “May I continue?”

  “Please do.”

  “Where I lived was a small town, countryside all around. I had this place I liked, not far out, a mile or so. Fields, a copse, a stream. My own secret spot. I’d park my Raleigh Grifter and sit and maybe smoke a fag I’d bought off one of the older boys at school. Someone once dumped a load of porn mags in a hedgerow nearby. Probably had just got himself a girlfriend, maybe a wife, and he was having a clear-out. I found them and salvaged them. Kept them safe and dry inside the trunk of a half-rotted oak.”

  “Like a squirrel hoarding nuts.”

  “If you like. Penthouse, Club International, Fiesta, Men Only... I’d thumb happily through those, undisturbed, in absolute peace and quiet.”

  “Heaven.”

  “Damn right it was. And then one day they went and built a bypass right through the middle of it.”

  He mused on the memory, drinking more wine.

  “First sign that something was up,” he said, “was when I spotted some blokes in council-worker donkey jackets fiddling around with measuring rods and theodolites. I didn’t know what a theodolite was; I thought it was a camera, and they were taking pictures. They did it for about a week. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why, what it was all for, what they were up to. Then I overheard my dad talking to one his friends about a bypass. The friend was a shopkeeper, ran a chemist’s on the high street. He was worried about losing passing trade. He said a bypass would be the death of the town.

  “Everything went quiet for a while. No more men in donkey jackets trampling all over my secret spot. Then, a couple of months later, the mechanical diggers arrived. And so did the protestors. There were standoffs. Plenty of chanting and placard-waving. ‘Save Our Town,’ et cetera. But the diggers got their way in the end. The workmen started churning up the earth with their JCBs very early one morning, before the protestors turned out. After that it was a fait accompli. The ground had been breached. No going back. No point trying to resist any more.

  “I watched it over the months that followed: the farmland disappearing, the foundations of the road being raised, this whole massive undertaking, this change. They uprooted my tree, the one containing my porn stash, along with most of the others. They flattened the little hummock where I used to smoke. They bridged the stream, channelling it through a concrete tunnel. Every spare moment I had, rain or shine, I’d be down there, keeping an eye on things from a distance, marking the slow advance of the project. The waltz of the diggers and dumpers. The smell of their diesel exhaust wafting towards me on the wind...

  “Finally, by the end of the year, there was this huge causeway skirting the town. This great bare earthworks. Then the tarmacking began, the finishing-off, and a long curving shoulder of earth, rock and rubble became a road.”

  He paused.

  Lydia said, “Were you sad? You must have been.”

  He looked at her. “Sad? Why?”

  “They’d destroyed your place. Your little private paradise. Ruined it for ever.”

  “No,” Barnaby said with a slight chuckle. “Oh, no. I couldn’t have been happier.”

  “Seriously?”

  “It was wonderful. Miraculous. Out of nowhere, from nothing, there was a stretch of dual carriageway. Men had made it. Built it with their machines and their knowhow. Cars could now zoom past, lorries, coaches, motorbikes. People could go places fast, without having to meander through our little town any more. Where before I’d sit there and enjoy the silence –”

  “And your porn.”

  “And my porn – now I’d sit there and enjoy the noise. The hiss of approaching tyres. The thrum of engines, often many of them, in multi-part harmony. The Doppler shift as each vehicle sailed by. I loved it.”

  “You’re a nutter.”

  “No, but I did,” he insisted. “That bypass, you see, represented achievement. Success. Man taking his environment by the scruff of the neck and doing exactly what he wanted with it.”

  “But didn’t the road kill the town, like your father’s friend said it would?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice. His chemist’s didn’t go out of business. I don’t think any shops did. Passing trade – it’s overrated. If somebody wants to go to the chemist’s, or the greengrocer’s, or the newsagent’s, or the florist’s, they’ll go. Just wandering by the shopfront isn’t suddenly going to make you stop and turn and walk in. The town still got visitors from outside. What it didn’t have, now, was endless queues of traffic clogging up the high street and forming a jam around the war memorial. I’d say that was a win.”

  “But at the expense of countryside.”

  “A couple of square miles of it at most. Plenty more where that came from.”

  “Some animals’ natural habitats.”

  “If they had any sense, they’d have moved on. If they stayed and found they didn’t have a nest or a burrow any more, then it was their own damn fault.”

  “You’re only saying that to wind me up.”

  “Or I could mean it,” said Barnaby. “Either way, hand on heart, the construction of that bypass was a formative event in my life. A pivotal one, even. I realised then that I wanted to impose my will on the world too, the way those road builders did. I wa
nted to accomplish what they had – helping people to travel, making life more convenient for others, accelerating the pace of civilisation. In a nutshell, progress.”

  “Progress,” said Lydia with a curl of her lip. “Such an old-fashioned, Victorian concept. Antiquated. In the circles I move in, it’s a dirty word. It always has connotations of a backwards step, not a forwards one. Something lost rather than gained – a site of natural beauty, a way of life, someone’s home, a tradition. Something we should have kept hold of, needlessly sacrificed on the altar of modernity.”

  “As far as I’m concerned it means only improvement. And I knew it was my... Well, my calling. My vocation. I left school at sixteen. Didn’t want to waste any time faffing around with university. Wanted to get on with things. Joined a small London firm doing business with Burma, as it was then, for oil – Rangoon Overseas Petroleum Ventures Ltd. A rump company, all that remained of a much larger firm that had been going since colonial times. I was the office boy, making the tea and trying to get the primitive computer system to work. Within three years I was running the company, and the majority shareholder. Another three years and Rangoon Overseas Petroleum Ventures had swallowed up a dozen similar-sized companies and had been renamed GloCo, with me as sole owner. A decade on, while I was only just in my early thirties, GloCo was a FTSE One Hundred corporation and I was climbing fast up the Forbes rich list.”

  “Am I supposed to be getting moist again? Are you telling me all this because you think it’ll turn me on?”

  “No,” said Barnaby. “I’m telling you all this because... because I want you to know. This is me. This is who I am. I believe it’s called sharing. Women are supposed to want it from their men. But if you’re going to be like that...”

  “Please don’t get all huffy. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have sneered. My mistake.” The apology was sincere.

  He almost said it then: I have something to show you. The words were on his lips. He had given her something of himself, a token. It was often how he proceeded to the next step with a girlfriend. Soften her up with a revelation about his past. Bait the hook with an honest confession, a glimpse into the real Barnaby Pollard, an insight into his soul. And then – bam. While she was off-guard. While he looked vulnerable.

  But he held back. He sensed Lydia wasn’t ready.

  Not yet.

  Soon, though.

  He couldn’t wait much longer.

  ON A ROLL

  DURING THIS PERIOD, as Barnaby and Lydia became cemented in the public’s perception as a couple, GloCo went from strength to strength. The share-price wobble brought about by the Seagull Movement protests stabilised. There were no more ructions or fluctuations, just a steady incremental rise in profits and dividends. Barnaby swooped on a number of his rivals, making bids for them using loans leveraged against his existing corporate holdings. In well over half of these attempted buyouts he was successful. He expanded further into the American and Asian markets, while leaving the Middle East more or less alone. It was an impenetrable cartel down there in the deserts, and the region as a whole was just too volatile. Much the same was true of Russia, which held the world’s largest natural gas reserves, second largest coal reserves and ninth largest crude oil reserves. It was too much of a closed shop; the discovery and extraction costs were high on account of the vastness of the country, its harsh climate and its lack of decent infrastructure; but above all, Russian businessmen were, as a breed, mad, and almost impossible to deal with in a civilised manner. Contract negotiations invariably involved drinking Herculean quantities of vodka, more than even Barnaby’s hardened liver could handle, and quite often letting off assault weapons in the wilderness as well. The hassle and hangovers weren’t worth it. As both Napoleon and Hitler had learned to their cost, Russia should be left well alone.

  GloCo flourished, and so did Barnaby’s relationship with Lydia, much to Jakob’s disgust.

  “You’re always bloody together,” he complained in the Jaguar one morning on the drive in to work. “Every spare minute you have, you spend with her.”

  Barnaby looked up from his Financial Times. “Seriously, Jakob, is it your place to cast aspersions on my girlfriend? Let me answer that for you. It is not. You bodyguard, me employer. There are boundaries. Clear?”

  “I’m not casting aspersions on her,” Jakob said. “Just on how close you and her are getting. It’s not like you to be so... smitten. It’s not normal for Barnaby Pollard.”

  “I think Barnaby Pollard is the best judge on what’s normal for Barnaby Pollard.”

  “It used to be one inconsequential loskind after another.” Loskind was Afrikaans for ‘woman of easy virtue,’ only not so polite. “And now you’re all serious about this one chick who seems to be taking over your life. It’s not good for you.”

  “In what way not good, Jakob? Everything’s pretty rosy from where I’m standing. Have you seen GloCo’s share price lately? And look at this.”

  He turned the newspaper round, pointing to a column. Jakob glanced at it in the rearview mirror.

  “Print’s too small, boss. Read it out to me.”

  “FT’s tipping the valuation to go even higher. Comment here says, ‘GloCo’s on a roll and shows no sign of stopping. CEO Barnaby Pollard combines acumen with aggression in a high-risk, high-reward industry. He’s an old hand, a seasoned campaigner. He knows the ropes and he’s got the track record and the assets to underwrite his adventurousness. With the per-barrel price of crude unlikely to drop in the foreseeable future, and demand for gas on the increase in the developing nations, there aren’t many safer or more lucrative places to stash your spare cash than GloCo.’”

  “All well and good,” said Jakob, “but – jislaaik!” He braked hard as a black cab swerved out from the kerb right in front of the Jag. Both cars screeched to a halt. Jakob followed a volley of blares on the horn with a volley of insults out of the window: “Maafoedi! Stront vir breins! Call that driving? You drive like a wrinkled old krimpie, you dickhead!”

  The cabbie responded no less colourfully, cursing Jakob and flipping him the bird.

  “Ja, I’ll break that fokken finger off and shove it where the sun doesn’t fokken shine, pal. You know whose car this is you just cut up? Fellow who earns more in an hour than you do in a year.”

  Barnaby didn’t catch the cabbie’s reply, but it was strongly worded enough to make Jakob unbuckle his seatbelt and open the door.

  “No,” said Barnaby. “Let’s not. Remember Tarquin Johnson? Best avoid a rerun of all that, eh?”

  Jakob grumbled, but stayed put, and the black cab pulled away. The Jag continued on its journey, joining the Westway eastbound.

  “It’s occurred to me, Jakob,” Barnaby said, “that you may be a wee bit jealous.”

  “Of Lydia Laidlaw?”

  “And her relationship with me.”

  Jakob gave a gruff, staccato laugh that managed to convey both amusement and scorn. “Not a chance, boss. No offence, but you’re really not the sort of man I go for. You’re about twenty years too old, for one thing. No tattoos, for another.”

  “Just felt I should ask. You wouldn’t be the first employee, male or female, to fall for me.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Mr Pollard. I like you as a person, but that’s all. I regard you as a friend. And I respect you also, which is why I don’t like to see you getting yourself into hot water.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “Have you shown her the basement yet?”

  The question hung in the air between them. The Jaguar swept down from the flyover onto Marylebone Road.

  “No,” said Barnaby. “Not yet.”

  “Didn’t think so. But you’re planning to?”

  “When the moment’s right.”

  “That’s when everything’s going to change. You mark my words. And I don’t know that she’s going to be able to make the transition. It’s a big gamble with someone like her. It might all go horribly wrong. You could be setting yourself up f
or a fall.”

  “But I can’t not do it. I can’t keep that side of me hidden from her forever.”

  “Even if it spells the end for the two of you?”

  “If it does, then so be it,” Barnaby said peremptorily, and he flapped the newspaper in a way that indicated the subject was closed.

  Jakob took the hint and drove the rest of the way in silence.

  A VERY GOOD TIME

  TO BE BARNABY POLLARD

  GLOCO’S RUN OF good fortune continued. It was awarded a government permit to release shale gas reservoirs in Lancashire using hydraulic fracturing. The county council was cock-a-hoop, as this would bring employment to a depressed area. Local environmentalists were not so happy, predicting that the fracking process would cause earthquakes, groundwater contamination from flowback from the pumping, and air pollution from the benzene in the shale gas.

  Meanwhile, a GloCo exploratory platform up in the Arctic Circle, on the rim of the East Greenland Rift Basin, made a spectacular find: an undersea oil reserve estimated to contain half a billion barrels or more. Barnaby ordered three spar rigs to be towed to the site, and soon they were moored in position with their six-hundred-foot caissons probing down into the gelid water towards the ocean floor, ready to insert drills and suck up oil like mosquitoes siphoning blood.

  A GloCo open-cast coal mine in Botswana, which was believed to be virtually exhausted, had an unexpected fresh spurt of life. A new seam appeared, almost magically, running down at a steep angle through the rock strata. The surface mining operation was converted to deep mining, a longwall shearer boring into the ground with its cutting drums and a scraper chain conveyor hauling the raw carbon booty up to be crushed into manageable chunks and carted off in trucks.

  At the GloCo Tower, Barnaby sat in his penthouse office, overseeing the company’s international business via telecommunication.

  Before him, the GloCo logo was inlaid into the Carrara marble floor in brass. It extended from the foot of his desk all the way to the expanse of plate-glass picture windows. The world cupped in two hands.