The Fear Index

surgical gown. ‘Of course I see them.’
    ‘The calipers are being applied by a French doctor called Guillaume-Benjamin-Armand Duchenne. He believed that the expressions of the human face are the gateway to the soul. He’s animating the facial muscles by using what the Victorians called galvanism – their word for electricity produced by acid reaction. They often used it to make the legs of a dead frog jump, a party trick.’ He waited for Quarry to see the importance of what he was saying, and when he continued to look baffled, he added: ‘It’s an experiment to induce the facial symptoms of fear for the purpose of recording them on camera.’
    ‘Okay,’ said Quarry cautiously. ‘I get it.’
    Hoffmann waved the book in exasperation. ‘Well, isn’t that exactly what’s been happening to me ? This is the only illustration in the book where you can actually see the calipers – in all the others, Darwin had them removed. I’m the subject of an experiment designed to make me experience fear, and my reactions are being continuously monitored.’
    After a moment when he could not entirely trust himself to speak, Quarry said, ‘Well, I’m very sorry to hear that, Alexi. That must be a horrible feeling.’
    ‘The question is: who’s doing it, and why? Obviously it’s not Genoud’s idea. He’s just the tool …’
    But now it was Quarry’s turn not to pay attention. He was thinking of his responsibilities as CEO – to their investors, to their employees and (he was not ashamed to admit it afterwards) to himself. He was remembering Hoffmann’s medicine cabinet all those years ago, filled with enough mind-altering drugs to keep a junkie happy for six months, and his specific instruction to Rajamani not to minute any concerns about the company president’s mental health. He was wondering what would happen if any of this became public. ‘Let’s sit down,’ he suggested. ‘We need to talk about a few things.’
    Hoffmann was irritated to be interrupted in mid-flow. ‘Is it urgent?’
    ‘It is rather, yes.’ Quarry took a seat on the sofa and gestured to Hoffmann to join him.
    But Hoffmann ignored the sofa and went and sat behind his desk. He swept his arm across the surface, clearing it of the detritus of the smoke detector. ‘Okay, go ahead. Just don’t say anything till you’ve taken the battery out of your phone.’

    HOFFMANN WASN’T SURPRISED that Quarry had failed to grasp the significance of the Darwin book. All his life he had seen things faster than other people; that was why he had been obliged to pass so many of his days on long and lonely solo voyages of the mind. Eventually others around him caught up, but by then he was generally off travelling somewhere else.
    He watched as Quarry dismantled his phone and placed the battery carefully on the coffee table.
    Quarry said, ‘We have a problem with VIXAL-4.’
    ‘What kind of a problem?’
    ‘It’s taken off the delta hedge.’
    Hoffmann stared at him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He pulled his keyboard towards him, logged on to his terminal and began going through their positions – by sector, size, type, date. The mouse clicks were as rapid as Morse code, and each screen they brought up was more astonishing to him than the last. He said, ‘But this is all completely out of whack. This isn’t what it’s programmed to do.’
    ‘Most of it happened between lunchtime and the US opening. We couldn’t get hold of you. The good news is that it’s guessing right – so far. The Dow is off by about a hundred, and if you look at the P and L we’re up by over two hundred mil on the day.’
    ‘ But it’s not what it’s supposed to do ,’ repeated Hoffmann. Of course there would be a rational explanation: there always was. He would find it eventually. It had to be linked to everything else that was happening to him. ‘Okay, first off, are we sure this data is correct? Can we actually trust what’s on these screens? Or could it be sabotage of some kind? A virus?’ He was remembering the malware on his psychiatrist’s computer. ‘Maybe the whole company is under cyber-attack by someone, or some group – have we thought of that?’
    ‘Maybe we are, but that doesn’t explain the short on Vista Airways – and believe me, that’s starting to look like somewhat more than a coincidence.’
    ‘Yeah, well it can’t be. We’ve already been over this—’
    Quarry cut him off impatiently. ‘I know we have, but the story’s