The Power of Five Oblivion

strength. It was louder than ever. “You must learn discipline. You’re in the army now. Try to behave with dignity.”
    There was no dignity. People were sobbing, screaming, tearing at each other, trying to hide. A man in his sixties – red-faced and overweight – let out a bellow like a bull and charged towards the nearest exit. He hadn’t taken more than a few steps before the guards rounded on him, clubbing him down with their truncheons and then continuing, pounding him long after he had lost consciousness. Several people had followed him but, seeing what had happened, they fell back, their hands raised in surrender, whimpering. There was a second gunshot. In the very centre of the room, a man stood clutching his stomach. His name was Haywood and he had been the head of a petrol company that had managed to pollute more than one hundred kilometres of the Australian coastline. Now blood, like oil, was leaking through his fingers. He fell to his knees, tumbling over the seat in front of him, and lay still. There was more screaming and confusion. The chairman watched, impassive, from the stage.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, please!” he exclaimed. “Let’s be civilized about this.”
    It took an hour to clear the hall. The delegates had become a seething mass, fighting against itself. They wanted to get out, to escape. At the same time, they were terrified of leaving, knowing what was waiting for them. Gradually, the guards beat them down, setting the dogs onto them or using the mace to blind them. They were laughing, enjoying their work. There were men here who had arrived with their noses high in the air. Women who had spent hundreds of dollars on their hair and nails and now found that they were worth nothing at all. They were jerked to their feet and sent spinning through the doors.
    There was a fleet of yellow buses waiting outside. Once they had been used to ferry New York children to school but now they had been adapted – the windows barred, the seats removed. The men and women were jammed into them so tightly that they couldn’t move, could barely breathe. Even at the end, they tried to find a way out, tearing off their own watches and jewellery to offer as bribes to the guards. The guards snatched the precious objects, then pushed them inside anyway.
    At last it was over.
    Jonas Mortlake was still in his seat, his hands resting on his knees. There were about twenty bodies around the hall. A few of them had been shot and some of them had been crushed in the stampede. But most of them had suffered heart attacks and were sitting there, facing forward with huge eyes and open mouths. The chairman had never left the stage. He was leaning against the podium, framed by the symbol of the Old Ones. The two of them were finally alone.
    “Let’s go to my private office,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m dying for a drink.”

TEN
    The chairman’s office had a panoramic view over the river that seemed to stretch on for ever to the north and to the south. Jonas Mortlake stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling, triple-glazed windows, looking at the women washing great bundles of clothes in the murky water, the children splashing around in the shallows, the old men turning scraps of meat on bonfires that had been built along the shoreline and that added clouds of grey smoke to the already polluted air. Dozens of ships were lashed together in the mudbanks, slanting at odd angles, the metal ones rusting, the wooden ones rotting. There were still a few ferries afloat, making the journey between Manhattan and Long Island City, but no one in their right mind went over there. The overcrowding was so bad on the island that some buildings had two or three families crammed into each room. The crime levels were off the scale. It was said that you couldn’t walk the length of 21st Street without having your throat cut and that afterwards you would lie there until you rotted. The police never went into the area. There was no rubbish collection. The whole place was left to get on with itself.
    Perhaps it was the air-conditioning but Jonas felt a cold shudder rise up between his shoulder blades. He was so glad he was up here, not down there. From as early as he could remember, he had always believed that he had been chosen. It didn’t matter that he was alone, that his mother was always away on the other side of the world. All through his life he’d had the best food to eat, the finest clothes to wear. He