James Smythe: No Harm Can Come to a Good Man

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Copyright © James Smythe 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015

Cover photograph @ Shutterstock.com

( Epigraph Epigraph What is now proved was once only imagined. William Blake When catastrophe strikes, we look for the signal in the noise – anything that might explain the chaos that we see all around us and bring order to the world again. Nate Silver, The Signal and The Noise ): Extract taken from The Signal and The Noise by Nate Silver © Nate Silver 2012. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

James Smythe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007541935

Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780007541928

Version: 2016-02-16

‘A writer of bold imagination and verve’

Lauren Beukes

‘Savage, intimate and inexorable’

Nick Harkaway

‘Powerful and distinctive’

Guardian

‘Smythe’s storytelling is pacey and addictive; he has a fiendish talent for springing surprises’

The Times

‘Fully formed, fundamentally affecting, forward-thinking fiction. The sort of story that reminds us why we read, and what we, the people, need’

Tor.com

‘Like Ballard, Smythe understands, and ruthlessly demonstrates, the nightmare that results when our fantasies are realised’

Sam Byers

‘Science fiction for those who think they don’t like it’

50 Best Spring Reads, Independent

‘A book about memory, about the impossibility of making the future match the past, and the danger of following a desire too far’

Matt Haig

‘Very cleverly constructed and completely gripping’

Daily Mail

‘Creepy, compulsive science fiction, narrated with the kind of anxious interior perspective characteristic of JG Ballard’s finest work’

Metro

‘Quite brilliant’

Sunday Mirror

‘With his particular flair for speculative fiction, [Smythe] cooks up something pretty extraordinary’

Dazed & Confused

‘As if Philip K Dick and David Mitchell had collaborated on an episode of The West Wing . Unsettling, gripping and hugely thought-provoking’

FHM

To my family

What is now proved was once only imagined.

William Blake

When catastrophe strikes, we look for the signal in the noise – anything that might explain the chaos that we see all around us and bring order to the world again.

Nate Silver, The Signal and The Noise

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for James Smythe

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part Two

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by James Smythe

About the Publisher

Laurence Walker presses play and the video begins.

On it, he is standing in a seemingly blank room. He is looking straight into the camera lens, or the facsimile of him is; a broken version, created from photographs and screen grabs. It looks like him, but only barely. There is something about the version of his face that the software has created – so blank and expressionless – that makes him feel sick to his stomach. Behind him he can see similarly wrong versions of his family, of his wife and daughters. This created version of him isn’t looking at them, his body language barely even acknowledging their presence. He wonders why they are so scared. Deanna and the girls are huddled together, clinging onto one another, terrified, backing away from him. Their faces are approximations of what that would actually look like: twisted and distorted and not at all real.

In the background, he hears a noise, a rustle that he cannot put his finger on; and then another noise, quieter in the mix. Sobbing . And then, finally, he notices that the version of him is holding something.

It’s a gun. He knows the thick black metal. The digital version’s thumb is on the trigger. The screen version of Laurence seems to shudder. More than a shiver: it seems uncontrollable.