J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'No one. It's not the sort of breakthrough you can write about in the psychiatric journals. It may seem a rather extreme form of therapy, but it does work. Levels of overall health, resistance to infections… all have markedly improved, at the cost of a few abrasions and the odd case of VD.'

'I can't believe it…' I watched Penrose smiling his most benign smile, clearly glad to lay out the truth for me. He ran his fingertips across his teeth, tasting his nail-quicks, a mix of arrogance and insecurity. I thought of David Greenwood, the idealist with the children's refuge, and at last understood why he wanted to kill Penrose. I asked: 'Did Greenwood know about this?'

'In general terms. He often sat in that chair while I held forth over our chess games.'

'And he approved?'

'I hope so. Poor man, he had problems of his own.' Penrose leaned forward and touched my hand, trying to steady my resolve. 'Paul? You've made a decision?'

'Of course. I'll see the British consul in Nice and take his advice. The French authorities need to be told about this.'

'I understand…' Penrose seemed disappointed in me. 'But let me fill in the background. If that doesn't change your mind I won't stand in your way. Fair enough?'

'Go on.'

'First, I'm sorry you were so close to the exercise at the Cardin Foundation. Frances Baring has always been a law unto herself.'

Penrose spoke soothingly, and the warring elements in his face, the lax mouth and alert eyes, at last seemed to be synchronized.

'These robberies and outbreaks of violence – you might think the senior managers at Eden-Olympia are in a state of deep mental deterioration.'

'I do. There's no doubt about it.'

'In fact, that isn't the case. By any objective yardsticks, compared with the health of executives in Manhattan, Zurich and Tokyo, the physical and mental well-being of the five hundred most senior people at Eden-Olympia is extremely high. Visit the clinic – it's virtually empty. Almost no one ever falls ill, though they spend hundreds of hours a year in under-ventilated passenger jets, exposed to God only knows what infections. It's a great tribute to the architects of Eden-Olympia.'

'I've read the brochures.'

'Everything they say is true. However, it wasn't always so. When I came to Eden-Olympia four years ago it was approaching a crisis. On the surface, all looked well. These huge companies had successfully relocated themselves, and everyone was delighted with the housing and leisure facilities. But below the surface there were some very serious problems. Almost all the senior people were constantly ill with respiratory complaints. They were plagued by bladder infections and abscessed gums. A healthy executive would fly toNew York and back, and spend the next week in bed with some opportunist fever. We carried out careful tests of resistance levels and were amazed by how low they were. Yet everyone said they liked Eden-Olympia and enjoyed living here.'

'Were they sincere?'

'Absolutely. There was no malingering, no secret disaffection. Yet chief executives and main-board directors stumbled into work with persistent viral complaints. Worse than that, they all reported a loss of mental energy. Decision-making took longer, and they felt distracted by anxieties they couldn't identify. Chronic fatigue syndrome haunted the place. We checked the ventilation systems and water supply, we looked into radon emissions from the deep-site work. Nothing.'

'The malaise wasn't physical – it was all in their minds?'

'Yes… though to be exact, the two had fused.'

Penrose lay back, his large body relaxed in its leather sling. I could see that he was keen to be frank with me, and confident that he could convert me to his cause. For the first time, a strain of idealism lit his unwavering eyes, a commitment to his patients that went far beyond professional concern. Watching his little smirks and ingratiating grimaces, I knew that nothing would be gained by challenging him. The more freely he spoke, the more he would incriminate himself.

He smiled at the sun, talking in an almost rueful tone. 'When I came here, Paul, I thought Eden-Olympia was the anteroom to paradise. A beautiful garden city, everything town-planners have been working towards for centuries. All the old urban nightmares had been dispelled at a stroke.'

'Street crime, traffic congestion…?'

'Minor irritations. The real problems had simply been left out of the blueprint. And that's a little worrying. Whether we like it or not, Eden-Olympia is the face of the future. Already there are hundreds of business and science parks around the world. Most of us – or at least, most professional people – are going to spend our entire working lives in them. But they all suffer from the same defect.'

'Too much leisure?'

'No. Too much work.' Penrose flexed his arms, and then allowed them to settle themselves. 'Work dominates life in Eden-Olympia, and drives out everything else. The dream of a leisure society was the great twentieth-century delusion. Work is the new leisure. Talented and ambitious people work harder than they have ever done, and for longer hours. They find their only fulfilment through work. The men and women running successful companies need to focus their energies on the task in front of them, and for every minute of the day. The last thing they want is recreation.'

'The active mind never needs to rest? That's hard to accept.'

'It needn't be. Creative work is its own recreation. If you're drafting the patent on a new gene or designing a cathedral in Sao Paulo, why waste time hitting a rubber ball over a net?'

'Your children can do that for you…?'

'Assuming you have any children. Alas, today's corporate city is superbly talented, adult and virtually childless. Look around you at Eden-Olympia. No leisure activities, no community life or social gatherings. How many parties have you been invited to in the last four months?'

'Hard to remember. Very few.'

'Practically none, if you think back. People at Eden-Olympia have no time for getting drunk together, for infidelities or rows with the girlfriend, no time for adulterous affairs or coveting their neighbours' wives, no time even for friends. There are no energies to spare for anger, jealousy, racial prejudice and the more mature reflections that follow. There are none of the social tensions that force us to recognize other people's strengths and weaknesses, our obligations to them or feelings of dependence. At Eden-Olympia there's no interplay of any kind, none of the emotional trade-offs that give us our sense of who we are.'

'But you like it here.' I tried to speak jokingly. 'After all, it is the new paradise. Does it matter?'

'I hope it does.' Accepting my raillery, Penrose bared his teeth. 'The social order must hold, especially where elites are involved. Eden-Olympia's great defect is that there's no need for personal morality. Thousands of people live and work here without making a single decision about right and wrong. The moral order is engineered into their lives along with the speed limits and the security systems.'

'You sound like Pascal Zander. That's a police chief 's lament.'

'Paul…' Penrose raised his hands towards the ceiling, trying to defuse his impatience with me. 'I take the point – a sense of morality can be a convenient escape route. If the worst comes to the worst, we tell ourselves how guilty we feel and that excuses everything. The more civilized we are, the fewer moral choices we have to make.'

'Exactly. The airline pilot doesn't wrestle with his conscience over the right landing speed. He follows the manufacturer's instructions.'

'But part of the mind atrophies. A moral calculus that took thousands of years to develop starts to wither from neglect. Once you dispense with morality the important decisions become a matter of aesthetics. You've entered an adolescent world where you define yourself by the kind of trainers you wear. Societies that dispense with the challenged conscience are more vulnerable than they realize. They have no defences against the psychotic who gets into the system and starts working away like a virus, using the sluggish moral machinery against itself.'