J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

Yet, despite myself, I still admired Penrose, and the core truth of his bold but deranged vision. I hated the violence but remembered the brutal hazings at the RAF flight school, and how they had energized us all. Those fraternal beatings had been the closest we would ever come to tormenting our prisoners, part of the cruel but necessary pleasures of war. At Eden-Olympia, psychopathy was being rehabilitated, returned like a socialized criminal to everyday life.

For all his success, Penrose had been on edge in the two months since Zander's death. Often he knocked over his chesspieces as we played beside the pool. In the middle of a move he would leave the table and pace alone around the tennis court, then walk to his car without a word. At times he seemed to doubt that he was equal to the huge test of his talents posed by Eden II, and was searching for an even more radical leap of faith.

As we climbed the mountains above Grasse he patted my arm, treating me to the conspiratorial smile he turned upon waitresses and filling-station personnel who met his approval. He pointed to the rev counter, trembling in the red zone. 'Feel the power, Paul? When I'm bored you can take over.'

'As long as you're in control.'

'Who wants to be in control? Haven't I taught you anything?' He drummed a hand on the wheel. 'Those publicity planes – they spoilt the show.'

'No one noticed. They were glad to get back to the office. A kitchenware sale, some clapped-out cars…'

'You're wrong, Paul.' Penrose pointed to a billboard advertising a new hair spray. 'That's just the point. Reality is always a threat. I'm not worried by any rival ideology – there isn't one. But all these ads for aquaparks and swimming pools… they're the real enemy. They subvert everything. Frances probably arranged it deliberately.'

'Why should she?'

'To unsettle me. She's restless. You know that, Paul. She thinks she's a rebel, but doesn't realize that Eden-Olympia is the biggest rebellion of all.'

Frances would disapprove of my accepting a lift in Penrose's car. We met rarely now, and she said nothing of her plans to expose Eden-Olympia. Our hour together near the lighthouse at La Garoupe had been a closing of accounts. She had tried to use me again, hoping to trigger an outburst against Eden-Olympia, but I was too uncommitted for her. We met for dinner at the Vieux Port, and I told her that I was working my way into Penrose's confidence. She nodded, lit a cigarette and stared at the Arab yachts.

Meanwhile, the first graffiti and damaged surveillance cameras at Eden-Olympia seemed too feeble a protest to be her handiwork. The cryptic signs aerosolled across windscreens resembled teenage graffiti tags, and were soon scrubbed away by teams of maintenance men, but the stains of rebellion remained.

Curiously, I had become one of the first victims. Three days before the ground-breaking ceremony at Eden II, the Jaguar was brutally savaged. Vandals slashed the tyres and engine hoses, and wrenched the gear lever from its housing. Mr Yasuda was so impressed that he formally congratulated me, his wife bowing three paces behind him, under the impression that the Jaguar had served heroically in a ratissage of Pearl Harbor proportions.

But I no longer joined the bowling clubs on their outings, and distanced myself from the secret life of the business park. I moved from my Alice bed to a maid's room overlooking the tennis court.

I said nothing to Jane about Greenwood's tragic end, and how her sometime lover had died in a paroxysm of self-disgust. At night, when I woke, I would step into Jane's bedroom and watch her as she slept, Simone's lipstick smudged across her mouth, the young woman I had loved, and one day, perhaps, would love again.

At the Col du Pilon, a few miles above Grasse, we parked by the observation point with its devil's view over the Var plain. Penrose filled his huge chest with the cold air, holding his breath as if only an over-oxygenated brain could envisage all the possibilities of his new kingdom.

'Spectacular, Paul? There are times when you feel the wind of history under your wings. You've watched the future break out of its egg. The Greenwich line of this millennium runs through Eden-Olympia.'

'All the same, it's time to go back to London. I have to persuade Jane.'

'But why?' Penrose turned his back to the sun, and concentrated all his professional sympathy on me, as if I had admitted to bedwetting or shoplifting. 'Eden II is the only future we have.'

'Not for me.'

'We'll find you a job. You can start a publishing house for us, edit a monthly magazine.'

'Thanks, but everything looks less certain now. I couldn't take the risk.'

'You won't have to. You and Jane are safe, you're with us.'

'Along with those hundreds of senior executives arriving soon at Eden II? You're about to create a major crime wave.'

'Paul… the crime wave is already there. It's called consumer capitalism. Dear chap, I haven't asked you to defecate on the tricolour. A small social cost has to be borne, but we compensate the victims.'

'People like Zander?'

'That was an accident.'

'Wilder, I was there. It was an execution.' I lowered my voice as two elderly Chinese walked from their car and stood beside us at the observation rail. 'He knew about the paedophile ring and the jewellery raids, the strangled streetwalkers… I should have gone to the police.'

'They came to you. Sensibly, you said nothing.' Penrose raised his strong chin to the sun, inhaling the cool air. 'Who told you about the paedophile ring – Halder?'

'Not Halder.'

'I'm glad. He's too ambitious to be disloyal. We think very highly of Halder.'

'Good. Alain Delage shouldn't play games with him.'

'Does he? That's unpleasant. I'll tell him to pick another deprived group – English tourists, say. If Halder didn't talk to you, who did? Frances Baring?'

'She's said nothing.'

'You spend a lot of time with her. She must talk about something. She's always had friends outside Eden-Olympia – an attractive woman in the property office, who visits a lot of very rich people. Some of them have axes to grind, and carry weight in Paris and Brussels.'

'She's never talked to me. Besides, she knows nothing.'

'She knows more than you think. I worry about Frances. For her, the clocks stopped on May 28…'

He broke off as the drone of a publicity plane rose from the valley below. He snatched at the air, trying to seize the miniature aircraft, no larger than a gnat against his outstretched hand. 'Those planes. Paul, don't you find them annoying? Like all the graffiti at Eden-Olympia – a fifty-million-dollar office building and a few francs' worth of paint turn it into something from the Third World.'

'When Eden II opens you'll have larger problems on your mind.'

'You're right, Paul. It's an enormous challenge. Still, we have to press on. The therapy classes unsettle you, but they've proved their worth.'

'For the moment. Too many people know that something nasty happens after dark at Eden-Olympia. Sooner or later, the authorities will act.'

'Of course they will. It's a gamble we had to take.' Penrose took my arm, moving me closer to the observation rail. He had perspired heavily during the aerial protest at Eden II, and the wind lifted a stale scent of unease and frustration from his damp shirt. 'I don't want you to worry, Paul. Forget about going back to London. I need you here – you're one of the few people I can trust. You've seen the truth of what we're doing, and that's why you've never betrayed the therapy programme.'

'I'm an observer. Frances tells me I'm too dull and normal for Eden-Olympia.'

'Normal? Careers have foundered trying to define what that means. Be careful, we've moved into a world where it's dangerous to be normal. Extreme problems call for extreme solutions. As it happens, the therapy programmes aren't needed now. We're scaling them back.'