Pasha Malla: People Park

THE PEOPLE

The Pooles

PEARL: the mother

KELLOGG: the father

GIP: the son, Raven’s

biggest fan

ELSIE-ANNE: the daughter, who carries a purse, always

The New Fraternal League of Men

GREGORY FAVOURS: the last living Original Gregory

BABBAGE GRIGGS: Head

Scientist

“NOODLES” SOBOLIN: Imperial Master

ROSSIE MAGURK: Special Professor

LUCAL WAGSTAFFE: Silver Personality

BEAN: Helper L2, a wily

asthmatic

WALTERS: Helper L2, D-Squad

REED: Helper L2, D-Squad

PEA: Helper L2, Snitch

DACK: Helper L2, Θnitch

DIAMOND-WOOD: Recruit, on crutches

STARX: Summoner, very big

OLPERT BAILIE: Helper L1 (Probationary), reinstated and reluctant

Island Residents

SAM: aka Mr. Ademus, brother of Adine

ADINE: an artist, sister of Sam, partner of Debbie

DEBBIE: friend to all

THE MAYOR: the mayor

POP STREET: a living protest, a quartered century hencefrom!

CALUM: a teenager

CORA: Calum’s mum

RUPE: Calum’s brother

THE HAND: the girl with the hand-shaped haircut

LEFT AND RIGHT: twins

ISA LANYESS: Face of In the Know

EDIE LANYESS: daughter of Isa, Calum’s girlfriend

FAYE ROWAN-MORGANSON: Face of The Fate of Faye Rowan-Morganson

LOOPY: artist laureate

LOOPY’S ASSISTANT: morose

TWO STUDENTS: a boy and a girl (names unknown)

CONNIE: Sam and Adine’s mother (deceased)

And also

RAVEN: the illustrationist

LL WE UNDERSTOOD: at nine o’clock that morning, the illustrationist would be arriving by helicopter.

In the pre-dawn gloom Helpers from the New Fraternal League of Men, mostly middle-aged guys in matching khakis and windbreakers, busied themselves with preparations. The streets surrounding People Park were closed to traffic and down on the common a landing area was marked off with pylons. From these a red carpet cut woundlike across the muddy lawn, up the steps of the gazebo, to a pressboard podium. Affixed to lampposts banners proclaiming the park’s Silver Jubilee hung limp as dead sails in the cold still air. At just after six a.m., with everything readied, the NFLM assumed their positions, walkie-talkies crackling, breath puffing in clouds, and waited for the crowds to come.

The towerclock of the old cathedral, now the Grand Saloon Hotel, had barely marked six-thirty when the first people began to appear: families and lovers hand in hand, businessfolk swinging briefcases, Institute undergrads with their knapsacks and hangovers, teens walking bikes, the elderly in pastels, the tall, the short, the fat, the thin, the hirsute and bald, citizens of every shape and creed and trouser, many in Islandwear jackets — Unique! silkscreened into a skyline silhouette.

In a splendid show of diversity and solidarity, with the same look of curiosity and expectation, they came. As night lifted they came, the bruise-coloured sky leaking light while citizens from all corners of the island arrived stamping and squelching onto the wet brown grass, the mud suckled their shoes, their boots, a few thousand strong by the time the lamps and streetlights flicked off at seven-fifteen, everyone wrangled into order by the NFLM.

Atop the bannered poles, on the roofs of the boathouse and the Museum of Prosperity, amid the solar panels of the Podesta Tower, from all around, cameras trained on the crowd, panned over the crowd, zoomed into and out of the crowd, while We-TV commentators readied microphones and ran spit-slicked fingers through their hair. Camcorders pointed at the stage and sky and one another: when two faced it was akin to a pair of young pups nuzzling snout to snout, awaiting the instinct to maul or mate.

Though there were no dogs.

The tower bells sounded eight, and with room scarce on the common, new arrivals were forced up the surrounding hillocks. To the west in the windows of the downtown towers faces appeared framed in steel and glass. Some intrepid souls climbed into the leafless apple trees to the east, or the bare-limbed poplars on the park’s south side. In a hilltop clearing to the north a handful of demonstrators wagged placards — ignored and estranged until one young woman was hit with a gritty snowball. Hey! her boyfriend cried. Hundreds of people poured blithely past, the culprit secreted among them.

At twenty to nine by the towerclock the Mayor arrived alone and waving to perfunctory applause, attempted to stride up the gazebo steps — and found herself marshalled sidestage behind a handwritten sign: VIP. Then a signal was given and a faction of Helpers formed a line before the crowd, arms yoked in the manner of paper dolls. They spoke into walkie-talkies, responses sputtered back.

Ra- ven , Ra- ven , Ra- ven , the crowd began chanting and clapping in time.

This was April 16, a bright cold morning warmed by the sun nosing out of the lake. Springtime was coming: stray patches of snow had gone crystalline and grey in their dying days, the asphodels would soon bloom, the trees beckoned leaves with their spindly arms, the crinkle of ice upon Crocker Pond fractured like an eczemic skin. Everything smelled of decay and worms, rich with thawing dirt. High above, a single cloud, a thin little wisp, trailed along — a baby bird lost from the flock. The Ra- ven chant faded. Everyone watched the sky because he would come from the sky.

Someone said, It’s nearly nine!

Someone said, Shut up howbout, okay?

Someone said, Listen!

There it was: the growl of an engine, faraway. Everyone craned their necks and looked, but in the sky was just the cloud. He couldn’t travel inside a cloud. But watching it drift along up there people began to wonder. In locales around the globe the illustrationist had defied many laws of physics and gravity and, more roguishly, the judiciary arms of governments.

There, yelled another someone.

A little piece of cloud seemed to be breaking away. But it was not, the crowd realized, a cloudlet that was now swooping toward the common, graceful and white as a gull against the deepening blue. It was a helicopter. As it approached the air began to thrum, applause splattered through the crowd, there were shouts and yelps and murmurs and with fingers pointed skyward hollerings of: There he is — He’s coming — Yeah!

As though lowered on a rope the helicopter descended: one hundred feet from the ground, eighty, sixty, engines snarling. The crowd watched, faces slanted skyward. Those wearing hats were holding their hats. Some people plugged their ears. Puddles rippled and Silver Jubilee banners fluttered and tree branches trembled and all those cameras captured everything, everything. From her pocket the Mayor produced a stack of cue cards she patted into a neat little pile.