Richard Morgan - Market Forces

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Market Forces has had a long and varied evolution, from nasty idea to short

story, to screenplay, to the novel you now hold in your hands. Along the

way, it (and its author) has incurred a few debts. In chronological order,

then, so near as I can recall:

Thanks to Simon Edkins for the original thought-provoking sneer: they

think they live in a jungle, don't they?, and to Gavin Burgess for sharing his

knowledge of some of the more feral business training procedures out

there. Thanks to Sarah Lane for seeing the potential in a moth-eaten

unpublished short story, for pushing me into building a screenplay around

it, and for all the unflagging enthusiasm and hard work she poured into the

project along the way - great movie producers are made of this, or should

be. Thanks also to Alan Young for substantial anecdotal inspiration over

the years, and for reading the raw product with an economics consultant's

beady eye. Thanks, as always, to my agent, Carolyn Whitaker, and my

editor, Simon Spanton, for excellence in the field of making me pay

attention to detail. Thanks to everyone on the Gollancz team for making

the fifth floor a great place to hang out. And finally, most of all, thanks to

my recently acquired wife, Virginia Cottinelli, for her patience in sharing

with me the contents of a Master's programme in Development at the

University of Glasgow, the getting of which was already costing her more

grief than any paying student should have to put up with.

A list of books that proved inspirational during the writing of Market Forces

is appended at the end of the novel, should the reader be interested. They

are too many to list or talk about here, but they are too important not to

mention at all. On a lighter note, Market Forces also owes a rather obvious

debt of inspiration to the ground-breaking movies Mad Max and Rollerball,

both of which made a massive impact on me at an age when legally I

shouldn't have been watching either.

Market Forces is dedicated, with love, to my earliest fan,

my sister Caroline - because she's waited long enough

It's also dedicated to all those, globally, whose lives have been

wrecked or snuffed out by the Great Neoliberal Dream and

Slash-and-Burn Globalisation.

I know - that the cannibals wear smart suits and ties

And I know - they arm-wrestle on the altar

And I say - don't leave your heart in a hard place

Midnight Oil - Sometimes

If (I asked) the commercial banks, the official creditors, the Bank, the

IMF, the TNCs, the money managers and the global elites were happy,

who were we to complain?

Susan George - The Lugano Report

PROLOGUE

Checkout.

The shiny black plastic swipes through.

Nothing.

The machine fails in its habitual insectile chittering and the screen blinks, as

if outraged at what it has been fed. The checkout girl looks up at the woman

who has handed her the card and smiles a little too widely. It's a smile that

contains as much genuine emotion as there is fruit juice in a carton of Five

Fruit D-Lish.

'Are you sure you want to use this card?'

Up to her arms in bagged shopping, the woman sets down the two-year-old

she has been propping against the checkout flange and looks back to where her

husband is still unloading the last of the brightly coloured tins and bags from

the trolley.

'Martin ?'

'Yeah, what?' Voice irritable with the household task they've just completed.

'The card doesn't...'

'Doesn't what?' He meets her eyes and reads the distress there, then switches

to the checkout girl. His voice comes out tight. 'Run it again, please. Must have

glitched.'

The girl shrugs and swipes the card a second time. The screen flickers with

the same disdain.

TRANSA CTION DENIED.

The girl takes the card and hands it back to the woman. A small pocket of

quiet expands around the action, bubbling out past the conveyor belt to the boy

at the next checkout unit and to the three customers waiting behind Martin. In

a few more seconds it will dissolve into the slither of whispering.

'I4Zould you like to try another card.'

'This is ridiculous,' snaps Martin. 'That account had funds as of the first of

the month. I've just been paid.'

'I can run. the card a third time,' offers the girl with studied indifference.

'No.' The woman's knuckles have gone white around the small piece of black

plastic. 'Martin, try the Intex.'

'Helen, there's money in that acc--'

'Some problem,' asks the man behind him, tapping his own plastic

significantly against the pile of shopping he has assembled so close to the

Martin's mouth shuts like a trap.

'No problem.'

He hands over the blue flecked Intex card and watches at least as intently as

the people behind him as the checkout girl swipes it.

The machine chews it over for a couple of moments,

And spits it out.

The girl hands it back and shakes her head. Her smooth, plastic politeness is

beginning to degrade.

'Card's blocked,' she says dismissively. 'Tenninal audit.'

'What?'

' Terminal audit. I'm going to have to ask you to put those purchases back on

the far side of the counter and leave the store.'

'Run the card again.'

The girl sighed. 'I don't have to run the card again, sir. I have all the in

formation

I need right here. Your rating is invalidated.'

'Martin,' Helen presses forzvard at his side. 'Leave it, we'll come back when

it's cleared u '

'No, goddamn it.' Martin shrugs her off and leans over the counter, into the

checkout girl's face. 'There is money in that account. Now swipe the card

again.'

'Better do as she says,' says the pushy customer behind him.

Martin swings on him, tensed.

'This got something to do with you ?'

'I am waiting.'

'Well, wait some fucking more. 'He snaps his fingers in the man's face,

dismissing him, and the pushy customer flinches back. Martin turns back to the

checkout girl. 'Now, you--'

The prod hits him in the side like a rude elbow. A heartbeat later the charge

shocks him off the counter and into a seemingly immense clear space. He hits

the floor, smelling burnt fabric.

He hears Helen shriek. Sees confusedly from floor level. Boots in front of him

and a voice that sounds like tearing cardboard at a great height.

'I think you'd better leave the store, sir.'

The security guard hauls him to his feet and props him against the counter

again. A big man, swelling at the waist but watchful and hard around the eyes.

He's been doing this for a long time, probably cut his teeth on cordoned zone

clubs before he got this gig. He's shocked men before and Martin is out of office

clothes at four-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon, casual in faded jeans and a

well-worn crew-neck pullover that doesn't show what it was once worth. The

securityknow,

guard thinks he has the measure of this one. He doesn't know, can't

ili

level As the guard falls, Martin drives into the base of his skull with one

clenched fist.

The guard hits the ground a dead weight.

'Stand where you are!'

Martin reels around and comes face to face with the guard's smaller, female

partner just as she clears a pistol from her holster. Still scrambled from the

cattle prod, he lurches the wrong way, towards her, and the guard blows his

brains out all over his wife and son and the checkout and the checkout girl and

all the shiny packaged items on the belt that they can no longer afford.

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摘要：

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSMarketForceshashadalongandvariedevolution,fromnastyideatoshortstory,toscreenplay,tothenovelyounowholdinyourhands.Alongtheway,it(anditsauthor)hasincurredafewdebts.Inchronologicalorder,then,sonearasIcanrecall:ThankstoSimonEdkinsfortheoriginalthought-provokingsneer:theythinktheyliveinaju...

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Richard Morgan - Market Forces

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