Authors: Iain Banks
Too much to think about. I’m probably looking hesitant.
‘In fact, let’s … Let’s make it another four of those; two-fifty altogether. Yeah?’ Paul says. He’s standing close enough for me to smell his aftershave. ‘Best offer.’ He winks at me.
Two hundred and fifty. Blimey; that’s as much as you get for a clip used on
You’ve Been Framed
.
‘What’s on this tape?’ I ask him.
‘Embarrassing shit,’ he says ruefully, nodding.
‘Not porn?’ I ask, jokily (I think).
‘Definitely not,’ he says immediately, like he was just waiting for the question. I’m starting to think it is porn. ‘So,’ he says, standing back and looking at the inner door of the Gents’ as it trembles and the outer door makes a flapping-open noise. ‘Deal?’
‘Deal,’ I tell him, and slip my hand and the note into a gilet pocket.
‘Really?’ Hol is saying to Rick, as Paul and I come back to our shunted-together tables. Rick is folding a newspaper and sticking it into an inside pocket in his leather jacket. ‘The
Daily Mail
?’ Hol says, gaze flicking from Rick to Pris. ‘Hate-filled, right-wing rant-rag the
Daily Mail
, to give its full title; the newspaper with its knickers permanently in a twist?’
‘Yeah,’ Rick says, shrugging inside his jacket. ‘They were out of
Morning Star
s, weren’t they?’ He glances at Pris, who is looking round at the others and rolling her eyes.
‘Oh, Christ, here we go,’ Paul says. ‘Leave it, Hol.’
‘Hol finds the
Guardian
a tad right-wing,’ Pris tells Rick.
‘I was getting the
Sun
till about six months ago,’ Rick says reasonably. He nods sideways towards Pris. ‘Herself took offence. Think she was jealous of page three.’ (Pris rolls her eyes again, though she is smiling as well.) ‘Bloody hell, eh? Thought I was moving up in the world.’ Rick grins, looks at Paul, Rob, Guy and Haze. ‘Still miss the football in the
Currant
. Bit shit in this.’ He taps his jacket where it bulges over the newspaper.
‘You’ll have to excuse Hol, Rick,’ Guy tells him. ‘She blames herself for the past twenty-odd years of neocon excess, bless. Feels if only she’d been a more engaged, political journalist and properly inspiring – you know, rather than a hack sitting in the dark regurgitating bile onto undeserving Hollywood product – it might all have been so different. Eh, Hol?’ He gets to the end of this little speech and sits shaking with what might be a suppressed cough, swallowed laughter, just hiccups or a malfunctioning gag reflex – it’s impossible to say.
‘Yeah, I take full personal responsibility for everything,’ Hol says, glaring at Guy, her mouth a tight line.
‘You read what the fuck you want, mate,’ Rob tells Rick, and sits back.
‘Don’t you worry, chief,’ Rick says. He drains his pint glass. ‘My round. That be a red wine, Holly?’
‘No thanks. I’m fine.’
‘Come on; just kiddin you. Have a G&T. It’s only a paper.’
‘Fine,’ Hol says, handing him her glass. ‘Make it a double. You persuaded me.’
‘Never taken much, has it, Hol?’ Alison says.
‘Never,’ Hol agrees promptly. She smiles a broad smile but her voice sounds like she doesn’t care.
‘So, Rob,’ Rick asks, ‘what is it you do?’
‘I solutionise outcomes,’ Rob says.
Hol, who had been talking to Pris, looks over and says, ‘
What?
’ but Rob doesn’t notice, or pretends not to.
‘We’re both in Grayzr Corps,’ Alison tells Rick, glancing at Rob.
Rob nods sideways at Alison without looking at her. ‘We work in Moral Compliance.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Rick says. ‘What’s that then?’
‘Pre-identing up-torrent crisis nodes and realitising positive issue-relevant impending-threat-modulated countermeasure envision-sets within the applicable statutory and regulatory challenge/riposte-space,’ Rob says, without taking a breath. He looks round at the others.
Guy and Haze, who had been arguing about drugs, are looking at him.
Hol is staring at him, then she looks at Alison. ‘That was a joke,’ she says. ‘That
was
a joke, wasn’t it?’
Alison smiles at her.
‘What’s the big problem?’ Rob asks. ‘It’s just what I
do
.’
‘Sorry, mate,’ Rick says. ‘I’m none the wiser.’
‘Think we knew that from the—’ Guy starts to say, but Hol, who is sitting beside him, flicks a fist into his thigh. ‘Fuck’s
sake
,’ he says, rubbing his leg.
‘Sorry,’ Hol says quickly. ‘That was harder than I meant.’
‘I’ve nothing left there, Hol,’ Guy grumbles, wheezing. ‘Fucking fuck-all muscle-mass. I have to sit down to pee; can’t stand up long enough to take a piss. Jesus.’
‘I’m
sorry
!’
‘Modern multinationals in a high-choice environment are largely about image, customer perception and the moral integrity of the brand,’ Alison is telling Rick. ‘While everybody else is, rightly, focused on prompt product deliverance, positive quarterly results and increased shareholder value, Grayzr has an entire, vertically threaded division thinking about how we appear to the public and the various national and supranational regulatory and licensing bodies, not just right now but in the foreseeable future. It’s the sort of function that CEOs and the board are involved in as a matter of course across all industries but Grayzr intrinsically recognises that the positional privilege and remuneration-inspired lifestyle gap implicit between those in such positions and their concerns’ fundamental client-base make that task challenging without a dedicated in-house heuristic support structure, providing concept provenance, positional analysis and ethical guidance.’ She pauses, then puts her head to one side a little to look at Rick, who is staring at her, mouth hanging open. She shakes her head. ‘No?’ She shrugs, frowning. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know that I can put it any more simply than that without trivialising it.’
‘Yeah,’ Haze mutters, after a moment. ‘What she said.’
‘I think Alison means they try to look ahead, for the company they work for,’ Pris says, squeezing Rick’s hand. ‘To make sure it doesn’t appear evil.’
‘They watch their bosses’ arses,’ Hol says to Rick.
Guy looks at him and says, ‘They’re cunts.’
Alison whirls to face Guy. ‘
Do
you fucking mind? There’s no need for that sort of language!’
Guy continues to look at Rick, takes a sip of his Guinness and says, ‘They’re touchy cunts.’
‘Sure you won’t come back to the ranch, Rick?’ Guy says. ‘Hot and cold running sarcasm in every fucking room.’
We’re outside The Miller’s Boy, on the wide curved sweep of pavement guarding the entrance to Uppergate Pedestrianised Precinct; I’ve been to get the Volvo, which is now sitting idling in one of the Disabled spaces (legally; we got a Disabled badge for Guy over a year ago). Guy is resting against a black-painted, Heritage-themed litter bin, his forearm crutch splayed out to one side as he leans over a roll-up, protecting the makings from the rain with his head. I got the brolly from the car and went to shelter him with it but he told me to stop fussing, so I’m standing nearby waiting for them to sort themselves out.
Rain patters on the stretched fabric above me. If you turn the umbrella right so the saggy bit’s behind you, you can’t see it’s broken.
‘Nah, my mate’s picking me up in half an hour, thanks,’ Rick says, pulling his collar up and holding his newspaper over his head. ‘We’re off to near his, by Preston. He’s got me a spare rod and everything; I’m sorted.’
Paul looks up at the winter-grey sky from inside the fur-lined hood of his white parka. ‘Bit late to be going fishing, by the time you get there, isn’t it, Rick?’
‘Yeah, we’re losing the light here,’ Hol says. She has the hiccups. Another
hic!
shakes her body and she looks away, stamping her foot in annoyance and tutting. (And actually it’s only half past three.)
Rob and Alison are standing under a giant, colourful, Grayzr-branded umbrella. They brought their own car; Rob has stayed sober, though Alison hasn’t drunk much anyway.
‘Not for night fishing,’ Rick says, grinning at Paul.
‘Ah,’ Paul says. He turns to Pris, who is holding onto Rick’s left upper arm with both hands. ‘That’s not code, is it?’
Pris laughs. ‘Sure you won’t come back?’ she says, looking up at Rick.
‘Yeah, mate,’ Haze says, approaching and holding up his right hand for a high five, which Rick responds to dutifully. ‘I feel really bad, now, I really do. I feel I should have made more of an effort, know what I mean? With the offer of the bed and everything. It’s just with this back of mine, you know … But you should come back. You should. And we could still switch rooms around or something, eh?’ he says, looking at Pris.
‘Nah, seriously,’ Rick is saying. ‘You lot have your weekend together; I’ll be fine. I’d just be like a spare one at a wedding, I would, wouldn’t I? You lot are like Monty bloody Python. Wouldn’t be right.’
‘No!’ Pris says, almost hanging off his arms now, pivoting. ‘You’d be great!’
‘You’d fit in brilliant, you would,’ Haze tells him.
‘Don’t listen to a fucking word, Rick,’ Guy says, lighting up the rolly. ‘You’re well out of it. I was just being polite. These fuckers have decades of form. You stick with your gravel ponds, chum.’
‘Yeah,’ I hear Hol say quietly as she looks away, ‘shallow and full of carp.’
I fold the five, bank-fresh, ten-pound notes and stick them into my number four safe, which is a hole in the concrete behind the tiles of the fireplace in my room. I nipped out and changed the fifty for five tens in the Lloyds branch next door to the pub while they were all putting on their coats and arguing about the bill (Paul and Rob/Alison both insisted on paying for everything but eventually split it; Hol left the tip).
I have five ‘safes’ – as I’ve called them since I was a kid – dotted around my bedroom, plus a few others elsewhere scattered throughout the house and in one or two of the outbuildings. To the best of my knowledge, none of them has ever been compromised. The one behind the loose tiles of the fireplace is a fairly quick one to get to and relatively commodious after I hollowed it out when I was ten or eleven. I used to hide food in there sometimes; it has a maximum capacity of two standard Mars bars.
Another good one is inside the hollow frame of my ancient iron bedstead; you unscrew the brass ball on the bottom left upright and reach in with your finger to feel for an inconspicuous black thread superglued to the inside; you pull it up carefully and there’s a plastic container at the end that looks like a sort of giant med capsule. It can hold one Mars bar.
I need to get back down to the others, but I take a quick look round the room, just to reassure myself.
My room is my haven, my citadel. I fitted a bolt to the door years ago so when I’m in here I’m fully secure, though Guy was never one for just walking in anyway.
The bed is just a single but that’s okay as there’s just one of me. It used to be a real plus, it being small, as it meant it left more room on the floor for other stuff like the Scalextric set I used to have, and battle landscapes made of sheets draped over pillows and cushions and piles of books, where I’d play with my model soldiers. I don’t bother with that stuff any more, of course; it was all kind of retro at the time anyway – basically I was getting birthday and Christmas presents that people Guy’s age wanted when they were my age, not what I wanted – but now all that limited, physical gubbins has been replaced with the worlds that exist inside the computer and are distributed across the Cloud’s server farms scattered across the world, where HeroSpace and the other game environments are.
The current machine – sitting on an old dressing table, so flanked with infolding side-mirrors – is a two-year-old Dell with a sixty-centimetre flat screen. I used to really care about the hardware and built my own computer when I was fourteen, but it seems kind of irrelevant these days; just the gateway you pass through to get to the landscapes on the far side. Big screens and fast graphics chips are useful, but they don’t compensate for lack of skill or experience.
The main expense I incurred over the last few years was getting in decent broadband. Guy doesn’t even know about that. I feel a bit bad having this wired straight into the Dell and not home-hubbing wi-fi throughout the house, but I need it for intense HeroSpace moments, and letting Guy know about the broadband might raise awkward questions about where the money for it came from. The broadband is like my secret, high-speed tunnel out of the house into the rest of the real world, and those beyond.
I have a bookcase full of books and old toys, a few CDs, a third-generation iPod with a cracked screen and a travel dock, and a chest of drawers with clothes. The room has a single, very worn old carpet covering the floorboards. It’s allegedly Persian but actually made in Belgium according to the label underneath. The room’s other principal feature is translucent plastic Really Useful Boxes, some individual ones and some stacks, varying in capacity from one point four to sixty-four litres.
I like boxes that stack and that fit neatly inside other boxes. I keep a pair of cardboard tubes from whisky bottles for no other reason than the fact one fits so neatly inside the other that when you insert the smaller one inside the larger and let go, it takes a full fourteen seconds for it to move slowly all the way down, air sighing smoothly out around it. I suspect even the Volvo’s pistons aren’t that tight.
‘You’ve learned the
words
to “Gangnam Style”?’ Hol says, plonking herself down on the velvet sofa in the sitting room. She starts laughing.
‘Yeah,’ Haze is saying, ‘I heard this girl on the radio doing it and I thought,
You know what? That sounds quite cool, that does. That’s better than just doing all the actions, like
.’
‘But you
can
do all the actions?’ Paul asks, a deep frown on his face.
‘Yeah,’ Haze says. ‘Of course.’
‘Thank God,’ Paul says. He pours himself some red wine and holds the bottle towards Hol. ‘Sure I can’t …?’