by Iain Banks
‘Mr McGill believes we’re descended from monkeys and Christians are no better than Muslims,’ Fromlax told his boss, who at least had the decency to look pained.
‘Or Jews, to be fair,’ Alban said reasonably as Fromlax’s eyes widened. ‘I’m an atheist, Mr Feaguing,’ he said, turning to the other man. ‘I was trying to explain to Tony here that, from where I stand, Judaism, Christianity and Islam don’t even look like separate religions, just different cults within this one big, mad, misogynist religion founded by a schizophrenic who heard voices telling him to kill his son. And I do indeed believe in evolution rather than magic. I take a pretty firm line on lightning not being divine thunderbolts, too.’
‘Well, a man’s beliefs are his own business, I guess,’ Feaguing said, looking at both men in turn. ‘The most important thing is being able to talk, come to agreements, where agreements are possible.’
‘The most important thing is to live in peace,’ Alban said, hoping this in itself sounded like agreement - it wasn’t particularly meant to be.
‘Tony,’ Feaguing said, putting his hand between the junior exec’s shoulder blades, ‘would you have a word with Mr Percy Wopuld—’
‘It’s Schofield,’ Alban said. ‘Uncle Perce married in.’
‘Schofield, of course, I beg your pardon,’ Feaguing said, nodding and holding up one hand, glancing at Alban and then smiling back at Fromlax. ‘Percy’s the Brand Manager? Guy with the glasses over there, sat next to the fire with Winifred? He has some questions.’ Feaguing patted his junior’s back. ‘Would you do that?’
‘Certainly,’ Fromlax said, and - with a last, part dark, part pitying look at Alban - got up, retrieved his laptop from the narrow table behind the couch and went over towards the group of people gathered round the fireplace.
Feaguing watched as Fromlax joined them. ‘She’s a very special and wonderful lady, your grandmother,’ he told Alban.
‘Oh, she’s something,’ Alban said. He decided he was getting rather good at this seeming-to-agree ploy.
‘You’ll have to excuse Tony,’ Feaguing said. ‘The guy takes his religion pretty neat.’ He grinned broadly. He was dressed in slacks and a shirt and sweater and held a tumbler with whisky and ice. ‘You kinda have to make allowances for some of these younger guys, cut them a bit of slack.’ He held up one hand. ‘Not that he’s any younger than you, Mr McGill. But you know what I mean.’
‘Of course.’
‘Me,’ Feaguing said, gesturing at his chest with his whisky glass, ‘I’m a devout capitalist.’
‘Please, call me Alban; after all, Tony and I were on first-name terms and we were close to blows.’
Feaguing grinned, sat back. ‘I understand you’ve been speaking up for the family firm staying with the family,’ he said. He held up one hand as though to forestall something. ‘I just want to say, I completely understand. In your position, I’d have mixed feelings myself.’
Alban thought of saying that his feelings weren’t mixed, they were totally against the takeover, but this wasn’t strictly true, he supposed, so he didn’t.
‘It’s a big decision,’ Feaguing said, sitting forward, cradling his glass in both hands, looking thoughtful. He nodded, also thoughtfully. ‘And I know and respect what your family has done with the heritage that Empire! and the other games represent. It’s a record to be proud of. Your family should be proud.’
‘There haven’t been too many sins this family hasn’t indulged to the hilt,’ Alban said. ‘I doubt we missed pride.’
Feaguing grinned again, flashing very white teeth. ‘Now, look, obviously, I’m here to close the deal.’ His hands were spread wide. ‘But I want to tell you about the corporate attitude at Spraint, about the way we work, about our philosophy. I did say to call me Larry, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did,’ Alban told him. ‘Larry, you want to buy the family firm because you think you’ll make more money owning what we own rather than licensing it. It then becomes a question of how many of us value our holding above whatever your best offer turns out to be. I don’t see how philosophy really comes into it.’
Larry looked pained, scratched behind one ear. ‘Well, we’ve kind of made our best offer,’ he said. Alban didn’t even bother to do anything with his expression. ‘But anyway,’ Feaguing went on, ‘I want you to understand that I’m sincere here, Alban. Don’t be over-cynical, please. Different companies do business in different ways. If that wasn’t true, your family firm wouldn’t have succeeded so well over the last century and more. If it wasn’t true then there’d be no winners and losers, just everybody doing pretty much the same, and life is certainly not like that. At Spraint we believe in the long term, we believe in commitment, we believe in shared values. It’s not just about money.’
‘I thought you had a duty to increase shareholder value.’
‘Absolutely. But there are as many ways of doing that, once you include all the variables, as there are, well, say, of becoming better educated. What classes do you want to do? What do you invest in? Both simple-sounding questions, both infinitely complicated answers.’
‘But it is still about money.’
‘You know,’ Larry said, sitting back, frowning, ‘this might sound like a strange thing to say, but in a way money is kind of irrelevant.’
Alban widened his eyes. ‘Really?’
‘What I mean is, it’s just how you keep score. Like a ball game. The scoreboard, the numbers on it; they’re just things. It’s what those numbers buy you, what they get you that matters; not the numbers themselves.’
‘I wish I was an economist,’ Alban said, ‘we could debate this properly.’
‘What matters is how people feel,’ Feaguing said. ‘Do people feel good having a bunch of money in the bank, or in stocks? Do they feel better owning a Harley or a Lexus or a Sunseeker or a Lear Jet? How many of those can you use? Do they feel better being involved with a company that is simply trying to give them the figures to buy the same sort of stuff they could buy with shares in any other company, or - and here’s the thing - do they feel better investing in a company that shares the values they hold themselves? Values of long-term commitment to worthwhile projects, the very real worth of excellence for its own sake, a proven long-term commitment to extensive charitable works, a belief in the future of science and technology allied to a recognition of the basic human need for diversion and game-playing and all the life-enhancing lessons that the best scenarios and games are able to teach.’
Alban sat in his seat, looking at Larry Feaguing. Alban had his legs crossed, one elbow on his knee and his chin on his fist. He had the distinct impression he was getting a regurgitated, slightly jumbled version of a more coherent - and doubtless more inspiring - speech Feaguing had once been on the receiving end of. Alban shook his head. ‘Well, they do say Europe and North America are growing further apart all the time. You have to hope they’ve left enough slack in all those transatlantic cables.’
Larry sat back and looked pained again. ‘Alban, I’m just trying to tell you that companies have characters, like people do, and I feel proud of the character of Spraint Corp. That is not bullshit. Excuse me, but I mean this sincerely. We honour what you’ve done with Empire! and the other games and we think we’ll be worthy inheritors of that heritage. Your family has done wonderful things with those games in the past. Together we’ve done wonderful things with the various properties over the past six years, but it’s our belief that there’s an even greater potential in the titles that we’re confident can only be realised if we are allowed the privilege of taking over their stewardship.’
Alban shrugged. ‘I won’t argue you’re not sincere, Larry. But ultimately of course this is all about money.’
Feaguing shook his head. ‘I wish I could make you believe otherwise, Alban, I really do.’
‘Maybe we’re both getting this the wrong way round,’ Alban suggested. ‘Perhaps you’re right about the character and morals of Spraint Corp, but you’re giving the
Wopuld clan way too much respect for their beliefs and collective character. Maybe all we’re interested in is money.’
‘Do you really believe that, Alban?’ Feaguing asked quietly.
Alban looked around the room at all his many, many relations, this widespread but, for now - briefly - concentrated family, which he had loved and hated and served and exiled himself from and longed for and come to an accommodation with and still half loved and half hated sometimes, and then he looked back at Feaguing with a small smile. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But if I were you I’d treat it as a decent working hypothesis.’
Fielding snored, Alban discovered. It was so bad that he ended up having to pad along to the nearest bathroom and make a couple of little wads of toilet paper to stuff in his ears as plugs. He lay awake for a while after that, thinking of VG, wondering where she was laying her tousled head that night, how she was sleeping. The rain and the wind had barely slackened all day.
A gust - which he heard over Fielding’s snoring and through the improvised ear plugs - shook the windows in their frames.
He was struggling to make his way down through the upward stream of water, blown this way and that by the pummelling wind and rain. There was somebody down there, somebody ahead of him, somebody who’d fallen through the rushing stream in front of him. He’d watched her go and then realised he had to save her and so thrown himself in too but then the water hadn’t let him, it was rushing back up at him, flowing the wrong way, forcing him upwards so that he had to struggle against it and fight his way down.
‘Alban!’
The voice sounded distant, underwater. For a few moments he thought it might be her voice, but it wasn’t. It was too deep.
‘Alban!’
He woke up tangled in damp bedclothes, as though the stream he’d been fighting had suddenly set, coagulating around him into a twistedly solid form.
‘You okay?’ It was Fielding.
Alban realised he was at Garbadale, in a single bed, sharing a room. He took one of his ear plugs out, cleared his throat and ran a hand over his sweaty face. ‘Sorry, yeah.’ He kicked at some of the sheets, releasing a trapped leg, sticking it out to cool. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Nightmare?’ Fielding asked, his voice sounding normal now, not underwater.
‘Kind of.’ Alban looked around. The room was perfectly dark. He couldn’t see a thing. He twisted his head and looked at the little bedside cabinet, just to see the sea-green glow of his watch dial, hovering in the darkness like the face of a tiny, constant ghost.
‘Sounded like it,’ Fielding said.
‘Sorry if I woke you up.’
‘Never mind. Try and get back to sleep. No more nightmares.’
‘Yeah. Thanks. No more nightmares.’
He lay awake for a while after that, staring at the unseen ceiling, listening to the wind and the rain and trying to recall who it had been he had thought he was trying to rescue.
Breakfast was another straggled, well-spaced affair. Alban spent a couple of hours in the dining room, taking a very long and leisurely breakfast and talking to most of the people he hadn’t managed to talk to already. He got the impression that a lot of people were assuming everybody else was all for the sale, while they themselves weren’t, but still expected to lose the vote. A surprising number were against the sale at any price, or so they said.
The weather was starting to improve and there was talk of some of the adults forming a shooting party after lunch, to cull a few hinds. Various males were already committed to spending most of the day in front of the big plasma screen in the TV lounge, watching sport. Andy came down late for breakfast, looked at the still falling rain and suggested tomorrow might be a better day for Alban and him to scatter the flowers on the loch. Alban agreed.
A treasure hunt in the gardens had been arranged later in the afternoon for those children who didn’t think such childish pursuits beneath them. Alban helped set the treasure hunt up during the hour after his elongated breakfast, hiding prizes and instructions, most of them rain-proofed in plastic kitchenware boxes, amongst the trees and bushes and lawns of the garden, all according to a plan drawn up by Aunt Lauren.
He wandered a little, visiting parts of the gardens the treasure hunt wasn’t supposed to reach, taking in the pinetum, the arboretum and the old walled kitchen garden, its long-vanished glasshouses present only in the ghostly form of marks on the walls and the channels of the flues for the fires that had heated the plants in the winter.
The rain had almost ceased now, the wind shifting, blowing in clear from the north-west. He walked under the fine, tall trees he remembered from earlier visits - various pines and firs plus a number of Western Hemlock and Wellingtonia - letting the few fat heavy drops of leaf-filtered rain fall on to his face. Too many places were choked with rhodies, he thought. The place was ideal for them - peaty, acidic soil, lots of rain - but it needed a clear-out.
He was surrounded by the signs of autumn - the leaves were turning, the deciduous trees beginning the process of drawing the goodness inward, leaving the leaves to yellow and redden and brown and fall.
He returned to the house as the last of the rain cleared and blue skies appeared between the mountains to the north-west. The temperature had dropped a couple of degrees, but it still felt mild.
Sophie met him in the cloakroom as he took his jacket off. ‘Alban, would you come fishing with me?’
‘Fishing?’ he said. ‘What, on Loch Garve?’
‘Yeah. Care to?’ she asked. She wore chunky black boots, black jeans, a green blouse that matched her eyes and a grey sweater. She stood, arms folded, leaning back against the wall by the door into the rest of the house, one leg up behind her.
‘You’re not shooting, then?’ he asked.
‘Not a great fan of guns,’ she told him. ‘But I’ve kinda taken up fishing back home. I asked your pal Neil McBride and he said you knew the loch pretty well and you might take me if I asked you nicely.’
‘Well, he’s the real expert,’ Alban said, hanging up his jacket. ‘But I’ve got a rough idea of the best places; the ones Neil’s told me about, anyway. Anybody else coming?’
‘Just us.’ She smiled. ‘That okay?’
‘Course it’s okay,’ he said. He looked at his watch - it was nearly noon. ‘Give me half an hour to get everything together. You want to eat before we go or take a packed lunch down the loch?’
‘I’ll organise some food to take with us. Neil’s sorting us a boat.’
‘Good man. We’ll need to be back about five at the latest, that all right?’
‘Sure.’
He scratched the nape of his neck. ‘We will be out in this wee boat for several hours; I’d schedule a toilet break before we head off.’
She hoisted one eyebrow. ‘Aye-aye, cap’n.’
‘Okay then.’
‘Okay.’
Neil had the boat started and idling at the jetty for them. ‘You’ve got a full tank,’ he told Alban, ‘and there’s a can of fuel under the bow seat, though you shouldn’t need it. Already mixed, but you might want to give it a good slosh around before you pour it in, if you do have to. Funnel’s in the wee crate under the back seat there, with the rest of the bits and bobs.’
‘Cheers, Neil.’ Alban stepped in and started stowing the fishing gear in the little boat. Sophie had one of the rods, a fishing bag and the cool box with the food.
‘Forecast is fine,’ Neil told them. ‘Clear. Wind’s to stay the same or freshen a bit. Three to a four.’
‘That all?’ Alban said. ‘Good as dead calm by Loch Garve standards.’
‘Want a suggestion?’ Neil asked.
‘Sure.’
‘Try down at Eagle Rock, under Meall an Aonaich. Do you know that bit?’
‘Nearly at the head?’
‘Aye, about a mile this way. There’s a buoy off the bit of shore between the two burns. Tie up there and use fly for brownies. The wash-off from the burns pushes them out that way afte
r heavy rain. If that doesn’t work ’cause there’s too much chop I’ve put a couple of wee rods in for spinners.’
‘Okay.’ Alban turned to Sophie as she handed him the stuff she’d been carrying. ‘It’s a fair distance to get there, but I guess we’ll get a couple of hours in.’
‘Fine by me,’ she said. Sophie wore a dark blue jacket over what she’d been wearing earlier, with a canvas gilet over that, much pocketed. Neil helped her slip into a slim, self-inflating life-jacket, then she put out one hand and Alban held it while she stepped into the boat, taking a long stride to bring her foot down in the centre of the bottom boards.
‘Well, have fun,’ Neil told them.
‘See you later,’ Alban said.
‘Thanks again,’ Sophie told Neil. ‘Hope the shooting goes well.’
‘For everybody but the deer, aye,’ Neil said, casting them off.
Loch Garve was nearly twenty-six kilometres long and nowhere wider than two. At nearly two hundred metres in places it was deeper than the North Sea; a steep-sided inland loch bordered and hemmed in by tall mountains and shaped ‘like a dug’s hind leg’ according to Neil McBride.
The wind was behind them as they headed south-east in the slim, clinker-built boat, the little four-horsepower two-stroke droning away at their backs. He didn’t need it for the temperature, but Alban pulled a thick ski glove over his hand holding the motor’s throttle tiller. These old two-strokes were rattly, buzzy old things.
‘You want to sit up the front?’ he asked Sophie, raising his voice over the noise of the engine. ‘Keep us better trimmed. Kind of hard to talk over the sound of this thing anyway.’ He patted the motor’s tiller. The handle of the starting lanyard was protruding a little; he pushed it fully into the cowling. ‘We can gossip all we like once we’re moored and the engine’s off.’