Dead Air

by Iain Banks

  ‘Did you really imagine that?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m thankful I only had one night to lose sleep over it, but yes, I did. You have this thing about separation and entanglement, and a set of beliefs I find perfectly bizarre and that I can’t comprehend or anticipate the results of… For all I knew, to you, yesterday was some sort of sign, a bolt from the heavens that absolutely meant – without argument or appeal, and according to a kind of faith I don’t even begin to understand – we were over.’

  She looked almost sleepy as she said, ‘You think I’m irrational, don’t you?’

  ‘I think you behave like the most rational person I’ve ever met, but you claim to have this completely crackpot belief in your own half life/half death and a spookily entangled twin in another universe. Maybe that is profoundly rational in some deep sense that has eluded me until now, but I don’t feel any nearer seeing it than I was when you sprang this frankly wacko ideology on me in the first place.’

  She was silent for a moment. Those almond amber eyes gazed up at me, steady flames in a deep well. ‘You are a globalist, aren’t you?’

  ‘Hey, you were listening.’

  She smoothed her fingers through my chest hair, then gently took a fist of it and let her hand hang there, caught up. ‘You make such a big thing,’ she said, ‘of developed countries, rich countries, not being allowed to impose their ways of life and their way of thinking and of doing business on smaller or poorer countries, and that extending to religions and customs and the like, and yet you want to make everybody think the same way. You’re like most people who have to… fulminate about things; you want everybody to think the same way you do.’

  ‘Doesn’t everybody?’

  ‘But it is true, isn’t it? You want the one way of thinking spread everywhere, throughout the world, replacing all the different ways of thinking that have grown up in all the different places and peoples and cultures. You are a colonialist of the mind. You believe in the justified imperialism of Western thought. Pax logica; that is what you believe in. You wish to see the flag of your rationalism planted firmly in every brain on the planet. You say you don’t care what people believe in, that you respect their right to worship as they wish, but you don’t really respect the people or their beliefs at all. You think that they are fools and what they believe in is worse than useless.’

  I flopped onto my back. I let out a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Do I want people to think the way I do? I suppose I do. But I know it’s never going to happen. Do I respect other people’s beliefs? Shit, Ceel, I don’t know. There’s this saying about how you should respect a man’s religious beliefs the same way you respect his belief that his wife is the most beautiful woman in the world. Casual – and hopefully non-malicious – sexism aside, I can see that. I do accept I could be wrong. Maybe the… the Abrahamists are right. Maybe their cruel, woman-hating, woman-fearing unholy trinity of mega-cultism is spot-on after all.

  ‘Maybe, even, some tiny, tiny little strand of it, like, for example, the Wee Frees, who are part of the Presbyterian movement in Scotland, which is itself part of the Protestant franchise, which is part of the Christian faith, which is part of the Abrahamic belief-set, which is one of the monotheistic religions… maybe they and only they – all few thousand of them – are absolutely bang on the money in what they believe and how they worship, and everybody else has been wrong-diddly-wrong-wrong all these centuries. Or maybe the One True Way has only ever been revealed to a one-man cult within the outer fringes of Guatemalan Highland Sufism, reformed. All I can say is, I’ve tried to prepare myself for being wrong, for waking up after I’ve died and finding that – uh-oh – my atheism was actually, like, a Really Big Mistake.’

  I got up on one elbow again. ‘And do I think reason should replace irrationality? Well, yes. Yes, I do. Guilty as charged. And, bless it, society really is to blame. Society and education and enquiry and doubt and argument and disputation and progress; all the schools and libraries and universities, all the scholars and monks and alchemists and teachers and scientists. Faith is fine for poetry, for images and metaphors and art and for telling us who we are, who we’ve been. But when faith tries to describe the world, describe the universe, it just plain gets it wrong. Which wouldn’t matter if it admitted it was wrong, but it can’t, because all it’s got is its unwavering certainty in its own infallibility; the rest is smoke and mirrors, and admitting imperfection brings the whole lot tumbling down. There are no crystal spheres, and the planets are not the result of some sky god’s wet-dream. If that is supposed to be taken literally, then it’s a lie, plain and simple. If it’s a metaphor, then it has bugger all to do with the way things really work. Reason works, the scientific method works. Technology works.

  ‘If people want to respect their environment by believing that the fish they eat might have been an ancestor, or learn to lower toilet seats because their chi is leaking out, I’m happy to accept and even honour the results even if I think the root of their behaviour is basically barmy. I can live with that, and with them. I hope they can live with me.’

  She spread her hand flat against my chest. I could feel my heart beating hard. I shouldn’t let this sort of thing get to me like this, but I had no choice. This stuff was important to me; I couldn’t help it.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said quietly, looking at her own hand, or perhaps at my skin. ‘Sometimes I think we are like different coloured bishops on a chess board, you and I.’

  ‘Bishops? After all I’ve just said?’

  She smiled, still spreading her hand on my chest, as though trying to span the distance between my nipples. ‘Better to be a queen,’ she agreed.

  ‘You’ll just have to take my word for it that I’d rather be a pawn than a bishop. At least they can transcend their origins.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Or a knight. I’ve always liked the fact a knight has what is basically a three-dimensional move on a two-dimensional surface. And the castle; there’s something about the bluff, blunt power of the rook that attracts me as well. And it does do a potentially three-dimensional thing, too, just once, come to think of it, castling. Bishops are more devious, somehow, sliding in between pieces like a knife through ribs. The king, of course, is simply a liability.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘of bishops on opposing sides, and of different colours as well. Just the two of them there on the chess board, with no other pieces present.’

  I nodded. I saw, now, what she meant.

  ‘They could never connect,’ I said. ‘They could slide past each other for ever, but never affect. They appear to inhabit the same board, but really they don’t. Not at all.’

  She looked up at me with heavy-lidded eyes, her head tipped fractionally to one side. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘Perhaps. And is that us?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe all men and women. Maybe all people.’

  ‘For ever? Without exception? Without hope?’ I tried to say it lightly.

  She took my cock in her hand, then brought her other hand out from underneath her head and cupped her sex. ‘We connect here…’ She smiled. (A smile, it seemed to me just then, fit to light up the universe inside the skull; a smile, indeed, to light up two. A smile to illuminate infinities.) ‘… That will have to do for now.’

  Seven. SEXUAL PIQUE

  ‘ ‘Nikki! Oh my God! What have you done?’

  ‘Verhoeven? Underrated?’ I thought about this. ‘How?’

  ‘Hendrie. Aston Villa. Separated at birth.’

  ‘Wanking; why the bad press?’

  ‘Knock-knock.’

  ‘You know; all mouth and no trousers.’

  ‘The hell with you, grounded on Mount Arafat.’

  Craig was having a Hogmanay party at his place in Highgate.

  ‘Ken, hi! What? Oh, I cut my hair. Like it?’

  ‘No! It’s-’

  ‘Shorter. Easier to wash. Different.’

  ‘Yeah, and sort of browny-black. Are you ma
d?’

  ‘You sound like my dad.’

  ‘But you had beautiful hair!’

  ‘I still do, thanks.’

  ‘Fink about the endin of Total Recall.’

  I sniggered.

  ‘Zactly.’

  ‘What d’you mean “Zactly”? You can’t just say “Zactly” and look all justified and smug like that. Explain yourself, man.’

  ‘Wot was that reaction of yours there then, what was that all about?’

  ‘It was about a totally preposterous ending featuring the Pyramid Mine – a biggish hill but still less than a pimple on a planetary scale – emplacing an entire Martian atmosphere at what appeared to be Standard Temperature and Pressure in about half a minute, complete with milky clouds and everything, in time to put Arnie and the ingenue’s eyes back into their sockets about a minute after they started haemorrhaging, all with no lasting ill effects whatsoever to bodies either planetary or human.’ I thought about what I’d just said. ‘Or Arnie’s, for that matter.’

  Ed nodded. ‘Zactly.’

  ‘You’re doing it again! Will you stop with the fucking “Zactly” shit already?’

  ‘Hee hee hee.’

  ‘Yeah, and the “Hee hee hee” thing is no great improvement. ’ I took Ed by the shoulders and through gritted teeth said, ‘What the fuck do you mean?’

  ‘Wot I mean is,’ Ed said, giggling, ‘right, is that it is basically so fuckin preposterous a endin that it can only mean, right, that Arnie, is character that is, must still be in a virtual reality dream. None of the endin’s been real, azit?’

  I opened my mouth. I took my hands off his shoulders. I wagged a finger at him. ‘Hmm,’ I said.

  ‘An that therefore, like, that Verhoeven geezer is a subversive genius.’

  I stood there, nodding, trying to recall more of the earlier parts of the film.

  ‘Course,’ Ed said, ‘it’s only a feery.’

  ‘Hendrie who?’

  ‘Hendrie; plays for Villa. You must have seen him.’

  ‘No I mustn’t. Why?’

  ‘He looks like Robbie Williams.’

  ‘… Craig, you need to get out more.’

  ‘I was out. I went to the match. That’s where I saw him.’

  ‘Okay, you should stay in more.’

  ‘Phil, “Wanking; why the bad press?” is not funny. Now, “Button pushers; why the bad press?”; that has a modicum of comedic value. Only a modicum, not enough to actually use in the show or anything, but I employ it purely as an example.’

  ‘I was thinking of a new phone-in feature.’

  ‘Right. Well, there are ladies on the end of premium-rate phone lines dedicated to ensuring this sort of thing is already well catered for. I’m told.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I was thinking of.’

  ‘Well what, then? A sponsored wank-o-thon?’

  ‘No no no. Right; it’ll be called Get a Hold of Yourself.’

  ‘Uh-huh. You’ve always been jealous Chris Evans had that Breakfast Show feature where a girl got her boyfriend’s “lollipop” in her mouth and recited lyrics, haven’t you?’

  ‘Nooo; look-’

  ‘Phil; no. Just leave it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t think-?’

  ‘I think you should go and talk to Craig.’

  ‘Who’s There?’

  ‘ Tijuana.’

  ‘ Tijuana who?’

  ‘Gary Glitter.’

  ‘… What?’

  ‘ Tijuana be in my gang, my gang, my gang?’

  ‘Oh, I understand the meaning it’s meant to have,’ I told Amy, leaning closer to her. We were on the decking in Craig’s garden, near midnight. I’d just tried to talk to Jo, in Barcelona with Addicta, but without success. ‘It’s just not the meaning I took from it the first time I heard it. That’s what I’m saying.’

  ‘What, “Fur coat and no knickers”?’

  ‘Yeah! I always thought, Damn, that sounds great! That sounds, like, really sexy!’

  She laughed, putting her head back to show a long, winter-tanned neck and perfect teeth. Her blond hair glowed softly in the light falling from the lit windows of the house. ‘Yes, well, you would.’

  ‘Witty but unfair. Look, I-’

  ‘You don’t know what it feels like. You just have no idea. All you’ve got is your theory, just your precious one-man-party line, as usual. You have no concept what it’s like. You haven’t been there. You haven’t felt the atmosphere. We’re surrounded by people who hate us.’

  ‘Ah, excuse me? This is me you’re talking to here. I’m all too well acquainted with the tell-tale tingle on the temple that indicates the cross-hairs of antipathy have locked on to me once more. But just… just back up a bit, there; who’s this “we”? When the hell did you become a Daughter of the Zionist Revolution?’

  ‘When I realised it was them or us, Ken.’

  ‘Oh, fuck, you mean you really are? Jeez, I was just-’

  ‘They all hate us. Every nation on our borders would like to see us destroyed. Our only way out’s the sea, and that’s where they want us. Ken, just look at the map! We’re tiny! And then, inside our own nation, these people murder and bomb and shoot us, inside our own borders, on our own streets, in the shops, on the buses, in our homes! We’ve got to stop them; we have no choice. And you, you have the gall to claim that we’ve become the Nazis, and can’t see you’ve become just another bloody anti-Semite.’

  ‘Oh, fuck, Jude, look, I know you feel really deeply about this-’

  ‘No you don’t! That’s what I’m saying. You can’t!’

  ‘Well, I’m trying to! Look… please, please don’t put words into my mouth or beliefs into my mind that aren’t there.’

  ‘They are there, Ken, you just won’t accept it.’

  ‘I am not anti-Semitic. Look, I like the Jews, I admire the Jews, I’m positively pro-Semitic for fuck’s sake. I’ve told you this! Well, some of it! I’ve been this way since I was a kid, since I heard about the Holocaust and since I realised that the Scots and the Jews were so alike. The Scots are smart, but we get accused of being mean. Same with the Jews. It’s culture, not race, but we’ve both punched way above our weight for civilisation; the Jews are the only people I ever put ahead of the Scots in terms of their influence on the world given the size of their population pool.’

  ‘This is so bullshit.’

  ‘I’m serious. I loved you guys from when I was a kid! So much I was embarrassed to tell you how much!’

  ‘Don’t bullshit me.’

  ‘It’s true. You were just so fearsomely far to the left I never dared.’

  ‘Ken-’

  ‘I’m serious. I used to love Israel.’

  (This was true. When I was thirteen I’d fallen deeply in love with a girl called Hannah Gold. Her parents lived in Giffnock, one of the more leafy parts of Glasgow ’s suburban southern hinterland. They took a dim view of our friendship and my obvious infatuation with their daughter. But I charmed them, plus I did my research. Within six months Mr G was expressing his pleased surprise at how much I knew about Israel and the Jews. The Golds moved to London shortly after Hannah’s fourteenth birthday and we were pen pals for a while, but then they moved again and we lost touch. I’d been heartbroken when they left, but I recovered and went on, going from desolation to something shamingly close to indifference in about three weeks.

  My new interest in Israel proved rather longer lasting. And at the time I didn’t see how anybody could not love Israel. It was the world’s most charismatic, brave, buccaneering nation, defying all these bullies around it. The Six Day War, Dayan and his eye-patch, a woman prime minister, the kibbutzim; when I was a kid I was so proud it was British-built tanks that had gone sailing across the Sinai with the Star of David flying from the whip aerials. I used to get books out the library about Israel. Great Jewish Generals; can you believe Trotsky was in there? I even knew that the Israeli army had improved their Cent
urions by putting petrol engines in place of the British diesels; I knew all that adolescent, war-geek stuff, I loved it. Yom Kippur; triumphing against the odds, nicking their own boats from under the noses of the French, the raid on Entebbe; it was breath-taking, cinematic! How could anyone not admire all that?)

  ‘But that was before the invasion of Lebanon, before Sabra and Shatila-’

  ‘That was done by Christian militias,’ Jude protested.

  ‘Oh, come on! It was Ariel Sharon who let them off the leash, and you know it. But that was the start; I began to wake up to what had happened to the Palestinians, to all the UN resolutions that Israel had just ignored, that it was uniquely allowed to ignore, then to the history – “The bride is beautiful, but she is already wed” – and to the illegal settlements, and the secret nukes. I heard what Rabbi Kehane believed, what his followers still believe, I saw the bodies lying bleeding in the mosque, and I felt sick. And now civilians are just killed without any legal process whatsoever, and I’ve heard Israelis as good as talk about a final solution for the Palestinian problem. I’ve listened to a cabinet minister say without irony that if they can just round up all the terrorists and get rid of them, there won’t be any left, and I can’t believe I’m hearing an educated person suggest anything as monumentally stupid, as psychologically obtuse as that.

  ‘Look; I don’t want anyone hurt. I don’t believe in suicide bombings or attacking any civilians and of course you’ve every right to defend yourselves, but, oh, God, look, can we just agree on this? That the Holocaust wasn’t evil and horrific and the single most obscene and concentrated act of human barbarism ever recorded because it happened to the Jews, it was all that because it happened to anybody, to any group, to any people. Because it did happen to the Jews, and there had been nowhere for them to escape to, I thought, Yes, of course, they did deserve a homeland. It was the least that could be done. The world felt that. Partly guilt, but at least it was there.