by Iain Banks
'That is very sad.'
'Yes, but I've been very lucky.'
'In your career, do you mean?'
'Well, that as well. But I meant that I was loved.'
'I see. By your mother, you mean?'
'Yes.'
'A mother should love her child.'
'Of course. But I was still lucky. She made me feel loved, and made me feel special, and she protected me. There were many men in her life and some of them were violent sometimes, but none of them ever touched me and she did her best to hide from me what they did to her. So, though we were poor, and things could certainly have been easier, I had a better start in life than some.'
'Then you met Mrs Telman.'
I nodded. 'Then Mrs Telman came along, and that was the single luckiest thing that ever happened to me.'
'I knew Mrs Telman. She was a good woman. It was sad she could have no children of her own.'
'Do you have a family yourself, Mr Cholongai?'
'One wife, five children, two grandchildren, third grandchild on way,' Mr Cholongai said, with a big smile.
'Then you are blessed.'
'Indeed.' He sipped his iced coffee. There was an expression on what I could see of his face that might have meant the coffee was giving him a toothache. 'Might I touch on a personal matter, Ms Telman?'
'I suppose so.
He nodded for a while, then said, 'You have never thought of having children of your own?'
'Of course I've thought of it, Mr Cholongai.'
'And you decided not to.'
'So far. I'm thirty-eight, so I'm not in my prime for child-bearing, but I'm fit and healthy, and I reckon I could still change my mind.' In fact I knew I was fertile; I'd gone to a clinic when I was thirty-five, just out of curiosity, and been again a few months ago, and gotten a clean bill of reproductive health both times. Nothing wrong with my eggs or any part of the system, which made not having children my choice rather than an imposition.
Cholongai nodded. 'Ah-hah. This is awkward, I know, but, may I ask, was it simply that the right man did not come along?'
I tasted my iced coffee, glad to remain inscrutable behind my glasses. 'That depends what you mean.'
'You will have to explain. Please.'
'It depends on how you define the right man. The right man did come along, as far as I was concerned from a purely selfish point of view. But he turned out to be married. So, not the right man after all.'
'I see. I am sorry.'
I shrugged. 'One of those things, Mr Cholongai. I don't cry myself to sleep every night.'
He nodded. 'You are not, perhaps, a very selfish person: you give a lot of money to deserving causes, I think.'
This is the sort of thing you have to live with in the Business; that old financial transparency means there's no feeling quietly superior to somebody about things like this. If they have the slightest interest in your private affairs they'll already know exactly what causes you feel most strongly about, or what system of checks and balances you've put in place to square your conscience with your functional life.
'Actually,' I said, 'I'm very selfish. I only give to charities so that I can sleep easily at night. In my case the proportion of my disposable income I find I need to jettison is about ten percent. A tithe.' More coffee. 'It's the closest I come to religious observance.'
Cholongai smiled. 'It is good to give to charity. As you say, all benefit.'
'Some think otherwise.' I was thinking of a few — mostly US-based — execs I'd met who had nothing but contempt for anybody who gave any money to any cause, with the possible exception of the National Rifle Association.
'Perhaps they have their own…indulgences.'
'Perhaps. Mr Cholongai?'
'Please, call me Tommy.'
'All right, Tommy.'
'If I may call you Kathryn.'
'I'd be honoured. But I'd like to know, Tommy, what all this has to do with anything.'
He shifted in his seat. He took his sunglasses off briefly, rubbing one knuckle into the corner of one eye. 'Can we talk in confidence, Kathryn?'
'I assumed we already were. But, yes. Of course.'
'It has to do with Thulahn.'
'Thulahn?' That threw me.
'Yes. We would like to ask you to change tracks.'
What? Maybe he'd meant change tack, but it worked either way. 'How do you mean?'
'In your career.'
I felt a coldness sweep over me, as though I'd drenched myself in iced coffee. I thought, What have I done? What can they do to me? I collected myself and said, 'I thought my career was going just fine.'
'It is. That is why it is difficult for us to ask this of you.'
My initial panic had subsided, but I was still not at all sure I liked the sound of this. My heart was racing. It suddenly struck me that a light silk blouse and unlined jacket were bad things to wear when your heart was thudding: people could probably see the fabric quivering. Maybe women and fat men suffered more this way; some sort of resonant frequency set-up magnifying the effect in your breasts. Breeze, I thought. There's a breeze. Should cover any signs. Calm down, girl. I cleared my throat. 'What exactly are you asking me to do, Tommy?'
'To become, in a sense, our ambassador to Thulahn.'
'Ambassador?'
'It is more than that.' (More than that? How could it be more than that?) 'At first we would ask you to go there to report. To look at the place and try to work out where it might be heading, to spot trends, in other words — social trends, if you like — in the same sort of way that you seem to be able to spot trends in technology at the moment. Do you see the connection?'
'I think so. But why ?'
'Because we are entering a unique situation in Thulahn. By adopting it as our base we will be exposing ourselves in a way we have not done before. We will be making ourselves vulnerable in a manner we have not been since the fifteenth century.'
This was a Switzerland reference, of course: the late fourteen hundreds was when the place became effectively independent and the Business — always attracted to havens of stability, no matter how relative — had started to put down roots there. Cholongai's chronology ignored a dodgy moment in 1798 when the armies of revolutionary France invaded, but never mind.
'Don't we have people to do that sort of thing?' I asked. Surely either we did or we could employ the best. This was the sort of thing you could just throw money, university professors and battalions of post-grads at. Sociologists loved places like Thulahn.
'Not at the appropriate level, Kathryn. We need someone whom we can trust. That, of course, means someone in the Business whom we know to be profoundly committed to it. There are probably hundreds of people at the right level using that criterion alone. But we also need someone who can see things from a perspective outside the company, someone who will feel sympathetic towards the people of Thulahn. Someone who will be able to empathise with them, and advise us how best to incorporate their needs and wishes with those of the company itself.' Cholongai sat forward, clasping his hands on the surface of the white plastic table. Beneath our feet the deck buzzed and around us the plates and glass of the superstructure vibrated as the ship powered onwards, heading for the shore.
'Thulahn is not Fenua Ua,' Cholongai said. 'There are nearly a million Thulahnese. We cannot evacuate them all, or provide all of them with apartments in Miami. They seem a docile people, and devoted to their royal family, but if we are to make the sort of commitment to their country that we are anticipating making, then we need to be able to predict how they will feel in the future, and move to accommodate those feelings.'
'Such as, what if they decide they would like democracy?'
'That sort of thing.'
'So I'd be spying on them?'
'No, no.' Cholongai laughed lightly. 'No more than you already spy on those companies we consider investing in. What you would do would benefit the people of Thulahn as much as ourselves, perhaps more.'
'And only I can do thi
s?' I tried to sound sceptical. It wasn't difficult.
'We think you would be the best person to do so.'
'What would it involve?'
'It would mean that you would have to relocate to Thulahn. It might be possible also to continue performing your present function for a while, but I would think that before too long it would become impossible to carry out both tasks satisfactorily.'
'You mean I'd have to live in Thulahn?'
Cholongai nodded. 'Indeed.'
Thulahn. Memories of my few days there came tumbling back. Thulahn (or at least Thuhn, the capital, because I hadn't really been anywhere else): mountains. Lots of mountains. And rain. Mountains that — when you could see them through the clouds — made you crane your neck to see their snowy summits, even when you were already a mile or two high. Almost nothing level. That fucking football pitch that doubled as a landing strip. Lots of smoke — the smell of burning dung — tiny bright-eyed children plumped out by thick clothes, small men bent under huge bundles of firewood, old women squatting fanning stoves, shyly hiding their faces, goats and sheep and yaks, a surprisingly modest royal palace, the few dirt roads and the single stretch of tarmac they were so proud of, bizarre tales about the dowager Queen I'd never met, huge monasteries barnacled across cliff faces, waking up in the middle of the night feeling breathless, the creak of prayer windmills, the bitter taste of warm milk beer. Not to mention my fan, the Prince.
I took a deep breath. 'I don't know about that.'
'It would seem to be the only way .'
'What if I say no?'
'Then we would hope that you would continue to do your present job, Kathryn. We would have to find somebody else — perhaps a group of people rather than an individual — to take on Thulahn in the way I have outlined.'
'I like my life, Tommy.' Now I was trying to sound regretful. 'I enjoy feeling part of the buzz in the Valley . I like staying in London and travelling in Europe. I like travelling. I like the view over cities at night, and room service and long wine lists and twenty-four-hour supermarkets. You're asking me to settle down in a place where they're still struggling to come to terms with the flush toilet.'
'That is understood. If you took up this offer you would have complete freedom to work out the proportion of time you would spend in Thulahn and the proportion you spent elsewhere. We would trust you to resign if you found that the amount of time you felt able to spend in Thulahn was inadequate to fulfil the role you had taken up.' He paused. 'You would be made very comfortable. We could re-create your house in California, if that was what you wanted. You would have a company plane at your disposal. And a choice of staff, of course.'
'Those sound like the sort of privileges a Level Two could expect.'
'Level Two status would be assured.'
Good grief. 'Assured?'
'The importance of our association with Thulahn will surely be obvious to our colleagues at every level, once the deal has been struck and we are able to let everyone know. I cannot imagine that they would fail to promote you to a level your position in the country and importance to the company would befit.'
This was indeed as good as saying it was mine. 'But the deal with the Prince isn't done yet?'
'Not quite. Technically there are still a few details to be ironed out.'
'Would me agreeing to all that you're proposing happen to be one of those details ?'
Cholongai sat back, looking surprised. 'No.' He looked up the not-quite-vertical slope of white superstructure towards the bridge of the ship. 'We are not sure if the Prince is simply holding out for better terms or whether he is genuinely beginning to have second thoughts. It is vexing. It may be that he is being struck by the enormity of what he is doing. He is ending several hundred years of tradition and taking something away from his own family, after all.'
'Just as well he's childless, then.' I was still a bit taken aback by all this. 'What exactly would be the set-up if we do take the place over? How do we make sure it's ours?'
Cholongai waved one hand. 'The details are complicated, but it would involve a sort of governing trust of all the Level Ones. The Prince would remain head of state.'
'And after him?'
'If he has no children, there is a ten-year-old nephew who is next in line. He is in one of our schools in Switzerland.' Cholongai smiled. 'He is making good progress.'
'Bully for him.' I tapped my fingers on the plastic table. I was thinking. 'Whose idea was this, Tommy?'
'What do you mean, Kathryn?'
'Whose idea was it to involve me in this way?'
He sat still for a moment. 'I do not know. That is, I cannot remember. The suggestion was probably made at a Board meeting, but when exactly, and by whom, I do not recall. Detailed minutes are not kept. That also is in confidence, by the way. Why does this matter?'
'Just curious. May I ask who knows about this?'
Cholongai nodded, as though he'd anticipated this question. 'Level One executives. I do not think anybody else does. J. E. Dessous and I have been delegated to take responsibility for the analysis and…decision.' He looked to one side as the steward approached with a large silver tray and what at first I thought was a lap-top sitting on it. It was a satellite phone. 'Excuse me,' Mr Cholongai said to me, and lifted the handpiece. 'Hello?' he said, then shifted into either rapid Chinese or Malay; I couldn't tell which.
He put the phone down and waved the waiter away. 'There is someone coming to see you,' he told me.
'There is? Here?'
'Yes. They have something for you. A present.'
I looked at him for a moment, glad that the Ray-Bans were hiding at least some of my confusion. 'I see.'
The noise of a helicopter thud-thudded unseen, somewhere behind us.
'Anyone I know ?' I asked.
Mr Cholongai's head tipped to one side. 'Perhaps. His name is Adrian Poudenhaut.'
Pran and I watched Poudenhaut's helicopter land where mine had set down. His was a sleek Bell with retractable undercarriage (I felt jealous). Poudenhaut stepped out, dressed in a light blue suit. He held a slim Halliburton. Pran moved to take the aluminium briefcase off him, but Poudenhaut clutched it to his chest.
We walked away and the Bell lifted off, stowing its wheels and dipping its nose towards the land, which was just visible as a dark line on the horizon.
'Ms Telman,' Poudenhaut said.
'Hello again.'
'Thank you, that'll be all,' he said to Pran, who smiled and nodded and walked away across the deck. Poudenhaut reached into one pocket and extracted a sizeable mobile phone, then into another and took out an L-shaped attachment for it. Together they made an even dinkier satellite phone than Mr Cholongai's.
He pressed a couple of buttons then held the phone to his ear, looking at me all the time. I inspected my own sunglassed image in his shades.
The phone made a noise. 'I'm on the ship, sir,' he said. He handed me the phone. It was quite heavy.
'Hello?' I said.
It was, as I'd expected, Hazleton's voice on the other end. 'Ms Telman? Kathryn?'
'Yes. Mr Hazleton, is that you ?'
'It is. I have something for you. Adrian will show you. The disc is yours afterwards.'
'Is it? Right.' I had no idea what the hell we were talking about.
'That's all. Nice to talk to you. Goodbye.' The line bleeped and went dead.
I shrugged and handed the instrument back to Poudenhaut. There was a bead of sweat in the hollow of his upper lip. 'I hope you know what's going on here,' I said, 'because I certainly don't.'
Poudenhaut nodded. He looked around, then pointed at a line of tall windows forward of where we stood. 'In here will do.'
The place must have been a lounge, perhaps a restaurant. The floor was bare metal plate with just a few strips of worn carpet and underlay strewn about. The suspended ceiling had been taken down and the light fittings removed. We sat in the gloom at the back by a small table attached to a metal column supporting the roof, surrounded b
y a forest of grey cables hanging from where the lights had been, all swaying slowly in the gentle swell.
Poudenhaut took off his shades and looked about. All around us were the grey fronds of the hanging wires. Forward of us there was a bulkhead with various hatches and doors set in it. In the other three directions, daylight glared through the windows like a vast, strident strip-light.
He flipped open the cover of the combination lock and clicked the three little wheels. He sprang the catches, opened the briefcase and lifted a little portable DVD player out.
'Oh, my,' I said. 'That's very neat, isn't it?'
'Hmm,' he said. I craned my head: there was nothing else in the briefcase. Poudenhaut frowned at me and clunked the case shut. He spun the little player so that it was facing me, hinged the screen up and — reaching over the top — stabbed at a button. The machine made discreet whirring noises and the screen lit up, though it stayed blank.
'I've been asked to show you what you're about to see,' Poudenhaut said. 'I need your word you won't say anything to anyone about this.'
'Okay, I guess.'
He looked like he wasn't sure whether this was really sufficient, but then said, 'Right.' He leant over and hit another button. The screen flickered.
Only I could see this: Poudenhaut was facing the rear of the screen. There was no sound. The picture was better than VHS, nearly broadcast quality. It showed a woman entering a building on a busy street. The woman was Caucasian, youngish and dark-haired. She wore sunglasses, a summer dress and a light jacket. Traffic was driving on the right-hand side of the street, and I guessed this was in the US somewhere from the automobiles. I got the impression the camera had been inside a vehicle. Small figures to the bottom right of the display indicated it was 10/4/98, 13:05; that would be April the way Brits show the date, but October if this was American; exactly a month ago.
The scene switched to a bedroom lit by sunlight on closed net curtains; the drapes moved slightly, as though the window was open behind them. It looked like the camera was sitting on top of a wardrobe or a cupboard, angled downwards. The image quality had deteriorated a little. No date/time display. The same woman — probably — led a tall man in a business suit to the bed and started kissing him. He was white, tanned, had black hair and a neatly trimmed beard. They slipped each other's jackets off, then they fell together to the bed. They started undressing each other, quickly. I looked up at Poudenhaut, raising my eyebrows. He stared back, impassive.