The Business

by Iain Banks

  I turned round to see the big Chinese man silently opening the doors for me. I looked back to say goodbye to the Queen, but she had closed her eyes and her head had drooped, as though she had been a marionette in a fairground booth all the time and now my money had run out. I took a last look round the strange room with its glittering, whispering walls of flaking leaf over black wooden flesh, then turned and left.

  Langtuhn Hemblu almost had to run to keep up with me as I strode back to the car.

  'My, you had quite a long time with the Queen Mother!'

  'Did I?'

  'Yes! You are very privileged. Isn't she a treasure?'

  'Oh, yes, a treasure,' I said. Pity she's not buried, I thought.

  When I got back to my room in the palace at Thuhn, all my stuff had gone.

  I stood in the doorway and looked around. The little cot bed in the alcove had been made up. The cupboard where I'd hung my suit carrier and clothes was open and empty. The satellite phone, my computer, my toiletries; all gone. The little table by the bed had been cleared too; my netsuke monkey had disappeared with everything else.

  A swimmy sort of feeling came over me. No phone, no contact. Just what I stood up in. In my pockets, a billfold and two shiny discs.

  Had I been robbed? I'd assumed this was one of those places where you didn't need to lock anything, and that was why there was no way of securing the room door. But, then, how much were the satellite phone and the ThinkPad worth, compared to what the average person here made in a year? Maybe somebody had been just too tempted, and I too careless.

  Or had I made that bad an impression on the Queen Mother? Was this some sort of instant revenge of hers for speaking back to her? I turned to try and find somebody to help, and heard a voice in the distance coming closer. The little quilted lady who didn't stop talking appeared at the end of the corridor. She came up, took my hand and, still talking, led me off to another part of the palace.

  The door had a lock. The floor was carpeted. My suit carrier hung in a wardrobe that could have come out of a Holiday Inn. The window was a triple-glazed sealed unit. Under the window was a radiator, plumbed into pipes which disappeared discreetly through the carpet. The bed was a standard double with ordinary pillows. The netsuke monkey had been placed alongside my flashlight on the bedside table. The computer and satellite phone sat on a little writing table with a mirror over it. Through an open door I could see a tiled bathroom with a shower and — glory be — a bidet. Still no TV , mind you.

  The little quilted lady bowed and left, talking.

  There was a business card on the writing table beside the sat. phone. Joshua Levitsen, honorary US consul, would like to meet me tomorrow; he suggested breakfasting at the Heavenly Luck Tea House at eight.

  I went to the window. Same view, a storey higher. The room was warm; a faint thermal was drifting up from the radiator. I turned it off and tilted the heavy window open.

  My e-mail included a plaintive note from Dwight Litton reminding me that I was missing the première of his Broadway play. I didn't bother to reply.

  How you doin?

  That line work on all the girls?

  So they say. I wouldn't know.

  No, of course not, Stephen.

  So how is Shangri-La?

  Cool.

  Think you might want to stay?

  Too early to tell yet. Saw the Queen today; a character. I'll tell you about it later; you won't believe. I've been moved within the palace from a rather spartan but characterful room to something that looks like it's been filched wholesale from the nearest Ramada. How's things with you?

  Fine. Working on a big restructuring exercise for two of the biochemical multis. Also taking part in (mostly e-mail) discussions about MAI fall-out. Domestically, looking after bambinos while Emma visits old girlfriend in Boston...Hello? Kate? You still there?

  Sorry. Sorry for the hiatus. Some sort of glitch at this end. Had to reconnect.

  I awoke, breathless again.

  Where was I? Where had I been?

  I couldn't even remember what the original problem had been, what slight or remark, what insult or minor injury had occasioned the incident. All I remembered was that I had gone to Mrs Telman for comfort, and received a strange sort of it.

  She held me. I sobbed into her bosom. It was probably a very expensive blouse I was soaking with my tears, but at least I was too young to be allowed to wear mascara; the marks of my fury and despair would soon dry and leave no mark.

  We were in the hotel in Vevey where Mrs Telman stayed whenever she came to visit me at the International School. Lac Léman was a dark presence in the night, its white-flecked surface visible by moonlight between the wintry showers that fell upon the waters from the mountains. I was fourteen or fifteen. Young enough still to need to be held sometimes, old enough to be troubled by, even ashamed of such a need. She smelled of the exotic perfumes I remembered from her car, six years earlier.

  'But it's not fair!'

  'Life is not, Kathryn.'

  'You're always saying that.'

  'When it stops being true, I'll stop saying it.'

  'But it should be fair!'

  'Of course it should.'

  'Well, then, why can't it be?'

  'Why can't we all live in palaces and never have to work? Why can't we all be happy and never have to cry?'

  'I don't know,' I said defiantly (I'd begun to get used to this sort of rhetorical defence). 'Why can't we?'

  Mrs Telman smiled and offered me her handkerchief. 'There are two schools of thought.'

  I rolled my eyes dramatically. She ignored me and went on. 'Some people will tell you that we can never have true fairness, or justice, or happiness, or freedom from having to work. We are sinners and we deserve no better anyway. However, if we do as we're told, we may achieve perfect happiness for ever after our own death. That is one point of view. Another is that we may begin to attain all those goals in this world if we apply ourselves, even if the final fulfilment of those dreams will certainly take place after our own death.

  'I prefer the second outlook, though I accept I could be wrong. But, Kathryn, in the meantime, you must understand that the world is not fair, that it does not owe you a living or even an apology, that you have no right to expect happiness, and that all too often the world can seem like a mad, bad place to be.

  'When people behave rationally, kindly, generously and lovingly towards you or those you care about, be grateful; appreciate it and make the most of it at the time, because it is not necessarily the normal way of things at all. Reason, kindness, generosity and love can seem like very rare resources indeed, so make the most of them while they are around.'

  'I just don't know why people have to be horrible to other people.'

  'Kathryn, unless you are a saint, you must know.'

  'But I don't!'

  'You mean you've never been horrible to anyone? Never teased other girls, never been unkind, never been secretly delighted when something bad happened to somebody you don't like? Or are you going to tell me there's nobody you don't like?'

  'But they were horrible to me first!'

  'And they probably thought they had their reasons. You're very clever. Some people resent clever people; they think they're showing off.'

  'What's wrong with being clever?' I asked indignantly.

  'A lot, if you're not a very clever person yourself and you feel that a clever person is showing off or trying to make you look stupid. It's like a strong person showing off how strong they are.'

  'But I don't care if people are strong! They can show off how strong they are as much as they like; I won't care.'

  'Ah, yes, but then you're clever.'

  'But that's not— !' I did not say the word 'fair'. I balled the handkerchief she had given me in my hand and thudded my head against her chest again. 'That's not right,' I said lamely.

  'It's right to them.' She held me and patted me on the back. 'And that's all that matters. To themselves, people are usu
ally right.'

  I felt for the bedside table. I was in Thulahn, in Thuhn, in the royal palace. I found the little monkey and rubbed it between my fingers.

  In my dream the old Queen had been a cross between one of the demon-warriors that guarded her bedchamber, and the netsuke monkey that guarded my bedside. There was some sort of fading thing about monkey guards my subconscious had probably filched from The Wizard of Oz, but it was all already pretty vague and strange and just not of this world. In my dream I had been trapped inside a dark, cold palace carved within a mountain. It was full of smoke and I had been stumbling around trying to find the Queen but then I'd been chased through the fume-filled halls by…something. Or a lot of somethings. I could hear them whispering but I couldn't make out what they were saying, because somebody had pulled out half their teeth. They kept the removed teeth in little pouches on their belts, where the teeth clicked and rattled in a jittery accompaniment to their lisping voices.

  Whatever they were, I knew that if they touched me there was something in their touch, in their sweat, that would burn and burrow down to my bones and poison me and make me one of them; dark wraiths of pain consigned to wander the hollowed-out palace for ever.

  They could run faster than me, but there was some sort of rule — or some sort of effect or gift that I had — that meant they couldn't bear the gaze of my eyes, and so I had to run backwards, keeping them always one corner or room or corridor or door behind, and running backwards had been slow and difficult and scary, because I couldn't be sure that there weren't any of them behind me too, lying in wait for me to run backwards into them, and so I had to keep glancing over my shoulder to make certain, and that gave the ones I was running away from in the first place a chance to catch up. All the time I kept shouting, 'It's not fair! It's not fair! It's not fair!' while my feet clattered in the silence of the shadowy halls.

  The dream ended unresolved, before they could catch me or I could finally make my escape to the world outside. I awoke remembering my meeting with the Queen and the words of Mrs Telman, and needing to touch the little monkey, which was my guardian, just to know that it was what it was; something inanimate and fixed and incapable of malice or love, but, if anything, something on my side as well as by it, something made reassuring just by its familiarity, and talismanic by the illusory fidelity gained through the long continuity of its presence.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I'd shopped in the afternoon, picking up a trail of small pillow-children who'd seemed determined to follow me everywhere as soon as I'd stepped outside the palace gate. The last time I'd been here, shopping in Thulahn meant forgetting about credit cards and using cash. Luckily — I thought — I'd remembered this and brought vast amounts of US dollars from Karachi. Only to discover that some of the more up-to-date retailers in the capital did now take plastic. The main foreigners' outfitters in Thulahn was the Wildness Emporium, a huge stone barn of a place, which smelled of kerosene and was full of very expensive Western hiking and climbing gear. It was run by two turbaned Sikhs who'd looked like they were fed up explaining that, no, it wasn't meant to read the Wilderness Emporium.

  I'd picked up a very thick and much-pocketed mountaineering jacket in yellow and black, a matching pair of insulated dungarees and another set of padded thermal trousers in vivid red. I'd also bought a pair of no-nonsense hiking boots that looked like old Timberlands but had less fiddly laces that went through hooks instead of eyes at the top, a complicated multi-coloured hat with ear flaps, velcro chin flaps and an adjustable peak, and a pair of stiff black ski-gloves with draw-strung gauntlet extensions that came up to my elbows. A fleece in aquamarine, a couple of pairs of thick socks and two sets of vests and long johns completed my new wardrobe. The two Sikhs — brothers as it turned out, once we'd got talking — had happily relieved me of a bothersomely bulky wad of bills and urged me to come again anytime.

  I'd staggered into the street, wearing some of this gear and carrying the rest, and been mobbed by children once more. They'd insisted on helping me carry my stuff. Heading back up to the palace I'd taken a different route and discovered a shop that sold native Thulahnese gear, so we stopped off there and left with a gorgeous black fur hat I felt only a little guilty about buying, a matching hand muff, a pair of black hide boots with fur on the inside and fifty-millimetre-thick soles made from layers of auto tyres (which makes them sound horrible but actually they were beautifully stitched and finished), a little satin jacket with mandala designs, and a long red quilted jacket with matching trousers.

  And all for not very much money at all, really. In fact, for so little that I'd tried to leave a tip, but the old Thulahnese couple who owned the place had just looked mystified. I'd felt so bad I'd taken another turn round the stock and come back to the counter with the most expensive-looking thing I could find (and, trust me, I'm good at spotting this sort of thing): a long, slim, silk and satin jacket, jet black with gold and red dragons sewn into it, delicately quilted and sparkling with gold thread.

  Seeing what I'd selected, the old couple had made a show of having synchronised heart-attacks, puffing out their cheeks and shaking their heads and bustling amongst the racks to bring me much cheaper jackets that were almost as nice, but I'd clutched the one I'd chosen to my breast and refused to let it go regardless of all cajolings and remonstrations until, eventually, with much puffing and shaking and hand-waving, I'd been allowed to buy this beautiful, beautiful thing for, well, still not very much money.

  The only thing I forgot to buy was a big bag or rucksack to carry it all back in. Usually I remember to do this when I've made a lot of purchases abroad.

  But for the children I'd have needed a wheelbarrow to take all my new clothes back to the palace. I didn't know whether to offer them money or not, and in the end they'd just left me at the gates with lots of bowing and smiles and nervous giggles.

  I confess that I had briefly worried that one of my bags might not make it all the way back with me, or that something would disappear from one of them, and so felt quite utterly mortified when, in my room, after checking the bags were all there, I opened them up and discovered that not only did they contain everything I'd bought, several of them held more: little home-made sweets and savouries wrapped in carefully folded greaseproof paper and tied with ribbon, and tiny artificial flowers made from wire and cut silk.

  The weather early the next morning was appalling: a furious snowstorm whirled outside my triple glazing. I could hear it through the glass, through the stone walls. I had mixed feelings about this sort of weather. It would make getting around difficult but on the other hand it might hold off the Prince for another day or two. At least it hadn't stopped the palace generator from working. Electric power: hot water and a working hair-dryer. I treated myself to my second shower in twelve hours, lost myself within the comforting hum of the hair-dryer, then hesitated when it came to dressing. Western or ethnic?

  I chose Western, so pulled on the dungarees, seriously pocketed jacket and fake Timbies, and plonked the complicated hat upon my head. As an afterthought, just before I left the room, I stuck one of the little wire and silk flowers in the velcro fastening of one of the jacket's pockets.

  By the time I was squeaking through the snow in the main courtyard the weather had abated somewhat; the wind had dropped and only a few flakes were falling, though the mass of cloud above the valley looked low and dark and heavy with more snow.

  Children met me at the gates again, appearing from every direction. To my shame, I realised I had no idea if they were the. same ones as yesterday or not. It was time to stop treating them as a mass, I guessed. I hunkered down and smiled and started trying to find out names.

  'Me, Kathryn,' I said, pointing at myself. 'Kath-rin.'

  They giggled and looked down and snorted and shuffled their feet. Eventually I worked out what I hoped were a few of their names and got them to understand I wanted to go to the Heavenly Luck Tea House. I tied a few pointy hats on properly and wiped a couple of snotty n
oses with a paper handkerchief.

  I stood up, took two of the offered chubby little hands and we tramped downhill through the snow.

  'Ms Telman. Hi. Josh Levitsen.'

  'How do you do.' We shook hands. Mr Levitsen was not what I'd been expecting at all. He was young — though his tan skin was deeply lined — he was full-bearded, blond, and wore a slightly grubby fawn parka with a matted fur hood lining, and a pair of leather-sided circular mountaineering glasses with surfaces like oil on water.

  'Fine. Just fine. You having breakfast? I've got tea here for both of us.'

  The Heavenly Luck Tea House was within a skyed penalty shot of the football field/airstrip, with a view over that and the snow-filled valley. It was warm and steamy and full of people, mostly Thulahnese. Polished wood was everywhere and the floorboards creaked like a swamp full of demented frogs.

  'What do you recommend?'

  'Rikur saraut, champe and thuuk.'

  'What's that?'

  'Corn pancakes — they keep syrup behind the counter just for me and my guests — porridge and thick noodle soup; kampa — spicy — if you like.'

  'Perhaps a very little of each. I'm not terribly hungry.'

  He nodded, waved one arm and shouted the order. He poured us both some strong tea into cups with no handles but little ceramic tops. We exchanged a few pleasantries and agreed to use first names before he sat forward and lowered his voice a little. 'Just to let you know, Kate, I used to be with the Company.'

  'The CIA?' I asked quietly.

  He grinned. 'Yeah, but now I'm with the Business.' He lowered his glasses to wink.