by Iain Banks
Hisako Onoda came to the conclusion there was almost certainly nobody left to kill on the Nadia. She decided to go and see Mr Dandridge, who deserved a visit like nobody else did.
It was all still hopeless, she knew, but this was better than doing nothing.
The crumpled black Gemini Orrick had knifed lay draped over one end of the pontoon. She looked at one of its bulky silenced engines, worked out how to take it off and dragged it over to where the Nadia's own inflatable lay moored. She stuck the military engine's prop in the water, pushed the starter. The engine trembled, rumbled; even idling, the prop tried to push itself under the pontoon. She switched the outboard off, unbolted the Evinrude from the sternplate of the Nadia's Gemini and let it slip into the black waters. She replaced it with the big military engine, working by the light from the ship above, and sweating with the effort, arms aching. The pontoon was on the near side of the ship to the other two vessels. She had the walkie-talkie switched on, and was vaguely surprised it had stayed silent; it seemed nobody had heard or seen anything on the other two ships. As she worked she waited for gunfire, or the radio to rattle off some incomprehensible Spanish at her, but — in that perverse sense — waited in vain.
It took her two trips to bring all the weaponry down to the boat. She topped up the outboard fuel tank with one of the jerry cans on the pontoon, then stowed that with the missile launchers and explosives in the bottom of the inflatable and restarted the engine.
She pushed the Gemini away from the pontoon. The inflatable purred off into the night, taking a curving course towards the bulky rectangular shape of the Nakodo.
Her mother kept a scrapbook. It glossed over the time she was in hospital. Sometimes when she was home she would look through the scrapbook when her mother wasn't there. The pages flipped through her fingers; the glued-in programmes with her name in them, the cuttings from papers mentioning her individually, a few cassette inserts, some magazine interviews and features, and as the pages slipped and sped and fell through her hands she thought that the times the heavy pages covered had themselves gone just as fast, just as suddenly and inevitably.
The years mounted up, like a sentence. She played, and her modest fame grew. She tried a few more times to board a plane, from single-engine Cessnas to 747 s, but could not ever suffer the doors to be closed. She got as far as Okinawa for a couple of holidays, and went to Korea for the Olympics and a few concerts, but pressure of work stopped her from making sea journeys that lasted any longer. There was talk once, by a Greek ship owner impressed with her playing, of her string quartet playing on board a luxury cruise ship for anything up to a year; state rooms, good money, and a world cruise… but she visited one of the cruise ships in Yokohama and decided she didn't much like the people, the decor or the idea of being expected to play the safe, predictable music that seemed to be expected of her. So it came to nothing.
She grew to know Japan well; the places she didn't go to with the orchestra she visited alone, on her frequent vacations. Mr Moriya fretted that she wasn't maximising her potential, which she took to mean making all the money she could, but then she scarcely knew what to do with what she did have. She paid off the loan on the Stradivarius, bought a house in the hills above Kamakura, which cost a fortune, and had long since paid the loan on her mother's little apartment, but she didn't know what else to do. Driving didn't interest her; she always had a small Ronda, but hated the crowded roads and was always relieved to get out of the machine. She felt awkward and conspicuous in very expensive clothes, and couldn't see the point of jewellery you worried about. She saved, for want of anything better to do, and thought vaguely about founding a school in her later years.
Mr Moriya decided she was right to go for quality rather than quantity, and renegotiated her contract with the orchestra. She started to ration public appearances, and only recorded when she absolutely had to. Western music critics who heard her made flattering comparisons; she thought about going to Europe but kept putting it off. She was looking forward to travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway, but it seemed like something she should do only once each way (to reduce it to some sort of absurdist commuter journey each year would seem like sacrilege), and was anyway nervous of actually playing in Europe. At first she had worried that nobody would want to listen to her, then, when it became clear they did, that she'd been built up too highly, and they'd be disappointed. Mr Moriya, to her surprise, didn't try to pressure her into going. He seemed content to let the offers mount up, the venues increase in size, and the proposed money inflate.
She fell into the music, whenever she played. It was real; colourful. Her life, for all the friends and holidays and for all the respect of other musicians and adulation of audiences, seemed, if not actually monochrome, then missing some vital component; as if one colour was missing, one gun in the set misfiring, so infecting the image with its absence.
One day she trudged through the woods north of Fuji, taking the old path she'd first travelled as little more than a child, struggling with her water-warped and salt-stained cello and case.
When she got to the bald summit of the hill, the little clearing where she'd watched Fuji dance in the flames she'd made, she discovered it had become a picnic area; half a dozen smiling, chattering families sat at stout wooden tables, unpacking boxes, spreading dishes, opening bottles, taking their rubbish to cheerfully bright plastic bins which said 'Thank you' when you fed them. Children's laughter filled the place, and smoke from a portable barbecue wavered like some incipient genie. in front of the view of Fuji. Western pop music tinkled from a ghetto blaster hanging from a tree.
She turned and walked away, and never went there again.
She was halfway across the kilometre of dark water between the Nadia and the Nakodo when the radio came alive in her trouser pocket. The noise startled her, made her let go of the throttle, clutch at her thigh where the speech was coming from. She pulled the radio out.
'-hey; Sucre…? She let the Gemini's engine idle, looked round at the lights of the ships. 'Arturo, Arturo… La Nadia, 'allo? Yo, venceristas en La Nadia… muchachos? It was Dandridge's voice, chuckling. Despertad vosotros!
She heard other voices in the background. More Spanish, too quick for her to follow. Eventually; 'Sucre; anybody. Hello. Hello? God damn it, you guys. Hello. Hello! Hello! Jesus- The radio went dead. She looked round to the lights of the Nakodo.
She switched the engine off. It was very quiet.
She remembered the nightscope on the AK47 she'd taken from Sucre's cabin, lifted the gun and sighted.
The view of the Nakodo's hull was dim grey and grainy. There was no movement on the deck or in the bridge, though it was hard to tell in the bridge because the lights there were almost too bright for the nightsight. She dropped the sight, watched the pontoon and the steps down to it. Still nothing. She kept watching, and kept checking the radio, thinking she had somehow turned it off Then she heard something, behind her.
She swung, steadied the sight on the Nadia. She swept the ship, stem to stern, and found a Gemini, heading round from the rear of the ship, making for the pontoon. One man; that was all she could see.
She put the gun down, started the engine up again, and swung the inflatable back, towards the Nadia.
She kept checking with the rifle nightsight, in case whoever was in the Gemini approaching the ship showed any signs of having heard — or seen — her, but the inflatable just motored on, slowing, for the pontoon she'd left a few minutes earlier. She was a couple of hundred metres away from the Nadia when the other boat docked. One man got out. She saw him raise one arm to his face.
'Here, said the radio. The man hefted a rifle, started up the steps towards the Nadia's deck. She kept on motoring towards the ship. She was watching the single figure climb towards the top of the steps when he stopped. He looked down towards the pontoon. The view she had was made shaky by the progress of her own boat through the waves. She let go the throttle; the Gemini coasted forward, dropping and dying in the
water. The man brought something up from his waist. 'Wait, said the radio. 'The Gemini; the other one. Did anybody — ? She saw him raise something else to his face; to his eyes; held like a pair of binoculars. He looked down, then out, scanning, looked straight towards her. 'Holy sh-, Arturo? Hello? Who is —
She had to look to find the safety, flicked it and resighted. The rifle filled the world with sound; the sight flared with the gun's own flame. 'Holy sh- the radio said again.
She had the impression of bullets flying and falling. She brought the gun up, kicking against her shoulder.
Fire came back from the ship, halfway up the steps to the deck. She dropped the rifle, hearing distant, tinny echoes of firing coming back from behind her, reflected from the boxy hull of the Nakodo.
She found the heavy machine-gun, lifted it rattling from the bottom of the Gemini. She supported it as best she could, fired.
The gun kicked against her shoulder, almost throwing her over the stern of the boat. Lazy lines of tracer swung round, heading towards the Nadia, spiralling into the night sky. The Gemini was turning, forced round by the weight of flung metal arching away from her towards the distant ship. Return fire flickered from the ship's hull.
She cursed, dropped forward, hearing splashy pops of bullets striking the water somewhere in front of her. She steadied the big machine-gun on the bulbous prow of the Gemini, swinging the inverted V of its barrel-support into place on the taut rubber of the bows. In the ship's own glow she could make out enough of the steps and pontoon to see where to aim. Light glittered there. By the time the noise arrived she was firing.
The tracer helped. She swung the stuttered trail and raised it, until the trail ended where the firing had been coming from. The Gemini was starting to swing again. The belt of bullets clinked and clattered like a bottling plant beneath her; the cartridges were thrown out to one side, hissing as they hit the waters of the lake.
'Hey! Get — ah! Son of a bitch! The radio came alive again with Dandridge's voice. She paused, and through the radio heard clinks and slaps that died away, and guessed those noises were her bullets hitting the hull of the ship. 'Get over here, you motherfuckers. Ah! Shit! The sound of something thumping and clattering.
She fired again. The chain of bullets ripped its way up into the gun and finished. She spun round, grabbed the ammunition box, found the end of the cartridge belt and snapped the gun open, hauling the weight of articulated belt up, fumbling with the first round until it clicked into place and she could close the breech mechanism again. She fired once more, having to angle out over the starboard bow of the inflatable as it twisted in the water, swung by the recoil. She put the gun's stock down, felt for the AK47 and studied the nightsight. Against the Nadia's hull, a figure limped and fell down the last few steps to the pontoon, threw itself behind the deflated corpse of the black Gemini.
'Hey! Hey! said the radio. 'Come on! Who is that?
'We coming, jefe.
She took the radio up, clicked the button that fell beneath her thumb. 'Mr Dandridge? she said. She leant forward, took up the machine-gun again, shifting it to the side of the Gemini, aiming at the pontoon, dimly seen against Nadia's hull.
'Wha-shee-it! Ms Onoda? Dandridge coughed, laughed. 'Our little yellow friend? That you out there with the heavy weaponry?
She clicked the send button again. 'Hello, she said.
'Jesus aitch, I do believe it is. You still alive?
'No, she said.
The Gemini was still drifting. She took up the AK47 again, scanning the grey view. The Nakodo still showed no sign of life. Le Cercle was hidden behind the stern of the Nadia. She listened for engines.
'Ha, Ms Onoda. The radio cut out, came back. Dandridge wheezed, 'Dead and kicking, huh? Who the hell taught you to shoot like that? She didn't reply. She checked the machine-gun again, put it down and went back to the stern of the boat, restarted the outboard. 'What've you been doing, lady? What you been up to? How come you got a radio? She angled the inflatable parallel with the ship, sent it in the direction of the Nadia's bows, away from the course a boat from either of the other two ships would take. Dandridge had come from Le Cercle, not the Nakodo. The AK47 sight still showed nothing happening on or near the Nakodo.
'Ms Onoda; talk to me. You're screwing things up here. I think I deserve a little explanation. Let's talk.
'Did I hit you? she asked, putting down the assault rifle to talk into the radio.
'Just a scratch, as we say in the trade, Dandridge laughed. 'You don't cease to amaze me, ma'am. Hell, what you got against us? He laughed again.
'You comfortable, Mr Dandridge? she said.
'Hell, never felt better. How about you?
'Same here. She was within fifty metres of the Nadia's port bow. She swung the Gemini round until it was pointing back towards the pontoon. She let the throttle go, killed the engine, and went forwards to shift the machine-gun to the inflatable's bows again.
'Great. Well, look, we seem to have a minor disagreement here, but I'm sure we can talk it out. I just want you to know I personally don't bear you any ill will, you know — she heard him grunt, imagined him shifting position on the pontoon. She took another look through the nightsight. No movement. - but this is a real stupid way to negotiate, you know? I realise you have your own point of view and all, but I want to talk to you for a moment, and I hope you'll do me the honour of listening, right? There are aspects to what we're trying to do here that I don't think you fully appreciate. Now, you don't have to tell me that every, umm, aspect of these guys' behaviour has been everything you might expect under the Geneva Convention and all, but —
She held one of the little metal legs of the machine-gun down on to the pliant rubber with her left hand, squeezed the trigger with the index finger of the right.
The gun tried to leap; it barked and rattled and hissed. Fire trailed out across the water, calm enough to reflect it in places, and raised white feathers of water around the pontoon. She heard Dandridge shout as she paused, adjusted. The gun pulsed against her shoulder again, tracer bowing and falling. She saw sparks, then a ball of flame as the jerrycans on the pontoon ignited.
She looked up. The little mushroom of fire rose rolling, doughnut-like, against the dark hull, gathering itself under and through like a woman hoisting her skirts. Beneath it, a neck of flame throbbed in and out, and fire spilled over the deck of the pontoon, spreading over the waters to either side. She put the gun down.
'Hot damn, Ms Onoda, good shooting! Dandridge shouted from the radio. 'Outstanding! Just when I was starting to feel cold. Well thank you, ma'am.
She felt back into the pile of weaponry in the bottom of the Gemini, found what she was looking for and lifted it. She turned away from the distant light of the burning pontoon and used the cigarette lighter from her breast pocket to inspect the device.
'Jefe —
'Shut up. Ma'am, you have me quite incredibly impressed. You should be on our side, and I mean that as a compliment, I really do. And that's what I want to talk to you about. See, there's things in all this I don't think you fully understand. We are talking about the geopolitical situation here. What I mean is, you actually are on our side, if you only knew it. I mean that. You're a mercantile nation; this is about what matters to you, too. Ah, hell, Ms Onoda, it's all about trade; yes, trade; trade and spheres of influence and… and opportunities; the possibility of influence and power… you still listening, Ms Onoda?
'Keep talking, she said absently, wishing she knew more about the Cyrillic alphabet.
'Good. We have to keep talking. That's very important. I. think that's very important. Don't you think that's important, Ms Onoda?
She lifted the weight to her shoulder, tried a couple of switches. The device whined but the sight stayed dark. She tried different sequences, found a trigger guard and pushed it up and forward. The whine altered its tone.
'Well, I'm sure you do. You're one sensible lady. I can tell that. Very sensible and very clever and very sensiti
ve. I hope we can talk as equals, and that's just what I intend to do. See, the great have to stoop, sometimes, Ms Onoda. To stay great you have to stoop; no ways round that. You can try and distance yourself from the people who do the stooping; I mean distance yourself from the cutting edge, but it still remains your responsibility. You have to do bad things in a bad world, if you want to stay able to be good. Do you understand that? I mean, there's all these people think goodness and rightness is somehow indivisible, but it isn't; can't be, in fact. It's a razor's edge, Ms Onoda; a real razor's edge. You have to balance, you have to keep working, you know. You try to stop, you ever think you got it all taped so well you can just let things drift, and you're dead. Not the next day, not the next year even, but soon; and it starts as soon as you let go. Romans found that; the Spanish and the English too. You got to remain dynamic, or you fall down; you sink into your own indulgence; you get decadent. Free society… free society like America's, that sort of stuff is bubbling away under the surface all the time; always people want to have a quiet life, be hippies, live in what they think is peace… and damn it, it might be, for a little while, but-
She clicked a button. The sight came alive; grainier than the rifle's nightsight, but the boiling stem of fire on the pontoon showed bright, like a vivid tear in the night. Centring, the whine became a guttural coughing noise, a protesting, damaged clock stuttering in her ear. Red symbols lit up above the display. She squeezed the trigger.
There was a moment of hesitation, and she almost put the missile launcher down, preparing to look at it again.
But while she was still waiting, just starting to wonder what she'd done wrong this time and what she'd have to do to make the thing work, it happened.