The Business

CHAPTER FIVE

'You bitch.'

'You asked for it.'

'I was just trying to help.'

'So was I.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, you spoke so highly of this Dr Pegging I thought I'd give him something more to work on. You can afford it. Think of the poor man's fees. And I think you've got a crush on him anyway. Gee, I imagine calling up a complete stranger thinking they're your best friend is probably worth a whole year's extra treatment.'

'Ex-best friend.'

'Whatever.'

'Oh, Kate, don't be so horrible!'

'I'm sorry, Luce. Bygones?'

'I suppose.

Word came through from Jebbet E. Dessous' people that the middle of the week was far too late to meet up; they wanted me there a.s.a.p.

So: Uncle F's Lancia Aurelia to Leeds-Bradford, where some sort of fuck-up by British Regional Aeroflot — a fairly regular occurrence judging by the bitter comments of some of my fellow non-passengers — meant I had to hire a helicopter from a company in the airport; I phoned our corporate lawyers to let them know we'd be charging BA for the relevant amount on my company credit card. I'm with the Prince on this one: I don't like helicopters either, or light aircraft for that matter, though in my case it's just because of the statistics.

Anyway, to Heathrow in a Bell Jetranger with a business-like pilot, who thankfully didn't indulge in any small-talk, then the tiny-windowed luxuriously upholstered cigar tube that is Concorde. No free seats and I was sat next to a smug advertising account director who was himself invasively well upholstered and determined to make the most of both the free champagne and four hours of enforced intimacy. I slipped my earphones on and turned up the Walkman. Sheryl Crow at volume shut him up.

I fell asleep after the album finished, and woke up as we were decelerating through bumpy clouds. I was in that drowsy, disconnected state where the bits of the brain that dream dreams and come up with crazy ideas haven't been brought back on message by the rational part, so that everything goes a bit haywire, and I remember watching the US coast, far, far below, and thinking, Well, here I am, and Stephen's in Washington DC; at least if there's some comprehensive world-wide catastrophe we'll be on the same continent. In the event of some deep-impact type disaster — if I survived — I could start walking and attempt to find him. Yes, and Mrs B might have died tragically and we could start a new life together…

I shook myself out of it and looked out my US passport, to speed the formalities when we landed.

JFK, an American 737 to Chicago (iffy lunch but the coffee had improved), a slim commuter Fokker to Omaha and a very noisy military-looking Huey to Jebbet E. Dessous' vast property on the Nebraska/South Dakota border; eighty thousand acres of plains, cattle, scrub, trees, roads like a map grid and all the dust you could eat. The co-pilot who helped strap me in insisted I wear a pair of heavy olive-green headphones for the journey. My hair, which had survived intact for four flights, one ocean and half a continent but which has always reacted badly to hats and serious headphones, was going to need fixing later on.

Half an hour in we hit some low-level turbulence over a series of pine-covered ridges. My lunch began to let me know it hadn't really settled down properly and was thinking of relocating. I considered the potentially onomatopoeic name of the helicopter I was travelling in, and tried to take my mind off my nausea by thinking of other modes of transport with dubious names, but only got as far as Sikorsky and the Cess in Cessna before we reached calm air again and my lunch decided that — on balance — it was happy where it was.

We landed in late afternoon in a dusty airport on the outskirts of what looked like a small deserted town, kicking up a great rolling ochre cloud.

'Welcome to Big Bend, ma'am,' the pilot said.

'Thanks.'

I took my time unclipping my harness and disconnecting the headphones while the dust settled. An ancient Willis Jeep in US army colours roared up and sat just outside the limit of the slowing rotor blades.

The breeze was cold and sharp and dry beneath a lapis sky stroked with feathers of high pink cloud. I could hear the steady crack-crack-crack of heavy machine-gun fire from some way off. The co-pilot dumped my bags in the back of the open Jeep and jogged back to the Huey, which was powering up again.

'Ms Telman.' The driver was a grizzled but healthy-looking guy a decade or so older than me, dressed in army fatigues. He stuck out one hand. 'Eastil. John Eastil. That all your luggage?'

'How do you do. Yes, it is.'

'I'll take you to your cabin. Hang on.' He spun the Jeep's wheel and gunned the engine; we roared away from the Huey. 'Sorry it's not a limo.'

'That's all right. Good to get some fresh air.' Actually I was pleasantly surprised by the way Mr Eastil drove: it was a lot more relaxing than Uncle Freddy's floor-the-pedal-and-damn-the-speed-bumps banzai style.

'Take you long to freshen up, Ms Telman?' Eastil asked. 'Mr Dessous would like to meet with you directly.'

'Five minutes.'

My cabin was a ten-minute drive away; a sprawling wooden thing set in amongst the pines overlooking a slow-flowing river winding through a shallow valley carpeted with long, pale grass. While Eastil waited in the Jeep outside I hung up my suit carrier, washed my face, squirted perfume behind my ears, dragged a brush through my hair, a toothbrush across my teeth and plonked the sad-faced monkey on a bedside table. The walk-in provided a skiing jacket, which I pulled on as I strode out to the Jeep.

We drove back into town, through its deserted streets and out the far side. We arrived at an old drive-in movie theatre; a huge field shaped like a baseball ground with the gantry for a vast screen at the wide end, though there was no screen, just the slim web of girders of its support structure. There were a lot of trucks and heavy rigs scattered around, and two big mobile cranes, one of them with its jib extended and its body raised up off the ground by its extended jacks.

Short rusty posts, which must once have carried the speakers for the parked cars, were arranged in serried rows across the weed-strewn lot. We parked alongside a handful of four-wheel drives and sport utilities by the projection building, which looked a lot like a concrete bunker, with no proper windows but a scattering of small rectangular apertures all facing in the direction of the absent screen. A long tube poked out of one hole.

'Miss Telman! Good to meet you. Jebbet E. Dessous. Call me Jeb, I don't answer to much else. I'll call you Miss Telman till I get to know you better, if that's all right with you. How was your flight? Cabin okay?'

Bustling out of a door in the projection building came a large, red-faced man dressed in the sort of speckled beige army fatigues the world has come to associate with the Desert Storm campaign. He wore a similarly camouflaged cap — incongruously, it was the wrong way round, as though he was trying to look New York Hip of about five years ago — from under which stuck tufts of hair that might have been sandy or just yellowing white. He thrust out one massive hand.

His grip was delicate, even sensitive.

'How do you do, Jeb. Everything's been good.'

He let go and stepped back to look at me. 'You're a fine-looking woman, Miss Telman, hope you don't mind me telling you that. My opinion of my dumb-ass nephew has gone up, and that takes a lot of doing, I'll tell you.'

'How is Dwight?'

'Oh, still stupid.' He nodded at the Jeep. 'Come on, I'll take you to him.' He looked up at the sky with a frown, then pulled his cap the right way round.

Jebbet E. Dessous' driving style was more muscular than that of Mr Eastil, who sat in the back, holding on tight and chewing on a cold cigar.

'Sing us a song, John,' Dessous shouted, as we swung round the outskirts of the deserted town.

'What do you want to hear?' Eastil asked. I got the impression this was not an unusual request.

'Anything.' Dessous looked over at me and tapped the centre of the Jeep's bare metal dashboard. 'Can't get any sort of sound system in these things,' he said. I just nodded.

John Eastil launched into an enthusiastic — no, make that just loud — rendition of an old song I vaguely recognised but couldn't place until he got to the chorus, when I realised it was 'Dixie Chicken' by Little Feat. Dessous tried singing along too, but was patently tone deaf.

We headed along the bottom of a small dry creek towards the jumbled shape of a sprawling stone-and-log-built cabin, which looked like it owed something to Frank Lloyd Wright. Probably an apology.

'Boy comes here to write,' Dessous shouted at me.

'I see. How's he doing?'

'Oh, got some play opening in New York, so he says. Dumbass fool probably financed it himself. Still wants to make it in Hollywood, get his name above the titles. That's what — well, you'll hear.'

'Uncle Freddy seemed to think Dwight had some mad scheme you wanted me to talk him out of.'

'I don't want to prejudge anything here, Miss Telman. I don't know you, don't know which way you'll jump. I just want you to be honest with the boy. He talks about you a lot. Might listen to you. Sure as hell doesn't listen to me.'

'I'll do my best.'

'Yeah, well, just give it your best shot.'

We stopped outside. Eastil stayed with the Jeep again while Dessous jumped out, strode to the door, hammered on it once and marched in. 'Dwight!' he hollered, as I followed him. 'You decent, boy? I got a lady here to see you!' He pulled his cap off and ruffled his hair.

The cabin's shady interior was all long, low couches, split levels and rugs over naked concrete both underfoot and on the walls. From a distant room came a whoop, and Dessous turned in that direction.

'Hold on, hold on, just backing up!'

We found nephew Dwight in a bedroom with a view over the creek. The broad bed was covered in sheets of paper; on the desk by the window stood an elderly Apple Mac. Dwight was standing in front of the machine, clicking with the mouse. He glanced round. 'Yo, Uncle. Hi, Kate! How the hell are you?' Dwight was a sharp-featured, awkwardly tall guy, only a little more than half my age; he was barefoot and wearing jeans and a dressing gown; his mid-length brown hair was half held in an unravelling pony-tail. He had a goatee beard and patchy stubble. He tapped the keyboard, turned the screen off and then came over to me, took both my hands in his and kissed me wetly on both cheeks. 'Mwah! Mwah! Great to see you! Welcome!'

'Hello, Dwight.'

'Your idea is what?'

We were sitting on a terrace overlooking the dry creek, Eastil, Dessous, Dwight and I, drinking beers. The stars were starting to come out. Thick jackets and a warm draught from the opened terrace doors kept us on the warm side of hypothermic.

'It's brilliant!' Dwight exclaimed, waving his arms about. 'Don't you think?'

I resisted the urge to suggest it was he who wasn't thinking, and just said, 'Run it past me again?'

'There's this, like, thing that looks like a ship's funnel or something, right? In Mecca, right in the centre. Where the Muslims go on pilgrimage to, okay? It's like the thing they're going there to see; this rock, inside this big sort of black shrouded building thing, in the centre of this humongous square in Mecca.'

'The Kaaba.'

'Cool!' Dwight looked delighted. 'You know the name! Yeah, the Kaaba, man. That's it!' He swigged from his bottle of Coors. 'Well, the idea for the movie is that…oh, yeah, like, hold on, this rock that's in the Kaaba, right? It's supposed to have fallen from the sky, be a gift from God, from Allah, right? I mean, obviously nowadays everybody knows it's a meteorite, but it's still holy, like, still venerated, okay? Or they think they know it's a meteorite,' Dwight said, leaning across the table and nearly putting one elbow in a bowl of dip. 'The idea for the movie is that it isn't a meteorite at all, it's a fuckin' spaceship!'

'Dwight!' Dessous said sharply.

'Aw, Uncle,' Dwight said, with a sort of exasperated laugh. 'It's okay. Kate's cool about it. Sometimes even women cuss these days, you know?' He looked at me and rolled his eyes.

'You can swear in front of women if you want, nephew, but don't swear in front of women in front of me.'

'Yeah, right,' Dwight said, casting his gaze briefly towards the stars again. 'Anyway,' he said, and with gratuitous emphasis went on, 'the idea is that the rock inside the Kaaba isn't a rock: it's a lifeboat, it's an escape pod from an alien spacecraft that blew up above Earth fifteen hundred years ago. The lifeboat half burned up in the atmosphere so that's why it looks like a rock, or maybe it's designed to look like a rock, right, so nobody tries to look inside it — I mean, maybe all this happened in some sort of, like, war, okay? So it had to be disguised, right? Anyway, it crashed to the ground in Arabia and got taken for this incredibly holy, like, thing. And, like, maybe it did something, you know? Maybe that's why it was venerated and stuff, because it did something that rocks don't usually do, that even meteorites don't usually do, like float above the ground or dig itself out of the sand or something or zap somebody who was trying to cut into it. Whatever. But it gets taken to Mecca and everybody comes to worship it and stuff, but…' He chugged some more frothy beer. 'But, being a lifeboat, it's sent out a distress signal, right?' He laughed, obviously greatly taken with his own free-wheeling inventiveness. 'And it's, like, taken all this time until now for the distress signal to get back to aliens and them to get here. But as our story begins — I mean, we might have had some sort of pre-titles stuff featuring the firefight between the spaceships and the lifeboat streaking down through the atmosphere, watched by shepherds tending their flocks by night, or whatever — anyway, as our story begins properly, the mothership's, like, here. And there's these alien guys inside the escape pod and they're just starting to wake up.' He sat back, eyes wide with enthusiasm. He spread his arms. 'What do you think? I mean, like, that's just the start, but what do you think of it so far?'

I stared at Dwight. Jebbet E. Dessous seemed to be gauging the width of his forehead with his hand. Eastil was blowing across the neck of his beer bottle, producing a low, breathy note.

I cleared my throat. 'Do you have any more of the story?'

'Na.' Dwight waved one hand. 'They have scriptwriters for that sort of stuff. It's the concept that matters. What do you think? Huh? Be honest.'

I looked at his eager, smiling face for a few moments and then said, 'You want to make a movie in which the holiest shrine of what is arguably the world's most militant and fundamentalist religion turns out to be —'

'An alien artifact,' Dwight said, nodding. 'I mean, Uncle Jeb's concerned that people might be upset by it, but I'm telling you, Kate, this is a great idea. I know people in Hollywood who'd kill to produce this movie.'

I watched Dwight carefully at this point for any sign of irony, or even humour. Not a sausage. I looked at Mr Dessous, who was shaking his head.

'Dwight,' I said. 'Does the word "fatwa" mean anything to you?'

Dwight started to grin.

'Or the name Salman Rushdie?'

Dwight hooted with laughter. 'Aw , Kate, come on, he was an Islamic! I'm not!'

'Actually I think he was sort of lapsed at the time,' I said.

'Well, he came from an Islamic family or whatever! I mean, he was from India or something, wasn't he? The point is I've got nothing to do with their religion. Hell, I'm not sure what I am — lapsed Baptist or something. Yeah, Uncle Jeb?'

'Your mother was a Baptist, I think.' Dessous nodded. 'I have no idea what your father thought he was.'

'See?' Dwight said to me, as though this explained everything.

'Uh-huh,' I said. 'Dwight, I think the point is that you might be seen as dissing their faith. That might not go down too well, regardless of your own belief or lack of it.'

'Kate,' Dwight said, suddenly looking serious, 'I'm not saying this movie isn't going to be controversial and cutting edge. I want this movie to be impactful. I want people to on-board this bigtime, to sit up and think and overstand, you know? I want them to think, Hey, what if, like, our religions don't just come from above,' (at this point Dwight mugged staring nervously up at the near-black sky) 'what if they come from, like, the stars? You know?' He smiled widely and threw back the last of his beer.

I took a deep breath. 'Well, that's not exactly a new idea, Dwight. But if that's what you want to say, why not…well, do it through a different religion? Or even invent one?'

'Invent one?' Dwight said, frowning.

I shrugged. 'It doesn't appear to be that difficult.'

'But this idea needs the Kaaba thing, Kate, it needs this escape pod.'

'Dwight, if by some miracle you get to make this movie, you'll be the one who needs an escape pod.'

'Bullshit, Kate!'

'Dwight,' Dessous said tiredly.

Dwight looked genuinely sad. 'I thought you at least would understand! I'm an artist; artists have to take risks. It's my job, it's my calling. I have to be true to myself and my gift, true to my ideas, or what am I bothering for? I mean, why are any of us bothering? I have a responsibility here, Kate. I must be true to my Muse.'

'Your Muse?' Dessous said, almost choking.

'Yeah,' Dwight said, glancing from his uncle to me. 'Otherwise I'm just, like, a fake, and I won't be a fake, Kate.'

'Dwight, ah, there's a movie out at the moment called The Siege —'

'Yeah yeah yeah,' Dwight said, smiling tolerantly and patting the air as though pacifying an invisible dog. 'I know. Completely different sort of movie altogether. This movie's going to be big budget and ultra-spectacular, but it's going to be, like, thoughtful?'

'The people who made The Siege probably thought it was thoughtful, too. They probably didn't mean to upset the entire Arab-American community and have movie theatres picketed across America.'

'Well, across New York City, anyway,' Dwight said, shaking his head at my lack of understanding. 'You really on Uncle Jeb's side?' he asked me, disappointed. 'Frankly I was hoping you might help me talk him into putting some money into this project.

This time Dessous did choke on his beer.

'I think you'd be mad to go ahead with this, Dwight,' I told him.

Dwight stared at me, aghast. Then he leant towards me, eyes narrowed. 'But you do think it's a great idea?'

'Brilliant. It's a breathtakingly good idea. But if you really want to put it to good use, find somebody in the movie industry you hate and would like to see ruined or dead and suggest the idea to them in a way that would let them claim it as their own.'

'And watch them pick up the Academy Award?' Dwight laughed at my naïveté. 'I think not!'

Dessous and I exchanged looks.

Dinner, an hour later, was in Jebbet E. Dessous' own home, an Italianate villa overlooking a broad lake on the outskirts of the deserted town, which was just what it appeared to be. Premier, Nebraska, had been a declining township on the fringe of Dessous' ranch for years before he'd taken over the spread on its other side; he'd bought the place up lot by lot and gradually moved people out until he'd created his own ghost town. The main reason he'd done this, he explained, while showing me round the villa before dinner, was so that he had the sort of room a man needs when he's using heavy ordnance.

Jebbet E. Dessous was into weaponry the way Uncle Freddy was into cars. Hand guns, rifles, automatics, mortars, heavy machine-guns, tanks, rocket-launchers, he had everything, including a helicopter gunship stored out at the airfield where I'd landed and a motor torpedo boat which he kept in a large boathouse on the lakeside. Most of the heavier stuff — like the tanks, housed in a warehouse in the town — was old; Second World War vintage or not much later. He grumbled about the government's reluctance to sell tax-paying citizens main battle tanks and anti-aircraft missiles.

Dwight and I followed him round the stables attached to the main villa; this was where Dessous kept his collection of howitzers and field pieces, some dating back to the Civil War.

'See this?' He patted what looked like a load of long, open pipes mounted on a trailer. 'Stalin's organ pipes, they used to call these. The Wehrmacht were terrified of them. So were the Red Army; used to fall short too often. You can't get the rockets any more but I'm having a bunch of them made.' He slapped one of the dark green metal tubes with his giant hand again. 'Make a hell of a noise, apparently. Looking forward to letting these suckers off, let me tell you.'

'What's the biggest missile you've got, Jeb?' I asked, as innocently as I could, thinking of the Scuds he was supposed to have bought.

He grinned. He was dressed in a white tuxedo now — Dwight had thrown on a jacket, too — but Dessous still looked like a bucolic farmer dressed up and in town for a dance. 'Ah-hah,' was all he would say. He winked.

'Goddammit, Telman, I thought you of all people would agree with that!'

So I was Telman, now. I had kind of thought that when Mr Dessous had said he'd call me Miss Telman until he knew me better he meant that in the fullness of time he might get round to calling me Kathryn, or Kate. Apparently not. Or maybe that would come later. The point at issue was how easy it was to bootstrap yourself out of poverty.

'Why, Jeb?'

'Because you came up out the slums, didn't you?'

'Well, if not slums, certainly a degree of deprivation.'

'But you did it! That's my point; you're here!'

Here was the dining room of the villa, which was fairly big and untidily sumptuous. As well as myself, Dwight, Eastil and Dessous, there was Mrs Dessous, who was a stunning Los Angelino redhead about Dwight's age sheathed in silver and called Marriette. There were a dozen other people on Dessous' immediate staff, and a similar number of technicians and engineers, to whom I'd been introduced en masse.

The long table was stratified, with Dessous at the head dispensing Pétrus and the junior technicians somewhere at the far end swigging beer. The food had been Mexican, served by small and wondrously deft and inconspicuous Mexican men. I wondered if Dessous themed all his meals, so that if we'd eaten Chinese we'd have been surrounded by pigtailed Chinamen, while an Italian dinner would have been served by dark, slim-hipped young men called Luigi. The main course had been some very fine lean flag steak from one of Dessous' own herds, though I'd had to leave most of mine because there was just too much of it.

'I was extraordinarily lucky, Jeb,' I said. 'Mrs Telman's car blew a tyre near where I was playing with my pals. If it hadn't been for that piece of luck I'd probably still be in the west of Scotland. I'm thirty-eight. By now I'd have had three or four kids knocked out of me, I'd weigh another twenty or thirty pounds, I'd look ten years older, I'd smoke forty a day and eat too much chocolate and deep-fried food. If I was lucky I'd have a man who didn't hit me and kids who weren't doing drugs. Maybe I'd have a few high-school qualifications, maybe not. There's an outside chance I'd have gone to university, in which case it might all have been different. I might be a teacher or a social worker or a civil servant, all of which would be socially useful but wouldn't let me live the sort of life I've come to appreciate. But it's all based on luck.'

'No. You don't know. You're just making assumptions,' Dessous insisted. 'That's the Brit in you coming out there, this self-deprecating stuff. I knew Liz Telman; she told me when she found you, you were selling candy at fifty per cent mark-up. You trying to tell me you wouldn't have learned something from that?'

'Perhaps I'd have learned how easy it was to rip people off, and decided never to do it again. Maybe I'd have ended up working in a Citizens' Advice Bureau or —'

'This is perversity, Telman. The obvious lesson to draw is how easy it is to make money, how easy it is to use initiative and enterprise to pull yourself out of the environment you find yourself in. You'd have done it anyway, with or without Liz Telman. And that's precisely my point, dammit. The people who deserve to will get out of their deprivation, they'll rise above any goddamn social disadvantagement, whether it's in Scotland, Honduras, Los Angeles or anywhere else.'

'But it's not the people who deserve to,' I said. 'How can you condemn the vast majority who don't get out of the slums or the schemes or the barrios or the projects? Aren't they going to be the ones who put family, friends and neighbours first, the ones who support each other? The ones who rise are more likely to be the ones who are the most selfish, the most ruthless. The ones who exploit those around them.'

'Exactly!' Dessous said. 'Entrepreneurs!'

'Or drug-dealers, as we call them these days.'

'That's evolution, too! The smart ones sell, the dumb ones use. It's vicious, but that's the state and its dumb laws.'

'What are we really saying here, Jeb? Societies are made up of a mix of people, obviously. There will always be people who basically accept their lot and those who'll do anything to improve it, so you've got a spectrum of behaviour, with total compliance at one end — people who just want a quiet life, who really only want to be left alone to raise their families, talk about the ball game, think about their next holiday and maybe dream about winning the lottery — and dissidence at the other. Within the dissidents, some people will still identify strongly with their friends and family, and struggle to improve the lives of all of them. Some will only be out for themselves and they'll do anything to achieve material success, including lying, stealing and killing. What I'm questioning is who amongst this lot could be termed "better" than the others.'

'Basically what you're saying is the scum rises and I'm saying the cream rises. Now, you tell me who's got the more optimistic vision here, and who's being defeatist.'

'Me, and you, Mr Dessous, in that order.'

Dessous sat back. 'You're going to have to explain that to me, Telman.'

'Well, scum and cream both rise, I guess, depending on the context. Actually I don't think either analogy is particularly helpful. The comparison you choose to make shows which way you've already decided. However, what I'm saying is more optimistic because it supposes a way forward for everybody in a society, not just its most viciously competitive percentile. You're being defeatist because you're just giving up on nine people out of ten in a poor society and saying there's no helping them, and that the only way they can help themselves is individually, by climbing out on top of those around them.'

'That's evolution, Telman. People get hurt. People strive, people succeed. Some strive and don't make it, and some succeed without striving, but they're the exceptions, and if you don't at least make the attempt then you don't deserve to succeed. You've got to have struggle. You've got to have competition. You've got to have winners and losers. You can't just even everybody out; that's what the Communists thought you could do, and look what happened to them.'

'You can have fairness.'

Dessous roared with laughter. 'Telman! I can't believe I'm having to tell you this, but life isn't fair!'

'No, the world isn't fair, the universe isn't fair. Physics, chemistry and mathematics, they aren't fair. Or unfair, for that matter. Fairness is an idea, and only conscious creatures have ideas. That's us. We have ideas about right and wrong. We invent the idea of justice so that we can judge whether something is good or bad. We develop morality. We create rules to live by and call them laws, all to make life more fair. Of course, it depends exactly who draws up the laws who those laws are most fair to, but —'

'Selfishness is what drives people on, Telman. Not fairness.'

'And you accuse me of being pessimistic, Jeb?' I said it with a smile.

'I'm being realistic.'

'I think,' I said, 'that a lot of successful people are actually less hard-hearted than they like to think. They know in their hearts that people suffer terribly in poor societies through no fault of their own. The successful people don't want to admit that to themselves, they don't want to accept that really they're just the same as those poor people and they certainly don't want to face the horror of even suspecting that if they had been born into those societies they might have been stuck there and suffered and died, young and unknown after a miserable life, any more than they want to face the alternative of knowing that they could only have got out by being more competitively brutal than everybody else around them. So, to save their consciences, they decide that the people in the slums are there because they somehow deserve to be, and if they just tried hard enough they could get out. It's nonsense, but it makes psychological sense and it makes them feel better.'

'You accusing me of self-deception, Telman?' Dessous said, looking surprised but not angry. I hoped I was getting the correct impression here, that he was enjoying all this.

'I don't know, Jeb. I'm still not sure what you really think. Maybe you secretly agree with me but you just like an argument.'

Dessous laughed. He slapped the table and looked round the others. A few of the people nearest us had been following the argument. Down in their own relatively impoverished area, at the end of the table where the beer was, nobody was taking a blind bit of notice: too busy having a good time.

In the lounge after dinner, fuelled by fine wine and brandy, Dessous talked with some of the technicians who'd been at the other end of the table. He came back to where I was sitting with Dwight and Eastil, rubbing his hands and positively glowing.

'Mechanism's ready!' he announced. 'Screen's up. Ready for some target practice?'

'Betcha,' Eastil said, and knocked back his drink.

'I've got to see this,' Dwight agreed. 'Kate…you ought to come.'

'Ought I?'

'Yee-ha!' said Dessous, turning and marching off.

'Yee-ha?' I said to Dwight, who just shrugged.

About a dozen of us drove to the drive-in movie theatre in three sport utes. The sky was clear, and Dessous, shucking off his DJ and pulling on a quilted jacket, ordered the other two drivers to leave their lights off. He drove in front, tearing along the road to town using only the moonlight and starlight, startling jack rabbits and discussing over the radio which way the wind was blowing.

We pulled up by the dark bulk of the projection building. While Dessous was cursing everybody for forgetting to bring a flashlight I pulled one from my pocket and clicked it on.

'Well done, Telman,' Dessous said. 'You always so well prepared?'

'Well, I usually carry a torch.'

Dessous smiled. 'I've got friends who'd tell you that ain't a torch, Telman. That's a flashlight; a torch is what you burn niggers with.'

'Would they? And are they really racist scumbags, or do they just enjoy trying to shock people?'

Dessous laughed and unlocked the door.

The lights flickered on in the projection building, bright after the blacked-out journey in the four-wheel drives. People flicked more switches, starting fans and heaters and powering up the two big 35mm projectors, which were aimed out through small windows at the distant screen, which was now in place.

I didn't notice anything odd at first: the place was all very techy in an old-fashioned sort of way, with exposed cables and ductwork and racks of film canisters against the walls and whole boards of clunky-looking industrial switches and fuses the size of your hand. At each of the two big projectors, two guys were loading film into the complicated pathways of rollers and guides. Then I saw what stood in between the projectors.

I stared. 'What the fff—?'

'Oerlikon twenty-millimetre cannon, Telman,' Dessous said proudly. 'Single mount. Isn't it a beauty?'

Dwight, standing on my other side and holding a half-full glass of wine, just chuckled.

Where a third projector might have stood there was, indeed, a very heavy machine-gun. It stood on a fluted mount bolted to the concrete floor, it had two padded brackets at the rear where it looked like you were supposed to rest your shoulders, and a big, almost circular drum of ammunition on the top. Its charcoal-coloured metal gleamed in the overhead lights. The long barrel disappeared out of a small window into the night, facing the huge screen in the distance.

The right-hand projector whined up to speed. Somebody handed out bottles of beer, somebody else dispensed ear-protectors.

The first reel was a Second World War dog-fight. It was black and white and looked like real camera-gun footage. Dessous took his place at the cannon and, after a deep breath, started firing.

Even with the ear-protectors on and the muzzle of the gun outside the building, the noise was pretty intense. I could see Dessous grinning like a loon and mouthing what I suspected were more yee-has, but his voice was entirely lost in the racket. A duct above the cannon's chattering mechanism sucked most of the smoke away, but the projection room soon stank of cordite and a thin grey mist filled the air. A big limp sack hanging on the other side of the gun from the magazine shook and pulsed as though there were a bunch of scared kittens inside it.

People were crowded round the remaining small windows facing out to the screen. I squeezed in beside Dwight, who put his arm round my waist. He bent his head to mine and shouted, 'Is this fucking crazy, or what?'

To my left, the surface of the projection booth was lit by the stuttering muzzle flash of the cannon. Across the gulf of darkness above the abandoned parking lot, the lines of tracer flicked, disappearing into the black and white skies of wartime Europe, where Mustangs and Messerschmitts dived and rolled and formations of Flying Fortresses laboured onwards through the clouds. Smoke drifting from the cannon in the near still air picked out the projector's beam. Then the gun fell silent.

There was a moment of quietness, then people cheered and clapped and whistled. Dessous, radiant, stepped down from the cannon, rubbing his shoulders, his face slick with sweat. He accepted congratulations and shook Eastil and a few of the technicians by the hand. His wife, silvery sheath of dress topped by a quilted jacket, went up on tippy-toes to kiss him.

Eastil was next at the cannon, once it had been reloaded, the sack full of spent cartridge cases had been emptied and another reel of film spun up to speed in the other projector.

We appeared to be progressing historically: this was Korean War footage of MiGs and Sabres. The cannon went crack-crack-crack, fast as a speeding heart. I watched the screen. There were a few small tattered holes starting to appear.

'You're our latest guest, Telman,' Dessous said, when Eastil had had his turn. 'Care for a shot?'

I looked at him. I wasn't sure whether I was expected to say yes or not. 'That's very kind,' I said. I watched another reel of film being loaded into the first projector. 'I imagine we're up to Vietnam by now.'

Dessous shook his big head. 'Not much dog-fighting there. We've gone straight to Yom Kippur.'

I had a very brief lesson in how to shoot the gun. This basically consisted of hold on, don't close your eyes, and press this trigger here hard. The cannon had a fairly crude sight which looked like the wire frame taken off a dartboard and shrunk to about the width of a hand. The gun smelled of oil and smoke; it gave off heat like a radiator. I settled into the padded shoulder rests and for some reason couldn't help thinking of the stirrups in a gynaecologist's. My mouth, I have to say, was quite dry.

The image across the drive-in lot flashed 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 +, with those reverse-sweeping clock roundels in between, counting down. Then we were in full colour above the sands of the Sinai peninsula and the skies were full of MiGs. I squinted through the sights and pulled on the trigger. The cannon shuddered and kicked back at me, nearly tearing my fingers away from the trigger. Tracer bullets lanced towards the screen and disappeared into the darkness beyond.

I tried aiming at the aircraft swirling in front of me, but it was hard. As long as I kept the bullets going through the screen and not into the framework holding it up I thought I'd be doing fine. The gun clattered to a stop. At first I thought it must have jammed, then I realised that I'd used up all the shells.

I staggered as I stepped down, my ears ringing, my arms tingling, my shoulders aching and my whole body seeming to buzz.

Dessous grabbed me briefly by one elbow. 'Whoa, you all right there, Telman?'

'I'm fine.' I laughed. 'Some kick.'

'Yup.'

The screen was starting to look a little frayed in the centre when we had our finale. Another three people had taken turns at the gun; both Dwight and Mrs Dessous had declined. Dessous took his place again, the projector powered up, and before the gun started firing I could hear a mixture of cheers and boos from the people clustered round the windows.

The unmistakable image of Saddam Hussein's face appeared on the screen, monolithically lugubrious, fixed and still. The gun launched 20mm cannon shells at it.

The rest of the short reel was Hussein in various settings, sitting talking to his military commanders, walking past crowds of cheering people, inspecting troops, and so on. Then it went back to the still of his face, looming a hundred feet high above the deserted lot. Dessous fired into the eyes until the silvery material of the screen there started to fall away and flap and tumble — dark, silver, dark, silver — towards the ground. Holes appeared in the vast nose, the deep brush of moustache and across the broad expanse of forehead. Finally, peppering the line between dress shirt and Adam's apple, Dessous must have hit some part of the framework around the screen's lower edge, because sparks burst out, and two of the tracer rounds suddenly ricocheted upwards into the night in a bright red V. The cannon fell silent again as flames started to lick up around the giant face still displayed on the screen, while flaps and scraps of screen folded and fell or were caught in up draughts and floated skywards.

More cheering and whooping and laughter. Dessous looked like a child locked in a candy store. He nodded and wiped his brow and took a lot of pats on the back and handshakes and just appeared utterly pleased with himself.

Across the lot, flames licked up around the huge, frayed, unsteady image.

Back in the villa, long past midnight, we sat in Dessous' den, just the man himself and me. The walls were covered in swords, hand-guns and rifles, all polished and gleaming and resting in little chrome cradles. The place smelled of gun oil and cigar smoke.

Dessous drew on his cigar, levered himself back in his giant leather seat with a creak and thumped his shoes on to his broad desk. 'You ever think of yourself as a socialist, Telman? You sure sound like one.'

'Briefly, at university. Do I really?' I tried the cup of coffee, which was all I'd felt like. Still too hot.

'Yup. You know how much you're worth?'

'Roughly.'

'Guess you can afford to be a socialist.'

'I guess I can.'

Dessous rolled the fat cigar round his mouth a couple of times, not taking his eyes off me. 'You believe in communities, don't you, Telman?'

'I suppose so. We're all part of communities. All part of society. Yes.'

'Are we your community?'

'The Business?' I asked. He nodded. 'Yes.'

'You're committed to us?'

'I think I've shown that over the years.'

'Just because of Mrs Telman?'

'Not just. That's the sentimental reason, if you like. I have others.'

'Such as?'

'I admire what the Business stands for, its —'

'What do you think it stands for?' he said quickly.

I took a deep breath. 'Reason,' I said. 'Rationality. Progress. Respect for science, belief in technology, belief in people, in their intelligence, in the end. Rather than faith in a god, or a messiah, or a monarch. Or a flag.'

'Hmm. Right. Okay. Sorry, Telman, I interrupted you there. You were saying.'

'I admire its success, its longevity. I'm proud to be part of that.'

'Even though we're vicious capitalist oppressors?'

I laughed. 'Well, we're capitalists, sure, but I wouldn't put it any stronger than that.'

'There's a lot of the youngsters — Level Six through Four — who'd think what you were saying earlier about initiative and drive and success and so on was something close to heresy; something close to treason.'

'But we aren't a religion, or a state. Yet. So it can't be either, can it?'

Dessous studied the end of his cigar. 'How proud are you to be part of the Business, Telman?'

'I'm proud. I don't know of any internationally accepted scientific unit of measurement of pride.'

'You put our collective good above your own interests?'

I tried my coffee again. Still too hot. ' Are you asking me to surrender some of my stock options, Jeb?'

He chuckled. 'Nope, I'm just trying to find out what the Business means to you.'

'It's a collection of people. Some I like, some I don't. As an institution, like I said, I'm proud to be a part of it.'

'Would you do anything for it?'

'Of course not. Would you?'

'No. So, I guess we're all in it for ourselves, aren't we?'

'Yes, but we rely on the support and co-operation of everybody else to help us achieve our individual goals. That's what communities are all about. Don't you think?'

'So what wouldn't you do for the Business?'

'Oh, you know, the usual stuff: murder, torture, maiming, that sort of thing.'

Dessous nodded. 'I guess that kind of goes without saying. What about this idea of self-sacrifice? What would you sacrifice something of your own for, if not for the Business?'

'I don't know. Other people, maybe. It all depends on the circumstances.'

Dessous grimaced and stared at the ceiling, looking suddenly bored with the whole conversation. 'Yeah, I guess it always does, doesn't it?'

I woke up. Very dark. Where the hell was I? The air outside the bed was chilly. The bed itself felt…unfamiliar. I heard a chinking noise like something hitting a window. I sniffed the air, suddenly afraid. Not in my house, not in London, not in…Glasgow or Blysecrag…Dessous' place. Big Bend. I was in Nebraska. The cabin on the ridge. The noise came again.

I felt for the light switch and touched the little netsuke monkey. The light was very bright. I stared at the curtains over the windows. I felt groggy and my head hurt; not badly, but enough to let me know I'd drunk too much. The noise at the window came again. I looked at the telephone on the other bedside table.

'Kate?' said a muffled voice.

I fastened the top button on my PJs top and went to the window and drew the drapes. Dwight's pale face stared back at me. I opened the window. Cold air spilled in.

'Dwight, what are you doing?'

He was wearing a thick jacket but he looked cold. 'Can I come in?'

'No.'

'But it's cold out here.'

'So you shouldn't have left your cabin.'

'I wanted to talk to you.'

'Haven't you got a phone?'

'No. That's why that cabin's so great. No phone. You can write.'

'What? You mean a letter?' I asked, confused.

Now he looked bewildered. 'No, I mean write treatments and shit, without distraction.'

'Oh. And what about your mobile?'

'I leave it switched off.'

'But…never mind.'

'Please let me in.'

'No. What did you want to talk about?'

'I can't talk out here! It's freezing!'

'I'm freezing too, so keep it brief.'

'Aw, Kate —'

'Dwight, I've had your uncle beating my ears all evening. If you have anything to say I'd really appreciate you saying it as concisely as possible so I can get back to sleep. I'm very tired.'

He looked pained. 'I was going to ask you…if you wanted to come to the première of my play on Broadway,' he said. He scratched his head.

'Your play?'

'Yeah,' he said, grinning. 'Finally got my name above the title on something. It's called Best Shot. It's brilliant! You'd love it.'

'When is it?'

'Next Monday.'

'I'll try.'

'You will? You promise?'

'No, I can't promise, but I'll try.'

'Right.' He hesitated.

I shivered. 'Dwight, is that it?'

'Uh, yeah. I guess.'

I shook my head. 'Right. Good night.'

'Umm. Okay,' he said. He started to turn away. I started to close the window. He turned back. 'Hey, ah, Kate?'

'What?'

'Do you, ah…Do you, like, want we should maybe, like, you know, spend the night together? Maybe?'

I stared at him. I thought of lots of things to say, but eventually I just said, 'No, Dwight.'

'But, Kate, Jeez, we'd be great together!'

'No, we wouldn't.'

'We would! I'm just so admirative of you.'

'Dwight, that's not a word, or if it is it shouldn't be.'

'But, Kate, I just find you so attractive, and I mean I never go for women your age!'

'Good night, Dwight.'

'Don't reject me, Kate! Let me in. I'm not going to be heavy, I'm not going to aggress on you or anything.'

'No. Now go home.'

'But-!'

'No.'

His shoulders slumped within the big jacket. His breath smoked down. He raised his head again. 'You'll still come to the play?'

'If I can.'

'Aw, come on, promise.'

'I can't. Now go home. My feet are turning blue.'

'I could warm them up for you.'

'Thanks, but no.'

'But you will try and come?'

'Yes.'

'You're not just saying that to get rid of me?'

'No.'

'As my guest, as my date?'

'Only if you can't find somebody your own age. Now, good night.'

'Excellent!' He turned to go, switching on a flashlight. I started to close the window again. He turned back again. 'You really think my idea about the escape pod inside the Kaaba is that bad?'

'Not bad, just potentially fatal.'

He shook his head as he turned away into the night. 'Shit.'

My feet really were cold; so were my hands. I drew six inches of warm water in the bath and sat on the rim with my PJ cuffs rolled up, soaking my feet and hands to bring some blood back into them. I dried them and returned to bed and slept like a very tired log.