Iain Banks - The Business

The waters calmed gradually again, the waves fell back and smoothed slowly out. The veins of light dancing on the ceiling became lazier and broader, like a river flowing towards the sea. The air-conditioner hummed.

'Okay?' Stephen said. I looked up at him.

One part of me wanted to let him go back by himself, so that I could stay here alone with the humming silence of the air and the slow averaging of the lulling waters, but his freckled face, tired though still smiling and open and friendly, would not let me. I accepted a hand up, we switched off the lights and returned to the main house.

He saw me to my room door, kissed me lightly on the cheek and told me to sleep well, which, eventually, I did.

'Mmm. Yes? Hello?'

'Kathryn, is that you?'

'Uh, speaking. Speaking. Yes. Who is that?'

'Me. Me…me, it is me.'

'Prince? Suvinder?'

'Yes. Kathryn.'

'Suvinder, it's the middle of the night.'

'Ah, no.'

'What?'

'I must…must correct you there. Kathryn. It is not the middle of the night, no no.'

'Prince, it…hold on. It's half six in the morning.'

'There. You see?'

'Suvinder, it's still dark, I've had one hour's sleep and I was hoping for a good five or six more, minimum. As far as I'm concerned it is the middle of the night. Now unless you have something very important to say to me…'

'Kathryn.'

'Yes, Suvinder.'

'Kathryn.'

'…Yes?'

'Kathryn.'

'Prince, you sound terribly drunk.'

'I am, Kathryn. I am very terribly drunk and very sad.'

'Why are you sad, Suvinder?'

'I have been unfaithful to you.'

'What?'

'Those two lovely ladies. I fell for their fanim… manifold charms.'

'You—?'

'Kathryn, I am a man of easy virtue.'

'You and all the rest, Prince. Look, I'm very glad for you. I hope those two young ladies made you extremely happy and you were able to do the same for them. And you mustn't worry. You can't be unfaithful to me because I am not your wife or your girlfriend. We haven't made any promises to each other and therefore you can't be unfaithful. Do you see?'

'But I have.'

'You have what?'

'I have made promises, Kathryn!'

'Not that I was aware of, Suvinder, not to me.'

'No. They were made in my heart, Kathryn.'

'Were they now? Well, I'm very flattered, Suvinder, but you mustn't feel bad about it. I forgive you, all right? I forgive you for any previous and all future transgressions; how's that? You just go on and have a whale of a time to yourself and I won't be bothered in the least. I'll be happy for you.'

'Kathryn.'

'Yes.'

'Kathryn.'

'Suvinder. What?'

'…Can I hope?'

'Hope?'

'That one day you will…you will look upon me kindly.'

'I already do, Suvinder. I look upon you very kindly. I like you. I hope I am your friend.'

'That is not what I meant, Kathryn.'

'No, I didn't think it was.'

'May I hope, Kathryn?'

'Prince…'

'May I, Kathryn?'

'Suvinder…'

'Just say that it is not a lost cause which I am pursuing, Kathryn.'

'Suvinder, I do like you, and I am honestly very flattered indeed that —'

'Always women say this! They say flattered, they say friend, they say like, and always later comes "but". But this, but that. But I am married, but you are too old, but your mother will put a curse on me, but I am too young, but I am not really a girl —'

'What?'

'—I thought you would be different, Kathryn. I hoped that maybe you would not "but". But you do. It is not fair, Kathryn. It is not fair. It is pride, or racism, or, or…or classism.'

'Prince, please. I've had a lot of disturbed sleep recently. I really need to get some quality rest in at some point.'

'Now I have upset you.'

'Suvinder, please.'

'I have made you upset with me. I can tell from your voice. Your patience is exhausted, is it not?'

'Suvinder, just let me go back to sleep, please? Maybe we should just, you know, stop now. We can talk about this in the morning. Things will look different then. I think we both need our sleep.'

'Let me come to see you.

'No, Suvinder.'

'Tell me which room you are in, please, Kathryn.'

'Absolutely not, Suvinder.'

'Please.'

'No.'

'I am a man, Kathryn.'

'What? Yes, I know, Suvinder.'

'A man has needs…What was that? Did you just sigh, Kathryn?'

'Prince, I don't want to be rude, but I really need to get back to sleep now, and I'm asking you to say good night and let me get some rest. So, please, just say good night.'

'Very well. I shall go now…But, Kathryn.'

'Yes?'

'I shall not cease to hope.'

'Good for you.'

'I mean it, Kathryn.'

'I'm sure you do.'

'I do, I mean it.'

'Well, hurrah.'

'Yes. Well. Good night, Kathryn.'

'Good night, Suvinder.'

Let me explain some things about the way our company works. The first thing to understand is that we are, up to a point, democratic. Put simply, we vote for our bosses. Never mind about that for now; we'll come back to it.

Secondly, we're quite serious about insisting that if people want to rise above a certain level in the corporate hierarchy, they must renounce any religious faith they have previously espoused. In practice all this means is that an executive promoted to the rank we once called magistratus, then Deacon, and now call Level Six, has to swear they've given up their faith.

We don't insist that people stop going to their churches or their temples, or stop worshipping either in public or in private, or even stop funding religious works (though some sort of gesture in this direction is generally expected and appreciated); we certainly do not insist that people stop believing in their heads, or their souls if you will. All that's required is that people are prepared to swear they've stopped believing. This is quite sufficient to weed out the real zealots, the type of people — admirable in their way if you esteem that sort of behaviour — who would prefer to be burned alive than switch to a different branch of the same church.

Thirdly, we practise total financial transparency: any company officer may inspect the accounts of any other. This has become much easier technically in recent years, of course, with the advent of computers and electronic mail, but the principle has been around since the first century AD. Its effect is to make corruption as a rule either unachievable or only possible at a trivial scale. The main downside is complication. This was the case when people had to open up cabinets full of wax tablets for inspection, when they had to unroll papyrus scrolls, when they had to unchain books from counting-room desks, when they had to order old ledgers from storage, when they had to search through microfiches, and it is certainly the case now with computerised accounts; over two millennia, every technological advance that promised to make the task easier has been closely and seemingly inevitably accompanied by an increase in the complexity of the figures and systems involved.

Always looking for ways to cut costs, we've carried out trials which involve abandoning this practice for specific times and in certain places, intending to give it up entirely if the trials prove successful, but the results have always persuaded us that the benefits outweigh the costs.

Of course, corruption is always possible, and probably inevitable. A company worry has always been that one of our number might siphon off very small amounts of money over a long period and use that as seed capital for transactions which — though they exist outside the Business — are only possible thanks to the contacts, trust and information that person's membership of the company has brought and which grow exponentially until they distort the relationship between the apparent and real economic effect that person produces.