Iain Banks - The Business

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.