Iain Banks: The Business

My European base was Suzrin House, the company's monolithic warren of offices and apartments overlooking the Thames at Whitehall, which I preferred to our Swiss base at Château d'Oex. I suppose Suzrin House was my second home, though in terms of architectural cosiness that's a bit like regarding the Kremlin or the Pentagon as a pied-à-terre. Never mind. My job, wherever I might be, was to keep abreast of current and incipient technological developments, with the brief of recommending which of those technologies the Business ought to invest in.

I'd been doing this for a while. It was, I am pleased to say, on my advice that we bought into Microsoft on its initial flotation back in the eighties, and into the Internet Server companies at the start of the nineties. And — while many of the other computer and associated hi-tech companies we've put money into have gone quite spectacularly bust — a few of our investments in the computer and IT industries had produced returns sensational enough to make the whole investment programme one of our most worthwhile. In recent history, only the portfolios we developed in steel and petroleum during the late eighteen hundreds have yielded greater rewards.

My reputation in the company was, if I may toot my own tuba a tad, at least very secure and possibly — whisper it — even verging on legendary (and, believe me, we have a generous stock of living legends in the Business). I had achieved Level Three status ten or fifteen years earlier than I might have hoped for, even as a high-flyer, and, while it depended on the goodwill of my co-workers, I was fairly confident that some time in the next few years I would be promoted to Level Two.

A close inspection of my own personal Mammon graph would reveal even to the untrained eye that my remuneration package — including commission multipliers gained as a result of my successful forecasts regarding computers and the Internet — was already more generous than that of many of our Level Two executives. It had occurred to me a couple of years earlier that I was probably what the average person would consider independently wealthy; in other words that I could have existed comfortably without my job though, of course, as a good Business woman, that was all but unthinkable for me.

Anyway, you can't rest on your laurels. These successes with computer software and communications — lucky guesses if you wanted to be uncharitable — were all in the past, and I still had a job to do. And so it was that at that moment I had high hopes for our recently taken-up stakes in fuel cell technology and had been lobbying hard for more investment in private space concerns. We would see.

The Lexus hummed its way through the mirror-wet streets of Glasgow, heading east. People hunched against the buffeting wind-rush of rain; some carried umbrellas, others held folded tabloids or flapping carrier-bags over their heads as they waited at pedestrian crossings. I checked my lap-top for e-mail then read the newspapers. My chauffeur was called Raymond. Raymond was about half my age, tall and athletic, with short blond hair. He and I had developed what they used to call an understanding over the week or so I had been in Glasgow. Raymond was perfectly good behind the wheel, though I confess I preferred him between the sheets, which was where he had been the night before when Mike Daniels had called.

If Mrs Todd knew from the start that we were involved, she was able to pretend that she didn't because Raymond had so far always succeeded in waking up in time to slip away before she arrived in the morning.

An able if occasionally overly energetic lover at night, Raymond was the soul of driving professionalism and formal politeness during the day. When I was Raymond's age this sort of compartmentalisation of roles and relationships would have struck me as hypocritical, even deceitful. Now, however, it seemed quite the most convenient, even honest way to behave. Raymond and I could be prim and correct with each other while he performed his driverly duties, and as carnally abandoned as we desired when he took off his peaked cap and set his grey uniform aside. In fact I rather enjoyed the contrast: it lent a certain anticipatory frisson to the mundane condition of being taken from one place to another.

'Ah, Ms Telman?'

'Yes, Raymond.'

'Some bad traffic up ahead,' he said. He glanced at the car's navigation screen. 'Take a different route, aye?'

'Okay.'

Raymond whirled the steering-wheel to send us down a side road leading to the river. Raymond took this sort of thing seriously. Personally I have no interest in my route to a given destination, but some people like to be told why they're going one way rather than the other.

I scanned the newspapers. Mid-term elections in the States. Dow up. British chancellor makes an announcement today about extra government borrowing. Interest rate cut expected later today. Footsie up, pound down.

Death and destruction in Central America, caused by the remains of Hurricane Mitch. Thousands buried under mudslides. Part of my mind scanned a mental list of company assets in the area, wondering how we might be affected, while my conscience shook its metaphorical head and tried to dredge up some human sympathy for the victims from the depths of my corporate soul. I could have logged on to the company's encrypted Website and found out what exposure we had in Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras — and, if our Web people were on the ball, what damage we'd taken down there — but I preferred to finish reading the papers first.

General Pinochet's appeal against his extradition to Spain was due to come up in the House of Lords that week. This was of more than academic interest for us as a company. Frankly the fate of one old fascist mass-murderer was irrelevant in business terms (though I don't doubt that as a company we kept on good terms with whoever was in power in Chile throughout the Allende years, Pinochet's regime and subsequently), but the whole issue of diplomatic immunity was one that exercised us at that point. Hence what Mike Daniels referred to as 'the Pashific shing'. Personally I thought the Pacific thing was all a monumental irrelevance, but it was out of my hands — and I was probably not invited to the rumoured shindig in Yorkshire that weekend, no matter what Mike might think. That was Level One stuff, the preserve of the Hazletons and the Parfitt-Solomenides of the Business.

The chip factory lay a few miles outside Glasgow near the town of Motherwell. Standard low-level landscaping of clipped grass, ornamental water features and a scattering of thin trees, their leaves mostly gone to the autumn winds. They bent in the rain-heavy wind as the Lexus rolled up to the main entrance of the vast ochre shed that was Silex Systems' principal manufacturing facility. Raymond jumped out and was there with a golf umbrella, opening the door.

Mr Rix, the plant manager, and Henderson, his deputy, were waiting in the foyer.

'What happens to the chips that fail?'

'They're thrown away.'

'You can't recycle them?'

'In theory you could, but it would add a lot of cost. By the time they're at this stage they're already so materially complicated it would take a fortune to start reducing them to their individual constituents.

I was standing with Mr Rix and Mr Henderson in one of the cleanest places on Earth. I was wearing something not far off a spacesuit. The closest I'd seen to it were the shiny things they wear in those rather forced Hey-we're-cool-really Intel ads for Pentium processors. The suit was loose and quite comfortable — as it would have to be if you were to spend an entire working day in it — with a full face mask incorporated into the helmet. Breathing seemed easy enough, though apparently I was doing it through a sub-micron filter. The suit's slipper-like shoes were built into the bottom of the legs, so that it felt a little like being a small child again, wearing pyjamas. When I changed into the one-piece, out of my white silk blouse and Moschino skirt and jacket, I felt a moment of regret at even temporarily giving up my clothes, until it occurred to me that the suit I was putting on was probably much more expensive than the one I was taking off.