Iain Banks - Dead Air

‘Shorter. Easier to wash. Different.’

‘Yeah, and sort of browny-black. Are you mad?’

‘You sound like my dad.’

‘But you had beautiful hair!’

‘I still do, thanks.’

‘Fink about the endin of Total Recall.’

I sniggered.

‘Zactly.’

‘What d’you mean “Zactly”? You can’t just say “Zactly” and look all justified and smug like that. Explain yourself, man.’

‘Wot was that reaction of yours there then, what was that all about?’

‘It was about a totally preposterous ending featuring the Pyramid Mine – a biggish hill but still less than a pimple on a planetary scale – emplacing an entire Martian atmosphere at what appeared to be Standard Temperature and Pressure in about half a minute, complete with milky clouds and everything, in time to put Arnie and the ingenue’s eyes back into their sockets about a minute after they started haemorrhaging, all with no lasting ill effects whatsoever to bodies either planetary or human.’ I thought about what I’d just said. ‘Or Arnie’s, for that matter.’

Ed nodded. ‘Zactly.’

‘You’re doing it again! Will you stop with the fucking “Zactly” shit already?’

‘Hee hee hee.’

‘Yeah, and the “Hee hee hee” thing is no great improvement. ’ I took Ed by the shoulders and through gritted teeth said, ‘What the fuck do you mean?’

‘Wot I mean is,’ Ed said, giggling, ‘right, is that it is basically so fuckin preposterous a endin that it can only mean, right, that Arnie, is character that is, must still be in a virtual reality dream. None of the endin’s been real, azit?’

I opened my mouth. I took my hands off his shoulders. I wagged a finger at him. ‘Hmm,’ I said.

‘An that therefore, like, that Verhoeven geezer is a subversive genius.’

I stood there, nodding, trying to recall more of the earlier parts of the film.

‘Course,’ Ed said, ‘it’s only a feery.’

‘Hendrie who?’

‘Hendrie; plays for Villa. You must have seen him.’

‘No I mustn’t. Why?’

‘He looks like Robbie Williams.’

‘… Craig, you need to get out more.’

‘I was out. I went to the match. That’s where I saw him.’

‘Okay, you should stay in more.’

‘Phil, “Wanking; why the bad press?” is not funny. Now, “Button pushers; why the bad press?”; that has a modicum of comedic value. Only a modicum, not enough to actually use in the show or anything, but I employ it purely as an example.’

‘I was thinking of a new phone-in feature.’

‘Right. Well, there are ladies on the end of premium-rate phone lines dedicated to ensuring this sort of thing is already well catered for. I’m told.’

‘That wasn’t what I was thinking of.’

‘Well what, then? A sponsored wank-o-thon?’

‘No no no. Right; it’ll be called Get a Hold of Yourself.’

‘Uh-huh. You’ve always been jealous Chris Evans had that Breakfast Show feature where a girl got her boyfriend’s “lollipop” in her mouth and recited lyrics, haven’t you?’

‘Nooo; look-’

‘Phil; no. Just leave it.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t think-?’

‘I think you should go and talk to Craig.’

‘Who’s There?’

‘ Tijuana.’

‘ Tijuana who?’

‘Gary Glitter.’

‘… What?’

‘ Tijuana be in my gang, my gang, my gang?’

‘Oh, I understand the meaning it’s meant to have,’ I told Amy, leaning closer to her. We were on the decking in Craig’s garden, near midnight. I’d just tried to talk to Jo, in Barcelona with Addicta, but without success. ‘It’s just not the meaning I took from it the first time I heard it. That’s what I’m saying.’

‘What, “Fur coat and no knickers”?’

‘Yeah! I always thought, Damn, that sounds great! That sounds, like, really sexy!’

She laughed, putting her head back to show a long, winter-tanned neck and perfect teeth. Her blond hair glowed softly in the light falling from the lit windows of the house. ‘Yes, well, you would.’

‘Witty but unfair. Look, I-’

‘You don’t know what it feels like. You just have no idea. All you’ve got is your theory, just your precious one-man-party line, as usual. You have no concept what it’s like. You haven’t been there. You haven’t felt the atmosphere. We’re surrounded by people who hate us.’

‘Ah, excuse me? This is me you’re talking to here. I’m all too well acquainted with the tell-tale tingle on the temple that indicates the cross-hairs of antipathy have locked on to me once more. But just… just back up a bit, there; who’s this “we”? When the hell did you become a Daughter of the Zionist Revolution?’

‘When I realised it was them or us, Ken.’

‘Oh, fuck, you mean you really are? Jeez, I was just-’

‘They all hate us. Every nation on our borders would like to see us destroyed. Our only way out’s the sea, and that’s where they want us. Ken, just look at the map! We’re tiny! And then, inside our own nation, these people murder and bomb and shoot us, inside our own borders, on our own streets, in the shops, on the buses, in our homes! We’ve got to stop them; we have no choice. And you, you have the gall to claim that we’ve become the Nazis, and can’t see you’ve become just another bloody anti-Semite.’

‘Oh, fuck, Jude, look, I know you feel really deeply about this-’

‘No you don’t! That’s what I’m saying. You can’t!’

‘Well, I’m trying to! Look… please, please don’t put words into my mouth or beliefs into my mind that aren’t there.’

‘They are there, Ken, you just won’t accept it.’

‘I am not anti-Semitic. Look, I like the Jews, I admire the Jews, I’m positively pro-Semitic for fuck’s sake. I’ve told you this! Well, some of it! I’ve been this way since I was a kid, since I heard about the Holocaust and since I realised that the Scots and the Jews were so alike. The Scots are smart, but we get accused of being mean. Same with the Jews. It’s culture, not race, but we’ve both punched way above our weight for civilisation; the Jews are the only people I ever put ahead of the Scots in terms of their influence on the world given the size of their population pool.’

‘This is so bullshit.’

‘I’m serious. I loved you guys from when I was a kid! So much I was embarrassed to tell you how much!’

‘Don’t bullshit me.’

‘It’s true. You were just so fearsomely far to the left I never dared.’

‘Ken-’

‘I’m serious. I used to love Israel.’

(This was true. When I was thirteen I’d fallen deeply in love with a girl called Hannah Gold. Her parents lived in Giffnock, one of the more leafy parts of Glasgow ’s suburban southern hinterland. They took a dim view of our friendship and my obvious infatuation with their daughter. But I charmed them, plus I did my research. Within six months Mr G was expressing his pleased surprise at how much I knew about Israel and the Jews. The Golds moved to London shortly after Hannah’s fourteenth birthday and we were pen pals for a while, but then they moved again and we lost touch. I’d been heartbroken when they left, but I recovered and went on, going from desolation to something shamingly close to indifference in about three weeks.

My new interest in Israel proved rather longer lasting. And at the time I didn’t see how anybody could not love Israel. It was the world’s most charismatic, brave, buccaneering nation, defying all these bullies around it. The Six Day War, Dayan and his eye-patch, a woman prime minister, the kibbutzim; when I was a kid I was so proud it was British-built tanks that had gone sailing across the Sinai with the Star of David flying from the whip aerials. I used to get books out the library about Israel. Great Jewish Generals; can you believe Trotsky was in there? I even knew that the Israeli army had improved their Centurions by putting petrol engines in place of the British diesels; I knew all that adolescent, war-geek stuff, I loved it. Yom Kippur; triumphing against the odds, nicking their own boats from under the noses of the French, the raid on Entebbe; it was breath-taking, cinematic! How could anyone not admire all that?)