MARTIN AMIS - THE INFORMATION

Slowly Gwyn held out his hand. "Thanks, man."

Jesus, thought Richard. Which of us is going nuts faster? "No," he said. "Thank you."

"Before I forget, Gal Aplanalp is off to L.A. any minute, so you'd better give her a call. Tomorrow. Morning."

And then they parted in the car park, under the afternoon moon.

Out there, in the universe, the kilometer definitely has it over the mile. If the universe likes roundness, which it seems to do.

The speed of light is 186,282 mps, but it is very close to 300,000 kps. One light-hour is 670,000,000 miles, but it is very close to 1,000,000,000 kilometers.

Similarly, one Astronomical Unit, or the average distance between the earth and the sun, center to center, is 92,950,000 miles, but it is very close to 15,000,000 kilometers.

Is this arbitrary anyway? Is this anthropic? In a million millennia, the sun will be bigger. It will feel nearer. In a million millennia, if you are still reading me, you can check these words against personal experience, because the polar ice caps have melted and Norway enjoys the climate of North Africa.

Later still, the oceans will be boiling. The human story, or at any rate the terrestrial story, will be coming to an end. I don't honestly expect you to be reading me then.

In the meantime, though, the kilometer definitely has it over the mile.

"When entering a main road from a side road, you come to a halt, look left and right," said Crash in his deepest and stateliest tones, "and wait until you see a car coming."

"Really?" said Demeter Barry.

"You engage first gear. When the car come good and close-you pull out in front of it.?

"I see."

"And then you slow down to a crawl. And stick you elbow out the window."

"Really."

"Unless of course he try to overtake."

"Then what?"

"Then of course you speed up."

The thrashed Metro lurked in a dead-ended sidestreet off Golbourne Road. Beneath its roof rack of ads and L-signs Demeter sat strapped into the front passenger seat, while Crash was wedged behind the wheel. As he spoke he made intently carving gestures with his hands.

"Allow me to demonstrate. Here, let's-seatbelt on okay? There we go."

It was true-what Steve Cousins said. Driving instruction was sustained by a deep scholarship of lechery, in common with many other callings in which men were obliged to serve unattended women: plumbing, policing, clothes vending (particularly shoes). Consider the milkman, and milkman lore. How Eros must have wept at his disappearance from the English streets . .. Take it from Crash: contrary pulses to do with male-female authority-plus this cool new fear rich chicks had about seeming racist or snobbish-bred a helpful confusion. Even the window-cleaner, a door-to-door artist with his tramplike rags and plastic pail, his dramatic windowsill clearances, his perched and watchful form on the other side of the glass, the new light he let flow into the living space: even the window-cleaner was the cause of rearrangements, of domestic reconsiderations .. . Probably a pamphlet as long as the High way Code could be written on, say, the Use of the Seatbelt in the Promotion of Instructor-Student Bodily Contact; also Seat-Elevation Adjustment, the Pardonability of Tactile Reassurance During and After the Emergency Stop, the Gearstick as Symbol or Totem.

"And the bottom line being?" said Crash invitingly.

"What?" asked Demeter.

"I'm asking you."

"Urn. I don't know."

"To impress your personality on the road. I say it again. Your purpose when driving is not to arrive at your destination safely or quickly. Your purpose when driving is . .. ?"

"To impress your personality on the road."

"Exactly. To show who own the road."

Boldly Crash fired the Metro and approached the junction, indicating left. The street was clear, and uncannily remained so, for twenty sec- onds, for forty, for sixty, for more. And this was London, where there was no shortage of cars. This was a modern city, where cars were in endless supply, where there were cars, cars, cars, as far as the eye could see. They went on waiting. Crash craned his neck. A sizable segment of Demi's allotted hour had already been consumed by their vigil.

"Neutron bomb is it."

They went on waiting. At last a smudged white van appeared, from the right. You could always eventually rely, in London, on a smudged white van: it looked as though it had been scrabbled at by the sooty fingers of huge children. Here it came, over the bridge beneath the bristling council block, and advancing with steady purpose. The van was upon them- the van was practically past them-when Crash pounced out in front of it.

First, the great sinus effort of the brakes; then brutal honk of horn and (Demi half-turned) the incensed strobe of headlights. Crash now sat back, humming, and steadily quenched the Metro's speed, the van whinnying and jostling in its wake, trying to pass, to climb on top of, to leapfrog over. Glancing at Demeter, Crash lowered the side window and stuck an exaggerated length of elbow out of it.

"Now," he instructed, "for the irrational burst of speed."

And Demeter was duly pressed back into her seat as Crash's slablike trainer hit the floor.

Twenty minutes later the Metro stood double-parked on the All Saints Road, parallel with Portobello, before the hulk of the old Adonis. Crash was explaining that the techniques he had just demonstrated, and other mysteries to which he might soon introduce her, lay in the realm of advanced motoring; of such skills, Crash gently hinted, Demi could only dream of one day becoming mistress.

"But the same principle always apply. You show who own the road."

With a nod or two and a quiet clearing of the throat Crash fell into a high-minded silence. His thoughts lay, perhaps, in that land where advanced motorists, with many a veer and screech and pile-up, deployed their expertise. Or maybe he was pondering his very recent misadventure: the smudged white van, it had transpired at the next traffic lights, contained three uniformed policemen.

"Probably get off," mused Crash, who ought to know, "with a DWD."

"I'm sorry?"

"Driving Without Due."

"Sorry?" said Demi. And she sounded it: sorry she asked.

"Driving Without Due Care and Attention," Crash elaborated. "But you weren't. I'll be your witness. You were driving with incredible care. Everything you did was-?

Crash waved a great hand: it was not given to all, this grasp of the higher motoring mysteries. It was definitely not given to the police … His devout but wounded gaze turned to the fagade of the old Adonis. The All Saints Road, with its new poster galleries and tapas bars, had changed dramatically even in Crash's adult lifetime. But not so long ago (Crash nodded to himself) the old Adonis had loomed over perhaps the busiest and certainly the noisiest drug corner in West London: "a symbolic location," to quote Police Review. It was a drive-by, All Saints and Lancaster: the cars came and slowed, all night, and the shaved black heads bobbed up to the unwinding windows. The Adonis, the old super-pub with its sticky chandeliers and sodden carpet, its contrapuntal rock videos and the thick bank of dole-quaffing fruit machines, was the natural fulcrum of the play. And there you found the reverse apartheid of the drug economy, with the whites, in their frothing melee of malt beer, keeping the given distance from the sober but hot-faced brothers, who tended their Lucozades and Ribenas on the streetside bar. The Adonis. Its colonial symmetry and gaiety-where were they now? Effaced, abashed, behind planks and mesh wire. But if you (Crash grunted as he eased his neck round further), but if you… that bit there. A low door, to the side and down a step or two, and the guy within, watching and glinting. If you listened you could faintly hear the modest monotony of the music and-yeah-the sound of glasses clashing or cracking. So: the old Adonis refuse to die. It had found, in the eaves and runnels, a diminished and secondary existence: but continuation, all the same. Demi, who was watching Crash, saw a look of pleased indulgence show in his eyes. She didn't know, either, about the deep association between Adonis and rebirth, of his shared identity with Orpheus, and with Christ, who represented a power that could bring the dead souls back, as Orpheus had failed to do.