MARTIN AMIS - THE INFORMATION

"Did anything happen between Gwyn and Belladonna? I need to know because I'm doing a long piece about him. For the papers."

"Oh yeah."

Richard thought it might look good if he wrote this down. He produced his checkbook-all scrolled and furled.

"I get it," said Darko. "Checkbook journalism."

"… Do you want a drink? At last. We can have that 'jar.' "

"I'm out of here. And you're a piece of shit. She did his favorite, right? She's way out there. She wanted them to die together."

"What? In the poetic sense?"

"What? She ain't mega-well. She's positive, man."

It took a moment. But Richard's body was quicker than his mind. His body was walking past a dry cleaners' on a warm day: it breathed its false breath on him, and a hot damp gathered in every crevice of his clothes.

"Jesus. What about you? Are you all right??

"Ranko-he's got it. But I'm clean."

"Stay well, Darko. Stay well."

Left alone, he sat for half an hour with the crossword on his lap. He still had his pen out but he wasn't called upon to use it. The only clue he was sure about was 13 across (eight letters). There was only one possible answer: shithead. And that couldn't be right.

He thought: the lion will lie down with the lamb. The lion can and must lie down with the lamb. But he doesn't have to fuck it. Unless they both say it's cool.

Come to Denial.

Denial. For that "holiday of a lifetime." Or just to "get away from it all" and take a well earned "break."

Your room, ideally designed for comfort, offers a panoramic view of the ocean setting. In the restaurant you may sample typical local cuisine or delicacies from our international menu. Before your meal, why not enjoy a "cocktail" in the "Crow's Nest" bar?

In Denial, amenities abound. There is a wide variety of activities and the finest entertainment. Hunt for "bargains" in the bustling market town. Or simply recline by the pool and "relax."

Whilst we reserve the right to increase our prices at any time, once you pay your deposit the price of your holiday as shown on your invoice will not be increased unless you amend your booking. No refunds will be made for cancellations, exchange rate movements, or cost adjustments that would otherwise decrease the holiday price.

So book now for the sun and fun of Denial. Denial: the true "never never" land of all your dreams .. .

But the information comes at night. The communications technology it picks is not the phone or the fax or the E-mail. It is the telex-so its teeth can chatter in your head. The information makes sleep interdisciplinary, syllabus disciplines, and then disciplines unknown or not yet devised: eschatoscopy, synchrodesics, thermodonture.

The information is advertising a symposium of pain. Pains of all faiths and all denominations. These are your little ones, these are your pretty ones. Become accustomed to their voices. They will grow louder, and more persistent, and more persuasive, until they're all there is.

It is ordinary and everyday. On the beach the waves do it ceaselessly, gathering mass and body, climbing until they break and are then resum-moned into the generality with a sound like breath sucked in between the teeth.

Weakness will get you where you are weakest. Weakness will be strong and bold, and make for your weak spot. If in the head, then in the head. If in the heart, then in the heart. If in the loins, then in the loins. If in the eyes, then in the eyes. If in the mouth, then in the mouth.

The information is nothing. Nothing: the answer is so many of our questions. What will happen to me when I die? What is death anyway? Is there anything I can do about that? Of what does the universe primarily consist? What is the measure of our influence within it? What is our span, in cosmic time? What will our world eventually become? What mark will we leave-to remember us by?

"Door," said Richard. "The door. I-"

"What is it?"

"Just sad dreams. It isn't anything."

"Hush now," said Gina. "Hush . .."

It was seven o'clock and Gwyn Barry was driving westward into a low sun: into the bloodbath of sunset. The one-way street fled through the tunnel of his rearview mirror; and above his head a ragged and sclerotic cloud dangled from the sky, an outcast from a superior system: it looked like an unforgivable deepsea fish whose bad radar had taken it where it should not go-a disgrace to the bright-ringleted shallows. Thus the ambience was briefly painterly and Parisian: clarity on which a shadow is soon to fall. Had he been younger (say seventeen), or a different kind of person, he might have marked it, its queasy numinousness. But he was Gwyn Barry, and he was coming back from his hour with the pro at the Warlock, and he was having drinks and dinner with Mercedes Soroya, who had a proposal for him, and the Profundity thing would be announced that night at 2200 hours-and he was driving, in a city, which takes part of the mind and plugs it in somewhere else, into the city and the city's sticky streets.

Up ahead an orange van stood athwart the narrow entrance to Sutherland Avenue. Gwyn's car slowed and, at a respectful distance, rolled to a halt. He could see through the dusk-lit slot of the van's side windows: empty, like something brain-dead. He looked around, expecting to see the nearby berk who would shortly climb into it and drive it away or at least open its bonnet and stand there staring at it with his hands on his hips. There was hardly enough time for impatience to gather (he wasn't Richard after all, who would have been impatient already, whatever was happening), hardly enough time to give his horn a coaxing toot . . . When Gwyn felt the car jolt he was less surprised by the impact, which was not severe, than by the affront to his spatial awareness: a second ago the rearview mirror had been clear, the street bare, the evening light still and heavy. He turned. An old wood-ribbed Morris Minor occupied the breadth of his tinted back window. At its wheel, an old lady in a rimless fruitbowl hat and a white shawl, and also wearing the pleading look that old ladies wear. Sumptuously reassured, Gwyn felt love for the old lady, for the white shawl, for the wooden ribs of the innocuous Morris. Yes- wait-she was climbing out. Gwyn undipped his seatbelt. He would be wonderful about it. He didn't know the old lady's name. The old lady was called Agnes Trounce.

He stepped into the rosy light, under the gut-colored cloud. He veered round affrontedly as the orange van gave a neigh out of nowhere and reeled off at speed down the open avenue. He turned again: the old lady, her figure bent, was walking away too fast between the parked cars, and the second door of the ribbed Morris was opening. They came out low, and then they straightened. One had hair of pale ginger and invisible eyebrows. The other was thin, with black hat pulled down and black scarf pulled up and black glasses looping the central strip of his face. Gwyn was entirely ready. He was without reflexes, without gestures. All he felt was apology and panic and relief.

"What you call my mum?"

"What?"

"Nobody," said Steve Cousins, coming forward and reaching under his coat for the car tool, "and I mean nobody, calls my mother a cunt."

The sun was looking down on this, but not quite sincerely. The sun is very old, but the sun has always lied about its age. The sun is older than it looks: eight minutes older. The sun, to us, is always as it was eight minutes ago, when its light began the journey across the eight light-minutes. As Steve Cousins and Paul Limb (backup) moved in on Gwyn Barry, the sun was really eight minutes older than it looked, eight minutes redder, eight minutes deeper in the sky. This opened up a gap in time.

Eight minutes ago Crash was behind the wheel of the blue Metro (under its roof rack of ads and L-signs), half a mile to the east, showing Demeter Barry how you negotiated speed bumps at fifty miles per hour.