Iain Banks: Walking on Glass

Graham felt happier with this direct assault; this was just gay misogyny, not even genuine at that, but another of Slater's roles. He laughed and shook his head.

Slater shrugged and said, "Well, when it does go wrong, at least you know you can come running to me." He patted his right shoulder with his other hand. "I have very good shoulders for crying on."

"Not," Graham laughed, "while you're wearing that cap, chum." Slater narrowed his eyes and straightened the tartan cap on his head. "Well," Graham went on hurriedly, "I really have to go now," and took a couple of steps backwards.

"All right, then," Slater sighed wistfully. "Do all the things I wouldn't dream of doing, but don't forget what your Uncle Richard told you." He grinned, blew Graham a kiss, waved one hand, then stepped on to the crossing during a lull in the traffic. Graham waved back, then walked away. "Graham!" Slater called suddenly from the other side of the road. He turned to look, sighing.

Slater stood outside the gallery, in front of one of its large windows. He put one hand in his jacket pocket, and as he did so his bow tie lit up; the small red stones were really lights. They flicked on and off. Slater started laughing as Graham shook his head and walked away up Rosebery Avenue. "A quick flash!" Slater bellowed in the distance.

Graham laughed to himself, then had to break his stride as a long-haired biker in dirty denims bumped a large Moto Guzzi across the pavement in front of him and into the courtyard entrance of the buildings called Rosebery Square. Graham looked darkly at the man pushing the bike, then shook his head, telling himself not to be so stupid. The man looked nothing like Stock, the bike was quite different from the big black BMW Stock rode, and anyway omens were nonsense. Stock's time was over; he could tell that from what Sara had said over the phone that morning.

He breathed deeply and put his shoulders back, shifted the large black portfolio from one hand to the other. What a blue sky! What a great day! He thrilled to everything around him, no matter what; the brightness of the June day, the smell of cheap cooking and exhaust fumes; birds singing, people talking. Nothing would, nothing could go wrong today; he ought to find a betting shop and put some money on a horse, he felt so lucky, so good, so in tune.

Sacked!

Lips tight, fists clenched, eyes narrow, breath held, back straight, stomach in, chest out, shoulders back, Steven Grout stamped away from the depot he had just been fired from, away from their stupid job and those awful people. He came to a car parked by the kerb, stopped, took a deep breath, then walked on. Never mind the name of the road, he thought; they would only change it. He watched the cars and buses and vans and trucks pass by him, and calculated how far he had to go to get to the next parked car which would shield him from them.

The pavement had been much repaired, and it was difficult to synchronise his steps so that the middle of each foot fell exactly on the cracks between the paving stones, but with some concentration and a few judicious half-steps he managed it; then he came to a long blue-grey line of asphalt where a pipe had obviously been repaired, and walked along that instead, free from the worry of the paving stones between the cracks.

He still felt hot and sticky from the attack by the Microwave Gun. He thought back, again, to the confrontation in Mr Smith's office.

Of course, he had known they would use the Microwave Gun on him; they always did when he was up in front of somebody, whenever he was at a disadvantage anyway and needed all the help he could get, whenever he was going for an interview for a job, or being asked things by the Social Security people or even clerks in the Post Office. That was when they used it on him.

Sometimes they used it on him when he was waiting to be served by a barman, or even when he was just standing waiting to cross a busy street, but mostly it was when he was talking to somebody official.

He had recognised the symptoms as he was standing in Mr Smith's office.

His palms were sweating, his forehead was wet and itching, he felt shivery, his voice was shaky and his heart was beating fast; they were cooking, him with the Microwave Gun, bathing him in its evil radiations, heating him up so that he broke out in a lathering sweat and looked like a nervous kid.

Bastards! He'd never found the Gun, of course; they were very clever, very clever and cunning indeed. He had given up dashing through to adjoining rooms, running to look downstairs or above, craning his head out of windows to look for hovering helicopters, but he knew they were there somewhere all right, he knew what they were up to.

So he had to stand there, in the office of the Roadworking Operatives Supervisor in the Islington Council Seven Sisters Road Highways Department Depot, sweating like a pig and wondering why they didn't just get on with it and sack him as he listened to Mr Smith and his eyes hurt and he could smell his own body-odour again.

"... were all hoping that this would not be a continuing situation, Steve," Mr Smith said, droning nasally from behind the chip-board desk in his low-ceilinged office on the depot's first floor, "and that you would be able to consolidate your position here by forming a positive working relationship with the remainder of the road gang, who, in all fairness, I'm sure you'd be the first to agree, have done their very best to, well..."

Mr Smith, a man of about forty with large soft bags under his eyes, leant over his paper-strewn desk and looked down at the No-Nonsense pen he was fiddling with. Steven watched the pen, mesmerised for a second.

"I really do think... ah... Steve - oh, and please don't hesitate to interject if you feel you have anything you wish to articulate; this isn't a star chamber here. I want you to play a full and meaningful part in this discussion if you feel that thereby we can ah, resolve..."

What was that? He wasn't sure he'd heard that right. Something about a Star Chamber? What was that? What did it mean? It didn't sound like it fitted in with this period, this setting, this age or whatever you wanted to call it. Could Mr Smith be another Warrior, or even further up the hierarchy of Tormentors than he'd thought?

God! Those bastards and that Gun! He could feel sweat start to gather in the lines of his forehead and in his eyebrows. Soon it would roll down his nose, and then what? They might think he was crying! It was unbearable! Why didn't they just throw him out? He knew it was what they wanted to do, what they had planned to do, so why didn't they just do it then?

"... resolve this apparent impasse in some viable way conducive with the efficient operation of the department. I don't think I'm running a particularly tight ship here, Steve; we like to think that people will appreciate..."

Steven stood smartly to attention in the middle of the office, his hard hat held tightly under his right arm, close to his side. Out of the corner of his eye he could just see Dan Ashton, the road-gang foreman and union representative. Ashton was leaning, thick bronzed arms folded, against the edge of the doorway. He was about fifty, but the fittest as well as the oldest man in the gang; he stood there grinning unpleasantly, his cap pushed back on his head, a damp, unlit roll-up hanging from his mouth. Grout could detect its soggy odour even over the smell of Mr Smith's Aramis .

Ashton had never liked him either. None of them did, even the one or two who didn't continually make fun of him and tease him and play jokes on him.

"... over backwards to accommodate you, but it really does look, I'm afraid, as though this incident with the canal and the cat has to be just about the last straw... ah... Steve. I understand from Mr Ashton here -" Smith nodded at the older man, who pursed his lips and nodded back, "- that Mr ah..." Mr Smith looked at some of the papers on his desk for a moment,'... ah yes. Mr Partridge had to go to hospital for a tetanus injection and stitches after you struck him with a shovel. Now, we don't think he's going to press charges, but you must realise that if he did you would in fact be facing a charge of assault, and coming as this does on top of your other verbal and written warnings - all within, I'm afraid to say, Steve," Mr Smith sat back in his seat with a sigh and flicked through a few more of the papers on his desk, shaking his head at them, "a very short interval of time considering the length of your employment with us, and all regarding previous lapses in