Iain Banks - Whit

'So there's lots of places with flumes, then?'

'God, yeah; hundreds. I mean, these ones here are all right, but you should see some of the big ones they got abroad, the big outdoor ones; fuckin' brilliant, they are…'

'Right, goin' for the Black Hole again, right?' Ricky said, getting to the front of the queue.

'Right, lover,' Morag said, holding him by one shoulder and then patting his behind when his turn came.

'So Ricky's your boyfriend?' I asked her.

'Yeah,' she smiled broadly. 'Hunk or what, eh?'

'Oh, a hunk,' I agreed. 'How does he feel about you… you know, in the films?'

She put her head back and laughed. 'Is he jealous? Na; I think he's proud, and he likes watching, anyway. Besides,' she lowered her head to mine and dropped her voice. 'Don't tell him, right? But sometimes, right, doing the porn? I just pretend I'm faking it.'

She giggled, winking at me.

I looked at her, frowning. 'You mean you fake faking an orgasm?' I said, confused.

'Yeah,' she said, nudging me. 'Don't want to hurt his feelings, do I?' She glanced round. 'See you at the bottom.'

Terror, again. But this time I kept my legs crossed and hence avoided any orificial invasions. I was starting to appreciate how, for Morag, fluming might present a refreshing contrast with her day job.

'How did you become a porn star?'

'I was giving a concert-'

'The baryton?'

'Yeah; of course. I was doing all right with that, too, though it wasn't like you could get many people to come along; very small scale and select it was… but I was on the tube train going there, kind of dolled up, I suppose, when this guy came up and gave me his card and asked would I like to have some photos taken for a magazine? And I said, What sort of magazine? And he said a men's magazine, but one of the class ones, like. Well, I wasn't bothered one way or the other, but then he mentioned the money and I said, well, I'd have to think about it. Thought about it, called him next day, said okay, went to this stately home a week later where they were doing the shoot, took off me togs, the photographer recommended Frank as a manager and he got me into the films. Simple as that, really. I know I should have said something, written or something, but the communal letters kept telling me how proud everybody was of me playing the baryton and I felt I'd be letting people down, and I mean after all I had started off doing what I'd said I'd do, and I still do the occasional concert, every few months, like, and so I reckoned it was sort of all right and maybe even kind of ordained, anyway, because if it hadn't been for the baryton and me going to that concert and meeting the guy on the tube train then I wouldn't have got into porn in the first place, would I?'

'Hmm,' I said. Obviously, formulating elaborate justifications for deceit was not an area in which I held a monopoly. 'Do you enjoy it?' I asked, frowning.

'What, the porn?'

'Yes.'

She looked thoughtful. 'You know what?' she said, nodding at me. 'I love it.' She shrugged. 'I like lots of sex, I like being admired and I like the money. Sure beats working for a living.' She laughed. 'I'll give it another few years, then I think I might open my own chain of exotic lingerie shops.' She looked thoughtful, her gaze directed far away. 'Or go into flume design or something.' She shrugged again and went on filing her fingernails. 'I mean, it's kind of technical and cluttered, right enough, but it's very pure, really.'

We sat wet-haired in the cafe, watching the pool and the swimmers. I am sure I looked bedraggled. Morag looked like some fresh, glowing, blue-jeaned mermaid. Ricky was at the counter, queuing to fetch us our drinks.

We had each tried the other three flumes, though Morag and Ricky both kept going back to the Black Hole. I didn't, preferring the two convoluted medium tubes because they gave you time to appreciate the ride rather than just be terrified by it. I even liked the broad, shallow white tunnel, the slowest of the lot, which Morag and Ricky tried because they felt they had to for completeness' sake but declared was really there for wimps and sportive old-age pensioners, but which had the additional attraction of having a view for the first, half-transparent section, and a damn fine view at that, of Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat rearing up all green and brown against the blues and whites of the sky.

After a couple of hours of intense fluming, producing raw heels, shoulders and other pointy bits, we did a few lengths of the pool for exercise, and then decided to call it a day. Once we'd changed we'd headed for the café.

Morag put away her nail file in her little shoulder bag and sat back in her seat, stretching with lithe magnificence, her hands at the back of her neck pulling her damp hair away from her blouse. Lifting her arms like that had a dramatic effect on her bosoms; the effect it had on those present, however, seemed to obey a sort of inverted inverse square law; she gave no sign whatsoever of noticing. I wasn't about to, either, but men sitting at nearby tables stole furtive glances, males further away looked on with appreciative directness, and those surrounded by toddlers and damp towels twenty yards off across the cafe floor suddenly sat up straight and adjusted the position of their little plastic seats for a better view.

I gave a small laugh, leaning over the table. 'So, cousin, do I take it you've absolved me of being a stalker or an obsessive or whatever it was you thought I was?'

'Yeah,' she said, looking a little bashful. 'Well, I'm sorry about that, but it wasn't my fault, right?'

'No, I know,' I said. 'I think I know who's to blame.'

Ricky returned from the counter with a tray. I had a little pot of tea, Morag a black coffee and a mineral water, and Ricky a cola and a cheeseburger.

'So, what do you think's going on, then?' Morag asked me in a business-like manner.

'At the Community?' I asked. She nodded. 'I'm not certain,' I admitted. 'But I think Allan wants to take over.'

She frowned. 'But he's not a Leapyearian; how can he?'

'He's the one helping Grandfather with the revisions at the moment; that might even be the whole reason for getting me out of the way in the first place. I can't see how he can remove Leapyearianism from the Faith entirely and leave anything worth believing in, but he might be able to persuade Salvador that a real Leapyearian is male and so I don't count, or that there should be a division between the Elect of God, who'd be just a… a sort of figure-head, and the… executive, I'd suppose you'd call it - whoever actually runs the Order and the Community. They'd hold the reins.'

I looked over at Ricky, who was staring at me over his cheeseburger, his jaws wrestling with the food.

Morag saw me looking and glanced at him too. 'It's all right, Rick,' she said. 'Just God talk.'

He nodded, mollified, and redirected his concentration back to the cheeseburger.

'Maybe it's just me,' I said, shrugging. 'Maybe he feels I've wronged him somehow and he wants to destroy me personally…' I shook my head. 'No. No; I think he's doing it for himself, and for Mabon, his son.'

'Maybe he's frightened of you.'

I opened my mouth to protest that this could not be the case, but then thought of Allan's face and the expression I had seen on it too many times to count, the first time on the day I brought life back into the fox lying dead in the field by the road. I closed my mouth again and just looked down, shrugging.

'Or what about Salvador?' Morag asked. 'Sure it isn't the old man behind it all?'

'Not sure, but… fairly so. I think he just took advantage of the situation.' I laughed bitterly. 'To try to take advantage of me.'