Canal Dreams

by Iain Banks

  'Had fun?

  'Uh-huh. She passed the joint back.

  'Think we can get on?

  'I think we are.

  'Didn't want to like me at first, did you? He looked up at her.

  'No, she agreed, surprised. 'But I didn't hold out for long. Does everybody give in so quickly?

  'Oh no, he said. 'Some people never get to like me. There was silence for a moment; she heard the water lap, watched steam plume from the funnel of a freighter — half a mile away, and heading for the sea — and then heard its horn, echoing off the warehouses and hulls around them, announcing its farewell. He handed her back the spliff. 'Did you sleep with all those film stars? she asked him.

  He laughed. 'One or two. He looked up at her. 'I'm a man of easy virtue, Hisako.

  'Easily led astray. She nodded through the smoke, feeling dizzy.

  'I'm afraid so, he said, stretching his arms up behind his back, as though in a gesture of surrender, then reaching in and scratching the back of his neck vigorously.

  'Yeah, she said, studying the end of the joint, 'same here.

  He gave a sort of coughing laugh, looked at her. 'Really?

  'Really. Dangerous these days, but… She gave him the joint back.

  'Yes, of course, but… He nodded, looked out to the departing ship in the distance. He took a deep breath. 'Umm…

  'Yes?

  'Do you think…

  'Yes?

  'I might be able to tempt…

  'Yes.

  '… you back to… His voice slowed as he looked round at her.

  'Yes.

  '… my hotel? He grinned.

  'Yes.

  She rounded the stern of the Nadia, struck out for Le Cercle. The water stayed warm, and the waves small. She swam steadily, trying to find a rhythm that suited her body and the water, and felt half-hypnotised. She thought she heard thunder a few times. The wind did stiffen eventually, and the water became more choppy. The Nadia fell slowly behind her. The ship leaving for the open sea that misty dawn at Yokohama, years ago, an ocean away, had been a general cargo freighter.

  She wondered vaguely what the chances were it had been the Nadia.

  Le Cercle's pontoon was brightly lit; the rest of the ship looked dark in comparison. There was a man on the pontoon, scanning the waters with a nightscope. She angled away, towards the tanker's bows. Lightning flashed beyond the hills to the north-west, and thunder rolled across the dark lake, vague and long after. Rain was starting to patter down around her as she swam under the dark-on-dark cliff of the ship's port bow.

  Fairy tale, she told her reflection in the dark train window. Too good to be true. Brilliant and handsome and now only a few months later he wanted them to be true only to each other, and to be married, and to live together (he'd stay in Japan, never fly again, if she wanted; she told him not to be crazy, and worried that he might have been even half-serious), and have children if she wanted. He loved her, wanted her, was made whole by her.

  Sometimes he made her feel half her age, sometimes twice it. He could make her feel like a teenager, impressed by another's antics one second, struck dumb by his devotion; ardour, indeed, the next. Other times he seemed so energetically enthusiastic and excited — and even innocent, even naive — she felt like a grandmother, shaking her head over the wild excesses of youth, knowing it would come to no good, grumbling it would end in tears.

  She'd said she'd go to see her mother, think it over, talk it over. He wanted to come too, but she wouldn't let him. He'd been subdued and sad at the station, and only brightened when he saw a flower seller and bought so many roses she could hardly carry them. She'd left all but one with the guard, too embarrassed to cart them through the train. The one she'd kept lay on the table in front of her, its dark image on the table reflected in the rock-backed window glass.

  She rolled the rose around on the table, holding its stem and watching the velvet — soft petals flatten and spring back as they took the flower's weight on the table surface, then released it again. She wondered what to tell her mother. She'd kept the whole affair secret from her, as she always did. She didn't know if her mother had heard anything through the gossip pages or not; she didn't normally read them, and Hisako didn't think any of her mother's friends did either, but… Well, it would either come as a surprise or not; there wasn't anything she could do about it now. What would her mother say? She felt a heaviness in her at the thought her mother would probably be delighted, and encourage her. She wondered what that heaviness meant.

  She kept on rolling the rose to and fro, to and fro. How happy she might become, she thought. How happy and fulfilled and content. She put her thumb on a thorn and pressed, felt the pain and watched a tiny bright bead of red form on the pale surface. She had spent, she thought, so much time playing music with the feeling that this was to compensate, that she did it to add to life, to make restitution. She had lived quietly if not virtuously, and if she took time off she always knew she'd play better at the end of it. She'd kept her head down; never tried too hard to enjoy herself beyond her own pleasure in the music, the occasional lover and a small group of friends. She wasn't supposed to make too much of life, wasn't supposed to glory in her own existence too fully, too vivaciously.

  Because.

  After a while she stopped rolling the flower to and fro on the table, and took the single red rose, and shut it in the cello case.

  She still hadn't made up her mind when distant clanking noises, and a single rocking judder pulsing down the carriages announced the arrival of the relief engine. People clapped as the train moved. Life resumed, and she kept on thinking, round and round.

  She didn't deserve it, but then how many people ever had just what they deserved happen to them? It would be hell; he'd philander, he was younger after all; it would pass, this sudden rush of enthusiasm. Or they'd grow together, and he would. always love what would always be there in her, what he must love anyway because she wasn't half so attractive as all those film stars and models. No, it was too much; she'd make a fool of herself… but life was short, and something had to happen. Her mother was at the station, bright and full of life, looking younger than Hisako could remember. She was excited, didn't mention the three-hour wait. She must know, Hisako thought wearily.

  Mrs Onoda took her daughter's arm. She wanted Hisako to be the first to know. A new friend, a wonderful man; she was sorry she'd kept it quiet, but people talked and she had wanted to wait until it was official. She just knew Hisako would like him too. She was so happy! And, think; now you won't be a half-orphan any more!

  Hisako smiled, said she was very happy for her.

  Flushed the rose down the toilet that evening.

  She found the buoy, climbed up on to it. The rain came down in big, unseen drops, cold and hard. She rested a few minutes, looking up at the inverted V the tanker's bows made above her. The shape was more imagined than seen; the lights above were few and dim. The rain came harder, raking her face. She sighed, looked down, then shrugged, stood on the slightly tipped, slick top surface of the buoy, and took hold of the hawser sweeping up to the ship. She gripped it; wet, but not oily. She wrapped her legs round it too, gripping it with her ankles. Tensing her legs, she reached up and pulled with her arms. No problem.

  She went on up.

  By the time she got to the top, the rain was crashing down like pebbles off the back of a dumper truck; thunder bellowed in the hills. She peeped through the hawse pipe, saw only dim grey-black deck and spattering rain. She stuck her head. through, remembering the cameras. They were pointed sternwards, away from her. She crawled through, on to the deck, and found cover behind a winch housing. Rain clattered around her. She raised her head again, looking down the pipe-cluttered length of deck to the island of superstructure.

  She wondered what to do now. Why was she doing this?

  Because. Because she couldn't think of anything better to do.

  She laughed quietly to herself, and shivered inside the clinging fatigue
s.

  They had the red lights on in the bridge. She could see somebody moving there, in the dry, red warmth. Lightning lit the starboard side of the ship, throwing electric blue shadows over the white cliff of the superstructure.

  Not a weapon to her name, she thought. Not a thing to wield. Even the knife had gone when she took the belt off.

  She saw movement, and a uniform appeared in the rain-scattered distance, coming up from the steps to the pontoon, from the blazing fan of rain under the lights into the shadow of the lower deck. She watched the soldier as he was met by another tiny figure; they disappeared into the ship. Shortly afterwards the remaining lights went out all over the tanker, leaving only the red night-lights of the bridge burning.

  She was surprised at first, thinking that if they were really afraid of some sort of attack they ought to floodlight the vessel… but then she remembered the nightscopes. Perhaps it made sense after all; at first sight, anyway.

  She let her eyes adjust. She could see them on the bridge, far away. There were several, all watching through the nightscopes at first. She could see a place to hide under a nearby pipe cluster, so that if they turned on the lights again and used the television cameras, or came out looking, she could hide. There were two soldiers looking out after a while, then only one, sitting on a stool near midships in the bridge, sweeping from side to side and now and again getting up to look from each wing of the bridge.

  The thunder crashed and the lightning flickered overhead, lighting up the ships and hills and islands. After one flash, and while the man with the nightscope was looking out to port, she jumped over the first breakwater.

  She waited for the same conjunction before tackling the next breakwater, then wriggled along the rain-slicked deck to the shelter of the main trunk lines. Under the pipes she felt relatively safe, and had a clear run — or crawl — along half the deck to the midships valve-head cluster, where the pumps and switch gear were sited that accepted and discharged the cargo. Lightning flashed blue images of the pipe network above her across the deck, catching a million falling raindrops in an instant of falling. She started edging forward.

  She scraped and slid and coasted along the wet deck, blinking the rain out of her eyes. She pulled with her hands and elbows, pushed with her feet. She tried to think about what she ought to do, but nothing suggested itself. She suspected she'd had her share of luck that night, and these rattled, jumpy soldiers were not going to fall as easily as those on the Nadia. That had been a happy hunting ground; this felt wrong.

  Her crotch itched; she stopped and scratched. Raw, and despite it all she ought to have taken the time to have a proper bath. But there you were; she hadn't had the time, and -

  Suddenly, without warning, she was sick.

  There was little enough in her stomach, so it was mostly bile, but she watched what there was come out, and tried to do it as silently as possible, while feeling the deepest surprise. This was unexpected. She hadn't felt sick. She forced the last heave, spat, then rolled over under a welded collar between two lengths of pipe above her, where the rain was dripping so hard and fast it was an almost unbroken stream. She let the water splash into her mouth, rinsing and spitting and rinsing and spitting and then swallowing and swallowing.

  Huh, she said to herself.

  She got back on her front, and kept on crawling. The rain would soon rinse the sickness away; there'd be no sign for them to find. The lightning glare burst through the pipes above and threw black bars across her back.

  She got to the valve cluster and paused, looked up at the bridge again, through the pounding lines of rain. She watched for a while. Just the one man. Then two more came from behind. They held what looked like a SAM launcher. One of them took the nightscope and stood scanning the deck; she had to duck now and again, but watched when she could. It looked as though one of them was showing the man on the bridge how to work the launcher; holding it up, sighting, letting the other man repeat the actions. She ducked at each flash of lightning. The lightning was closer now, the thunder louder.

  She stayed ducked after one flash, thinking. She looked around her, checking the bow cameras but unable to see which way they were pointing through the driving rain. She shivered again in the cool wash of water glueing the fatigues to her skin, and ran her hand over the rough-painted surface of the valve-head controls. Her hand stopped, invisible.

  She patted the metal hatch cover.

  The catches came undone easily, and the hatch swung open. She waited.

  Darkness for a long time, then a brilliant flash, leaving an after-image. It was difficult to decide whether the controls here were set out similarly to those on the bridge, which she thought she could just about remember.

  She remembered something else, and decided she was sufficiently hidden from the bridge by the high, thick pipes of the valve cluster. She took out the cigarette lighter from the fatigues' breast pocket. It sputtered, clicking. She blew on it, shook it hard, then tried it again, using her other hand as an umbrella. The lighter hissed, made a series of clicking noises at the same time, then lit. The clicking noises stopped. Still sheltering it, she held the little yellow flame to the open white cavity of the pump controls. The flame lessened, shrank, and the hiss decreased. She shook the lighter but its light continued to fade, running out. Never mind; she'd seen all she wanted.

  She snapped the lighter off. Peeped at the bridge. No sign of concern; just the one man, scanning. The rain sang on the metal deck and pipes around her. She waited. The lightning preceded the thunder by ten seconds, then by five, then one or two. She put her hands on the switches.

  Lightning flared and thunder bellowed all around the ship; probably hit it, she guessed. She turned the switches. The echoes of the thunder were still dying away as the pumps beneath her feet started up, making the deck thrum. Red lights appeared in front of her eyes.

  She heard hisses and gurgles, then, over the noise of the rain, the rumble of the thick oil pouring out through the pipes and into the lake.

  She wondered how long it would take them to realise. She watched the bridge for a few seconds. Nothing. Same man, same actions. Quite undisturbed. She felt the deck tremble as the pumps pulled the oil from the tanks and threw it into the lake. She watched the man on the red length of the bridge for a while longer, her eyes screwed up, trying to drill her sight through the waves of rain. Nothing; nada. Hadn't even seen the damn stuff spewing out from the sides of the ship. Hadn't noticed the lights on the cargo-handling board on the bridge. She looked at the lighter in her hand, thought about trying to set fire to the torrent of oil pouring from the pumps over the side of the boat and into the lake, then looked up, mouth opening, into the night, and with a last hurried look at the lighter, put it away, squatted on her haunches, and thought. She nodded once to herself, then spent a long time looking through the rain, through a small space between two pipes she reckoned would screen her from the nightscope and the lightning, watching the man on the bridge. She started to worry about the lightning.

  After a while she got dizzy with tiredness. The storm was departing; the rain had settled to a steady downpour; the lightning had become less dramatic and urgent, the thunder less immediate and crackly.

  She felt the deck resound beneath her, and lay down in the pouring rain, only half-sheltered by the thick pipes above. She curled up, and slept.

  Hisako Onoda dreamed of a lake full of blood and a sky full of fire. She watched from the depths of space and saw a great lever strike the world; it rang false and shattered, disintegrating into all the separate states and creeds, beliefs and prejudices that had riven it over the years, blowing like seeds from a flower.

  She kept waking up, thinking she'd heard steps, or voices. Or maybe she only thought she kept waking up, she thought later.

  Blood and fire, the dreams were always there waiting for her when she drifted off again.

  When she did awake, properly, finally, the rain was gone, the first light of dawn was trying to burrow under the da
rk lid. of the sky, the deck still trembled beneath her, the air smelled thick and the lake was full of blood.

  12: The Heart of the Universe

  Her father died three months before she was born; she had never been held by him. They told her she was lucky, all the same; she might have been born deformed. It was years after the Pikadon, and maybe he'd have died of cancer anyway. That was the way it worked, by statistics. It came down to probabilities, a cellular image of the jeopardising indeterminacies that lay beneath the physical world, and were its absolute — but absolutely uncertain — foundations. So maybe the bomb did kill him, eventually, or maybe it didn't.

  They'd opened him up, hoping to deal with the tumour in his belly, but when they saw what was inside him, they just closed the incision again. He stayed in hospital, went home for a while to be with his pregnant wife, but after a few weeks the pain got so bad they took him back into the hospital once more.

  He'd been with his unit in Kaita, a town a few kilometres from the city suburbs, when the Pikadon came. They'd seen the lone bomber from the barracks; tiny in the sky. One of the men claimed he'd seen the bomb itself, a dot falling. They heard the sirens from the city, went back to cleaning their rifles.

  Then another sun lit the parade ground and the barrack buildings. They shielded their eyes, felt the heat, and watched dumbly while the light faded slowly and the vast cloud rose soundlessly into the sky, like the leg of a giant boot that had stamped upon the city. The noise came much later, like continuous heavy thunder.

  On the way to the city, to help, they met the burned people, and once passed a group of soldiers; young men like themselves, but looking like black men, stumbling along in a crocodile line down the dusty road, each man with one hand on the shoulder of the man in front, following the leader. The soldier at the head of the strange, silent column had one eye left; the others were all blind. They weren't Negroes. They were Japanese. They'd been closer, and watched the bomb all the way, until it exploded in the air above the city, and that was the last thing they were ever to see; the light had melted their eyes. The fluids were still wet on their charcoal-black cheeks.