I got up on one elbow again. ‘And do I think reason should replace irrationality? Well, yes. Yes, I do. Guilty as charged. And, bless it, society really is to blame. Society and education and enquiry and doubt and argument and disputation and progress; all the schools and libraries and universities, all the scholars and monks and alchemists and teachers and scientists. Faith is fine for poetry, for images and metaphors and art and for telling us who we are, who we’ve been. But when faith tries to describe the world, describe the universe, it just plain gets it wrong. Which wouldn’t matter if it admitted it was wrong, but it can’t, because all it’s got is its unwavering certainty in its own infallibility; the rest is smoke and mirrors, and admitting imperfection brings the whole lot tumbling down. There are no crystal spheres, and the planets are not the result of some sky god’s wet-dream. If that is supposed to be taken literally, then it’s a lie, plain and simple. If it’s a metaphor, then it has bugger all to do with the way things really work. Reason works, the scientific method works. Technology works.
‘If people want to respect their environment by believing that the fish they eat might have been an ancestor, or learn to lower toilet seats because their chi is leaking out, I’m happy to accept and even honour the results even if I think the root of their behaviour is basically barmy. I can live with that, and with them. I hope they can live with me.’
She spread her hand flat against my chest. I could feel my heart beating hard. I shouldn’t let this sort of thing get to me like this, but I had no choice. This stuff was important to me; I couldn’t help it.
‘Sometimes,’ she said quietly, looking at her own hand, or perhaps at my skin. ‘Sometimes I think we are like different coloured bishops on a chess board, you and I.’
‘Bishops? After all I’ve just said?’
She smiled, still spreading her hand on my chest, as though trying to span the distance between my nipples. ‘Better to be a queen,’ she agreed.
‘You’ll just have to take my word for it that I’d rather be a pawn than a bishop. At least they can transcend their origins.’
‘I believe you.’
‘Or a knight. I’ve always liked the fact a knight has what is basically a three-dimensional move on a two-dimensional surface. And the castle; there’s something about the bluff, blunt power of the rook that attracts me as well. And it does do a potentially three-dimensional thing, too, just once, come to think of it, castling. Bishops are more devious, somehow, sliding in between pieces like a knife through ribs. The king, of course, is simply a liability.’
‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘of bishops on opposing sides, and of different colours as well. Just the two of them there on the chess board, with no other pieces present.’
I nodded. I saw, now, what she meant.
‘They could never connect,’ I said. ‘They could slide past each other for ever, but never affect. They appear to inhabit the same board, but really they don’t. Not at all.’
She looked up at me with heavy-lidded eyes, her head tipped fractionally to one side. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘Perhaps. And is that us?’
‘Maybe. Maybe all men and women. Maybe all people.’
‘For ever? Without exception? Without hope?’ I tried to say it lightly.
She took my cock in her hand, then brought her other hand out from underneath her head and cupped her sex. ‘We connect here…’ She smiled. (A smile, it seemed to me just then, fit to light up the universe inside the skull; a smile, indeed, to light up two. A smile to illuminate infinities.) ‘… That will have to do for now.’
Seven. SEXUAL PIQUE
‘‘Nikki! Oh my God! What have you done?’
‘Verhoeven? Underrated?’ I thought about this. ‘How?’
‘Hendrie. Aston Villa. Separated at birth.’
‘Wanking; why the bad press?’
‘Knock-knock.’
‘You know; all mouth and no trousers.’
‘The hell with you, grounded on Mount Arafat.’
Craig was having a Hogmanay party at his place in Highgate.
‘Ken, hi! What? Oh, I cut my hair. Like it?’
‘No! It’s-’
‘Shorter. Easier to wash. Different.’
‘Yeah, and sort of browny-black. Are you mad?’
‘You sound like my dad.’
‘But you had beautiful hair!’
‘I still do, thanks.’
‘Fink about the endin of Total Recall.’
I sniggered.
‘Zactly.’
‘What d’you mean “Zactly”? You can’t just say “Zactly” and look all justified and smug like that. Explain yourself, man.’
‘Wot was that reaction of yours there then, what was that all about?’
‘It was about a totally preposterous ending featuring the Pyramid Mine – a biggish hill but still less than a pimple on a planetary scale – emplacing an entire Martian atmosphere at what appeared to be Standard Temperature and Pressure in about half a minute, complete with milky clouds and everything, in time to put Arnie and the ingenue’s eyes back into their sockets about a minute after they started haemorrhaging, all with no lasting ill effects whatsoever to bodies either planetary or human.’ I thought about what I’d just said. ‘Or Arnie’s, for that matter.’
Ed nodded. ‘Zactly.’
‘You’re doing it again! Will you stop with the fucking “Zactly” shit already?’
‘Hee hee hee.’
‘Yeah, and the “Hee hee hee” thing is no great improvement. ’ I took Ed by the shoulders and through gritted teeth said, ‘What the fuck do you mean?’
‘Wot I mean is,’ Ed said, giggling, ‘right, is that it is basically so fuckin preposterous a endin that it can only mean, right, that Arnie, is character that is, must still be in a virtual reality dream. None of the endin’s been real, azit?’
I opened my mouth. I took my hands off his shoulders. I wagged a finger at him. ‘Hmm,’ I said.
‘An that therefore, like, that Verhoeven geezer is a subversive genius.’
I stood there, nodding, trying to recall more of the earlier parts of the film.
‘Course,’ Ed said, ‘it’s only a feery.’
‘Hendrie who?’
‘Hendrie; plays for Villa. You must have seen him.’
‘No I mustn’t. Why?’
‘He looks like Robbie Williams.’
‘… Craig, you need to get out more.’
‘I was out. I went to the match. That’s where I saw him.’
‘Okay, you should stay in more.’
‘Phil, “Wanking; why the bad press?” is not funny. Now, “Button pushers; why the bad press?”; that has a modicum of comedic value. Only a modicum, not enough to actually use in the show or anything, but I employ it purely as an example.’
‘I was thinking of a new phone-in feature.’
‘Right. Well, there are ladies on the end of premium-rate phone lines dedicated to ensuring this sort of thing is already well catered for. I’m told.’
‘That wasn’t what I was thinking of.’
‘Well what, then? A sponsored wank-o-thon?’
‘No no no. Right; it’ll be called Get a Hold of Yourself.’
‘Uh-huh. You’ve always been jealous Chris Evans had that Breakfast Show feature where a girl got her boyfriend’s “lollipop” in her mouth and recited lyrics, haven’t you?’
‘Nooo; look-’
‘Phil; no. Just leave it.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t think-?’
‘I think you should go and talk to Craig.’
‘Who’s There?’
‘ Tijuana.’