N= They Ate the Truth 14

* * *

I'm in another hotel, not as nice this time. There's a woman with a
permanent scowl in the corridor outside my room, pushing a hoover up
and down the rust carpet with great force, as though she was trying to
scrape chewing-gum from paving slabs. The bedspread is a drab
butterscotch colour and there was a brillcreamed hair on the pillow
when I arrived.

Let me say something. I've never been that mad about Bond films, but
there's one I like and that one is On Her Majesty's Secret
Service.

I have this theory that you can tell something about a person from what
their favourite Bond film is - Goldfinger fans are classic, steady,
appreciative but not adventurous. Those who favour Live and Let Die are
dark and broody, a little dangerous and with a sense of humour that
their friends often don't get. Diamonds are Forever, idiosyncratic and
with taste but don't like to follow a crowd, The Man with the Golden
Gun people who like things stripped-down kept simple but they want
quality, they don't like crowds. People who like A View to a Kill are
just plain wrong.

But people who like OHMSS - they've got problems. They believe in
quiet, they believe that life is generally dull but puncuated with
flashes of violence and brilliance. And they believe that love, true
love, is going to end badly.

Just thought I'd say.

I've been holding a bottle of Havana Club by the neck for an hour. The
yellow and red on the label are the finest sharpest colours I've ever
seen. There's a leaflet came with it, telling me how to make Cuba
Libres. I miss those so much. But if I open this bottle, I'm not mixing
it with anything.

* * *

What Chesterton said has just knocked me off balance, I don't know if
I'm going to find myself again. When I was young, I did bad
impressions. All of the usual, but I remember saying once as I rattled
off twelve in a row for my unimpressed audience "I do so many voices I
might forget what my own sounds like. "

That gave me The Fear.

I didn't really see The Fear again until a stag weekend, bunch of us
all together drinking on a campsite in Derbyshire, ready to go into
Derby to go clubbing. Everyone in high spirits and then the groom just
said "If we go out tonight, one of us is going to get stabbed. I just
know it. "

The Fear. We went, and none of us got stabbed, although we did get
drunk and play moose-hunting. The groom's brother won, easily, with a
woman that could be described as nothing other than unspeakably
foul.

I've got it right now. It's a little like when you look out at the sea
and think about all the corpses that are in there somewhere and the sea
wants you, the sea wants to take you and add to its pile. And there's a
part of you, a small still voice that wants to go.

The neck of this bottle is the only thing that is holding me in this
world, and it's the last thing in the world I should be holding
onto.

Is it losing faith in Lorrie, learning that I might be losing her, or
the grey-goo problem? There's only two reasons why she didn't do her
job and report back about Johann van Gibt. She fell in love with him,
or she went over to his side, or maybe both. The both makes it worse,
not better.

And I'm finding out now that all that stuff I said about it not
mattering what she did in the past because she was a different person
was all just lies, said to make one or other of us feel better.

Grey-goo. Think about that. It is more comforting.

Eric Drexler came up with the phrase. It is connected with his ideas
about nanomachines, small replicating machines that can manipulate
atoms (when I say small, I mean to the extent that a grain of sand
appears like a cathedral, maybe smaller). This manipulation of atoms,
says Drexler, can mean that you can make anything, literally anything,
with just some nanomachines and some raw materials - fancy a steak?
Toss in some chemicals, some grass and some nanomachines and they'll
knit you the juiciest you've ever tasted.

And the best thing about nanomachines, what they're absolutely best at
making is other little nanomachines. Just like our DNA, they are
copying machines. One will make a copy, both will make two more? and so
on.

This is Drexler's Grey-goo problem. Suppose the machines get out of
control, or someone directs them badly or with evil intent ? They copy
so efficiently that within a day, they'd swamp the earth, and you
couldn't stop them. Why grey-goo? Nobody knows that except Drexler -
maybe seeing the Blob on television the day before.

Van Gibt has invented insects that eat guilt, he has taken a Queen,
from which he can produce many, many more insects. There's an awful lot
of Guilt in the world. With enough insects he could tear through this
country, his bugs just chewing people up and swallowing their secrets.
There's any number of things he could do, if he was minded to.

This is why I'm starting to think a lot about James Bond movies.

If the bugs eat everyone, maybe I'll be the only man left in England.
They won't eat me. I don't feel guilty. I don't feel anything except
The Fear.

I've got to get out of this room, I'm as thin as the wallpaper. There's
nothing to me, I'm like the slender sticks of graphite you find inside
a propelling pencil.

Bill. I promised I'd phone Bill.

* * *

I try to push cheer into my voice as I ring from the payphone. I'm
still holding the bottle of Havana Club and I don't care how many
people look at me, the cap is still screwed on. I ring Bill at his
local again.

"How're things? " I ask him, "The stranger still following you? Maybe
at the bar ordering a tomato juice?"

Bill laughs, "He was here earlier, but he went to the khazi. Won't they
be tapping this phone?"

I shrug, pointlessly, "Probably not. Now they know I can't help them
find Lorrie or Van Gibt, there's no point knowing where I am. "

"Are you alright? " asks Bill, "You sound really? I don't know, small.
"

There's some sort of noise by the telephone, I can't tell what's going
on.

"Hello, " says a voice down the telephone. It has a quality to
it.

"Excuse me, " I say, "I'm trying to talk to my friend. Put Bill back
on. "

"Bill's having a little sit down, " says the voice. That's the quality,
I can hear it in 'little'.

He's Dutch, this man.

The bottle makes an interesting noise as it smashes, crunchy yet
wet.