Canal Dreams (1987) by Iain Banks

Author:Iain Banks
Format: epub
Published: 1987-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

Conquistadores

They took her across to the Nakodo in Le Cercle’s Gemini; the one she and Philippe used on their dives. The sunlight was bright on the water through the patchy cloud, and she hugged her cello case to her, gaining some distant comfort from its leather smell. Sucre sat in the bows, facing her, mirror shades showing the cello case, her, and the vencerista at the outboard. There was a small thin smile on his face; he hadn’t answered any of her questions about why they were heading for the Nakodo with the cello. He kept the Kalashnikov pointed at her the whole way across. She wondered what would happen if she threw the cello case at him. Would it stop the bullets? She didn’t think so. He would probably puncture the Gemini if the gun went off on automatic; maybe he would even hit the vencerista at the stern, but her own chances of surviving would be small.

She imagined, nevertheless, throwing it at him, leaping after it; Sucre somehow missing it and her, her grabbing his gun, perhaps knocking him overboard (though how to do that without losing the gun, strapped round his shoulders?), or just knocking him unconscious, still getting the gun from him in time to turn and fire before the man in the stern could reach for and fire his own machine-gun…yes, and she could swim away from the probably sinking Gemini, using the cello case as a life raft, and rescue all the others or get word to the outside world, and everything would be just fine. She swallowed heavily, as though consuming the wildness of the idea. Her heart beat hard, thudding against the cello case.

She wondered how often people had been in such a situation; not knowing what was going to happen to them, but so full of fearful hope and hopeless fear they went along with whatever their captors were arranging, praying it would end without bloodshed, lost in some pathetic human trust that no terrible harm was being prepared for them.

How many people had been woken by the hammering at the door in the small hours, and had gone—perhaps protesting, but otherwise meekly—to their deaths? Perhaps they went quietly to protect their family; perhaps because they could not believe that what was happening to them was anything—could be anything—other than a terrible mistake. Had they known their family too was doomed, had they known they were themselves already utterly condemned and without hope, destined inevitably for a bullet in the neck within hours, or for years—even decades—of toil and suffering in the camps before a cold and disregarded death, they might have resisted then, at the start, when they still had a chance, however futile their resistance might finally be. But few resisted, from what she knew. Hope was endemic, and sometimes reality implied despair.

How could you believe, even in the cattle trucks, that what had been the most civilised nation on earth was preparing to take you—all of you; the

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