Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [229]
Dunfermline. I’d addressed many packages to his place there, but had vaguely thought it was a suburb of Edinburgh. Wrong: over the Forth, apparently. My mental picture changed to Highland mountain ranges.
‘You sure we have time?’
He set down an empty glass. ‘See how far we go.’
We almost ran down Cockburn Street, across the Waverley Bridge again then up around the back of a Waterstone’s and a Burger King to a large pub that seemed to have only a side entrance. High ceiling, tiled walls, murals, leather seats, marble, polished brass and hardwood.
‘A veritable people’s palace,’ I observed as we sat down. ‘It’s like something from one of your degenerated workers’ states.’
Reid grinned. ‘The beer would be cheaper.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘See what they did to Budweiser?’
‘Shocking,’ Reid said. ‘There ought to be a law.’
I nodded at the murals. ‘Heroes of the Industrial Revolution…is that Watt? Stevenson?…they should have one of Adam Smith seeing the invisible hand.’
‘Capitalist realism,’ Reid said.
‘Something you’ve got into, apparently.’
‘Yes, I’m glad to say.’ Reid leaned back, stretching out in his seat. ‘It’s the only game in town.’
‘Yeah, well, you should know.’
‘Damn’ right I do!’ he said forcefully. ‘I haven’t changed my ideas, long-term – but I know a defeat when I see one. Getting over the end of the Second World will take generations, and it won’t be our generations. The last time I hung out with the left was during the Gulf War. The kids don’t know shit, and the older guys –’ he grinned suddenly like the Dave I knew better ‘– that is, the ones older than us, they look like men who’ve been told they have cancer.’
‘And can’t stop smoking, eh?’
‘Ha! OK, Jon, we still have a bit of business to settle.’
‘Fire away.’
‘The brutal honest truth is you’re not likely to get a better offer. Face it, man. You’re forty, you’re nobody, and you’re getting nowhere. The chances are you’ll end up hawking space junk around SF conventions and forgotten ideas around fringe organisations for the rest of your life.’
I shrugged. ‘There are worse ways to live.’
Dave leaned towards me, almost jabbing his cigarette in my face with his emphasis. ‘And there are better, dammit!’
‘I know, I know. But I’ll get there my own way. The whole free-market thing still has a long way to run, and even space is becoming fashionable again. People are going to see that new movie, what is it? – Apollo 13, and think, “Hey, we did that way back then! Why can’t we do it now?” The West will get back into space fast enough when they have the Chinese on their ass. Or somebody’ll give us a Sputnik-style shock. And look, even Cochrane seems to think I’m onto something.’
‘Aach!’ Dave’s inarticulate sound conveyed a weight of Highland scepticism. ‘That was ninety-nine percent bullshit and flattery. Maybe one percent keeping a weather-eye on the contingencies.’
‘Sure, but I’d rather have that one percent than sell out.’
‘Stop bloody thinking about this as selling out! Christ, I’d take money from Nirex or Rio Tinto Zinc if they gave me a free hand with it. This is getting there your own way. This is all legit. On the square and on the level –’
He realised what he was saying and laughed. ‘OK, old Ian is in the Craft but that’s got nothing to do with it!’
‘Yeah, well, I’m kind of holding out for the Illuminati…So that’s the deal, is it? They put up the money and I do what I like with it?’
‘No hassles so long as you get results.’
‘Measured how?’
‘Oh, rebuttals, airtime, exposés of where the environmentalists get their bloody money from. Parents making a fuss about Green propaganda in schools.’ He shifted into a semblance of an English working-class accent, or at least a permanently aggrieved tone. “In my day we didn’t call it destroying rainforest, we called it clearing the jungle, and I think there should be a bit of balance, know what I mean?”’
It was