![]() ‘There’s the same issue with some of the uh, fine detail, but there’s nothing…’ ‘It’s good,’ I say, looking down at my notes. Actually he means Martin Cantor, the board’s thirty-six-year-old chair, and his nemesis. ‘If that doesn’t satisfy them, I don’t know what will.’īy them he means Resolute’s board of trustees. ‘Enough,’ Ess says now, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms above his head. Then she pulled away from me, gave a brittle sniff and said,‘Change of plan.You’re not going.’ Inside hers, golden cities, hidden worlds. Pressed her forehead, hard, into mine, as if trying to see inside my eyes. What I said to Alice, though, was,‘You’re right.’ Instead I did what I did and I’m doing what I’m doing. I could have stood up for him, stood by him. Alice has met Ess once.Īnd anyway, it’s not true. He’ll see you didn’t have a choice.’ Her confidence, her authority. I’m not carrying anything round with me.’ I held up my empty hands to illustrate the point, and she slapped them, one after the other, in the manner of a tribal greeting, or a tribal rebuke. ‘It’s not healthy, carrying all that round with you, all that whatever it is. Alice isn’t really foolable, or not by me she isn’t. And you’re not thinking any more about that silly stuff, are you? About Ess or anyone wanting to kill you, or…?’ Did you ever see anyone so pumped?’ Probably I was trying to put her mind at rest. ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I said.‘I’m pumped for this. This was Alice, two days ago, before I left for the airport. A brilliant and a – you know – hugely successful time.’ We work for Resolute Aviation and we’ve come to India to buy an antigravity machine. I’m twenty-eight, his personal assistant, not important at all. Raymond Ess is fifty-six, a senior executive, an important man. At first I assume he’s thinking, strategising.Then I realise he’s just sunbathing.įinally the eyes flip open and he says,‘Right.Where were we?’Īnd we turn back to our notes, our proposals, our plans. He shuts his eyes, tips his head back and sits silently smiling. But Ess seems happy, more than happy, where we are.Įvery few minutes he pauses. I would like to suggest we find somewhere else to hold our meeting. I tried shading it under the table, but the table is a latticework of metal, all chinks, and the pattern it threw onto the screen was ornate but not legible.The best I’ve come up with is to sit with my knees high, feet on the seat of my chair, the little computer steeply balanced in my lap, one hand round the upper edge of the screen, the other scrolling, dabbing at the virtual touchpad. I’ve had similar difficulties with my tablet held at the wrong angle, the screen is an oblong of blinding fire. Ess spends long moments with his nose in his notes, struggling to extract a word or a number from the field of dazzle the light makes of any page. The roof terrace with its swept tile and faux-imperial architecture – columns, pillars, Greek nymphs, Roman busts – isn’t really suitable for this meeting.The sun is so bright, insanely flashing we can barely see what we’re doing. He is in giddy high spirits he seems to be trembling with excitement. He talks quickly, laughs often, often for no reason I can make out. His hands are pressed together between his knees. SCREENIT HAND OVER NOSE MOUTH FREEHe sits eagerly hunched over the mosaic of paper he’s spread across the entire table surface, relegating our cups and plates to the free chairs on either side of us. I don’t know, and would fear to guess, how long Ess has spent asleep. We’ve been in the country for eight hours, at least five of which I’ve spent asleep. On the hotel roof terrace Raymond Ess and I are working through breakfast. ‘Then why are you going on this trip with him?’ She gave me a complicated look – amused, pitying, maybe just starting to be worried. You’re being fantastic, you’re being interesting…’ When I said all this to Alice, one night last week, she did her best not to laugh. Because it’s the only punishment that fits the crime. He’s going to stab me through the sheets with a kitchen knife, crush my throat with his speckled hands, and he’s not going to do it because he’s mad, though he is (stark, staring) he’s going to do it because it’s what I deserve. One night soon, when he finds out what I’ve done, Raymond Ess is going to slip quietly into my room and murder me in my bed. One way and another I’ve been thinking it for years, though I used to mean something like Raymond Ess is going to be annoyed with me or Raymond Ess is asking too much of me. This is the thought I can’t stop thinking. The Weightless World, by Anthony Travelyan Chapter 1 ![]()
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