Transition

Just as well; he discovers that the villa was flooded in the last Category 5 and so, after some problems finding anybody still around and doing the jobs they’re fucking being paid to do, he hires an ancient walk-through delivery van from a friend and loads all the stuff he can carry from the villa into it: televisions, computers, hi-fis, scuba gear, rugs, pieces of designer furniture, some Benin bronzes, a couple of full-size replica terracotta warriors, various paintings and so on. It’s exhausting, but he’s sure it’ll be worth it. He parks up on higher ground, behind a sturdy-looking water tower just outside George Town, and sits there through the night, the winds shrieking around him and the truck, laden though it is, shaking and bouncing on its shot, overloaded springs.

The face of one of the terracotta warriors, standing right behind his seat, looks inscrutably over his shoulder throughout the night, either angel of death or guardian angel – Adrian can’t decide which. The disturbing thing is that the company making the replicas let you specify what you wanted their faces to look like, and Adrian chose his own face for both, so there’s basically a stony-faced version of himself standing right behind his seat the whole time.

The water tower makes some terrible groaning noises during the night and scares him half to death, but it doesn’t fall down and survives intact.

In the afternoon of the next day, when the hurricane has passed, he drives the beaten-up van back along the leaf- and wreckage-strewn road to discover the villa is intact and unflooded; almost undamaged. His luck has held yet again and he is still invincible. He grins, reaches behind him and pats the cheek of the terracotta warrior: guardian angel, then. But on the way down to the villa, whooping and hollering, he loses control of the truck and it slams into a ditch.

All his possessions in the back come sliding forward and crush him to death.

Bisquitine remains Empress of all she surveys, just as she always has been.

All right, I lied about the quiet and normal life bit. So I’m unreliable. And there was no deer, or fox, or any other form of wildlife involved. What there was, was me; briefly inside his head as he drove away. Long enough to unfasten the bastard’s seat belt and tug hard on the steering wheel before dancing back out of his head again an instant before the crash.

It was as long as I could have stayed in there anyway, and it hurt, plus it wore me out for days.

But it’s a start.

Iain M. Banks

Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial acclaim with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. However, it was his 1987 novel CONSIDER PHLEBAS which introduced his remarkable talent to the SF community, and also saw the addition of the 'M' to his name – an addition which remains a distinguishing feature of his SF work. He has since written a further 5 SF novels, and a collection of SF short stories, THE STATE OF THE ART, all published by Orbit. Described by William Gibson as 'a phenomenon… wildly successful, fearlessly creative', he was acknowledged as one of the Best of Young British Writers in 1993, and lives in Fife, Scotland.