The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps Read online

  ‘Is there anything else on the menu?’

  ‘Sure, lots of things.’

  ‘Then I’d order something else.’

  ‘You could still sit there and eat?’

  ‘It would depend on what I was doing in these people’s company in the first place.’

  ‘What if you disapproved of them?’

  ‘I’d try to steer the conversation towards the things I disapproved of, and then I’d be honest about what I thought was wrong.’

  ‘You don’t have a problem specifically with the duckling thing?’

  ‘Humans eat all sorts of animals. They slaughter pigs, who are much more intelligent than birds.’

  ‘So if an animal is dumb it’s OK to kill it?’

  ‘I’m not a butcher. Or a chef. I’ve chosen to do something else with my life. That’s a choice against killing, if you like.’

  ‘But what about the ducklings?’

  ‘What about the ducklings?’

  ‘You wouldn’t feel compelled to save them? For example, would you consider smashing the glass enclosure, so they could escape?’

  ‘Instinctively, I might. But it probably wouldn’t do those ducklings any good. If I was really haunted by what I saw in that restaurant, I suppose I could devote my whole life to re-educating the people in that society so they would kill the ducks more humanely. But I would rather devote my life to something that might persuade human beings to treat each other more humanely. Because human beings suffer so much more than ducks.’

  ‘You might not think so if you were a duck.’

  ‘I don’t think I would think much about anything if I were a duck. It’s higher consciousness that causes all our griefs and tortures, don’t you think?’

  ‘Would you step on a cricket?’ interjected one of the other questioners.

  ‘No.’

  ‘A cockroach?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You’re not a Buddhist, then.’

  ‘I never claimed to be a Buddhist.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that all life is sacred?’

  ‘It’s a beautiful concept, but every time I wash, I kill microscopic creatures that were hoping to live on me.’

  ‘So where’s the dividing line for you?’ the woman rejoined. ‘Dogs? Horses? What if the restaurant was frying live kittens?’

  ‘Let me ask you a question,’ he said. ‘Are you sending me to a place where people are doing terrible, cruel things to other creatures?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then why ask me these sorts of questions?’

  ‘OK, how about this one: Your cruise ship has sunk, and now you’re stuck in a life raft with an extremely irritating man who also happens to be homosexual . . . ’

  And so it went on. For days and days. So long, in fact, that Bea lost patience and began to wonder if he should tell USIC that his time was too precious to waste on any more of these charades.

  ‘No, they want me,’ he’d reassured her. ‘I can tell.’

  Now, on a balmy morning in Florida, having earned the corporation’s stamp of approval, Peter turned to face the driver and posed the question to which, in all these months, he hadn’t been given a straight answer.

  ‘What is USIC, exactly?’

  The driver shrugged. ‘These days, the bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does. Time was when a car company made cars, a mining company dug mines. It’s not like that anymore. You ask USIC what they specialise in and they tell you things like . . . Logistics. Human resources. Large-scale project development.’ The driver sucked the last of the Tang through a straw, making an ugly gurgling sound.

  ‘But where does all the money come from?’ said Peter. ‘They’re not funded by the government.’

  The driver frowned, distracted. He needed to make sure his vehicle was in the correct lane. ‘Investments.’

  ‘Investments in what?’

  ‘Lots of things.’

  Peter shielded his eyes with one hand; the glare was giving him a headache. He recalled that he’d asked the same question of his USIC interrogators, at one of the early interviews when Beatrice was still sitting in.

  ‘We invest in people,’ the elegant female had replied, shaking her artfully clipped grey mane, laying her scrawny, delicate hands on the table.

  ‘All corporations say that,’ Beatrice remarked, a bit rudely he thought.

  ‘Well, we really mean it,’ said the older woman. Her grey eyes were sincere and animated by intelligence. ‘Nothing can be achieved without people. Individuals, unique individuals with very special skills.’ She turned to Peter. ‘That’s why we’re talking to you.’

  He’d smiled at the cleverness of this phrasing: it could function as flattery – they were talking to him because it was obvious he was one of these special people – or it could be a preamble to rejection – they were talking to him to maintain the high standards that would, in the end, disqualify him. One thing was for sure: the hints that he and Bea dropped about what a fine team they’d make if they could go on this mission together fell like cookie crumbs and disappeared into the carpet.

  ‘One of us needs to stay and look after Joshua, anyway,’ said Bea when they discussed it afterwards. ‘It would be cruel to leave him for so long. And there’s the church. And the house, the expenses; I need to keep working.’ All valid concerns – although an advance payment from USIC, even a small fraction of the full sum, would have covered an awful lot of cat food, neighbourly visits and heating bills. ‘It just would have been nice to be invited, that’s all.’

  Yes, it would have been nice. But they were not blind to good fortune when it was offered. Peter had been chosen, from among many others who were not.

  ‘So,’ he said to the driver, ‘how did you first get involved with USIC?’

  ‘Bank foreclosed on our house.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Bank foreclosed on just about every damn house in Gary. Repossessed them, couldn’t sell them, let them fall apart and rot. But USIC made us a deal. They took on the debt, we got to keep the house, and in exchange we worked for them, for like, grocery money. Some of my old pals called it slavery. I call it . . . humanitarian. And those old pals of mine, they’re in trailer parks now. And here’s me, driving a limousine.’

  Peter nodded. He’d already forgotten the name of the place where this guy was from, and he had only the vaguest grasp on the current health of the American economy, but he understood very well what it meant to be thrown a lifeline.

  The limousine cruised gently to the right and was cloaked in cooling shade from the pine trees on the verge. A wooden road sign – the sort that normally advertised campsites, roadside grills or log-house holidays – announced an imminent turn-off for USIC.

  ‘You go to any sinking city in the country,’ continued the driver, ‘and you’ll find lots of people in the same boat. They may tell you they’re working for this or that company, but scratch underneath, and they’re working for USIC.’

  ‘I don’t even know what the letters in “USIC” stand for,’ said Peter.

  ‘Search me,’ said the driver. ‘A lot of companies these days got meaningless names. All the meaningful names have been taken. It’s a trademark thing.’

  ‘I assume the US part means United States.’

  ‘I guess. They’re multinational, though. Somebody even told me they started up in Africa. All I know is, they’re good to work for. Never screwed me around. You’ll be in good hands.’

  Into thy hands I commend my spirit, Peter naturally thought. Luke 23:46, fulfilling the prophesy of Psalms 31:5. Except that it wasn’t clear into whose hands he was about to be delivered.

  ‘This will sting some,’ said the black woman in the white lab coat. ‘In fact, it will be real unpleasant. You’ll feel like a pint of cold yoghurt is travelling up your veins.’

  ‘Gee, thanks. I can hardly wait.’ He settled his head uneasily in the padded polystyrene hollow of his coffin-like crib an
d tried not to look at the spike that was approaching his tourniquetted arm.

  ‘We wouldn’t want you to think there was anything wrong, that’s all.’

  ‘If I die, please tell my – ’

  ‘You won’t die. Not with this stuff inside you. Just relax and think nice thoughts.’

  The cannula was in his vein; the IV drip was activated; the translucent substance moved into him. He thought he might vomit from the sheer ghastliness of it. They ought to have given him a sedative or something. He wondered if his three fellow travellers were braver than him. They were nestled in identical cribs, elsewhere in the building, but he couldn’t see them. He would meet them in a month from now, when he woke up.

  The woman who had administered the infusion stood calmly watching over him. Without warning – but how could there be any warning? – her lipsticked mouth started to drift to the left of her face, the lips travelling across the flesh of her cheek like a tiny red canoe. The mouth did not stop until it reached her forehead, where it came to rest above her eyebrows. Then her eyes, complete with eyelids and lashes, moved down towards her jawline, blinking normally as they relocated.

  ‘Don’t fight it, just go with it,’ the mouth on the forehead advised. ‘It’s temporary.’

  He was too frightened to speak. This was no hallucination. This was what happened to the universe when you were no longer able to hold it together. Atoms in clusters, rays of light, forming ephemeral shapes before moving on. His greatest fear, as he dissolved into the dark, was that he would never see other humans the same way again.

  Acknowledgements

  THIS BOOK EXISTS BECAUSE Keith Wilson, Artist in Residence at Whitby Abbey during summer 2000, asked me to come and write a short story inspired by the English Heritage dig. My thanks to him for this, and for his guided tours of Whitby when Eva and I were there.

  A number of folk were generous with their time and expertise in advising me on details of fact. Any errors that remain are therefore due to my fault, my fault, my grievous fault, and should not be blamed on English Heritage, Cath Buxton (archaeologist), Stephen and Pam Allen (paper conservators), Carla Graham, Colin Manlove or the Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society. I also acknowledge the valuable work of Father Roland Connelly and historian Andrew White. As always, Eva Youren offered wise advice and felicitous ideas.

  No animals were harmed or coerced in the making of this story.

  Michel Faber

  February 2001

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Some Rain Must Fall

  Under the Skin

  The Courage Consort

  First published in Great Britain in 2001

  by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE

  This digital edition first published in 2008

  by Canongate Books Ltd

  Copyright © Michel Faber, 2001

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on

  request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84767 402 9

  www.canongate.tv