Espedair Street

already got a prototype DAT cassette machine, smuggled out of Sony by a well-paid mole). Putting on a record was a small ritual for Wes. At home, he wore white gloves when he handled an album.

He finally brought his computer fetish and his mania for perfect sound together when he got hold of a used IBM mainframe and had recording-studio tapes transferred directly onto discpacks; he could then programme an entire evening's listening from his computer terminal. No scratches, no rumble, no tracking errors. Cost him well into six figures just for the hardware, and he was temporarily sickened when CD came out, but it kept him happy for a few years.

The IBM machine was installed in his house on the north Cornish coast, along with frightening amounts of surveillance equipment and some very powerful all-weather strobe lights...

'We need a bigger sound system, man.' I breathed in hard through both nostrils and faced into the darkness. My nose was numb, the back of my throat felt thick. I felt faster than a speeding innuendo and sharper than a rad- fem's tongue.

Both barrels. Here it comes. Columbian nirvana. I felt like the top of my head had been blown off and replaced with a diamond. 'What?' I said instantly, glaring at Wes. 'Bigger? You want a bigger sound system than we've got already? Are you crazy? We could knock small buildings down with the one we've got. Get anything more powerful and it'll be covered by the SALT agreement. We're registering as low-yield underground weapon tests already. Right now we use more electricity than some African countries generate; what are you trying to do; cause blackouts? You cornered the market in candles or hurricane lanterns or something? Christ almighty, have you seen the size of our speaker stacks? They're like office blocks; people live in them. There's a ten-person squat going on in the stage-left bass stack, didn't you know? Been there for two years and the roadies only noticed because the squatters applied to put in main drainage. What...'

'Calm down, man. Stop exaggerating.'

'You want to saddle us with fifty thousand law suits from people with no eardrums and you accuse me of exaggerating? Shee-it.'

We were standing on the long front porch of the house along the coast from Newquay. Wes didn't have a name for it yet. He was still thinking about it. I'd suggested 'The Plumbers' because the place overlooked Watergate Bay, but Wes didn't seem to think much of this idea, and I'm not even sure he'd heard of Watergate, at the time or since. 'Dunbuggin' might have been another name for the place, except that it could not have been less appropriate.

It was long after midnight and Wes' party was just starting to hit the plateau phase. Music thumped out from the big drawing room on the far side of the house. It was a dark, close night; no sign of stars or moon. The air smelled sweet and fresh, alternately scented by the land and by the sea, which could be heard but not seen, beating and crashing against the rocks a hundred feet or so from the house.

We stood looking out into the Atlantic darkness and shared a joint. Wes sat down at a garden table and fiddled about with the six-inch reflector telescope standing on the porch. God knows what he expected to see.

He'd been quiet for all of two seconds. I couldn't bear it.

'You want a bigger sound system?' I said, just to check.

'Well.' Wes looked thoughtful. 'Not necessarily bigger... just louder.'

'You're mad.'

'Maybe, Weird, maybe... but we're not loud enough. We need more decibels, man.'

'Hearing aids,' I decided. 'You've cornered the market in hearing aids and you're trying to drum up trade, or organ up trade. Well, it won't work. You'll have the Monopolies Commission and the anti trust people onto you. Not to mention the British Medical Association and the Food And Drug Administration. My advice to you is, forget it.'

'Do you know if any other bands are using electrostatic speakers?' Wes said thoughtfully. He looked through the telescope's eyepiece into the pitch-black overcast.

'Jesus, now he wants to electrocute us. You're a sick man, MacKinnon. There's something wrong with your filters; the white noise is coming through. Your brain's envelope is torn. Return To Zenda. Who is number one?'

'Give me that jay, Weird; you're gibbering.'

'God, I feel good. Could we go swimming? I feel like going swimming. Think anybody else would feel like swimming? Where's Inez; have you seen her? You want to come swimming?'

'Na, man. Don't do it anyway, like. You'd probably imagine you could swim to New York and we'd never see you again.'

'A length? No; I was only going to do a couple of widths. Want me to bring back some Guinness from Dublin?' I was jumping up and down by that stage, swinging my arms around in swimming motions.

'Na,' Wes said. He got bored with the telescope and turned to an FM radio lying on the table. He turned it on and it relayed the sounds of the party to us, muffled. He changed the frequency, then stopped when he found some panting noises. 'Hey man; listen. People humpin. Hey!' He looked up at me. I was still jumping up and down.

'You're sick. I told you. You are a sick and crazy man. That must be illegal. You'll get the jile.'

'No, man...' Weston grinned happily, listening to the sounds of a bed creaking and two people breathing heavily. I moved a little closer and stopped jumping up and down. I wondered if I could recognise the heavy breathing. It was getting quicker. 'That's beautiful, man.' He turned the frequency control again. I felt slightly disappointed. My arms and legs were sore but I started jumping up and down again. The radio relayed what sounded like people screwing again.

'Hot damn,' I said between jumps. 'There's a lot of it about tonight.' 'HOT DAMN. THERE'S A LOT OF IT ABOUT TONIGHT.' My own voice bellowed back from the radio and turned into a feedback howl. Wes chortled and switched the radio off again.

'That was you,' Wes grinned. 'There's a mike over the door, just behind you.'

I turned round and looked for it but I couldn't see it. 'You're still a deeply sick and disturbed man, Weston.'

'No, I'm just ahead of my time, Weird.'

'Bull...shit.'

'Suit yourself.'

Weston had bugged his own house. Every room. Totally wired for sound and broadcasting on all channels. He had bugs everywhere; from the old kitchen pantry to the new double garage. No bedroom or bathroom was spared. He'd even bugged the loft. Anybody with a good FM radio could pick up every sound in the house so long as they were within about two hundred feet. We all thought Wes was crazy, but Wes thought it was a great hoot.

'It's the future, man,' he'd tell you. 'In the future everything's going to be bugged. Telephones and offices and televisions and radios and everything, man. There'll be no way to stop it. They can fit bugs anywhere already. You know they can bug a room by shining a laser at the windows now? It's true, man. You'd better believe it. This is the future and you might as well get used to it now. Anyway; what's so wrong about hearing people fuck or crap? Everybody does it; there's nothing shameful about it, man; what does it matter? Why be shy of things most people do every day? It's crazy, man. They just want you to be that way so they can control you; they're getting inside your head, installing censorship circuits, and you're helping them. Just let it all hang out, man.'

Wes, you'll gather, felt he'd been born too late. He was a mid-to-late-sixties man really. Most people had moved on but Wes used his money to move both back to the past and forward to the future at the same time; anything other than stay in the present. Now I knew why his keyboard runs usually went in opposite directions at the same time.

Wes wasn't stopping at audio intrusion only. He had ordered camera equipment, he'd told me. First sound, then vision. Soon he'd have closed circuit TV in every room. Twenty channels in full colour, from cellar to rooftop view.

I sat down heavily on the top step of the porch. Wes handed me back the jay. I looked out into the darkness. The waves crashed beneath us. 'We need more light here,' I said suddenly. 'There's just too much darkness here. More light is required.'

'You want more light?' Wes said, in a strange tone of voice that made me look round suspiciously at him. 'I think we can fix that.' He sniffed in the sea salt smell, lifting his head and seeming to scent the air and listen to the