'What are we really saying here, Jeb?  Societies are made up of a mix of people, obviously.  There will always be people who basically accept their lot and those who'll do anything to improve it, so you've got a spectrum of behaviour, with total compliance at one end — people who just want a quiet life, who really only want to be left alone to raise their families, talk about the ball game, think about their next holiday and maybe dream about winning the lottery — and dissidence at the other.  Within the dissidents, some people will still identify strongly with their friends and family, and struggle to improve the lives of all of them.  Some will only be out for themselves and they'll do anything to achieve material success, including lying, stealing and killing.  What I'm questioning is who amongst this lot could be termed "better" than the others.'

'Basically what you're saying is the scum rises and I'm saying the cream rises.  Now, you tell me who's got the more optimistic vision here, and who's being defeatist.'

'Me, and you, Mr Dessous, in that order.'

Dessous sat back. 'You're going to have to explain that to me, Telman.'

'Well, scum and cream both rise, I guess, depending on the context.  Actually I don't think either analogy is particularly helpful.  The comparison you choose to make shows which way you've already decided.  However, what I'm saying is more optimistic because it supposes a way forward for everybody in a society, not just its most viciously competitive percentile.  You're being defeatist because you're just giving up on nine people out of ten in a poor society and saying there's no helping them, and that the only way they can help themselves is individually, by climbing out on top of those around them.'

'That's evolution, Telman.  People get hurt.  People strive, people succeed.  Some strive and don't make it, and some succeed without striving, but they're the exceptions, and if you don't at least make the attempt then you don't deserve to succeed.  You've got to have struggle.  You've got to have competition.  You've got to have winners and losers.  You can't just even everybody out; that's what the Communists thought you could do, and look what happened to them.'

'You can have fairness.'

Dessous roared with laughter. 'Telman!  I can't believe I'm having to tell you this, but life isn't fair!'

'No, the world isn't fair, the universe isn't fair.  Physics, chemistry and mathematics, they aren't fair.  Or unfair, for that matter.  Fairness is an idea, and only conscious creatures have ideas.  That's us.  We have ideas about right and wrong.  We invent the idea of justice so that we can judge whether something is good or bad.  We develop morality.  We create rules to live by and call them laws, all to make life more fair.  Of course, it depends exactly who draws up the laws who those laws are most fair to, but —'

'Selfishness is what drives people on, Telman.  Not fairness.'

'And you accuse me of being pessimistic, Jeb?' I said it with a smile.

'I'm being realistic.'

'I think,' I said, 'that a lot of successful people are actually less hard-hearted than they like to think.  They know in their hearts that people suffer terribly in poor societies through no fault of their own.  The successful people don't want to admit that to themselves, they don't want to accept that really they're just the same as those poor people and they certainly don't want to face the horror of even suspecting that if they had been born into those societies they might have been stuck there and suffered and died, young and unknown after a miserable life, any more than they want to face the alternative of knowing that they could only have got out by being more competitively brutal than everybody else around them.  So, to save their consciences, they decide that the people in the slums are there because they somehow deserve to be, and if they just tried hard enough they could get out.  It's nonsense, but it makes psychological sense and it makes them feel better.'

'You accusing me of self-deception, Telman?' Dessous said, looking surprised but not angry.  I hoped I was getting the correct impression here, that he was enjoying all this.

'I don't know, Jeb.  I'm still not sure what you really think.  Maybe you secretly agree with me but you just like an argument.'

Dessous laughed.  He slapped the table and looked round the others.  A few of the people nearest us had been following the argument.  Down in their own relatively impoverished area, at the end of the table where the beer was, nobody was taking a blind bit of notice: too busy having a good time.

In the lounge after dinner, fuelled by fine wine and brandy, Dessous talked with some of the technicians who'd been at the other end of the table.  He came back to where I was sitting with Dwight and Eastil, rubbing his hands and positively glowing.

'Mechanism's ready!' he announced. 'Screen's up.  Ready for some target practice?'

'Betcha,' Eastil said, and knocked back his drink.

'I've got to see this,' Dwight agreed. 'Kate…you ought to come.'

'Ought I?'

'Yee-ha!' said Dessous, turning and marching off.

'Yee-ha?' I said to Dwight, who just shrugged.

About a dozen of us drove to the drive-in movie theatre in three sport utes.  The sky was clear, and Dessous, shucking off his DJ and pulling on a quilted jacket, ordered the other two drivers to leave their lights off.  He drove in front, tearing along the road to town using only the moonlight and starlight, startling jack rabbits and discussing over the radio which way the wind was blowing.

We pulled up by the dark bulk of the projection building.  While Dessous was cursing everybody for forgetting to bring a flashlight I pulled one from my pocket and clicked it on.

'Well done, Telman,' Dessous said. 'You always so well prepared?'

'Well, I usually carry a torch.'

Dessous smiled. 'I've got friends who'd tell you that ain't a torch, Telman.  That's a flashlight; a torch is what you burn niggers with.'

'Would they?  And are they really racist scumbags, or do they just enjoy trying to shock people?'

Dessous laughed and unlocked the door.

The lights flickered on in the projection building, bright after the blacked-out journey in the four-wheel drives.  People flicked more switches, starting fans and heaters and powering up the two big 35mm projectors, which were aimed out through small windows at the distant screen, which was now in place.

I didn't notice anything odd at first: the place was all very techy in an old-fashioned sort of way, with exposed cables and ductwork and racks of film canisters against the walls and whole boards of clunky-looking industrial switches and fuses the size of your hand.  At each of the two big projectors, two guys were loading film into the complicated pathways of rollers and guides.  Then I saw what stood in between the projectors.

I stared. 'What the fff—?'

'Oerlikon twenty-millimetre cannon, Telman,' Dessous said proudly. 'Single mount.  Isn't it a beauty?'

Dwight, standing on my other side and holding a half-full glass of wine, just chuckled.

Where a third projector might have stood there was, indeed, a very heavy machine-gun.  It stood on a fluted mount bolted to the concrete floor, it had two padded brackets at the rear where it looked like you were supposed to rest your shoulders, and a big, almost circular drum of ammunition on the top.  Its charcoal-coloured metal gleamed in the overhead lights.  The long barrel disappeared out of a small window into the night, facing the huge screen in the distance.

The right-hand projector whined up to speed.  Somebody handed out bottles of beer, somebody else dispensed ear-protectors.

The first reel was a Second World War dog-fight.  It was black and white and looked like real camera-gun footage.  Dessous took his place at the cannon and, after a deep breath, started firing.