Michael Smith - Only Forward

‘No,’ said Snedd, shaking his head. ‘For a start, it isn’t me. Also, I did a lot of digging in the last couple of weeks, trying to find an angle on this Neighbourhood, something to build on. I cased everybody out, learnt where the power lay. The only gang here that could have a halfway decent stab at a stunt like that belongs to my brother.’

‘There’s no one here from Turn?’ I said, puzzled.

‘Only us two.’

‘Shit. He isn’t here then.’

‘No. But I did hear something that might interest you.’

‘What?’

Snedd looked at his brother.

‘Tell him whatever you know,’ Ji nodded. ‘We can’t do anything with this. This is Stark’s kind of problem.’

‘Okay.’ Snedd took a piece of spicy chicken from the plate the old man was handing round. I passed on that, but took another turn at the avocado dip. ‘It’s virtually nothing, anyway. I heard that someone from the Centre came through here a couple of days ago. I don’t know who had him: there was no word on that.’

‘How could you have found that out?’ Ji asked irritably. ‘I put the word round and there was nothing.’

‘Ah, but that’s just it,’ said Snedd smugly. ‘I didn’t put the word out. The word came to me. Whoever had him was looking for me. They tried in Turn first, then somehow traced me here.’

Ji laughed. ‘Why the fuck would they want you?’

‘Well, that’s what I wondered. If they wanted the hardest man around, they’d go straight for you. The most organised, straight for you. So that’s not what they wanted. They wanted something I might be able to give them, that you couldn’t.’

‘And what’s that?’ I asked, beginning to suspect the answer.

‘I think they wanted to know how to get into Stable Neighbourhood.’

Pretty soon afterwards we relocated to BarJi, and the après-fight party was in full swing when I left. It’s rare that the leaders of both gangs are involved, so the atmosphere was unusually good. Once the news gets out that there are now two of those lunatics, the other gang leaders in Red are going to get very nervous indeed. Fyd shook my hand at the door, which, though it nearly broke my fingers, was kind of nice. Being on the right side of him struck me as a good place to be.

I reached the Department of Doing Things Especially Quickly just before 9.00 p.m. The elevator was now reciting the history of the Department the way it was supposed to, which made me glum until I realised it was making up all of the dates.

‘Way to go,’ I whispered to it as I got out. ‘Fight ’em from within.’

‘Right on,’ it whispered back.

Zenda’s office was empty, so I hung around for a while. Royn popped her head in briefly, and said that she was on her way, but could be late. I frowned to myself. Zenda is never late, not even for me. That’s another of the things I like about her.

She arrived at 9.03. In the Centre that was like turning up after everyone else had died of old age, and I let her get a drink before I said a word. She sat heavily in her chair and stared straight ahead for a moment, and then looked up at me.

‘Trouble?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said, but she was lying. After a pause she stabbed the button on her intercom and barked out an instruction to someone about a meeting in four days’ time. ‘Okay,’ she sighed, ‘what do you have?’

‘Alkland is not in Red,’ I said.

‘Shit .’

‘But I think I know where he might be.’

Zenda brightened considerably at this, and shone a smile at me.

‘Good man. Where?’

‘It’s not very good news, I’m afraid. I think he might have been taken into Stable.’

‘Stable? What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Think about it, Zenda. Whoever snatched Alkland is alarmingly together. Where’s the cleverest place in the area to hide someone?’

‘Somewhere where no one can go. Shit. ’ She drummed her fingers on the table for a moment. ‘I’m going to have to go higher on this.’

She picked up the phone. After a moment she spoke to someone, telling them she needed to speak with C as soon as possible. She nodded at the reply, and replaced the phone.

‘I can’t authorise an incursion into a forbidden Neighbourhood. Shit, shit, shit .’

‘Zenda,’ I asked gently, ‘what is going on?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’ She looked at me, and I looked at her and could see she was troubled, and she could see that I saw. Professional relationships are difficult, especially if you knew the person before. The better you know someone the wider the gap becomes between what you know and what you can say. There are some things you just can’t discuss in an office, not even huddled round the kettle in the kitchen area.

The intercom buzzed.

‘Impromptu Meeting time minus twenty seconds and counting,’ it barked. ‘Your participants are on their way, Ms Renn.’

Zenda stood to be ready to greet them, and then turned to me.

‘Of course, I didn’t ask if you’d be willing to try,’ she said, looking contrite. I smiled at her, trying to say something with my eyes. I think it got across, because she smiled back.

‘Thank you.’

The door banged open and C glided in, with Darv in close attendance.

The meeting didn’t last very long. I told C what I’d found out, and he agreed with my conclusions. The fact that I was still in one piece after two visits to Red and being in the front line of a gang war between two Turn psychopaths was not lost on Darv, and though he was no more polite, he seemed to accept that I was indeed the man for the job.

The job being, of course, risking almost certain execution and/ or instant death, melodramatic though that sounds. There was no question but that the job was going to go ahead, and that made me think a little. Forbidden Neighbourhoods, particularly Stable, are very, very protective of their privacy, and the Centre is supposed to respect that. If I was going to get top level go-ahead for an incursion, something pretty major was at stake. I was beginning to wonder if I knew everything I ought to, if this was just going to be a normal job after all.

‘Well,’ said C, leaning back in his chair. ‘There does appear to be only one option. Ms Renn suggested you for this job, Mr Stark. She said that not only were you the best at what you did, but also that you had never turned your back on anything once you’d started. Does this set a precedent?’

‘No,’ I said, gazing levelly at him and saying what he expected to hear, ‘and I take it this conversation never took place.’

He smiled gently, and nodded.

‘Ms Renn is a good judge of character.’

He stood and left the room without another word. Darv, grunt that he was, took the time to spell out exactly how disinterested the Centre was going to be in any trouble I got myself into, and then he left also. As I watched him go I felt unreal for a moment, was aware of the world around me. It passed. It always does.

Zenda saw me to the door.

‘Be careful, Stark,’ she said.

‘I will,’ I said, kissing her hand, feeling for once a fragile pool of intimacy in the administrative desert. ‘And if there’s anything I can do, should whatever it is that isn’t wrong get any worse, call me.’

She nodded quickly twice, and I left.

On the way back to my apartment I did what I could to come up with a plan of attack. For reasons of my own I was actually pretty excited at the idea of seeing the inside of Stable, but like everybody else, I knew next to nothing about it. What little I did, including the only possible method of entry, I knew from Snedd. I had the notes I’d got him to make after being released from there with numbers on his forehead, but they were very patchy. He didn’t understand why I was so interested in the inside of a Neighbourhood I could never go into, and he wasn’t in the best of moods at the time.