Michael Smith - Only Forward

‘Well, he’s got to be in deep shit of some kind, for you to be looking for him,’ said Ji as he settled violently into one of the other chairs round the table. Ji looks like he was hewn out of a very large rock by someone who was talented but on drugs all the time. There’s a kind of rough rightness about him though, apart from round his eyes. He has some big scars there.

His bodyguards lurked round the next table, watching my every move. Given that Ji could kill either of them without breaking sweat I’ve always thought them kind of superfluous, but I guess there’s a protocol to being a psychotic ganglord.

Ji waved in the direction of the bar and a pitcher of alcohol was on the table before his hand stopped moving. He nodded at the stage. ‘What do you think of the show?’

‘Obscene,’ I said, nodding in appreciation, ‘genuinely obscene.’

‘Yeah,’ he grunted, pleased. ‘Bred for it, you know.’ He wasn’t joking: they really are. Red tends not to be the Neighbourhood of choice for women. I noticed that as usual all the girls had thick black hair. Ji has a thing for that.

We chewed the rag for a while. I recapped the last few months, mentioned a couple of mutual acquaintances I’d run into. Ji told me his land had expanded another half mile to the north, which explained his bar’s continued existence, recounted a couple of especially horrific successes, and used the word ‘fuck’ just over four hundred times.

‘So,’ he said in the end, waving and receiving another pitcher, ‘what the fuck do you want? I mean, obviously the joy of seeing my face, but what else? Nice trousers, by the way.’

‘Thanks. Two things,’ I said, leaning over the table and dropping my voice, just in case. ‘I have to find this guy. His name’s Alkland. People who are looking for him think he might be in Red somewhere.’

‘Actioneer?’

‘Yeah, and not just any old can-do smartarse. This is a golden boy.’

‘What the fuck’s he doing in here then?’

‘That I don’t know. I’m not even sure he is here. All I know is that he isn’t in the Centre. ACIA think he’s been stolen and stashed in Red somewhere: I guess it’s the logical first choice.’

I sat back and took a drink of alcohol. Ji knew what I was asking: I didn’t have to spell it out for him. On the stage the sweating and toiling performers were joined by a new pair of girls, who immediately proceeded to go to the toilet over them. That’s entertainment in Red for you.

‘No.’

I nodded and lit another cigarette. I think I forgot to mention that I’d just had one. Well I had. I finished it, put it out, and then I lit another one. Use your imagination.

‘I guessed not.’

‘I’ll listen for him. You still in Colour?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ll pass word if I hear anything. Don’t think I will, though.’

‘No, me neither. I don’t think there’s a gang in Red with enough power to kidnap an Actioneer right out of the Centre. It has to be someone else, maybe a team out of Turn or somewhere. But they could be holding him here.’

‘What’s the other thing?’

‘I need a gun. I lost mine.’

Ji grunted and waved at one of his bodyguards. Ji has a good line in waves: the guard didn’t even need to come over to know what he was asking for. He just disappeared straight out the back.

‘Thanks.’

‘No problem. You going to leave me the cube?’

‘Can’t. Zenda would kill me.’

‘You still working for her?’

I pressed the cube, printed out a colour image of Alkland and gave it to Ji.

‘You know me. I’ll work for anyone.’

‘Especially her.’

‘Especially her.’

By the time I got back to my apartment it was late. You’re not allowed to enter the Centre more than once in one day, so I had to go the long way round, via two other Neighbourhoods. Luckily Ji, cunning old fox of a psychotic that he is, had got hold of some WeaponNegatorz™, so I got the gun back undetected.

Guns, actually. Ji gave me a Gun, which is my weapon of choice, and also a Furt as an added bonus. The Furt is quite a flash laser device, which doubles as a cutting instrument and is therefore kind of useful. The Gun just fires energy bullets. Crude, but effective, and as it generates the bullets itself you never have to reload, which has saved my life eleven times. It was the same make as my last gun, which I lost on the recent job I still haven’t told you about, and it felt very comfortable in my hand. Over a couple more pitchers Ji and I had tried to work out where this left us in the favour stakes. We were both pretty bollocksed by then, but the end result seems to be that he now owes me one more favour than he did before.

As I sat with a jug of Jahavan coffee, each molecule of which is programmed to pelt round the body kicking the shit out of any alcohol molecules it finds, I considered where to go from here. So far, I didn’t have very much to go on. I had established that Ji hadn’t been involved in Alkland’s abduction, but I’d known that anyway. Ji simply wanted to take over as much of Red as he could and stay alive as long as he could whilst killing as many other people as possible. He was a simple man, with simple needs.

Whoever had Alkland was into something much more complex. They couldn’t be after money, because the Centre didn’t have any, but it was unlikely they’d done it for the sheer fun of it. They had to want something that only the Centre could give them. Working out what that might be was going to be important, and I put a memo in my mental file to have a crack at it when I could be bothered. My mental memos are different to my mental notes: I always do something about them eventually, and they’re typed so I can read what they say. For example:

Internal Memo: Who’s got Alkland?

1) Someone with enough togetherness to get people into the Centre to snatch him.

2) Someone with enough togetherness to know about him in the first place.

(The togetherness factor of these guys had to be pretty high. The Centre doesn’t widely distribute lists of ‘People Doing Really Important Things Whom You Might Like To Consider Kidnapping’. I’d never even heard of Alkland before tonight, and I know the Centre pretty well for an outsider.)

3) Someone who wants something of a kind that only the Centre can give them.

(When I knew what that might be, I’d know what kind of people I was dealing with, which would make it easier to predict the way in which they’d operate.) And

4) Get some batteries for the Gravbenda™.

See? Very diligent. Zenda would be impressed. Well, not impressed, probably, because I’m sure her mental memos run to 120 pages with graphs, indexes and supporting audio visual material, but pleasantly surprised, maybe. Surprised, anyway.

I also made another note, which I’m not going to tell you about. It was kind of a surprising idea, and very unlikely: but I stored it away anyway. I’ll let you know if it turns out to be relevant.

By the time I finished the jug I was completely sober. More sober than I wanted to be, in fact: I’d drunk too much coffee and was now too far in the black, sobriety-wise. It made me notice things like that whenever I come back to my apartment, it’s empty. It’s a nice apartment, fully colour co-ordinated and with happening furniture, but I use it just as somewhere to store my stuff, and to crash when I’m in the Neighbourhood. When I come back to it, it’s always empty. No people. Or no person, to be more precise.

I have an apartment, I have more money than I need, I have a job, of sorts. But have I got a life?

See what I mean? Foolish, unhelpful thoughts. I took a look at the packet of Jahavan and saw I’d picked up Extra Strength by mistake. ‘Warning,’ it said in the blurb. ‘Anyone except alcoholics may find themselves experiencing foolish and unhelpful thoughts.’