The authorities in Stable don’t mess around. The penalty for incursion into their Neighbourhood is death by DNA expiration. The culprit’s DNA is altered so that the body dies exactly one year from the date of sentence: every physical function just stops and the chemicals that make up the body fall apart. It’s quite a common method of execution in civilised Neighbourhoods, and a few go the whole hog and graft display tissue onto the foreheads of executed criminals in the shape of digital numbers, to give a read-out of how many days the guy has left. Some people think this is unnecessarily bloody-minded, but the Foreheaders don’t mind too much. Often it gets them served quicker in restaurants because the staff can see the guy doesn’t have much time to waste. Especially in the last week, when the numbers flash on and off in bright red.
Also, you can work out what the time is by looking in the mirror, which is kind of useful if you don’t like to wear a watch.
‘Shouldn’t you have been dead for quite a while now?’ I asked Snedd.
‘Yeah,’ he laughed. ‘But you know me. I work things out. I found out how to get the clock to recycle, so at the end of each year I get another year. It’s always kind of a tense moment when the read-out gets down to 00:00:00:01, but it’s worked so far.’
‘Did Ji know you were still alive?’
‘Yeah,’ muttered Ji, ‘but I was trying to forget. What the fuck are you doing here, Snedd? And what the fuck are you doing building up a gang?’
‘I got bored,’ he replied. ‘Thought I’d come into business with you for a while.’
‘With me?’
‘Yeah. I didn’t want to just tag along: thought I’d bring something of my own to the party. And now you’ve killed them all.’
‘Snedd,’ I asked, ‘was it just the gang you were bringing, or did you have anything else?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Stark’s looking for someone,’ said Ji, helping himself to more alcohol. The old man circulated, passing out nibbles to the bodyguards.
‘An Actioneer called Alkland has been stolen,’ I said, looking Snedd in the eyes. ‘ACIA think the gang might be holed up in Red somewhere.’
‘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