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seat again and leaning across to be cutting directly to my face, I know it. Alkland is not in the Centre, we're sure of that. He was involved in very important and highly classified work. He has clearly been kidnapped, and we want him back.'
'Surely even a class 43 mono attendant at the Portals would have noticed something? How could anyone have got him out without his consent?'
That,' said C, slowly turning his impassive face towards me, 'is what we want you to discover.'
I left the Department ten minutes later, in plenty of time to get out of the Centre in one piece. Rather than go directly to the mono I headed across The Buck Stops Everywhere Park and Recreation Area, a little patch of green in amongst the towers of excellence. The park was pretty packed, unfortunately, full of people holding impromptu al fresco meetings and starting affairs with people who might be useful to them, so I cut out again and headed for the B line mono on the other side. Remind me to take you to a Centre bar sometime. It'll be the least fun you've ever had.
There hadn't been much more to the meeting. C had outlined the brief, and it was pretty straightforward. Find out who'd snatched Alkland, find, out where they'd taken him, and bring him back alive. There was also an unspoken sub-brief: don't let anyone know what you're up to. The Actioneers don't like it to be known that they're not on top of absolutely everything, and ACIA has no jurisdiction outside the Centre itself. Their thinking was that whoever the guys in the black hats were, chances were they'd be holed up in Red Neighbourhood, which borders on the Centre's eastern side. I wasn't so sure, but I had to go there anyway, so it would do as a place to start.
I had a CV cube on Alkland, with his likeness and various other pieces of information about him, and I had twenty-four hours before I made an initial report back to Zenda. A standard, run-of-the-mill, normal thing. Something to do.
I took the mono to Action Portal 3, and as I had five minutes to spare I found Hely, the attendant who'd last seen Alkland. He'd been reassigned from the inner mono, and Royn told me where to find him. He was eager to help, but couldn't tell me anything I didn't know already.
Before I boarded the mono Hely showed me his used tickets. I could see why they were so keen to get Alkland back. The pile really was very, very tidy.
2
I boarded Red Line One at 8.30 p.m., and as always immediately wished that I hadn't.
Red Neighbourhood isn't like the Centre. It isn't like Colour, either. It isn't like anywhere. The chief reason the Centre has a fucking great wall around it is to keep Red Neighbourhood out.
Let me explain a bit about the Neighbourhoods. A long, long time ago, the old deal about cities being divided by race and creed simply went down the pan. I think basically everybody got bored with the idea and lost interest: spending all day hating your neighbours was just too damn tiring. At the same time, the whole concept of cities started to change. When a nation's main city begins to cover over seventy per cent of the whole country, clearly things need to be organised a little differently.
What happened is that neighbourhoods became Neighbourhoods, self-governing and regulating states, each free to do what the hell they liked. The people that live in a given Neighbourhood are the people who like what the Neighbourhood likes. If you don't like the Neighbourhood, you get the hell out and find one that's more your sort of thing.
Unless you come from a bad Neighbourhood, in which case you're pretty much stuck where you are. Some things change, some things stay the same. So far, so what.
With time things began to get a little weird, and that's kind of how they've stayed. Everything is compacting, accelerating, solidifying, but not all of it in the same direction. There's a loose collection of Neighbourhoods that are pretty much on the same planet, and if any country-wide decisions need to be made,
'Surely even a class 43 mono attendant at the Portals would have noticed something? How could anyone have got him out without his consent?'
That,' said C, slowly turning his impassive face towards me, 'is what we want you to discover.'
I left the Department ten minutes later, in plenty of time to get out of the Centre in one piece. Rather than go directly to the mono I headed across The Buck Stops Everywhere Park and Recreation Area, a little patch of green in amongst the towers of excellence. The park was pretty packed, unfortunately, full of people holding impromptu al fresco meetings and starting affairs with people who might be useful to them, so I cut out again and headed for the B line mono on the other side. Remind me to take you to a Centre bar sometime. It'll be the least fun you've ever had.
There hadn't been much more to the meeting. C had outlined the brief, and it was pretty straightforward. Find out who'd snatched Alkland, find, out where they'd taken him, and bring him back alive. There was also an unspoken sub-brief: don't let anyone know what you're up to. The Actioneers don't like it to be known that they're not on top of absolutely everything, and ACIA has no jurisdiction outside the Centre itself. Their thinking was that whoever the guys in the black hats were, chances were they'd be holed up in Red Neighbourhood, which borders on the Centre's eastern side. I wasn't so sure, but I had to go there anyway, so it would do as a place to start.
I had a CV cube on Alkland, with his likeness and various other pieces of information about him, and I had twenty-four hours before I made an initial report back to Zenda. A standard, run-of-the-mill, normal thing. Something to do.
I took the mono to Action Portal 3, and as I had five minutes to spare I found Hely, the attendant who'd last seen Alkland. He'd been reassigned from the inner mono, and Royn told me where to find him. He was eager to help, but couldn't tell me anything I didn't know already.
Before I boarded the mono Hely showed me his used tickets. I could see why they were so keen to get Alkland back. The pile really was very, very tidy.
2
I boarded Red Line One at 8.30 p.m., and as always immediately wished that I hadn't.
Red Neighbourhood isn't like the Centre. It isn't like Colour, either. It isn't like anywhere. The chief reason the Centre has a fucking great wall around it is to keep Red Neighbourhood out.
Let me explain a bit about the Neighbourhoods. A long, long time ago, the old deal about cities being divided by race and creed simply went down the pan. I think basically everybody got bored with the idea and lost interest: spending all day hating your neighbours was just too damn tiring. At the same time, the whole concept of cities started to change. When a nation's main city begins to cover over seventy per cent of the whole country, clearly things need to be organised a little differently.
What happened is that neighbourhoods became Neighbourhoods, self-governing and regulating states, each free to do what the hell they liked. The people that live in a given Neighbourhood are the people who like what the Neighbourhood likes. If you don't like the Neighbourhood, you get the hell out and find one that's more your sort of thing.
Unless you come from a bad Neighbourhood, in which case you're pretty much stuck where you are. Some things change, some things stay the same. So far, so what.
With time things began to get a little weird, and that's kind of how they've stayed. Everything is compacting, accelerating, solidifying, but not all of it in the same direction. There's a loose collection of Neighbourhoods that are pretty much on the same planet, and if any country-wide decisions need to be made,
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