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  ‘There he is,’ called the office administrator, excitedly. ‘Not eggshells, then, plumber? What’s that – hair? It matches yours exactly. But you couldn’t have been called to unblock a U-bend with your hair in it, not unless you’ve been here before. Have you? I’m confused.’

  As Delilah shook her head, the man who’d accompanied the administrator into the bathroom said, ‘Okay, let’s cut the crap and cut to the chase. How good a plumber are you? My administrator says you’re the best, says you’re a genius with pipes, a whiz. Because, plumber, you see, we’ve taken a call in the Color Coding Office – soon to be renamed the Office of Color Coding – and, well, I don’t see that it’s our responsibility – but the long and the short of it is that this call came through to us from Upstairs, and, and … and what did the call say, office administrator? Where’s that note gone? You’re useless!’

  As he spoke, Delilah excited by not being rumbled, decided that it might be possible, not wishing to believe it before, to trick her way out of the Authority building disguised as a plumber.

  ‘Here, sir.’

  ‘Right, an instruction for us to see that a shower unit be fixed. It’s stopped working. Floor 01, that’s the lightest lilac in the entire Authority – nearly white, a lovely atmosphere to work in, right there under Welcome, which is also nearly white too, but not quite, just not quite white, but nearly, very nearly, a single hue off, yet not so the eye would notice it, the untrained eye that is.’

  Floor 01, thought Delilah. Almost definite escape. Where previously fear had taken a grip and shaken her, now anticipation copied, and stirred her insides. She trembled, with thrill. This terrible sequence was nearing its end.

  ‘You’ve got that wrong, sir,’ said the office administrator.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘See, says here, boss, 101, not 01, should be Floor 101. You didn’t read the first 1, you missed it out, went straight past it as if it wasn’t there. Shower Unit 101 is on the blink, so’s 101’s launderette, apparently. All the officers down there are filthy because they can’t wash their clothes. The water’s been switched off – and no one knows how to get it going again. Off you go then, plumber. Go see to it. We’ve got work to do, two new shades of lilac to discover and catalogue.’

  ‘Can’t be done,’ said Delilah, and gave her head a definitive shake.

  ‘Er,’ said the boss, ‘I don’t remember it being a request. No, plumber, it’s an order. Go on, on your bike. 101.’

  Delilah thought quickly and said, ‘It’s in me contract, guvnor, floors 0 to 99 only. I’m not cleared for any lower – security and all that. Know what I mean? Paperwork. Clearance. Shame, can’t help. Out of the question. Right pity. But that’s the way it is.’ And she headed for the door, wondering how she’d picked up the plumber’s lingo when she’d been mad most of the time she spent with him.

  ‘Before you swagger away,’ said the boss, his Life already to his ear, ‘let me just see about that. You’re a plumber, plumbers go where they’re told. Clearance my arse.’ He spoke into his Life, ‘Yes? Hello? What is your name? Is it? Mine is different … Don’t take that tone with me … You can, yes. We’re having some trouble here on 49 with a bolshie plumber. Says he can’t go down to 101. Isn’t cleared. What do you have to say about that? … Really? … Oh, I did not know. … Lots of escapes. High security. Right you are, then. Oh? How lucky. And they can escort the plumber. With the Missing Persons Officer right now? But just beginning a questionnaire, I understand. … If you think it’s permitted to disturb them … Fair enough. Yes, he’s right here in the bathroom. … We’ll wait for the officers. No, don’t worry, he’s an excellent plumber, he’ll have 101’s troubles fixed in … What was that? … Yes I would recommend him. He’s done all my work for me back in my housing unit. Excellent craftsmanship, outstanding. In fact he’s a great pal of mine. We go back a long way. Eons. Often dine together. Only last night in the restaurant on 10, that’s right the one next to the Theater of Religion, we were discussing the intricacies of modern plumbing and water purification – you know, that recent desalination scare at the plant over by the Authority reactor. Fascinating. Extraordinary. One moment … yes, goodbye. Sounds like they’ve arrived already. Come in. Door’s open. That was quick. Hello.’

  The two officers walked in. Delilah’s hopes faded and sunk through her slippers.

  ‘This is the plumber, is it? He’s a bit thin for a plumber,’ said one.

  The office boss replied, ‘Nonsense, man! A plumber should be thin. He can get in behind radiators where a fat plumber would get stuck. A thin plumber can climb inside a boiler and weld cracks from the inside. I’d like to see a fat plumber do that. No, no doubt about it, this plumber here, a dear friend of mine, he’s one of the best plumbers around, if not the best. And don’t just take my word for it, ask my administrator here, he’s had the plumber work for him too. I believe they also went on holiday together, where the plumber fixed some pipes in a half-built apartment unit that wasn’t really ready for guests yet. This plumber is more than just a plumber. This is a super-plumber.’

  ‘Stop. You’ve convinced us. Very impressive. We will have to complete our questionnaire with the Missing Persons Officer later. He boasted that often the missing person is discovered before the questionnaire is finished, but on this occasion I’m afraid to say that the Missing Persons Officer was wrong. This way, plumber.’ They opened the door and politely ushered Delilah out, asking, ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Derek,’ tried Delilah. ‘Yeah, Derek. But you can call us Del, if you like, as it goes.’

  ‘Follow us, Del. 101 awaits. Don’t be frightened, it’s not so bad as you might think. It’s all the disinformation that gives 101 such a terrible name. The same cannot be said, mind, as you head down towards 333. By the time you’ve got down there you’re into the constructs of the most extreme imaginations. It would be hard to make 331 sound any worse than it actually is, because it is such a terrible place already. If you could imagine a worse place you would probably be offered a job working for the Authority, or indeed discover that you are already working for the Authority. It is interesting to note that while the first scenario is not unprecedented it has only transpired once before. This is how floors 331 thru 333 came into existence. The original architect had not catered for them. They were designed, and are administered even now, by a former bottle manufacturer who flipped one day at work when he broke his favourite bottle. He went home that night, his career in ruins, drew up the plans, presented them next day to Authority Welcome, and, within minutes, got offered the job. Broken glass plays a theme down there, as you might imagine. But you cannot imagine how, not a plumber, a humble plumber like you. It is mind-boggling, Del, literally. There’s the molten glass; the brain surgery; the ingenious use of love and hate, the harnessing and tapping of these emotions, amazing – the Former Bottle Manufacturer has pioneered a process that reverses their polarity; the life-lengthening techniques to prolong indefinitely a prisoner’s suffering, which he’s medically patented. And that is just for starters. When you meet this Former Bottle Manufacturer, it is almost disturbing to find him to be so utterly normal. It is not necessarily, we discover, a disturbed mind that produces the utterly disturbing, but sometimes an ultra sane one. However, let’s not go into this, this Academy talk, it is no doubt beyond your intellectual capacity, which like any plumber’s is distinctly limited. Floor 101 awaits us, with its refined air, its easygoing coercion methods. What a light-hearted place it is at, at heart. Goody, we’re here.’

  The lift gave its ting and the doors slid open with another mouthy hiss. Being mistaken for a plumber had gained Delilah nothing. She grunted: she was back. Floor 101. Bad news indeed. The worst news. Her earlier boisterous sensation of imminent escape left her now as she left the lift. She glanced around, a plumber for the time being, until, and she knew it was coming, she could feel it, until she was reunited with her real self the prisoner. An innocent prisoner at that. She swaggered
along in her stolen slippers, which were very comfortable, in the company of the officers, wondering how long she had, wondering what would happen to her this time.

  ‘Who’s he?’ asked the very ugly person in charge of the launderette when the officers and Delilah walked in through the glass doors, which had a grime years of steam had deposited on them. ‘What’s he doing in here?’

  ‘He’s the plumber, superintendent. Come to fix the launderette before going on to Shower Unit 101.’ This sent a shudder and a chill through Delilah. So did the launderette superintendent – for being so amazingly ugly. Not only that, but was this superintendent male or female? Ugliness had obscured or obliterated all normal indicators and markers of gender. Further, the very ugly launderette superintendent did not give the impression of being particularly pleasant or amiable either. Delilah wondered which had come first, the ugliness or the disagreeability. Then Delilah again wondered again whether this person was male or female. And tried not to look.

  ‘I won’t have a plumber in here,’ said the ugly superintendent. ‘Not after the last one came and stopped everything from working. Get him out of here. I want to see the back of him. And I don’t like the way he’s looking at me. If you officers are here to wash your clothes, that’s another matter. I can convert credits in your Lifes into change for the machines and the driers if you don’t have anything small enough. Conditioner and powder are in the dispenser over there, spill them at your peril. Any wash left unattended for more then 10 minutes will be held in lost property for a while then destroyed. Last wash is an hour before closing. Which means, since we close in 59 minutes, you’re too late. Right, I’ll be in the back room, fiddling about, but don’t call for me unless it’s important. I don’t take kindly to being disturbed. Is that it?’

  ‘You forget to mention one thing, superintendent.’

  ‘Oh yes? And what is that,’ the superintendent snapped.

  ‘That the machines are not working. Because the water is no longer running.’

  ‘And you think that he’ – the superintendent pointed and snorted a hideous nose at Delilah, who winced and was surprised that this immensely ugly superintendent wasn’t incorporated into some terrible purpose in the System – ‘can fix that, do you?’

  The superintendent walked towards the backroom, walking neither like a man nor a woman, stil void of gender clues.

  ‘Come on, Del. Do your stuff. You’ll have this sorted in to time, I’m sure. Then we can go see to Shower Unit 101. You’ll be impressed when you see Shower Unit 101. You won’t believe your eyes. What a piece of work.’

  Delilah hadn’t come up with a plan yet so she said, ‘Take a butchers at the grunge round here. Blimey. Never seen nothing like it. Now where’s the stopcock got to. Come on, me old mucker, give us a hand. Don’t just stand there like a lemon, do something. Help us find it, like, the stopcock. Christ alive.’

  ‘It might be in there, Del. Have a look.’ The officer pulled the latch and swung the great round glass door open – and Delilah poked her head inside the drier. The other officer poked his head in too and said, ‘Ignore what he’ – and flicked his head back at the other officer – ‘told you in the lift about the lowest floors. A former bottle manufacturer presides down there, it is true, but the fact is that no one knows what goes on. My officer friend’ – he flicked his head back again – ‘did little more than relate his own amateurish and anguished ideas of what constitutes the truest terrors known to man. You glimpse the workings of his mind, not of a former bottle manufacturer’s, nothing more. He has not met the Former Bottle Manufacturer. No one has. What is interesting, though, is that many people possess a deep desire to see the truth of those deepest floors revealed, more than they would openly admit. We even queasily wish, I believe, to experience them firsthand, to be subjected to their horrors. I know I do.’ He rubbed his hands and clapped them, another JJ Jeffrey clone. ‘But all this again, no doubt, goes way over your simple plumber’s head. Far too psychological for a young man whose living takes him in and out of pipes, behind radiators, and sees him do a spot of welding inside boilers. You stick to plumbing, Del.’ He slapped Delilah on the back and withdrew from the drier. ‘You’ll do all right.’

  Delilah pretended to look around for the stopcock, wondering what she should do. She knew where the stopcock was, downstairs, and hoped her eyes didn’t tell everybody. She knocked a wrench, which the real plumber had left lying around, on a pipe, and listened to the noises it registered, doing so in the experimental manner she’d developed in conjunction with her escape attempt.

  ‘Look at Del work,’ said one of the officers – in a hushed awe.

  Delilah the plumber pursed her lips and pondered, interpreting the sound, intent this time on giving nothing away.

  ‘He’s an artist,’ said the other.

  ‘Language,’ admonished the first. But whispered, ‘You’re right, Del is a craftsman, a maestro,’ as Delilah on hands and knees tapped a ventilation shaft and brought the wrench to her temple in professional puzzlement.

  ‘It is a privilege to watch.’

  ‘Oh it is.’

  ‘Found it yet?’ demanded the ugly and unsexable superintendent, back on the scene, folding a towel that Delilah recognised with a nasty shock. She shook her head, carefully, still not sure how to get out of this one, still not sure how to make impossible the resumption of the water supply to Shower Unit 101 – where she assumed she’d be heading after she was sprung, which she assumed wasn’t far away, and could still feel it, or something like it, closing in on her.

  The superintendent said, ‘Why doesn’t one of you officers ask me where the previous plumber went after leaving here. Save all this tapping.’

  ‘Where did the previous plumber go after he came in to check the leak, superintendent?’

  ‘I’ll mind you to remember who I am, officer! You’ll give me more respect. And you’ll look at me, directly, when you address me.’

  ‘Yes, superintendent, quite so. I was forgetting myself. May I ask where the plumber proceeded to after coming here?’

  ‘I won’t tell you.’

  Delilah quietly raised her eyes: not just ugly, then.

  The superintendent said, ‘Not unless you book a service wash. Look at you. Call yourselves officers? You’re filthy, filthy. I have seen cleaner Sweepers on their way home from work, even when they’re on strike, like now – the blessed Public Body. Your filth is quite disgraceful. I am reminded of the time I first got into the launderette business, during law school, how customers would come into my launderette – not here, up there, beyond the Authority – all dirty and soiled, and take off their clothes, hand them to me as if they expected me to do something magical with them, and leave. They seemed not to realise that the dirt on their clothes projected their sullied characters. You officers are the same. You have no pride. You insult the Authority, embarrass the System, with your grimy garb. I should send you down.’

  The two officers had taken on a tremble each, as if in a rapidly cooling place.

  ‘Downstairs,’ shouted the superintendent in a fully powerful version of a voice that had taken over from its prior nasal snapping. ‘To Wet Room 102. He went to the wet room. That’s where the plumber went. Downstairs to the wet room!’

  ‘Oh thank you, superintendent,’ said one officer, ‘Thank you ever so much. Golly.’

  ‘Come on Del, said the other one, cheerfully now, that’s probably where we’ll find this elusive stopcock. Look sharp. Here, your wrench, you’ll be needing your wrench.’ He slipped the wrench in her pocket.

  Delilah faltered – at least her slippers did. They didn’t want to go down a floor. But she was ushered out by a hand cupping her elbow.

  ‘This way, Del, it’s a lovely place, Wet Room 102. Come see for yourself, very quiet, you can’t hear a thing in there, nice and cut off from the rest of the System. My, this is quite a tour your getting, isn’t it – all these exciting new places. You must be having the time of your life. Now t
here’s a thought, where’s your Life, Del? Life me so I can contact you after this job’s done. We’ll go out dancing. Here–’ and the officer produced his Life, touching it to his chin, awaiting Delilah’s.

  ‘Lost it, dint I,’ said Delilah. ‘Tragic.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Del. But you’ve got a replacement, surely?’

  ‘Not as yet. As it goes. Insurance lapsed. Disaster, unmitigated.’

  ‘Oh Del. This is bad news. Bad news indeed. You are breaking the law. I am going to have to arrest you and send you to the System. Upon losing your Life you know you must go immediately to Authority Welcome and await a state-issued Life. So the queue is two maybe five days long? That is just the way it is. How can your whereabouts be tracked at all times by the Authority if you do not carry a Life, Authority-issued or otherwise, it is mandatory, you know that. What is five or ten days queuing in Authority Welcome against a spell one hundred or more floors below it in the System, which could be indefinite, if not infinite?’

  Right, thought Delilah, what is such a spell indeed, regretting she hadn’t heeded more charily the disinformation – especially since it was true disinformation. But this was the problem with disinformation, and why the Authority had to rely on the System’s huge deterrent value – to back up the disinformation, whatever credibility that disinformation might have.

  ‘Up against the wall, Del, you’re under arrest. This is the end of the line for you. Spread’m!’

  ‘Whoa,’ said Delilah, thinking fast, ‘I had a job on earlier, yeah? I put me Life down, as you do, like, and next thing I know it’s gone and gone. Where do you think I was headed when I was waylaid up there in the bathroom and near forced to come down here and see to your plumbing? Hey, clever? You answer me that, if you can. I was on my way to Welcome, weren’t I, for the blinking queue. You’re gonna have to arrest yourself for impeding me, cos if it weren’t for the likes of you tugging me down here I’d be up there right now, this very instant, minding me own business, queuing, like.’ And she wished she was. But she wasn’t.