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  ‘We’ll get demoted again, if Upstairs finds out about this,’ said the other officer, worried.

  ‘To the wet room, then.’

  ‘Yes, to Wet Room 102.’

  ‘This way, Del, dear Del. Let’s find the stopcock and you can be on your way. We’ll even help by escorting you all the way up there to Welcome. We’ll push you in, right at the front of the queue, no one will mess with us, not officers. Our privilege. You’re a good chap, Del. We like you. The sooner we get this done, the sooner you can be on your way and out of this building. Quick smart then, Del, do your stuff.’

  They both slapped her on the back, which sent her sprawling into a trip, but a trip that her comfortable slippers saved from developing into a headlong tumble, though the wrench in her top pocket did knock quite hard against her chest. ‘You first,’ they said, and in Delilah went, stalling again, this time as she met head-on the invisible wall of her memories.

  The choice was give the stopcock a twist and be free in ten minutes up there on the moving floors, with the populous, free. Or save a prisoner from a circuit in the shower unit by not twisting it.

  6 – Another Murder

  She stopped for breath, or brought her swagger to halt, and rested on the whipping post, treading on something that squelched, daring not look lest it be the dormitory warden's eye. Then she got ready to twist that stopcock on. It was an easy choice, freedom.

  Behind her the door opened.

  Delilah didn’t turn round: she knew.

  The two similar-looking-to-each-other officers scrabbled about, looking vaguely incompetent, not registering.

  From behind a voice approached and spoke nastily in her ear. ‘Look,’ Gentle pointed at his bleeding cheek, ‘I’ve just been awarded a quarter promotion for apprehending a missing plumber, whom I found on the loose. It is said he aided and abetted the prisoner’s escape, but seeing as the prisoner is here where I left it, I cannot see how this is possible. Nonetheless, the plumber is to be punished. It is imperative, therefore, that we get the water flowing again, for this plumber is to experience for himself the very shower unit he seemed so keen to sabotage. I forced him into telling me where the stopcock is. Fortunately I was on my way here anyway to inform the prisoner that we cannot find it a defence lawyer, but the prisoner will be pleased to hear that Lawyer Poy Yack will be prosecuting it. The prisoner can launch its own defence – but the prisoner is a stupid nineteen-year-old-girl and I would feel such an action is pointless. Yet it is the prisoner’s right, for some reason.’ Gentle lifted his head, and directed, in a more confident, though still very high, version of his previously unconfident voice the two officers to: ‘Take the plumber to Shower Unit 101 and ready him for treatment.’ They made a move for Delilah. ‘No, he is outside, you asinine men. When will you learn! You will recognise him easily enough, he is tied up in what is left of his skin-tight underwear. With his welding equipment strapped to his back. He is top heavy and must lie on his front. Go see for yourself.’ The two officers left.

  ‘So, is the prisoner pleased to see me? Probably the prisoner is very pleased. Almost as pleased as when those two officers came in here, who knows when, and released without my consent the prisoner from its floor bindings and gave it this tight outfit to wear, and those slippers to go with it, which look very much like the administrator’s from the Color Coding Office. I mean, the soon-to-be-renamed Office of Color Coding. For interfering with the prisoner I will recommend to Officer JJ Jeffrey that the officers lose half a promotion. Which is the same as recommending half a demotion. It simply depends which way you look at it and what kind of person you are. I am a very confident person these days and my optimism means I talk in terms of promotion. The prisoner will take off its outfit!’

  So this was it then, it was back. The application of the System. To be inflicted again on Delilah, and again by this person whom she most detested: Gentle. If she felt like she’d experienced a mildly comic interlude, which wasn’t quite what she felt, then she thought now, knew, that it was over, now that she’d gone back from plumber to prisoner. Now that she was once more at this fundamentally unconfident officer’s mercy, despite what he might believe his own confidence levels to be.

  ‘It is all very well that the prisoner go round in clean clothes, while the rest of us must suffer along in filthy garments we cannot wash!’ As Gentle spoke he again went fervently at his fur thighs with the brush, the label of which had frayed since Delilah had last seen it, due to much use, and gave the impression of great age, and in addition to saying Happy Birthday, my dearest Gentle was signed, Delilah now saw, Your young admirer. ‘There is only so much one can do with a brush,’ the officer complained. ‘Look, for instance, at the state of my hat.’ He removed his yellow synthetic fur hat, thrust it at Delilah and ran a hand through his hair – which no longer was cut square on top. But nor was Delilah’s – as Gentle now noticed, to his fury: ‘The prisoner! The prisoner! The prisoner has done it again. Once more the prisoner mocks me with its matching hairstyle. This is bad news for the prisoner. I heard from my friend the administrator who works in the Office of Color Coding, which is why I recognised, but misidentified, the prisoner’s slippers as his, about a fantastic new hairstyle he had come across. He was too busy – I should say, too excited – to finish the conversation, because he had just discovered yet another new hue of lilac, leaving only one to go. He is a fastidious worker and dedicated to lilac. It means everything to him, his job, and lilac. So I got onto the man at the boot and hat shop who wanted us to knock heads together, though we had not yet got round to doing so, in fact he had forgotten my name, calling me Mr Molly, and I described this new hairstyle and asked if it would help my upcoming modelling career. You know what he said? “It couldn’t hurt it, Mr Molly.” So I went for a trim. Only to discover … only to discover that the prisoner once again mocks me with its hairstyle. The prisoner remembers what happened last time? Perhaps the prisoner has forgotten. Maybe to help it remember, the prisoner would like to jump in front of the plumber and be showered first. Or maybe, now that the prisoner knows what it has to look forward to, the prisoner will relish the wait. Shower Unit 101: you’re next on the list.’ Gentle did the hand rub, the clap, and stamped on a slipper, and looked for the fork to twist, and finding it gone twisted Delilah’s finger instead, spiralling pain up her arm. Still angry, he stamped on the warden’s eye, which though slightly squashed by Delilah earlier had since popped back to shape and had been considering Gentle in an ill light, but now exploded.

  He said, ‘And now I will see to the stopcock. The plumber cleared your towel out of the jets, but not just your towel. He retrieved all sorts of junk. Torn clothing, for instance, shoe laces, hair, toenails, you name it, half a tooth. Before turning saboteur he informed us the unit would be more powerful than ever before, once it was up and running again. Lucky him, he will be able to verify this first hand. Once I’ve dealt with him, I’ll deal with you. Or – and I have just thought of this – or – and what a challenge this would be, I could deal with both prisoners together. Two prisoners in Shower Unit 101. Can you imagine? What a spectacle. I don’t think such an acrobatic extravaganza has ever being staged before. I could sell tickets. It is widely acknowledged, as you may have heard already, that I am best at the controls. It is undisputed, incontrovertible. Officers talk openly of my quiet dedication, of how I have mastered the controls. You’ve experienced for yourself the skill I display. Yes, I am quite hooked on the idea of flinging two people around Shower Unit 101, putting to test its extra power, my endless talents. Mind, I shouldn’t imagine the heaving crowd would mind were I to crash the prisoners into each other, breaking various of their prisoner parts, in fact they would be all for it, and call for an encore I expect. What does this prisoner think of my suggestion?’ Gentle rubbed the hole on his cheek and picked at the scab. ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  I’m a plumber, thought Delilah, a bleedin plumber, and I’ve had enough. She said, her voice at the roughest she coul
d muster, ‘You're messing with a plumber here, and you'd better believe it. Tangle with me and I WILL PUT YOU DOWN. Make no mistake about that, sonny. I've got your number, now outta my way.'

  Gentle had not expected such force of language from Delilah, nor such force of manner, and Delilah saw evidence of this as he tensed in his synthetic yellow fur outfit and fear flashed across his face like the passing of explosive light. ‘Move aside, fuckhead,’ she said, ‘I’m coming through,’ and she walked behind the open palm of her raised hand, reassured by the cold weight of the wrench in her chest pocket that knocked against her ribs with her stride.

  Rooted by fear or now fight, Gentle stood firm, and in her path, and did not move. Delilah knocked him flat, which she hadn’t expected, the Officer’s heel caught by the shiny shackle he’d only recently drilled into the floor to shackle her, pitching him headlong. Delilah brought her hand to her face and stared at it in astonishment. Officer Gentle didn’t appear to be moving. She hoped she hadn’t killed him. And yet she hoped she had, he deserved it. But she hoped she hadn’t. She bent to take a closer look at him, his eyes flickered. Then, as his hand shot up towards her neck, and Delilah was hit by this new predicament, the wrench took care of everything by slipping from her pocket and landing on Officer Gentle’s forehead with a reassuring crack. Promptly, and at the shock of what she might have done, and it certainly sounded like she had done it, Delilah fainted, falling flat on the officer, an elbow wedging against his windpipe and ending probably any chance of survival might have had.

  When Delilah came round she discovered that she was asleep. In this sleep she slept on the most comfortable mattress she’d slept on for many days, albeit a rather lumpy one. But it was at least warm and made a change from her recent sleeping surfaces, which had been hard and cold and often wet – when she hadn’t been hanging from her ankle 100 feet in the air, that is. She dreamt, as she’d dreamt before in the System, of the moving floors far above her and of the rich suburbs with their fake blue skies she was yet to see and of men she had known and of men she had not. Such dreams made the return to reality so much harder and she therefore resisted them, and fought against them when awake, but they were inside her and came for her whether she liked it or not when sleep wrested the controls from her consciousness. She dreamt too of her Life, her shiny pride and joy, and wondered now, in her sleep, at the trouble it had got her into. She promised that when she got out of here she wouldn’t show it off again, and would keep it close to her person, and would not carry such a flash version either. This was when she got out of here. Getting out of here was such a huge subject, so important, so everything, that its enormity woke her up.

  Her own scream completed this process of waking. Arghh!

  She got out of bed. She leapt off Gentle’s near lifeless body and screamed again at his aghast face. Then screamed inside her own head, a noise horrible in itself, at the danger she was putting herself in with all this screaming. She didn’t want anybody to come running in. She hoped Wet Room 102 was as cut off as the two officers had claimed. Quickly she wondered, could she just walk out of here, down the corridor, enter the lift, and escape.

  She adjusted Gentle’s body, slipped out of Wet Room 102, and swaggered along close to walls, making for the lift, her eyes alive now and working her surroundings, working her options. She pressed the up button. The lift responded with its ting and its doors sprung open with their mouthy kiss. She entered, excited.

  ‘Which floor, please?’ asked the elevator. This hadn’t happened before, this was new.

  ‘Zero,’ said Delilah, pressing a button that to all intents and purposes was white, yet just wasn’t quite.

  ‘No officer detected,’ said the elevator. ‘Which floor please?’

  ‘One.’

  ‘Sorry. No officer detected.’

  ‘Two?’ said Delilah.

  ‘No officer detected. Which floor please?’

  ’99,’ suggested Delilah.

  ‘No. Find another lift, I won’t take you there.’

  ‘Please,’ said Delilah, frantically pressing a barely perceptibly yet perhaps slightly less nearly white button than the previous button, which she hoped might be the Floor 1 button. And then, when that failed to have any effect, punched any other very, very light lilac buttons, which to upset any rational thinker were arranged at random on the lift wall.

  ‘No officer detected,’ said the lift. ‘Elevator resetting. Elevator resetting.’ And now the lift moved right. This was new too. And this, Delilah’s sense of direction informed her, wasn’t up, right, her fear concurred, was wrong. She banged on the left button. Nothing doing. She regretted leaving the wrench in the wet room. With it she’d have hammered on the button to force the lift left, or smashed the lift up enough so she could escape, prised its doors, or something. But maybe she was better off without the murder weapon. She bashed the left button again with her fist.

  ‘Ouch,’ said the elevator.

  ‘Let me out here,’ said Delilah. ‘I’m a plumber and have work to do. I specialise in U-bends and stopcocks. I’m expected.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said the elevator. ‘About all you specialise in is blowjobs. Go on, give me one. You know you want to. Come on, I’m very hot. Mouth and hand, it’s what I want. Get down.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ said Delilah, remembering she’d been recently crazy herself, and perhaps was again now – in a lift that travelled right and asked of her sexual favours.

  The lift said, as if sensing her self-doubt, ‘Come now, young girl, I am only joking. Not about your not being a plumber, because you are not, but about your administering me a blowjob. The truth is that I do not even know what a blowjob is. I hear officers talk of this ‘blowjob’ with such reverence and at the same time disgust that I know that it must be a terrible thing. Mouth and hand? What would I know? I am a talking lift.’ The talking lift paused, and asked very amiably, and without a trace of embarrassment at its earlier proposition, ‘Tell me, how are you enjoying your stay in the System. Have you experienced much pain? You look remarkably well to me. Look is the wrong word, I can only sense you. But I sense your well-being. It is cheering – or would be were I an emotional creature – to sense that you still possess for instance your full quota of limbs. So many of my passengers do not. You have both eyes, too. A passenger some days ago, en route to 330, had none. But I believe he was dead. At least, I sensed so. I’m sure that you have worse to come, though. The Whipping Boy, where I’m taking you because I rely on him to reset me with his phenomenal technical skills, he will probably do nasty stuff to you, which is I’m afraid unavoidable, and you have my apologies, which if I had a heart would be heartfelt. But that is the System – as I am taught to tell all potential escapees. I’m part of the security, you see. Well, sort of.’ Throughout its chatting, the elevator was very cheerful, and continued on a chatty note. ‘If I have one complaint about working here, apart from being so far underground, though I’d rather be here than going up and down the outside of one of those tall glass buildings they used to have once, then it’s the colour scheme. I mean, why lilac? Of all the colours the architect could have chosen – lilac? 330 hundred shades or hues or whatever you want to call them, of lilac. Then what happens? Some bottle manufacturer who’s gone nutty at work one day comes along and wants to put in an extra three floors. All sorts of problems – far more than just extending my cables. The lilac on 330 is as dark as lilac can go before becoming very light violet – that’s official. So what does the Authority do? It moves the Color Coding Office from the Public Body to 49 to search for three new shades of lilac, so that the entire building – apart from Authority Welcome, which is the lightest lilac possible before becoming white – that’s official too – can be repainted. I overheard today that another new hue was discovered. Took long enough, didn’t it? Last one was nearly a year ago. You know, as far as I’m concerned all the Color Coding Office has really done since it moved here is change its name to the Office of Color Coding. I ask you.
Sometimes I wonder if the Authority has got its head screwed on properly. Splendid. We’re here.’

  ‘Come in,’ called the Whipping Boy from his desk.

  ‘So long,’ said the lift, and tipped Delilah out and closed its doors.

  ‘Sit over there until I’ve finished my homework. And be quiet,’ instructed the Whipping Boy. ‘Then I’ll deal with you. After I’ve reset the lift. I’m very busy.’

  I’ve just killed a man, thought Delilah. I’m a murderer. I’ve had some bad luck, over the past few days, but now I’m in real trouble. Maybe how I left him will trick them into thinking it wasn’t me. It was an accident, after all, I didn’t mean to kill him. I’m glad he’s dead though. I hated that man. And with this, she rubbed her hands and then clapped them.

  ‘Shut up. What are you doing. Didn’t I tell you? Clap your hands like that again and I’ll whip them off.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Delilah.

  ‘Quiet. Can’t you see, I’m doing some really serious calculus here. Hold on, just now, were you doing an impression of Officer JJ Jeffrey? You were, weren’t you.’

  ‘No,’ replied Delilah, terrified that she was.

  ‘Everybody does, even my pal Gentle, whose birthday it was not so long ago. He’s a good man, isn’t he. So he lacks confidence from time to time? I’m only ten, though quite advanced for my age, but know how he feels. Sometimes you just don’t have it in you to interact with other people. You feel weak in your shoulders, your legs, and can’t cut it socially. Gentle confides in me along those lines. I’ll grow out of any similar shortcomings, especially when I hit my teens. Bam! They say I’m gonna be a monster. Meanwhile I’ve got my pizzle to play with. Did you hear, Gentle’s going into modelling? I’m so pleased for him. He deserves it. He’s on the verge of great things, I know he is. I want to be like him when I’m older, but without the high voice, and I won’t wear the same clothes, I’m not so keen on synthetic fur. I think I have a sort of crush on him, but I’m just a schoolboy so that’s all right. If y = u/v is the same as y = u v-1, then apply that to y = ex/x and we get y = ex × x-1, so, using the product rule, do that in my head, we get dy/dx = ex(- x-2 + x-1), yes, this is easy.’ And the Whipping Boy reapplied himself to his calculus – leaving Delilah to review the terrors of the murder being discovered. I like my eyes, she thought, and closed them. I don’t want him whipping them out of me – which he will when he finds out, or worse.