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  ‘You can explain that to me at some stage, if you like,’ I said eventually, ‘in fact, you’re probably going to have to. There’s a lot of high-powered can-do people out there looking for you, and I’m supposed to be taking you back to them.’

  Alkland made as if to speak, but I held up my hand.

  ‘For the time being it will only confuse matters, and I’ve got enough to worry about already. The police back there were looking for me, not you. By now they’ll know that there’s two intruders in the Neighbourhood, and they’ve got your name. Nothing you can tell me is going to change the issue. If we don’t get out of Stable as soon as possible, we’re going to become dead people.’

  I talked to Snedd, you see, and found out a bit more about his DNA expiration work-around. It involved a drug called Strim. Way, way back Strim was sort of like Dopaz in some areas, the popular heavy drug. Its effects are far wilder than Dopaz’s, and not everyone’s idea of fun: it fucks around with genetic material, temporarily changing the brain’s neural organisation. Perception is not just warped or distorted: it becomes completely alien, transporting the user into an utterly different universe, one that is by all accounts a nightmare.

  Over the years people in Turn Neighbourhood, fun-loving violent lunatics that they are, used the drug so often and in such increasing quantities that natural selection weeded out those who couldn’t take it, and in time strands of the population became immune to its effects. Snedd’s work-around involved regular use of Strim in quantities that would kill one hundred normal people stone dead instantly. Having to spend the rest of your life with a digital clock on your forehead, branded as a criminal, would have been a far from ideal life, but it would have been a life. For Alkland and I, there was no let-out clause. If we were caught we would either die instantly, or in one year’s time.

  Neither appealed.

  Alkland nodded, which again put him well above the ranks of my normal rescuees. He saw the position.

  ‘I’m sorry I screwed up the situation back there for you,’ I said, ‘but they would have cracked on sooner or later.’

  ‘I know,’ he nodded. ‘I wasn’t thinking very clearly when I came. At all, in fact.’

  ‘How the hell did you get in?’ I asked, broaching what to me was a bit of a burning issue. I mean, you saw the grief I had, and I’m built for this kind of thing.

  ‘I had myself delivered,’ he replied. ‘A friend of mine left the Centre many years ago, transferred to Natsci Neighbourhood. Computers were his thing, you see. He’s quite high up now. Stable bought their important computer from Natsci, the one they use to run the big vidiscreens and the atmosphere controls. That was a long, long time ago: it was just about their only import. No one knows about it apart from the Authorities, of course. A few days ago they had a new one delivered, and I’m sure they’ll be so pleased with it that they won’t notice it isn’t quite as powerful as promised.’

  ‘And why isn’t it?’

  ‘Because where the tertiary RAM units are supposed to be there’s just a space. It’s not very large, but it was big enough.’

  ‘Nice.’ I said. ‘A diplomatic pouch.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Yes, in effect. One with a service panel in the back which, unusually, opens from the inside too. I was prepared to sit inside for a few days, waiting for the right time. As it happened it was left in the street for ten minutes, and I popped out. I just walked away, and no one gave me a second glance.’

  I shook my head. Contacts of that sort I would give someone else’s right arm for. Even Zenda can’t pull strings like that. The thought of her held me for a moment, and I wondered how things were going back in can-do city. If Royn had passed on my message, and she was pretty good like that, then Zenda would know both that I was in Stable, and that I’d been in serious shit when I sent it. I wondered if she was worried about me. I sort of hoped she was: not to a degree that would in any way inconvenience her or distract her from being the hyper-powered dynamo she was, but just a little bit would be nice.

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘is reasonably flash. You get high marks for that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, proudly. I’ve never done anything like it before. The idea just popped into my head.’

  ‘The downside being, sadly, that it’s no use to us now. I arrived tourist class, leaping large distances, running like hell and almost being killed, and that’s no use either. They’ll have police wedged down that pipe like sardines.’

  ‘And there’s no other way you know of?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said, cheerfully, ‘from now on we’re into creative and original thought.’

  7

  ‘A large police manhunt is underway today following an incident in Play area last night. Six policemen, three small children and a bunny rabbit were killed when Fell Alkland, a fugitive from justice, escaped from the Powers Hotel. Police have yet to release a picture of this loathsome thief, child molester, animal hurter and defiler of graves, but he is described as being in his sixties and of medium build, with thinning grey hair and a nasty nose. A younger accomplice, whom the police describe simply as “agile”, is also being sought. If you see anyone who meets either of these descriptions you should report them to the police immediately.

  ‘Following a heart attack brought on by overwork, Gerald the talking duck is in hospital, where his condition is described as good. Does he think his doctors are all “quacks”? We’ll have that story after the break.’

  Four o’clock in the morning, that deep, dead hour, found us still floating along on the crest of a table. Alkland dozed off after a while, propped up against one of the legs. He twitched occasionally, but for the most part his sleep seemed untroubled. I stayed awake, trying to think of a way out.

  The problem was that I simply didn’t know enough about Stable. Nobody did. From what Alkland had told me about his intrusion route, there must be a way in somewhere, but it was a dead cert that it would be guarded to the gills, even if we could find out where it was. It was also a cert that come sunrise every Stablent with an ounce of public feeling in their hearts (which meant all of them) would have been convinced that we had to be caught at all costs. They wouldn’t have photos, but the art student could have given them quite a thorough description of Alkland, and sooner or later we’d give ourselves away in public. We had to stay away from public areas: the river and the strip of ‘countryside’ on either side of it was our only hope.

  But I was tired, and nothing much came to me. You have to remember that since I’d last slept I’d travelled to Royle, got across it, undergone my rather trying intrusion experience, hacked round the derelict area, climbed up and down walls, fashioned makeshift rafts and so on and so forth. ‘Enough, already,’ my brain was saying. ‘Time out.’ It couldn’t have one, as I had to keep watch and make sure we didn’t veer towards the bank, so it huffily withdrew all thinking services and left me with two blankly staring eyes.

  I looked up from lighting another cigarette to see that Alkland had woken and was looking blearily at me.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t a dream, then. How disappointing.’

  He tried to stretch his legs, discovered that it couldn’t really be done without kicking me in the face, and gave up. Shivering, he wrapped his jacket tighter round him against the cold, and peered out across the water.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Is it any less likely we’re going to be dead by the end of the day yet?’

  ‘Not significantly, no. Ultimately we’re going to run out of river. We could head for the bank and camp out in those trees, but I wouldn’t advise it. There’s nowhere to go, and they’ll search them sooner or later. I think our best bet is staying put until we get to the wall, and then see what happens.’

  I didn’t add that what happened might well involve bullets. He was a smart guy: I’m sure he figured that for himself. Something had to happen to the river when it got to the wall. I had no idea what, but I just had to hope it was something helpful. It was our only chance.r />
  ‘Do you think they’ll know we’re on the river?’

  ‘No. Think about it. What they found was a locked and empty room. The bed looked slept in: that’s all they know. You could have jumped ship hours before they got there. They don’t know there was any urgency on our part, and without that they won’t think of the river. Why screw about with water when you could just walk? They’ll probably just assume we’re in Stable somewhere, hiding out. They won’t know for sure we’re together, and the descriptions they get of you won’t make them leap to the conclusion you’re an old hand at commando tactics like fashioning rafts out of tables. For the time being, we’re moderately safe where we are.’

  Alkland nodded, seeming a little comforted. I was glad one of us was.

  Things at the wall went badly at first. It sort of crept up on us, and by the time I realised what was happening it was too late. I’d kind of assumed that we’d be able to jump ship before we got there: sadly not.

  By five dawn was doing its thing, and a final bend in the river led us into a straight run to the Neighbourhood wall. The banks had widened over the last hour, and getting to them would have been no mean feat against the strengthening current.

  Then about half a mile out, the gradually tapering banks were replaced by brick walls. For a while they were only six feet or so high, which we could have handled, but by the time we were getting really close they had risen to twenty feet. Worse still, they were no longer sheer but bent back over the water. Getting the raft to them wouldn’t have been easy. Deconstructing the raft while still standing on it to get the pads would have poked its head into ‘Very Difficult’ status. We would only have two pads each: Alkland handing himself up one of those increasingly curved walls was firmly labelled ‘Impossible’, and cross-referenced to the ‘Forget it’ and ‘I think Not’ categories as well. Ahead of us the river narrowed abruptly, feeding into a hole in the wall which was about ten feet wide and four high.

  ‘We’re going into that hole, aren’t we?’ Alkland asked sadly.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Any idea what’s on the other side?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Right-o,’ he sighed.

  About a hundred, yards away from the wall my brain, sensing I was imperilling its safety yet again, called a temporary truce. ‘I’ll deal with you later,’ it muttered, glaring at me. ‘What the hell are we going to do now then?’ I think it was secretly glad to be back in the team though, because after a moment I came up with the first bit.

  ‘Come and sit next to me at the back,’ I said to Alkland, and he complied resignedly. ‘When we get to the wall, we’re going to stick both our hands up, and we’re going to grab it. The current’s pretty fast, so it’s going to be hard, but what we have to do is try to hold on for long enough so that I can look and see what happens inside. Okay?’

  Alkland nodded, putting his glasses neatly into his pocket. I zipped up the inside pocket of my jacket, which has a waterproof lining. I come prepared.

  In the last thirty yards the current increased dramatically. Ten yards away we stuck our hands up and sat for a few moments, probably looking like a very dour pair of accountants dourly getting into the spirit of a water ride in a theme park. The hole was taller than it looked, and at the last minute we had to hoick ourselves onto our knees to reach the wall. My hands smacked into the slightly slippery stone and for a moment I was sure they weren’t going to hold: the current dragged us past for a second, giving me a glance of an interior that was very noisy and strangely light, and then by straining arm muscles we managed to hold the raft steady. It was clear we couldn’t hold on for long, however, so I slipped my head in and checked it out.

  What I saw was so monumentally surprising that it took me a while to work out what it was, and then even longer to work out what it meant. The narrow river of water continued in a concrete conduit for about five yards past the wall, and then broadened into a pool about ten yards across, the water whirling choppily around in a dishearteningly dangerous way.

  At the centre of the pool there was something very strange. A channel of water about six feet across shot straight up as far as the eye could see. Four spotlights were trained on the spout, which seemed to be contained within a tube of thick glass.

  ‘What can you see?’ gasped Alkland, clinging onto the lip of the hole with all his might, bless him.

  ‘I don’t know. But it’s very nicely lit.’

  It clicked soon enough, of course. You probably think you were there before me, but of course you’re not hanging onto a wall while crouched on a raft. Or if you are, you’re doing it of your own free will and I bet the water isn’t flowing as quickly.

  The river didn’t flow out of the Neighbourhood and into the toilet outside: water in that quantity would have been hard to come by, and constantly refining turd soup from Royle would have been a real pain for the Authorities. So instead they’d set this up. The river was zapped up to some pipe up in the roof, sent over to the other side, and dropped back down to join the start of the river. That was impressive engineering by anyone’s standards. They had to have some help from somewhere: anti-gravity frolics of that kind are pretty state-of-the-art stuff. That sort of technology is bloody expensive and held very close by the people developing it. The Stable Authorities had to have some pretty stunning contacts themselves. I filed away the question of what exactly it was they had to offer in exchange for later consideration.

  For immediate consideration was what this offered us. My arms were getting very tired and Alkland’s contribution had waned to negligible. There was very little choice. We couldn’t go back, and once we were inside there was nowhere to go except into the pool. The current in there was fierce: there was a very strong pull from the glass tube sucking the water up into the field.

  ‘Alkland?’ I shouted, and he wearily ducked his head under the wall. I let him take a second to take everything in. ‘We’re going up that tube.’

  The prospect clearly alarmed him a great deal, but there was nothing I could do about that. I wasn’t regarding the experience in a wholly positive light myself, but we weren’t in a choice situation, and he realised that.

  ‘Oh dear. I—oh dear.’

  ‘Yeah. I know what you mean. We’re going to have to go down on the table. We don’t want it to get there first or it might block the tube, and with that sort of suction we’ll never get it off. So. We let go, and ride the rapids. Ready?’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  I took that as a ‘yes’ and let go. The raft immediately cannoned down the channel towards the pool and in about two seconds we were bouncing around a jacuzzi from hell. Almost immediately two of the barrels sprang off the bottom of the table, the pads unable to cope with the power of the current. The raft tipped and turned over, dumping us into the churning water. I grabbed Alkland’s coat and pulled him towards me as best I could. We were set on course now, spinning round the pool increasingly quickly, with the table and two barrels in close pursuit. Alkland looked deeply unhappy about the whole experience, and I grinned maniacally at him to try to cheer him up. I look after my clients.

  ‘At the last possible moment,’ I screamed, trying to communicate above the din, ‘take the deepest breath you can. Breathe till you’re full. Then take another breath. It may have to last you a while.’

  I didn’t add that it might be the last one he took. In another couple of seconds we were whipped under the bottom end of the tube, hauled into the column of water and dropped towards the sky.

  Immense speed, a rushing sound and a feeling of crushed and utter helplessness. For the first few moments, that was all I knew. Then I noticed that I still had a handful of Alkland’s jacket and tightened my grip. If by some chance I got out of this, I wanted him with me.

  The elevator ride lasted about forty seconds, I suppose, but it seemed a hell of a lot longer than that. The last third seemed to expand, swelling until time almost stopped, with nothing but the sound of water and the glint of the glass tube re
flecting light from the spots below. Though the impact had knocked a little out of me I still had enough breath left for a while, but I had no idea how long there was still to go, or what would happen next. If the chute reached roof level and was then diverted into a pipe to run across to the other side, we were finished. There was no way I could hold my breath that long, and I’m youngish and pretty damn fit. I’d be holding on to a dead man’s jacket before we got a tenth of the way across Stable.

  I tried, but in the circumstances I couldn’t quite get my head round the physics of the whole thing. To keep the river cycle going, I hazarded vaguely, similar quantities of water would have to cross the ground in one direction and the roof in the other. If the pipe was the same size as the river, the water speed would be the same. Probably. If it was thinner, it would have to be quicker. Wouldn’t it? If so, how thin would it have to be to be quick enough? I didn’t have a pen, piece of paper, calculator and pitcher of alcohol to hand, so I gave up trying to work it out, and almost immediately afterwards the next thing happened.

  Suddenly the glass tube came to an end. The column of water spurted a few feet above it and then broke up, falling round the sides. I heard Alkland gasp for breath as we fell back and were bounced by the water charging up behind us. We slid painfully across a sort of conduit thing before landing in a pair of bruised heaps on the ground. With one mind we flailed unseeingly to the side, instinctively crawling out of the continual flow of water. Within five yards we came to a ridge in the ground, and I heaved myself to my knees and, turned round to sit on it.

  Alkland joined me a moment later, chest heaving, and we looked at each other blearily. The Actioneer looked like an experiment in aquatic rat-breeding and I doubt I appeared exactly dapper. After a moment we both laughed, quietly at first, and then louder and louder, pointing at each other with weak arms. Each time it looked like we were going to get it under control one of us would break out again, and the other would follow. It was kind of hysterical, I guess, but it was a good thing all the same.