or ‘cut’ with other substances, either to swindle buyers or just to lower the dosage. A lot of drugs are cut with baking powder. When they cut Dopaz, they cut it with Crack.
Most of the drones in BarJi were out there in the main bar, watching the biology lesson and drinking very low dosage Dopaz drinks, about four of which will leave you unconscious for forty-eight hours. The heavy hitters would have made their way to the rooms at the back, and tomorrow would find half of them in the piles of garbage in the street, their corpses waiting to fossilise like everything else. There’s no safety net in Red Neighbourhood: if you fall, you fall. You can’t leave Red for a better Neighbourhood: they’ve all got standards, criteria, exams or fees. If you were born Red, or end up in Red, you’re not going to make it out into the light. The only way out of Red is down.
While I waited for Ji I worked my way through Alkland’s cube. The Actioneer was sixty-two years old, born and bred in the Centre. His father had been B at the Department of Hauling Ass for seven years, and then A for a record further thirteen. His mother had revolutionised the theory and practice of internal memoranda. Alkland’s career leapt off the CV like an arrow or some other very straight thing: he wasn’t just a man who was very good at doing things, but the perfect product of the Centre, a hundred per cent can-do person. His work during the last five years was classified, and I didn’t have a high enough rating to break the code, but I knew that it must be very diligent stuff. The Department of Really Getting to the Heart of Things is the core department in the Centre. Everybody reports to them in the end, and the A there is effectively Chief Actioneer.
The cube told you everything you needed to know about Alkland unless you weren’t an Actioneer. To them, what you did in office time was what you were. But I needed to know why whoever had kidnapped him had chosen him, and not someone else. I didn’t want to know what Alkland was: I needed to know who he was. I had to understand the man.
Eventually, frustrated, I switched the setting to Portrait and a 10 x 8 x 8 hologram of Alkland popped onto the table. It showed a bony face, with grey thinning hair and a thinner nose. The eyes behind his glasses were intelligent but gentle, and the lines round the mouth told a history of wry smiles. He looked rather gentle for an Actioneer. That was all. There was nothing else to learn from the cube, and I had no more to go on.
‘Stark, you fuck, how the fuck are you, fucker?’
‘Fuck you,’ I said, turning with a smile. I know my language is far from ideal, but Ji makes me sound like a rather fey poet. I stood and stuck my hand out at him and he shook it violently and painfully, as is his wont. The two seven-foot men on either side of him regarded me dubiously.
‘Who’s that fucker?’ he asked, nodding at the holo.
‘That’s one of the things I want to talk with you about,’ I said, sitting down again.
The main bar in Ji’s is actually the most private place to talk, as all the patrons are so wasted you could set fire to their noses without them noticing. Overhearing other people’s conversations is not what they’re there for.
‘Well, he’s got to be in deep shit of some kind, for you to be looking for him,’ said Ji as he settled violently into one of the other chairs round the table. Ji looks like he was hewn out of a very large rock by someone who was talented but on drugs all the time. There’s a kind of rough rightness about him though, apart from round his eyes. He has some big scars there.
His bodyguards lurked round the next table, watching my every move. Given that Ji could kill either of them without breaking sweat I’ve always thought them kind of superfluous, but I guess there’s a protocol to being a psychotic ganglord.
Ji waved in the direction of the bar and a pitcher of alcohol was on the table before his hand stopped moving. He nodded at the stage. ‘What do you think of the show?’
‘Obscene,’ I said, nodding in appreciation, ‘genuinely obscene.’
‘Yeah,’ he grunted, pleased. ‘Bred for it, you know.’ He wasn’t joking: they really are. Red tends not to be the Neighbourhood of choice for women. I noticed that as usual all the girls had thick black hair. Ji has a thing for that.
We chewed the rag for a while. I recapped the last few months, mentioned a couple of mutual acquaintances I’d run into. Ji told me his land had expanded another half mile to the north, which explained his bar’s continued existence, recounted a couple of especially horrific successes, and used the word ‘fuck’ just over four hundred times.
‘So,’ he said in the end, waving and receiving another pitcher, ‘what the fuck do you want? I mean, obviously the joy of seeing my face, but what else? Nice trousers, by the way.’
‘Thanks. Two things,’ I said, leaning over the table and dropping my voice, just in case. ‘I have to find this guy. His name’s Alkland. People who are looking for him think he might be in Red somewhere.’
‘Actioneer?’
‘Yeah, and not just any old can-do smartarse. This is a golden boy.’
‘What the fuck’s he doing in here then?’
‘That I don’t know. I’m not even sure he is here. All I know is that he isn’t in the Centre. ACIA think he’s been stolen and stashed in Red somewhere: I guess it’s the logical first choice.’
I sat back and took a drink of alcohol. Ji knew what I was asking: I didn’t have to spell it out for him. On the stage the sweating and toiling performers were joined by a new pair of girls, who immediately proceeded to go to the toilet over them. That’s entertainment in Red for you.
‘No.’
I nodded and lit another cigarette. I think I forgot to mention that I’d just had one. Well I had. I finished it, put it out, and then I lit another one. Use your imagination.
‘I guessed not.’
‘I’ll listen for him. You still in Colour?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ll pass word if I hear anything. Don’t think I will, though.’
‘No, me neither. I don’t think there’s a gang in Red with enough power to kidnap an Actioneer right out of the Centre. It has to be someone else, maybe a team out of Turn or somewhere. But they could be holding him here.’
‘What’s the other thing?’
‘I need a gun. I lost mine.’
Ji grunted and waved at one of his bodyguards. Ji has a good line in waves: the guard didn’t even need to come over to know what he was asking for. He just disappeared straight out the back.
‘Thanks.’
‘No problem. You going to leave me the cube?’
‘Can’t. Zenda would kill me.’
‘You still working for her?’
I pressed the cube, printed out a colour image of Alkland and gave it to Ji.
‘You know me. I’ll work for anyone.’
‘Especially her.’
‘Especially her.’
By the time I got back to my apartment it was late. You’re not allowed to enter the Centre more than once in one day, so I had to go the long way round, via two other Neighbourhoods. Luckily Ji, cunning old fox of a psychotic that he is, had got hold of some WeaponNegatorz™, so I got the gun back undetected.
Guns, actually. Ji gave me a Gun, which is my weapon of choice, and also a Furt as an added bonus. The Furt is quite a flash laser device, which doubles as a cutting instrument and is therefore kind of useful. The Gun just fires energy bullets. Crude, but effective, and as it generates the bullets itself you never have to reload, which has saved my life eleven times. It was the same make as my last gun, which I lost on the recent job I still haven’t told you about, and it felt very comfortable in my hand. Over a couple more pitchers Ji and I had tried to work out where this