Only Forward. Michael Marshall Smith
from the pouch on the wall and read that the monorail had been shut temporarily so they could install mood sensors in the walls of the carriages. I thought that was pretty cool, and the walls picked that up and shone a smug blue.
Little Big Station, Pacific Hue, Zebra One, Rainbow North: the stations zipped by soundlessly, and I geared myself up for whatever it was I had to gear myself up for. I didn’t have much to go on, so I just geared up generally.
I judged I was probably geared up enough when the walls were a piercing magenta. ‘Steady,’ read a little sign that popped up from nowhere on the opposite wall. ‘That’s pretty geared up, fella.’ I took the hint and looked out the window instead. Soon I could see the huge sweeping white wall that demarcated the Colour Neighbourhood from Action Centre. The Actioneers aren’t the only people to have built a wall round them to keep everyone else out, but theirs is a hell of a lot bigger, whiter and more bloody-minded than most.
The mono stopped at Action Portal 1, and I got off and walked across to the gate. The man in the booth was reading an advanced management theory text, but he snapped his attention to me instantly. They’re like that, the Actioneers. Ready for anything.
‘Authorisation?’
I fumbled in my wallet and produced my card. Zenda got it for me a few years ago, and without one they just don’t let you in.
‘Destination?’
‘Department of Doing Things Especially Quickly.’
‘Contact?’
‘Zenda Renn, Under-Supervisor of Really Hustling Things Along.’
He tapped on his console for a while, taking the chance to snap up a few more lines of Total Quality Management at the same time. The computer flashed a curt authorisation, not wasting any of its time either, doubtless keen to get back to redesigning the Centre’s plumbing system or something.
‘Wrist.’
I put my hand through the gap in the window and he snapped a Visitor Bracelet round my wrist.
‘You are authorised one half hour this visit. Take the A line mono to your destination. Your journey will be free, with no cash or credit transaction involved.’ They like to make a big thing about the fact that they don’t use money in the Centre, like it means they’re some big egalitarian happy family, yet there are 43 grades of monorail attendant alone. ‘May I suggest that you make productive use of your travel time by reading or engaging in some other constructive pass-time?’
I guessed my attendant was at least a 10: he was pretty sharp.
I got on the mono, and again had a carriage to myself. Seven till eight is compulsory relaxation time in Action Centre, and all the zappy Actioneers were off busily relaxing in the most complex, stressful and career-orientated ways they could find. I was glad the carriage was empty. It meant that no one was using any of the phones built into each seat, there was no meeting going on round any of the meeting tables, and no one was heading for a stroke on the exercise machines.
I sat in my seat, steadfastly ignoring the bookcases and the tutorial vidiscreens. Triggered by my Visitor Bracelet, the carriage’s synthetic voice assured me that my journey time would be at the most four minutes and thirty-two seconds, and went on to suggest several constructive tasks I could accomplish in that time.
The deal with the bracelets is this. When you visit the Centre, they want to make damn sure you leave again. They can’t have just anyone slouching around the place, diluting the activity pool. So they give you a bracelet, which has a read-out of how long you’ve got. If the read-out gets down to zero and you’re still in the Centre, it blows up. Simple, really. You’ve got business, you’ve got half an hour to do it in, and if you don’t get it done you get blown up. I guess it’s what Actioneers feel like all the time.
People from Natsci Neighbourhood, which is to the south of the Centre, can get two-day passes. The Natscis specialise in technology. It’s their life. They’re sweet really, little men and women in white coats dashing about the place, twiddling dials and programming things. They have better computers and gadgets than everybody else, and the Centre has to buy their mainframes from the Natscis, which pisses them off no end.
As it happened, I did do something constructive during my four minutes and thirty-two seconds, which doubtless made the carriage very happy. I got my seat computer to print out a map of the current layout of the area round the Department. This week, I saw, they’d arranged the buildings to make up the ancient symbol for Diligence when seen from a particular point in space.
When the doors opened at my stop I stood politely to one side to let an Actioneer get on first.
‘Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep,’ he was saying into his portable phone, ‘yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.’
He struck me as a can-do kind of guy.
‘Stark. You’re early. Congratulations.’
Zenda was sitting behind her ridiculously large desk when I finally made it to her office. This time they’d rearranged the inside of the building too, and used an industrial strength Gravbenda™ so they could have the floors at a 45° angle to the ground. They probably had a reason, but it made finding your way around sort of mentally strenuous. The elevator I took was clearly very annoyed about the whole thing and spent the entire journey muttering to itself instead of telling me the history of the Department in the way it was supposed to.
Zenda’s desk is about forty feet square, literally. As well as her computer, pens, paperclips and stuff like that, it also has an aquarium on it, and a meeting table with six chairs. I made my way round to her end of it and kissed her hand. They don’t do that in the Centre, but they do in the Neighbourhood where she grew up, and I know she kind of likes it.
‘Good to see you, Zenda. You’re looking very diligent today.’
‘Why thank you, Stark. Cool trousers.’
‘Yeah, the streets loved them. Am I tidy enough?’
‘You’re fine.’
She turned and bawled a drinks instruction at the unit in the wall.
‘Okay, okay already,’ the machine said huffily, ‘I’m not deaf.’
I grinned. Zenda is very relaxed for an Actioneer. Being in the Centre has changed her much less than it does most of them: I think the only reason they keep her there is that she’s so damned good at Doing Things. The machine burped the drinks onto the desk and slid shut, without even telling us to enjoy them. Zenda smiled, and handed me one of them.
‘When did you get back?’
‘A few days ago. Went into extra time. Sorry about this afternoon.’
‘That’s okay: I assumed you were tired.’
‘I was.’
‘Did it work out okay?’
‘It worked out fine. You going to tell me what this is about?’
‘I can’t. I don’t know myself. I got a call this afternoon from a couple of rungs up the ladder, saying there was an ultra-important Thing That Needs Doing, requiring a particular blend of skills and discretion. It sounded like your sort of thing, so I got you here.’
‘Is it a normal thing or a Something?’
‘A normal thing.’
Very few people would have known what the hell I was talking about. Zenda is one of the very few who know me well, and knows what I really do, but we don’t discuss it. There are things I have to sort out, and they often come to me through her. I rely upon her, in fact, her and a couple of other people, and yet I’m the only person who can sort these things out, and they know that. It’s an odd kind of relationship, but then what isn’t?
‘Good. So. When can I buy you dinner?’
‘Next year, possibly. It’s a busy time: I’m on intravenous feeding for the