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'Oh great. That's real motivational management for you, isn't it' muttered the BugAnaly®. 'If that's how you run your Department I'm not surprised they're bugging you.'

'Right!' shouted Zenda, stepping purposefully towards the desk.

'Didn't mean it! Stark, help!'

I reached out and swept the machine back into the draw and closed it.

'I think, perhaps, that it's time we all had a nice chat' I said, looking at Alkland. He dropped his eyes, and then nodded, and I noticed that the improvement brought about by the shower had been temporary. He looked awful.

'Stark?' said a muffled voice from the drawer.

'Yes?'

'You forgot your bug.' I opened the drawer and the machine spat the device up into the air. I fumbled the catch and had to pick it up off the floor, but I calmly shut the drawer on the machine's tinny cackling. I'm saving up throwing the little bastard out of the window for when I really need a boost. ., We got coffee. We sat comfortably. We began.

'I was born in Centre, and have lived there all my life' Alkland began. 'I saw more Neighbourhoods on the way back today, albeit from a distance, than I've ever been to. Every day of my life I've striven, worked, applied myself, been diligent, for the Centre.'

He paused for a moment after saying this, as if unsure where to go next.

'Stark knows the trouble I went to to get into Stable. He also knows I had no idea of how I was going to get out.'

'Wait, wait, wait' said Zenda. 'How much trouble you went to?'

'Yes'

'There was no gang, Zenda' I said.

'No gang?'

'No' said Alkland. 'It was all my own work. I just left.'

Zenda looked absolutely stunned. People don't just leave the Centre. If you've spent your whole life fighting to keep ahead of the people who want to take your place, you don't just leave. Someone else will be sitting in your desk before you've been gone five minutes. A lot of Actioneers actually sleep at their desks to make sure no one sneaks in there during the night. Alkland read her thoughts.

'Inconceivable to you, I know, and to just about every other Actioneer. So: I was kidnapped. That was the only explanation that made sense, and that's what everyone believed.'

'Almost everyone,' I suggested. I don't know what it is about conversations like these, but they make everyone sit forward in their chair and speak in compact sentences.

'Yes' he sighed. 'There are those who will have known from the start that I wasn't kidnapped, and you were given this Thing to Do, Zenda, by one of them. C knew that I'd gone by myself, and he knew why, too.'

'Wait a minute' said Zenda. 'C knew you hadn't been kidnapped? Then why did he tell me you had been? Why did he put me on the case?'

'Because he didn't know where I was, and he wanted me found. The simplest thing to do was say I'd been kidnapped. That way it would be easy to motivate people to go out and find me.'

'It did occur to me to wonder' I said, 'exactly why anyone would kidnap a senior Actioneer, what it was that only the Centre would have that could make it worth someone's while. Nothing came to mind, but I just assumed I hadn't thought about it long enough.'

'But C could have told me that you'd just left' Zenda said, angrily. 'Why wouldn't he trust me? It wouldn't have made any difference to me. I do my job: if someone needed finding, then I'd have them found.'

'Because you might have asked questions. Look at the way you reacted when I told you I'd just left. You might not have asked C what the issue was, but you'd have thought it strange all the same. You've noticed something odd in the Centre as it is: you'd have noticed a lot sooner if you'd been looking for it.'

The Actioneer ground to a halt again, and I decided that it was time for some focused discussion, some agenda-building. The day was wearing on. I didn't know what excuse Zenda had for being out of the Centre, but it wouldn't last for ever.

'Okay' I said, 'there are three questions that need answering. Why did you leave? Why are they looking for you? Quickly, Alkland.' I didn't like pushing the older man, because he looked so ill, and I knew he was very much on edge. But on the other hand I had to do it because of precisely those same things. It was nearly five hours since we'd left the roof, and it was already getting dark outside. If I wasn't going to complete the job I was asked to do, I needed to know what else was going to happen, and soon.

'That's only two questions,' said a muffled voice from the drawer. 'Moron.'

'Shut up and turn yourself off' I suggested. 'In whatever order.'

'What is the third question?' asked Alkland.

'Later' I said.

'He hasn't thought of one yet' chipped in the BugAnaly®. 'He's just trying to sound clever.'

I got up, opened the drawer and turned the machine off by. whacking it against the desk not quite hard enough to break it. It does come in useful sometimes, and more importantly I want it to be in full working order for when it goes sailing out the window.

Much later I realised that there were four questions I should have asked. If I'd have realised that then, things might have gone differently. But I didn't.

'All right' said Alkland. 'Why did I leave? I left because I couldn't continue to turn a blind eye to what has been going on in the Centre for a number of years. Zenda, have you heard of a drug called Dilligenz?'

We both had. A few Actioneers, the most nauseatingly can-do-at-all-costs young guns intent on clawing their way up the ladder, allegedly make occasional use of the drug. It's meant to be illegal, but then what isn't?

'Yes,' she replied, disdainfully. 'It's supposed to make you more diligent.' I smiled to myself. Zenda doesn't like cheating, never has.

'It does' said Alkland sadly. 'Not much, and not for very long, but a little. It's been around for a long while, and some of the people who've worked their way up to senior positions in Centre have been using it all their lives. It's got them to where they are. There's a kind of inner circle now, a network of people who use it and control it, getting it to the people they want to succeed. The Centre isn't a meritocracy any more, I'm afraid, and hasn't been for quite some time.'

I wasn't hugely surprised to hear that, but I could see that Zenda looked stunned. She's not naive, exactly, just focused. She worked hard to get into the Centre, and like most of them, takes pride in her own capabilities. I knew it would take her a while to assimilate this new picture of how the Neighbourhood actually worked behind the scenes. I wondered if it would ever be the same for her again.

'But it's worse than that' Alkland went on, more passionately now. 'It was when I discovered how they make it that I finally decided that enough was enough. Why are some people more diligent than others? What makes some people desperate to succeed? It's in the mind, partly, but it's also physiological, chemical. Dilligenz is made from an extract of the human brain.'

Zenda breathed in sharply at this, and I was mildly shocked too. Not very, but a bit. Like I said, I've seen some harsh things.

'It's always been said that the drug is bought in from Red, but that's not true. The extract is brought in from the outside, but the drug is manufactured in the Centre.'

'Where do they get the extract?'

'Stable.'

I put a tick against a question earlier filed for later consideration. Hence the Stable Authorities' purchasing power for computers and AG technology. Zenda was aghast.

'They're taking stuff out of people's brains?'

The process is quite straightforward, and does the "donor" no physical harm. It just leaves them, well, rather less diligent than they were before. Placid.'

'Which is,' I added, 'perfect for the Authorities.'

'Exactly. A truly symbiotic arrangement for those in power. A diligence transplant. Those who don't want their people to have it sell it to those who do. It's perfect.'

'It's disgusting,' Zenda muttered furiously.

'But now the engineers have made a new advance: Dilligenz II. More powerful, works for much longer and requires a slightly different type of extract. It still doesn't kill the donor, but leaves them as vegetables. And no one tends vegetables any more, especially not in Stable. They can't afford dead weight. Ultimately it's people-farming, and I couldn't condone it any longer. So I left.'

'Which answers question two,' I said. They think you're going to blow the whistle on them.'

'Yes.' He shrugged.

'And are you?'

The Actioneer sighed. Sitting in his chair he looked very old and tired.

To whom? The Chief Actioneer knows what's going on, but he's old, and he wants to stay Chief Actioneer. C has enough of a power-base to topple him if he causes any trouble. Outside the Centre, who cares? No one has any authority over the Centre or anyone else. C and those who work with him are already in negotiation with Stable and a couple of other Neighbourhoods. There's no point going to Stable, or Shan, or Idyll because the Authorities there know what's going on. They're part of it.'

'Idyll?' shouted Zenda, 'Idyll are part of this? No, no, no . . .'

I tried to calm Zenda, but didn't do very well: I was furious myself. I've seen a lot of Neighbourhoods, I've been around. But Idyll is a special place, for a variety of reasons. It's not like anywhere else. Idyll is an old Neighbourhood, where people come and go quietly and peacefully. They don't care about anyone else, and they have no argument with anyone. They just want to be left alone to be kind and gentle to each other. I know that sounds kind of weird, but it works for them.

'Not yet,' said Alkland quickly. 'So far the Centre has just used Stable and Shan. But Dilligenz II will need more donors, and Idyll is in danger of falling apart financially. I've never been there, I hear it's very nice, but -'

'Very nice?' Zenda yelled. 'It's my home. It's where I grew up. It's, Stark, tell him, it's -'

'It's not supporting itself any longer' Alkland finished for her. 'Centre is threatening to call in equipment loans it negotiated for them through Natsci. Idyll will fall apart if they do. They don't have any choice.'

Zenda sat seething for a few moments. I waited. I knew what was coming. I'd suspected for a while, pretty much since I'd discovered there was no gang, that something like this was lumbering over the horizon towards me. I don't look for jobs. They come and find me, and that's why my life is such a rich pageant of strikingly grief-laden events. Zenda turned to me eventually, as I knew she would.

'Yes, they do. They do now.'

I looked at her and smiled. Like I said, sometimes I get to choose, sometimes I don't. The odd thing is that fighting for the right side never feels like a choice. You choose to do the bad things in your life: the good ones come and drag you along with them. It's just a shame their goodness doesn't rub off.

'I'll do my best.'

She smiled radiantly, beautifully, and took my hand.

'I'll do whatever I can,' she said. Tell me what to do, and I'll do it.'

Alkland looked at us blankly.

'What are you talking about?'

'We're talking about stopping this.'

The Actioneer shook his head hopelessly.

'You can't. They're powerful, and they won't stop at anything. You don't know what you're dealing with.'

'Neither do they,' said Zenda fiercely, nodding her head in my direction, which was kind of flattering. I did my best to look like a force to be reckoned with, but it's not in the face, and I didn't expect to convince him, not yet. Alkland looked at us both gloomily for a while, and then shook his head.

A little later the Actioneer fell asleep on the sofa, lulled by the warmth and safety of the apartment, and Zenda and I crept into the kitchen to let him get on with it. I used the vidiphone in there to order some pizza. I ordered a lot. The telephonist seemed a little taken aback by how much I ordered, in fact, but I managed to convince her I was serious in the end.

'What happens now, Stark?' Zenda asked quietly when I'd finished.

'You have to go back to the Centre' I said, 'taking your bug with you.' She looked glum at this, but resigned. In matters of this kind she always does what I say. Nearly always, anyway. 'You've got to put it back where you found it, and hope that no one's checked for it in the meantime.'

'What if they have?'

'Play clever. Say you found it, and checked it out'

'What? Is that wise?'

'Saying anything else wouldn't be convincing. Just don't say you've seen me, or even heard from me. That's what they're bugging you for in the first place. Department Security should be able to tell you if anyone's been in your office: if anyone has, someone like Darv, then go straight to C, and report the bug. Remember: you don't know anything, and you haven't seen Alkland and me, so that's the most natural thing to do. He'll pretend not to know anything about it, and apologise, and they'll hide the next one more carefully.'

'Okay. Then what do I do?'

'Sit tight, do your job, and pretend you haven't heard from me. I'll be in touch as soon as I can.'

'Where are you going?'

I looked at her for a long moment, and she understood, and nodded.

'I wondered,' she said. 'So there's a Something after all. Does he know?'

'I don't think so,' I said. 'He thinks they're just bad dreams, and there's no reason he would know otherwise. But you've seen the way he looks: that -has to be sorted out before anything else, or he's not going to make it.'

'Be careful, Stark.'

'I will. One more thing: on your way home give Ji a call, and let him know where I'm going.'

'Will he remember who I am?' .

'He remembers.'

Suddenly there was a cry from the living room, and I swung the door open to see Alkland thrashing about on the sofa, still asleep. His skin was mottled and his breathing was coming in harsh irregular gasps. I hurried over to him and shook his shoulder hard. The entry phone went and Zenda stabbed the button to let the pizza delivery girl in. It took a couple of very hard shakes to wake Alkland. He jerked up, eyes staring, babbling something incomprehensible. I shook him again and his eyes focused on me, terrified and staring.