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sakes, not least of all mine, my sake especially, the most
important sake of all round here. Now get on with it. I have terrible colic
from all these eggs I eat and must get to a toilet soon. Speak, damn you,
speak.’
    It just so happened that Delilah knew all the words to
this scene. She stood in front of the background and acted it out, prompted not
by a prompter but by her own clear and accurate memory. And this was how was
down here on floor 100 when the Authority put together another of their, or
its, disinformation bulletins for the Center.
    ‘And now,’ said JJ Jeffery, ‘scene two. This is about
how the girl is left stranded – because she has lost her Life. We, that’s
my colleagues and I again, we are especially pleased with what we came up with
here. Would you like to hear? Did your agent get scene two to you in the end.
Only we were worried because he was locked up with some writers in 149 and what
with all the injections he’d had in his tongue we could not make head nor tail
of what he told us – the stupid mumbling nincompoop. Anyway, the girl cannot
get into her housing unit and finds herself in a deserted tract. Here she beds
down for the night – but is happened upon by a wayward bunch, a most
unsavoury gang, who are thankfully more threat than action. You will not
believe what transpires next. And I would not want to put you through it. Well,
I would, but I won’t. Suffice to say she finds herself nearly two days later
shooting out of a hole in System floor 101-stroke-100 into the company of an
officer – where, if you please, she tries stealing an egg, and the
officer, an eminent officer at that, with many years distinguished service, and
greatly decorated, even being awarded a medal for his modesty, which he has
never mentioned to anyone and never will, is left with no option but to counter
this feisty food thief with a quick stab of his fork to her felonious finger. I
admit that at this point we, my colleagues and I, well we were stumped. We
could not think where to take the disinformation bulletin next. We’d hit a
brick wall, so to speak. All we could think of was she winds up in a useless
old towel, but you’re wearing that. No, endings are not our forte, apparently.
I can only hope that what we do have cuts the mustard with Upstairs. Otherwise
it’s my head for the chopping block, so to speak again. What do you think? I am
interested in your opinion.’
    Delilah opened her mouth to speak. She knew it
unlikely she’d get any words out. She was correct. The officer said, ‘Anyway,
for you the future is not so rosy, needless to say.’
    ‘There was a call, sir.’
    ‘Who said that?’ The officer spun round. ‘Do not
interrupt me. Take that officer away and shower him.’
    ‘Perhaps you should hear this, sir,’ said another
officer in inside-out uniform, a subordinate like the first.
    ‘Damn this insurrection. Very well, speak. Make is
snappy, I’m dying to go.’ JJ Jeffrey squeezed his knees together.
    ‘There was a man,’ repeated the first man, ‘who came
into the Floor 0, into Authority Welcome. And the man asked after the prisoner
here’ – the officer indicated Delilah – ‘and expressed an interest in
posting her bail.’
    ‘A man. Who is this man?’
    Having no one out there, Delilah was also keen to
discover who this man was. She had not banked on a saviour. In her heart leapt
a keen hope. And time and hunger recalibrated themselves, in anticipation of
her release, in anticipation of their return to normality. She felt hunger’s
strong tugs and time’s aching measurements. She thought about getting out of
here, out of the System, and she could barely bear it, the soaring hope of freedom.
    ‘The man is a Nothing, sir. That is to say, we have
nothing on him. Only that he has associated in the past with a small-time
pickpocket. But this small-time pickpocket is too old for pickpocketing now, so
I wouldn’t worry about that.’
    ‘ I’ll decide whether to