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I'd gone through with it. I'd really shopped. Food, batteries for the Gravbenda®, food, Normal Strength coffee, food and food. I'd made the fridge really happy. Finally it had something to get its teeth into again, lots of stuff it could keep nicely cold and fresh. Not all of the food was for me: one of the things I had on my list of things to do was to get in touch with my cat, Spangle, and see if he wanted to come and stay for a while.
    First, though, I had some calls to make. I made them. I called all of the reliable contacts I have in Neighbourhoods around the Centre, and some of the unreliable ones too.
    Nothing. Whoever had snatched Alkland had done a truly tremendous job, secrecy-wise. It was looking more and more as if it had to be a gang from Turn Neighbourhood, which was very bad news. I do this kind of thing, the normal things, largely for something to do. I have to fill my time somehow, now that it's all I have: but I'd rather it didn't get too serious. I've calmed a bit in the last few years. Taking on a bunch of well-organised psychopaths doesn't appeal as much as it would have done once.
    I ate some more food. Things were not going particularly well yet, but that's the way it always works. The City is a hell of a big place, split into hundreds of places that have no idea what's going on in all the other places. There's no point just skipping blithely round, hoping you'll run into what you're looking for on a street corner. You don't get handed a job complete with a little box full of clues and helpful pointers. I don't, anyway. There's a lot of waiting involved in the initial stages. I'd put out feelers, registered an interest, and that was all I could do.
    Suddenly there was a loud pharping noise from the message tray. Unfortunately the tray is fixed to the wall near the floor, and I couldn't reach it from where I was sitting, i.e. on the ceiling. I flicked the switch on the Gravbenda® to return things to normal.
    It's not just the batteries on that thing, you know, I think the unit's completely dysfunctional. Instead of gradually reorientating the room it just switched over instantaneously, dumping me and the remains of my lunch in a large and messy pile in the middle of the floor. I made a mental note to go stand outside my ex-client's apartment sometime and shout, 'Be wary if this gentleman asks to pay you in kind, lest the consumer goods he offers are faulty in significant ways', or something equally cutting, and then crawled painfully through the debris towards the message tray. I hadn't actually cleared up the mess from the last Gravbenda® disaster before turning it on again, and you haven't seen untidiness until you've seen a room where the gravity has failed twice in different directions.
    The message was from Ji. He was going to kick the shit out of an enclave in the Hu sub-section of Red, and would I like to come along? I knew Ji well enough to realise that this was not purely a social invitation. He was on to something.
    I quickly changed into attire suitable for gang warfare likely to stop only just short of the deployment of nuclear weapons. Long black coat, black jacket, black trousers, black shirt. On impulse I ran the CloazValet® over the shirt first: it stayed black, but gained a very intricate, almost fractal pattern in very dark blues, purples and greens. I found my gun and shoulder-holstered it.
    It's always difficult to predict how long these things will go on, so I put a call through to Zenda to warn her I might be a little late calling in. This is me in full action mode, you see: dynamic, vibrant but considerate too. Royn answered the vidiphone.
    'Hi, Stark. Like the shirt.'
    Thanks. Is Zenda available?'
    'Sorry, Stark, she's too busy to talk to you right now. Way, way too busy.'
    'She's always busy.'
    'Yeah, but she's busy to the max at this time. She's too busy to talk to the people she's doing business with, let alone anyone else. Can I give her a message?'
    'Just that I may be a