Bang (19 page)

The rich student spoke. ‘We only poisoned those
prisoners because they were nasty to you, didn’t we, doll. Especially that
plumber, he broke your heart. Your only friend and he does that, welds you up
in a cage fabricated from see-through bars and tells you to shut your mush and
not say another word about the bump on his forehead, though you’d repeatedly
been going on about it and looking at it with a kind of longing as if you
wanted to kiss it better. He treated you as if you were nothing. I’m surprised
you didn’t squeeze your head between the bars and try twisting it off, so upset
you must have been. You know they had that plumber up all night building
wheels? Said he’d rather build those wheels than sleep in the really
comfortable bed they offered him, made with the softest sheets the System
has – coated, they are, with a substance used to coat non-stick saucepans,
so that if the bed is at a slight angle you will slide out, while if it is flat
you will have the most frictionless night’s sleep of your life. But no, refused
didn’t he. Those wheels meant a lot to that plumber. Greedy he was, too. At the
feast he wolfed down as many prawns as he could, sucking those eggs out with a
vengeance. You probably saw how they poured from his nose like pate from a tube
– we did, from our ladders. He was the first to succumb to the biotoxin. There
he was on the floor with his hands round his neck, dying, or trying hard to
anyway. You wouldn’t have heard his shrilly screams up in the Theater of
Religion – does the minister really wear a silver tracksuit? We
offered to help drag away the plumber and the bodies of all those prisoners
who’d been so horrid to you – especially the two who kicked and beat you
and cut off your long hair the night up there when you lost your Life and slept
rough, they suffered badly, you’ll be glad to hear – but our help was
rejected. Painters, the officers said, had not the first idea how to dispose of
bodies. Little did they know. And little do you know if you think we’d kill
your enemies only to kill you. We need you alive. Because without keeping you
alive the threat to kill you cannot be made, either by us or the Authority.’

There came another clunk.

‘So, in that way, Delilah, you are responsible for
their mass murder.’

Delilah felt sadness.

‘Because you conspired with us right from the start,’
continued the student. ‘Unwittingly, perhaps, but that is hardly important. You
will hear these accusations again, if you are not killed when you’re rescued.
Had it not been for your support we would not have acted. Before you came along
– and you did so right we needed you most, thank you – we were simple genetics
students locked in a copyright battle with the Former Bottle Manufacturer over
the name
bloodbottles
. How far we have come since, thanks to your
morale-boosting imprisonment and your subsequent railing against the Authority.
Our prior selves were but shadows of the great kidnapper biological terrorist
students you see before you now. And you, you made us do it. You!’ The students
intertwined arms and shone proudly at Delilah, then danced a little jig
clapping their hands.

Delilah asked, ‘What exactly are you demands?’

‘An end to all miscarriages of justice within the
Authority. Accompanied by our release, unconditional, obviously.’

Delilah choked on a lump of food she’d forgotten to
swallow. ‘You what?’

‘We’ll kill as many people as necessary until
everybody round here starts behaving decently.’

‘Now, I’m only a hairdresser but–‘

‘That’s right.’

‘But it seems to me that you’re just another part of
the System. All you’ve done is hurt the prisoners. And that, from my
observations, is the primary goal of the System. No, I’m convinced, you’re part
of it. Even if you don’t know it yourselves. You’re very misguided.’

The foreign kidnapper spoke out, more brokenly this
time. ‘Don’t talk to us about primary goals and what we do or don’t know,
little girl. You don’t know anything. We are genetics students, we have
unravelled genes, all you have unravelled is hair. The comparison is not there.
A meeting of minds cannot be found. We are talking below ourselves, when we talk
to you. And if your own hairstyle is anything to go by you are not much of a
hairdresser either, though I do understand that persons who work in such places
wear hairstyles they would not dream of inflicting on paying customers, and it
is my suggestion that
that
’ – he swiped at Delilah’s head but
missed and spun round hitting his friend instead, whose eyes enlarged at the
pain – ‘is such a style. You cannot even offer my girl-like friend advice
on his terrible problem of split ends that makes his hair fuzz in bright light
and look like an explosion of fine liquid.’

‘Yes,’ said the other, ‘What about my hair?’

A deep bang this time, from somewhere nearer by,
answered that question. Such bangs, and clunks, were not uncommon within the
System. Even the best architects struggled to sink a structure 333 storeys into
the ground without some risk of lateral and vertical stresses due to heat or
slight seismic activity. Thus these bangs from the earth itself had been
incorporated by the Authority into the System, further terrifying new prisoners
during their incipient nights. However, this bang just gone was not such a
bang, for it had been followed by other bangs of a distinctly human rhythm,
like those of a door knock, a dance sequence, or a set of punches. The shout of
‘We know you’re in there’ made ever more clear the situation, yet the rich and
poor student remained apparently calm. Only now did Delilah wonder where in the
System the three of them actually were. She knew from the wet room that
infrequently inhabited or visited sections of the System existed. It seemed
highly unlikely though that a safe haven existed within the System for
prisoners, a place they could appropriate and control like this. Yet her
kidnappers, with languid movements of their hands and limbs, suggested
relaxation and, for now at least, assumed control.

‘Kidnappers, give yourselves up, you are surrounded,’
came a voice dull and metallic still from some distance. ‘Let the prisoner go,
dead or alive, she is our property.’

Delilah whispered, ‘Where are we?’

‘Officially? We’re in Nowhere 110.’

‘Nowhere’s nowhere,’ remonstrated Delilah.

‘Exactly,’ said the limp-wristed foreign kidnapper
student, ‘and that’s precisely where we are. For the System to be
somewhere
,
the Authority decided that there had to be incorporated into it places that
were
nowhere
.’

‘I find you hard to understand,’ said Delilah. ‘But
don’t know whether it’s because of what you say or the way you say it. Oh dear.
But let me guess, these Nowhere places are places of necessary redundancy,
which nonetheless perform the vital secondary purpose of allowing the model of
the System as you describe it to function, providing in this current example of
kidnap a hideaway that would not otherwise exist? Slack, if you like, of which
if there were none the System would jam up, like an engine built with no
tolerances. That about the size of it?’

‘My word!’ said the long-haired fuzz-ball student,
wobbling his head on his lazy neck. ‘How did you work that out for yourself?’

The other said, ‘She could not have formulated such a
theory. It is beyond her comprehension. Therefore I will ignore it.’

Delilah said, ‘I read a book once at school that said
something about how authoritative states deliberately left areas in which
criminality, vice, undesirables, what have you, could live and exist, how these
areas acted like nets, if you like, which could periodically be checked and
emptied. The book was banned, and for my reading it my teacher hit me on the
head with a cabbage. This was unfair because she had given me the book the
night before and told me to take it home and not read it. But I did.’

‘If you read it in a book it does not count. We can
all regurgitate second-hand theory, even if it is second-hand theory never
heard before. No, you are a hairdresser and nothing more. We cannot accept you
as anything else. Be a good girl and cut my friend’s hair and wait for what
happens next. What happens next will happen soon, not so much soon as any
moment now. Here, the scissors you asked for. They are left-handed even though
you are not.’

‘Do not allow my ears to show,’ said the other
student. ‘They are bad ears, just trim the split ends. I don’t want it almost
bald like that idiot Gentle’

‘Actually
I
do,’ said the rich student. ‘I want
it all off. I am sick of it. It has been driving me mad for years. Off with it.
I will feel so much better.’

‘I think you’re wrong,’ said the student whose hair it
was, ‘but if you’ve made up your mind …?’

‘I have.’

‘Come out with your hands up,’ called the voice, dull
and metallic.

‘Commence cutting!’

Nervously, Delilah began to trim the long-haired
student’s hair. It fell to the floor and picked up the light, and was pushed
around by a breeze that approached from under the door, from the people behind
the bangs presumably. Meanwhile, the other kidnapper student approached the
suitcase, looked inside very quickly, allowing a burst of hum to escape,
appeared pleased, and said, ‘Keep cutting, hairdresser, this is what you’re
good at, I can tell from your cutting style because you have your hip jutting
out. A bad hairdresser stands bolt upright and cuts with jabbing movements,
sometimes stabbing a neck or a skull, but not you. When you’re finished, sweep
all the hair up and stuff it down the front of your black mourning dress. I
can’t stand to abide by the sight of fuzzy hair blowing about on the floor, it
makes me itch, even if it’s hair I have grown to know and love and then
ultimately detest over the past years. No, for me, hair only has emotional
status when still attached to its owner’s head. This business of keeping the
locks of a loved one’s hair in a silver snap-shut case is beyond me, I would
more readily have about my person their genetic makeup. Then I could at any
moment, given the right equipment, recreate, for instance, their aroma. It is
their aroma I am sure you’ll agree that makes them so much what they are.
Ignore the door, it is designed to dent like that, cut his hair.’

Bang.

‘Yes, we humans are reliant on smell so much more than
we like to admit.’

Bang.

‘Without smell, love would have been all the poorer.
And without smell, we could never have imparted the scent of prawns in the
bloodbottle eggs. The seafood aroma convinced the feasters they were safe to
eat, despite being much redder than prawn eggs usually are.’

Bang.

‘Now sweep up the hair and stuff it down your dress
where it will itch you not me.’

Bang!

And the door came crashing down. Over it trampled
Warden 111 and Officer JJ Jeffrey in his pith jungle hat – which he stopped to
empty of water, not that this still made any sense. He entered accompanied by
the two interchangeable officers. They may or may not have been the same two
similar looking but non-descript officers from Remand 111, it was hard to say.
Delilah placed them as probably the originals – by the tea leaves on one’s
upper lip and eggshells on the other’s. They also had the water-bag buttocks.

‘Release the suit,’ cried the rich student. His poor,
now bald, accomplice opened the suitcase and with his fingertips lifted out the
suit, which now made a furious amount of noise, and threw it in the direction
of the officers. It somehow flew towards the officers and certainly put
frightened looks on their faces.

‘Spray the fly killer!’ cried JJ Jeffrey, and, taking
turns, the two officers sprayed a can at the suit, which appeared to cough,
stand swaying for some moments, before bending forward, staggering about a bit,
then doubling up on the floor and dying. Red and black, it had been fabricated
from sown-together bloodbottles.

‘Arrest everybody. Who is this? Who are you? Where is
the other student with the long hair and the split ends? Who is this frightful
baldy I see before me? Such an ugly fellow I have not had the misfortune to
meet in a good long time. Don’t try tricking me, kiddos. I’ve been around, I
know the score. You won’t put one over on Officer JJ Jeffrey so easily. Oh I
get it. You’ve had a haircut. Who did that? You could at least have kidnapped a
decent hairdresser. It is an awful haircut. You should ask for your money back,
it is the worst style I have ever seen on a man, and without a great head of
fuzzing hair to detract from them your prominent features and grotesque ears
come to the fore in such a way I find extremely unpleasant. I am not alone with
these feelings, we all find you repulsive. I would not be surprised if your
ugliness ensures you a harsher sentence than your co-plotter. Ugliness is no
virtue in the System, nor anywhere, though I cannot tell you exactly why, for a
coherent explanation of ugliness has never been offered. Nor beauty, not that
the two are in anyway related. Okay, carbuncle face, you’re under arrest. So is
your oily friend.’

‘Please no,’ pleaded the rich student, before a
breathless spiel. ‘I have money think what you could do with my money let me go
oh please let me go I will never kidnap again call my guardians they will give
you whatever you want if that is what you want or you can use me however
pleases you I will do anything if money isn’t your bag I am amenable to your
every whim would you like me to take this off?’