Falling by Debbie Moon Page B

manoeuvres. By the time the school guard had waded in, the fight had become a stand-off, and an uneasy truce has ensued.
    Until tonight.
    The rest of the Electric Volunteers had wandered off several minutes ago, bored by the familiar ritual of insults and challenges. They’d gone a few stops down the SideRide, but the sound of it, looking for someone else to harass. She could hear their yells as they competed in some kind of antisocial behaviour; probably jumping high enough to hang off the ceiling girders and hit the EMERGENCY STOP button.
    She was alone with Lazy Jay and the night.
    â€˜You still stood there, DiMortimer? What’s wrong, you forgot your mace?’
    God, she’d forgotten that. Her mother forcing her to take a mace spray to school – the new sort, where they took a blood sample and then engineered your spray so it worked on everyone except you. The Volunteers had thought that was howlingly funny. Mummy’s little girl can’t take care of herself without a mace spray.
    Well, they’d thought it was funny until Kohl grabbed it, tried to spray her with it, and only succeeded in getting hospitalised by breathing in the splashback while Jude, right as rain, laughed her head off.
    Oh yeah. Best days of your life, for sure.
    â€˜You should sort your parents out, Jay,’ she yelled. ‘The clinics can fix legs now. Legs, arms, faces… Hey, you could have the complete overhaul. You certainly need it.’
    â€˜Pity they can’t fix brains, Drosser. We’d book you in double speed.’
    Jude grinned. ‘I can’t afford it. But you, you’ve got the ancestral millions at your disposal. Creamed off – no, I mean gratefully donated by the old country, isn’t that right?’
    The ancestral millions had ended up in the pockets of the faithful retainer who’d been smuggling them out of the country, and none of the family liked to be reminded of it. Particularly not the one who needed it most.
    A flash of white teeth, the glitter of narrowed eyes. ‘Don’t jeer me, Drosser. You said you was gonna Sidewalk. Gotta big mouth, kid. Got the balls to go with it?’
    â€˜Got more’n you have, cripple boy!’ She was on her feet now, screaming, consumed by the childish fury that springs from inner fear. ‘I’ll show you. You wanna display, I’ll give you a display.’
    And she was down the steps and heading along the pavement.
    Little East Bankside had been quick to take the anti-pollution laws to heart. No more private cars meant no more drive-by shootings, no more kerb crawlers, no more mass ram raids. And those deserted roads would make a perfect track for the Mass Person Conveyors the Euro-Fund had just authorised.
    FORGET THE SIDEWALK, the strangely Americanised adverts had screamed; TAKE THE SIDERIDE. Simple, easy to police, and totally pollution free.
    The fact that people might not want to travel everywhere on a endless loop of slow-motion conveyor belt didn’t seem to have occurred to anyone.
    There were improvements. They glassed in the tracks, protecting travellers against wind and weather. Allowed entrepreneurs to fill a section with seats and rent them out, even set up refreshment areas or grocery stalls. After all, the journey out to the Municipal Quarter, home of most of the menial jobs that Bankside residents were best qualified for, could take up to two hours.
    Strangely enough, no one seemed too impressed.
    Then, in a flash of divine inspiration, a minor council functionary hit upon the perfect solution. Simply place an official entrance/exit every hundred yards – and make it illegal to travel more than 125 yards on foot.
    Pavements were solely for getting you from your front door to the nearest entrance/exit and back. Anyone found actually walking down them was obviously up to no good, and once the Bankside police pulled you in, they always found some charge or other that would stick. Their