That was reassuring to know.
"It'll also allow you to override more of the built-in safety margins, but I wouldn't advise that in your case. Not yet."
As if she needed to tell me that!
"I think that's enough theory, how about we try a little flying?" Beth said.
"We?"
"I'll be right here, ready to help out if something goes slightly wrong."
"You'll also be safely on the ground if something goes drastically wrong," I said.
Beth grinned. "Don't worry about it, you'll be fine. I've never lost a student yet."
"How many people have you trained to fly CG-Suits?" I asked.
"You'll be my first. Now, I want you to concentrate on the little man in the beach-ball: think of him rising straight up into the air, about six feet, and stopping there.
"Good, you can see the little arrow appearing on the vertical axis of the ball. Okay, think up and six feet. Good. Now stop. Excellent!"
I was standing in mid-air, looking down at the top of Ben's head: from up there I could see that her roots were lighter than the rest of her hair, but I was too polite to mention it. And too nervous. All that was holding me up was a bit of physics theory which I wasn't entirely convinced by; but at the same time, it felt right; as if I'd known my whole life that I ought to be able to do this.
Beth looked up, grinning encouragingly.
"Let's try a little forward movement," she said.
I practised all day, gaining in confidence, coming to trust the suit absolutely. It was no longer something in which I felt confined, it was freedom.
After dinner that evening, we changed the suit's power cells, and I persuaded Beth to let me go out on my own to practice. She wasn't too keen, but I could tell that she was too tired to insist on coming with me.
"You do need the practice," she eventually conceded.
She programmed an Emergency Recovery route into the suit's memory: if I lost consciousness at any point, the suit would carry me back along this pre-programmed route, back to the house.
"Just a precaution," Beth said. "You can't actually come to much harm in that thing. But please, don't try to do anything clever: just stick to simple flying practice."
I promised. She knew I was lying.
I'd discovered that the suit had a low-level flying mode, designed to avoid radar detection. Flying along, only five or six feet above the ground, changing course to avoid obstacles with only inches to spare, was an exhilarating experience. I skimmed over the surface of the reservoir at King's Mill, startling a family of moorhens, and then chased a train on the old Robin Hood line, determined to overtake it: Faster than a speeding train. I only narrowly missed the cartoon-character fate of smashing into the tunnel wall near Mutton Hill.
Past the beacon, on the other side of the hill, I spotted a couple of rabbits, their white tails bobbing like targets through the browning bracken fronds. I decided to give chase. Although the suit was weapon-free, its targeting software was still intact: here were programs that could judge distances, calculate angles of attack, and work out the effect of gravity on the motion of a projectile. They could also lock onto a moving target and keep the suit on the same course. I targeted one of the rabbits. I felt like some massive bird of prey. I could actually have reached down and plucked the rabbit off the ground. Instead, I turned off the targeting software and headed off across the countryside, like a high-tech Peter Pan.
Flight seemed so natural now, almost intuitive, like it was something I'd known my whole life and had been waiting to practice. Perhaps I recognised the experience from a lifetime of dreams of flying.
As the sun dipped towards the horizon, I headed back towards Beth's house. She was already in bed asleep when I got there, which meant she missed my miscalculating a landing on the lawn: I hit the ground running, tripped and plunged headlong into a bushy conifer.
*
"What I'm going to try and teach you today," Beth said. "Is some of the clever stuff. The kind of tricks you'll need if you have to go up against Nathan Rhodes."
Beth had noticed the gouges in the front lawn and the damaged conifer, but she hadn't said anything. Her reference to Nathan was to remind me to take things seriously: there was a purpose to this training, it wasn't a holiday. But it had been fun so far. And it did feel like a holiday in the country. I was beginning to think that I could never go back to those narrow, crowded city streets.
"I can see how people could get hooked on the CG-Suit experience," I said.
"The novelty wears off eventually; it becomes just like driving a car. Then you start looking for ways to make it exciting again, ways to make it more dangerous."
That's what StormRiders were all about – riding the edge of a hurricane, the shockwaves of explosions, or trying to stay one step ahead of a lava flow.
"Since you've already mastered the technique of an ordinary landing," Beth said, raising an eyebrow. "Let's try something a little more difficult: I want you to fly in through a door and land inside a building.
"Since I like my home too much to put it at risk, we're going to start by having you fly down from the top of that hill over there and come to land in that disused out-building. Think you can do it?"
I shrugged, and it became an exaggerated gesture in the suit. "I'll give it a go," I said.
"Do you want me to put a bush inside there, to cushion your fall?" Beth asked.
"Bitch," I said.
The suit's long-range collision detection would normally cut in and carry me over or around the out-building as I got close to it, so I had to override that. I had the distance detectors to help me judge my approach to the open door, and my landing in the shadows beyond, but it was going to need more than a little skill and concentration to carry it off.
From the top of the designated hill, the target building looked about the size of a dog kennel: I took readings for the distance to it, for the width of the door, and to the spot inside where I hoped to come to rest. I got the computer to plot the route. It was just left for me to control orientation and judge my speed of approach. No problem.
One minute I was heading towards the target like a bullet out of a gun, the landscape rushing past me like the London to Brighton Run, and the next there was darkness. And a loud crash. And the clatter of falling masonry.
It took me a while to dig myself out of the rubble, even using the suit's strength to pull myself free. Fortunately, both I and the suit were unharmed.
Beth looked down at the heap of bricks and broken beams that had been the out-building, and shook her head.
"Needs work, Houston," she said.
Beth took me out to a disused, half-derelict hospital building: it had lots of windows and floors for me to destroy until I got my landing right. She left me to it.
It was all a matter of visualisation: I tried not to visualise myself buried under a ton of rubble.
I practiced my landing – and demolition – skills until icons flashed in my visor warning me that I barely had enough juice left in the batteries to get me home. I headed back to Beth's house in the twilight, my sensors warning me occasionally that I was sharing the skies with bats.
The house was in darkness when I landed on the scarred lawn. I parked the suit in the garage, swapping the batteries and putting the drained cells on charge.
"Beth?" I stood in the kitchen and shouted, listening hard for her response. I wondered if she might have taken the car and headed off in search of takeaway food, but when I looked out of the front window, the Land Rover was still parked among the weeds on the gravel driveway.
"Beth?" I walked up the stairs, thinking maybe she was sleeping. Moving around without the suit was a strange experience: my body felt somehow shrunken and vulnerable. I was a tortoise without its shell. Only less wrinkled. "Beth, you up here?"
Light flickered in her bedroom doorway. The TV was on. I stood in the doorway and looked in. The bed had been slept in, but it was empty now. I crossed to the en suite bathroom an
d ducked my head in. It was empty except for a strong smell of bathroom mould.
I knew Beth had to be in the house somewhere – if she was anywhere else, she'd have taken the Land Rover. Her damaged leg wasn't going to be fit for walking for another couple of weeks at least.
"Beth!"
I went over to the TV, intending to switch it off. It was tuned to a news channel showing local news. I suspected it had been left on to catch my attention. Even with the volume off, I could see the headlines. The evening's main story featured footage of Talos Tower, and a number of reporters seemed to be covering it live. Including Milo Bryce.
I loaded the suit into the back of the Land Rover and headed back towards town. On the way I turned on the dashboard TV screen and watched the local news feed. I was certain that the main story was an invitation from Nathan to a little party he was throwing at Talos Tower.
*
"The building you can see behind me is the Talos Tower in Trinity Square, former headquarters of recently disgraced robotics giant Talos Industries," Milo Bryce said. "Deserted within days of the company's demise, this office block is once again the 'scene of the crime.'
"Within the last couple of hours, a hostage situation has developed here: Nathan Rhodes was the industrial spy accused of stealing a new artificial muscle fibre design for Talos Industries, and now he is believed to have kidnapped three people, and to be holding them hostage high above us, on one of the tower's upper floors.
"Trained police negotiators have been on the scene for the last hour, but so far have made little progress. Rhodes claims to have booby-trapped the lower floors of the building, and a police spokesman admitted a few moments ago that incendiary devices do appear to have been placed throughout the first two, possibly three, floors.
"There are unconfirmed reports that Rhodes has made some demands, but the nature of these demands has not yet been made known to us.
"Shakespeare Street, Milton Street, Foreman Street and Sherwood Street have all been cordoned off, and nearby buildings, including the Victoria Shopping Centre, have been evacuated. All around us we can see fire-engines and other emergency vehicles, their crews preparing for a worst-case scenario, in which the building behind me becomes a towering inferno.
"Nathan Rhodes' motives for the hostage-taking appears to be revenge: the three people he is holding captive are close friends of the man you can see entering the building in this footage: he is Steven Houston, who along with this reporter originally exposed the Talos Industries conspiracy. Rhodes appears to hold Houston personally responsible for Talos' downfall, and the kidnapping was designed to get Houston to enter the tower alone and unarmed. We have a remote camera with Steven Houston, and we'll be following him – live – every step of the way."
Network IX NewsTape. Designation: MB/JP 34537ENG-76YH4: Network IX's remote camera is floating some yards behind Steven Houston, showing the view over his right shoulder. The Talos Tower lobby is dimly lit: Houston's footsteps echo inside the polished grey marble cavern. The reception desk is unmanned, the elevator doors are all open onto dark empty shafts. Houston stops.
"Nathan!"
His voice echoes eerily.
There is a movement in one of the lift shafts, and the remote camera moves forwards, past Houston.
Nathan Rhodes drifts down into view, the bulk of his CG-Suit almost filling the shaft: he seems to be 'seated' in mid-air, like a Star Trek villain in space. He is smiling. A second Network IX camera floats down behind Nathan Rhodes, unnoticed, and it takes up a position where it can show Houston clearly.
"Glad you could make it," Nathan Rhodes says.
"What do you want?" Houston says.
"It's nice to see you too: I'm very well, thank you for asking."
"Let's not play games, Nathan. I'm here: let the others go."
"That wasn't part of the bargain: they are as guilty as you are. I'm going to kill them too – the old man and the old woman, and the cop."
"They're not part of this," Houston says. "It's between you and me. Why don't we settle this thing properly?"
"Pistols at dawn, twenty paces, turn and fire?" Nathan says. "I don't think so. If there's one thing that I've learned from the movies, it's that when the villain pauses to gloat and humiliate the hero one last time, the hero always uses the opportunity to spring some sudden attack, catching the villain off guard and defeating him. I'm not going to give you that chance. I am going to detonate the incendiary bombs now, and you are going to die.
"Goodbye, Steven."
Nathan Rhodes closes his helmet face-plate and lifts a joystick-like detonator in his gloved hand. The camera moves in for a medium close-up: Nathan waves and smiles.
The fire bombs are detonated.
In medium close-up, Steven Houston is engulfed in flames.
*
I'll let you know how I survived the inferno in a little while: suffice to say that I cheated and, in the great old movie tradition, used a stunt double.
Meanwhile, I ought to fill in the details of what happened up to this point, in preparation for the Big Finish.
I got to Trinity Square about the same time as the TV cameras. I'd ditched the Land Rover at the city limits and flown the rest of the way: my landing was less than perfect, and it was captured on film by Milo Bryce's camera, and broadcast to the nation as part of his report. He also included footage of me climbing out of the suit: it was part of the plan Milo and I had cooked up on route to the tower.
Milo had popped up in a little window in the suit's helmet display.
"What can you tell me about the building?" I asked.
"Not much," Milo said. "Since Talos Industries collapsed, the building has been empty: who knows what Nathan might have set up in there during the last few days. The security cameras have been shut down, so have environmental services. There are no active computers in there that I can get into: Talos Tower is about as primitive a location as they come."
"That's probably why he chose it," I said.
"I've got some plans of the tower, but they won't be much help until we know where Nathan actually is in there, and where he's got the hostages.
"I'm going to bring along an extra camera: with luck I'll be able to scout ahead of you and provide you with information as we go in," Milo said. "I think we've got to assume that he intends to kill you: he probably intends to kill the hostages, and maybe himself too. He's had almost a week to set up this situation: who knows what kind of booby-traps he's rigged up in that tower.
"If you go straight in there in this suit, he's likely to go for the easy targets first..."
"You mean he'll kill Raoul, Phyllis and Beth first," I said.
"In his place, that's what I'd do. In a suit, you're well protected, he'll kill the hostages to upset you, make you angry enough to make a mistake, drop your guard."
"So I go in without the suit?"
"I think Nathan ought to see you enter the tower without the suit: until we know where the hostages are, protecting them has to be your first priority."
"Staying alive myself is also going to be high on my list of priorities," I said.
"Don't worry, I have a plan," Milo said. "I think you'll like it."
So that's how come I landed in full view of Milo's Network IX cameras, and allowed them to film me climbing out of the suit.
"Okay," Milo was saying when I got there. "The studio is doing a piece on Talos Industries and Nathan Rhodes, leading up to the present situation, and then they're going to come to us for a live feed: I want shots of the tower and Stevie landing cut into my to-camera piece, okay? And make sure we include something of Stevie getting out of the suit."
Milo Bryce had a Network IX cameraman now, Jeff Pierce, who was holding a battered ENG unit, which he would use to film Milo's report, and which also allowed him to control two remote cameras, which floated behind him on mini CG units. A third remote camera was being piloted by Milo himself, and would check out the building ahead of me, warning me of any nasty surprise
s Nathan had waiting. Hopefully, either Milo or one of the Network IX cameras would also locate the hostages, without Nathan being aware that they'd been found.
Images from all of the remote cameras would be fed to a retinal projector I was wearing.
"I want one camera on Stevie all through this," Milo said. "Then, as soon as we find out where the hostages are, I want the signal from that camera too. If we can use the other camera to sneak up on Nathan without him knowing, that'll give us all the coverage we need."
Milo's remote camera followed me into the lobby of the Talos building, and captured my spectacular fiery demise: it was great television.
And it was only the beginning.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The lobby of the Talos building was filled with bright yellow fire: above the flames, Nathan floated, safe in his CG-Suit. He threw back his head and laughed, in the way that villains often do.
Something stirred in the flames, and above the crackling of the blaze came a humming sound. Singing.
"Baby come on light my fire – "
A figure rose, phoenix-like, out of the flames. It was Stevie Houston. Or was it? Was it the shimmering heat-haze, or was the flesh really melting away from his face like a Vincent Price character?
"Is it me, or is it warm in here?" The molten Stevie asked.
"What's going on here?" Nathan demanded.
"No use getting all hot under the collar, you've been tricked, that's all. I'm not the real Stevie Houston, I'm the understudy."
The fake Stevie Houston raised his hands, the plastic flesh dripping from them.
"Damn! I knew I should have worn sun block."
Nathan turned back towards the open lift shaft.
"Hey, hot shot, where you going?"
The robot look-alike had been Milo's idea: he'd arranged for it while I was on my way to the tower. He figured it would distract Nathan long enough for us to locate the hostages and rescue them. He was almost right.
Milo had piloted the remote camera around the outside of Talos Tower, spiralling up one floor at a time, looking in through the windows to find Raoul and Phyllis and Beth: he'd eventually spotted them, bound and gagged on the floor in a twentieth storey office. The real me was back in the CG-Suit by this time, and I headed straight up to the twentieth floor. A couple of punches had the reinforced glass out of the window frame, and I cleared away any dangerous shards, intending to take Raoul and Phyllis out first.
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