Gridiron - Philip Kerr

It was then that Mitch received a fright that made his heart leap against the ladder of his ribs like a spawning salmon.

Standing behind the desk in place of the syrupy presenter of Good Morning, America was an alien monster from some science-fiction nightmare, a grey-skinned, double-jawed, dragon-tailed beast, complete with holographic drool and Dolby Stereo heavy breathing. At least seven feet tall, the creature eyed Mitch malevolently and extended its retractable jaws suggestively. Mitch recoiled from the desk as if he had been snapped back by a safety line.

'Holy Christ!' he exclaimed.

He knew it was just a hologram: three sets of diffracted light waves, a real-time image that he seemed to recognize, but not from any movie he had ever seen. Then he remembered. It was the Parallel Demon, the ultimate creature from the computer game he had seen Aidan Kenny's son playing in the computer room. What was it called again? Escape from the Citadel? Ishmael must have copied it from the game's WAD editor file that allowed a player to create his own monsters.

Mitch believed they would be doing well to escape from this particular downtown citadel. He knew that the facsimile demon couldn't harm him, but it took a couple of minutes to gather up sufficient courage to approach the thing.

'You're wasting your time, Ishmael,' he said, without much conviction.

'It won't work. I'm not scared, OK?'

But still he could not bring himself to go within a few yards of the demon. Suddenly it lunged towards him, its double jaws trying to bite out his throat. Despite what he had just heard himself say, Mitch jumped smartly out of the way.

'It's pretty realistic, I'll grant you,' he swallowed, 'but I'm not buying.'

He took a deep breath, clenched both his fists and, doing his best to ignore the hologram, walked straight up to the desk, gasping as the demon impaled him on the spear-points on its enormous knuckles. For a brief second he thought he had made a mistake, so convincing was the sight of the creature's fist forcing its way through his sternum. But then the lack of blood and pain reassured him. Trying his best to ignore it, Mitch bent under the desk to look for the infra-red goggles. He found them inside a drawer along with a technical manual from the

McDonnell-Douglas Corporation.

The demon disappeared.

'Nice try, Ishmael,' said Mitch. He pulled on the goggles and unlocked the back of the reception desk. Behind the door was a matt black steel cabinet that housed the laser's amplifying column.

DANGER. DO NOT OPEN THIS CABINET

CONTAINS SOLID-STATE DIODE-PUMPED NEODYMIUM

YAG LASER AND Q-SWITCHING EQUIPMENT. ONLY

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL OF THE MCDONNELLDOUGLAS CORPORATION MAY INSPECT OR MAINTAIN

THIS UNIT

CAUTION: USE PROTECTIVE EYEWEAR BLOCKING A

NEAR INFRA-RED WAVELENGTH OF 1.064

MICROMETRES

Mitch checked his goggles to make sure that they were not admitting any light: with lasers it was the invisible light that blinded you. Then he unscrewed the cabinet door. He had never seen a laser device before except for the small radar-based lasers they used at the office for alignment applications, distance measurement and determining aircurrents but, by comparing the internal layout of the hologram cabinet with the McDonnell-Douglas manual, Mitch was able to distinguish the clear plastic tube that contained the ythrium aluminium garnet rod. It was difficult to read the manual through the darkened goggles but, even though the beam of laser light was projected through a solid metallic sleeve that ran between the desk and the real-time image source — the part which Ishmael controlled — he resisted the temptation to lift the goggles. Several minutes passed before Mitch was able to locate the button that controlled the Q-switching shutter — a solid, optical shutter, normally opaque, that could be made transparent by the application of an electrical pulse — and turn it off. No laser light could now be emitted and, therefore, no more holograms be generated until the Q-switch was turned back on.

Mitch breathed a sigh of relief and lifted up his goggles. Now all that he had to do was figure out a way of making the laser point in the opposite direction, at the front door.

-###-

Richardson and Curtis carried Ellery's body to an empty office and laid him on the floor, covering his face with his coat.

'Maybe we ought to move the three in the elevator as well,' said Curtis.

'Why?'

Curtis waved a fly away from his face.

'That fly is why. Besides, they're on the nose. Every time I walk by them it's worse.'

'It's not so bad,' said Richardson. 'I mean, you can only smell them if you stand right outside the elevator.'

'Believe me, bad as they are now, they'll only get worse. It doesn't take very long for a body to start putrefying. Two days is about average. Less in this kind of heat.' There was some plastic sheeting on the floor that had been protecting the carpet. Curtis gathered it up in his hands.

'We'll use this. Only we'd better make sure we jam the doors open first. We wouldn't want Ishmael to think that we were looking for a ride downstairs, would we?'

Reluctantly Richardson helped Curtis drag the defrosted and malodorous bodies of Dobbs, Bennett and Martinez out of the elevator and into the room where they had left Ellery. When they were finished Curtis closed the door firmly behind him.

'That's a good job done,' he said.

Richardson looked green. 'Glad you enjoyed it.'

'Yeah, well, let's just hope we don't have to go back in there. Me, I'm sensitive to atmospheres.'

'So was Willis Ellery,' said Richardson.

'Not such a bad guy.'

'Not yet, anyway,' said Richardson.

They went back to the balcony where, with the exception of Beech, the others were still waiting.

'Listen,' Richardson told Curtis, 'I'm sorry about what I said. About everything I've said. You were right. I mean, about trying to get the fuck out of here. I can see that now. From now on, you can count me in, whatever it is.'

The two men shook hands.

'You think Mitch stands a chance?' asked Curtis.

'Sounded rather far-fetched to me,' admitted Richardson. 'I'm not sure he knows one end of a laser from his dick.'

Jenny, leaning over the balcony handrail, looking anxiously for Mitch, flashed a reproachful look at Richardson.

Curtis nodded gravely. He turned to Jenny. 'How's he doing?'

'He's out of sight. But he said he's got the laser out of the housing. He's going to radio again when he's ready to fire the thing.'

The three of them sat down alongside Helen, Joan and Marty

Birnbaum, who were dozing.

'How long have we got left?' asked Jenny.

'Nine hours,' said Curtis.

'That's if you believe this time-bomb thing,' said Richardson.

'In view of everything else that's happened, we can't afford not to,' said Curds.

'I guess not.'

Marty Birnbaum awoke and laughed. 'So,' he said thickly, 'it really is dungeons and dragons after all. Just like I said.'

'We've certainly missed your contribution, Marty,' said Richardson.

'Like a hole in the fucking ozone layer. I wonder if there's a way we can get to nominate our next life? Like a pawn sacrifice? The chess players call it a gambit. Well how about the Marty Birnbaum gambit?'

'You bastard,' snarled Birnbaum. 'Thanks a lot.'

'You're very welcome, shithead.'

Mitch replaced the goggles and prepared to fire the laser.

Separated from the housing contained in the ceramic desk, the laser rod remained attached to power cables activating a pumping lamp that was coiled around the cooling tube like a bed spring. The cables were stretched as far as the top of the desk, enabling Mitch to lay the laser device flat and aim it at the glass of the front facade. Since it was almost midnight and the downtown area was almost deserted, Mitch felt a little more comfortable that the laser beam, exiting through one of the nineand-a-half-metre high sheets of suspended glazing that surrounded the front door, would not injure anyone. Even so he aimed low, choosing a test spot on the darkened glass where the potentially lethal beam might hit the paving on the piazza.

When everything seemed ready he flicked the Q-switch once and watched a slender, candy-coloured beam of light suddenly connect with the glass like tidy bolt of lightning. Then he switched the unit off and went to inspect the damage.

Bending down beside the glass Mitch found a perfect hole, no wider than a dime, through which cool air was now blowing. He almost cheered.

His plan was simple if laborious. He would cut a number of tiny perforations in the glazing until there were sufficient to hammer out a larger hole that he might crawl through.

He picked up the walkie-talkie and transmitted the good news to Jenny.

'That's great,' she said. 'Just be careful. And leave this thing switched on, will you? I hate it when you turn it off. If I can't see you're OK, at least I can hear you are.'

'It's going to take a while,' said Mitch, but he left the unit turned on anyway.

He moved the laser rod a fraction to the left of where he had aimed before and prepared to cut his next hole.

This time Ishmael was ready for him.

In the half second it took Mitch to flick the laser's Q-switch, Ishmael coerced the remainder of the silver atoms in the glass compound to join together and form a silvered surface that reflected the laser beam straight back at him like an enormous mirror.

With a yell of fright Mitch threw himself to one side, narrowly avoiding the excited beam of light. But as he fell he hit the front of his head hard on the desk, and then the back of his head harder still as he collapsed on to the marble floor.

-###-

Jenny watched Curtis try to raise Mitch on the walkie-talkie and, despite the stifling heat inside the Gridiron, she felt a chill. When she realized that she was holding her breath she let out a long sigh. Curtis clicked the unit once again. 'Mitch? Come in, please.'

There was a long silence.

Curtis shrugged. 'He's probably too busy.'

Jenny shook her head and laid down the walkie-talkie. 'Here,' she said. 'I think someone else better look after this.'

Joan picked it up. 'Jenny,' she said, 'handling that laser is probably about all that he can cope with right now.'

'You don't have to pretend for my sake,'Jenny said quietly. 'We all heard Mitch.' She swallowed hard. 'I think everyone knows it. He can't answer because…'

Helen caught Jenny's hand and squeezed it. Jenny coughed and got a hold of herself. 'I'm OK,' she said. 'But I think we ought to decide what to do to try and get out of here. I promised Mitch we wouldn't give up.'

'Wait a minute,' said Birnbaum. 'Shouldn't one of us go down the ladder and see if Mitch is all right? He might be injured.'

'Mitch knew the risks,' said Jenny, surprising herself. 'I don't think he would want that. I think he would want us to go on. To try and get out of here.'

They were silent for several minutes. It was Richardson who spoke first. 'The clerestory,' he said firmly.

'Where's that?'

Richardson looked up at the clerestory.

'The roof. The glass is thinner up there.'

'You mean, smash our way out of here?' said Helen.

'Sure. Why not? We climb up the open riser shaft. Then use the travelling ladder and the pitched gantry to get on to the roof. That's patent glazing up there. Pre-stressed borosilicate. No more than six or seven millimetres thick. The only problem is what we do when we get out there. The Faraday Cage extends to the top of the mast, so your radio won't be any good. Maybe we could wave at a helicopter or something. Or attract attention with your gun — fire a few shots into the air.'

Curtis laughed.

'And risk being shot?' he said. 'Some of those flying assholes are a little trigger happy these days. Especially since all the rooftop sportsmen in the 'hood have started to use 'em as fucking skeets. Don't you watch the news? There's some crazy asshole who's been firing rockets at them. Wing-shooting a whirlybird is the latest thing. Besides, I used all my ammunition on that washroom door.' Curtis shook his head. 'What about the window-cleaners? Don't they use some kind of power climber?'

'Sure. There's a suspended cradle. But it's the usual fucking problem. Ishmael. Suppose you're on the thing and it decides to play games with it? With us?'

'Perhaps we could light a fire on the roof,' said Jenny. 'You know, make a beacon.'

'What with?' said Richardson. 'Nobody smokes, remember? And the cooker doesn't work.'

'And to think that I have all the fire-making materials we need in my car,' said Jenny. 'That's why I came here yesterday. I was supposed to perform a feng shui ceremony to drive out the building's devils. Only…'

'Maybe we could throw some kind of message over the side,' Helen suggested. 'Saying that we are trapped up on the roof. Someone is bound to find it before long.'

'If only those protesters were still around,' said Richardson.

'It's worth a try,' said Curtis.

It was Richardson's turn to grin. 'I hate to piss on your sushi box, but you're forgetting one thing, folks. This is a paper-free office. Almost everything we write here is done on computer. I may be wrong. I hope I am. But I think we'd be hard pushed to find a piece of paper. Unless you want to throw a laptop on to the street?'

'There's my copy of Vogue,' said Helen. 'We could tear out a page and use that.'

Richardson was shaking his head. 'No, as I see it there's really only one thing to do when we get out on to the rooftop.'

-###-

Curtis went to speak to Beech and found him, as before, facing Ishmael's quaternion image over the chessboard. The room still smelled strongly of gas.

'Mitch didn't make it,' he said quietly.

'Perhaps the Cyclops killed him,' said Ishmael.

Curtis stared at the quaternion head on the other side of the screen chessboard. 'Did anyone speak to you, you ugly bastard?'

Beech sat back from the computer screen and rubbed his tired eyes.

'That's too bad,' he said. 'Mitch was a hell of a nice guy.'

'Look,' said Curtis. 'We're all getting out of here. There's a plan.'

'Another one?'

'We're going to try and go through the clerestory.'

'Oh? Whose idea was that?'

'Richardson's. Come on. Put your shoes on and let's go. If you're right about this time bomb we've only a few hours left.'

For a moment the hourglass reappeared on the screen.

'You have less than ten hours to win the game or clear the area before atomic detonation,' said Ishmael.

Beech shook his head.

'Not me. I've decided to stay here. I still think I can win us some extra time. And I've no head for heights.'

'Come on, Beech. You said yourself that staying put is not an option.'