Part 32 (1/2)
”Yes. Take care.”
He stared at the black display.
I'm an idiot.
Then he put the phone away, checked the knife on his hip, and got moving.
[ TWENTY-ONE ].
The Millennium Wheel was wired for light. Each ellipsoidal car, wrapped in a smart plastic lamina, rippled with scarlet, indigo and white patterns, s.h.i.+ning even in sunlight. The struts, braided with optic fibres, s.h.i.+mmered with a thousand colours, s.h.i.+fting in time to the music's beat atop a tall pedestal stage on the Embankment proper, a band was playing, their instruments redfanging the lights: a visual kaleidoscope phaselocked to the beat.
”It's brilliant,” said Richard.
”Yeah, watch now.” Opal pointed. ”That's Hammerfeld, from Norway, you want to talk about brilliant.”
The gra.s.sy square next to the Wheel contained a complex arrangement of scaffolding towers, some with tough lightweight sheeting to form walls, plus ramps and outcrops of hard plastic with minimal padding. The compet.i.tors were doing their thing two at a time, partly because this was a friendly compet.i.tion for little prize money, a demo showcasing the partic.i.p.ants of next week's Xtreme Run champions.h.i.+ps. Most of the foreign compet.i.tors were already here in London.
Richard knew all this because Opal had explained it several times over. He even remembered some of the nicknames.
”That's Mjolnir, right? Aka the Hammer?”
”Not bad, Richie.”
People were swirling all around them. Brian had gone off somewhere with some older guys his own age.
”What are the towers for? They're too smooth to climb up.”
”Only for the freerunners. No gloves, no skates, see? This is the freerunning; the gekrunners come afterwards.”
”And old Hammer up there is a freerunner.”
”He does both, actually, unlike most of them. In compet.i.tion, leastways.”
Brand names and mottos of clothing and equipment companies scrolled down the ramps and slides and towers. Opal and the other squatters, gekrunners or not, despised the System, meaning banks and ordinary jobs and all the rest; but they accepted companies promoting their gek-gear, because otherwise there would be no events like this, no money to pay for people to come from abroad, or to hire in the ma.s.sive stands, and whatever else it took.
Of them all, it seemed only Brian saw the contradictions in their views.
And me.
At least Brian had a place among them.
What can I do?
Athleticism was alien to him. If he were at home now, he'd be up his bedroom, reading a book on his widescreen, drinking a Diet c.o.ke or milk, pretending not to hear Father downstairs swearing as he got deeper into the whisky, or the rows with the in-house staff, the screech of wheels if Father set off for a
drunken, too-fast drive in his ElectroBentley X.
”Richie, did you see that?”
”Uh, what?”
”He went from like a Lache into... Never mind.”
”Sorry.”
”You all right?”
”Sure. Yeah.”There were smells of roasting food, nuts and cicadas and chicken, and the sweetness of candy floss; but the pain in his stomach was familiar now, a constant hard pressure. His lack of money was a reality. But Opal was with him.
She was focused on the freerunners cartwheeling and leaping around the compet.i.tion stage: absorbed, lips apart and eyes alight, perhaps seeing herself up there one day, feeling how it would be to flip through the air like that, enjoy the attention of the crowd. At least, that was what he thought was happening in her head.
The music was a piece he knew, Everyone Runs From Something, and he would normally remember the name of the band but tonight it wasn't there in his mind. Despite the crowd all around and Opal beside him, he felt more lost than he had ever imagined he could be. People jostled and cheered the freerunners' performance, which to him was a montage of senseless movement and confusion.
None of this was right.
Josh followed the stream of people. At intervals, he checked his phone, then, after finding no search hits, he randomly accessed the footage his software agents were a.n.a.lysing. Around the Embankment and further east at South Bank and Waterloo, the flow of faces and bodies along the streets formed an organic river, so hard to dive inside for individuals, especially when they were kids, shorter than the throng of adults. If they were here at all.
More people pa.s.sing meant a wealth of video data, more possibilities counterbalanced by the difficulty of seeing someone clearly enough for recognition. All around was a press of individuals caught up in the tidal motion of the crowd, though each of those thousands was a self-aware individual, a human being with success and failures, loves and disappointments, a family past and an unknown future; while he himself could drift with his thoughts or come back to reality: a fourteen year-old boy needed to be found, for his own sake and Suzanne's.
Josh bought a pink candyfloss, so he looked like someone here for pure enjoyment, and held it in his right hand, keeping his fingers away from the wispy, sticky sugar-cloud.
On the gra.s.s area by the Eye, gekrunners were warming up. He moved closer, protective of his candyfloss, finding a place to stand. Ignoring the compet.i.tion spectacle, he looked around the crowd, trying to spot a girl or lad matching the images in his mind. Meanwhile, his phone was in his sealed s.h.i.+rt pocket, ready to vibrate if one of his querybots found a hit.
Around him, some wore their phones velcroed to sleeves or on bands around wrist or biceps. Though the fabric would make a noise if pulled, this place was crowded and the music was loud wearing phones that way invited theft. That was why Josh's was in his pocket.
A strange hand took hold of his knife hilt.
He reacted as trained, slapping his hand against the attacker's, pinning his grip and knife, dropping his weight as he spun, free hand hammering down, still with the candyfloss impale the eyeball but the attacker was small pull back pull back eight or nine years old eight or nine years old Jesus Christ Jesus Christ and he diverted the strike in time. He twisted the trapped hand, and the kid went to his knees. and he diverted the strike in time. He twisted the trapped hand, and the kid went to his knees.
”I should snap every bone in your arm. If I sneeze it'll happen anyway.”
”S-sorry.”
”Get up.” He unpinned the hand. ”Come on.”
”All right. You didn't have to hurt me.”