‘Whatdaya mean? You must be back in, I mean, what was it testing?’
‘You know, to see if I was all there in mind and body.’
‘And?’
‘Something was missing, apparently.’
‘What something?’
‘Fear.’
‘Is that bad?’
‘They seem to think so – they figure I have some kind of deathwish.’
‘They said that?’
‘No, they dressed it up a bit, called it the Miracle Effect.’
‘This thing they’re saying about you,’ said Clancy, ‘is it true, do you think?’
‘If it’s weird to feel like your number’s not gonna come up then I guess I got some kinda syndrome, call it the Miracle Effect, the Angel Complex, call it any darned thing you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m still here and probability says I shouldn’t be.’
‘So what does it feel like?’ asked Clancy. ‘Believing you can’t die?’
Ruby paused before saying, ‘I sort of can’t help pushing things to see what will happen, to see how it feels to be invincible and every time I don’t die it’s harder to believe I ever will. But I don’t get what the problem is – I mean, I’m a Girl Scout, right? Or at least a trainee agent, so how can fearlessness be a bad thing?’ She paused. ‘Look, you coming over or what?’
‘What,’ said Clancy.
‘That’s funny Clance. . . you’re a laugh a minute buster, you know that?’
‘Yeah, well, if I could I would you know.’
‘I know, but there’s Olive, right?’
‘Yeah, but once I’m done with that I’m planning on meeting Elliot at the diner if you feel like it.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ said Ruby. ‘Meantime, stay outta jail.’ She hung up and went down to the kitchen looking for food but as she was passing the hall table, the telephone began to ring. She picked up the receiver. ‘Twinford Space Programme, slip into an astronaut suit and make gravity a thing of the past.’
‘Uh. . .’ said a hesitant voice down the end of the line.
‘Oh, hi Quent.’
‘It’s Quent,’ said Quent.
‘I know,’ said Ruby.
‘You did? How come?’ He sounded really pleased.
‘You have a kinda recognisable voice.’
‘I do?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Wow, no one’s ever told me that before.’
‘Happy I could make your day, now what can I do you for?’
‘I was hoping you could make it to my birthday party.’
Silence.
‘I sent the invitation several weeks ago but I know you were in hospital getting your arm fixed so you might have missed it.’
Silence.
‘That’s why I’m following up with a call.’
Silence.
‘It’s going to be a superhero theme.’
Silence.
‘I haven’t decided on my costume yet, but it might be that one who breathes underwater.’
‘Aqua-man?’
‘Yeah, Aqua-man, but it’s a hard superhero to do out of the pool and our pool’s being drained due to the algae.’
‘So remind me of the date Quent?’
‘It’s on Saturday 16th.’
‘Saturday 16th, that’s a tough break, any other day but Saturday 16th and I’d be there like a shot.’
‘You mean you can’t make it?’ Quent sounded devastated. Not a tiny bit upset – devastated.
If Ruby could be hard-nosed when confronted by bullies and psychopaths, she entirely crumbled when faced with disappointed, lisping eleven-year-old boys, or disappointed anyone for that matter – all that Ruby Redfort tough-talking, cocksure cool just evaporated.
‘Look Quent, before you let that lip start wobbling let me see if I can’t rejig a few things here.’
A superhero party, that’s all I need.
While Ruby was contemplating her dilemma, her friend Clancy was figuring a way to wriggle out of his little problem. He was so absorbed by these thoughts that he didn’t at first hear the small voice calling out to him.
‘I said, can you walk me to the party now?’ It was Olive, Clancy’s five-year-old sister.
‘No,’ said Clancy, ‘I said I’d hang out with you, but I’m not walking you to any party.’
‘But Mom said you have to.’
Olive was standing in the doorway to his room in her hat, coat, gloves and backpack.
‘What are you wearing Olive?’ said Clancy. ‘You do realise it’s still about 24 degrees outside?’
‘Mom says we are expecting a cold snip any day soon,’ said Olive.
‘Yeah, well I think you are a little over prepared. And by the way it’s cold snap, not cold snip.’
‘I like snip better,’ said Olive.
Clancy rolled his eyes. Most people seemed to find Olive cute but he didn’t. She was too annoying for cute.
While Clancy looked for his backpack, Olive went down to find their mother and tell on him.
Clancy took the backstairs to avoid the inevitable – maybe he could slip out without Olive seeing – but as he turned the corner to his dismay there she was, like a tiny pacman figure all dressed in yellow, expressionless but determined.
‘Mom says you’re in trouble if you don’t take me.’
There was to be no escape. Mrs Crew’s voice called out, ‘Clancy, is it really too much to ask that you walk your little sister to her party? She so looks up to you, can’t you just be kind?’
Olive was looking straight ahead, her big eyes blinking at him. She looked as innocent as a kewpie doll.
Clancy was about to offer Olive a bribe but his mother marched out from the kitchen followed by Amy, the youngest but one Crew sister.
Amy was seven and not a big talker and Clancy, perhaps for this very reason, was especially fond of her.
‘OK, OK, I’ll drop her,’ grumbled Clancy.
Amy gave him a sympathetic glance.
Mrs Crew bent to kiss Olive on the nose. ‘You are a perfect picture!’
Clancy looked at Olive. She was a picture all right.
Reluctantly he walked her to her friend’s party where she immediately latched on to some other kid and began talking to it as if Clancy had never been there.
‘My total pleasure,’ he called, ‘don’t mention it.’
Olive didn’t even hear.
‘Is that your little sister?’ said a mother on the way to drop off her kid. ‘I could just eat her up.’
‘You’ll need plenty of relish,’ said Clancy.
Due to the Olive drop-off, Clancy was now running late and Elliot would already be at the Donut waiting for him. Clancy didn’t like to be late, he liked to be punctual; he got anxious when he wasn’t on time. So he started to run. It was well past midday and hot, but he would rather be on time than comfortable, therefore he sprinted, not easing his pace for even a minute. Clancy was fast, but despite his running flat-out he arrived twenty-one minutes late. It was a shame because this was one morning when Clancy would have benefited from being on time; it would have saved him a whole lot of bother.
As he pushed open the door to the diner on Amster Street, he went smack into the back of a kid who was tying his shoe on the other side of the door.
‘Woah, sorry,’ said Clancy, stepping back.
The boy straightened and turned around, and for just a second looked like he was about to say something along the lines of, ‘No problem,’ but sort of changed his mind when he laid eyes on Clancy.
It was like he had a choice – shrug it off or make something of it. He took option two.
‘You deep down stupid? Or do you just feel the need to get socked in the face?’
‘What?’ said Clancy, he didn’t get what was going on here. All he’d done was walk into the Double Donut and now he was about to get beaten up? It wasn’t even 1 pm; the day had barely got going.
‘You deaf too, loser?’ said the boy.
Clancy just stared, unsure what to say. The kid’s jaw was set in an angry clench and his eyes had narrowed. He was sort of ugly-looking, all fists and muscles – looked like he could take on a gorilla.
‘Look, I didn’t mean to bump into you. It was an accident caused by you being in the way.’
‘What?’ The gorilla looked puzzled.
‘But sorry if I hurt you.’ Clancy knew that that last thing wasn’t a good thing to say if he wanted to walk away without getting blood all over his shirt, but the guy was ticking him off and he couldn’t help himself.
‘What did you just say?’ said the boy.
‘Sorry if I hurt you, I guess you have a low pain threshold,’ said Clancy, ‘some people do.’
The boy’s face was set like stone. ‘You aren’t even going to have a pain threshold by the time I’ve finished with you,’ he hissed. ‘I’m going to snap it right in half.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ said Clancy. ‘You can’t snap a pain threshold, not in half, not in quarters, not in nothing.’
But the boy wasn’t listening. He had grabbed Clancy by the shirt collar and had his other hand balled into a fist. His face was very near Clancy’s and his breath smelled of something not so fresh.
‘If it’s all the same to you,’ croaked Clancy, ‘I’d really like to apologise, I’m sure it was all my fault, what do you say we start afresh?’
This only served to make the boy even madder. He was about to really punch Clancy when Marla stepped in. She had hold of the kid’s arm, real tight.
Marla was known for her strong grip and well-developed biceps; she could open any size of pickle jar, hurl heavy sacks of potatoes into the store cupboard and throw brawling men out into the street without breaking a sweat.
Marla looked the gorilla kid square in the eye. ‘I don’t wanna see you again, not in my diner, not outside my diner, not anywhere near my diner, you got that cookie?’
The boy kind of nodded.
‘Sure you do,’ said Marla, as she turned him around and marched him out of the door, ‘now scram.’
Then she looked at Clancy. ‘Play nice,’ was all she said before going back to her kitchen. Clancy brushed himself down, then made his way through the tables to where Elliot was sitting.
Elliot looked up when Clancy approached. ‘Do you know how late you are?’
‘Did you see that?’ asked Clancy.
‘What?’ said Elliot. ‘Did I miss something?’ He was looking around now.
‘I nearly got squeezed to death by a gorilla is all.’
‘Really?’
‘Almost,’ said Clancy, ‘but knowing you were there thinking about me made all the difference.’
‘What do you mean a gorilla?’ Elliot looked both afraid and eager to see it.
‘This huge guy was trying to kill me; Marla threw him out.’
‘If only I’d seen,’ said Elliot, ‘I would have. . . you know, done something. . .’
‘I’m sure you would have weighed in.’
‘No way José,’ said Elliot, ‘you’re a good friend Clance but I like my teeth where they are – in my mouth.’
‘So what would you have done?’ said Clancy.
‘Run in the other direction most likely,’ said Elliot, and then he began to laugh, so much that the whole table began to vibrate and his milkshake ended up on the floor. At which point Marla handed him a mop.
Clancy didn’t mind that Elliot was not prepared to put himself in the line of attack; at least he was honest about it. It was hard to hate someone for that.
Chapter 15.
RUBY WOKE UP EARLY THE NEXT MORNING and got dressed: a pair of shorts, a T-shirt bearing the word scram, sun cream. She stuffed her climb shoes into her backpack, along with a bottle of water, some climbing chalk and the glider wings, then she took out item 202: The Getaway shoes.
If Spectrum weren’t going to give her free-climb training, then she was just going to have to do it for herself.
She slipped on the shoes. A perfect fit. It was clear that they had belonged to Bradley Baker back in the day, but they didn’t look like they had got too much wear and the leather was still in fine condition.
She pushed open her window, swung herself out to the tree and climbed down to the yard. Then she went out the back gate into the alley and ran until she met the Dry River road, a long gently winding ribbon of tarmac. She clicked the green button and the roller wheels snapped out. Now they looked more or less like traditional roller skates. Then she clicked the red button. Nothing happened. She skated a couple of yards – still nothing – stupid Spectrum junk! And then quite suddenly she was moving at incredible speed towards Dry River Canyon.
This was the climb location the Spectrum trainees would be training at, so why shouldn’t she give it a go – she was as good as any of them, whatever LB or Agent Gill thought. It was still early morning and the temperature wasn’t so hot, a perfect day for a climb, and what better way to test her newly fixed arm than by climbing several hundred feet up a rock face.
Plenty, some might say.
Ruby arrived without injury but her feet were very hot and a strange smell was coming from the Getaway Shoes. She took them off and placed them in the shade of a rock to cool. There were no trees in Dry River Canyon, just huge boulders strewn along what would have once been the river bed; vast stone formations marching across the landscape and a huge wall of golden rock towering up and around the canyon’s edge. She changed into her climb shoes, fastened her chalk pouch around her waist and stood looking up at the cliff that rose several hundred feet above her. Then she slipped on the tiny backpack containing the folded Glider Wings, so lightweight that she could barely even feel the straps on her shoulders.
She began to climb.
She was fast, and from a distance it looked effortless as she reached with her arms and legs, feeling out hand- and footholds. She paused now and again but only so she could reach behind her and dig her hands into the pouch and dust them with chalk. Keeping her fingers free from sweat was her only concern. She’d made it a good way up – four hundred feet perhaps.
She was now balanced on the smallest of ledges, just contemplating the view before she made the final ascent. The air was very fresh this morning, only a light breeze lifting her hair. She worked out the direction she wanted to go in – she did not choose the easiest route, she picked the one with the most challenge to it, which meant rounding the rock face under a large overhang and then getting herself up and over. She was counting on there being some pretty decent fingerholds or it was going to get tricky.
This was a dangerous route for the best of climbers, but such was Ruby’s confidence in her climbing, she didn’t think for one minute, not one second, that she could fall. She felt like Spider-Man as she clung by her fingertips and toe tops, making her way across the face of the golden rock. She had made it all the way under the jutting stone face – now all she need do was to get above it. She chalked her hands and without pause began to work her way out and to the edge of the lip. For a few seconds she hung by her fingers from the overhang, four hundred and fifty feet above the canyon floor, then with a superhuman effort she swung her foot up and hooked it over the top. Twisting, she lifted herself up and over the lip.
Once above it she felt a rush of adrenalin – she had pretty much made it. She was doing well, not a wrong move, and then quite unexpectedly her foot slipped and she was sliding fast, back to the place where the rock cut under and there would be no surface to grab. She dug her fingers in, making claws of her hands and then, at the last moment, just before she went over the edge, she found a hold and for a moment she hung there by her fingers’ very tips just thanking her ‘Redfort Good Luck’.
Phew.
She let out a breath and then almost chuckled to herself. Life and death, so easily exchanged – and currently hanging in the balance, quite literally. She looked around her, calmly gauging her next move, then when she was sure, she swung her body to create momentum and kin
d of leapt to the right, letting go of her handhold as she did so.
A heartbeat of completely thin air –
– and then the warm dry rock was once again in her grasp.
Ten minutes later she had made it, and standing there drinking in the sun’s rays she felt very alive, the adrenalin coursing through her veins. Perfect, she thought. She was about to fly. Glide down like some kind of eagle bird. She unlatched the safety catch on the Glider Wings and felt for the release button. The one thing she had understood from reading the instructions was that you had to jump before depressing it, that was crucial – a hard thing to do, because it meant totally and utterly trusting that it was going to work.
She stepped back from the edge and walked about twenty paces. Then turned to face the canyon she was about to dive into. She ran as fast as she could until she was running like one of those cartoon characters who realise too late that they are running in midair above a giant gorge.
She punched the button.
A horrible split-second of nothing.
She punched again and felt the tiny wings spread out and she was airborne, gliding like a huge bird of prey. She could control direction with her body, leaning from side to side. This was without doubt the most incredible experience of her life; she was several hundred feet up and utterly alone, held only by the air around her. Silent, and surrounded by empty space.
And then a very unwelcome sound – the sound of tearing fabra-tech.
Chapter 16.
AS THE AIR PRESSURE RIPPED INTO THE GLIDER WINGS, some of the fabra-tech ‘feathers’ whirled away into the sky and Ruby began to half glide, half fall, Icarus-like towards the rock face. She reached out her hands but could not catch hold of anything that would halt her descent.
A sudden gust of wind grabbed at the glider gear and wrenched it from the backpack, and then she was tumbling and turning as she tried to grab air.
Ruby caught sight of the little wings peacefully gliding away – like the wings of an invisible, and forgetful, guardian angel. She caught sight of the ground rushing to meet her and knew that there was no way she would land without making one big dent in the earth, and no doubt an even bigger one in her skull.