The Age Of Zeus (15 page)

Hyperion and Crius, and all at mission control, were left staring at a shattered, sagging indentation in the rockface, from which a thick swirl of dust, like a soul released from a body, billowed up and dispersed into the starry sky.

17. THE PROTHERO STARE

"J
ust what the fuck happened last night?"

This was Ramsay, to McCann, early the next morning, minutes after he set foot back on Bleaney Island. He had McCann backed up against a wall in the command centre, with a forearm pressed to the engineer's epiglottis and a section of his shirtfront bunched around the other hand. McCann looked terrified, as well he might be. The Chicagoan's expression was pure murderous rage. Others - technicians, Titans, Sam - looked on, startled. It had happened so quickly. Ramsay had marched in and grabbed hold of McCann before most of them knew he was even in the room.

"I don't know!" McCann gasped. "Some kind of breakdown in Soleil's suit."

"I thought the damn things were supposed to be indestructible."

"I never said that. Clearly there's a design flaw. Maybe the servomotor housings need to be hardened, or, or... I just don't know. If I had the suit I could examine it, run some tests..."

"Well, you can't," Ramsay snarled, "on account of it's buried under half a hillside in the middle of goddamn Wales, along with Soleil. And I'm holding you personally responsible."

"It wasn't my fault," McCann protested.

"Oh yeah?" Ramsay drew him away from the wall and slammed him back into it hard enough to wind him. "You built the fuckers. Whose else fault can it be?"

"Rick."

"Sam, back off."

Sam placed a hand on Ramsay's shoulder. "That's enough. We get it. You're upset. But so's Jamie. So are all of us."

Ramsay peered at her hand as though it was dog dirt. Sam, taking the hint, withdrew it.

"Upset?" he said. "Let me tell you, the last thing I am is upset. I'm mad as hell, is what I am. I just lost a man. I was unit leader on that op, and I lost a man, which I wouldn't have if Scotty here had done his job properly."

He thrust McCann against the wall a third time, forearm pushing upwards on the engineer's trachea so that McCann was forced to go on tiptoes to avoid strangulation.

"Taking it out on Jamie isn't going to help anyone," Sam said.

"Oh no?" Ramsay retorted. "'Cause it's sure as hell making
me
feel better."

"It won't bring Soleil back, it won't undo what's done. Rick, what happened in that cave was an accident. You know that."

"Do I?"

"Deep down you do. Soleil tripped, and something in her battlesuit took a knock and broke. If any good is to come of this, it's the fact that now we know there's a potential problem with all the suits that we didn't know was there before. Something Jamie can look into and put right. Right, Jamie?"

Avidly McCann nodded.

"Oh, that's twisted fucking logic," said Ramsay. "A Titan died - on our first fucking outing, what's more - but hey, it's OK, look on the bright side, at least it's shown us that we're all going to have to twinkletoe around like ballerinas from now on if we don't want to get ourselves killed."

"You eliminated the Cyclops. The op was a success."

"Whoopee-fucking-doo. Medals all round."

Letting go of McCann with a snort of disgust, Ramsay swung away from him. The engineer sank to the floor, limp with relief.

"You know, I'm thinking maybe that Pugh guy was right after all," Ramsay said to Sam, to everyone. "This
is
bullshit. Those suits are deathtraps. Landesman's plan sucks. This whole crusade against the Pantheon is a waste of time. It's bullshit, and I'm not sure I wanna be a part of it any more."

And with that, he stormed out.

Technician looked at technician. Titan looked at Titan. Unease was in everybody's eyes.

Sam wished Landesman was there to make some rallying speech and raise people's spirits. He, however, was taking Eto'o's death particularly hard. Immediately after her act of supreme self-sacrifice, he had sequestered himself away in his office, and was refusing to open the door to anyone or even answer anyone's knock.

In his absence, the role of morale booster fell on Sam.

"Jamie," she said to McCann.

"Aye?" said the engineer, getting to his feet, looking ruffled and still very alarmed.

"You can figure out what went wrong with Soleil's suit, can't you?"

"I hope so. Without the suit itself -"

"Wrong answer. Not 'I hope so.' That's not good enough. You
will
. You'll work day and night, you won't stop, you won't rest and neither will any of your colleagues until the fault is found and rectified. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"I want your word on it. I am not kidding around here. I want you to promise me that you'll give it your all."

McCann was all seriousness. "I will, I promise. Of course I will."

"Good. Because otherwise I will be unhappy. Rick just now, being unhappy? That, believe me, is nothing compared to me being unhappy. That was
happy
compared to me being unhappy."

She then gave McCann a stare that she'd seen Inspector Prothero give on a number of occasions, most memorably to a constable who'd managed to contaminate a crime scene by opening several drawers without first taking the basic precaution of putting on latex gloves. It was a look that combined equal parts disdain, derision and annoyance, with a pinch of world-weary resignation thrown in for good measure, and it invariably left the recipient feeling as low as it was humanly possible to feel while at the same time determined to improve and do better next time. Sam knew this because she herself had had the look directed against her once. Once had been enough.

She must have emulated her DI and mentor pretty well, because McCann withered visibly before her, seeming almost to shrink, to become physically the small boy that he was inside. Moments later he was scurrying around marshalling the other technicians, getting them to pull battlesuits off their stands and onto workbenches, starting to dismantle them, generally whipping up a frenzy of keen investigative fervour.

Sam knew she had bullied the poor kid. Equally, it had got results, and her fellow Titans appeared reassured. Something was being seen to be done. If McCann could prevent the suits from ever going wrong in that way again, then Eto'o would not have died in vain.

Later, Hamel drew Sam aside for a private word, and confirmed that her handling of the situation had been spot-on.

"You did well," she said. "I am going to miss Soleil, very much. But I'm glad to know that hers won't have been a wasted death."

"Thérèse, do you mind if I ask? Were you and Soleil... you know?"

"Sam. You can say it. Were we lovers?"

"Yes."

"No." Hamel lofted her shoulders slightly, disappointed but philosophical. "No. Soleil was not the way I am. However, I liked her a great deal. She reminded me very much of my partner."

"The partner you mentioned, the one the Olympians killed."

"Yes. Mélanie. They looked nothing alike. Mélanie was Caucasian, for one thing. But they both had this straightforwardness about them, this pragmatism, so admirable. Also, with Soleil I was able to speak French, and that was nice. It's tiring to speak a second language all day, and the French was a reminder of home, you know? Like putting on a pair of old slippers."

"You could speak French with me if you like," Sam said, "as long as you don't mind limiting it to GCSE level.
Comment est votre baguette, monsieur boulanger?
"

Hamel pulled a face. "Your accent is horrible, and your grammar not much better."

"But apart from that..."

"Also, it sounded like you were asking the baker how his penis is, which I don't think was your intention at all."

"Ah. Best we stick to English, then."

"Yes, I think that would be a good idea. Sam?"

"Yes?"

"Deaths were inevitable, of course," Hamel said. "We must accept that. You must most of all."

"I know, I know. Just, why so early on? On our very first outing? It doesn't bode well for the future."

"Don't be discouraged. Feel sad, yes, but stay strong. That's my advice. As leader, you must feel hurt by each casualty as much as anyone, perhaps more than anyone, but must show it less than anyone."

"A tall order."

"Then be tall."

"I'm five foot six in my socks."

"Then wear high heels."

"I would," Sam said, "if I could only find a pair that go with a battlesuit."

"Curse those men," said Hamel, "for making battlesuits that are so hard to accessorise with. Why couldn't Landesman have spent a bit more money and brought in Ralph Lauren to help with the design?"

"He just wasn't thinking, was he?"

They laughed, and the laughter felt good. It warded off the sense of despair that was gnawing at Sam, the fear that the task Landesman had set them was of Herculean proportions - perhaps Sisyphean proportions - too great for them to accomplish, futile, unfulfillable. After all, the Cyclops was supposed to have been a relatively easy takedown, entry-level stuff. One of the least feared of the Olympians' monsters, a moronic brute of a creature - and yet killing him exacted a heavy price. If for each monster scalp the Titans claimed one of their number had to die, that was a rate of attrition they simply couldn't sustain. There'd be none of them left when the time came to confront the Olympians themselves.

"One thing I am sure of," Sam said. "From now on, no op takes place that I don't go on. I'm not staying behind the lines like some First World War general. I'm not prepared to sit back and watch while others go out and risk their lives. I want to lead from the front. If I'm there in the thick of things, then maybe I can prevent any further mishaps. At the very least I'll be in a position to try and do something, rather than just looking on helplessly."

"As I recall, you were hardly 'looking on helplessly' last night," Hamel said. "You were very proactive. But still, I take your point, and I respect it. Do you know what my therapist would say about you? He'd say you have 'control issues.'"

"I think your therapist probably has no idea what it's like to make life-or-death decisions or be responsible for other people's physical safety."

"True. To be honest, I'm not sure why I used to go to see him so regularly. He always seemed to me an overpaid fool with too many degrees and too little life experience. He was supposed to be helping me get over Mélanie's death, but again and again the conversation would come round to me being a lesbian."

"He was too fascinated by that?"

"Much too. But here's a funny thing. I haven't felt the need for therapy since coming to this island - haven't felt that need, that compulsion to talk to someone about how I'm feeling. It's like, this, what we're doing, this is a kind of therapy in itself. Do you not agree?"

Sam pondered. "I have a purpose again. I don't have that sense of being adrift in my own life any more. You could be right. Or maybe it's just that I don't have as much time on my hands as I used to. Before, I'd sit at home for days on end, obsessing about myself and my misery. Haven't had a spare moment to do that here."

"Revenge as the cure for bereavement?" wondered Hamel.

"Perhaps," said Sam.

Or perhaps not.

Perhaps there was only one true cure for bereavement - the one Eto'o had found in the course of exacting revenge.