to.
He passed the Start/Finish line for the ninth time at 145mph – VVRVRRVRRRRRRROOOOOM! – and saw the chequered flag.
The signal that the Monte Carlo post-mortem meeting was about to begin.
With a sigh, Al slowed, left the track, and drove down through the complex to the hangar-like building known as the CFAC (Central Field Analysis Chamber). The huge doors parted as he approached and he drove straight into the vast concrete space that was dominated by a ring of particle accelerators capable of whipping up an electromagnetic vortex that could shrink all matter.
His Boldklub machine. It had been used first during Operation Scarlatti, when Finn had first got caught up in the nano-world and where, somewhere, he remained. Now it stood idle, waiting for his return.
Al crushed the lump that rose in his throat and spun the Mangusta to a handbrake halt at the centre of the array.
Commander James Clayton King, the Hook Hall supremo, on his way up the steel gantry steps to the control gallery, didn’t look down, break step or in any way acknowledge him. The impeccable figure who had coordinated saving the world any number of times hated showing off of any sort.
In moments, the G&T Committee were assembled: engineers, scientists, thinkers, soldiers. There were no formalities. Commander King reviewed the Monte Carlo débâcle using video to illustrate the handover, the roar of the motorbike, the pop of the empty cigar tube, the chase and kill. When the recording finished, he concluded: “We‘re not the first to leave the casino having incurred a loss. We knew this could happen, which is why we took precautions. Kaparis duped us. We duped him.”
Pictures flashed up of the dead rider and the girl who’d made the exchange.
“Tyros, of course. Note that they’ve taken to wearing coloured contact lenses to disguise the scarring left by the brain programming.”
The last known picture of Kaparis flashed up, able-bodied and evil, standing with a group of super-rich investors in Zurich, Switzerland, sometime in the late 1990s.
Al had to look away.
“As ever, he is playing games, displaying his power.”
“What goes on in that pretty little head of yours …?” Delta wondered aloud as she imagined three separate ways she’d like to snap that pretty little head off.
“We go again,” said Kelly. “We have no choice. He knows we have no choice. We wait for him to make contact again and we start again.”
“And we look ridiculous, again,” said Stubbs gloomily.
“Shut up, Stubbs,” said Kelly automatically.
“We are prepared for every eventuality,” said King. “Except one.”
“What?” said Al.
“He may be stringing us along because he doesn’t have Infinity or Carla.”
“They are NOT dead!” cried Delta, who never welcomed this suggestion. “We have no evidence that they’re dead. I was the last to see her and at that time she was alive!”
It was true that Delta had lost consciousness shortly after, but (attached to Yo-yo’s collar and still at nano-scale) she had been the last person to see her sister alive. Infinity Drake was presumed to be secreted somewhere about her person.
King waited a moment.
“We have no evidence, apart from a few doubtful videos, that Kaparis is holding either Infinity or your sister.”
Delta took comfort in this and bit her lip not to show it.
Al looked at the Zurich picture again and felt his stomach twist. Whenever he thought of Kaparis, his body tensed to take a punch. Exactly what Kaparis would have wanted, Al thought. Maybe that was the problem. Al looked round at the experts at the table or on screen, perhaps the finest minds ever assembled. He had led them to disaster. All his life he had been the smartest guy in the room, the brain. He had surfed his intellect and got as far as Boldklub and nearly bust open the laws of physics, but now it seemed he was all washed up.
“Stubbs is right …” said Al (but Stubbs took no pleasure in it). “We should never have fallen for Monte Carlo. That was ridiculous. We’ve become too predictable. Too logical. We’re scientists. We want the world to be rational, but we know that most of the time it isn’t. Life is random, absurd. That scares and confuses us. That’s why most of us are so bad at personal relationships!”
Al looked around. He was right. The room was full of blinking, uncomfortable nerds.
“If we can’t logically figure a way through this, then we’ve got to embrace the irrational, the unconscious. Look for answers there. We – no, I – I’ve got to stop digging the hole we’re in, I’ve got to step back and feel it, you know?”
“May I be excused?” requested Stubbs at this point.
“It’s time to get Zen, get patient,” Al continued. “It’s time to look beneath. This is a game of chess, not noughts and crosses.” He got up and paced. “We’ve got to think forwards, think backwards, think laterally; find the gap, the clue.” He slapped the table – “Come on! Let’s think outside the box! Let’s burn the damn box! You’re the brightest and the best. The only thing that trumps facts, that trumps time, that trumps the inevitable – that breaks E=MC2 – is the HUMAN IMAGINATION!”
Al climbed on to the desk and threw himself into a headstand. His legs flailed and split, but he held it, just.
He regarded them all, upside down. They looked ridiculous.
“It seems,” sighed Stubbs, “we’re back to square one.”
FEBRUARY 20 10:12 (GMT). Blue Valley Mall, Woking, Surrey, UK
There were too many variables, thought Li Jun.
There were six small children and approximately six thousand polyurethane spheres in the ball pool, featuring nine different colours with a predominance of red, blue, green and yellow. Four per cent of the spheres were misshapen or dented. Every movement caused a chaotic chain reaction through the surrounding balls that was predictable only to a low standard deviation. Too many differential calculations were required.
But what was causing Li Jun’s real distress was that the activity of the six small children in the ball pool had no point or goal. She looked out of the ball pool to where Grandmother Allenby stood with the other adults.
In an exaggerated mime, Grandma clutched her diaphragm and said, “Breathe, dear.”
Li Jun took a deep breath. She should be able to cope. She had a formidable mind. She had been Kaparis’s chief technician, after all—
“INCOMING!” Hudson cried, sprinting towards the edge of the pool while holding on to his glasses.
Grandma watched the speeding dork bellyflop in, causing an explosion of colour.
“Hudson! Really!”
“Come on, Li Jun! Get your shoulders under!” said Hudson, and he began to splash her with balls, an activity enthusiastically taken up by the little ones, so that Li Jun soon stood, uncomprehending, in the centre of a mad fountain.
“Is she … quite normal?” asked one of the other parents, looking at the slim teenage girl who seemed to be part Asian, part alien.
“She’s from another culture,” explained Grandma, biting back the urge to call Hudson and the toddlers off.
Li Jun was, in fact – thanks to Grandma – the world’s only liberated Tyro. After they had been rescued in the South China Sea, she had managed