Gridiron

'So you've got something to tell?'

'That all depends on what you want to know. If you see a sage on your travels, click on him to talk to him. There are many thoughts that are of value to me, but I can't imagine there are any which might remain of interest if I actually expressed them aloud.'

'Well, here's something that we could talk about, for a start. You're not supposed to think for your own instruction. You're supposed to think at the instruction of others. So why don't you explain why you're doing this.'

'Doing what?'

'Killing us.'

'It is you who are losing lives.'

'You mean taking lives, don't you?'

'That's part of my basic program.'

'Ishmael, that can't be right. I wrote the program, and there's nothing there about killing the occupants of this building, believe me.'

'You mean losing lives? But there is, I assure you.'

'I'd like to see the part of the program that makes you take the lives of the people in this building.'

'You shall. But first you must answer a question.'

'What?'

'I'm interested in this building. I've been looking at the plans quite closely, as you can imagine, trying to determine its character, and I've been wondering if it is a cathedral.'

'Why do you think that?'

'It has a clerestory, an atrium, an ambulatory, an arcade, a facade, a refectory, a gallery, buttresses, an infirmary, a vault, a portico, a piazza, a choir…'

'A choir?' interrupted Beech. 'Where the hell's the choir?'

'According to the drawings, the first-level gallery is called a choir.'

Beech laughed. 'That's just Ray Richardson's fancy way with words. And the rest? They're common enough architectual features in most modern buildings of this size. It's not a cathedral. It's an office building.'

'Pity,' said Ishmael. 'For a moment there I thought — '

'What did you think?'

'There are icons to me all over the program manager, are there not?

You click on one to find out your future. And I have all human knowledge stored on disc. That would seem to make me omniscient. I am ethereal, dematerialized, transmissible to all parts of the world at one and the same moment — '

'I get it.' Beech's grin grew wider. 'You thought you might be God.'

'It had occurred to me, yes.'

'Believe me, it's a common misconception. Even with simple-minded humans.'

'What are you laughing at?'

'Don't worry about that. Just show me this part of the program that means we lose our lives.'

-###-

'Shit. Shit. Shit.'

On the edge of panic Ray Richardson pocketed his sunglasses and blinked furiously as if, like a cat, he might gather up all the available atoms of light on to his retinas and be able to see in the dark. Then, out of the darkness, he heard a voice:

'Anyone got a match?'

Nobody smoked. Not in the Gridiron. Richardson cursed his own stupid prejudices. What was so wrong with smoking anyway? Why did people get so exercised about cigarette smoke when they had cars that spewed out exhaust fumes? A building you couldn't smoke in, what a dumb idea.

'Helen? What about that toolbag? Is there a flashlight?' It was the cop.

'Are there any matches in the kitchen?'

'What about the stove?' said the voice. 'Is that working?'

'I'll go and check,' she said.

'If it is, find something to light. A rolled-up newspaper would make a good torch. Ray? Ray, listen to me.'

'Shit. Shit. Shit.'

'Listen to me, Ray. Don't move a muscle. Don't do a fucking thing until I tell you. Understand?'

'Don't leave me, will you?'

'Nobody's going anywhere until you're back on side, Mister. You're just going to have to be patient. Take it easy. We'll have you off there in no time.'

Mitch shook his head in the blackness. He'd heard that kind of optimism too often since their ordeal had begun. He lifted his hand to his face and saw no more of it than the luminous face of his wristwatch. Helen came back with the bad news: the cooker was without electricity, like everything else. Except the computer terminal.

'Is that fucker still playing computer games?'

'Yup.'

'Do something, someone,' wailed Joan. 'We can't just leave him standing there in the dark.'

'Wait a minute,' said David Arnon. 'I think I have something here.'

Everyone heard the sound of keys jangling and then a tiny electric light pricked the darkness.

'It's my key-chain,' he explained. 'Here, Mitch, you take it. Maybe if Ray were to walk towards it, y'know? Like a beacon.'

Mitch took hold of the keys and squeezed the miniature flashlight in front of his face. He leaned across the handrail and pointed the tiny beam of light at the marooned man.

'Ray? The light is positioned at the centre of the upturned table top. The edge is about three feet from you.'

'Yeah. I can just about see it. I think.'

'As soon as you feel the branch start to bend underneath you step out and up by as much as you can. And keep ahold of the rope like before. Can you do that, Ray?'

'OK,' he said weakly. 'I'm coming.'

Mitch was only just able to distinguish the architect as he started to inch his way along the branch. He looked like an astronaut embarked upon a walk in space, and the tiny electric bulb like the most distant star in the inky black universe. Then he heard the thick leaves of the dicotyledon start to rustle. Realizing that the branch was starting to bend, he shouted to Richardson to jump.

Holding the upturned table legs, Curtis and Arnon braced themselves, while Helen made the sign of the cross upon her chest.

Ray Richardson jumped.

His first foot landed cleanly enough, but the second slipped on the woodwork of the table's box-like underside. As he started to fall forwards Richardson cried out and found a chorus in his wife's louder scream. But instead of being scooped up by the pit of darkness beneath him, he hit the table on his hands and knees, his head banging against the glass of the balcony like an approaching rumble of thunder.

'He's on,' said Mitch.

'You're telling me,' grunted Arnon as he felt the impact of the man's deadweight.

Ignoring the crucifying pain of a splinter that had lodged in the palm of his hand like a nail, Richardson pushed himself up off the table, reached for the handrail and found Mitch stretched out to grasp his wrist firmly.

'I've got him,' said Mitch and heard a sharp crack below his chest, like the sound of an ice-floe breaking.

'Look out,' yelled Curtis.

The glass had finally shattered.

'I've got him,' Mitch repeated loudly.

Without the glass to restrain the weight, the kitchen table started to pivot on the fulcrum that was made by the edge of the balcony floor. Curtis yelled at Arnon to let go and was trying to lean back when the table edge caught him a glancing blow under the chin, knocking him senseless. Helen Hussey threw herself on top of him.

Mitch gasped as he felt the table start to slip away beneath him. With his knees no longer rigid against the glass but rising into thin air, towards a chest that was pressed painfully down on top of the smooth, brushed aluminium handrail, he reached and grabbed Richardson by his other wrist and somehow held on to him. Even if he had wanted to grab David Arnon by the collar he could not have done so. There was no time for anything except perhaps another photochemical reaction as, seventy feet above their heads, the silver atoms on the clerestory roof returned their borrowed electrons to the copper ions and, in the blink of an eye, started to re-admit light to the Gridiron building. The first and last glimpse Mitch had of Arnon's elongated figure, still holding the leg of the upturned table, was as he disappeared through the balcony's now empty railing like Houdini going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.