"That was then. Nigel's not the person he used to be. None of us is."
"Even so, it was an aberration, Sam. It won't happen again."
"I have responsibility for this team. I need to know that — "
"Sam, Sam," Landesman interrupted, wafting a hand. "Nigel will be fine, I guarantee it. He's got something out of his system, and he's duly embarrassed about what he did and is busy eating more humble pie than is good for the digestion. He won't be any more trouble. In fact, I suspect that from now on he'll be eager to prove just what an asset he can be."
"That might not be such a good thing, either. Someone who's trying too hard is as much of a loose cannon as someone who's unreliable. But" — she let out a theatrical sigh — "I can see I don't have any choice in this."
"As it happens, you don't," Landesman said genially. "That we're discussing the matter at all should be taken as a mark of the high esteem in which I hold you. Now, if there's anything else…?"
Sam knew that she had just, ever so politely, been dismissed. As she rose from her chair, her eye fell on a photograph sitting on Landesman's desk in a silver frame. It was a studio portrait of a woman and a small boy, taken some thirty years ago to judge by the woman's clothes and hairstyle. She was sharply, aristocratically beautiful, with eyes that were strikingly large, dark and limpid. The boy was cute and had the same eyes, but his blazed with an extraordinarily intense and challenging light, as if everything, even posing for a photo, was a source of great puzzlement and irritation to him. He was, she guessed, three, four years old. Maybe the photographer had caught him on a bad day.
"Your wife and son?" she asked.
Landesman nodded. "Arianna. Alexander."
Something about the way he said it prompted her next question. "Are they…?"
Her implication was clear. Were they dead? Had they been killed by Olympians? If so, it would explain a lot.
Landesman certainly understood what she was getting at. He shook his head.
"Arianna," he said, following a long intake of breath, "died shortly after that picture was taken, long before the Olympians were around. Natural causes. An unusually aggressive form of lymphatic cancer, and all the money in the world couldn't save her — it could only make her descent a little slower and her landing a little softer than it might otherwise have been. As for Xander, he's still with us, though not with me. By which I mean, he and I aren't in touch any more. We were always combative during his childhood, and had a terrible falling-out when he was in his early twenties. I'd tried my best to raise him on my own, using as little hired help as possible, but it wasn't easy. I was a busy man, not often home. He needed a stability in his life that I couldn't give him, so it was inevitable, I suppose, that we should come to a parting of the ways. I wish it hadn't been quite so terminal, though. I don't think he could forgive me for not having been a good enough father."
"I'm sorry."
"Thank you, but I'm reconciled to it. Some mistakes cannot be rectified. They can only be lived with, or erased."
"As in forgotten."
"Perhaps," said Landesman.
As Sam turned to go, Landesman said, "Our pasts shape us, Sam. None of us is the person he or she used to be, it's true, but what we are still contains a great proportion of what we once were. Nothing, not even suffering the worst kind of tragedy, alters us completely. At core, we are set in stone."
For some time afterward Sam debated whether he'd been referring to Chisholm, to her, or to himself. It very possibly could have been all three.
14. CALLSIGNS
The training continued. The Titans familiarised themselves with all the weapons on offer, not just the conventional ones — the guns, the grenades, the rocket launchers — but the more unusual items such as the knuckledusters that packed a stunning million-volt punch and the semiautomatic pistol with hinged barrel and videocamera sight that could shoot round corners.
They practised manoeuvres as well, learning from Ramsay and Barrington about flanking crossfire, cover formation, shooting lines and the like. For those among them with no military background it was a crash course in the basics of armed combat, courtesy of two drill sergeants with very different teaching styles. Surprisingly it was the Australian who was the more even-tempered of the two, the one who would dismiss errors with a shrug and a "never mind, try again" attitude. The Chicagoan was less forgiving, quicker to scold. He might pepper his instruction with wisecracks, but he took the role of tutor very seriously. "This shit," he said, "if you don't get it right, you could get yourself killed. Worse, you could get the guy next to you killed." And if Ramsay was harsh with all of his pupils, there was none he was harsher with than Sam. His feeling seemed to be that, as leader, she could least afford to get things wrong — although in Sam's view there was more than a little bit of petty revenge going on. He was still smarting from her Piss off and leave me alone remark a while back. Not a man who took rejection well, obviously.
And then, come early March, they were ready.
They knew it, without having to be told. They were now moving in synch with one another, each instinctively understanding what his or her place was in any given manoeuvre. All of them were able to handle the weapons comfortably, although each had developed his or her own preference for and aptitude with a particular one. They had discovered that sense of quiet, deep-seated joy that comes from being part of a cohesive unit, the satisfaction that a wolf might feel in the sinuous ebb and flow of a pack on the hunt. They weren't perfect. Now and then one or other of them could still slip up. Nor were all the interpersonal relationships within the group in harmony. Barrington and Sondergaard continued their two-way sniping, which would sometimes escalate into out-and-out insults; Sparks and Hamel had started to get on each other's nerves, for reasons no one, perhaps not even they, could quite fathom; Chisholm had become ostracised since the rocket launcher incident (which he had self-deprecatingly dubbed his "Poseidon Misadventure"), although he was doing his utmost to ingratiate himself back into the group; and Sam and Ramsay remained on frosty terms, the initial affection each had felt for the other in the early weeks having now become submerged, leaving no trace of itself on the surface.
Nevertheless, they were ready. They were beginning to get impatient, wanting to know from Landesman when they were going to hit the Olympians, pestering him to be allowed to put theory into practice. If that wasn't a sign that they were ready, then nothing was.
And then one morning they arrived in the command centre to find that their battlesuits now sported names. Each of the Titans had adopted a particular suit as his or her own. The straps were permanently adjusted to fit just so, the visor display configured how each of them wanted it, and in the case of southpaw Barrington the control pad had been transferred to his right wrist. A few of them had even added customising details, having asked Patanjali to reprogram the nanobots to form particular patterns or images when the suits were in their default colour setting. Eto'o, for instance, had the green, red and yellow stripes and yellow star of the Cameroonian flag on one shoulder of her suit, Hamel had a rainbow on one shoulder of hers, Barrington had facsimile beer labels on his helmet, and Tsang's breastplate was ornamented with the symbol of the Obliteration — the letters HK surrounded by a black border.
Every suit now had a single word on the front as well, just above the heart: the name of one of the mythical Titans.
"Phoebe," said Harryhausen, reading hers.
"Rhea," said Hamel.
"Oceanus," said Chisholm.