Philip Kerr - Gridiron

Behind the horse-shoe shaped, heat-resistant ceramic desk, there was no sign of Kelly Pendry's hologram. Mitch was almost relieved. At least he wouldn't have to endure her relentlessly sunny personality. But the hologram was supposed to be triggered by anyone entering the gradient field that limited the boundaries of Kelly Pendry's interaction. If the hologram was not operating, then the front door had to be open.

'Fat chance,' he said out loud, but he walked over to the front door anyway, just to make sure.

It was still locked. He pressed his nose to the tinted glass of the door, trying to see if there was anyone on the piazza, but knowing that this was unlikely. He could just make out the raised hydraulic blocks of the piazza's Deterrent Paving that were doing their uneven job in making the area generally inhospitable. A couple of times he saw the flashing lights of a police patrol car on Hope Street, and the sight was enough to make him start hammering on the door with the flat of the hand, and shout for help. But even as he did he knew he was wasting his time. The plate glass didn't even vibrate under his blows. He might as well have been striking a concrete wall.

'Mitch?' squawked the walkie-talkie unit. 'Are you all right? What's happening?' It was Jenny again. 'I heard you shout.'

'It's nothing,' he said. 'I lost my head for a minute, that's all. It was just being near the front door, I guess.'

Optimistically, he added, 'I'll call you when I've got the laser working.'

He replaced the walkie-talkie on Dukes's utility belt and turned towards the desk, asking himself if he really had half an idea of what he was doing. His experience of working with lasers was rudimentary, to say the least. Ray Richardson had probably been right. In all likelihood he would only succeed in blinding himself. Or worse. But what else was there to do?

It was then that Mitch received a fright that made his heart leap against the ladder of his ribs like a spawning salmon.

Standing behind the desk in place of the syrupy presenter of Good Morning, America was an alien monster from some science-fiction nightmare, a grey-skinned, double-jawed, dragon-tailed beast, complete with holographic drool and Dolby Stereo heavy breathing. At least seven feet tall, the creature eyed Mitch malevolently and extended its retractable jaws suggestively. Mitch recoiled from the desk as if he had been snapped back by a safety line.

'Holy Christ!' he exclaimed.

He knew it was just a hologram: three sets of diffracted light waves, a real-time image that he seemed to recognize, but not from any movie he had ever seen. Then he remembered. It was the Parallel Demon, the ultimate creature from the computer game he had seen Aidan Kenny's son playing in the computer room. What was it called again? Escape from the Citadel ? Ishmael must have copied it from the game's WAD editor file that allowed a player to create his own monsters.

Mitch believed they would be doing well to escape from this particular downtown citadel. He knew that the facsimile demon couldn't harm him, but it took a couple of minutes to gather up sufficient courage to approach the thing.

'You're wasting your time, Ishmael,' he said, without much conviction.

'It won't work. I'm not scared, OK?'

But still he could not bring himself to go within a few yards of the demon. Suddenly it lunged towards him, its double jaws trying to bite out his throat. Despite what he had just heard himself say, Mitch jumped smartly out of the way.

'It's pretty realistic, I'll grant you,' he swallowed, 'but I'm not buying.'

He took a deep breath, clenched both his fists and, doing his best to ignore the hologram, walked straight up to the desk, gasping as the demon impaled him on the spear-points on its enormous knuckles. For a brief second he thought he had made a mistake, so convincing was the sight of the creature's fist forcing its way through his sternum. But then the lack of blood and pain reassured him. Trying his best to ignore it, Mitch bent under the desk to look for the infra-red goggles. He found them inside a drawer along with a technical manual from the

McDonnell-Douglas Corporation.

The demon disappeared.

'Nice try, Ishmael,' said Mitch. He pulled on the goggles and unlocked the back of the reception desk. Behind the door was a matt black steel cabinet that housed the laser's amplifying column.

DANGER. DO NOT OPEN THIS CABINET

CONTAINS SOLID-STATE DIODE-PUMPED NEODYMIUM

YAG LASER AND Q-SWITCHING EQUIPMENT. ONLY

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL OF THE MCDONNELLDOUGLAS CORPORATION MAY INSPECT OR MAINTAIN

THIS UNIT

CAUTION: USE PROTECTIVE EYEWEAR BLOCKING A

NEAR INFRA-RED WAVELENGTH OF 1.064

MICROMETRES

Mitch checked his goggles to make sure that they were not admitting any light: with lasers it was the invisible light that blinded you. Then he unscrewed the cabinet door. He had never seen a laser device before except for the small radar-based lasers they used at the office for alignment applications, distance measurement and determining aircurrents but, by comparing the internal layout of the hologram cabinet with the McDonnell-Douglas manual, Mitch was able to distinguish the clear plastic tube that contained the ythrium aluminium garnet rod. It was difficult to read the manual through the darkened goggles but, even though the beam of laser light was projected through a solid metallic sleeve that ran between the desk and the real-time image source — the part which Ishmael controlled — he resisted the temptation to lift the goggles. Several minutes passed before Mitch was able to locate the button that controlled the Q-switching shutter — a solid, optical shutter, normally opaque, that could be made transparent by the application of an electrical pulse — and turn it off. No laser light could now be emitted and, therefore, no more holograms be generated until the Q-switch was turned back on.

Mitch breathed a sigh of relief and lifted up his goggles. Now all that he had to do was figure out a way of making the laser point in the opposite direction, at the front door.

Richardson and Curtis carried Ellery's body to an empty office and laid him on the floor, covering his face with his coat.

'Maybe we ought to move the three in the elevator as well,' said Curtis.

'Why?'

Curtis waved a fly away from his face.

'That fly is why. Besides, they're on the nose. Every time I walk by them it's worse.'

'It's not so bad,' said Richardson. 'I mean, you can only smell them if you stand right outside the elevator.'

'Believe me, bad as they are now, they'll only get worse. It doesn't take very long for a body to start putrefying. Two days is about average. Less in this kind of heat.' There was some plastic sheeting on the floor that had been protecting the carpet. Curtis gathered it up in his hands.

'We'll use this. Only we'd better make sure we jam the doors open first. We wouldn't want Ishmael to think that we were looking for a ride downstairs, would we?'

Reluctantly Richardson helped Curtis drag the defrosted and malodorous bodies of Dobbs, Bennett and Martinez out of the elevator and into the room where they had left Ellery. When they were finished Curtis closed the door firmly behind him.

'That's a good job done,' he said.

Richardson looked green. 'Glad you enjoyed it.'

'Yeah, well, let's just hope we don't have to go back in there. Me, I'm sensitive to atmospheres.'

'So was Willis Ellery,' said Richardson.

'Not such a bad guy.'

'Not yet, anyway,' said Richardson.

They went back to the balcony where, with the exception of Beech, the others were still waiting.

'Listen,' Richardson told Curtis, 'I'm sorry about what I said. About everything I've said. You were right. I mean, about trying to get the fuck out of here. I can see that now. From now on, you can count me in, whatever it is.'