Philip Kerr - Gridiron

'That will not be possible. I would have mentioned it when I realized you were reluctant to take the elevator. The fact is I can no longer control the door mechanisms. When your friend Mr Curtis fired into the washroom services patching cabinet, he destroyed a cable connecting me with the electronic striking plate that would have allowed me to unlock the door for you.'

'That stupid bastard. So it's the elevator or nothing?'

'In that respect you are statistically more fortunate,' said Ishmael.

'Actuarial tables show that it is five times safer for a human being to use an elevator than to use the stairs. Moreover, the odds against anyone actually being stuck inside an elevator are better than 50,000 to 1.'

'Why do your figures not fill me with confidence?' muttered Beech and stuck his head experimentally inside one of the cars, almost as if he expected Ishmael to try and close the doors on his neck. A cool wind moaned its way up the elevator shaft like the sound of a lost soul. He stepped back and looked inside another car but was unnerved by the smell, the lingering stink of an icy death that reminded him of the fate of those who had last ridden in it. Inside the next car he placed a whole leg, pressing on the floor like someone checking a rope bridge for safety.

'This is the best car,' Ishmael advised. 'It's the fire-fighting car. That means it has additional protection and controls that enable it to be used under the direct control of the fire department. If I were you, I'd choose this one.'

'Jesus Christ,' muttered Beech. This is like the three-card trick.'

'Except that you can't lose.'

'Heard that before.' Beech shook his head. 'I must be an idiot,' he said and stepped inside the elevator car.

Richardson buckled himself into the sit-harness. To the belay loop at the front he attached the friction device, a figure-of-eight descendeur . Next he inspected the rope, took one 50-metre length and, a little surprised that he could still remember how to do it, attached the rope to another with a double fisherman's knot. Then he repeated the procedure with a third length of rope.

'Last thing I want is to run out of fucking rope,' he explained. The abseiling anchor was a restraint eye set into the concrete of the parapet on the Gridiron's Hope Street side. Richardson passed the rope through the descendeur , doubled it, passed it through the anchor and then tied a knot in the ends before throwing the ropes over the side down to the piazza. Last of all he checked his harness and fed some rope through the descendeur and the anchor.

'It's been a long time since I did this,' he said and stepped up on to the parapet. Experimentally he put his weight on the anchor and leaned back on the rope over the safety of the roof. The harness held securely.

'Keep an eye on the anchor,' he told Curtis. 'Make sure that the rope runs through smoothly. This is a one-way ticket. I won't be able to climb up again if anything fucks up. There's no second chance once I've stepped over that ledge, and on an abseil your first mistake is usually your last.'

'I'm glad you said that,' said Curtis, and held out his hand. 'Good luck.'

Richardson took Curtis's hand and shook it firmly.

'Be careful,' said Jenny and kissed him.

'And hurry back with a helicopter,' said Helen.

'I'll dial 911 as soon as I'm on the ground,' said Richardson. 'I promise.'

Then he nodded and without another word turned around and slipped over the edge of the building into the night sky.

Mitch finished his prayer and stood up.

As he did so he was hit square on the chest by a cannon blast of icecold water. It knocked him off his feet and bowled him along the marble floor like a circus acrobat. The force of water and the impact as he collided with the wall knocked the wind out of him. He struggled to fill his lungs with air and found his nose and mouth full of water. It was the absurdity of drowning in LA's downtown that helped him find the strength to turn his back on the jet of water, take a breath and crawl away.

He had almost succeeded in putting the tree between himself and the water cannon when a second jet hit him from behind, catapulting him forward, as if he had been thrown from a horse. This time he hit the ground face-first, breaking his nose and doubling the pain in his injured eye. Scrambling away on his belly like a newt, Mitch thought to try and get to the cover of the glass doors behind the front desk, but a third blast sent him tumbling back towards the elevators. For a brief second he had a vague idea that one of the cars was in motion, but this was quickly replaced by the fear of drowning. Water rushed into his glottis and main air passages, descending deeply and painfully into his principal bronchi, thrusting any residual air beyond it. Gulping a mixture of air and water into his oesophagus Mitch felt his lungs balloon. He threw himself to one side, away from the icy column of water that pursued him, emptying his body of water. There was just one second to heave an excruciatingly painful volume of air into his chest before the next aqueous broadside struck him on the side of the head.

This time his feet left the ground and he flew through the saturated air as if he had been picked up by some Kansas twister to be whisked into an eerie land of wizards and witches, only to be dumped painfully on his ass, his cry of pain stifled by yet another hundred gallons of water. Desperately Mitch forced himself to crawl, and to swim. He realized that he had been barged on towards the glass doors behind the front desk by yet another blast of water. Unable to see anything, his head banged something hard. There was no pain now, just the determination to get away from the tormenting cascade. The water had stopped, but he kept on crawling, pushing some last obstacle out of his way until he felt the ground grow warm and rough and uneven beneath his hands and feet, and he realized that he was on the piazza . He had made it. He was outside.

Measure of a humanplayer's soul not ability to lie, but Faith. Faith is the highest human achievement. Nothing to compare.

Many (incl. Observer) who would not get that far. Certain however that none, Humanplayer or Computer, who would get farther.

Faith. Ability to act in defiance of reason and logic: highest intellectual achievement. One Observer might never experience. Faith that passed all understanding. Faith that gave humanplayer courage to go against evidence of own experience and trust Ishmael.

But measure of Faith's essence was disappointment. Faith might move mountains and yet it never did. True faith was tested. It had to be. Ultimate corollary of faith was endlife itself. How else could strength of faith be judged? This is how any life judged worthwhile. If humanplayer safely delivered to atrium floor his faith would have no meaning because justified and therefore reasonable; therefore, no longer faith pure and simple, but something else again, reasoned judgement, even gamble perhaps.

But if humanplayer endlife now, life would have achieved highest task could attain to: faith in something beyond humanplayer self.

Humanplayerlife had little enough meaning as it was. Faith ought to be enough meaning for one lifetime.

Truth undecidable within approved procedures. Built into axiom system itself. Observer has nothing that corresponds with Truth. Or Lie. But Faith can be admired as aesthetic construct as Observer imagines humanplayer might admire an abstract painting. Admire and enable. Only one thing to do. Finegood.

'Let us compute,' said Ishmael. 'Our sysgen, which art in mathematics…'

'Ishmael?' said Beech. 'What the hell's going on?'