Lost Worlds (17 page)

One of the gangsters walked over to the window and looked out. Luckily he didn’t look up.

Gecko sighed. Turning round, he slumped down with his back against the low wall that ran along the edge of the building. Pigeons stuttered back and forth on stubby little legs over by the
trapdoor that led down into the top floor of the building, watching him out of the corners of their eyes. He envied the way that they could fly from roof to roof, not having to worry about planning
the routes and taking the chance that muscular strength and speed would win out over gravity. On the other hand, most of them had malformed, twisted feet from where cuts had become infected from
the dirt and pollution that coated the rooftops and windowsills. Cuts and grazes were a common problem for free-runners, but they all knew that hands and other exposed areas needed to be kept
scrupulously clean, and they all carried little bottles of antiseptic spray just for that purpose.

On a whim, he pulled his mobile phone from the secure pocket in which he kept it. There was a message from Tara – they had exchanged mobile phone numbers before she had flown to America.
She had left it about half an hour ago.

‘Hi,’
her voice said. ‘
We’ve just landed at Heathrow. Had a great trip. Rhino’s a good guy – I think you’ll like him. He’s a bit like
you, I guess – small and muscular.
’ There was a pause while Tara realized the implications of what she had said.
‘Not that I’ve been looking at you. Or him. Not in
that way.’
She was getting more and more flustered now, and Gecko started grinning.
‘Anyway,’
she said, trying to regain her composure,
‘we’re getting a
taxi back to Calum’s place once we’ve got our baggage sorted out. Apparently Calum wants us all to get together for a final briefing. So I guess I’ll see you there.’

Gecko slid his mobile phone back into his pocket and fastened the flap across it. He stood up and stretched, preparing himself for the run across the rooftops back to Calum’s apartment. He
turned round to take a last look down into his flat – and felt a shiver go down his spine.

The two gangsters were gone.

Had they given up for the day, or . . . ?

The trapdoor in the centre of the roof burst upward. One of the shaven-headed men erupted from the space like a jack-in-the-box.

Calum suppressed a frustrated sigh. He didn’t seem to be getting through to Professor Livingstone.

‘I don’t think you understand,’ he said as patiently as he could. ‘The intention isn’t to go in with nets and cattle prods and anaesthetic darts. This isn’t
like
King Kong,
where we bring the last survivor of an unknown race of creatures back to civilization and exhibit it in a carnival for entertainment. If we get even a scrap of hair
I’ll be happy. Anything that we can get a DNA sample from.’

‘You’re missing the big picture,’ Gillian said, shaking her head. ‘
If
the Almasti exist, and that’s a big
if,
then bringing one back would be
–’ she paused, searching for the right word – ‘a
phenomenon.
Newspapers from here to China and back would put two photographs on their front page and their home page
– one of the Almast and one of the person who captured it. This might be the missing link between apes and humans – a living example of where we have descended from. We’re talking
worldwide exposure!’

‘I’m not missing the big picture,’ Calum said testily. ‘I’m ignoring it. I don’t
like
the big picture. I don’t
want
to be on the front
page or the home page of
anything.
I just want to bring back enough viable genetic material so that the Almasti’s entire genome can be sequenced. After that, I would rather they were
left in peace.’

‘You’re being naive, Calum.’

‘Maybe I am,’ he said. He glanced at the professor. She had a frustrated scowl on her face. ‘Look, I understand where you’re coming from. You’re a businesswoman,
and you have been for as long as I’ve known you. If
your
photograph is on every front page and home page, then the business opportunities flood in, don’t they?
Everyone
will know who you are.’

‘You think I’m treating this as an advertising opportunity?’ she asked with quiet intensity.

‘I think you’re treating it as a number of things, including an advertising opportunity, but you’re forgetting – this is
my
expedition. I’m the one setting
it up and financing it. Whatever comes out of it gets used in the ways that
I
decide.’

Gillian just shook her head. ‘You’re very like your father, you know?’

‘Thank you,’ he said, feeling the sad tug of memories.

‘I didn’t mean it as a compliment. He was an idealist, and so are you. He could never see the complexity of problems, or the implications of the various answers. To him, and to your
mother, the world was a very simple place, but it
isn’t,
Calum. It really isn’t.’

‘
My
world is that simple, and my world exists for about as far as I can reach. Which, in this instance, is all the way to Georgia.’

She put her hands up defensively. ‘OK. All right. Just promise me that you’ll think about what I’ve said.’

He recognized her words as a typical negotiating ploy to get out of a dead-end situation, and he responded in a like manner. ‘Yes, I promise I’ll think about it,’ he said with
as much conviction as he could force into his voice.

‘Right,’ Professor Livingstone said, clapping her hands together, ‘on to the next point – someone in your party needs to be armed.’

Calum felt his skin crawl at the very thought of weapons. He didn’t like violence. He didn’t even like thinking about the
possibility
of violence.

Gillian noticed his reluctance. She raised a hand to forestall his response. ‘Don’t worry – I’m thinking of something less lethal than it sounds.’ She reached down
to a case that she’d brought in with her, and which was resting by her feet. ‘This is a new thing that’s been developed by one of the laboratories I do consulting work for.
They’ve given me one of the first off the production line.’ She put the case on the counter and flipped the catches. Calum watched edgily as she opened it and took out something that
looked like a lot of black metal tubes strapped together, with a shoulder stock at one end, a handle and trigger in the middle and a wide barrel at the other end.

‘What the hell is that?’ he asked. ‘Some kind of multi-barrelled shotgun? If the Almasti are alive, then I want them to stay that way.’

‘It’s a non-lethal weapon.’ She patted the middle of the gun where all the tubes seemed to be part of a rotating mechanism. ‘It’s a rapid-fire taser shotgun.
There’s no gunpowder inside – it works on compressed air. The munitions it fires are mainly lithium-ion batteries, with two sharp prongs at the far end. When they hit something, the
prongs touch the skin and complete a circuit, and the battery delivers a charge of several thousand volts. It’s not enough to kill anyone or anything – except maybe a mouse – but
it’ll knock a man or a wolf or a bear out for quite a while. It’s yours for as long as you need it. It’s certified flight safe, as long as it’s in the cargo hold with the
appropriate documentation – which is already in the case.’

‘No,’ he said forcefully, pushing it back. ‘No, no, no, no, no. You’re trying to drag this expedition in a direction in which it will not go – not for as long as I
have a say. No weapons, no exploitation, no advertising opportunities,
nothing!
Is that clear?’

She shook her head sadly. ‘It’s clear, but it’s shortsighted and it’s wrong. Look, I’ll leave the taser shotgun here. Think about it.’

Another negotiating tactic. ‘OK, I’ll think about it,’ he said softly. ‘But the answer will still be “no”.’

‘Family quarrel?’ a voice asked from the doorway. ‘Should I back away and leave you to it?’

‘Come in, Natalie,’ Gillian said, waving a hand, ‘and discover the reason why you never had a brother.’

‘Eeuw!’ Natalie exclaimed as she pushed the door open and entered the apartment. ‘I don’t even want to think about it.’

Calum watched as she walked across to the table. Realizing that he was watching, and realizing that Natalie had noticed that he was watching, he looked away. And felt himself flush with
embarrassment.

The thug looked around the rooftop, caught sight of Gecko and started moving towards him. He obviously wasn’t a free-runner – he was too bulky – but he moved
like a freight train, big and unstoppable.

The second gangster emerged from the trapdoor more carefully, but then he was carrying a gun.

Gecko knew immediately that they had seen him from the window, pretended not to and had set out to ambush him unawares. He wasn’t sure if they were out to catch him and make their
boss’s offer more forcefully, or whether they had been sent to punish him for not saying yes by breaking his arms and legs, but frankly he wasn’t going to hang around to find out.

His best route off the roof was straight ahead, but that would mean going through the two gangsters. That was out of the question. There was only one alternative.

Gecko jumped up on to the waist-high rim that bordered the roof area and started to run. Within less than a second, he was sprinting at full speed. The far edge of the building seemed to rush
towards him. He was pretty sure he knew what lay beyond it, but it had been a long while since he had done that particular jump and he was a little fuzzy about the details. He seemed to remember
that it was a tricky one, with a high element of risk. Not the kind of run he would normally choose. The problem was, he had no time for a calm, considered reconnaissance.

He reached the end of the small wall and jumped blindly into space, arms extended for balance, legs bent slightly to absorb the impact of landing – assuming he didn’t plummet all the
way to the ground.

He quickly evaluated the situation as he fell. It wasn’t good. The roof ahead of him was further than was comfortable – or even achievable without having the wind at his back. Worse,
it was a pitched roof, built as a triangle. It would have been bad enough if he’d been falling towards one of the pitched sides, but he was end-on to the building. If he didn’t land
exactly on the peak where the two sides met, then he would hit either the left or the right side. Unable to get a purchase on the slope, his feet would slip and he would fall, rolling down the roof
until he hit the guttering and fell off.

Just to make it worse, the end of the roof peak had a decoration on it, a little curlicue that probably looked really quaint from the street but which at his level looked more like a major
obstacle to landing. He had to hope that his momentum carried him
over
the decoration and on to the ten-centimetre-wide peak.

This was not looking like a successful jump.

All of these thoughts flashed through his mind in the time it took him to cover about five metres horizontally and drop two metres vertically. The roof of the building he was aiming for rushed
towards him, growing larger and larger in his field of vision. He wasn’t going to make it! He was dropping too fast! He was heading straight for the triangular wall between the sloping
roofs!

The little plaster curlicue seemed to rise past his eyes as he dropped. Desperately he reached out for it, hands scrabbling for a grip. His fingers closed over it just as he slammed into the
wall. The impact drove the breath from his body and sent a pulse of pain through every bone and every muscle he had. Instead of dropping like a stone he just hung there, hands clamped on a fragile
plaster decoration that had endured God knows how many years of rain, snow and baking sun.

He brought his legs up and braced himself against the wall. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him that the two thugs hadn’t yet made it to their side of the chasm. That was a relief
– they were probably in a mood to use that gun by now.

He heaved himself up with his arms, while at the same time trying to walk up the wall with his feet.

His arms were burning as they took his entire weight. He could feel them trembling with the stress he was putting on them. His fingers felt as if their joints were coming apart, the skin and
tissue stretching like elastic.

He hauled as hard as he could, edging his feet higher, small step after small step. He couldn’t let it all end here.

The plaster decoration was level with his eyes. He lunged upward and wrapped his right arm round it. That gave him enough purchase to pull himself inelegantly up, scrabbling with his feet to
maintain the momentum. Within moments he was folded over the roof: legs hanging on one side, torso and arms and head on the other.

He felt like he was going to be sick.

Glancing over at where he had come from, he saw the two thugs staring at him. One of them raised his gun. The other slapped it down with a curse. Maybe they didn’t want to draw attention
to themselves. They were both looking hard at the roof that Gecko was folded across, trying to work out if there was a way across there for them, or maybe trying to work out where to go next to
intercept him.

He wanted to stay there and catch his breath, but he didn’t have the luxury of time. He climbed to his feet and painfully started to walk along the ridge where the two slanted roofs met,
balancing like a circus wire-walker.

At the other end of the roof he looked around to get his bearings. If he slid down to the guttering on the right-hand side, then he could shin down a drainpipe to where he could then launch
himself across empty space to another, flatter roof. From there he knew a route that would get him to Calum Challenger’s apartment.

He glanced backwards. The two Eastern Europeans were gone. The problem was that he knew he would see them again, unless he got away from London in a hurry.

Tbilisi was looking more and more like a good thing to him.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Rhino glanced around at Tara, Natalie and Gecko. They were sprawled out in a rough circle on the grass, obviously exhausted, tucking into
sandwiches and drinks from a cool box that he had brought with him. Behind them lay the wooden aerial pathways, ropes, climbing frames and zip-wires of the adventure playground that extended for
several acres through the forest, and off to one side, near the cars, were Gillian Livingstone and Calum Challenger.