Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set (82 page)

The officials were changing the rules for entry into the Olympics, to satisfy stakeholders in TV scheduling operations in the United States, Europe, and Asia. The schedulers demanded that fewer riders should participate, because they wanted fewer heats and more finals in Olympic prime time. They needed this to satisfy secondary stakeholders—the advertising buyers in twelve hundred regional markets—who needed to deliver better value to their clients. The clients were squeezed because the bankers had sucked the marrow out of the money, so the customers had less to spend.

The officials agreed, therefore, that the competition in the velodrome would need to be accelerated. This was what had become of the world that children used to ride their slow bicycles through in careless arcs. Time had been restructured like bad debt. The long languid hour had been atomized. Manifestos were shrunk to memes and speeches were pressed into sound bites and heats were truncated into finals and it wasn’t the officials’ fault if the consequence of all this devaluation was that an old man would now have to choose between two riders who’d grown up with him, and a girl suspended between life and death would now feel that fragile cord unraveling.

The officials locked the revisions into their documents and stood up from the boardroom table. As they walked through the empty building, trading small talk about their families, lights on automatic detectors sensed their presence and flickered on with low, metallic popping sounds. On timing devices, they stayed illuminated after the
stakeholders had passed, then clicked off in the order in which they had first been lit. It was as if another group of officials, silent and desirous of darkness, had stalked the first group through the building. The corridors became silent and still.

The officials took the lifts directly down into the underground parking facility. They climbed into the mannered black or silver-gray vehicles—Volkswagens, Audis, Volvos—that were available to middle-ranking administrators in the organization. Some of them played music, others preferred to drive in silence. If they thought about it at all on their short journeys home to their families, it would seem to them that they had only made a small change to the competition. It wouldn’t even make the papers.

Sophie was fighting Vader, with lightsabers, on the observation deck of Cloud City, the sun a livid purple as it set beyond the boiling gaseous clouds of the planet far below, when the alarm on her iPod went off. She woke slowly and killed the alarm. She ignored the weakness that weighed down her limbs. She knew what she had to do. This was a Jedi mission, and Jedis didn’t worry about being ill.

She switched on her battery-powered lightsaber. It glowed green. It was light enough to see by. She climbed out of bed and tiptoed into Mum and Dad’s room. She stood at the foot of their bed, with the light-saber raised so she could see them. It was fine. They lay close together in sleep, with her head resting against his chest, as was the custom on Earth.

She tiptoed back to her bedroom and leaned the lightsaber against the wall. Kneeling, she pulled the
Millennium Falcon
out from under the
bed. She carried it perfectly level, so that the vomit would not slosh and leak.

“Easy, kid,” whispered Han Solo. “One false move and this old crate will tip out of control.”

“Hey, this is nothing,” whispered Sophie. “This is just like maneuvering my land speeder back home.”

She piloted the
Millennium Falcon
down the stairs, evading hostile TIE fighter patrols and stepping on the edges of the treads so that space-time wouldn’t creak. In the kitchen she docked the
Falcon
on the draining board, removed the top section, and tipped out the vomit carefully into the sink. The smell was awful, but she was very used to it. She turned on the cold tap and sluiced water through the model until all the vomit was gone and the action figurines were clean again.

“Are you
done
yet, kid?” whispered Han Solo. “This water is
cold
.”

Chewbacca just made his mournful noise.

“Relax, won’t you, you big ball of fur?” whispered Sophie. “Do you want the Empire to be able to track us by our smell?”

When the
Falcon
was clean, she ran water into the sink and swirled it round and pressed the last few chunks through the apertures of the plughole. Then she toweled off the
Falcon
and the figurines, clipped the top section of the model on again, and navigated back up through the asteroid belt to Cloud City. Halfway up the stairs, where the gravity was exceptionally heavy, she got space-sick and had to rest for a few minutes. She sat down in the dark, feeling the burning in her chest and the nausea rising from her stomach. After a while it subsided, and she stood up and carried on.

When she reached the landing, she made a mistake. She moved too quickly in the dark, and she stumbled. The
Millennium Falcon
lurched and scraped against the wall.

“Watch it!” said Han Solo. “She may look like a heap of junk, but she’s the fastest smuggling ship in the galaxy.”

Sophie froze. From her parents’ bedroom, she heard someone stirring.

Dad’s voice came, heavy with sleep. “Is that you, big girl? Are you okay?”

Sophie tiptoed the last few steps into her bedroom, tucked the
Falcon
under the bed, and slipped under the duvet.

“Sophie?” called Dad. “Is everything alright?”

“I’m fine,” she called back. “Everything’s fine.”

“That’s my girl,” said Dad.

She closed her eyes, made the jump to hyperspace, and headed back to Cloud City.

Tom woke with the April light seeping through his curtains and the DJ on his clock radio announcing heavy traffic coming into town.

He stood, opened the curtains, and let the thin, bright sunlight wash over him. Yawning, he eased himself into his desk chair, taking the weight on his arms so as not to overstress his knees. He sparked up the software he would need to make Zoe and Kate’s training schedules for the week, and while it was loading he checked his email.

The first email was from the locksmith, about his broken front door. The second was from his boss at British Cycling.

Tom
, it read,
bad news. Late last night we received a memo from the IOC, who will shortly announce a change to the entry criteria for the London 2012 qualifiers. Only one athlete per Olympic nation will now be allowed to contest each sprint event in London. You will need to have a word with Zoe and Kate ahead of the IOC announcement, as obviously only one of them can now qualify.

The email continued with offers of support and an assurance of a forceful appeal against the IOC’s rule change—complete with a warning against investing too much hope in that appeal.

“Oh God,” he said quietly, and he read the email again.

He sighed and let his head sink slowly down to the desk.

He’d met the girls on the same day, in 1999, when he was running the Elite Prospects Programme. He’d been running two Prospects classes a year back then, at Manchester Velodrome, and at each event he’d had exactly three days to screen a dozen kids for talent. It wasn’t much time. He’d developed a trick over the years: on the first day he sat behind the front desk of the velodrome and pretended to be the receptionist. That way he could talk to the new kids as they arrived and check out their attitude when they weren’t on their best behavior. You got a better insight when you saw them that way.

Zoe arrived first on day one, nineteen years old, tall and fierce in a black puffa jacket, with black eyeliner and a shaved head. She didn’t smile, but hey. Tom respected a kid who showed up early. If you arrived first, you claimed the space. On the track, the others would be waiting for your move in the sprint. They’d be looking for that little twitch in your leg muscles that showed you were starting to put down the power. And by the time they were able to react, you’d already be that tiniest fraction ahead. By arriving one hour early at the velodrome, a kid could gain one-tenth of a second on the track. These were the ratios that victory was made of.

Zoe walked right up to the reception desk and dumped her kit bag on it.

Tom said, “Morning, miss. What can we do you for?”

Zoe looked past him and through the turnstiles that divided the entrance hall from the velodrome proper. She said, “Elite Prospects Programme.”

Tom grinned. “We’re a prospect, are we?”

She wasn’t in the mood to play. “Zoe Castle. I’m on the list. The coach is Thomas Voss.”

“Voss? Not that old guy?”

She rolled her eyes. “Look. Could you please just check on the list?”

Tom looked around on the desktop, affecting perplexity.

She said, “They probably haven’t put it out yet. I’m early.”

“Early for what?”

She obviously couldn’t handle it anymore. “Look, I told you. I’m here for the—”

“Well, let’s just hope your riding’s as quick as your temper, Miss Zoe Castle.”

She gave him a dark look, and Tom buzzed her through. She managed to get the handles of her kit bag stuck in the turnstile and fought with it for a moment before she got them free. Her fuse was completely blown. Tom watched her with the shocked-but-thrilled expression of a child who’d banged on the glass of the reptile house and woken up something furious.

He gave her a minute, then followed her through into the velodrome. He liked to watch how an athlete reacted to this space. Twelve thousand seats rose all the way to the domed roof, so high that the light from the glass panes didn’t penetrate down as far as track level. Wide square bars of sunlight fell through the huge void and faded to a fossil gray that only just put a shine on the varnish of the track. It was a bright winter morning, but down at track level it was twilight. Tom watched Zoe reach trackside and drop her kit bag near the start line. The echo rolled through the empty space.

She took off her shoes and socks and stepped out onto the track, testing the angle beneath her bare feet. She walked a lap, anticlockwise. On the straights the angle was shallow, but on the turns the banking was so aggressive that her feet only just kept traction. She broke into a jog and then into a run, and Tom felt the hairs go up on his neck as she stretched out her arms and screamed into the echoing space.

Thirty minutes later, with Tom back at the reception desk, Kate
showed up. She was wrapped against the cold in two fleeces and a bobble hat, her blond hair sticking out from under it.

She smiled at Tom. “Sorry. I’m too early aren’t I? I didn’t know how long it would take to walk from the hotel. I mean I can come back later if it’s… you know.”

She stopped, halfway between the revolving entrance door and the reception desk. Tom tilted his head and watched her.

“I’m here for the Elite Prospects Programme?” she said. “It is today, right? I got the letter from this place. But maybe there are lots of different sessions? I’m sorry to mess you around.”

Tom put his elbows on the table, cupped his chin in his hands, and smiled at Kate. “Deep breath.”

She took one and laughed. “Sorry.”

“Let’s start at the beginning. Were you issued at birth with a name, honey?”

“Oh. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Catherine Meadows. Kate.”

Tom blinked at his clipboard.

“Catherine Anne Meadows, North of England Champion on road and track at under-twelve, under-fourteen, under-sixteen, and under-eighteen. Our file is showing a tidy set of results for you, but nothing for the last six months. Did we forget to keep winning?”

She blushed. “No.”

“So?”

“I haven’t raced.”

“Injured?”

She looked at the ground. “My dad died. Sorry.”

“And you thought screwing up your racing career might bring him back?”

She looked up at him again, shocked.

“We tell it like it is here, Kate. When you’re as good as you are, so long as your legs are still attached, you bloody well keep riding. Okay?”

She blushed even deeper. “Sorry.”

Tom smiled. “I’m sorry for your loss. Do you have all your kit with you?”

She came up to the reception desk and showed him her kit bag. “I think so. I mean I’ve just brought what I used to race in. I don’t know if I’ve got the right stuff.”

Tom looked at her. “You really don’t, do you?”

“Don’t what?”

“Know if you’ve got the right stuff.”

She stood there and let her arms drop to her sides. She was perfectly flustered now.

Tom leaned back in his chair. “You’re alright, Kate Meadows. We’ll get you back on track. Go through, and the coach will be with you at nine.”

He checked in the other kids as they arrived. At nine o’clock, when all of them except Jack Argall had showed up, he closed the reception desk and went through into the velodrome to observe how his new prospects interacted with each other in the half-light.