Read Online The Age Of Zeus by James Lovegrove - Free Book Online
Authors: James Lovegrove
Tags: Science-Fiction
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right, baffling her sense of spatial awareness which was telling her they weren't where her eyes were reporting them to be. Yet further colliding went on whenever she activated the option.
McCann kept telling her she would adapt to the suit. It would just take time. "It's like a sports car," he said. "Most folk think you can just climb in one and race off. They've no idea that in most of your modern sports models the gearstick is two paddle shifters on either side of the steering column, and that the steering wheel is super sensitive, the accelerator too, and that sometimes the accelerator pedal's in the middle, not on the right. First time out everyone nearly always stalls or just misses having a crash. You have to re-learn how to drive. And it's the same here. Think of the TITAN suit as a Lamborghini Murciélago and yourself as, I dunno, a Volkswagen Golf. Forget everything your body knows about walking and so on. The suit'll teach you a new way. Listen to it. Feel it. Trust it to do what it's meant to, and soon enough you'll find it becoming second nature."
She attempted to follow this advice, and blundered headlong into the nearest support pillar.
McCann helped her to her feet.
"Aye, well," he said, "maybe it's going to take you a wee bit longer than 'soon enough.' But you'll get there, Sam."
"You're talking to a woman who failed her driving test three times," Sam said. "But thanks for the vote of confidence."
The eleven recruits ate meals together in the room with the table where they'd first met. The cuisine was good. Landesman did not scrimp on the small luxuries like that. A professional chef rustled up fine fodder from the supplies that Captain Fuller ferried over every other day.
The recruits also bunked together, in pairs, in rooms that boasted clean, simple décor, neither Spartan nor flowery, and lacked only one thing: a view. The communal washing facilities were decent. There was a well-equipped recreation room with a pool table and a plasma-screen TV. There was a library. There was even a laundry. Lillicrap had undersold things somewhat to Sam and Ramsay, or perhaps had been deliberately lowering their expectations. His "perfectly civilised" had implied basic functionality, but the bunker on Bleaney Island was actually quite a pleasant place to be, the absence of natural daylight notwithstanding. Sam had stayed at worse hotels.
Her roommate was Mahmoud, and the two of them quickly formed a bond, partly because of their background in the police but mostly because they shared the honour of being the least accomplished with the battlesuits. Each evening at bedtime they would go over the disasters of that day and compare fresh aches and blisters. Mahmoud remarked that the two of them would be completely covered in bruises if it wasn't for the suits' impact-absorbing abilities. Sam, in turn, lamented the sad irony that an invention designed to put her on a par with gods was making her feel more of a clumsy mortal than ever. She didn't confess that she doubted she was going to stay beyond the end of the week, but she had a feeling Mahmoud knew and was thinking much the same.
They found another point of similarity in the fact that they were both bereft of immediate family. Sam was an only child whose parents had both passed away while she was in her late teens, her father of a massive coronary, her mother of complications from the type 1 diabetes that had dogged her all her life. At the end of a torturous period of hospitals, hospices and funeral parlours Sam was left with the freehold on a house on Kensal Rise, enough in the way of inherited savings to last her through university, and an abiding sense of the fragility and unfairness of life. Mahmoud's parents hadn't survived the deaths of her two brothers. Her father's despair had driven him to seek consolation in his religion, but neither the Qur'an nor frequent visits to the mosque and long talks with the imam had provided him with the answers he wanted. So
McCann kept telling her she would adapt to the suit. It would just take time. "It's like a sports car," he said. "Most folk think you can just climb in one and race off. They've no idea that in most of your modern sports models the gearstick is two paddle shifters on either side of the steering column, and that the steering wheel is super sensitive, the accelerator too, and that sometimes the accelerator pedal's in the middle, not on the right. First time out everyone nearly always stalls or just misses having a crash. You have to re-learn how to drive. And it's the same here. Think of the TITAN suit as a Lamborghini Murciélago and yourself as, I dunno, a Volkswagen Golf. Forget everything your body knows about walking and so on. The suit'll teach you a new way. Listen to it. Feel it. Trust it to do what it's meant to, and soon enough you'll find it becoming second nature."
She attempted to follow this advice, and blundered headlong into the nearest support pillar.
McCann helped her to her feet.
"Aye, well," he said, "maybe it's going to take you a wee bit longer than 'soon enough.' But you'll get there, Sam."
"You're talking to a woman who failed her driving test three times," Sam said. "But thanks for the vote of confidence."
The eleven recruits ate meals together in the room with the table where they'd first met. The cuisine was good. Landesman did not scrimp on the small luxuries like that. A professional chef rustled up fine fodder from the supplies that Captain Fuller ferried over every other day.
The recruits also bunked together, in pairs, in rooms that boasted clean, simple décor, neither Spartan nor flowery, and lacked only one thing: a view. The communal washing facilities were decent. There was a well-equipped recreation room with a pool table and a plasma-screen TV. There was a library. There was even a laundry. Lillicrap had undersold things somewhat to Sam and Ramsay, or perhaps had been deliberately lowering their expectations. His "perfectly civilised" had implied basic functionality, but the bunker on Bleaney Island was actually quite a pleasant place to be, the absence of natural daylight notwithstanding. Sam had stayed at worse hotels.
Her roommate was Mahmoud, and the two of them quickly formed a bond, partly because of their background in the police but mostly because they shared the honour of being the least accomplished with the battlesuits. Each evening at bedtime they would go over the disasters of that day and compare fresh aches and blisters. Mahmoud remarked that the two of them would be completely covered in bruises if it wasn't for the suits' impact-absorbing abilities. Sam, in turn, lamented the sad irony that an invention designed to put her on a par with gods was making her feel more of a clumsy mortal than ever. She didn't confess that she doubted she was going to stay beyond the end of the week, but she had a feeling Mahmoud knew and was thinking much the same.
They found another point of similarity in the fact that they were both bereft of immediate family. Sam was an only child whose parents had both passed away while she was in her late teens, her father of a massive coronary, her mother of complications from the type 1 diabetes that had dogged her all her life. At the end of a torturous period of hospitals, hospices and funeral parlours Sam was left with the freehold on a house on Kensal Rise, enough in the way of inherited savings to last her through university, and an abiding sense of the fragility and unfairness of life. Mahmoud's parents hadn't survived the deaths of her two brothers. Her father's despair had driven him to seek consolation in his religion, but neither the Qur'an nor frequent visits to the mosque and long talks with the imam had provided him with the answers he wanted. So
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