Vull squatted down beside me and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘That was the easy bit, now it gets a little risky,’ he whispered.
When I got to my feet and looked up, Pete was already outside the structure standing on the bottom edge of the opening. He pulled something from his belt and attached it to the beam of the roof above him. I couldn’t make out what he’d put there until it was my turn to clamber up, Pete had by this time moved away somewhere, I couldn’t see him. Vull pulled a small clip from my harness and clipped it to what looked like a piece of cotton thread attached to the beam.
‘Don’t make any sound,’ said Vull and suddenly the world went very scary. I was 308 meters or, in old money, 1,010 feet above the floor of the museum, hanging by a thread so fine I could barely see it and a clip that looked like it would have trouble restraining a lazy Chihuahua. I could now see everything and that really didn’t help. Far in front of me, Pete was hanging from a beam by one arm, over a thousand feet above the floor. He was attaching the far end of the thread to something. I looked up, the massive I beam above me had a lip that you could hold on to but only an idiot with a death wish would try.
‘Let go,’ whispered Vull right into my ear. I did and then immediately I wished I hadn’t. I suddenly really wanted to be where my kidonge said I was, in my expanded foam bed on the third floor of number eight Carson Square. Instead I was a thousand feet above a museum floor sliding along a thread I couldn’t really see towards a man who was just a black shape in the darkness.
I think I may have gone measurably mad at that point. This insanity increased momentarily when I stopped sliding down the thread. The monstrous expanse of the museum roof sloped down very gradually from the tip of the Shard to where Pete was hanging on another thread, but not steeply enough for me to continue. I had to reach up and use the beams above my head for leverage to continue my precarious journey. I felt my hands shaking uncontrollably as they came into contact with the structure above me, I couldn’t look up, I definitely didn’t want to look down, I just stared at Pete as I slowly edged my way forward.
‘You’re doing good Gavin,’ Pete whispered as I got closer to him. He suddenly put his finger in front of the black mask covering his face and pointed down. I shouldn’t have looked because I almost lost control and screamed. I did glance down momentarily, just visible a thousand feet below me was a figure walking along through the museum exhibits. Pete and I froze, I think I may have held my breath and I felt sweat stinging my eyes.
A tap on my shoulder indicated that all was clear. I’d been hanging by a thread with my eyes tightly shut. I felt Pete’s enormous arm around my waist as he supported my entire weight and quickly unclipped me from one thread and onto the next.
I don’t know what the climber’s term is for what we were doing, Pete had strung up a series of cables across the ceiling of the massive museum. Of course the cable was so thin that thread is a more accurate description; it would have been invisible from the ground but we would not.
The next length of supporting thread, the thing I was entrusting my life to, went down at a much steeper angle. Pete showed me how to grip the thread with my gloved hand.
‘Don’t let yourself go too fast, I’ll be right behind you,’ he whispered then pushed me away. At first I just sort of bobbed along the thread, the little clip making a faint sound as the wind started to rush past my cloth covered ears. My right hand was above me gripping the thread. I had to twist my arm to increase the friction on my glove. Although it protected my hand from being sliced in two I could still feel intense heat the friction generated as I tried to control my speed. At the far end of the thread I could see my goal, a metal framework, under which hung a very familiar object.
The Yuneec.
When I finally reached the complex grid of metallic pipework that formed a kind of twisting sculpture from which the Yuneec was hanging, I breathed a sigh of relief. It took me a moment to regain my composure and move out of the way of the next black-clad figure serenely sliding down the thread toward me. Beyond him I could just make out Pete helping people move from the first length of thread to the next, and beyond that, the dark shape of the Shard in the distance. It was a baffling spectacle, but as I was now standing on a large metal structure and holding on with both hands, I could take a moment to look around, and down. About a hundred meters below me I could make out the shape of the Yuneec hanging from a thread that I couldn’t see. This was our goal. This was what we had gone through this secretive nightmare journey for.
‘All good,’ said Vull as he joined me on the increasingly crowded structure. The last person to arrive was Pete. He slid down the thread at great speed, slowing down with apparent ease and very little sound.
‘Okay, I’ll go down and dismantle the drone,’ said Pete. ‘You all know what to do.’
For the first time that night I did know what to do. I had a tool on my belt that Vull had shown me how to operate. I slowly made my way up the complex tubular framework from which the Yuneec was hanging.
Once I reached the level of the museum roof I located a small nodule in the skin of one of the struts and placed the point of the hand tool onto it. The nodule instantly disappeared leaving a neat hole, no noise, no smoke, no sparks. This was the coolest hand tool I’d ever used. With a little supporting assistance from one of the black-clad figures in our group, I managed to reach every nodule supporting the massive sheet of transparent material. I can’t call it glass, it wasn’t glass. The reason I know this is that when I’d managed to remove the last fixing, Vull reached past me and pushed it upwards. I am happy to acknowledge this giant of a man possessed impressive upper body strength but he managed to move the large sheet with the tips of his fingers.
He slid it gently to one side and then with a clearly well-trained agility, hauled himself up through the hole. Within moments his arm reached down, I grabbed it and was pulled up as if by a machine, emerging onto the vast expanse of the museum roof. I knelt on all fours by Vull’s feet as he pulled up other members of the silent group. After a minute at most, the full team was on the roof in a neat pattern around the opening. This hole in the roof was about four meters across, and they all stood around it as if they were standing around a puddle on flat ground. I was laying spreadeagled on the floor, peering over the edge where I could just make out Pete’s black form moving around the now gently swaying Yuneec.
Vull knelt down beside me.
‘We have a couple of minutes at most,’ he said without lowering his voice. ‘The removal of the pane will cause a pressure change in the upper part of the museum.’ I understood as I could feel warmer air rushing up through the hole we’d made. ‘We have to act fast,’ Vull added in a very serious tone.
I nodded my understanding then noticed movement behind Vull and saw one of the black-clad figures feverishly hauling on a fine thread that had been lowered through the hole. I glanced down through the hole and saw the right wing of the Yuneec being hauled towards us, with a small scrabble of manhandling it was placed neatly on the vast expanse of Museum roof around us. This was quickly followed by the left wing, and finally, with everyone hauling on seven separate threads, the fuselage and Pete. This took some serious heaving, even I got involved, although I was a shaking jelly by this time so I don’t know how much I actually assisted.
‘This is just brilliant,’ said Pete as we finally settled the Yuneec into a position where we could attach the wings. Pete gave me a massive pat on the back which nearly knocked me over. ‘I got your bloody plane back,’ he said, even through the feature- obscuring black face cover I could tell he was grinning.
‘Pete, you are a bloody genius,’ I said and gave him a hug as best I could. It was a bit like trying to hug a cart-horse, but I could tell he appreciated it because I felt his body start to shake with sobs. I patted his enormous back. ‘Cry it out, Pete, that’s right, cry it out mate.’
Vull brok
e up the bromance by grabbing my arm and walking toward the cockpit door. ‘You need to start the drone,’ he said. ‘We have one minute.’
At that moment the ground beneath us lit up, someone had switched on the lighting in the museum. The authorities knew we were there, the alarms had gone off, stuff was happening.
I clambered into the cockpit and went through the start-up procedure with Pete’s enormous head poking through the passenger window.
‘Toggle switch under the safety cover, up for on,’ he said. This was about the only part of the Yuneec controls that was familiar. I flipped the switch and the control panels came to life in an instant. Wonderful screens lit up before me, the central one giving an exact location in a plan view scrolling map.
The whole plane shuddered as the team attached the first wing, the one sided weight started to tip the machine over but this was rapidly rectified by Pete who put one arm up to steady it.
‘Green button above the toggle, wait!’ said Pete as my finger hovered above the green button. The plane shuddered again as the opposite wing was inserted, I heard the familiar clunk of the locking bolt system. Vull appeared by the pilot window. ‘Good to go,’ he said.
‘Stand back, drone prop spinning up, hold the tail!’ shouted Pete.
I glanced around, no one was standing near the front of the plane and just about everyone who’d been on this crazy venture was standing around the tail.
‘Wait!’ I shouted. I jumped out of the cockpit. ‘Wait, I have something to do.’
‘No time,’ said Vull.
I held out my hand toward him.
‘No need,’ he said, he clearly understood what I was thinking.
‘There’s no need for me to keep it. Quick,’ I said. I shook his hand and felt the body blow to my belly.
‘Thank you,’ he said. I moved along the row of black-clad figures, shaking their hands one by one and feeling the intense shock to my solar plexus each time. Finally I reached Pete.
‘Mate, I saved the last for you,’ I said, braced myself and took the blow as we shook hands. I could tell Pete was crying but I had to let go and return to the plane. I had just shed a little over three million Kwo to this incredible team of nutters.
I checked the time, 6:03a.m., we were three minutes late but it was fine, I had plenty of time to reach the Singh power-field. I pushed the green button and silently the limp propeller started to spin, a fabric propeller seemed so ridiculous, it was as if a violently shaken tablecloth was flapping around the nose of the Yuneec, but it soon became rigid as the revolutions increased. I eased the throttle control forward and said ‘Shit, Oh Lord.’ As I felt the instant power the rebuilt Yuneec had been given.
I undid the strap around my leg which was a huge relief, then pulled the black cloth off my face. I rubbed my face vigorously with both hands. I really needed to be awake for what was coming next.
I put my head out of the window and smiled at the black-clad team behind me. Between them they were going to have to do many thousands of hours of talking therapy for taking part in this caper. In fact it was quite likely that for the rest of their lives they would be encouraged to analyse what drove them to undertake this dangerous prank.
I gave them the thumbs up sign and I saw Pete momentarily take one hand off the tail to return the gesture. Then, as I’d been instructed, I pushed the throttle control to maximum and the plane immediately lifted vertically. I can barely remember what happened because of the sheer terror of the experience, the plane was spinning but also climbing at great speed, I was trying to turn against the spin but having little success, after a few seconds, again as I was advised, I eased off the throttle and the spinning decreased until I could sense the controls having more effect. I managed to level out and fly straight but the experience of flying the Yuneec was utterly transformed. What had essentially been an experimental light aircraft was now a very sophisticated and fast aerobatic plane. The power of the motor was staggering and when I opened the throttle I could see by the shadow they created the individual propellor blades became longer, therefor giving even more forward thrust.
I circled high and wide around the museum, the true scale and and awe-inspiring beauty of the building was suddenly apparent to me for the first time. Already the tiny black-clad figures were mere ants on a vast triangular patterned carpet. I was flying at 2,500 meters and yet I it seemed like was still only just above the roof. As I flew over what must have been the front entrance I had arrived at with Professor Etheridge months before, I saw more figures appear on the roof from a conventional exit, they were making their way slowly toward the group I had just left.
I turned hard and tight, finding the G force quite a strain to deal with, the old Yuneec would never have managed the speed, let alone the turn.
I came in low and fast over the roof as I knew the guys would have wanted to see this. I passed no more than fifteen meters over their heads travelling at close to 400kph. Fast and low, just as they’d asked.
I climbed up with such speed I was almost in need of oxygen by the time I levelled out, although the plane had been upgraded to an amazing degree the cockpit wasn’t pressurised and I needed to be aware of that. It really wouldn’t do to lose consciousness at 10,000 meters over a city where flying a drone was strictly against the rules.
The sun was up by this point and the vast array of the squares below me was exactly what I’d seen when I came out of the cloud. However, now it all made sense, I knew the layout of the dozen or so Squares I’d seen from the ground. Now I could see them stretching away into the distance, mile after mile of squares all the way to the horizon, some hugging the sides of distant hills. In all the time I’d been in London I’d seen but a fraction of this mega city.
I banked around slowly and descended toward the museum again, it was very easy to spot even from this distance. It essentially had the same footprint as one of the squares.
As I got closer I could see the black-clad figures had now removed their face coverings and were huddled in a group surrounded by many other people, clearly women from the museum security section. It wasn’t a riot or a fracas, it looked more like a rooftop garden party, no one was running around trying to escape, Pete had explained to me that for them there was no escape, once I’d taken off they would be detained for a while as their cases were assessed.
I did another, much slower fly-by, waving as I swept past them, some of the women who’d joined them waved as well. I climbed again and scanned the horizon as I flew in a wide circle above the museum. Off to the east was a perfectly clear sky, the sun now quite high, but in the distance, maybe fifteen or twenty kilometres away, forming in a long tunnel of misty cloud was the anomaly, just as Whitchitt had predicted. I quickly checked the time, 6:58a.m., only another ten minutes until the cloud was predicted to be at its most intense.
I levelled out and pointed the nose to the ever-increasing bulk at the centre of the cloud. I was feeling fairly relaxed at this point, I knew that if nothing happened, if I just flew through the cloud and came out the other side, still above London in 2211, I would head to Northern France where Pete had advised me there was far more open space to make landing a lot less dangerous.
I also didn’t experience the same emotional wrench I had felt as I took off from the Bow Field in Gardenia, seeing Grace standing there with the people from Goldacre Hall. I wasn’t leaving anything behind that I thought I would miss; maybe Nkoyo, she’d been so kind to me but always rather distant. I was relieved I hadn’t completely fallen in love with her.
As I continued to approach the distant and already much larger cloud I noticed a building to the left, I don’t know why it caught my eye but I knew at once it was the Institute, maybe my kidonge was working and alerted me to the fact. I checked the time and the distance to the cloud, I could do it. I turned and dived gently, I didn’t want to alarm anyone on the ground so I kept at a
reasonable height and circled around the long building. I could see people standing outside the front entrance and my curiosity got the better of me, I reduced my altitude further until I was just safely above roof level. I could now see clearly that there was quite a large group of people standing around the main entrance looking up at me, without question I made out Nkoyo, she was waving frantically. As I circled around again I slowed down to what would have been the normal speed the original Yuneec could have managed, I pushed open the passenger window and waved as I banked over the building.
I knew at once that I would miss seeing Nkoyo, not anyone else from the Institute, although even Doctor Markham had grown on me a little.
I opened the throttle again and climbed back up to about 3,000 meters and turned to the cloud. Even in that short time it had increased in size and darkened in colour, now a large, tubular grey cloud which reached to the heavens way above me and stopped about a thousand meters above the square below. Other than this one peculiar cloud, I could see nothing else in the perfectly blue sky.
I levelled out and was impressed to discover at about half throttle the plane was perfectly balanced, it essentially flew itself, I let go of the controls, adjusted my four point harness and aimed the Yuneec for the very centre of the cloud. My heart rate increased. Once again, I had no notion of what might be on the other side of the cloud.
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News from the Squares Page 35
