to walk away without getting blood all over his shirt, but the guy was ticking him off and he couldn’t help himself.
‘What did you just say?’ said the boy.
‘Sorry if I hurt you, I guess you have a low pain threshold,’ said Clancy, ‘some people do.’
The boy’s face was set like stone. ‘You aren’t even going to have a pain threshold by the time I’ve finished with you,’ he hissed. ‘I’m going to snap it right in half.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ said Clancy. ‘You can’t snap a pain threshold, not in half, not in quarters, not in nothing.’
But the boy wasn’t listening. He had grabbed Clancy by the shirt collar and had his other hand balled into a fist. His face was very near Clancy’s and his breath smelled of something not so fresh.
‘If it’s all the same to you,’ croaked Clancy, ‘I’d really like to apologise, I’m sure it was all my fault, what do you say we start afresh?’
This only served to make the boy even madder. He was about to really punch Clancy when Marla stepped in. She had hold of the kid’s arm, real tight.
Marla was known for her strong grip and well-developed biceps; she could open any size of pickle jar, hurl heavy sacks of potatoes into the store cupboard and throw brawling men out into the street without breaking a sweat.
Marla looked the gorilla kid square in the eye. ‘I don’t wanna see you again, not in my diner, not outside my diner, not anywhere near my diner, you got that cookie?’
The boy kind of nodded.
‘Sure you do,’ said Marla, as she turned him around and marched him out of the door, ‘now scram.’
Then she looked at Clancy. ‘Play nice,’ was all she said before going back to her kitchen. Clancy brushed himself down, then made his way through the tables to where Elliot was sitting.
Elliot looked up when Clancy approached. ‘Do you know how late you are?’
‘Did you see that?’ asked Clancy.
‘What?’ said Elliot. ‘Did I miss something?’ He was looking around now.
‘I nearly got squeezed to death by a gorilla is all.’
‘Really?’
‘Almost,’ said Clancy, ‘but knowing you were there thinking about me made all the difference.’
‘What do you mean a gorilla?’ Elliot looked both afraid and eager to see it.
‘This huge guy was trying to kill me; Marla threw him out.’
‘If only I’d seen,’ said Elliot, ‘I would have. . . you know, done something. . .’
‘I’m sure you would have weighed in.’
‘No way José,’ said Elliot, ‘you’re a good friend Clance but I like my teeth where they are – in my mouth.’
‘So what would you have done?’ said Clancy.
‘Run in the other direction most likely,’ said Elliot, and then he began to laugh, so much that the whole table began to vibrate and his milkshake ended up on the floor. At which point Marla handed him a mop.
Clancy didn’t mind that Elliot was not prepared to put himself in the line of attack; at least he was honest about it. It was hard to hate someone for that.
RUBY WOKE UP EARLY THE NEXT MORNING and got dressed: a pair of shorts, a T-shirt bearing the word scram, sun cream. She stuffed her climb shoes into her backpack, along with a bottle of water, some climbing chalk and the glider wings, then she took out item 202: The Getaway shoes.
If Spectrum weren’t going to give her free-climb training, then she was just going to have to do it for herself.
She slipped on the shoes. A perfect fit. It was clear that they had belonged to Bradley Baker back in the day, but they didn’t look like they had got too much wear and the leather was still in fine condition.
She pushed open her window, swung herself out to the tree and climbed down to the yard. Then she went out the back gate into the alley and ran until she met the Dry River road, a long gently winding ribbon of tarmac. She clicked the green button and the roller wheels snapped out. Now they looked more or less like traditional roller skates. Then she clicked the red button. Nothing happened. She skated a couple of yards – still nothing – stupid Spectrum junk! And then quite suddenly she was moving at incredible speed towards Dry River Canyon.
This was the climb location the Spectrum trainees would be training at, so why shouldn’t she give it a go – she was as good as any of them, whatever LB or Agent Gill thought. It was still early morning and the temperature wasn’t so hot, a perfect day for a climb, and what better way to test her newly fixed arm than by climbing several hundred feet up a rock face.
Plenty, some might say.
Ruby arrived without injury but her feet were very hot and a strange smell was coming from the Getaway Shoes. She took them off and placed them in the shade of a rock to cool. There were no trees in Dry River Canyon, just huge boulders strewn along what would have once been the river bed; vast stone formations marching across the landscape and a huge wall of golden rock towering up and around the canyon’s edge. She changed into her climb shoes, fastened her chalk pouch around her waist and stood looking up at the cliff that rose several hundred feet above her. Then she slipped on the tiny backpack containing the folded Glider Wings, so lightweight that she could barely even feel the straps on her shoulders.
She began to climb.
She was fast, and from a distance it looked effortless as she reached with her arms and legs, feeling out hand- and footholds. She paused now and again but only so she could reach behind her and dig her hands into the pouch and dust them with chalk. Keeping her fingers free from sweat was her only concern. She’d made it a good way up – four hundred feet perhaps.
She was now balanced on the smallest of ledges, just contemplating the view before she made the final ascent. The air was very fresh this morning, only a light breeze lifting her hair. She worked out the direction she wanted to go in – she did not choose the easiest route, she picked the one with the most challenge to it, which meant rounding the rock face under a large overhang and then getting herself up and over. She was counting on there being some pretty decent fingerholds or it was going to get tricky.
This was a dangerous route for the best of climbers, but such was Ruby’s confidence in her climbing, she didn’t think for one minute, not one second, that she could fall. She felt like Spider-Man as she clung by her fingertips and toe tops, making her way across the face of the golden rock. She had made it all the way under the jutting stone face – now all she need do was to get above it. She chalked her hands and without pause began to work her way out and to the edge of the lip. For a few seconds she hung by her fingers from the overhang, four hundred and fifty feet
