Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [49]
At the very last moment, feeling the power in her body, revelling in the practised skill residing in her muscles, she swung like a matador turning from the charging death of the bull’s horns and soared up again, above the gaping groups of onlookers, above the strange gaunt trees, high above the snow covered crags of the mountain peak itself.
She could feel a crow of delight, a laugh of glee, bubbling up from inside her; but when it burst forth, the sound she heard was not her own voice, but the deep voice of a man.
So whose feelings was she experiencing? The flyer’s? Or her own?
Dismissing the thought to concentrate on landing –
halfway down the mountain, where the slope had gentled to the near-horizontal – she came to a swishing stop, raised her hands to pull off her goggles, and pulled the headset off instead.
‘I did it! I landed without falling over!’ Jeremy’s voice was halfway between a squeak and a gasp. He pulled his own headset off and blinked at Sarah, distracted but elated.
‘That was the most exciting thing I’ve done since Nanny let me go on the big slide when I was three!’
Sarah grinned at him. ‘Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?’
Jeremy gave a puzzled frown. ‘I didn’t see you there,’ he said.
‘Well, of course you didn’t. We were both experiencing the same thing: experiencing what the original skier did.’
‘Mm. Yes, I see.’ His face cleared and he said in mock defiance, ‘Well, I’m jolly well going to have another go!’
He pulled on his helmet and stabbed a button at random.
Sarah sat for a moment, remembering the strangeness of feeling a man’s voice coming out of her mouth. And yet. at that moment, she had felt that she was wanting to laugh with joy. So whose laugh was it?
Her thought was interrupted by Jeremy’s voice. ‘Not nearly so exciting, this one,’ he was saying. ‘I’m just sitting in front of a big campfire warming my toes. I’ve got bare feet.’ His voice rose a couple of tones. ‘In fact not just my feet; I seem to be quite naked; and there’s a girl and she’s...
Oh my goodness me! No, don’t do that! Oh!’
He pulled the helmet from his head. ‘Well, really!’ he said.
‘Jeremy! I do believe you’re blushing,’ said Sarah.
‘I mean to say,’ replied Jeremy, putting the headset down decisively. ‘Going a bit far!’
Trying not to laugh, she donned her own helmet. ‘Now then, seven’s always been my lucky number, so...’ She pressed the seventh button in the seventh row.
She found herself crouching down, creeping through a forest or a jungle, more like, she said to herself. She felt her booted feet pushing through the tangled undergrowth and had to duck every now and then to avoid a low branch, or a hanging creeper. A heavy stench of decay was in her nostrils and in her cars a chattering wittering murmuring continuo which backed the solo shrieks of sonic alien bird.
She’d stopped now and was peering ahead as if she were looking for something. The heaviness in her hand, turned out to he the substantial weight of a gun – a gun like a fat stubby rifle. She must be stalking some sort of animal, like the lairds and people stalking stags in the Highlands; all that stuff.
The crack of a breaking branch made her look to her right, and start towards the movement she made out in the mass of leaves. Then she saw him: a man dressed very much as she seemed to be, with a leather jacket and high laced boots. Sarah could see the shine of sweat on his face, and a net of scratches, red raw, on the backs of his hands.
Was he her quarry? But even as she repelled the thought, with an unspoken No! – or did she say it aloud? -
the man looked straight at her, turned and stumbled away; and she went after him.
‘What is it? What’s going on?’
As she heard Jeremy’s distant question, she realized what the answer must he. ‘It must he one of those battle flame things,’ she told him. ‘You know, where they fire blobs of paint at one another.’
The other player was out in the open now, in clear view, so she raised the gun and fired – whoops dearie, careful now, it had quite a kick!