Epic (37 page)

They tell you at the front of every airboard manual that you have to wear a helmet. Then they tell you again. And just in case you don’t get the message, they tell you once more. Only after that do they tell you how to ride your new airboard. But I hadn’t learned much from manuals, just one fascinating fact. A drop to concrete from above ten meters will kill you; that’s pretty obvious. But did you know that there is a death zone created by falling from an airboard head first at exactly five meters above the ground? This is because for most people the one second it takes you to fall doesn’t give you time to get your head out of the way. Funnily enough if you fall from a bit higher, you are actually safer, you might only break a leg.

On the other hand, one second isn’t so bad if you know what you are doing.

I launched a desperate adrenaline-fuelled kick, intercepting the middle strap of the board with my left foot, with just enough momentum to swing the board right around over my head, so from my friends’ point of view it would have looked as if I had performed a mid-air cartwheel, bringing the board back beneath me, inches above the ground.

A fierce jolt of pain shot up my left leg, as if a giant pair of crocodile clips had been let shut around my ankle and a switch thrown. I let out a scream of distress and anger as the board and I rebounded back up into the air from our drop. My ankle was probably twisted. But I was furious now and, ignoring the pain, drove the board back into the wall, using its carbon steel edge to cut into the surface of the bricks. Orange dust and the reek of ozone surrounded me, as the thrust of my engine fought the desire of wall and board to push each other apart. Just before the strain burned out my motor, I finished my attack on the factory frontage and looped away, coasting now from aircar roof to aircar roof. One glance over my shoulder confirmed that my writing had been as neat as always. A perfect Y about two meters tall. My calling card. See, I told you I was good.

The factory doors opened and three more security guards ran out, shouting and brandishing their batons. My friends hurriedly ducked under the straps of their satchels and buckled their helmets tight. We fled into the amber evening with a motion of sinuous lines and sharp cutbacks, like a flock of starlings.

We had to stick to single file on the main routeway that was Fourth Street, some of the others performing tricks along a power cable down the center isle. But as the gang scattered into the pedestrian-only Fourier Avenue, on my right I caught a glance of fashionably ripped jeans and a screaming red T-shirt. Jay had come alongside me and we rode the bollards together, bouncing up, then gliding down towards the next as though we were cresting a series of waves.

“You all right? That mudgrubber knew exactly what he was doing. He could have really hurt you.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t say anything about the throbbing ache in my ankle. Thinking about it brought tears to my eyes but I wasn’t going to show any weakness in front of Jay. He was the oldest of our gang and our leader. Between Jay and me was a friendship, but also a rivalry. I’m sure he disliked the fact that I was a better boarder than he was, and, punk though he was, he just could not bring himself to match my self-confidence by boarding without a helmet.

“Good.” He glanced across at me. “I thought you were going down that time.”

“Yeah, it was close. But I caught it. No worries.”

Turning into Turner Square was a pleasure, lots of easy riding along the tops of the tidy bushes and plenty of room for the walkers to get out of our way. Then a number of climbs: the Castleford Hotel’s convenient awning; a series of window ledges; a grind along a power cable; an ollie to get that extra bit of height you needed to take you up to the stone ornaments of an ancient government building; finally we rode along the lamps that beamed light up onto a huge advertisement hoarding, currently selling a popular brand of toothpaste. As we came between the beams of light and the board, we were casting fleeting dark shadows like cavities on a whiter-than-white smile, so gigantic were the teeth. A quick glance and, having checked the sky was clear of surveillance choppers, a sharp cutback. We were gone.

Behind the advertising board was a disused office, and this was our den.