Nowhere was armed conflict a daily fact of life now. Nations coexisted. Rival countries glowered at each other across their borders and exchanged occasional disgruntled verbal salvoes, but the rhetoric was always muted, never reaching a level of bellicosity that would draw the Olympians' attention and arouse their disapproval. The world sat like schoolchildren in the presence of a strict teacher, bolt upright, hands on desks, facing forwards, with nary a paper dart or an ink pellet sailing through the air.
But it was a classroom with bloodstains on the walls, and the hush that filled it buzzed with fear and horror.
And if you complained -
If you protested -
And people did -
If you did have the temerity to do that -
The hubris -
Then the wrath of gods would be visited upon you.
As, for instance, in Hyde Park, July 25th, two and a half years ago.
When Apollo and Artemis descended on a milling, militant crowd, and chants turned to screams, and placards and banners carrying messages such as 'Down With The Olympians' and 'Ban The Pantheon' and 'No To Divine Terror' became spattered to illegibility with gore.
Sam had not been there.
But he had.
And he had died.
And with his death something inside Sam had died as well, and that was no mere figure of speech.
Hatred? Did she still feel that for the Olympians?
Not to the extent that she used to. For months after the events at Hyde Park, hatred had burned fiercely inside her, and its heat had made her feel alive, had maybe even kept her alive. But eventually like any fire it had subsided. She couldn't sustain it. Her heart ran out of fuel for it.
The embers still smouldered, however. And Landesman's Titan project was a breeze blowing across them, fanning them back to life.
Right, Sam told herself, if you really want to do this, do it.
She recalled McCann telling her to listen to the battlesuit, trust it.
There was a boulder in front of her, a hunk of black granite firmly embedded in the ground. The other recruits were all some distance off. The mist gave her cover. Nobody would see her fail, if she failed.
The boulder was clearly heavier than anything she could normally lift. Even the strongest man alive would have struggled with it, most likely in vain, with nothing to show for his efforts apart from maybe a hernia or some kind of prolapse.
Sam squatted down. She clamped her gauntleted hands on either side of the boulder. She concentrated on being in the battlesuit, being at one with the battlesuit, working in tandem with it. So far, so good. Before now, the mere act of grabbing the boulder would have been beyond her. The manoeuvre would have gone awry somehow. Either she wouldn't have been able to control the positioning of her hands or she'd have misgauged the squat and ended up flat on her bum or her back.
Heartened, she heaved.
Next thing she knew, she was standing upright, no boulder in her hands.
'Shit.'
She looked down. Odd. No boulder on the ground either, just a depression, a patch of bare soil where it had once sat.
So where — ?
She looked up.
The boulder was falling. Fast.
She sprang backwards out of its path of descent.
The boulder thudded to earth at almost the exact same instant she did.
She sat up with her legs akimbo, propped on her elbows, dazed. What just happened?
Except, she knew what had just happened.
How high had she hurled the boulder? Fifteen, maybe twenty metres straight up, she estimated.
How far had she leapt? Ten metres, thereabouts, in a single bound.
Sam thought about it for a moment.
Then she broke into a giggle. She listened to herself. Actual giggling. Tee-hee-hee.
This TITAN suit.
Oh, all of a sudden she was starting to like this TITAN suit.
10. BREAKTHROUGH
From then on, she had no trouble. Her learning curve was steep but, by virtue of having taken so long a run- up at it, she ascended smoothly and rapidly. By noon, as the mist began to thin, Sam was utterly at home in the battlesuit. She understood at last the exhilaration all the others were feeling in theirs. The suit took her and improved her, enhanced her. Made her a better her. A her that could heft impossible weights, run at impossible speeds, see in impossible wavelengths and ranges, even hear at impossible distances, not only through the comms link but via directional aural amplification scanners that made the cry of a herring gull half a kilometre away sound as though the bird was perched on her shoulder.
The basic functions of the suit soon seemed old hat. Sam wanted to try something else. She wanted to challenge it and herself.
She squared up to one of the remnants of drystone wall that criss-crossed the island. She hadn't yet seen any of the others attempt what she was intending to do, but given what she understood of the TITAN suit's operation, there was no reason why this shouldn't work.
She drew back an arm at waist height and punched the wall.
Punched straight through it, knocking a cavity in the top couple of runs of stone.
Didn't feel a thing.
Repeated the action.
In no time she had flattened an entire section of the wall, strewing stones and fragments of stone in a wide arc on the other side as though she were some kind of human wrecking ball.
And someone was applauding.
It was Landesman, standing nearby, Lillicrap beside him, in scarves and overcoats.
'Great stuff, Sam,' Landesman said. 'A fine piece of demolition. And deduction. I was wondering if, when, one of you would make that intuitive leap. No surprises, you were the one.'
'The nanobot coating isn't purely defensive.'
'Indeed. Its ability to absorb and deflect force can be turned to offensive purposes. Had it not been there, and you had punched the wall as you just did with the assistance of the servos, your hand would now be a mess of shattered bone and pulped muscle. Instead of which, thanks to the nanobots, you can hit with impunity, and with considerable power.'
'Any other features of the suit you haven't told us about?'
'Probably,' Landesman replied with a grin. 'But discovery is all part of the fun, isn't it? Nobody buys a computer and reads the manual from cover to cover. The best way to find out what a complex machine can do is by putting it through its paces and experimenting.'
Lillicrap gave a polite, meaningful cough. 'Mr Landesman?' he said, with a glance at his watch.
'Yes, yes, Jolyon, I know.'
'Nagging's what you pay me for, sir.'
'And you earn every penny. Sam, I'm afraid I must ask you and your colleagues to head inside now. The mist is lifting, and you know what that means.'
'Sunshine?'
