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.Without pausing, Rora chucked another brick towards him.Then another, straight at his head.‘Wait! What do you—?’There was no time to complain.The bricks came faster and faster.As much as he wanted to tell Rora to stop, instead Cameron switched to some sort of automatic defensive mode, half his mind tracking the trajectories of the bricks flashing up on the display, the other half directing his limbs into reflex deflections or dodges.If anything, the faster the bricks came at him, the better he responded.As if the less he thought about them consciously, the more effective his skills became.Finally, he met the last brick with a karate chop, and it broke apart in mid-air, the pieces falling to the floor with a thud.Cameron was as breathless with excitement as he was from the exercise.Regardless of all the cruel things that had been done to him, he couldn’t help but start to see the possibilities – and explanations.‘So that’s how Marie deflected everything I threw at her last night!’ A sudden thought deflated him.‘But wait, she already knew how to do all that.And she sure as hell had an edge over me.What else can she do that I can’t?’Rora gave him a consoling pat on the shoulder.‘Don’t sweat it.Listen, the thing you have to bear in mind is that Fry will have told his pet all about its abilities.He’ll have trained it, and made sure it was aware of all its capabilities.’ She flopped down on an exercise mat.‘Anyway, you’re the same model, so it makes sense that the two of you will have mostly the same abilities.Similar enhancements.You’ll just have to learn to use yours on your own.And practice is the best way to do that.’‘Great,’ said Cameron.Still, he did feel encouraged.With a faint whine of servos, he sat down beside Rora, but she was up again almost immediately and heading for the door.‘I need a shower,’ she said over her shoulder.‘Be time for the meeting soon.’‘All right.See you there, I guess.’Cameron felt a twinge of disappointment that she hadn’t stopped to talk.But he shrugged it off.As much as he probably needed a shower himself, he settled down to explore more aspects of his visual display.It was kind of like navigating a powerful computer system when you had no idea what it was for: exciting and unnerving at the same time.Of course, there was no keyboard to tap, no mouse to click – and no Help menu.Instead, to activate a particular function or access a file, Cameron had to focus his attention on an icon or area of the display, and then the best way he could describe it was to ‘think at it’.Experimenting like that, within a few minutes Cameron had discovered that the system was called a Head-Up Display, and boasted a number of cool features.He quickly found the Taser activator that would allow him to operate the weapon whenever he wanted, rather than having to wait for it to trigger automatically in an emergency.There was also interfacing software that would allow him to connect with a wide range of computer networks through ports in the fingers of his mechanical arm.He even had a built-in mobile phone, although the HUD unsurprisingly revealed a signal strength of zero here below ground.Finally, with a wry smile, Cameron found a satellite navigation system.Life was full of simple ironies like that, he supposed.Among all his other weird and wonderful ‘enhancements’, he had a system that could fix his position on the globe to within a metre, but couldn’t begin to tell him his place in the world.The meeting took place in the common room.Most of the tables had been pushed back to the walls, and all the chairs – simple plastic ones and big old armchairs alike – had been arranged in rows facing one end, like a rather eccentric classroom.Around thirty kids had gathered, some of them still chatting before taking their seats.There were some with furry faces, a couple with leathery hides who resembled pigs, one whose entire face had been replaced with a tinted visor, plenty with mechanical limbs, some with armour plating.There was even one girl who was positively reptilian, with a flickering tongue and a scaly skin that shifted colours.Cameron didn’t feel like looking too closely at any of them, and hoped they weren’t looking at him either.He could sense the tension in the room as Rora led him up one side of the rows of chairs towards a table that had been positioned at the front, where the teacher’s desk would have been.As if he was something she was about to show off to class.Biting his tongue, Cameron said nothing, keeping his head down so that his eyes didn’t have to focus on individual ‘monsters’ as he passed them.He knew their stares would be filled with the same mix of accusation and fear that he had seen in them the night before.He took a seat and gazed hard at the table in front of him.‘Hi, everybody,’ said Rora.‘Some of you saw him come in yesterday, but I’d like you all to meet Cameron properly.He’s going to be a valuable member of the Republic [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]