Theories of Flight

17

Access to the railway line was rendered simple by the presence of a swathe of demolished masonry, steel and glass that angled northeast, southwest: the Chuo line, heading toward Shinjuku, in the mind of the New Machine Jihad. The lofted beams that had spanned the platforms of Paddington had been brought down, the roof laid low in a toothy jumble of monolithic slabs.

Petrovitch picked his way over the debris, trying to keep a steady pace. Miyamoto was rubble-running a little way off, gaining at times, falling behind at others. But always in the lead was the baggy-trousered avatar, untroubled by inconveniences like shifting surfaces, awkward distances and gnawing fatigue.

It paused on the edge of the shining rails that stretched unbroken in one direction, twisted and buried in the other, and looked back. It seemed to be enjoying itself at its meat-confined companions’ expense.

Before Petrovitch could catch up, it was off again, running down the track, skipping and leaping. While seeing that the AI’s evident pleasure at something so mundane as tracking a moving point through real-space gave him satisfaction, there was also an inherent problem with the thing being so insufferably smug.

“Petrovitch-san?” Miyamoto’s forehead was slick with sweat, and his breath had a ragged tail to it that it didn’t have before.

“Yeah?”

“This is the wrong way.”

“Uh huh. It’s quicker, though.”

“How?”

“Up to the sidings at Oak Common. There’s a line that crosses. Goes to Willesden Junction. From there, pick up a route all the way to Stratford. Within farting distance of West Ham.” Petrovitch’s boots crunched oily ballast. To his right was the raised section of the A40, choked with vehicles, swarming with foot traffic. He was moving much faster than they were, and he could feel their envious stares across the distance.

“It is further.”

Petrovitch put his hand over his heart, where stitches and a patch of canned skin held the edges of the knife wound together. The turbine purred smoothly, pushing oxygen-rich blood around his body in a way the old one never had.

“Yeah. I’ll leave you behind if I have to,” he said. Just to show that he could, he increased his pace slightly, leaving the other man to either respond or give up.

Miyamoto drew level again.

“I cannot permit that. Miss Sonja would be most displeased with me.”

And pleasing Miss Sonja was chief of his concerns.

They ran through one station, and still in the shadow of the flyover, approached the next.

[People on the track. They appear to be both drunk and armed with rudimentary weapons. They are fighting amongst themselves.]

A bead of salt-sweat tickled Petrovitch’s cheek, and he wiped it away. The next station was just the other side of the two road bridges that spanned the track. Between them and it, figures limned in red moved between the shadows of massive concrete pillars in a slow, complicated dance.

“Company,” said Petrovitch. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Miyamoto’s—his now—gun. “Six of them. If we ignore them, they should ignore us.”

The avatar was waiting for them this time: not that it had any need to do so. Its presence or otherwise was no indication as to where its attention was directed. It could be almost anywhere, though not yet everywhere.

That it was leaning against the graffiti-covered tunnel walls, arms folded, made it clear that it was watching carefully and wanting to learn.

They got closer, and the situation resolved itself: not as the AI had supposed, a drunken brawl between those too stupid to flee. Not quite.

There was alcohol, for certain, that added unwarranted bravado to the cocktail of fear and abandonment. None of the protagonists could be described as an adult, but one of the kids was markedly younger: he was dressed differently, acted differently, and from his barked warnings, spoke differently.

Five feral youths, street fashion and sharp blades stolen from kitchens and tool boxes: the other, who wore clothes that had been patched, handed down, remade with dust. His hair was sun-bleached, his skin dark by wind and weather. His knife was a long, thin, lethal spike, and his shoes—his shoes were soft, unshaped.

“He is…” said Miyamoto.

“I know,” said Petrovitch. He slowed his run until he was walking, and raised his gun. “You lot. Get the huy out of here, if you know what’s good for you.”

The Metrozone kids, for so long unused to taking orders from anyone, let alone well-meant advice, stared at him.

“Trying to spoil our fun?” said one.

“Fine. I’ll put a hundred on the Outie.” Petrovitch nodded to the gray-brown teenager. “But die quickly. We’re in a hurry.”

“He won’t kill us, you wanker. He won’t even touch us.” The boldest city kid walked toward Petrovitch, swinging his little cook’s cleaver.

Petrovitch shot him in the foot, and the kid screamed like a girl. He hopped and shrieked and swore and cried, and Petrovitch felt almost sorry for him. It was a hard thing to take, to bluff and be found wanting.

There was a sudden scramble, even before the echo of the gunshot faded. Feet scrabbled over loose track ballast, and the kid with the blood seeping from the sole of his designer trainer frantically trying to keep up with the others who were leaving him behind.

“Go,” shouted Petrovitch, “you and your crew. You might make it across the Thames in time if you hurry.”

The avatar levered itself off the tunnel wall and gave Petrovitch a slow hand clap.

[Your capacity for turning each and every situation to your advantage never fails to surprise me.]

“Glad to be of service,” muttered Petrovitch. He looked the Outie kid up and down and turned the automatic flat to his palm. “Put the pig-sticker away, and we can trade.”

The boy had a sharp, lean expression. His gaze flicked from the tip of his long, thin blade to the dull gun-metal gray in Petrovitch’s hand.

“Trade?” he repeated, but the way he said it, it could have been one of the more industrial swear words.

“Yeah. I realize you might not have needed me, that you could have cut each and every one of them and sent them away like a whipped sabaka, but accidents happen. You slip, your knife hand gets slippery with blood, one of them thinks of throwing a rock at your head. One mistake, and they’re on you, carving away like you’re the Sunday roast. My way was quicker and a lot more certain.”

The boy weighed up his words, and sheathed the blade at his waist. “You go. I go.”

Petrovitch glanced around at Miyamoto, who stood poised, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Relax, okay?”

“He is from the Outzone. He will kill you if he gets the chance.”

“I’d like to think their motives are a little more nuanced than that. Isn’t that right, kid?”

The boy’s hand was straying back toward his bayonet, and Petrovitch felt the need to raise the gun barrel slightly. Maybe he would try and stick him. There was a look in his eye that warned everyone who might look that he was used to extreme, casual violence.

“So, let’s talk trade.”

The boy spat on the ground.

“You don’t trade in the Outzone?”

“Strong take. Weak give.” He squinted at the gun. “Not weak. Not give.”

“Petrovitch,” said Miyamoto. “We do not have time for this.”

“There’s time if I say there is.” He looked again at the boy. “You know what a gun is, what it can do?”

The boy nodded.

“I could make you tell me what I need to know, but I won’t do that. Instead, you get to ask me one question, and in return, I get to ask one of you.”

“Weak! You weak!” shrieked the boy. But he didn’t attack.

“I have the gun. Come on, you’re the scout, the path-finder: in me, you have someone who’s able to answer almost anything you might possibly think of.”

The boy listened to the city, testing whether anyone else was near. “What you? What him?”

Petrovitch frowned. “What me what? Our names?”

Shake.

“What we do?”

Shake.

“Where we come from?” It finally got a nod. “I’m Russian. From St. Petersburg. He’s Japanese, except there’s no Japan anymore.”

“Rus. Moscow,” said the boy.

“Moscow, yes.” He wondered where the conversation was going.

“Japan. Tokyo.” The boy put his fingers at the corners of his eyes and stretched them into slits.

Petrovitch laughed, and Miyamoto was indignant.

“Not London.”

“No, not London. Neither of us were born here.”

And that, in some way entirely obscure to Petrovitch, seemed to satisfy the Outie boy. “Talk.”

He seized his chance. “How are you coordinating this attack? Are you one army, or lots of groups? Is there any one person in charge?”

The boy tugged his ragged fingernails through his matted hair. Perhaps he thought he was being asked to give away too much. “Why? You hated enemy.”

Petrovitch snorted. “Yeah, that’s us. I need to find my wife. The last I heard, she was in West Ham, which is on the other side of the city.”

“West Ham know. Wife know not.”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“That is not what he means: he does not understand what a wife is,” said Miyamoto. He stepped forward, doing what the boy had done and listened to the city. It was unnatural, quiet. “His woman. He needs to find his woman.”

“A woman? Why?”

“Again I say,” said Miyamoto to Petrovitch, “we do not have time for this. Two decades of being Outzone has changed their language and culture so far that communication is impossible.”

“I want to know what we’re going to face out there. Is it a single army, or is it a rag-tag bunch of tribes who’d just as soon kill each other as kill us? Do they even have a plan? It’s important.” Petrovitch focused his attention on the boy. “Who’s your boss? Who’s the big man?”

“Fox,” said the boy. “He kill you, he kill you.” He pointed to each of them in turn.

“Yeah. He’ll probably kill you, too. Where is he?”

The boy pointed unerringly north.

“Waiting for you to come back and report, right? You going to tell him about us?”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re not interested in the same things. We’re not competing. He wants to take the city. I want to find my wife.”

“Fox not for city. Fox burn city. Burn all.”

“And there was me thinking that all he wanted to do was take in a West End show and do a bit of sightseeing.” Petrovitch rolled his eyes. “He’s welcome to burn whatever he wants, as long as it’s not me or mine. Though if he heads straight into the central zones from here, he’ll have to watch out for the tanks.”

“Tanks,” repeated the boy. “What tanks?”

“This Fox: older than us, right? One of the original Outies? He’ll know what a tank is,” he said with a sly smile. “And my colleague is right. We’re wasting time. Go on, back you go, wherever you came from.”

The boy—not much older than Petrovitch had been when he’d been running through the frozen streets—put his hand on his knife and started to draw it. Petrovitch raised his gun and aimed it straight at his face. The boy grinned.

“Not weak,” he said.

“No. Don’t confuse me with the rest of the sheep. I’m not like them.” Petrovitch waved the gun down the track. “Run.”

As they watched the boy scamper away, jumping from one side of the rail to the other and back, just because he could, Miyamoto growled deep in his throat.

“What did that achieve?”

“Zatknis: I need to do something else.” Petrovitch fetched out his rat. “You’re tracking him?”

[Trivial,] said the avatar.

“Okay. Tag him, and anyone he comes into contact with. Then tag their contacts, too. Build me a map.”

“Your hatnav again?”

“Slightly more than that. My associate,” said Petrovitch, and watched as text scrolled across his vision.

[I have been promoted, then. Co-equal with a biological entity. Yet the status of my citizenship remains in question.]

“That’s…” he started. “Not now. Just tell me where the kid goes.”

[He is passing under Ladbroke Grove. Road very busy, vehicular traffic stationary. No way through there. Now he is climbing the fence to access Canal Way. It is a dead end. He is cutting back east along the towpath. There is a narrow footbridge across to the north side beside the road bridge.]

“Okay.” He closed the rat. “Got your breath back?”

“I would like for you,” said Miyamoto, “to explain to me what it is you are doing.”

“While we’re moving.” Petrovitch set off again, in the direction taken by the boy. When Miyamoto had caught up, he said. “Think of a virus. If being an Outie is a disease, and the kid is a carrier, everyone he talks to has to be an Outie too. And everyone they talk to. If they have any sort of organization, I’ll know where most of them are in a couple of hours.”

“Clever,” conceded Miyamoto. “Unless they use phones, or radios.”

“Which they don’t, otherwise their scouts would be carrying them.”

An explosion rumbled in the distance. To the north, a fresh pillar of black smoke rose into the sky to join all the others that punctuated the horizon.

[Petrol station. Willesden.]

“How, how is it possible, that they hope to win?”

“By stampeding millions of people straight at the forces who might have the yajtza to fight back. Since the roads are clogged with fleeing refugees and we’re reduced to running along railway lines, I’d say it was working.”

He pulled ahead again, running fast and free.