Theories of Flight

20

Fresh text scrolled across his eyeline as he jogged along. They were crossing over a major road on a gray-painted bridge, but its sides were high, and topped with even higher mesh, in an attempt to prevent thrown objects landing on the tracks.

There were Outies beneath, but they couldn’t see him. Knowing they were there made his heart turn a little faster, made him place his feet a little more carefully.

He paid attention to the words bouncing in front of him.

[Reuters: Nobel nominee Dr. Epiphany Ekanobi arrested attempting illegal border crossing to Mexico from U.S. Dept for Homeland Security source states Ekanobi “credible terrorist threat.”]

“Chyort vozmi,” he growled.

[She is being held at the local sheriff’s office until personnel arrive from Los Angeles.]

Petrovitch felt his fists clench involuntarily. “If they so much as harm a single hair on her head, I’ll…”

[What possible damage can you do to them?]

“Crash their currency. Wipe their records. Deny them their satellites. Dangle them over the information abyss and threaten to drop them.”

[While I am likely to be able to do these things, I would need persuading before I was willing. Furthermore, I am currently using some of their assets to help you: the NSA are providing your satellite imagery.]

“I didn’t mean now: we’re busy. Later will do fine.”

[Regarding the digital map: I cannot sustain it beyond 1656 GMT. Unless all the Outies remain perfectly still over the fifteen minutes between one viewing platform setting over the horizon and the next rising sufficiently high to take over, all data will be lost.]. It added helpfully, [Just over five hours.]

“I could crawl on my hands and knees and still make it to West Ham in four.” He turned, running backward for a few steps, to place his finger to his lips and point downward at the road.

[It is unfortunate that Dr. Ekanobi has been captured. But I have identified the MEA unit your wife is attached to: she is north of West Ham, on the North Circular. They have taken up a defensive position on a raised section of road.]

“But won’t they end up completely surrounded?”

[There is another MEA unit engaged in a fighting retreat toward Woolwich. Their tactics appear to be to use one group as a diversion while the other escapes, more or less intact, along with the many thousands of refugees ahead of them.]

“So she’s bait.”

[Yes.]

“Does it look like there’s a plan to get them out?”

[No.]

“I’m not abandoning her.”

[Your worth to human civilization is far greater than the meaningless sacrifice of your life for a woman you cannot say you love. If you try to save her, you will die.]

“Yeah. You know this for sure?”

[The girl Lucy will die too.]

“Zatknis’ na hui. There’ll be a way. I just have to think of it.”

The embankment graded out and for a few short paces they were level with houses. They swept under a vast concrete structure that carried trains into Finchley Road, and kept angling down. The ground either side and in front rose up, and the tracks multiplied and split, left and right: after they passed through Finchley station on separate platforms, each bundle of rails went under the hill of Hampstead Heath. No short tunnel this time.

Petrovitch slowed and let the others catch up. Miyamoto was working hard, enough to make him reluctant to speak—and Petrovitch was glad for that, since he was getting more than enough grief off the AI. Lucy looked ready to drop, though. She was pale, shaky, and it looked like it hurt every time she tried to breathe.

Perhaps they could walk the next kilometer as it was entirely underground.

“We go in here,” he started to say, but his words were lost in the shrill whistle of artillery.

The shells came from the south, howled overhead and exploded with a full-throated roar a few streets away. Debris lifted into the air, and pulverized dust began to drift in grubby clouds.

[EDF tanks in Primrose Hill. They seem confident that there are no civilians left in the target area.]

A second volley of gunfire blossomed in red and black down the Finchley Road. Glass shattered and walls fell, and the ground shook. Slates and tiles span away, and started to hit the railway track like spinning plates, exploding as they crashed down. The sound of the shells leaving the guns was a distant and belated afterthought.

“Run.”

Petrovitch reached forward and grabbed Lucy’s hand, and he had to drag her, her exhausted legs unable to respond.

The barrage continued, getting closer, but they were safe in the tunnel’s mouth and picking their way further in. Gritty soot rained down on their heads with every concussion, and the air itself stiffened with every explosion.

Petrovitch fumbled in his pocket for the rat, his other arm fighting the losing battle to keep the schoolgirl upright. He ended up dumping her on her backside and leaning her against his legs while he flipped the case open and dialed the screen’s brightness up to maximom.

The pearl light illuminated the peaky whiteness of Lucy’s face, the oily darkness of the Victorian brickwork, and his own dusty glasses. Miyamoto stood watching the detritus accumulate across the tracks outside, and then the station took a direct hit.

The blast wave made them all duck down and cover their heads, and the roil of smoke that followed had its own distinctive taste. It smelled of war.

Petrovitch held the rat up, jerked Lucy to her feet and pushed her further in. The tunnel entrance was a hazy dot when they stopped again.

“We should be all right here,” he said.

Miyamoto’s eyes blinked in the soft glow. “And if the tunnel collapses?”

“We’re screwed. But it stood up to the Luftwaffe: a few tank rounds aren’t going to make a difference.” Petrovitch sat down next to Lucy. “You okay?”

She had scrunched her body up and was shivering uncontrollably. “Ohgodohgodohgod,” she was whispering, while her fingers writhed like dirty worms.

“Yeah, you’ll get used to it.” She’d lost her water bottle, and Petrovitch pressed his on her. “You might think that you were safer where you were, but that’s just an illusion. We’re doing fine. You’re doing fine. Better than I expected, anyway.”

She said something that he couldn’t quite catch.

“Say again?” He leaned in close.

“N-not bad f-for a girl.” She looked out at him under her fringe.

“Not bad at all.” He patted her shoulder awkwardly, not knowing what else to say. He felt he ought to try. “I will get you out of this: I promise.”

Lucy fixed him with her wide eyes that glowed in the light of the rat’s screen. “Y-you’re just saying that.” Her whole body spasmed, and she clutched her knees tighter.

“I’ve done this before. I didn’t lose anyone then. I don’t intend to now.”

She nodded. “But… outside.”

“Yeah. We’ll have to do something about that. The Outies we can deal with, but a stray artillery round will really ruin our day.”

Miyamoto reached over his back and drew his sword with a singing ring. “The European Defense Force are targeting Outie concentrations, but I do not believe that it will stop the inevitable loss of the northern Metrozone.”

Petrovitch tapped his rat. He’d lost the satellite connection—too much soil and rock between him and the open sky. “It’s not inevitable. Not anymore.”

“Explain.”

“The Outie advance relied on the wave of refugees ahead of it overwhelming the defenders’ capacity to cope. As long as they kept right up to the heels of the last fleeing Metrozoner, they were going to win. But they’ve fallen behind. They’ve underestimated just how fast a population can shift when the govno hits the fan. If the EDF can get enough troops on the ground to hold a line, set up enough pinch-points to funnel the Outies into the killing grounds, then not waver even when they’re down to their last bullet…” Petrovitch cocked his ear to the steady crump of explosions echoing down the tunnel. “I could win it.”

“Your capacity for self-aggrandisement never fails to astound me.” Miyamoto snorted. “You are not a god. You are not a general. You are a weak, venal, delusional street child who never grew up.”

Petrovitch played his tongue across his teeth for the few moments it took his anger to rise and then subside. “I don’t see anyone else around here who’s got a bunch of equations named after them.” He pretended to search the shadows for the ghosts of Schrödinger, Fermi and Heisenberg. “And I’m the only one who bought a yebani torch! So why don’t you just watch and learn?”

He levered himself to his feet, and crooked his hand under Lucy’s armpit. She looked up at him.

“Now?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” He pulled her up and held on while she steadied herself.

“I’m ready,” she said, though her legs could barely support her. The darkness of the tunnel bore down on her, but she struggled and stood tall. “Definitely ready.”

They walked down the center of the two tracks, on the rise of ballast that rattled and clattered when they kicked it, making sharp distinct sounds compared with the dull bass boom that reverberated around them. Without his map, Petrovitch was guessing they were halfway, and that they really ought to be able to see the far end sometime soon.

They didn’t: he couldn’t remember there being a curve that might block their view, and he held the little screen further out to one side, so as not to ruin his night sight.

There were lights ahead. Several, but none of them were shards of daylight.

“Chyort.” He snapped the rat shut and stayed perfectly still. Lucy, dogging his heels, stumbled into his outstretched arm and gave a little squeak of fear.

He watched and listened; he didn’t have a heartbeat to sound in his ears. Miyamoto seemed to have vanished, but he could hear the girl’s panting breaths off to his left. Above those slight vibrations, above the sub-sonic trembling of exploding shells, was a soft susurration of voices. The lights were still, though occasionally one seemed to flicker, as if a body occluded it.

Lucy was still in contact with his arm. He guessed at where her hand would be and, as silently as he could, walked her to the wall. He put her hand on it, and whispered into her hair, “Stay still.”

He left her there, and walked on, his own fingertips trailing the damp, crumbling tunnel side. He slipped the rat into a pocket, and filled that hand with his gun.

The lights grew and brightened. He could make out shape and form, and he frowned. There was a train in the tunnel, and there were people on that train. Petrovitch rode his luck, and loped up to the rear buffers.

It was a commuter train, stalled due to the power cut. The passengers ought to be long gone, though. The weak blue-white light just about made it through the oily dusty patina of the windows of the carriages, but no further. He pressed his ear to the metalwork. The buzzing, rumbling voices inside were indistinct, and he gained nothing but another smear of dirt.

Some of the train doors were open; the footplate was chest height, and Petrovitch stealthily eased himself aboard, crawling across the floor at the entrance until he could swing his legs up and in. He peered over the bottom of the internal door, through the smeary glass.

He could count about a dozen people, and supposed there might be a dozen more. Someone was standing in the aisle, their back to him, and he appeared to be wearing a dressing gown. A checkered, brown dressing gown, with a plaited cord tied around the waist.

Petrovitch stood up, and found the door handle. His first attempt at opening it failed, because he didn’t appreciate that it slid to one side and wasn’t hinged.

By the time he finally made a gap wide enough to squeeze through, most of the occupants of the train were standing, all were staring, and a hushed, pregnant silence had descended over them.

“Hey,” said Petrovitch.

A man in a white coat pushed past the dressing-gown wearer—though almost everyone was in some form of nightwear—and brandished a syringe.

“No closer,” he warned, then ruined the effect by adding, “please.”

Petrovitch held up the gun in his hand. “I don’t need to get closer. Hang on.” He leaned to one side, trying to see the far end of the carriage. “Miyamoto? Miyamoto?”

Heads turned, and there was a terse “What?”

“Put the yebani sword away, grab one of those lantern things and go and get Lucy.”

Miyamoto stepped out of the shadows and sheathed his blade. He snatched one of the little shining globes off the table between two elderly women and retraced his steps back into the darkness, carrying the light with him.

Petrovitch started to put the gun away, then thought better of it. “You first.” He didn’t want a needlestick, accidental or otherwise, and he could guarantee that anything inside the syringe wasn’t going to be good for him.

The man in the white coat crouched down and put the hypodermic on the floor, and Petrovitch waved them all back while he retrieved it. The liquid inside was clear, with tiny crystalline bubbles clinging to the meniscus.

He put it up on the luggage rack out of harm’s way. Everyone was waiting for something, anything, to happen.

Petrovitch lowered his gun, dangling it in his hand. The white coat had an ID badge clipped to the pen-filled breast pocket. He couldn’t make out the name in the gloom, and assumed the man’s profession. “What the chyort are you all doing here?”

“You’re not,” said the doctor, “you’re not one of them?”

“Despite appearances to the contrary, no. You shouldn’t be here. You should be south.”

“This,” and he balled his fists in evident frustration, “this is as far as we could get.”

His patients—his charges—nodded sadly.

“We had a bus,” said a man with the first flush of white stubble patterning his jowls; “we had one and we got it took off us. Turfed us out in the street, they did.”

Another shrugged. “What did they expect us to do? Walk?”

Petrovitch grabbed the doctor by the collar and dragged him away toward the door.

“Yobany stos, man. Walking would have been better, whatever speed they could have managed. You could have made it to the Thames by now.”

“I’ve got patients with emphysema, angina, diabetes, hip replacements, open leg ulcers, cataracts, glaucoma. I had to make a decision: yes, a couple of them could have made it. But we decided to stay together.” The doctor narrowed his eyes. “Don’t I know you?”

“Yeah, I’m a yebani celebrity.”

“The sweary physics guy on the news. But…” He scratched his ear hard. “Look, I don’t care why you’re here. What are our chances?”

Petrovitch saw a light appear at the far end of the carriage, and Lucy stumble along the aisle toward them.

“The Outie advance has gone over your heads. We’re Outzone now, and everything that means.”

“Then what’s that pounding?”

“EDF artillery. Too little, too late. We’re facing an army you can measure in the hundreds of thousands, and no one’s seemed to realize that a few well-placed HE rounds isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference. Unless I can persuade them otherwise, the EDF will hold on as long as they can, then they and MEA will blow the bridges and abandon the north. That means you, and everyone else left in it.”

The doctor’s face twitched.

Petrovitch dropped his gun in his pocket and moved back to accommodate Lucy. “Whichever way you look at it, you’re pretty much hosed. You’re in the middle of occupied territory. Even if the Outies don’t come and find you, you’re going to have to leave here eventually. Unless you’re intending to euthanize the lot of them.”

When the idea wasn’t immediately rejected out of hand, Petrovitch felt himself flush cold.

“Tell me you didn’t bring them down here to die.”

“Then what,” said the doctor, tight-lipped, “do you suggest I do?”

“What?” said Lucy, face turning from one man to the other. “What’s going on?”

“I,” said Petrovitch, and swallowed. He looked at the lined, tired faces and the rheumy eyes reflected in the cold blue light. “No. I’ve just about had it. Huy tebe v’zhopu! This has gone on long enough. We’re turning into a bunch of yebani savages, and it’s about time someone stood up, extended their middle finger and screamed ‘Zhri govno i zdohni!’ ”

“Sam,” said Lucy, with an embarrassed smile, “actually, you are screaming whatever it is.”

“Good.” He gathered up the front of the doctor’s white coat in his tightening hand and pulled him forward until they were nose to nose. “You will not—and I’ll repeat that—not hurt a single one of these people. Do you understand me? Even if you kill yourself afterward, I will find some way to drag you back to life and make you suffer like no one has ever suffered before.”

Petrovitch let go and wiped his hand free of any contagion. Again, all eyes were on him, and he snorted.

“Miyamoto?” he called. He could see the man’s shoulders slump in the shadows. “Yeah, you’re with me. We’re going to find some sky. And then,” he muttered so that only Lucy could really hear, “I’m going to throw myself into the open gates of hell and damn them to do their worst.”

He spun around, his ragged coat-tails flying in streamers behind him, and stalked away back out into the darkness.