Theories of Flight

4

She was sleeping in the bed, and Petrovitch was sitting at his screen, wearing a glove to gesture to the images on it. The crest of the news wave had reached east Asia, where Chinese technocrats in their glass towers and Mongolian yak-herders living in yurts were having breakfast to his sweary cry of triumph.

His phone rattled against his thigh again—and it couldn’t be Maddy this time either. He slipped it from his pocket and wearily thumbed the button.

“Doesn’t anybody use email these days?”

“Congratulations, Petrovitch.” There was a pause. “I can’t hear the champagne corks popping.”

“If you thought you could use me to get into a party, you don’t really know me at all.”

Harry Chain cleared his throat noisily. “So you’re bunkered down in Clapham A, waiting for the storm to die down. Perhaps you should have chosen a quieter career.”

“Quieter?” Petrovitch swung his bare feet up on the desk. “Quieter than high-energy physics? Yeah, we’re all yebani celebrities these days. Why did you call?”

“Apart from to say well done? How’s Madeleine?”

He looked at her reflection in the screen, the long curve of her spine and the shadows formed by her waist. “She’s fine. A bit shook up.” He didn’t tell him about her mother.

“Look, Petrovitch; we need to talk. Not over the phone, either.”

“About…?”

“Really not over the phone. I can come to you. Half an hour, forty minutes.”

“I don’t want to leave her, but I don’t want you coming to the domik either. You know where Wong’s is?”

Petrovitch heard the tap of a stylus against a screen.

“I do now,” said Chain. “Half an hour? Please?”

“You’re buying.”

“I always do.” The connection clicked off.

Petrovitch slid the phone back into his pocket and turned in his chair. Madeleine was still but for the slight rise and fall of her rib cage. Her hair was coiled on the pillow. Her hips were shrouded by a sheet. The expanse of pale skin between was perfect, unmarked by scar or blemish.

She was a thing of wonder, and she was in his bed. He shivered, even though he wasn’t cold.

His boots were by the door, his coat on a stick-on hanger next to it. He got ready as quietly as he could, but then came the point that he had to wake her. He kissed her shoulder, and waited for her to stir.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey yourself. What’s time?”

“Eight thirty. In the evening.”

Her eyes, large and unfocused, narrowed. “You’re going out?”

“I’m going to Wong’s. Harry Chain called. Said it was…” he shrugged, “he didn’t say what it was, but that in itself is worrying.”

“Okay.” Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she was instantly asleep again.

He took a moment to inspect the bruising that was seeping in a yellow and purple tide across her front; even her breasts, which were still as magnificent as he remembered them from that morning.

She’d need stronger painkillers than the pitiful bottle dispensed to her by the hospital.

He reluctantly turned away and zipped open a holdall on the floor. In Madeleine’s methodical way, each item inside had its own ziploc bag. He rummaged through the CS spray, the sheathed knives, the taser and assorted coshes for the Ceska. He slipped the pistol into his hand and went back in for the almost toy-sized bullets. He tidied away when he was done.

He threw on his coat, dropped the gun into his pocket, and looked back as he started to unlock the door. She’d still be there when he got back, which was in itself a reason not to be too long.

Wong scowled at him as Petrovitch kicked the door open.

“Hey. Why you no use handle like everyone else?” he complained, but he was already pouring coffee in a scalding black stream.

Petrovitch pushed the door back with his heel, shutting out the mist and the dark. “Because I’m not like everyone else. Where I come from the door opens you.”

“That still make no sense. You say that like it mean something, when it all nonsense.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and felt the weight of the pistol as he sized up the rest of the café’s clientele. “Quiet?”

“No one come in and shoot us up. Not today.” Wong slid the coffee over the counter. “On house.”

Petrovitch had come out without a credit chip, or even a few coins, so he had no choice but to accept. “Thanks. Why?”

“You great man now. Shows fortune cookie right again.” His face cracked into an unpleasant grin. “I have sex with the Stanford faculty’s mothers!”

Petrovitch looked over the top of his glasses. “Is that how they translated it? I prefer my version.” Still shaking his head, he retreated to the very back of the shop and nursed his scalding black coffee until Chain barged his way in.

“Hey,” started Wong.

“He’s with me,” Petrovitch called.

Chain squinted into the distance and finally located the source of the voice. He patted his jacket down for his wallet, and let Wong charge him twice for the same drink without him noticing. He brought his coffee to Petrovitch’s table and slopped it down before collapsing in the chair opposite.

“You all right?” asked Petrovitch.

“A bit, you know. Strange days.” He pressed his squashed nose into his mug, inhaling the bitter fumes. “Everything is wrong.”

“That, coming from a policeman, doesn’t fill me with happy thoughts.”

Chain’s face twitched. “I’ve been seconded. Metrozone Emergency Authority militia. Intelligence.”

Petrovitch just about managed to swallow. He coughed hard to clear his throat. “Ha!”

“Don’t start. Not now. Besides,” he said, reaching inside his jacket, “I’ve got something for you.”

He slid a slim metal case the size of a cheap paperback across the table. Petrovitch stared at it for a moment before looking up into Chain’s rheumy eyes.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“Since I dropped the last one in a swamp, I supposed I owed you.” Chain nudged it closer. “Consider it a late wedding present.”

“I thought my present was your convenient forgetting of all the illegal things I’d done.” Petrovitch picked up the case and turned it in his hands, watching the play of light and shadow across the brushed steel surface. He touched the recessed button and the case split apart. “If you’ve loaded this up with spyware… What am I saying, if? The first thing I’m going to do is bleach the insides.”

“For what it’s worth, I haven’t touched it. Factory fresh. Except,” and Chain stopped, and his shoulders hunched higher.

Petrovitch dabbed at the rat, checking the software and the connectivity. “Except what?”

“I did put a file on it. You might want to take a look.”

Petrovitch found the file and clicked it. A video started to run: grainy, too-bright colors, ghosting. It was almost unwatchable, but then it settled down. People were passing through a screen, the camera pointing down and toward them, recording their faces as they walked out from under the arch.

“Airport?”

“Heathrow, this morning. Watch for the blonde.”

“That’s every second person.”

“You’ll recognize her.”

He watched as figures paraded by. There was a pause, then a woman with a curiously mechanical gait stepped up to the screen. Lights and alarms sounded, causing a flurry of activity from the paycops. The woman looked first to her left, then her right, her ponytail flicking her shoulders. A guard was arguing with her, his hand on his holster, but she seemed supremely unconcerned. It was almost as if this happened all the time to her.

She was alone again, everyone else retreating outside the square of the camera’s capture. The screen rang its alarms for a second time, but she strode through untouched. She looked up at the camera, her gaze unwavering. Then she was gone.

“Don’t know her,” said Petrovitch.

“No family resemblance, then?”

“Not mine.” Petrovitch wound the video back and froze it. He stared at the image, even as she stared back. “Chyort.”

“May I introduce Charlotte Sorenson, recently arrived from the U.S. of A?” Chain swigged at his coffee and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “She has cybernetic legs, hence all the kerfuffle.”

“No prizes for guessing why she’s here.” Petrovitch snapped the rat shut and tapped it on the tabletop. “What does she know?”

“She knows where her brother stayed, who he was working for. She may even know he was being blackmailed.”

“By Oshicora and by you,” said Petrovitch pointedly.

“I would apologize, but he’s dead.” Chain shifted uncomfortably in his seat and leaned closer. “We all did things we’re not proud of.”

“Like shooting my wife in the back? At least the Outies have the decency to try and kill her face to face.”

Chain almost got up and left. His hands were on the tabletop, poised, ready to push himself away. He went as far as tensing his arm muscles. Then he slumped back down. “Okay. Probably deserved that.”

“Probably?”

“I’m trying to help you. There’s more than just Miss Sorenson to worry about.”

Petrovitch pocketed the rat and signaled to Wong for more coffee. “Go on.”

“I get to see things in my new job I wouldn’t normally see. A briefing here, a transcript there. Things start to add up.”

“Chain, stop sounding like the yebani Oracle and get to the point.”

“I think the CIA are after us.”

Petrovitch became stock still. Even when Wong banged down two more mugs and swept away the empties, he didn’t react.

Chain leaned back, making his seat creak in protest. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Yeah. I heard. What makes you think that?”

“This is not the best place to discuss the evidence.” Chain regarded his fellow diners, who appeared to be entirely disinterested in anything he might say. Or do.

“I’m not taking this on trust,” said Petrovitch. “You’re a pizdobol at the best of times.”

“I’m limited to what I can show you, but come in tomorrow.”

Petrovitch smirked. “Don’t you think I’m going to be busy tomorrow?”

“Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame. It’ll be something to remember fondly while you pace your cell and tear at your orange jumpsuit.” Chain picked up his coffee and gulped at it.

“You’re actually serious.”

Chain leaned forward again, his chest almost across the tabletop. “They’re desperate to know what happened during the Long Night, and there are only three people who know the whole story. Four, if you count your Doctor Ekanobi. I hear rumors: some of them are even true, though it would take anyone else years of sorting to get the full picture. But that’s why the CIA are here. They suppose if it can happen to the Metrozone, it can happen to one of their cities. This has their highest threat level, and their top priority.”

“Why don’t we do something radical?” Petrovitch stretched his neck out toward Chain and whispered: “Why don’t we just tell them what happened?”

“You shot an American citizen.”

“He was tovo. He’d killed, what, two dozen cops by blowing them up? You said yourself he had form for that, and yobany stos, he had his own father murdered.” Petrovitch pushed his glasses back up his face. “The Director’ll probably give me a medal for services rendered.”

“And the Jihad?” hissed Chain, “What about the Jihad?”

Petrovitch’s sardonic smile slipped. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. That’s going to be a problem.”

“They’ll want whatever you managed to save of Oshicora’s VirtualJapan. They won’t want to share it. They’ll want it for the exclusive use of Uncle Sam, and my guess is that they’ll eliminate everyone who knows about it before they carry it back to the Pentagon.”

“Langley,” said Petrovitch. “CIA headquarters is in Langley, Virginia.”

Chain grabbed Petrovitch’s lapels and pulled him nose to nose. “If you don’t want the world to face a weaponized AI in five years’ time—a world without you, Madeleine, your friend Doctor Ekanobi, or me in it—cut the crap. The Sorenson woman’s turning up isn’t a coincidence, it’s a sign. They’re getting ready to move, and you being famous all of a sudden will not save you or anyone around you.”

Petrovitch looked down. “Let go, Chain. I’ve been getting self-defense lessons from a very good teacher, and I’d hate to damage you.”

Chain released his grip, and the two parted, glaring at each other across the cracked and pitted formica. Eventually, Petrovitch raised his gaze to see Wong standing by his counter, hand resting on a meat cleaver.

Petrovitch shook his head slightly, and Wong went back to swabbing empty tables with disinfectant.

“You told Sonja any of this yet?”

Chain pursed his lips. “I thought it’d be better coming from you.”

“Thanks. You know how much Maddy likes me seeing her. Considering the govno I’m going to get, I may as well just suggest a threesome.”

“Go on your way to work, Petrovitch. You don’t have to tell Madeleine you took a diversion.”

“And you wonder why you’re still single.” He swilled the last of his coffee and dragged himself to his feet. He was more tired than he realized. Despite two mugs of rocket fuel, he felt a bone-deep weariness lay on him like a blanket.

“Think about it,” said Chain. “But not for long: you know where to find me.”

“Yeah. Middle of your spider’s web, just like last time.” Petrovitch squeezed out from behind the table. He waved at the owner as he passed. “Night, Wong.”

Wong folded his arms. “You still bad man. Sleep well.”