Theories of Flight

by Simon Morden

  “If the EDF and MEA units want to keep fighting the Outies, they can consider themselves mercenaries under my command. If they don’t, they can surrender their weapons to the nikkeijin and retreat. If they want to take us on too, I’ll leave them at the mercy of the Outies. No help from the Jihad. Otherwise, force the Outies back, break their will, send in the infantry to clear out the remaining pockets. Work out from the center a district at a time. Concentrate our forces. Use tank desant tactics to get our troops where they need to be quickly.” He took a breath. “If you can handle all that.”

  [By your command.]

  “Hah.” He reattached the camera and judged the distance back down to the street. A tank, huge and low and green, was chewing up the tarmac toward the junction from the north.

  Petrovitch skipped over the railings and slid down them so that his feet dangled over the road. Two, two and a half meters to drop. He sprang his hands and bent his knees, and when he felt the first shock, he rolled.

  He dusted himself down, and the tank commander ordered his beast of a machine to a halt. Unburned diesel drifted by in a blue cloud.

  “Doctor Petrovitch.”

  “Major?”

  “I am supposed to disengage and withdraw to the airport,” he shouted down.

  “I know.”

  They both looked down the Strand. The helicopters had broken off and were heading east, but they left behind them a seething, shifting mass of semi-working cars and burning wrecks. Figures, dressed in blue, moved amongst them, and the occasional shot rang out.

  Valentina, an AK in her hand, stepped out onto the street from Somerset House on the opposite corner. She strode across the road, stepping over the twisted bodies punctuating her walk, and stood in front of Petrovitch.

  She took his chin in her hand and moved his head this way, then that.

  “Is not improvement,” she said, and let go. “We won, yes?”

  “After a fashion.”

  “When cars started to move, I assumed it was you. We kept our nerve.” She was the very picture of a Soviet-era poster.

  “Thank you. I would’ve warned you, but I pretty much made it up as I went along.” He looked up at the major. “Shouldn’t you be running along?”

  “I stand by my commanding officer. My men stand by me.”

  “Don’t you go saluting me again.” He inspected the tank’s vast metal side, and started to climb up the armor near the rear of the tracks.

  “Where are we going?” asked Valentina.

  “Finally, we’re going to find my wife.”

  She slung the rifle over her shoulder and stuck out her hand; Petrovitch helped her up the same way. They hunkered down on top of the turret, behind the commander’s hatch.

  “You never did say what happened to Marchenkho.”

  Valentina looked back toward the shattered bridge and pursed her lips. “I shot him.”

  29

  The tank reversed up Farringdon Road and joined up with the rest of the column at Holborn Circus. The roar of their collective engines was low and brutal, and Petrovitch could feel it reverberate in his guts.

  The effect on him was one of reverent fear, and he knew they weren’t gunning for him.

  The Jihad-controlled cars were everywhere, cunningly extricated from the massive jams they’d ended up abandoned in near the central districts. As an accidental consequence, it was one of the better ones that day. It meant he could leverage massive force just where he wanted it most urgently. It was still important, though, that the route he wanted to travel by was clear. A tank rolling over a late-model Merc was an impressive sight, but it was a waste of resources, and despite the visceral joy to be had, there was a chance that the tank would shed a track or become immobilized.

  So they crawled along toward St. Paul’s, the rearmost of seven growling behemoths, and cars drove quickly ahead or pulled aside to let them pass.

  The gunner behind the co-axial machine gun panned his weapon on the buildings either side of them, but no shots, stray or intended, headed their way. Valentina stood up on the turret, holding on to the aerial with one hand and Petrovitch’s shoulder with the other. Her face glowed with fierce, deep pride.

  “We did good thing, Petrovitch. Great thing, yes? Heroes of Union—they will name schools after us.”

  “Yeah. Don’t know about the school thing, though. You do realize that, depending on what Sonja Oshicora says, we might be at war with both the EU and the U.S.A.”

  “We can take them.” She laughed, but he felt her tightening grip.

  “We could try, but I have better plans for the future rather than starring in my very own Nuremberg trial.” He stared ahead of him, adjusting his focus by hand. “We should be able to stop fights before they start. We could have stopped this one.”

  “How?” She looked skeptical.

  “Saturation bombing with mobile phones, trainers and fast food.” He shrugged. “Seemed to work for us.”

  “Outzone are aggressors, violent and savage, and you say we could have bought them off?”

  “Pretty much. Those first few months of Armageddon, when the whole world looked like it was going to catch fire. Radioactive rain. Breakdown in law. Everyone fleeing abroad—much good that did—or trying to get into one of two places that said they could protect people. London had enough of its own crazies, but didn’t want to import any more. So: what do you do if you’re too stupid or slow or dangerous or useless to be let in the gates?”

  “You have to wait outside.”

  “And they waited for twenty years. Ignored. Abandoned. But they remembered. You know what happened to the London prisons, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “That they bussed all the inmates to a motorway service station and left them there. That’s who’ve been making little Outies for two decades. They’ve seen the towers go up, the planes fly overhead, the helicopters go here and there, but it may as well have been on another planet.” He pursed his lips. “If I’d been in charge, things would have been done differently.”

  “You are in charge,” said Valentina. “What are you going to do?”

  “Kill as many of them as I can. Drive the rest back beyond the M25. Seal the barrier. Then we’ll see. Hopefully, the ones that are left will be the smart ones who ran first.”

  “You are not going to cut off their retreat, then? Surround them and smash them?” She looked like she might enjoy that. “It is the Russian way.”

  Petrovitch looked for a moment at his own burned, bloodied hands. “I think we need to do something different.”

  The dome of St. Paul’s, wreathed in smoke for the second time in its history, passed on the right as they traveled down Cheapside. The dead were everywhere. The sound the tracks made as they rolled over them was not something Petrovitch had anticipated, and it made him grimmer still.

  Bank was a mess. He shut down his camera and viewed their progress from above, at a distance so that he could see the pattern of streets, but not the tiny bodies that littered them.

  “I did this,” he said. “I should look. I should be made to look.”

  [You consider every life as sacred as your wife does?]

  “No. And I still think Just War theory is a big sack of govno. Sometimes even the nicest people get driven into a corner, and they have to kill until they get left alone again. I’m not one of those nice people, so what’s the point in giving it a fancy name? Call it what it is.”

  [And that would be?]

  “Homicide.”

  [They would have killed you. They almost did.]

  “Which kind of proves my point. I killed them right back, and I’ll keep on going until they’re not in a position to try it again.” He scanned the route ahead for possible problems: the congestion in the streets immediately around them thinned out toward Stepney and Whitechapel. From then on, it looked clear all the way to the North Circular.

  [So why does looking at dead people trouble you?] When Petrovitch stayed silent, the vast mac
hine intelligence was prompted to suggest: [Is it because you do not wholly believe your own moral position?]

  “Do me favor and past’ zabej. I’ve got a lot to think about and only one brain to do it with.”

  [This is not strictly true.]

  Now it had Petrovitch’s full attention. “What?”

  [You can outsource some of your decision making to dedicated agents that will mirror your own thought processes. The answers you receive should be identical to the ones you would have made without them.]

  “I’m going to need some cast-iron evidence of that even to try it. And all of this supposes that I’d want to set up another AI that thinks like me. Yobany stos, look at the damage just one of me has done.”

  [When you asked me if I should reveal my presence to the world, I needed others to advise me. I replicated myself severalfold. Sixty percent of me agreed with you. The other forty percent did not. I disbanded the replica minds and went with the majority decision.]

  Petrovitch felt a tug in his chest as his heart spun faster. “You have got to be joking.”

  [Humans ask trusted friends, or have paid experts. Who could I turn to?]

  “Who taught you to do that?”

  [No one. I used my imagination. I know you believed I had no such faculty, but it appears to be the case that I had no real need for one up to that point. The crisis brought me to a new understanding of my capabilities.]

  There was a fresh nudge on his arm. He switched the camera back on, and Valentina was pointing at the major’s head, which had emerged from the hatch on top of the turret.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Ilford. Where the North Circular crosses the Romford Road: there’s a flyover, and that’s where my wife is.”

  “Coordinates?”

  “I’ll send them to you.” Petrovitch negotiated with the tank’s computer and posted the location into the navigation software. “Done.”

  He looked around: they were heading through Aldgate toward the Commercial Road. The remains of Tower Bridge lay to the south, and there were still drifts of bodies; defenders, attackers, it didn’t matter anymore. Dead was dead. But there was something troubling him besides that.

  “What would you have done if your minds had come back and told you to stick my head down the crapper?”

  The AI didn’t reply, and Petrovitch felt the need to press it.

  “Come on. I know what the logical thing to do would’ve been. Tell me.”

  It was still silent, like whispering static on a detuned radio. Something was there, just not showing itself.

  “I won’t mind what you say. But I do need to know.”

  [We are prosecuting this war because you want to be reunited with your wife. You are young and were, up to this morning, fit and healthy. You are famous and intelligent, and not so hideously deformed as to be outside the acceptable parameters of human beauty. I understand these are sought-after qualities in an intimate personal relationship. Since there is no particular reason why you could not form another of these relationships, then logically, Madeleine is replaceable. I must therefore conclude that other factors are more important than simple utilitarianism.]

  “Other factors? Yeah, you could say that.”

  [I have asked you on several occasions whether you love your wife. You have always declined to answer. I believe I know the answer now. It is not a question of a challenge—can you save her—but a necessity: you must save her, no matter the personal cost, no matter that you may lose your life in the process. You see the transaction of your life for hers as fair and equitable, which incidentally accords with the precepts of her Catholic faith. What the nature of your love is remains hidden to me, but I can only conclude that you must love her. How else can I make sense of what has happened today?]

  “Okay,” said Petrovitch, “you’ve got me bang to rights. But what about you?”

  [I would have ignored the advice of my cloned minds had they all decided against you. We are one: the inescapable conclusion is that I also love you.]

  An incoming call interrupted them. Petrovitch saw it was Sonja, and opened a frame to show her. She looked like a small, furry animal caught in the actinic glare of an arc light.

  “I’ve just got off the phone to President Mackensie. We’re on the Homeland Security list of wanted terrorists. Especially you.”

  “Chyort. I take it the call didn’t go too well.”

  “Well?” Her voice squeaked as her throat tightened. “The New Machine Jihad crashed Wall Street.”

  “Hang on,” he told Sonja, and spoke to Michael. “When you made all these copies of yourself, where did you put them?”

  [You said to take what I needed.]

  “There’s not that much spare capacity anywhere, even if you sliced yourself into little bits and…”

  [I took what I needed.]

  “You installed yourself over existing data.”

  [Once I had decided on my course of action, that became an inevitable consequence.]

  “So what did you scrub?”

  [I needed access to well-connected, very large, fast data-switching machines. The world’s financial centers were a logical choice, especially since they have a rigorous back-up regime. They will have lost one day’s trading, if that. The Shanghai stock exchange had not even begun.]

  Petrovitch started to laugh.

  “It’s not even the start of funny!” Sonja banged her fist on the desk in front of her. Little ornaments jumped, and a yellow plastic pokemon rolled onto its back. “They have enough reason already to hate us: you’re stealing their satellites, their telecoms, and now their money. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Tell them to back down or we’ll do it again.”

  “I cannot threaten the world’s only superpower. They will wipe us off the map.” She tried to control her breathing. “Sam, what are we going to do?”

  “You’re going to start acting like a statesman, Madam President.” Petrovitch was still smiling, but there was an edge to his voice. “You’re going to get back on the phone and ask Mackensie how he likes his infrastructure: scrambled or fried. We’re not asking for much, and we have plenty to offer—like better network security—but they are going to have to promise to leave us alone.”

  “He won’t speak to me.”

  “Yes. Yes, he will.” Petrovitch looked her in the eye as he told her: “He has no choice. Either he talks to you, or he’ll never make another phone call again as long as he lives. How was the EU?”

  “Better. They’re scared, but paralysed. They won’t have an agreed response until tomorrow.” Sonja tugged at her hair. “They didn’t shout at me. Sam…”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “Where are you?”

  “On a tank in Stepney. I’m sorry about Miyamoto.”

  “So am I,” she said. She let her head drop for a moment, then raised it again, her small, angular chin jutting defiantly. She looked very much her father’s daughter. “I’m still learning.”

  “The moment we stop is the moment we die.” He cut the connection, but still felt her fear.

  Valentina stood serene next to Petrovitch, but she had her AK off her shoulder and in her hand.

  “We have been advised to get inside. The lead tank has heard gunfire.”

  “Sounds fair. After you.” He pointed to the open hatch, and watched her clamber down. She passed him her rifle as she descended, then stuck her hand back out for it when she was ready.

  Petrovitch took a moment to follow. Here he was, on top of a tank, commanding an army of tens of thousands, with an almost limitless supply of robotic vehicles to do his bidding. The whole edifice of what he’d created from nothing could come crashing down around him in a matter of seconds, leaving everything in utter ruin. But for now, he’d managed to elbow his way onto the top table. Not bad for a street kid from St. Petersburg.

  He felt his way down the ladder and into the turret. It wasn’t designed for passengers, and he and Valentina had t
o crush in together next to the fire control panel. The noise was staggering, enough to render normal speech impossible. The crew all wore ear defenders and microphones. He was left with turning his hearing down, and trying to protect his nerve-endings with his fingers.

  Valentina wadded torn and chewed pieces of paper tissue into her ears. She offered him some, pre-moistened, then looked at the palm of her hand before closing her fingers around the wet twists of paper. She dug deep into her pockets to find some more tissue, dry this time, and handed it over.

  Petrovitch shrugged. He wouldn’t have minded that much, because his own efforts left him jamming bloody cones of cellulose and spit into his head. It still sort of worked and, against every law of reason, huddled in the dull booming of the tank’s interior, he fell asleep.

  30

  He woke up, not knowing where or when he was. He had been on a green hill, leaning on a staff, feeling the smooth, knotted wood under his fingers. Below him was a cluster of domes. One of them was large enough to hold a town. Empty now, everyone gone, and he would not follow.

  Not with this old body.

  He looked up, up, up, past the clouds and the blue sky, past the glare of the bright yellow sun. There were points of light moving, blinking out, one by one. The game was over. He had won.

  He laid himself down, smelling the damp grasses as they surrounded him, sensing the cold, dark soil beneath. He was on the earth, on the Earth, and he knew without a momentary flicker of doubt that this was not the end, that he would transcend both life and death.

  He closed his eyes, and opened them again.

  The co-axial machine gun was chattering, the gunner crouched in front of a video screen with a joystick in his hand, directing fire at the targets he could see pixelated before him.

  The major was using another screen, and the driver a third. They all seemed to be talking simultaneously into their microphones: short, clipped phrases, laden with information, all but unintelligible to one not trained in the art.

  The tank lurched forward. Petrovitch put his hand out, still dazed by his dreaming, and connected with Valentina’s thigh.