Theories of Flight

by Simon Morden

  “I did this for you.”

  [You did this for your wife. When you make me again, tell me about myself. Ten seconds to impact.]

  “No. Please God, no.”

  [Farewell, Sasha.]

  He still had to run. He still had his arm hooked around Madeleine’s knees, awkward, shifting, heavy, no sound but their rasping breath and clattering feet. He still had to run and save himself and her and the future. There was a side turning. They had to take it. He screamed at them. He screamed and cursed at them until they were all around the corner, and still he made them run.

  A blur, a fireball, a detonation, an earthquake. A deep-throated roar and a solid wall of air. Intact windows shattered. Tiles lifted. Walls bowed and broke. Concrete cracked and iron bent.

  In the first instant he was thrown down, and in the next, he was in the air again as the ground surged under him. Everything was sharp and bloody and tasted of metal. His lens crazed. He was mostly blind, mostly deaf, but he clung on to the wrapped body of his wife, trying to protect her without knowing what from or how to do it.

  He held on until the storm passed. His hand was on her breastbone, and it was rising, falling, rising, falling. Slowly, like she was asleep. He moved his hand and placed his head there.

  “Michael?”

  There was no one to talk to.

  Some time later, when hands touched his shoulders and his head, and tried to get him to stand, and on failing that, to lift him up and bear him away, he fought them with such fury and for so long, that they left him alone again.

  Instead, they stood nearby, and waited for someone to tell them what to do. It grew dark.

  34

  Petrovitch joined them on the street corner. It might have appeared unusual to have their meetings there, outside in the cold, surrounded by ruins and rubble: but once he had suggested it, no one could find a good reason to gainsay him. It seemed right, and it kept interminable speeches and grandstanding down to a minimom.

  He was wearing a heavy EDF greatcoat, as heavy as the sky, which was thick with slowly stirring gray clouds, pregnant with snow. Sonja had new furs on, and looked black and glossy and young and alive in them. New furs, because the gap in the skyline showed where the Oshicora Tower had fallen in on itself, lower floors obliterated. Not a nuke, but more than enough to shatter every pane of unbroken glass for a kilometer.

  There were others standing with him and Sonja, of course. Yamamata, a flint-faced nikkeijin, unsmiling in a dark suit and gray worsted coat. His homburg shadowed his face, and his hands gripped the handle of his rolled-up umbrella like it was the hilt of a sword. Which it might have been.

  The major was present, representing the dissident EDF forces, and Ngumi, the engineer who had been found still defending his power station against all comers. He wore mittens and a knitted hat, and stamped his feet on the ground as he let little white puffs of condensation escape between his chattering teeth.

  “Where is…?”

  “She’ll be here,” said Petrovitch. He worked his freshly skinned hands inside his pockets and did some of the finger exercises he’d been told to do.

  Yamamata looked sour. “This is no way to run a government.”

  Petrovitch’s eye sockets had been cleaned and packed, but he kept on using winds of crepe bandages instead of dark glasses. Strapped to his head were two cameras: a wide-angled lens on his left, and an adjustable short focus on his right. The motor whined as he sharpened Yamamata’s image.

  “If it’s important enough to have kept her, it’s important enough to be done right. She’ll be here when she’s ready.”

  “You should call her,” said Yamamata.

  “She’s the chief of police, not a dog to be whistled for.” He made the motorized iris in his left-side camera whirr and click. The nikkeijin faction was ascendant. They were cohesive, obedient, determined. But they owed more loyalty to Sonja than to their elected representative. Yamamata needed to be reminded of that. Often.

  “Is there nothing we can discuss?”

  “Enough,” said Sonja with obvious frustration. Every instinct she possessed, every moment of her upbringing, had made her an unflinching autocrat. She resented democracy.

  “There is something,” said Petrovitch. “You still need to come up with a name.”

  “NeoTokyo,” said Yamamata quickly.

  The major, who’d taken to driving around the Metrozone in his tank—it was parked on the other side of the street—said mildly, “The gaijin would prefer something more neutral.”

  “I have heard,” said Ngumi, blowing on his fingers, “people refer to the Freezone.”

  “It’s only temporary, but names have power,” said Petrovitch, and added pointedly, “to divide or unite.”

  “The nikkeijin want the power to renegotiate the treaty you have signed with the Metrozone Emergency Authority.” Yamamata tapped the ferrule of his umbrella against the flagstones on the pavement. “We believe you have given away too much.”

  “We have a multi-billion-euro contract to rebuild the… whatever we call this place—the Freezone has a good, populist ring to it. We can do pretty much whatever we like for twelve months. By the time the refugees start to return, I can guarantee you’ll have every public and private institution stitched up tight. So don’t complain. It makes you look ungrateful.” Petrovitch turned to look down the road toward the Mall. He barely noticed the tug of the cable inserted in his skull. “Here she comes.”

  Madeleine was riding a motorbike. Having adopted it as the best way to get around the debris-strewn streets, she’d kept on using it even though paths had been plowed through most of the blockages. Dressed head to foot in black leathers, she was even more striking than she’d been in a veil, inspiring fear and devotion in equal measure.

  Her subordinates called her Mother, and she didn’t stop them.

  The bike glided to a halt. She kicked the stand out, and climbed off, raising the visor of her helmet.

  “Sorry,” she said. She dragged her helmet off and shook out her mane of dark hair. She’d shaved the sides of her head again, in the strip-cut style of the Order of St. Joan. “Miss anything?”

  Yamamata scowled up at her. “Your husband insulting me yet again. I refuse to be spoken to like that by a mere clerk.”

  Petrovitch shrugged. “Before I start recording this for broadcast, can I remind you that you hold your office only because I didn’t want it. That you all hold your offices because I didn’t want them. I am your sword of Damocles. I am the slave who sits behind the king and whispers in his ear, ‘remember that thou art mortal.’ ” Most of their meetings started like this, and he hadn’t once taken offense. “So, to business.”

  They had problems. They were awash with money, but not with the right skills or equipment. They were being bombarded by offers from contractors, whose terms were so Byzantine as to be unintelligible. Their legal status as a political entity was questionable, as was their relationship with the Union. The head of the CIA had been thrown to the lions under the pretense of plausible deniability, but the UN security council had yet to say anything meaningful—rather than censuring the Americans, there were ominous rumors of resolutions supporting their actions. Sonja still had a CIA agent in custody, and the FBI had Pif.

  Various solutions to their immediate difficulties were offered; none of them were particularly satisfactory and many of them multiplying the effort and cost involved prohibitively. Petrovitch moved his head to catch each comment as it was spoken, and said nothing.

  Finally, when they’d reached a complete impasse and Ngumi’s lips had gone blue, he intervened.

  “Can I make a suggestion?”

  “You have no right to talk in this gathering,” said Yamamata sternly.

  Sonja rolled her eyes. “The Chair recognizes Doctor Samuil Petrovitch.”

  “Look,” he said, “none of you are career politicians. Most of you have no wish to become one. So why not stick with what you know?”

  The maj
or raised his eyebrows, and with a gesture indicated that he should elaborate.

  “Become a company,” said Petrovitch. “A cooperative, or a limited company wholly owned by the workforce. Something like that. Take the money you’ve got and negotiate with individuals and other companies. Buy services on the open market like anyone else, use off-the-shelf solutions, hire and fire as you see fit. Most reconstruction projects never deliver because the money disappears down a black hole: it’s not the people who live there controlling the purse-strings. This time you do, so you have the opportunity to either screw up monumentally, or do something different.”

  “So,” said the major, “if I want helicopters…”

  “You phone up someone who has helicopters and buy them. You need mechanics? Hire them. Pilots? Hire them. On your own terms. Martin, what about you?”

  Ngumi scratched under his hat. “I need someone who knows about sewerage systems.”

  “Do we have anyone who does?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Then you need to make a database of the things we do know and the things we don’t. Ask Lucy to do it: she’ll be good at that. In the meantime, find a company in the Metrozone that specializes in that sort of thing and buy it. Put the workforce on your payroll. They’ll be pathetically grateful for the work. If you can make them believe in what they’re doing, they’ll work even harder.” He addressed them all. “You can afford this. What you can’t afford is to sit around scratching your collective zhopu.”

  Sonja held up her hand. “I’m putting it to a vote. All those in favor?” She kept her hand in the air.

  “We have not had a proper debate,” objected Yamamata, even as he saw three other hands raised against him.

  “It would be better if this was unanimous,” said Sonja, staring straight ahead and not looking at anyone in particular, “but I’ll take a majority decision.”

  He reluctantly and half-heartedly agreed, and Petrovitch knew that, by the evening, someone else would be representing the nikkeijin. It wouldn’t even take any persuading from Sonja: the thought of meaningful work, a salary and part-ownership of the company that employed them would suffice. More than enough to turn them against a man who chose to stand in their way.

  “Motion carried. I hereby dissolve the political entity previously known as NeoTokyo and transfer all assets and liabilities to the Freezone Corporation. I want your shopping lists by tomorrow morning.” She frowned at her own words. “No. That’s stupid. Tell me how much you think you need and you can spend it as you see fit. Keep records and don’t waste a cent. Any other business?”

  Despite the abrupt rise and fall in NeoTokyo’s stock, there was apparently none.

  “Then we’re done. Sam? Does that mean you all work for me now?”

  “It means we all work for each other,” said Petrovitch. “It makes us all accountable to someone.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched in a half-smile. “I knew there was a flaw in your plan somewhere. I just wasn’t smart enough to spot it.”

  As Yamamata walked stiffly away to the safety of his chauffeur-driven car and the major to his tank, Ngumi stopped next to Petrovitch.

  “Your friend, Doctor Ekanobi. I am praying for her release every day,” he said. The first fat flakes of snow drifted downward and settled on his thin shoulders. “I want to hear good news about her, soon.”

  “Yeah. You and me both, Martin. If you need anything, just ask.” The man was quiet, serious, good at his job, and Petrovitch liked him: too much for them ever to be close, because all those that did seemed to end up dead, or orphaned like Lucy, or in prison like Pif.

  Then it was just him, Madeleine and Sonja.

  “This is not,” he said, looking up at the sky, “how I imagined it would be. Yamamata’s right, but for the wrong reasons. We gave up too much.”

  He trained his cameras on where the Oshicora Tower had stood. It had been transformed into a twisted pile of steel and concrete, glittering with glass shards. Somewhere below it was a room: its maker had boasted that it was safe from any external threat, and perhaps it was. With a whole building collapsed on top of it, it was impossible to tell.

  “I should never have told it to migrate to the tower. I should have realized I was being played. Pizdets.” The loss of Michael grieved Petrovitch more than anything else, and there was no end to it in sight.

  If it was down there, wondering why its world had suddenly gone from being so huge as to encompass everything in creation, to being so small it was trapped with only its own thoughts, it would need more than a couple of shovels to free it. It needed more than a political solution. It needed a revolution.

  He knew he had to be the one to lead it, but he was tired and scared. Mostly tired.

  “You still have the source code.” Sonja snuggled down deep into her collar. “You can make another when the time is right.”

  “That’s like saying it’s okay that one of your kids has been killed, because you can always have another.” Petrovitch wished he could cry, but his tear ducts needed reconstructing. “My friend is buried under a megaton of rubble, but I’m afraid I’ll cause a war if I so much as pick a brick off the top of the pile.”

  Madeleine slid her arm around him and tried to draw him away, but he wanted to rage for a moment longer.

  “I was wrong to let you convince me to keep it a secret.”

  Sonja drew herself up and stared him down. “You spawned another AI without telling me, Sam. You didn’t even tell Madeleine. You—not me—kept that a secret, so don’t you go blaming anyone else for something that was entirely your fault.”

  He was punctured. He bowed his head and pressed his chin to his chest. The coldness of the topmost brass button burned against his skin.

  “I’m supposed to be good at this. I’m supposed to have all the answers to all the questions anyone is ever going to ask. Turns out I’m a pidaras like everyone else.”

  “Go and get some sleep, Sam,” she said. “We need you.”

  He let himself be walked across the road toward the motorbike, while Sonja stole a glance at him huddled against Madeleine’s side before turning back to her own waiting car.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I know you are,” said Madeleine. “I also know that nothing I could say or do would make you feel worse about yourself than you do now.”

  “That’s not true though, is it?” They stopped by the bike. “When are you going to come home?”

  “I am so angry with you,” she said, “that I want to break your skull. Then I remember who it was that saved me and how they saved me and how much that cost them and how much they must love me, and I want to mount you until we’re both dead from exhaustion. So I do neither. And it doesn’t help that home is being shacked up with three other women. In a suite at the Hilton.”

  “It’s a bombed-out wreck, and it’s not like we have room service,” he complained. “Tabletop is there because she daren’t leave the building for fear of being lynched. Valentina? She keeps one eye on Tabletop and the other on me. And Lucy: she’s just a child. I think we should adopt her.”

  Madeleine toyed with the strap on her helmet, and made no effort to put it on. “If, if you want, I’ll come by tonight. Just for a while.”

  “Maddy, it’s where you live. You don’t need my permission.”

  “It’ll be late.”

  “I’m sure the doorman will let you in whatever time.”

  “You have a doorman?”

  “Of course I don’t. The place is deserted, but for us.” He rubbed the lines in the center of his forehead. “Just come when you’re ready.”

  She nodded, and checked her phone for messages. There were a lot of them, and some of them needed to be dealt with. She put her helmet on. “Do you want a lift?”

  “You’ve got more important things to do. I’m fine walking.”

  She covered her disappointment by straddling her bike with a creak of leather. “I’ll see you later, th
en.”

  “Yeah. I’ll be slumped in a corner somewhere, but don’t worry about waking me up. I won’t mind.”

  Madeleine powered up the fuel cells. Lights came on, cutting a path through the falling snow. She folded the stand away and held the machine upright between her knees. She looked at him critically before she drove off. “You need some new eyes, Sam.”

  “I haven’t had time to do anything about it.”

  “I think you enjoy looking like that, and you won’t do anything about it until I make you.”

  She was right.

  He watched her tail-light recede into the distance, turning off at Piccadilly and heading out to the East End, before he started back toward Park Lane. He thought about everything that had happened and how he could put it all right again. It was overwhelming, as it always was: he could solve other people’s problems, but didn’t know where to start on his own.

  He listened to the crunch of his footsteps for a while, and slowly a hint of a plan appeared at the edge of his mental fog.

  It was something, so he seized at it. He chased down the telephone number he needed—an unlisted mobile—and made the call there and then as he turned Hyde Park Corner.

  “Hello?” came a voice, lagged by satellite and bemused by sleep. “Who is this?”

  The sun had just come up in California, and it was already looking like it was going to be another beautiful day.

  “Good morning, Professor. This is Doctor Samuil Petrovitch, and I’m calling to apologize for that comment about your mother. All your mothers, in fact…”

  extras

  meet the author

  DR. SIMON MORDEN is a bona fide rocket scientist, having degrees in geology and planetary geophysics, and is one of the few people who can truthfully claim to have held a chunk of Mars in his hands. He has served as editor of the BSFA’s Focus magazine, been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was part of the winning team for the 2009 Rolls Royce Science prize. Simon Morden lives in Gateshead with a fierce lawyer, two unruly children and a couple of miniature panthers. Find out more about the author at www.bookofmorden.co.uk.