by Simon Morden
Petrovitch lowered the phone and yelled at the top of his voice: “Past’ zabej! I’m trying to talk to someone here.” When the sound level had dropped below cacophony, he tried again. “Where is she?”
“St. Bart’s. She’s—”
“She’s what?” he interrupted. He had no control over the speed of his heart. It had no beats to miss, but it felt like it had momentarily stalled. “Do I actually have time to get there?”
“Walking wounded. Three rounds to the chest, but the armor held up. But that’s…”
“Yebani v’rot,” said Petrovitch, exasperated, “shut up and listen. Who are you?”
“Casualty clearing orderly.”
“Is she going to die?”
“No.”
“Has she asked for me?”
“Yes.”
“Then why the chyort didn’t you say any of that in the first place? I’m on my way.” He cut the call and plunged back into the mass of people, heading purposefully for the lift.
McNeil caught his arm. “Who was it? Press?”
“The militia. I have to go.” He tried to advance, but she held him back with surprising strength.
She leaned in close. “You have to talk to the press. Get the news out about what’s happened here today,” she said.
“They’re going to find out soon enough, with or without my help.” He pried her fingers away. “Why don’t you and Hugo talk to the cameras. You’ll do just fine.”
Petrovitch pushed through to the stairs to find she was still on his heels.
“We can’t do that!” she complained. “We don’t even know what you did!”
“The field attenuates to the seventh power. Upstairs, it had nothing to push against: down here, it does. Can you handle it now, because I really need to go?”
“Doctor, the head of department is here,” she called after him. “He wants to congratulate you.”
Petrovitch was already starting to climb. “You know what? Do pizdy.”
She tried one last time. “But Doctor Petrovitch: science!”
He stopped and brought his knuckle up to his mouth. He bit hard into it to stiffen his resolve.
“This… this is going to be with us forever,” he said. “Now we’ve discovered how to do it, everybody will be copying us. Good luck to them. My life is more than this now. Someone else needs me, and that won’t wait. Give my apologies to the head. Tell him… I don’t know—tell him my wife’s been shot. He’ll understand.”
He left her, her mouth forming a perfect O, and ran up one flight of stairs to the ground floor. He was passed on the way by more people, some of whom turned their heads as they recognized him, and some, like the ninja reporter with a broadcast camera and an armful of studio lights, so intent on getting to the site of the miracle that they failed to spot the prophet.
He skipped past the ground floor and kept on going: he wasn’t dressed for outside, and he’d need money, travelcard and identification if he was going to get across the central Metrozone and not get stranded, arrested or worse en route. It had never been the easiest of journeys: now it took wits as well as patience.
Back on the fourth floor, he took everything he needed out of his top drawer and threw on the scorched leather coat that had become his prized possession. In his pocket were clip-on lenses in a slim case. He slid them over the bridge of his own glasses, and the world became info-rich.
He knew the temperature, the wind speed, the likelihood of rain. He knew that the tube was still completely out, shallow tunnels crushed, deep tunnels flooded, but that there was a limited bus service along the Embankment as far as London Bridge. He knew that there was Outie activity around Hampstead Heath—firefights all along the A5/M1 corridor as well—but that was too far out to affect him. A bomb in Finsbury Park earlier, with twenty dead and a legion of whackos ready to claim it for their own.
As wedding presents went, the clip-ons were pretty cool. Even cooler when he’d hacked the controller and got it to display lots of things the manufacturers hadn’t meant it to.
Back down four floors to the foyer: a mere ten minutes after he’d discovered artificial gravity. There was still a steady drift of people heading for the basement, enough that it had started to become congested and the paycops didn’t quite know what to do with everyone.
Petrovitch was ignored, and in turn, he ignored them. He headed for the street, passing through the foyer doors and experiencing one of the flashbulb flashbacks he sometimes had. The present blinked into the past, and he was striding out into the night, Madeleine behind him. A packet of hand-written equations burned in his pocket.
The scene vanished as abruptly as it had arrived. He was back with weak daylight, the sound of people, the swoosh of automatic doors.
It had been quiet and cold when he’d trekked in from Clapham A and through the govno-smeared realms of Battersea—even the Outies had to sleep sometime. Now it was even colder, and there was an electric tension in the air, not helped by the battle tank parked on the corner of Exhibition Road, gun muzzle trained across Hyde Park. There’d always been direction to Metrozone pedestrians—a purpose for being on the streets, A to B, going to work, to school, to the shops—now there wasn’t. There were gaps between people, and they spilled aimlessly along the pavements.
The city was broken, and he hated the thought that something he’d spilled good, honest blood over was losing its way. He hated it, and still he stayed.
He headed south toward Chelsea, where he had to pass through an impromptu checkpoint thrown hastily across the road. Even though it was nothing more than a few waist-high barriers, a white van with MEA stencilled on the side and two paycops with Authority armbands, he took them seriously because of their guns. He affected a calm, cool exterior as he approached the screen. The cops were edgy, looking for those who might dodge through the unscreened, northbound stream in an attempt to avoid the scanner. They were edgy in a way that suggested they might shoot without warning.
It was his turn. He walked smartly through the arch and kept going. No contraband, no weapons: he was clean. There was nothing for the computer to latch on to, and no human operator to spot anything out of the ordinary.
Petrovitch’s hand went to the back of his neck, where his hair had grown uncharacteristically long. His fingers touched surgical metal.
The buildings around him bore scars, too. The visible tidemark on their street-side faces rose higher the closer he got to the river, and such was the pressure of population, some people found themselves forced to live in the stinking lower floors, amidst walls and floors and ceilings still damp and contaminated with gods-knew-what.
He came to the Thames, brown and sluggish, shining wetly. A barge, once embedded in a riverfront property, lay broken and sad on the mudslick that had been a line of trees. Across the Albert Bridge, he could almost see home.
The Embankment road had been scraped with a bulldozer, washed down by pumps. The white line was visible again down its center, and off to one side beside the Regency town houses swathed in scaffolding was the temporary bus stop. The virtual arrow above it was almost unnecessary, but finding he only had a five-minute wait was welcome news.
There was a queue. There always was. He took the opportunity to view the chasm carved through the London skyline, right through the heart of Brompton and out onto the Chelsea embankment. Across the river, the clear-cutting of buildings continued along the shoreline before petering out.
He was one of the few who knew it was the route of the Shinjuku line, mark two, terminating at the Oshicora Tower. Almost everyone else saw it as a random wound, born of chaos like everything else that night.
The bus, windows glazed with grime and protected by close-meshed grilles, strained along toward him. It sagged at the curbside and folded its tired doors aside. Inside, it was literally standing room only. The vehicle had no seats apart from the driver’s: they’d been stripped out and thrown away. Passengers grabbed at a pole or a hang-strap, or each other. Cattle-cl
ass for all: egalitarian transport for the twenty-first century.
Petrovitch slid his pass across the sensor and elbowed his way toward the back, where the crush would be less and the air a little clearer.
The journey along the north bank of the Thames was dreary and dull. The filth on the windows was sufficiently thick to render the view outside nothing more than variations in dark and light. With his info shades on, he was provided with a virtual map of his journey. Most of his fellow passengers had to rely on the driver’s announcements over the tannoy to give them clues as to where they were.
But no matter their status, they were all stuck together on the same bus, rocking this way and that, jerked by the inconstant acceleration and braking, clinging on to handles welded to the roof.
Chelsea Bridge, Claverton Street, Vauxhall Bridge, Lambeth Bridge—where the putative Keiyo line was driven through, narrowly missing Westminster Abbey—and Westminster Bridge. At each stop, people got on or off in an exchange that was interminably slow. No one would move out of the way from simple courtesy, choosing instead to shuffle sullenly aside. Fights were common, but there were no paycops on the buses. MEA, always on the verge of bankruptcy, couldn’t afford them.
He used his pocket controller to catch a news wire. The Metrozone’s litany of disasters was usually relegated to the third or fourth item on any given day, unless someone pulled off a spectacular. Top of the cycle was rioting in Paris—l’anglais causing problems as Metrozone refugees filled up French parks. Second was a late-season hurricane bearing down on Florida. Third, was him, managing to push the Outies’ latest incursion into fourth.
Antigravity demonstrated in London Metrozone lab.
That it wasn’t actually antigravity didn’t bother Petrovitch. It behaved like it—or like the popular perception of it—so why get cross? Instead, he nodded with satisfaction. At least they were reporting a science story. Stanford would be reading the wire at the same time as he was. MIT and CalTech, too, Pasadena and Houston; all those scientists, all that money, beaten by a once-great but now impoverished institution hemorrhaging talent like it had contracted academic Ebola.
After Charing Cross was Waterloo Bridge, where boats had lost their moorings in the Long Night and plowed into the spans, rendering it useless for motorized traffic. On to Temple, and as that stop was announced, Petrovitch started to move forward, easing himself through the mass of gray passengers until he could move no more.
The bus shuddered to a halt. The doors opened. The first few people waiting tried to get on before those already on could get off. There was some pushing and shoving. Someone outside fell back after gaining a foothold in the entrance, and the disturbance rippled out from there, inside and out.
It died away after a few moments, as most of those involved were just too tired to get riled. A stamp of the foot, a jab of the elbow, it was all they could manage.
Petrovitch squeezed out and escaped the crowd, walking to the back of the bus and behind it to get his bearings. Not far now. He turned his head, watching the street names pop up, and the information that there was a press conference being called at Imperial.
“Live from London” would have to happen without him. He shrugged at no one in particular. The university didn’t need some sweary Russian kid causing an international incident, and Petrovitch didn’t need his face beamed across the planet—a win for everyone concerned.
He headed up Farringdon Street, to where the flood waters had pooled under Holborn Viaduct and it still smelled of black mud, and cut through to Smithfield. His glasses told him the entrance to the hospital was there on his right.
It was, too: guarded by cops and MEA militia, a concertina of razor wire and a sandbagged machine-gun emplacement. Concrete blocks had been scattered like teeth to deter truck bombers.
He stared critically at the scene. He was now living in a city where a hospital was seen as a likely target. He made a face, feeling something close to physical pain. Once upon a time, he’d said that the center could not hold. He’d been right, as usual.
Past the fortified entrance, behind the façade of boarded-up windows and the gray stonework, was his wife.
So many things about him had changed, and she was the chief cause of most of them.
3
They finally let him in, and a harassed woman on the reception desk told him where to find Madeleine. There was a wide-screen TV bolted to the wall of the foyer, and it happened to be showing a small black sphere—the silver wire tracks didn’t show up well—floating without visible means of support. There was a commotion going on in the background, and a voice cut through the noise: “Past’ zabej!”
It appeared that the kid with the camera phone had been syndicated.
Petrovitch looked up at the ward names and started down the corridor. His boots squeaked loudly on the lino floor, contrasting with the soft-footed urgency of the hospital staff, all passing him at a trot.
A MEA militiaman, body armor thrown over one shoulder, rifle over the other, limped toward him. They were about to pass each other: Petrovitch moved to the left and readied a respectful nod, but the man stepped the same way. Three more switches from one side of the corridor to the other weren’t an accident.
A palm jutted out and shoved Petrovitch backward. The man with spiky blond hair snarled from deep inside his throat.
Petrovitch didn’t have time for this. “Mudak,” he said and tried to go around the man. For his troubles, he got pushed again, hard, against the corridor wall. His spine jarred against a door frame, and the hand on his chest attempted to pin him there.
“What’s your problem?” Petrovitch jammed his glasses up his nose and eyeballed the soldier. The tab over the man’s pocket read Andersson with two esses, and he had corporal’s stripes on his arm.
“You are,” said Andersson, “fucking civilians. We’re bleeding…”
“I’ve given already.”
“… bleeding every day, to keep you safe from the Outies.” He leaned in and shouted full in Petrovitch’s face, spittle flying. “You’re not worth it. None of you. Especially a coward who expects his wife to go out and fight while he sits on his arse.”
Andersson’s armor slipped forward off his shoulder. In the momentary distraction, Petrovitch brought his knee up hard, stepped sideways and reached for the corporal’s belt. He snagged a loop and pulled hard, slamming the crown of Andersson’s bowed head against the door.
“Let’s get one thing absolutely straight.” Petrovitch wasn’t even breathing hard, while Andersson was lying on the floor, clutching himself and whimpering. “I will not be making a complaint about this, today or ever. Everyone’s allowed to make a stupid mistake now and then, and this is your turn. But if you so much as lay a finger on me again, I will break it off and ram it so far up your zhopu, you’ll need to swallow a pair of scissors to keep the nail trimmed. Got that?”
The man on the ground swallowed against the pain. “You don’t deserve her.”
“I make a point of telling her that every morning, but she seems happy enough to keep me around.” Petrovitch snorted. “If I offer to help you up, would you take it?”
“Go to hell.”
“Lie there and count your yajtza, then.” He batted at his coat and walked away. He had an audience of two green-overalled nurses and a technician. He inclined his head as he passed them. “Enjoy the show?”
The technician did a double-take. “Hey. Aren’t you that…?”
“That what?”
“On the news. Just now. The flying thing.”
“Yeah. Look,” he said, “can one of you point me to the Minor Injuries Unit?”
“Turn right at the end of this corridor,” said the tech. “But you’re, like…”
“Like really smart? I know.” He started to walk away.
“Famous. I was going to say famous.”
“Oh, I hope not.” He waved his hand in dismissal and finally found the sign telling him which way to go.
There wer
e double doors with glass inserts, which he peered through. He could see her, sitting in the waiting room, her hands in her lap, fingers flicking through her rosary beads. Her eyes were closed, her lips barely moving. Piled next to her was her armor, folded neatly with her helmet on top. There was a gelatinous green pool of leaking impact gel collecting on the floor beneath.
Her hair had started to grow on the previously shaved front and sides of her head. She kept threatening to cut the plait off that extended from her nape to her waist, but he’d once offered the opinion that he quite liked it and, so far, it had been spared.
He pushed against one of the doors and slipped in, sitting down next to her in an identical plastic chair. Her battlesmock was open. When he leaned forward, he could see the purple bruising above the scoop of her vest top.
“Hey, Sam,” she said without opening her eyes.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
“Greenstick fracture of the seventh rib, left side. Could have been worse.” The rosary beads kept clicking.
Petrovitch nodded. “There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours.”
“Don’t make me laugh, Sam. It hurts.”
“But you do have per—”
“Sam.” She opened one eye, then the other. She gave him a sad smile and gathered up her beads. “Can we go home?”
“Yeah. Maddy, what else?”
“What else what?”
He put his elbows on his knees. “You’ve been shot before. You’ve never called for me.”
She tried to take a deep breath, and winced halfway through. Her hands trembled, and Petrovitch put his own hand over hers.
“It can wait,” he said. “When you’re ready.”
“It…” she said, and she was crying, and hating herself for doing so, and crying all the more because of that. “Oh.”
Petrovitch just about managed to reach around her broad shoulders. She slumped against him, her cheek resting on his head. He felt her shudder and gasp for a while, then fall still.