by Simon Morden
“This is just bullshit. You’re full of it, full of crap, kid. This is something you and the princess cooked up. Her old man’s alive and kicking, and shaking in his sandals because I’ve got his precious daughter.”
Petrovitch reached into his own coat pocket for a little metal hoop from which dangled a pair of thin keys. “I disagree,” he said. “What are you going to do? The smart thing or the stupid thing? Let her go, or wait for the Jihad to make you let her go?”
Sorenson looked at Petrovitch’s gun, then at Petrovitch himself. “Here’s the deal: I’ll not toss your sorry ass off the top of this housing project, and you’ll make yourself scarce. Without the princess.” He started to stride forward, confident of overpowering his opponent.
Then the American staggered back, his big hands flapping in front of his face, trying to bat away the bullet that had already banged into the back of his skull. A black river of blood flowed down his face from his forehead, almost obscuring his last look of surprise.
He fell, twisted, eyes open. His heavily covered frame made the roof shake as it landed.
“What the huy do you know anyway?” Petrovitch swapped the gun for the rat and flipped it open.
The screen was covered with two words repeated endlessly: coming now. They were still scrolling, and it was clear that it was almost too late. He used the touch screen to scrawl the hasty message, “Petrovitch says stop.”
Gunfire, up to that point far away, became suddenly close.
“Pizdets,” he said and snapped the rat shut.
28
Petrovitch decided that if he did everything at a run, fewer people were going to question what he was doing. The flaw in his plan was that he’d never felt less like running.
He could barely grip the handle to the top door; his arm was a seething mass of pins and needles, and the only way he could tell he’d actually got hold of the thing was that his fingers wouldn’t close any further.
Nevertheless, he pulled and trip-trapped down the stairs as fast as he could. He slipped on the bottom step and collided with the lower door, hurting his shoulder.
“Halyavshchik!” Now wasn’t the time to get careless. He pocketed the Beretta and used his good right hand to enter the war room.
Everyone had rushed to the windows to see what was happening below, and no one noticed him as he weaved through the tables and darted for the cafeteria door.
Sonja noticed him, though. “Sam? What’s going on?”
He fished out the handcuff keys and threw them across the floor to her. “The New Machine Jihad is going on, and we have to leave.”
She scooped up the keys and applied them to the cuffs. “What about Sorenson?”
“Something we don’t need to worry about anymore. Which is, on balance, a good thing since we’ve got more trouble than we can cope with.” He limped to the window and pressed his face to the glass.
The road below looked like the rush-hour at Waterloo Bridge: cars, nose to tail, not a scrap of tarmac between them, grinding against each other like boulders.
“Huy na ny,” he breathed, misting the window. Sonja joined him, standing uncomfortably close as she frowned at the vehicles, which seemed to be pouring into the plaza at the foot of the tower from every direction. As they did so, they set up a current, a whirlpool of automation with them in the gyre.
“Is that the best they can do?” said Sonja. “How’s that going to help?”
“None of those cars has a driver. Makes them very hard to kill.” He stopped to catch his breath. “They’ve got this building surrounded, which leaves me wondering what else they have up their sleeve.”
“Because of the wheels.”
“Yeah. It’s the usual can’t-climb-stairs problem.” He slumped down, back to the wall and screwed his eyes up tight.
“Sam?”
“I’m having a heart attack. Possibly the last one I’ll ever have.” He put his fist against his chest, and breathed in against the pain.
“But we have to get out of here!”
“I know. I’m doing my best.” Petrovitch heard another noise against the rumble of the procession, a deep bass diesel sound. He dragged himself back upright using the window ledge as a crutch and peered out.
It was a riot wagon; swathed in electrified mesh and brandishing its weapons: tear-gas launchers, wide-barreled watercannon, plastic bullet guns. It rolled in on its six fat tires and started through the sea of cars. It rode up onto the bonnet of one, whose windscreen popped and shattered. The roof buckled as the wagon kept on moving, bursting all the other panes.
Then it was surfing across to the entrance, granulated glass spraying everywhere, dipping and sliding on the uneven, unstable surface below but entirely supported by the vehicles beneath.
Sparks were crackling over its front armor. The militia were fighting back.
“They’d do better saving their ammunition,” said Petrovitch. “Something tells me that it’s going to be the least of their worries.”
Sonja put a hand under his shoulder and tried to pull him away from the window. “If it’s under Jihad command, we have to get to it.”
“Don’t trust them.”
“You want to stay here?” she asked.
“Do you want to go out there?” he countered. “You’ll be at the mercy of a bunch of crotch-scratching code jockeys whose hallmark is ‘oops.’ They damn near killed me playing with their oversized train set. I’d much rather be the author of my own salvation than rely on them.”
He steeled himself to get as far as the door, and only had to stop once, when he thought he was going to black out. His vision grayed and his ears roared, but the moment passed.
The Paradise residents were still standing at the window, but had now started arguing with each other as to what to do. Petrovitch found a chair and slumped into it, and, despite Sonja’s best efforts, he refused to move.
“Hey,” he said, then when that made no impression, he fetched out Sorenson’s Magnum and banged the butt hard on the table. “Hey!”
A dozen people turned to face him. He slid the gun across the tabletop and let them draw their own conclusions.
“Does that mean we have to do what you say now?” A rodent-faced woman stepped forward and leaned against the back of a chair.
“Yeah, that’s right. All of your base belongs to us.” Petrovitch snorted in disgust. It hurt, but it showed his contempt. “Get a clue and sit down, the lot of you.”
“Sam, we don’t have time for this,” said Sonja.
“There’s always time for this. Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.” He watched them as they moved closer, perching on the edges of desks and plastic chairs. Their unspoken deference to him made him squirm.
When he thought they were ready, he flipped his glasses off and rubbed at his eyes.
“You know, I don’t give a shit about your culture or your traditions, because they suck. I don’t care that I killed your new leader who killed your previous leader, since that way of kingmaking died back in the seventeen hundreds, and wake up!” He slammed his hand down hard, and the resulting noise even made himself jump. “It’s the twenty-first century out there, people. The Metrozone functions quite happily without you taking part. All you’ve done is made yourself a ghetto—a dysfunctional, kleptocratic ghetto—that your own children fight to get out of. This is not freedom. This is slavery, and you’ve done it to yourselves.
“I don’t expect anything I say will change anything, but huy! It might make one of you think. The thing is, the fact that you’ve collectively screwed up all your lives isn’t particularly important right now. What is, is that you’re under attack from the New Machine Jihad. Do not use the lifts. Do not trust any networked technology, especially if your safety depends on it functioning properly. Don’t waste bullets shooting at the cars, because the Jihad has the resources of the entire Metrozone at its disposal.
“The only way you might be able to get out alive is by letting
Sonja go. The Jihad want to save her, which is the only reason they’re here. You’re just not that important otherwise. No Sonja, no Jihad. I’m kind of assuming that you’d prefer it that way, so you can go back to stealing stuff and shooting at drones.”
As soon as he said it, his palms went sticky. His gaze went from the faces of his audience to the expanse of plate glass behind them. He stood up, far too quickly, and announced: “We have to get out of here, right now.”
He swayed on his feet as he turned. Madeleine would have caught him; Sonja didn’t seem to know what to do, and watched him stumble into several chairs. He raised himself up again to find them all still watching him and not moving.
But not for long, because someone noticed a wide-winged, slim-bodied aircraft outside the building lining up for its final approach. He pointed out of the window and started to run at the same time, pushing a boy to the floor who was in his way.
The sudden eruption of movement broke the spell of inaction. Everyone surged for the door. Petrovitch was battered at the front of the wave. He tried to reach back through the rush of bodies to Sonja and grasped nothing but thin air.
“Sam!”
He was slammed into the door to the stairwell. For a brief moment, he was wedged in the frame. Then he managed to claw his way back, fingers tight against the plasterwork.
She was standing there, watching the drone grow in size. It made a tiny correction that leveled its flight. Petrovitch kicked his legs free of the doorway.
“Sonja,” he said. “Snap out of it.”
“Do you trust the Jihad?”
“No! Now come on!”
“I do,” she said. She smiled, and spread her arms wide to embrace it.
The drone swelled suddenly, taking up all of the window, plunging the room into darkness.
It hit the floor below them, disappearing from view then disgorging a bright tongue of fire. The concrete beneath their feet jerked; dust danced, the picture window crazed, and what sounded like a hundred doors slamming echoed in their ears.
“See?” she said. “They wouldn’t hurt me.”
The fire flickered and faded. Smoke replaced flame as everything combustible started to burn. There was smoke and dust billowing up the stairwell, too, and advancing along the ceiling as a milky-white haze.
“Yobany stos,” said Petrovitch, crouching down. “When I find the Jihad, I swear to God I’m going to kill them. We’ve about thirty seconds to get below the fire, or we’re trapped and we’ll burn. I’m going, and you might like to follow.”
It was like climbing down a factory chimney. The air was sharp as a knife; it cut deep at Petrovitch’s throat and stabbed at his already aching chest. He could barely see because his eyes streamed with the acid fumes. He kept his head as close to the steps as he could, taking breaths in small sips, but the smoke howled and roared around him.
He had one hand on the banister railings, feeling them flick past his fingers. He had the other wrapped around Sonja’s wrist.
They made the first landing, turned and saw that the door to the next level had been blown out. Black soot mixed with clean air from beneath and whipped upward, carrying glowing cinders in its wake. The air was hot, dry and quick, carrying the promise of incineration with it.
The plastic handrail of the banister was starting to sag and drip. He lay down and slid to the next landing. It was like being in front of a furnace door.
He crawled until he felt the top step, then rolled off, dragging Sonja with him. He was falling, bouncing, twisting, spinning. He landed in a heap, his leather coat scorched and smoking, Sonja stirring weakly on top of him.
The stream of air that moaned around them was clear. He took a deep breath, immediately coughed so hard that blood flecked the boot-stained stairs. He spat and coughed again, rasping and wheezing. Mucus was dripping from his nose, his mouth, and he was still blind with tears.
He found enough strength to heave Sonja away and took another breath. It made him cough again, but not so vigorously. He scrubbed at his eyes with his fingers. His left side cleared, his right didn’t.
Petrovitch squinted, and realized he’d broken a lens.
At least he was still alive, despite the best efforts of Oshicora, Marchenkho, the Paradise militia, Sorenson, his own heart and the New Machine Jihad.
He tried to speak, and it came out as a croak. He tried again.
“You’re not on fire. So help me up and get me down these stairs. No, wait.”
He reached into his pocket for the rat, and opened it up. The screen reported starkly: here. Petrovitch, still lying on his back, used the stylus to reply “” before closing it up with a satisfying snap.
“What did you tell them?” asked Sonja. Her face, her clothes, were stained dark, and her voice didn’t rise above a whisper. She no longer looked like the Oshicora heir, neither did she sound like her. Just another seventeen-year-old kid dumped on the street by wild circumstance and lost as to what to do.
“I told them they couldn’t find their ass with their hands. Which is pretty much the truth. We’re not going to survive another of their rescue attempts, so let’s get going.”
She tentatively picked him up. “You have a plan, right?”
“I did, but I’m pretty much making it up as I go along now.” He straightened up as much as he could. He was bruised and battered, and when he ran his hand across his mouth, it came away streaked with red. But at least the knot in his chest seemed to be unwinding. He could manage, just.
• • •
Twenty stories later, and there were ominous grinding noises coming from the superstructure of the tower. The building groaned and shook periodically, as if shrugging another chunk of masonry free and letting it fall onto the carpet of driverless cars below.
Petrovitch was so exhausted he almost missed the first floor, and instead started down the final wind of stairs to the ground. He stopped himself, backed up and turned his head so he could use his good eye to see the number painted on the door.
“In here.” He put his hand in his pocket and took hold of the Beretta without drawing it.
The corridor led both left and right, a series of identical doorways, but some were open, and others were blank-faced and shut. He picked at random and peered around. The door itself was lying on the floor, hinges ripped from the frame. The first room had been gutted, anything useful taken, nothing but foul detritus left in its place. At the far end was a window, and a door that led out onto a balcony. All the glass had gone long ago, and tatters of lace curtains twitched fitfully.
Petrovitch lifted his gun hand clear, checked behind him, then entered the room. “Stay close,” he said unnecessarily, for Sonja was almost walking on the backs of his heels.
The sound of the cars bumping and scraping against each other was like a gale in a forest. Amidst all the individual creaking and cracking was a rhythm that came and went, building and falling as the next gust passed through.
He picked his way to the balcony, nudged the door open with his foot, and stepped outside.
It was hopeless. There was no way they could find a path across the shifting sea of metal. Maybe if he was fit, if he was on his own, if he was sufficiently reckless, he might try it. But he was none of those things.
The blue nose of the riot wagon edged around the corner, crushing everything beneath it. It started down the side of the building that would take it right by Petrovitch, and he ducked back inside.
“Down,” he waved.
“In this filth?”
“Huy, Sonja. Just get out of sight.” He put his back against the wall and hunkered down.
The growl of the wagon’s engine grew louder over the background noise until it seemed to be directly outside. Then the engine note dropped a pitch, and it rumbled away, idling.
Sonja was crouched in the kitchen doorway. “What is it?” she mouthed.
Petrovitch put his finger to his lips and tilted his head slightly. He caught sight of the top of the wagon and jerked
his head away.
And his name was being called. By a voice he could recognize.
He looked again, longer. There was a head bobbing around in one of the hatches.
“Maddy?” he shouted.
“Sam? Where are you?”
Petrovitch used his last reserves of strength to force his legs to work. He peered around the window, and they spotted each other at the same time. Madeleine started to climb out onto the hull, with Petrovitch frantically waving her back.
“What the zaebis are you doing here?”
“I came to get you.”
“Then who the yebat is driving?”
“Chain.”
“Is it that desperate?” Petrovitch beckoned Sonja. “Come on. You have to jump.”
She hesitated for a second when she saw what she had to do, and what the consequences were of failure: to fall between the cars and vanish beneath their wheels.
Then she threw herself up and over the balcony, bringing her feet underneath her and landing bare centimeters away from the open hatch. Madeleine steadied her, then pulled her down inside.
It was his turn. He laboriously climbed over the balustrade and hung there over the moving cars. The wagon was only a short distance way. An easy jump, almost a step, to nearly the same level as him. Less than a meter drop.
Simple, yet he balked.
Easier still to let go.
He clung to the rusting metal railing like he clung to life: by his fingertips.
“Huy tebe v zhopu!”
Petrovitch bent his legs, sprang his hands, and jumped.
29
He fell heavily against the metal hull, and started to slide downward. He couldn’t hold on, couldn’t support his own weight. He felt his feet dangle, and jammed his fingers into the fine wire mesh that wrapped around the skirts of the vehicle. It started to tear away.