Theories of Flight

2

At first, Petrovitch thought the buzzing coming from his leg was the first sign that his circulation was failing like it used to do, and his heart needed charging up again.

Then he realized it was his phone, the one that Maddy made him carry on pain of death—his, naturally. He unVelcroed his pocket even as staff and students swirled around him, slapping his back, shaking his hand, kissing him. Some of them were crying, wetting his cheeks with their tears of joy.

It was party time, and he’d brought the best present of all.

He palmed the phone and glanced at the screen. He was clearly lucky to get a signal at all down in the depths. He checked the caller ID, and frowned. It wasn’t his wife, and he wasn’t aware of anyone else who would know his carefully guarded number. He ducked clear of the crowd, which seemed to be growing by the minute, and walked further down the corridor to answer the call.

“Yeah?”

“Doctor Samuil Petrovitch? Husband of Sergeant Madeleine Petrovitch?”

It definitely wasn’t her. And with all the noise around him, it was almost impossible to hear the man at the other end of the connection.

“What’s wrong?”

The reply was lost, and Petrovitch growled in frustration. He jammed his finger in his ear and tried to cup his hand around the phone.

“Say again?”

“Sergeant Petrovitch has been injured. She’s been taken to…” and that was all he could make out.

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