Theories of Flight

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 major 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.