Theories of Flight

It was novelty they were seeking, not enlightenment.

He’d dismissed them all with a growl, and pushed through to safety with practiced elbows. Even then, he’d escaped from the frying pan only to find the fire.

The university hierarchy, with patent lawyers in tow, tried to stitch him up in words so complex he could barely fight his way out again. In the end, he’d signed nothing: no verbal agreement to any course of action, no appending his thumbprint to any document that would take longer to read than the lifetime of the universe.

“You can’t copyright physics,” said a voice.

Petrovitch looked up, saw only a blur. He patted around for his glasses and fitted the arms over his ears.

McNeil: she’d made no effort to dress up for the press either. Same old jeans, same old sweatshirt, no makeup or jewelry.

“Sorry?”

“What you said: you can’t copyright physics.” She sat down on the edge of Dominguez’s desk. “I agree.”

“Yeah, well. No one cares what we think. Not anymore.” He scratched at the corner of his eye. “Last night I dreamed that I was in a park—somewhere warm, not here—and the place was stiff with kids; little kids, babies, toddlers, teenagers, no one older than us, anyway. They all had spheres, and they were playing with them. Sliding them to each other, patting them so they bounced and spun, pushing them away and then running after them. Some of the bigger ones had made up a football-like game, with trees for goalposts, and others had stuck them to trays or bits of wood and were surfing on them. They all looked like they were having a really great time: certainly no one was telling them they’d have to hand their spheres back because they broke copyright.”

She reached across and picked up his—Dominguez’s—mug. “Want a fresh one?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

She busied herself at a sink, her back to him. “What are you going to do?”

“Now? I don’t know.”

Dominguez shouldered his way in. He saw McNeil and was about to say something, then he spotted Petrovitch and changed his mind.

Petrovitch wasn’t inclined to move. He sat, drumming the desktop with a fingernail tattoo, while Dominguez put his bag down on a bench.

“We have moved the mass balance downstairs, as you requested,” he said.

Petrovitch looked around. He finally noticed that the machine had gone.

“Yeah. So you have.” He sat up and stilled his hands. “Look, sit down, both of you. I think I do know what I’m going to do next.”

They pulled up chairs and waited expectantly. Petrovitch wondered what their reaction might be.

“We need a break from all this. We’re not going to get any proper work done around here for a few days anyway, until the dust settles and things get back to normal. So: we’re going to do something different. A gedankenversuch.”

“A what?” asked Dominguez.

“Thought experiment,” murmured McNeil, then to Petrovitch: “Into what?”

“Society. I want you to go and design me a human society. Not a utopia: one that acknowledges its faults and includes mechanisms to correct itself. One that’s better than the one we have now. Info-rich. Post-scarcity. Knowledge as currency. Stuff like that.” Petrovitch looked at their bemused faces. “Can you do it?”

Dominguez frowned his heavy brows. “I suppose so. Can I ask why? Is this part of our training?”

Petrovitch sat back, lacing his fingers together behind his head. “Yeah. It is. It’s a mistake to be an expert in just one narrow field. You need to be able to read widely and apply your smarts to any problem. Let’s see how you deal with this one.”

“You said a few days.” McNeil leaned forward. Her interest and enthusiasm had been piqued, and her usually pale cheeks were slightly flushed. “How long do we have?”

“What’s today?”

“Tuesday,” she said.

“Friday, then. On my desk by Friday.” He got up, pushing the chair back with a flick of his knees. “Don’t be late.”

6

He’d barely got back to his own office when his leg rang. He let it trill while he put the kettle on—he’d somehow missed out on McNeil’s offer—then delved inside the pocket.

It wasn’t her, but he did recognize the caller.

“Yobany stos, Chain. You’re not even supposed to have this number.”

“Very slick, Petrovitch. I particularly liked the stream of invective you launched at the bloke who asked ‘Dude, where’s my flying car?’ And you wonder why the public look on science news as irrelevant?”

“No, I don’t wonder at all. It’s because every last one of you enjoys wallowing in pig-shit ignorance. Why did you call? I think I said everything I wanted to last night.”

“There’ve been developments.”

“Tell you what, Chain. I’m a physicist. You’re a MEA intelligence officer. I won’t ask you to reshape human destiny, and you can stop trying to get me to do your job for you.”

“We’ve found a prowler.”

Petrovitch tucked the phone in the angle between his shoulder and his ear. He poured his coffee dregs into the pot plant and hunted for the jar of freeze-dried granules. “I’m assuming that word means something special.”

“A sort of robot. It was active, and armed.”

“A Jihadi leftover?” He shook a tablespoon of coffee into his mug and stood over the kettle, waiting for it to boil.

“Don’t think so. There are reasons to suspect otherwise.”

“And you’re going to tell me what those reasons are, or do I have to guess?”

“The Jihad made things out of what came to hand. This was meant.”

Finally, steam started to rise from the spout. He flicked the off switch and poured the water out. “This is still not my problem, Chain.”

“It’s American.”

“Yeah? It has the stars and stripes painted on the outside?”

“I think you’re missing the point.”

Petrovitch cleaned a spoon on his trousers. “Go on, then. Tell me the point.” He took the mug back to his desk and stirred as he listened.

“Do you know how those things work? Short-range radio control. Doesn’t have to be line of sight, but the operator isn’t normally more than a couple of kilometers away. It killed two of the team that stumbled across it before they managed to frag it with a grenade. The resulting explosion killed another of them. This was in the Outzone, on the southern fringe of Epping Forest.”

“Okay.”

“Is that all you’re going to say?” said Chain.

“Pretty much. I’ll concede that it looks like the Yanks are in the Metrozone, for whatever reason. Have you talked to them about it yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Petrovitch turned sideways to the desk and stretched out. “This, all of this, is stupid. They know you know. They’re waiting to see what you do. You can join in their game and be all sneaky, or you can play it straight. Someone—presumably an American agent—killed three MEA soldiers using this robot. The only guarantee you have is that they’ll think they can do whatever the huy they like if you don’t complain