Theories of Flight

wanted hacked, and it ground out the solution with blind repetition. Finesse wasn’t required, but speed was. Two seconds and he was in.

His overlays came alive, a flurry of identity tags blossoming out from the cabinets, unique strings of numbers that were attached to every paper file. The two he’d salted away in the box gave up their names, and rather than delete the records completely, he swapped the tags with the two replacements. It was those he wiped out, and sent his agent through the MEA computer, scrambling any mention of the new numbers.

It wasn’t perfect, but it’d take six months of solid work to find out what had really happened. That was it: retreat back out through the hacked node, making the user session disappear from the memory before closing the door behind him.

All he had to do now was get the physical files out of the building. The radio tags built into the cardboard covers were easy enough to dispose of. He just had to tear them off and soak the squares in a cold cup of black coffee to soften them enough that he could peel them apart and disassemble the tiny printed circuit. As for the rice-grain-sized tags themselves—he placed them on the window sill and crushed them to dust with a glass paperweight.

Chain had a pair of scissors. Petrovitch turned one of his coat pockets inside out and sliced through the seam at the bottom, then pushed the pocket back through. Each file was rolled into a tube and slid inside, then artfully arranged to lie flat within the coat’s lining, against the hem.

He took his overlays off and tucked them into their case, shut the rat, and put both into his other pocket. He put the lid on the box, and sealed it with tape from Chain’s stash of stationery. The solitary and sad pot plant— some sort of yucca forced into dwarfism by the size of the container—went on top, shedding brown leaves.

He’d done what he came to do, and the time he had left was extra. So he put on one last pot of coffee, and cleaned out two mugs the best he could. There was no milk, no sugar, just hot, strong, oil-black brew. The maker coughed and spat until it had done, then Petrovitch poured himself a cup and sat back in Chain’s chair with his feet up on the desk.

He closed his eyes and dreamed: there was the sea, white waves rolling up a narrow beach of dirty yellow sand, the strandline marked with tails of brown seaweed and bleached fragments of wood. There was green grass and pink flowers dancing in the wind, and inland, deep green trees grew. Between sea and forest was a dome of clear crystal that reflected the clouds in the baby blue sky. Inside the dome were structures, buildings within a building, and overhead, a wingless aircraft wheeled and spun with the gulls.

He was there. He was old.

“Doctor Petrovitch?”

He sat up with a sudden intake of breath. The coffee he was holding slopped over the rim of the mug and onto his legs.

“Yobany stos!” he yelled, and just about managed to get the mug down before he danced around the room, batting at his thighs. His actions set off all the aches and pains from the previous day. He screwed up his face in pain, and hobbled back to Chain’s seat.

“Sorry,” said Daniels. He was trying not to grin. “Have you taken everything you wanted?”

Petrovitch took a moment before replying. “Yeah. I made coffee.”

“I can see that.”

“Want one? At least it’s hot.”

“I can see that, too. Go on, then.”

Daniels perched himself on the edge of the desk while Petrovitch poured a dark steaming stream into another chipped mug.

“He didn’t have much,” said Petrovitch. “Nothing to remember him by. No photographs of him, his family, anywhere he’d been, nothing he’d made, nothing of sentimental value. A few bits and pieces, and that’s that.”

“Except for your wedding picture.” Daniels took his coffee from Petrovitch. “Perhaps you’ll find something different at his flat.”

“His… flat.” Petrovitch sat down again, and sipped at what was left of his drink, after he’d poured it over himself. The thought that Chain might have lived somewhere—that he left the office at all—was strange and unsettling. “I didn’t find any keys.”

Daniels dipped into his pocket and produced an evidence bag. Inside were two keys joined by a simple steel ring. As he slid them across the desktop, he asked: “Do you need the address?”

“Yeah.” He took the proffered slip of paper and stared at the bag. There was a brass lever key, old school and secure, and a plain bar of metal for a magnetic lock. He dragged them into his hand, closing his fist around them so that the sharp edges dug into his freshly skinned palm.

“Doctor Petrovitch, can I ask you something entirely unrelated?”

“Sure.”

“This research of yours: where will it take us?”

Petrovitch put the keys in his lap, and picked up his coffee again. “You realize you’re the first person to ask me that?”

“Didn’t you have a press conference yesterday?”

“Depressing, isn’t it? No one wants to know anymore. I could have invented something that could unravel the fabric of space-time itself, and some mudak would call it boring.”

Daniels looked over the top of his mug. “And have you?”

Petrovitch pushed his glasses up his nose. “Difficult to say. I’m… look: the Ekanobi-Petrovitch equations try to describe how the universe works. That I’ve shown we can change the local gravity field for one object is a signpost on the way, but all we have is a single answer to a very complex function that should have—will have— multiple solutions.”

“But you’re working on the others.”

“I would be, but I’ve done no work since Monday morning. I’ll get back to it when everything isn’t so pizdets. I haven’t answered your question, though. When you work with this… thing—Pif describes it as being like a sculpture—you get a sense of what might be there when you chip away all the rock you don’t need. I’m pretty certain I can get a working spaceship drive out of it, not just enough to take us to the other planets, but to other stars. And then there’s energy, fantastic amounts of it, trapped inside every atom. We can only get at it by going nuclear, and that’s not exactly flavor of the century after Armageddon.” He looked up and shrugged. “Give me ten years and no one trying to kill me, and I’ll do it.”

Daniels said nothing. He blinked, drank his coffee, and tried to digest the new knowledge along with his beverage.

Petrovitch put his mug down and hefted the cardboard box. The pot plant on top wobbled, and threw another long, crisp leaf to the floor. “I’ve wasted enough of your time. You’d better show me out.”

They traveled down in the lift together—Petrovitch reluctantly—all the way to the foyer, where they parted amidst all the comings and goings of smartly dressed politicians and administrators, and the smarter gray-clad MEA officers.

Petrovitch wondered how Chain had felt, coming in here every morning, staring up at the retina scanner. Had he wondered how he’d got to where he was, or had he just accepted it as his lot in life?

Madeleine was right. He hadn’t liked Chain. But he knew so few people that the loss of even one bit hard.

“How are you getting home?” asked Daniels. “I can arrange for someone.”

“It’s fine,” said Petrovitch. “I’m being picked up.”

“Good luck,” said Daniels, “with everything.”

“Yeah.” The Metrozone was falling apart, MEA or no MEA. Luck was about all they had left. “And you.”

He stepped out of the revolving doors, past the guards, and out onto the street. A big car pulled up by the curbside, and, without breaking step, Petrovitch opened the back door and shoved the box along the seat. The yucca wobbled and tottered. As he got in he steadied it, then turned to close the door behind him. They were already moving.

“Did you get it?” asked Grigori.

“I got what he had. It might not be enough, but it’s something.”