Theories of Flight

“What do you know that I don’t?”

“Plenty,” said Valentina. She carried on assembling the fiber-optic wand, attaching a small screen onto the back of the cable, and now she turned it on. The picture was of the foam packing inside her case, magnified so that each individual gray bubble showed. “But I would ask you to think for moment. Chain is dead, and perhaps only by accident.”

“What if they wanted to make sure?” said Petrovitch. He pressed his palm against the wall separating him from the inside of Harry Chain’s apartment. It didn’t seem anywhere near bombproof enough. He regained the key and put it in his pocket.

Valentina slid the end of the fiberoptic cable through the crack under the door. The screen went black, and stayed that way before she changed the settings and dialed up the night vision.

The image resolved: through the shifting noise of the signal, they could make out shelves that stretched floor to ceiling, corner to door.

“Anything?” demanded Grigori.

“Wait,” she said, manipulating the end of the cable. “Do not hurry me.”

The shelves, pregnant with box files, slid by. The bright rectangle was a window, covered by drawn curtains: light leaked in nevertheless and gave definition to the rest of the room.

“What was that?” Petrovitch got down on his hands and knees next to Valentina, and tried to gain a sense of the layout. “Middle of the floor.”

She pulled the cable back and redirected it. There was something—angular, thin, constructed. “Table?” She tilted her head. “Music stand?”

“Too… big.”

Grigori was growing impatient. “If you won’t open the door, I will.”

“You had chance,” said Valentina. “You did not take it. So let me do my job.” She switched to infrared, and the screen changed to reflect the new data. The floor and wall were blue, cold. But the object in the middle of the room was colder still, a skeletal pyramid glowing in intense purple except for the white-hot spot at its chest-height apex.

“It’s a tripod. A camera?” Petrovitch dabbed a greasy finger on the plastic surface of the screen. “That’s strange, though. Some sort of heat source.”

“It is infrared light.” She froze the image and slid the cable out from under the door. “It could be part of Chain’s alarm system. Did you ever come here before?”

“No. I just assumed he lived in his office.” Petrovitch squinted. “What is that thing?”

Grigori sighed and rubbed his open hand with his fingers. “He’s dead, he has no neighbors left, and you’re worried about an alarm that no one will hear. Give me the key.”

Petrovitch looked at Valentina.

“If it was up to me,” she said, “I would say no. But we seem to find ourselves in democracy.”

“So give me the key,” said Grigori.

“You don’t have to prove how big your peesa is.” Petrovitch brought the keys out again, and Grigori snatched at them. “You want to open the door, not knowing what’s behind it?”

“You’re going soft on me, Petrovitch. It’ll be that wife of yours.” He held the key to the sensor, and the lock made a solid clunking noise. “Pizda.”

Valentina strode two quick paces toward Petrovitch, put her thin arms around him and kept moving, pushing him away and against the dividing wall. Grigori pushed the door open to be greeted by the high-pitched whine of servos.

There was a series of lightning flashes from inside, accompanied by the fast-repeated roar of gunfire. Grigori danced like he was standing on a scalding hot plate, and the plasterwork behind him was patterned with holes.

Then he fell backward, strings cut, body ruined.

Valentina kept Petrovitch’s back pressed against the wall. “Do not move. Do not go to him. There is nothing you can do.”

The firing stopped, and a wisp of smoke curled around the door frame.

“Chyort.” Petrovitch didn’t quite know where to put his hands. He flapped for a moment, then gripped Valentina around the waist to ease their two bodies apart.

He didn’t step into the open doorway, but got down on his belly and crawled. The opposite wall was cratered, punched through in places to the room beyond. The gun inside was clearly more than capable of hitting him through the brickwork, if only it could see him.

There was no doubt that Grigori was dead. His thumb had caught the loop of the keyring, but his arm was thrown up behind his head, and still in full view of whatever lay in wait. As were the top of the stairs, too.

More propellant fumes drifted out, sharp and hot.

Valentina stood behind Petrovitch, adjusting her jacket.

“Idiot,” she said. “It is not like he had spare life that he could afford to throw this one away.”

Petrovitch backed away and sat up. “Sentry gun? What the huy was Chain doing with one of those?”

“Protecting his information? He would have had a way of deactivating it, though. Did MEA give you anything else besides keys?”

“No. Just them.” He’d broken out into a cold sweat. It could have been him. If Valentina hadn’t stopped him the first time, if he’d accepted Grigori’s dare, he would have walked straight into the line of fire. “First chance I get, I’m going to kick Chain’s corpse in the yajtza.”

“Do I have to point out that we have more immediate problem?”

“No.” Petrovitch pushed his glasses up his face, and eyed the distant stairs. “What’s the reaction time on that thing? Can we move faster than it can track us?”

She threw Petrovitch a box of matches. “Try for yourself.”

He picked up the cardboard box off his lap and extracted one of the red-headed sticks. His fingers were trembling as he rasped the head against the rough strip.

The match flared into life. Petrovitch held it for a second to make sure the flame had caught, then flicked it into the air. The match arced away, and simply vanished as a bullet tore through it, turning the wood to dust.

“Okay,” he said. “Plan B.”

“Which is?”

“Give me a moment.” He looked around for some assets. The floor was bare boards, the windows were on the half-landings, up and down, even the door to the other flat was in plain view of the automatic weapon in Chain’s apartment.

There was Valentina’s open case, just the other side of the doorway.

“Yeah. We can do this.” He hunched his legs up and started to unlace his boots, slipping his fingers between the eyelets and dragging out longer and longer loops of lace until they were both free.

Valentina watched him tie the laces together to make a single length. “What else do you need?”

“A piece of bent metal, to make a hook.” He had all-sorts in his pockets, but nothing that would do.

She had a heavy combat knife, which he thought might do. He tied the lace to the center of the knife, just handle-side of the hilt, and judged his throw.

The knife fell into the case, but as he slowly tensioned the attaching cord, it turned and rolled out.

The servos aiming the gun squeaked, and Petrovitch gritted his teeth for the inevitable bang.

It didn’t come, and he pulled the knife back in.

He tried again, making absolutely sure that at no point did his hand go further than the wall. His aim was good, but there was nothing for the knife to catch on to.

“This isn’t going to work,” he said, readying himself for a third attempt.

“This might.”

She was holding her blouse shut with one hand, presenting him with her bra with the other.

“I… I don’t see.”

“Underwiring.”

He blinked, and took the white satin underwear from her. Its warmth made his face flush. She turned away to button up, and he used her knife to slice open the reinforced seam.