Theories of Flight

ordinary.

Petrovitch’s hand went to the back of his neck, where his hair had grown uncharacteristically long. His fingers touched surgical metal.

The buildings around him bore scars, too. The visible tidemark on their street-side faces rose higher the closer he got to the river, and such was the pressure of population, some people found themselves forced to live in the stinking lower floors, amidst walls and floors and ceilings still damp and contaminated with gods-knew- what.

He came to the Thames, brown and sluggish, shining wetly. A barge, once embedded in a riverfront property, lay broken and sad on the mudslick that had been a line of trees. Across the Albert Bridge, he could almost see home.

The Embankment road had been scraped with a bulldozer, washed down by pumps. The white line was visible again down its center, and off to one side beside the Regency town houses swathed in scaffolding was the temporary bus stop. The virtual arrow above it was almost unnecessary, but finding he only had a five-minute wait was welcome news.

There was a queue. There always was. He took the opportunity to view the chasm carved through the London skyline, right through the heart of Brompton and out onto the Chelsea embankment. Across the river, the clear-cutting of buildings continued along the shoreline before petering out.

He was one of the few who knew it was the route of the Shinjuku line, mark two, terminating at the Oshicora Tower. Almost everyone else saw it as a random wound, born of chaos like everything else that night.

The bus, windows glazed with grime and protected by close-meshed grilles, strained along toward him. It sagged at the curbside and folded its tired doors aside. Inside, it was literally standing room only. The vehicle had no seats apart from the driver’s: they’d been stripped out and thrown away. Passengers grabbed at a pole or a hang-strap, or each other. Cattle-class for all: egalitarian transport for the twenty-first century.

Petrovitch slid his pass across the sensor and elbowed his way toward the back, where the crush would be less and the air a little clearer.

The journey along the north bank of the Thames was dreary and dull. The filth on the windows was sufficiently thick to render the view outside nothing more than variations in dark and light. With his info shades on, he was provided with a virtual map of his journey. Most of his fellow passengers had to rely on the driver’s announcements over the tannoy to give them clues as to where they were.

But no matter their status, they were all stuck together on the same bus, rocking this way and that, jerked by the inconstant acceleration and braking, clinging on to handles welded to the roof.

Chelsea Bridge, Claverton Street, Vauxhall Bridge, Lambeth Bridge—where the putative Keiyo line was driven through, narrowly missing Westminster Abbey—and Westminster Bridge. At each stop, people got on or off in an exchange that was interminably slow. No one would move out of the way from simple courtesy, choosing instead to shuffle sullenly aside. Fights were common, but there were no paycops on the buses. MEA, always on the verge of bankruptcy, couldn’t afford them.

He used his pocket controller to catch a news wire. The Metrozone’s litany of disasters was usually relegated to the third or fourth item on any given day, unless someone pulled off a spectacular. Top of the cycle was rioting in Paris—l’anglais causing problems as Metrozone refugees filled up French parks. Second was a late-season hurricane bearing down on Florida. Third, was him, managing to push the Outies’ latest incursion into fourth.

Antigravity demonstrated in London Metrozone lab.

That it wasn’t actually antigravity didn’t bother Petrovitch. It behaved like it—or like the popular perception of it—so why get cross? Instead, he nodded with satisfaction. At least they were reporting a science story. Stanford would be reading the wire at the same time as he was. MIT and CalTech, too, Pasadena and Houston; all those scientists, all that money, beaten by a once-great but now impoverished institution hemorrhaging talent like it had contracted academic Ebola.

After Charing Cross was Waterloo Bridge, where boats had lost their moorings in the Long Night and plowed into the spans, rendering it useless for motorized traffic. On to Temple, and as that stop was announced, Petrovitch started to move forward, easing himself through the mass of gray passengers until he could move no more.

The bus shuddered to a halt. The doors opened. The first few people waiting tried to get on before those already on could get off. There was some pushing and shoving. Someone outside fell back after gaining a foothold in the entrance, and the disturbance rippled out from there, inside and out.

It died away after a few moments, as most of those involved were just too tired to get riled. A stamp of the foot, a jab of the elbow, it was all they could manage.

Petrovitch squeezed out and escaped the crowd, walking to the back of the bus and behind it to get his bearings. Not far now. He turned his head, watching the street names pop up, and the information that there was a press conference being called at Imperial.

“Live from London” would have to happen without him. He shrugged at no one in particular. The university didn’t need some sweary Russian kid causing an international incident, and Petrovitch didn’t need his face beamed across the planet—a win for everyone concerned.

He headed up Farringdon Street, to where the flood waters had pooled under Holborn Viaduct and it still smelled of black mud, and cut through to Smithfield. His glasses told him the entrance to the hospital was there on his right.

It was, too: guarded by cops and MEA militia, a concertina of razor wire and a sandbagged machine-gun emplacement. Concrete blocks had been scattered like teeth to deter truck bombers.

He stared critically at the scene. He was now living in a city where a hospital was seen as a likely target. He made a face, feeling something close to physical pain. Once upon a time, he’d said that the center could not hold. He’d been right, as usual.

Past the fortified entrance, behind the facade of boarded-up windows and the gray stonework, was his wife.

So many things about him had changed, and she was the chief cause of most of them.

3

They finally let him in, and a harassed woman on the reception desk told him where to find Madeleine. There was a wide-screen TV bolted to the wall of the foyer, and it happened to be showing a small black sphere—the silver wire tracks didn’t show up well—floating without visible means of support. There was a commotion going on in the background, and a voice cut through the noise: “Past’ zabej!”

It appeared that the kid with the camera phone had been syndicated.

Petrovitch looked up at the ward names and started down the corridor. His boots squeaked loudly on the lino floor, contrasting with the soft-footed urgency of the hospital staff, all passing him at a trot.

A MEA militiaman, body armor thrown over one shoulder, rifle over the other, limped toward him. They were about to pass each other: Petrovitch moved to the left and readied a respectful nod, but the man stepped the same way. Three more switches from one side of the corridor to the other weren’t an accident.

A palm jutted out and shoved Petrovitch backward. The man with spiky blond hair snarled from deep inside his throat.

Petrovitch didn’t have time for this. “Mudak,” he said and tried to go around the man. For his troubles, he got pushed again, hard, against the corridor wall. His spine jarred against a door frame, and the hand on his chest attempted to pin him there.

“What’s your problem?” Petrovitch jammed his glasses up his nose and eyeballed the soldier. The tab over the man’s pocket read Andersson with two esses, and he had corporal’s stripes on his arm.