Theories of Flight

“You are,” said Andersson, “fucking civilians. We’re bleeding…”

“I’ve given already.”

“… bleeding every day, to keep you safe from the Outies.” He leaned in and shouted full in Petrovitch’s face, spittle flying. “You’re not worth it. None of you. Especially a coward who expects his wife to go out and fight while he sits on his arse.”

Andersson’s armor slipped forward off his shoulder. In the momentary distraction, Petrovitch brought his knee up hard, stepped sideways and reached for the corporal’s belt. He snagged a loop and pulled hard, slamming the crown of Andersson’s bowed head against the door.

“Let’s get one thing absolutely straight.” Petrovitch wasn’t even breathing hard, while Andersson was lying on the floor, clutching himself and whimpering. “I will not be making a complaint about this, today or ever. Everyone’s allowed to make a stupid mistake now and then, and this is your turn. But if you so much as lay a finger on me again, I will break it off and ram it so far up your zhopu, you’ll need to swallow a pair of scissors to keep the nail trimmed. Got that?”

The man on the ground swallowed against the pain. “You don’t deserve her.”

“I make a point of telling her that every morning, but she seems happy enough to keep me around.” Petrovitch snorted. “If I offer to help you up, would you take it?”

“Go to hell.”

“Lie there and count your yajtza, then.” He batted at his coat and walked away. He had an audience of two green-overalled nurses and a technician. He inclined his head as he passed them. “Enjoy the show?”

The technician did a double-take. “Hey. Aren’t you that…?”

“That what?”

“On the news. Just now. The flying thing.”

“Yeah. Look,” he said, “can one of you point me to the Minor Injuries Unit?”

“Turn right at the end of this corridor,” said the tech. “But you’re, like…”

“Like really smart? I know.” He started to walk away.

“Famous. I was going to say famous.”

“Oh, I hope not.” He waved his hand in dismissal and finally found the sign telling him which way to go.

There were double doors with glass inserts, which he peered through. He could see her, sitting in the waiting room, her hands in her lap, fingers flicking through her rosary beads. Her eyes were closed, her lips barely moving. Piled next to her was her armor, folded neatly with her helmet on top. There was a gelatinous green pool of leaking impact gel collecting on the floor beneath.

Her hair had started to grow on the previously shaved front and sides of her head. She kept threatening to cut the plait off that extended from her nape to her waist, but he’d once offered the opinion that he quite liked it and, so far, it had been spared.

He pushed against one of the doors and slipped in, sitting down next to her in an identical plastic chair. Her battlesmock was open. When he leaned forward, he could see the purple bruising above the scoop of her vest top.

“Hey, Sam,” she said without opening her eyes.

“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

“Greenstick fracture of the seventh rib, left side. Could have been worse.” The rosary beads kept clicking.

Petrovitch nodded. “There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours.”

“Don’t make me laugh, Sam. It hurts.”

“But you do have per—”

“Sam.” She opened one eye, then the other. She gave him a sad smile and gathered up her beads. “Can we go home?”

“Yeah. Maddy, what else?”

“What else what?”

He put his elbows on his knees. “You’ve been shot before. You’ve never called for me.”

She tried to take a deep breath, and winced halfway through. Her hands trembled, and Petrovitch put his own hand over hers.

“It can wait,” he said. “When you’re ready.”

“It…” she said, and she was crying, and hating herself for doing so, and crying all the more because of that. “Oh.”

Petrovitch just about managed to reach around her broad shoulders. She slumped against him, her cheek resting on his head. He felt her shudder and gasp for a while, then fall still.

Finally, she said, “I saw my mother today.”

Petrovitch blinked. “Your mother?”

“It was her. She actually looked sober.”

“Where was this?”

“Gospel Oak. North of there has been declared an Outzone, and the railway is now the front line. We were told to hold it.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“She was the one who shot me.”

“Chyort. That shouldn’t happen.”

“There’s a school, right next door to the station. A group of Outies came across the tracks and got into the building. We went in after them. Firefight, short range, all ducking through doorways and hiding behind furniture. Except this was a primary school, and tables built for five-year-olds don’t give me much cover.”

“And one of the Outies was your mother.” Petrovitch frowned. “How could that happen? I thought she was Inzone.”

“She was, is.” She shook her head. “Maybe they recruit as they go. I don’t know. But we still got to face each other down the length of a corridor. For the first time in five years. I assumed she’d drunk herself to death, yet there she was, larger than life, pointing a gun at me. And I dropped my weapon. I dropped my weapon and shouted ‘Don’t shoot!’ ”

“I take it she shot you.”

“The first put me on my back. I tried to get up, get my visor out of the way, so she could see who it was. She walked over to me and shot me twice more. There would have been a fourth to the head, but then the rest of my squad turned up, and she ran.”

“Pizdets.”

She sighed. “Haven’t told you the best bit yet. I was screaming ‘Mom, it’s me, Maddy’ over and over—and she had to have heard me, she was standing over me with a pistol pointed at my heart—and she still pulled the trigger. So yes, pizdets just about covers it.”

He squeezed her closer. They sat like that for a while.

“There’s a poem,” he said. “The one about your parents, how they…”

“I know it.”

“It’s true, though. They do.” Petrovitch held out his left hand and examined his ring finger. “Probably a good job we didn’t invite her to the wedding.”

She snorted. “You’re a bad man.”

“The very worst. Come on, babochka, let’s get you back to sunny Clapham.”

Madeleine disentangled herself and gathered up her dripping armor. Petrovitch took the full-face helmet by the chin-strap and let it dangle. She caught him looking at her.

“I’ll be okay,” she said. “Just, you know.”

“Yeah.” He opened the door with his foot and held it as she struggled through. “I should be carrying that.”

“It’d be easier wearing it, except that it’s pretty much unwearable. It’s only going as far as the front gate.