Theories of Flight

25

They passed each other in the tunnel, a string of blue-white lights swinging and shading in the darkness. Lucy moved up and down the line, urging the old men on, exhorting the old women to keep going.

And Petrovitch knew that she was destined for something greater. He moved aside, catching her luminous grin as she held up the lantern to illuminate both him and her.

“We’ll wait.”

“You’d better,” he said.

He made his way back to the abandoned train. Climbing up took all his remaining strength. He lay there, stranded, gasping, as the one last light lowered itself down toward his face.

“You found a coach,” said the doctor.

“I won a coach. I fought for it and I won it.” Petrovitch looked up and saw the doctor’s shoes. “You could have done pretty much the same, except it would have been easier for you because when you would’ve been looking, you wouldn’t have had the Outies.”

“And then what? Where would I have taken them? And why aren’t you getting up?”

“Because my back’s full of shrapnel and I’m bleeding heavily from a dozen places.”

The light moved, and there was a sharp intake of breath.

“What? I need a doctor? I kind of thought I’d found one.”

The man pulled a face. “I did A and E for six months, five years ago.”

“I’m reluctant to threaten the only person in a position to help me. But I have a gun in my pocket that I’m very tempted to use on you.”

“This is beyond what I can do here. You need a hospital. You need a scan, a transfusion, fresh skin. I haven’t even got sterile water so I can see what I’m doing.”

“What do you have?”

“A bag of stuff I threw together at the last minute.” Petrovitch could see it, packed and ready to go, sitting in the aisle.

“Then that’ll have to do. We don’t have time to get fancy.”

“I could kill you if I get it wrong.”

“Then,” said Petrovitch, “you’d better start praying to whatever god you believe in you get it right. Or right enough that I live for another few hours.”

The doctor looked skeptical and went to his bag. He brought out a pair of surgical scissors.

“I’m going to have to cut you out of what’s left of your clothes.”

“Yeah. Figured.” Petrovitch started to wriggle out of his long leather coat. “I’m sentimentally attached to this, though.”

He felt tearing: more than sentimentality, then. Actual flesh and blood. He dragged it to one side, and the doctor kicked it further with his foot.

“Got a name?” The scissors started to click.

“Petrovitch.”

“That’s it. The antigravity man.” Snip, snip, snip.

Petrovitch gasped as his back was exposed, the bloodied cloth peeled away. “It’s not… doesn’t matter.”

The doctor went quiet as he surveyed the ruins. “I don’t have a spare pair of trousers.”

“Showing my yielda to the world is the least of my worries.”

The doctor knelt again beside him and clipped his way through the waistband. “I did mean what I said about you needing a hospital. You’ve got multiple penetration wounds, and only some of them have visible fragments. Those foreign objects I can’t remove will continue to do damage the longer they stay in. Nick a vein or an artery, and you’ll bleed out in under a minute. Depending on the depth, you could be bleeding internally already. You have burns and abrasions, and you’re losing fluid from those, too.”

“My turn,” said Petrovitch. “What’s your name?”

“Stephanopolis. Alex Stephanopolis.”

“Right, Doctor Stephanopolis: I don’t want you to stop and listen to me, you can do and listen at the same time.” He shifted uncomfortably. “You see that hole in the back of my head? That connects to the experimental cyberware I used to defeat the New Machine Jihad six months ago. Today, I’m using it to direct a modified version of the Jihad to help defend the Metrozone from the Outies. As you may notice, there is nothing plugged in at the moment. That is because the satellite uplink I have to the Jihad won’t work underground. Joined the dots yet, Doctor?”

The doctor worked his scissors down the back of one leg. “If I believed you, you’d be telling me that the New Machine Jihad is loose again and you’re the only person who can control it.”

“No. It’s more subtle than that. I’m the only person it trusts. I’m the only one it will follow. And on its own, the Jihad will screw up. We get no second chances on this one. Either we win today or we lose forever.” Petrovitch gasped as the dried blood that had welded his skin to his trousers relinquished its grip. He unclenched his fists, a finger at a time. “The longer I spend under the knife, the worse the situation gets. So make it quick. I don’t care about dirt, fragments, bodies foreign or domestic. Patch me up enough to get me back out there. After that, you’re absolved.”

The doctor worked in silence for a while, revealing the full extent of Petrovitch’s wounds.

“I can’t… I.” He stopped and started again. “This, this doesn’t make sense. Why would you be doing this if you weren’t telling me the truth, and yet I can’t possibly trust what you’re saying.”

“Willing to take the risk that I’m full of govno?”

“No.” He dug into his bag again and retrieved a sterile syringe and a bottle of straw-colored liquid. “Any heart problems?”

“It’s in a jar somewhere in a lab. It hasn’t caused me a problem since the surgeon ripped it, still beating, from my chest.”

“What model do you have?”

“American. Prototype. You wouldn’t have heard of it.”

“What I’m asking is, if I stick you full of morphine, will you die?” The doctor drew off the liquid into the syringe. “Weight?”

“No idea.”

“You’re not making this easy.”

“Just guess and get to work, man.” Petrovitch grunted as the needle went in his backside. “I haven’t got all day.”

He could feel it, every last bit of it: the widening of wounds and the probing jaws of the forceps; the drag and cut of shards of plastic and metal and glass as they slid from his flesh, oiled with his blood; the cold tunnel air reaching deep, alien places inside him. But he didn’t care. He was immune to care for the duration of the injection.

“Tell me you haven’t got Hep or HIV,” said the doctor. His hands were bloodied up to the wrists.

“No. You?”

“No. I had a needlestick once. Scared the crap out of me. I had to wait six weeks for a repeat test. When it showed up clear, I nearly wrecked my liver on cheap whisky anyway.” He flicked his fingers and another piece of plastic clattered against the window, where it stuck briefly before sliding down. “I’m getting to the point where I’ve found all the obvious debris. The rest of it… I don’t think I can get it out. The light, the blood, it’s just impossible.”

“You got a needle and thread?”

“You need skin.”

“Got any?”

The doctor sighed. “It’s not going to be pretty. I can guarantee that you’re going to end up looking like Frankenstein.”

“The monster. Frankenstein’s monster. Frankenstein was the creator.”

“So why are you doing this? What’s so important?”

“Everything.” The needle punctured his already scarred back and the thread drew through. “Everything. The whole of modern history is collapsing on this exact moment. Everything since the first steam engine, since the first telegraph, first radio, first aeroplane, first rocket, first computer. We can go one of two ways, and we get to choose. We can stay where we are, we can decline and die. Or we can embrace the future like a long-lost lover, and we can live forever.”

“That’s the morphine talking.”

“No. No, it’s not. Do you suppose the caterpillar has any idea what’s going to happen to it? Does it dream of flying? Does it dream of drinking nectar? And look, a pupa is such a weird thing, just a sack full of chemicals. You can crush it and get nothing but goo. That’s what we are now. Pupating. I need to buy us enough time so we can hatch. A butterfly, a little butterfly. Babochka.”

One thread was tied off, another patch of embroidery begun, and Petrovitch felt the overwhelming need to talk.

“I see it sometimes. When I close my eyes. I see it as if it was already there. We’re not gods, we’re just people, but we have such vision and drive as to make us seem otherworldly. We have technology like fairy tales have magic. We can do anything we put our minds to. Why can’t others see it as clearly as I can?”

“Because we’re not delusional?”

“I don’t have to be there. I don’t have to be part of it. It’ll have a momentum of its own. All it’ll take is one push at the right time, and that right time is right now. But it needs me to live long enough to give it that one last shove, get it moving in the right direction. Then it doesn’t matter. No one will be able to stop it. Destiny. The future. I can pass it on. The caterpillar dies, the butterfly lives.”

“This would be easier if you shut up.”

“We’ve spent too long here. Trapped by our fears and our blindness. We have wings. We can fly. Armageddon was over twenty years ago, and we’re still shut in our cages and we’ve grown used to it, like the frog in a pan of water brought to the boil. Those days are over. Nothing can ever be the same again. Slow death or immanent glory. That’s what tomorrow brings.”

“Just. Stop. Speaking. It’s distracting me.”

“You don’t understand. You can’t. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. It’s beautiful. It’s worth dying for.”

The sewing became more angry and violent. Petrovitch felt himself as a piece of cloth, roughly handled and roughly stitched.

“There is,” said the doctor, “so little worth dying for. I only stayed because I couldn’t go. I was going to leave them here, promise them I’d be back, but I left it too late. You, you bastard, you make promises and you keep them. You even bring a fucking coach. The only reason I’m still here rather than driving my way out is because I’m scared. Scared of the Outies. If I thought it would do any good, I would abandon you all to save myself. Got that? And that’s what every other person in the Metrozone would do. So screw you and your madness. I don’t care about your dreams or even about tomorrow.” He made one last cut with the scissors. “That’s it. I’m out of thread.”

Petrovitch blinked in the blue light, and moved his hands to underneath his body. He pushed himself up to his knees and held on to the furniture while his ears roared and his vision grayed.

“A hand here?”

The doctor pulled him up. Pins and needles, dull aches, the sensation of his circulation returning—it was happening to someone else. They were definitely his trousers lying on the floor of the carriage, though.

The doctor packed his bag while Petrovitch worked out which way was up. He stooped to pick up his ruined coat, and as slowly as he moved, the world turned just a little faster. He dragged his arms through the sleeves and shrugged the leather around his shoulders.

“It doesn’t cover your arse, let alone anything else.”

Petrovitch checked that the gun was still there, and the knife. Lucy had the rat and the info shades. “It has pockets. That’s all I need it to do.”

He swayed toward the door and looked over the edge of the step into the darkness. He had to try and shake the out-of-body feeling: it mattered what happened to his meat, because it carried his mind.

So he lowered himself down to the track and made sure that he was heading in the right direction. The doctor soon fell into step beside him, lantern swinging in his free hand.

“Do you have a plan?”

“Probably,” said Petrovitch, who was concerned more with putting one foot in front of the other. “Straight down the middle, lots of smoke.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“The Outies’ front line is between us and my forces…”

“Your forces?”

“My forces,” said Petrovitch emphatically. “By the time we get there, it’ll be close-quarters urban warfare. So I’m just going to get the coach to drive straight through until we’re safe. No one’s going to pay us any attention because they’ll all be too busy not getting killed.”

“So how big is your army?”

“I don’t know. It’ll either be big enough, or too small. One person might make the difference, and we’ll never know one way or the other. I’d be happy with a hundred thousand. Happier with two. Weapons are a problem: no way we can get hold of that many firearms and train people with them in time.” He stumbled over some loose ballast. “We’ll have superior tactics, better comms, and intel like no other army in the history of warfare. They have numbers, the morale and the experience. I still think we can win.”

Lucy was waiting again at the tunnel entrance, though this time looking in rather than out. The info shades were perched on the bridge of her nose, and she plucked them off.

“We’re ready—everyone’s on the bus and Michael says we should really be going in the next five minutes.” She looked uncertainly at him, and his bare legs. “You were ages.”

“Yeah. I was getting patched up.”

“Where…” and she pointed. “Where are your trousers?”

“There wasn’t much left of them by the time we were done.” He put his hand out for the rat, which she duly passed across. “You don’t have to look.”

She blushed, but she kept her eyes on him as he rethreaded the connector around his neck and toward the back of his head. He fumbled the plug not once, but twice. He was about to try for a third time when she took over, slotting the silver spike home and giving it the required halftwist to lock it into place.

“Thanks.”

The AI took off its kevlar helmet and dangled it from its hand. [She is right about the five minutes. The push toward the unconquered Inzone is reaching a critical phase. We are engaged on all fronts from the West Way through to Whitechapel.]

“How’s Sonja doing?” Petrovitch walked down the tracks into the daylight, examining the map as he went. He could see where they were weakest, where their enemy was strongest. It didn’t make for comforting viewing.

[The EDF troops are utilizing your fluid defensive strategy. Where they follow your plan, Outzone attrition rates are high for few friendly losses. Where the nikkeijin are engaged, they are reluctant to retreat when they believe they are winning.]

“Then they get cut off and overwhelmed, and she loses whatever arms they had. Chyort. Where’s it worst?”

[The most intense fighting is taking place between King’s Cross and City Road. But it is Tower Bridge that may fall first.]

“Pull our people back. No pitched battles yet, because we’ll lose. Wait until the Outies are on the first section of the bridge, then blow it. Send the order.”

[If we do that, you need a way to hold the next upstream crossing. Or the next.]

“They’re all expendable until we get to Waterloo. Every time the Outies get their foot on a bridge, take it out.”

[That is not a long-term solution.]

“They’re all pressing for the river. Let them. We hold the ground immediately to the north, and their flank becomes increasingly exposed the further they go looking for a way over the Thames. When they reach Waterloo we hit them with everything—all our available assets. Three sides at once.”

[Waterloo. How apposite.]

“You know what to do. I’ll talk to Valentina and warn her.”

[Cable Street has gone. They are on the approaches to Tower Bridge.]

Lucy took his arm and guided him up the slope at the end of the platform.

“Do I say this stuff out loud?” he asked her. “Or do I just think it?”

“You haven’t said a word since you plugged in.”

“Okay.” There was the coach, motor idling, and the vague shadows of people behind the smoked plate glass. Petrovitch pushed the doctor ahead of him, then ushered Lucy on board.

He climbed up and stood in the aisle, surveying his passengers. Maybe they thought he was going to sit in the driver’s seat, but he quickly scotched that expectation.

The doors closed and the coach nosed out into the road.

They murmured and gripped their arm rests. The doctor stared at him swaying between the two front seats and suffered the stomach-clenching realization that yes, the New Machine Jihad had risen again.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” announced Petrovitch. “Please fasten your seat belts.”