Theories of Flight

8

It was the other way round this time, with Petrovitch sitting in the waiting room, bandaged and drugged, dressed in disposable paper pajamas, waiting for a shadow to fall across the glass panel and the door to open.

He had no rosary beads to click the time away. Instead, he lay back in his seat, eyes closed, realizing that the world had changed so much, so quickly, and that he really wasn’t in control of it anymore.

The door didn’t so much open as implode. He knew who it was. He could smell her fear and outrage on the gust of air that preceded her.

“You idiot!” She balanced on the balls of her feet, deciding whether to kiss him or kick him through the wall. She did neither. She was carrying a fresh T-shirt and a new pair of trousers for him, and she threw the bundle at him at full force. “What were you thinking? You could have been killed!”

He hadn’t been thinking, of course. Nothing but blind revenge, the desire to make someone pay.

“You’re not to do that ever again, do you understand me? Never again. Leave it to someone else, leave it to someone who has a gram of common sense, someone who’s paid to take the risks, someone who’s actually trained to weigh up those risks and make some sort of rational decision, rather than you because you’re not any of those things. What were you even doing there in the first place?”

There was a lull in the storm of emotion that was Madeleine.

He opened his eyes with difficulty. The right side of his face was numb—injectable painkillers for his cracked cheekbone—and the doctor had told him not to smile for at least a month. That was one instruction he was probably going to be able to follow without difficulty.

She was standing over him, hands on hips, looking righteously angry and utterly magnificent in her gray MEA fatigues. Her skin was even paler than usual, and she was trembling.

“I cannot protect you if you do stuff like this,” she said. “I cannot save you if I am not there.”

Petrovitch moved his clothes to one side and wiped some drool away from the corner of his mouth. “Chain called me.”

“And you had to go.” Her jaw set hard. “I am going to kill him. Where is he?”

“I don’t know. I imagine they’re still trying to cut the roof off his car so they can get his body out.” He shrugged the best he could. “Someone beat you to it.”

The fight fell from her like a cut curtain. She sat down next to him, making the chair look child-sized.

“What?”

“He called me. Said he had some bits and pieces from a U.S. military robot, but needed them looked over to make sure they were genuine. There was no one his end who’d turn out, so I said yes.” He chewed at his lip, tasted antiseptic, and grimaced. It hurt, in a good way.

“You could have—should have—said no. He had no business asking you.”

“When they come for us in the night, to try and take us away to wherever it is they take people like us to torture for what we know, we’ll discover it’s been our business all along. Except it’ll be too late to do anything about it. I need to know who they are, and what they’re planning, because if I do, I can send them home with their tails between their legs.”

She put her arm around him, her hand resting against the shoulder which had taken the brunt of the shotgun recoil. The paper clothes he was wearing rustled.

“I didn’t believe him,” he said. “I didn’t trust him. Maybe…”

“He was just using you, as usual. You didn’t even like him.”

“Yeah. I know. And now he’s gone, I can’t even tell him what a pizdobol he was.” Petrovitch leaned in against her, resting his head in the angle between her head and chest. “I knew something was wrong. There should have been a guard on the gate. He wanted to go on, I wanted to wait. So he did his thing, and I did mine. He was right in front of me, Maddy.”

“He could have waited, just like you.”

“I should have made him.”

“When did he ever listen to you? He always did what he wanted.” She pulled him close. “Stupid man.”

“Ow,” mumbled Petrovitch.

“Sorry,” she said. She didn’t let go.

They sat like that for a while, listening to the little sounds each other made. The door opened again, and there was a man in uniform: jacket; crisp, white shirt; tie knot snug against his throat; trousers that could hold a crease in a hurricane. He was carrying a sidearm at his waist and a clear plastic bag in his hand.

“Apologies for the intrusion. Sergeant Petrovitch, Doctor Petrovitch?”

They looked up.

“Captain Daniels. Intelligence Division. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Loss?” said Petrovitch, sitting up. “Yeah. That. So am I.”

Daniels held up the bag he was holding. “We need to keep this as evidence, but we can release it to you later, if you want.”

Madeleine took the bag and examined the knife inside. “Where did you get this?”

“The surgeon took it out of your husband’s chest, Sergeant.”

She scowled at Petrovitch, and handed the bagged knife back. “It’s a Ka-bar. American.”

“They make them in Taiwan,” said Petrovitch, putting his hand on the dressing over his heart. “Could have come from anywhere.”

“No, it couldn’t,” she said. “It could only have come from my fool of a husband, who in ten years’ time will have to have had everything important replaced with plastic and metal.”

She stood up, forcing the captain back, and resumed her hands-on-hips accusation of Petrovitch.

“Anything else you need to tell me? Lost an eye, a leg? Been fitted with a robotic spleen? Because they’ve already replaced your brain with a fifty-cent pocket calculator.”

“Depends,” said Petrovitch.

“On what?”

“On how much they told you.” He looked over the top of his glasses. “Do we have to do this now?”

“Then when? I don’t see you doing anything else important right now—unless you’ve arranged another press conference to hurl abuse at.”

“Perhaps I should come back later,” ventured Daniels.

“No, we’re done here. You’re supposed to tell me everything, Sam. Everything.”

She stormed out, leaving Petrovitch with his head in his hands.

“That went well,” he said. “What can I do for you, Captain?”

“I need to ask you some questions. Are you sure this is a good time?”

“Yeah. She’s right: I’m not doing anything else, so questions are fine. I’ll do what I can. Can I just ask you one first?”

Daniels pointed to the seat vacated by Madeleine, and Petrovitch nodded his assent. The captain sat down smartly, back ramrod straight.

“How much trouble am I in? If the guy I killed was just a regular citizen who liked dressing up as a ninja, I’m screwed.”

“If that was the case,” said Daniels, “you’d be under arrest by now.”

“I’m supposed to be smart. Everyone tells me so. I could’ve thrown it all away.” Petrovitch scrubbed at his scalp with his fingernails. “I think I have some apologies to make.”

Daniels’ face twitched. “He doesn’t appear on the Metrozone database. Most likely an Outie, judging from his appearance.”

“Good job I didn’t shoot him in the head, then.”

“Quite. You were suspicious?”

“I’m a street kid. I know how people behave when they’re scared, surprised, shocked. This man was too calm, like he knew what had happened, like he’d made it happen. It was just wrong.”

“You chased him.”

“And he ran. I looked like govno and I was carrying a pushka. I would’ve run from me, too, though I like to think I would have got away.” Petrovitch shifted in his chair. The pain was starting to seep through the haze of morphine.

“You didn’t think that someone who leaped from tall buildings was someone you should stay away from?”

“Yeah. Well. It was a little late for that. I was committed.”

Daniels kept his hands on his knees. He didn’t record any of Petrovitch’s answers, merely soaked them up like a sponge.

“You were with Major Chain at his request, yes?”

“Yeah. He called me. Said there were no tech guys around.”

“Is it something he did often?”

“No. No, he didn’t.”

“So why this time?”

Petrovitch shrugged. “Desperation. He was in a hurry. Couldn’t wait. That’s why he died in the explosion and I didn’t.”

“So how did you and the major know each other?”

It was time to start lying. He could do it, as natural as breathing, even to the urbane Captain Daniels.

“I was a witness, one of his old cases from back when he was plain old Detective Inspector Chain. Nothing ever came of it, but we’d talk every couple of weeks.” Petrovitch pushed his glasses toward the bridge of his nose. “He was checking up on me, I suppose.”

“You obviously made a big impression on him,” said Daniels.

Petrovitch gave a momentary frown. “Why d’you say that?”

“He made you his next of kin.” Daniels lost his composure for the first time, and sounded genuinely surprised. “Didn’t you know?”

“No. No, I didn’t. Why didn’t the old kozel say anything?” Petrovitch inspected his bandaged palms. “What does that mean, next of kin?”

“It means he nominated you to receive any outstanding pay, in-service benefits. That sort of thing. Human Resources will tell you more.” Daniels reclaimed his self-control. “There should be enough to pay for a funeral, at least.”

“Hah,” said Petrovitch mirthlessly. “So that’s what he was after: mourners. You see, Captain, there’s no one else. No one to mark the passing of Harry Chain but me. No friends, no family. That’s what a lifetime of pissing people off leads to.”

He levered himself to his feet, the sudden surge of blood to his extremities making everything tingle. His face was frozen, his shoulder one big bruise, his hands and knees scrubbed raw and clean with only a layer of vat skin beneath the bandages. There was a hole in his chest that went all the way down to a notch on the surface of his heart, and that meant yet another scar on the road-map that was his ribcage.

He paced the floor, working the life back into himself.

“Do you know what it was he wanted you to look at?” asked Daniels.

“Don’t you lot talk to each other?”

“Of course. I wanted to know if the major had told you.”

“Yeah, he told me.”

“Did you believe him?”

Petrovitch was flushing out the drugs from his system, feeling sharper by the minute. “No, of course not. I was going along to prove to him all he had were a couple of windscreen wiper motors and a bent aerial. Then some govnosos Outie takes out half the district and Chain goes to his grave thinking he was right.”

“So you don’t buy the CIA story?”

“No,” said Petrovitch. “Do you?”

“I couldn’t possibly say. Classified.” Daniels was nowhere near as good at lying as Petrovitch. “You also need to remember that Major Chain was in breach of protocol when he talked to you.”

“Yeah. Not a word.”

“Thank you for your time, Doctor Petrovitch.” Daniels adjusted his cuffs and stood, remembering to pick up the bagged knife as he did so. “I expect I’ll see you again when you come to collect Major Chain’s personal effects. Or we can courier them to you, whichever you prefer.”

Petrovitch affected a moment’s thought. “I’ll come and get them. The least I can do, I guess.”

Daniels extended his hand, and Petrovitch shook it gingerly. “Get well soon, Doctor.”

“Thanks for not arresting me.”

“These are difficult times for us all. If only everyone was as civic-minded as you.”

Petrovitch suppressed his snort of derision until he was alone. Daniels didn’t fool him, and he wondered if he fooled anyone. The uniform might work on some people, but not him: he’d had nothing but trouble from men—always men—strutting around as if they were on parade.

The man he’d killed wasn’t an Outie. No chance whatsoever, even discounting the satellite gear and the stealth suit, or the coincidence that the one building he’d bombed was the one where Chain had stashed the prowler components. It had been his teeth. They’d been even, white, perfect, glowing while bared in a feral snarl in the semi-darkness. No Outie, and precious few Metrozone dwellers, had teeth that good.

He’d bet good money that Daniels was running a gene assay right now, checking for military-grade bio-hacks, and that he thought the CIA were odds-on favorites for killing Harry Chain.

Petrovitch got his clothes on, and rescued his boots and coat. His rat was still in his pocket, along with the other bits and pieces he kept there. Not like last time. His fingers wouldn’t lace his boots, and he ended up tucking the loose ends inside.

Madeleine was sitting in the reception area, counting her beads while having one eye on the television screen. She stopped clicking and tucked them away as he slopped closer.

“I would pull you up,” he said, “except I’m more likely to rip both my arms out of their sockets.”

She chewed at her lip. “I don’t want to lose you, just when I’ve found you.”

“Yeah. It was crazy. I should never have done it. That I got away with it doesn’t excuse anything. Sorry.”

“And it won’t happen again?” She fixed him with a needle-like stare.

He blew out his breath in a thin stream. “Slight problem with that.” He looked around: there were other people present, and what he wanted to say wasn’t for public consumption. He did notice that he’d fallen further down the news cycle: the morning’s bombing had knocked him lower. “Can we go and find something to eat? I need to tell you everything.”