Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

Petrovitch wasn’t inclined to move. He sat, drumming the desktop with a fingernail tattoo, while Dominguez put his bag down on a bench.

“We have moved the mass balance downstairs, as you requested,” he said.

Petrovitch looked around. He finally noticed that the machine had gone.

“Yeah. So you have.” He sat up and stilled his hands. “Look, sit down, both of you. I think I do know what I’m going to do next.”

They pulled up chairs and waited expectantly. Petrovitch wondered what their reaction might be.

“We need a break from all this. We’re not going to get any proper work done around here for a few days anyway, until the dust settles and things get back to normal. So: we’re going to do something different. A gedankenversuch.”

“A what?” asked Dominguez.

“Thought experiment,” murmured McNeil, then to Petrovitch: “Into what?”

“Society. I want you to go and design me a human society. Not a utopia: one that acknowledges its faults and includes mechanisms to correct itself. One that’s better than the one we have now. Info-rich. Post-scarcity. Knowledge as currency. Stuff like that.” Petrovitch looked at their bemused faces. “Can you do it?”

Dominguez frowned his heavy brows. “I suppose so. Can I ask why? Is this part of our training?”

Petrovitch sat back, lacing his fingers together behind his head. “Yeah. It is. It’s a mistake to be an expert in just one narrow field. You need to be able to read widely and apply your smarts to any problem. Let’s see how you deal with this one.”

“You said a few days.” McNeil leaned forward. Her interest and enthusiasm had been piqued, and her usually pale cheeks were slightly flushed. “How long do we have?”

“What’s today?”

“Tuesday,” she said.

“Friday, then. On my desk by Friday.” He got up, pushing the chair back with a flick of his knees. “Don’t be late.”

H e’d barely got back to his own office when his leg rang. He let it trill while he put the kettle on—he’d somehow missed out on McNeil’s offer—then delved inside the pocket.

It wasn’t her, but he did recognize the caller.

“ Yobany stos, Chain. You’re not even supposed to have this number.”

“Very slick, Petrovitch. I particularly liked the stream of invective you launched at the bloke who asked ‘Dude, where’s my flying car?’ And you wonder why the public look on science news as irrelevant?”

“No, I don’t wonder at all. It’s because every last one of you enjoys wallowing in pig-shit ignorance. Why did you call? I think I said everything I wanted to last night.”

“There’ve been developments.”

“Tell you what, Chain. I’m a physicist. You’re a MEA intelligence officer. I won’t ask you to reshape human destiny, and you can stop trying to get me to do your job for you.”

“We’ve found a prowler.”

Petrovitch tucked the phone in the angle between his shoulder and his ear. He poured his coffee dregs into the pot plant and hunted for the jar of freeze-dried granules. “I’m assuming that word means something special.”

“A sort of robot. It was active, and armed.”

“A Jihadi leftover?” He shook a tablespoon of coffee into his mug and stood over the kettle, waiting for it to boil.

“Don’t think so. There are reasons to suspect otherwise.”

“And you’re going to tell me what those reasons are, or do I have to guess?”

“The Jihad made things out of what came to hand. This was meant.”

Finally, steam started to rise from the spout. He flicked the off switch and poured the water out. “This is still not my problem, Chain.”

“It’s American.”

“Yeah? It has the stars and stripes painted on the outside?”

“I think you’re missing the point.”

Petrovitch cleaned a spoon on his trousers. “Go on, then. Tell me the point.” He took the mug back to his desk and stirred as he listened.

“Do you know how those things work? Short-range radio control. Doesn’t have to be line of sight, but the operator isn’t normally more than a couple of kilometers away. It killed two of the team that stumbled across it before they managed to frag it with a grenade. The resulting explosion killed another of them. This was in the Outzone, on the southern fringe of Epping Forest.”

“Okay.”

“Is that all you’re going to say?” said Chain.

“Pretty much. I’ll concede that it looks like the Yanks are in the Metrozone, for whatever reason. Have you talked to them about it yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Petrovitch turned sideways to the desk and stretched out. “This, all of this, is stupid. They know you know. They’re waiting to see what you do. You can join in their game and be all sneaky, or you can play it straight. Someone—presumably an American agent—killed three MEA soldiers using this robot. The only guarantee you have is that they’ll think they can do whatever the huy they like if you don’t complain loud and long right now.”

“If I do anything,” said Chain, “they’ll pull back and have another go with a different team in a month’s time. I need to catch them red-handed.”

“No, no you don’t, you balvan ! This is Oshicora all over again, except this time it’s you versus the United States government.” Petrovitch was on his feet, yelling down the phone. “I learned not to trust you last time. Me, Maddy, Pif, Sonja—if you won’t keep us safe, I will. Tell the Yanks to back off, or I’ll find a way to do it myself.”

He ended the call, and for good measure, threw the phone across the room.

He scalded himself on his coffee, forgetting how hot it would be. Pressing his thumb hard against his lips, he felt the heat spread.

Then Petrovitch picked up the phone again and dialed Chain.

“If you wanted something, why didn’t you ask?”

“Because I’m embarrassed,” came the reply. “We employ forensic specialists, we pay them good money to work for MEA, and sometimes, just sometimes, it’d be really great if they actually turned up to do an honest day’s labor. I have the parts we retrieved from the scene before we were chased off by the Outies. They’re laid out in a warehouse, and I can’t get any usable information from it because I don’t know how.”

There was a blister forming, and there was nothing Petrovich could do about it. Ice would be good, but he knew there was nothing below zero in the building other than cryogenic nitrogen.

“I ought to tell you to poshol nahuj. ”

“But not today.”

“No. Not today. Where is this warehouse?”

“The old train shed at King’s Cross.”

“And how many people know about this?” Petrovitch picked up his coat and shrugged it on, one arm at a time. “Because if it’s more than you and me, I’d bet my babushka’s life the Yanks know it, too.”

“Maybe half a dozen people. I have a chain of command I have to inform.”

“So we’d better get down there before the evidence disappears. Meet me out front in five.”

Petrovitch sat on the steps, waiting. A huge four-wheel-drive car—more a small lorry than anything a private citizen would think necessary—put two tires up on the curb and the darkened window hummed down.

“Hey. Good to see you still have the coat.”

Petrovitch got to his feet and walked across the pavement. “Grigori? Yobany stos! What happened to the Zil?”

Grigori grinned apologetically. “Comrade Marchenkho managed to get a UN reconstruction contract. We all have these fancy autos now.” He slapped his hand on the outside of the door, leaving his fingerprints in the dirt. “Armored. Very tough.”