Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

“Perhaps you should.”

“I will not be doing so. We must ensure your wife’s safety.”

Petrovitch, hand on the door, stopped and looked at Miyamoto. “Is there something else you need to tell me?”

“Apologies, Petrovitch-san.” Miyamoto lowered his head. “My feelings are not important, but I must inform you I am compromised.”

“What the huy are you talking about?”

“I have instructions regarding your personal security,” said Miyamoto, “but if you were to meet an unfortunate end during this unwise excursion through no fault of my own, I would not be disappointed.”

Petrovitch took the opportunity to take his glasses off and rub them on the hem of his T-shirt. “When I look up pizdets in the dictionary, you know what I find?”

Miyamoto didn’t venture a reply.

“My picture. That’s what.” He hooked his glasses back over his ears and swung the door wide open. “Come on, lover-boy. You’re with me.”

T hey eyed the stream of refugees from the other side of the plate glass in the university foyer.

“This will complicate matters,” said Miyamoto.

“No shit, Sherlock.” Petrovitch tracked the movement of a woman pushing a huge chrome-ornamented pram piled high with plump plastic bin-bags. There was no evidence of a baby.

“They are all going one way. Not the direction we wish to go, either.”

“Yeah. You stating the yebani obvious is going to get really old, really quick.” Petrovitch held the door open to let one of the engineering lecturers out, wheeling a trolley stacked with taped-closed boxes. The noise poured in, the babble, the roar of people on the move. It reminded him of the old days, before the Long Night, when he was anonymous and the city sheltered him. “Let’s go.”

The only way they could make progress on the pavement was to press themselves against the walls, and even then, they had to stop for bulkier loads to pass by, or be swept backward and lose precious ground.

Petrovitch pulled Miyamoto into a doorway toward the top end of Exhibition Road.

“This is stupid.”

Miyamoto crowded in next to him and still managed to take up half the space Petrovitch did despite being of similar height and build. “You wish to abandon your plan?”

“No. Just change it.” He craned his neck over the moving crowd and eyed the traffic stop-starting down both sides of the white line. “Let’s see how good you are at keeping up.”

Petrovitch stepped out and let the press of bodies carry him away. But even as he shuffled back the way he’d come, he edged leftward toward the road. His foot fell off the curb, and he was with those traveling light, bags and backpacks only, squeezing in with the cars and vans, all heading south.

Then he sat on the bonnet of a car, and swung his legs up. Ignoring the furious driver hammering ineffectually on his horn, he walked up the windscreen to the roof and looked up the street toward Hyde Park.

The bigger vehicles were a problem. He couldn’t mount a big van or a lorry, but there was a path through that relied on switching lanes and no small dose of luck.

The car beneath him jerked forward to close with the bumper of the one in front, and Petrovitch crouched like a surfer to keep his balance.

Miyamoto appeared at his side, and thought Petrovitch needed steadying.

“Why don’t you look out for yourself?” Petrovitch rose up and, with a grimace of unexpected pain, started running.

The bodywork sounded hollow under his feet as he skipped down to the boot end and over the gap to the next car. There was a mattress tied on top—people thought they might need the strangest things—and he bounced across it, using it as a springboard to the next car in the queue.

He didn’t check behind him. Of course Miyamoto was there. The kid thought he was better than Petrovitch, more worthy than Petrovitch, and no part of him was going to let a gaijin show him up.

Petrovitch landed lightly, bracing himself with his extended fingertips. The woman behind the wheel stared at him. Every bit of space within the interior was overtaken with soft toys: it looked like she was being eaten alive by pastel-colored fur. It made the couple with the mattress look sane.

No time to wonder, though. He was up and over and confronted with his first flat-faced van. The street was supposed to be two-way traffic, but only an idiot would be going north at a time like this: both sides of the white line were stacked with a long queue of traffic, and the spaces between filled with people.

He judged the distance to the roof of the nearest car. Too far from a standing start, but neither did he want to climb down.

Miyamoto bounded by on the other side, not condescending to look back. He moved like a cat, all loose-limbed grace and confidence, as if he’d trained for this very moment.

Petrovitch growled under his breath and leaped, just as a shopping trolley rolled underneath. He used the handle as a stepping stone, planting his leading foot between the hands that steered it.

By the time he’d straightened up on the orange roof, Miyamoto was two vehicles ahead. Petrovitch set off in pursuit. Even when presented with another obstruction, in the shape of a lorry cab, he managed not to lose momentum. He pushed himself between the lines of cars, using the last of the bodywork to gain the first part of the next.

The lights at the junction cycled uselessly through the colors. Miyamoto got to them first, but only by the length of time it took Petrovitch to scramble over the last car and slide his feet to the tarmac.

“That was fun,” he said. “Let’s do it again.”

Miyamoto raised an eyebrow above his dark glasses. “Are you planning to travel like this all the way to… where?”

“West Ham. Ten k, that way.” He pointed down to Hyde Park Corner. “But there are around five million people trying to cross the Thames all at once. We have to go north to go east.”

“Across the park, then.” Miyamoto touched the hilt of his sword, protruding over his left shoulder. But he cast a glance toward the Oshicora Tower, visible in the middle distance.

“We’ll see what the Marylebone Road’s like.” With that, Petrovitch shouldered his way into the crossways traffic toward Hyde Park. Miyamoto followed, eyes fixed on Petrovitch’s flapping coat.

The park was fenced off—boarded in like a construction site with painted wooden panels twice his height. In amongst the warning signs nailed to the outside were biohazard symbols in stark black and white. The gates themselves were chained and locked as well as covered in plastic sheeting.

Miyamoto drew his sword and slipped the blade between the gate and plastic. Then he drew his arm up. The black iron showed through as the plastic parted. The ornate curls and leaves had been designed for show, not security. Petrovitch jumped up, dug his boot in a gap and clambered up until he reached the top, using one of the gateposts as a handhold.

He turned and slid down the other side, to find Miyamoto staring at him through the bars.

“What?”

The corner of Miyamoto’s mouth twisted. “You are better at this than I thought you would be.”

“I can piss higher up the wall than you can, too. Get your zhopu over here.”

Miyamoto resheathed his katana and scaled the gate, hand-over-hand, dropping lightly to the ground next to Petrovitch. He looked across the gray wasteland over the top of his shades.

Yellow diggers huddled together on the north side, and the first attempts at bulldozing the shanty-town had radiated from there, no more now than a sea of compacted mud. The Serpentine had been drained and dredged by a bucket-line, a crane parked over at the east end of the lake.