Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

Apart from that, and the absence of the dying, it was as Petrovitch remembered it: low, ramshackle shelters, mostly collapsed, made from old, wind-torn bags, pieces of crates and metal spars, and the paths twisting between them in a drunkard’s walk.

“Yeah. Follow the road straight across, and try not to contract cholera.”

Petrovitch set off at a jog, giving the rats time to skitter out of his way. Some of the shacks had been constructed on the road through the park, but the route was more or less direct.

The bridge across the black stink of the empty Serpentine was grim enough. The graded and flattened ground leading up to Lancaster Gate, with its caterpillar treadmarks and drifts of crushed white bones poking up out of the brown soil was worse.

The anonymous desperate had come to Hyde Park to lie down and die, and this was their legacy. It had enraged him while it had stood, and it retained its capacity to do so after its closure. Petrovitch considered it a selfish, stupid waste: pointless, pathetic, infantile.

It lent him more than enough energy to climb the gates on the other side of the park, vaulting the spear-shaped spikes decorating the top to land, knees bent, beside the Bayswater Road.

Miyamoto jumped down after him, and surveyed the scene. “This looks little better, Petrovitch-san.”

People were still streaming south, a formidable, moving obstacle to overcome. Outies had been reported as close as Hampstead Heath: those who were on the west side had options on where to go, but those on the east could only go one way. Tower Bridge was the lowest downstream crossing point, right in the heart of the city.

“If I was running this show, well, we wouldn’t have got to this point. But even now, someone should be in charge of traffic management.” Petrovitch pushed his glasses against his nose. “I suppose we should be grateful it hasn’t turned into a stampede.”

“Yet,” said Miyamoto. “There are reports of contact in Stratford.”

“Chyort.” Petrovitch dug in his pocket for the case that held his clip-ons. He fitted them over his glass lenses and fired up the rat.

[Moshi moshi.]

“Yeah. Need a route. There’s a barracks in West Ham Madeleine’s working out of. If you can monitor the MEA radio net, too—without letting them know you’re listening—and see if you can hear her, that’d be even better.”

“Who are you talking to?” asked Miyamoto.

“Voice-activated hatnav. With some additional, non-standard, plug-ins.”

Text started to roll out in front of his eyes: [I need some criteria: shortest, safest, fastest, or some defined mixture of those three parameters.]

“Make it the fastest.”

The AI materialized in front of the unseeing Miyamoto. [Any route, any method?]

“Yeah.”

[How are you at running along railway lines?]

“Oh, you’re joking.”

[No trains. No people. I am aware you have been promised that before: this time will be different.] The avatar, looking through the cameras on the building opposite, sized up Miyamoto. [Who is this?]

Aware that a regular hatnav couldn’t hold a conversation, let alone instigate one, Petrovitch tapped out his reply on the rat’s screen: Miyamoto—one of Sonja’s corporate samurai.

The AI’s avatar circled Miyamoto, and said approvingly: [He looks competent.]

You wish, Petrovitch typed. Now get on with it. We haven’t got time for this.

[I am—surprised is not the right word—bemused by humans’ ability to believe two contradictory views at the same time. I will have to learn how this is possible.]

He knew he’d regret it, but he asked anyway, “What the chyort are you on about?”

[You refuse to say that you love your wife. Yet every action you take shows that you do.]

Miyamoto was becoming too interested in what Petrovitch was doing. He started to crane his neck to see what was being written, and Petrovitch snapped the rat shut before he could make out a single word.

The avatar smiled; Petrovitch hated that expression, because he knew the vast intellect behind the stupid floppy hair and studied innocence had just got one over on him, and it was perversely happy about it.

“Were you doing anything I need to know about?” Miyamoto leaned closer so that Petrovitch could make out his own reflection in the dark glasses.

“No.”

The avatar strode into the crowd, turned and waved Petrovitch on. It made it look so that bodies that passed between them obscured his form: just a trick and a waste of processing time, but it was showing off.

Petrovitch put the rat back in his pocket. “We’re off again.”

“You have a way through this madness?”

“Yeah.”

Following the avatar, Petrovitch elbowed his way across the road and into the warren of sidestreets. Most traffic was sticking to the main roads, guided by herd instinct and maps which were in meltdown themselves. The maze created by the tall town houses and short straight streets must have looked baffling and frightening to the average refugee, whose only concern was to get to a bridge before it was cut.

So for Petrovitch and Miyamoto, it was easier going as they worked their way, dancing and dodging, toward Paddington. They had to cross Sussex Gardens, a rat-run from the Edgware Road that had turned into a solid mass of stalled cars and nervous people, but then they were back in the little streets in front of the station.

The avatar ran ahead, waited for them, then bounded away again, urging them on.

Praed Street was as bad as anything they’d found before. Two roads converged at the far end. It was a riot waiting to happen, and tempers were already rising as Petrovitch jumped up to a car roof and leaped across to the next.

A shout alerted him. He turned to see Miyamoto balanced on the car he’d just left. He’d drawn his sword and in one uninterrupted movement, he brought the singing edge of the blade to a halt a hair’s width from a ruddy man’s upturned snarling face, perfectly exposed beneath him.

“Gun,” called Petrovitch.

Miyamoto reached to his waist and tossed the gun over the heads of the crowd. Petrovitch caught it, and trusting that eyes were turning toward him already, fired three shots into the air.

The crack of gunfire, amplified and echoed by the glass and brickwork, achieved a collective cringe. For a moment, everyone stopped, ducked, looked for cover.

In that moment, Petrovitch was gone again: car, car, big last jump that barreled into a wheeled suitcase and the person pulling it, tumble, roll, and run down the dark service road that ran beside the concourse.

Miyamoto took his chance, too. Naked sword in front of him, he followed. One, two, three, and off into the space created by the fallen man, before chasing away after Petrovitch’s flapping coat-tails.

Behind them, the roar of shouts and screams built and spread, along with the panic and fear: Outies, in the central Metrozone. What order there had been evaporated. They left chaos in their wake.

A ccess to the railway line was rendered simple by the presence of a swathe of demolished masonry, steel and glass that angled northeast, southwest: the Chuo line, heading toward Shinjuku, in the mind of the New Machine Jihad. The lofted beams that had spanned the platforms of Paddington had been brought down, the roof laid low in a toothy jumble of monolithic slabs.

Petrovitch picked his way over the debris, trying to keep a steady pace. Miyamoto was rubble-running a little way off, gaining at times, falling behind at others. But always in the lead was the baggy-trousered avatar, untroubled by inconveniences like shifting surfaces, awkward distances and gnawing fatigue.