Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

Some of the train doors were open; the footplate was chest height, and Petrovitch stealthily eased himself aboard, crawling across the floor at the entrance until he could swing his legs up and in. He peered over the bottom of the internal door, through the smeary glass.

He could count about a dozen people, and supposed there might be a dozen more. Someone was standing in the aisle, their back to him, and he appeared to be wearing a dressing gown. A checkered, brown dressing gown, with a plaited cord tied around the waist.

Petrovitch stood up, and found the door handle. His first attempt at opening it failed, because he didn’t appreciate that it slid to one side and wasn’t hinged.

By the time he finally made a gap wide enough to squeeze through, most of the occupants of the train were standing, all were staring, and a hushed, pregnant silence had descended over them.

“Hey,” said Petrovitch.

A man in a white coat pushed past the dressing-gown wearer—though almost everyone was in some form of nightwear—and brandished a syringe.

“No closer,” he warned, then ruined the effect by adding, “please.”

Petrovitch held up the gun in his hand. “I don’t need to get closer. Hang on.” He leaned to one side, trying to see the far end of the carriage. “Miyamoto? Miyamoto?”

Heads turned, and there was a terse “What?”

“Put the yebani sword away, grab one of those lantern things and go and get Lucy.”

Miyamoto stepped out of the shadows and sheathed his blade. He snatched one of the little shining globes off the table between two elderly women and retraced his steps back into the darkness, carrying the light with him.

Petrovitch started to put the gun away, then thought better of it. “You first.” He didn’t want a needlestick, accidental or otherwise, and he could guarantee that anything inside the syringe wasn’t going to be good for him.

The man in the white coat crouched down and put the hypodermic on the floor, and Petrovitch waved them all back while he retrieved it. The liquid inside was clear, with tiny crystalline bubbles clinging to the meniscus.

He put it up on the luggage rack out of harm’s way. Everyone was waiting for something, anything, to happen.

Petrovitch lowered his gun, dangling it in his hand. The white coat had an ID badge clipped to the pen-filled breast pocket. He couldn’t make out the name in the gloom, and assumed the man’s profession. “What the chyort are you all doing here?”

“You’re not,” said the doctor, “you’re not one of them?”

“Despite appearances to the contrary, no. You shouldn’t be here. You should be south.”

“This,” and he balled his fists in evident frustration, “this is as far as we could get.”

His patients—his charges—nodded sadly.

“We had a bus,” said a man with the first flush of white stubble patterning his jowls; “we had one and we got it took off us. Turfed us out in the street, they did.”

Another shrugged. “What did they expect us to do? Walk?”

Petrovitch grabbed the doctor by the collar and dragged him away toward the door.

“ Yobany stos, man. Walking would have been better, whatever speed they could have managed. You could have made it to the Thames by now.”

“I’ve got patients with emphysema, angina, diabetes, hip replacements, open leg ulcers, cataracts, glaucoma. I had to make a decision: yes, a couple of them could have made it. But we decided to stay together.” The doctor narrowed his eyes. “Don’t I know you?”

“Yeah, I’m a yebani celebrity.”

“The sweary physics guy on the news. But…” He scratched his ear hard. “Look, I don’t care why you’re here. What are our chances?”

Petrovitch saw a light appear at the far end of the carriage, and Lucy stumble along the aisle toward them.

“The Outie advance has gone over your heads. We’re Outzone now, and everything that means.”

“Then what’s that pounding?”

“EDF artillery. Too little, too late. We’re facing an army you can measure in the hundreds of thousands, and no one’s seemed to realize that a few well-placed HE rounds isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference. Unless I can persuade them otherwise, the EDF will hold on as long as they can, then they and MEA will blow the bridges and abandon the north. That means you, and everyone else left in it.”

The doctor’s face twitched.

Petrovitch dropped his gun in his pocket and moved back to accommodate Lucy. “Whichever way you look at it, you’re pretty much hosed. You’re in the middle of occupied territory. Even if the Outies don’t come and find you, you’re going to have to leave here eventually. Unless you’re intending to euthanize the lot of them.”

When the idea wasn’t immediately rejected out of hand, Petrovitch felt himself flush cold.

“Tell me you didn’t bring them down here to die.”

“Then what,” said the doctor, tight-lipped, “do you suggest I do?”

“What?” said Lucy, face turning from one man to the other. “What’s going on?”

“I,” said Petrovitch, and swallowed. He looked at the lined, tired faces and the rheumy eyes reflected in the cold blue light. “No. I’ve just about had it. Huy tebe v’zhopu! This has gone on long enough. We’re turning into a bunch of yebani savages, and it’s about time someone stood up, extended their middle finger and screamed ‘Zhri govno i zdohni!’ ”

“Sam,” said Lucy, with an embarrassed smile, “actually, you are screaming whatever it is.”

“Good.” He gathered up the front of the doctor’s white coat in his tightening hand and pulled him forward until they were nose to nose. “You will not—and I’ll repeat that—not hurt a single one of these people. Do you understand me? Even if you kill yourself afterward, I will find some way to drag you back to life and make you suffer like no one has ever suffered before.”

Petrovitch let go and wiped his hand free of any contagion. Again, all eyes were on him, and he snorted.

“Miyamoto?” he called. He could see the man’s shoulders slump in the shadows. “Yeah, you’re with me. We’re going to find some sky. And then,” he muttered so that only Lucy could really hear, “I’m going to throw myself into the open gates of hell and damn them to do their worst.”

He spun around, his ragged coat-tails flying in streamers behind him, and stalked away back out into the darkness.

W hat is it that you are intending to do?”

Petrovitch stamped toward the tunnel’s exit and refused to answer.

“You must tell me.” Miyamoto caught him up, put a hand on his shoulder and spun him around. “What madness affects you now?”

“I,” said Petrovitch, “don’t have to tell you anything. Anything at all. Your job is to keep me alive. That’s it. My job seems to be considerably more complicated, so why don’t you shut up and let me get on with it?”

When he made to turn away again, Miyamoto could barely restrain himself.

“No. No: you cannot do this. If you die—when you die—I will be blamed. Miss Sonja will send me away. If I am to keep you safe, you must reconsider this madness.” He could think of nothing else to say. “I beg you.”

Petrovitch stood with his back to him. “You’re putting too much store in a relationship that’s a figment of your imagination. Sonja is using your devotion to her like a queen would a knight. Wake up, man! She doesn’t want you.”

“No, she wants you.”

The corner of Petrovich’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “She can’t have me. I’m promised to another.”