Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

“That’s the morphine talking.”

“No. No, it’s not. Do you suppose the caterpillar has any idea what’s going to happen to it? Does it dream of flying? Does it dream of drinking nectar? And look, a pupa is such a weird thing, just a sack full of chemicals. You can crush it and get nothing but goo. That’s what we are now. Pupating. I need to buy us enough time so we can hatch. A butterfly, a little butterfly. Babochka. ”

One thread was tied off, another patch of embroidery begun, and Petrovitch felt the overwhelming need to talk.

“I see it sometimes. When I close my eyes. I see it as if it was already there. We’re not gods, we’re just people, but we have such vision and drive as to make us seem otherworldly. We have technology like fairy tales have magic. We can do anything we put our minds to. Why can’t others see it as clearly as I can?”

“Because we’re not delusional?”

“I don’t have to be there. I don’t have to be part of it. It’ll have a momentum of its own. All it’ll take is one push at the right time, and that right time is right now. But it needs me to live long enough to give it that one last shove, get it moving in the right direction. Then it doesn’t matter. No one will be able to stop it. Destiny. The future. I can pass it on. The caterpillar dies, the butterfly lives.”

“This would be easier if you shut up.”

“We’ve spent too long here. Trapped by our fears and our blindness. We have wings. We can fly. Armageddon was over twenty years ago, and we’re still shut in our cages and we’ve grown used to it, like the frog in a pan of water brought to the boil. Those days are over. Nothing can ever be the same again. Slow death or immanent glory. That’s what tomorrow brings.”

“Just. Stop. Speaking. It’s distracting me.”

“You don’t understand. You can’t. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. It’s beautiful. It’s worth dying for.”

The sewing became more angry and violent. Petrovitch felt himself as a piece of cloth, roughly handled and roughly stitched.

“There is,” said the doctor, “so little worth dying for. I only stayed because I couldn’t go. I was going to leave them here, promise them I’d be back, but I left it too late. You, you bastard, you make promises and you keep them. You even bring a fucking coach. The only reason I’m still here rather than driving my way out is because I’m scared. Scared of the Outies. If I thought it would do any good, I would abandon you all to save myself. Got that? And that’s what every other person in the Metrozone would do. So screw you and your madness. I don’t care about your dreams or even about tomorrow.” He made one last cut with the scissors. “That’s it. I’m out of thread.”

Petrovitch blinked in the blue light, and moved his hands to underneath his body. He pushed himself up to his knees and held on to the furniture while his ears roared and his vision grayed.

“A hand here?”

The doctor pulled him up. Pins and needles, dull aches, the sensation of his circulation returning—it was happening to someone else. They were definitely his trousers lying on the floor of the carriage, though.

The doctor packed his bag while Petrovitch worked out which way was up. He stooped to pick up his ruined coat, and as slowly as he moved, the world turned just a little faster. He dragged his arms through the sleeves and shrugged the leather around his shoulders.

“It doesn’t cover your arse, let alone anything else.”

Petrovitch checked that the gun was still there, and the knife. Lucy had the rat and the info shades. “It has pockets. That’s all I need it to do.”

He swayed toward the door and looked over the edge of the step into the darkness. He had to try and shake the out-of-body feeling: it mattered what happened to his meat, because it carried his mind.

So he lowered himself down to the track and made sure that he was heading in the right direction. The doctor soon fell into step beside him, lantern swinging in his free hand.

“Do you have a plan?”

“Probably,” said Petrovitch, who was concerned more with putting one foot in front of the other. “Straight down the middle, lots of smoke.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“The Outies’ front line is between us and my forces…”

“Your forces?”

“My forces,” said Petrovitch emphatically. “By the time we get there, it’ll be close-quarters urban warfare. So I’m just going to get the coach to drive straight through until we’re safe. No one’s going to pay us any attention because they’ll all be too busy not getting killed.”

“So how big is your army?”

“I don’t know. It’ll either be big enough, or too small. One person might make the difference, and we’ll never know one way or the other. I’d be happy with a hundred thousand. Happier with two. Weapons are a problem: no way we can get hold of that many firearms and train people with them in time.” He stumbled over some loose ballast. “We’ll have superior tactics, better comms, and intel like no other army in the history of warfare. They have numbers, the morale and the experience. I still think we can win.”

Lucy was waiting again at the tunnel entrance, though this time looking in rather than out. The info shades were perched on the bridge of her nose, and she plucked them off.

“We’re ready—everyone’s on the bus and Michael says we should really be going in the next five minutes.” She looked uncertainly at him, and his bare legs. “You were ages.”

“Yeah. I was getting patched up.”

“Where…” and she pointed. “Where are your trousers?”

“There wasn’t much left of them by the time we were done.” He put his hand out for the rat, which she duly passed across. “You don’t have to look.”

She blushed, but she kept her eyes on him as he rethreaded the connector around his neck and toward the back of his head. He fumbled the plug not once, but twice. He was about to try for a third time when she took over, slotting the silver spike home and giving it the required halftwist to lock it into place.

“Thanks.”

The AI took off its kevlar helmet and dangled it from its hand. [She is right about the five minutes. The push toward the unconquered Inzone is reaching a critical phase. We are engaged on all fronts from the West Way through to Whitechapel.]

“How’s Sonja doing?” Petrovitch walked down the tracks into the daylight, examining the map as he went. He could see where they were weakest, where their enemy was strongest. It didn’t make for comforting viewing.

[The EDF troops are utilizing your fluid defensive strategy. Where they follow your plan, Outzone attrition rates are high for few friendly losses. Where the nikkeijin are engaged, they are reluctant to retreat when they believe they are winning.]

“Then they get cut off and overwhelmed, and she loses whatever arms they had. Chyort. Where’s it worst?”

[The most intense fighting is taking place between King’s Cross and City Road. But it is Tower Bridge that may fall first.]

“Pull our people back. No pitched battles yet, because we’ll lose. Wait until the Outies are on the first section of the bridge, then blow it. Send the order.”

[If we do that, you need a way to hold the next upstream crossing. Or the next.]

“They’re all expendable until we get to Waterloo. Every time the Outies get their foot on a bridge, take it out.”

[That is not a long-term solution.]

“They’re all pressing for the river. Let them. We hold the ground immediately to the north, and their flank becomes increasingly exposed the further they go looking for a way over the Thames. When they reach Waterloo we hit them with everything—all our available assets. Three sides at once.”