Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

“He. What?” Both words were pronounced separately, indignantly.

“I kind of guessed as much. I’ll leave him to you, shall I?”

“How. Dare. He.”

“Maddy, people are going to figure that now you’re not a nun, they can get in your pants.”

“But. I’m. Married!”

“They probably also figure I’m not going to be much competition, either.” Petrovitch shrugged again. “You’re going to have to get used to the attention. I’m going to have to get used to it. We’ll manage.”

Her face, previously white with pain and fatigue, had colored up. “How can you be so calm? How can you just stand there and be so matter of fact?”

“Because in the four months we’ve been married, you haven’t got ugly. I know you’re a mass of neuroses and insecurities about your looks, but you turn heads when you walk down the street—and it’s not because people think you’re a freak. I know that when they see me next to you, they’re saying ‘How the huy did a pidaras like him end up with a woman like that?’ And…” He turned away. “I wake up every morning and wonder that myself.”

Madeleine’s shoulders, tense before, slowly slumped down. “Sam,” she started. Something distracted her, and Petrovitch looked round to see the technician from earlier.

“What?” he said.

“Can I,” she said hesitantly, glancing between him and Madeleine, “can I have your autograph?” She brought her hands from behind her back. There was a pen in one, a spiral-bound notebook in the other.

Petrovitch raised his eyes at the ceiling. “You really picked your moment,” he said. Then he relented, took the biro and scrawled his name at a slant across the page. He tacked on the zero potential Schrödinger, and a smiley face. When he handed it back, she almost curtsied to him before running back up the corridor, notebook clutched like it was first prize.

“Sam?”

He held her helmet to his chest and flexed his fingers against its cold ceramic surface. “It’s not important.”

“What’s not important?”

He started for the exit again, and this time forced her to follow. She repeated her question to the back of his head.

“I didn’t want to mention it. You know: yeah, so what if your long-lost mother just tried to kill you? I don’t care how upset you are because I made gravity today.” He slid his glasses up his nose and tightened his lips. “I’m not like that. Not anymore.”

The news was still playing on the wall in the foyer. He’d overtaken both Florida and Paris, and coverage was pretty much universal. One side of the screen was the loop from the camera phone. The other was a scientist he vaguely recognized talking animatedly about how the future had changed irrevocably.

Madeleine trailed after him, and she stumbled as she saw her husband declare to the world just what he thought of Stanford University.

“That’s you.”

He went back for her, took her arm and guided her outside. “You get to see me all the time.”

She tried to re-enter the foyer. “You were on the news.”

“Yes. And in twelve hours, they’ll have forgotten all about me.”

“But shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, somewhere else?” She looked over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of the rapidly shifting images. “You did it. You made it work.”

“You called me. I came.” Petrovitch clenched his jaw, then forcibly relaxed it. “I thought that was the deal. No matter what we were doing, if one of us wanted the other, they’d come. No questions, no ‘I’m a little bit busy right now.’ That was what we promised each other. Or have I got it completely wrong? Probably better I know now than find out later.”

She dropped the armor and enfolded him in her arms, pressing him against her and not letting him go, even though it had to be hurting her.

“Thank you,” she said.

Petrovitch could hear the beat of her heart, strong and steady. “That’s okay,” he mumbled.

S he was sleeping in the bed, and Petrovitch was sitting at his screen, wearing a glove to gesture to the images on it. The crest of the news wave had reached east Asia, where Chinese technocrats in their glass towers and Mongolian yak-herders living in yurts were having breakfast to his sweary cry of triumph.

His phone rattled against his thigh again—and it couldn’t be Maddy this time either. He slipped it from his pocket and wearily thumbed the button.

“Doesn’t anybody use email these days?”

“Congratulations, Petrovitch.” There was a pause. “I can’t hear the champagne corks popping.”

“If you thought you could use me to get into a party, you don’t really know me at all.”

Harry Chain cleared his throat noisily. “So you’re bunkered down in Clapham A, waiting for the storm to die down. Perhaps you should have chosen a quieter career.”

“Quieter?” Petrovitch swung his bare feet up on the desk. “Quieter than high-energy physics? Yeah, we’re all yebani celebrities these days. Why did you call?”

“Apart from to say well done? How’s Madeleine?”

He looked at her reflection in the screen, the long curve of her spine and the shadows formed by her waist. “She’s fine. A bit shook up.” He didn’t tell him about her mother.

“Look, Petrovitch; we need to talk. Not over the phone, either.”

“About…?”

“Really not over the phone. I can come to you. Half an hour, forty minutes.”

“I don’t want to leave her, but I don’t want you coming to the domik either. You know where Wong’s is?”

Petrovitch heard the tap of a stylus against a screen.

“I do now,” said Chain. “Half an hour? Please?”

“You’re buying.”

“I always do.” The connection clicked off.

Petrovitch slid the phone back into his pocket and turned in his chair. Madeleine was still but for the slight rise and fall of her rib cage. Her hair was coiled on the pillow. Her hips were shrouded by a sheet. The expanse of pale skin between was perfect, unmarked by scar or blemish.

She was a thing of wonder, and she was in his bed. He shivered, even though he wasn’t cold.

His boots were by the door, his coat on a stick-on hanger next to it. He got ready as quietly as he could, but then came the point that he had to wake her. He kissed her shoulder, and waited for her to stir.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey yourself. What’s time?”

“Eight thirty. In the evening.”

Her eyes, large and unfocused, narrowed. “You’re going out?”

“I’m going to Wong’s. Harry Chain called. Said it was…” he shrugged, “he didn’t say what it was, but that in itself is worrying.”

“Okay.” Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she was instantly asleep again.

He took a moment to inspect the bruising that was seeping in a yellow and purple tide across her front; even her breasts, which were still as magnificent as he remembered them from that morning.

She’d need stronger painkillers than the pitiful bottle dispensed to her by the hospital.

He reluctantly turned away and zipped open a holdall on the floor. In Madeleine’s methodical way, each item inside had its own ziploc bag. He rummaged through the CS spray, the sheathed knives, the taser and assorted coshes for the Ceska. He slipped the pistol into his hand and went back in for the almost toy-sized bullets. He tidied away when he was done.

He threw on his coat, dropped the gun into his pocket, and looked back as he started to unlock the door. She’d still be there when he got back, which was in itself a reason not to be too long.