Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

Madeleine toyed with the strap on her helmet, and made no effort to put it on. “If, if you want, I’ll come by tonight. Just for a while.”

“Maddy, it’s where you live. You don’t need my permission.”

“It’ll be late.”

“I’m sure the doorman will let you in whatever time.”

“You have a doorman?”

“Of course I don’t. The place is deserted, but for us.” He rubbed the lines in the center of his forehead. “Just come when you’re ready.”

She nodded, and checked her phone for messages. There were a lot of them, and some of them needed to be dealt with. She put her helmet on. “Do you want a lift?”

“You’ve got more important things to do. I’m fine walking.”

She covered her disappointment by straddling her bike with a creak of leather. “I’ll see you later, then.”

“Yeah. I’ll be slumped in a corner somewhere, but don’t worry about waking me up. I won’t mind.”

Madeleine powered up the fuel cells. Lights came on, cutting a path through the falling snow. She folded the stand away and held the machine upright between her knees. She looked at him critically before she drove off. “You need some new eyes, Sam.”

“I haven’t had time to do anything about it.”

“I think you enjoy looking like that, and you won’t do anything about it until I make you.”

She was right.

He watched her tail-light recede into the distance, turning off at Piccadilly and heading out to the East End, before he started back toward Park Lane. He thought about everything that had happened and how he could put it all right again. It was overwhelming, as it always was: he could solve other people’s problems, but didn’t know where to start on his own.

He listened to the crunch of his footsteps for a while, and slowly a hint of a plan appeared at the edge of his mental fog.

It was something, so he seized at it. He chased down the telephone number he needed—an unlisted mobile—and made the call there and then as he turned Hyde Park Corner.

“Hello?” came a voice, lagged by satellite and bemused by sleep. “Who is this?”

The sun had just come up in California, and it was already looking like it was going to be another beautiful day.

“Good morning, Professor. This is Doctor Samuil Petrovitch, and I’m calling to apologize for that comment about your mother. All your mothers, in fact…”

DR. SIMON MORDEN is a bona fide rocket scientist, having degrees in geology and planetary geophysics, and is one of the few people who can truthfully claim to have held a chunk of Mars in his hands. He has served as editor of the BSFA’s Focus magazine, been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was part of the winning team for the 2009 Rolls Royce Science prize. Simon Morden lives in Gateshead with a fierce lawyer, two unruly children and a couple of miniature panthers. Find out more about the author at www.bookofmorden.co.uk.

I t was cold. Petrovitch had climbed the monumental mound of rubble in the heat and the rain and the wind, and now the weather was turning again. His breath condensed in numinous clouds, breaking apart against his greatcoat and turning into sparkling drops of dew that clung and shivered on the thick green cloth.

He had a route: he knew which of the fallen metal beams would support his weight, and which of them would pitch him into a lake of broken glass; that concrete slab was unstable, but this seemingly inconsequential block rested on solid ground. He’d programmed it in, and it showed as a series of waymarkers, of handholds and foot-fasts, but only to him. It had been dangerous, winning that knowledge.

Dangerous to the extent that he was surprised to see another man making his way toward the summit from the other side. No one else had ever tried it before, though he’d never indicated that no one could. It wasn’t like the remains of the Oshicora Tower were his in any moral or legal way.

That he had company had to mean something, but he’d have to wait to find out what.

He wasn’t going to let this novelty get in the way of his ritual, performed as he had done every day at the same time for the previous three hundred and forty-eight days. He carried on climbing, barely having to think about his muscles, letting the weight and carry of his body fall into a series of familiar, learned movements.

He used the time to think about other things instead: on how his life had gone, how it was now and how, in the future that he was trying to shape, it might change. His face twitched, one corner of his mouth twisting slightly: the ghost of a smile, nothing more. He was haunted by a vision that held almost limitless promise, yet still stubbornly refused to come into being.

He was almost there, but not quite: figuratively and literally. The summit of the ruins of the Oshicora Tower was in sight, turned by him into a hollow crown of arching, twisted steel. He stepped up and over, and was already searching for something symbolic to throw.

He kicked at the surface detritus, at the pulverized dust and the shattered glass, the cracked ceiling tiles and strips of carpet, the broken particle board and bare wires—all the things the tower contained before it was collapsed by cruise missiles.

There was the edge of a plastic chair. He reached down and lifted it up, pulling it free. It was pink, and had become separated from its wheeled base. It was cracked almost in half, but not quite. It would do.

He took it to the precipice, and held it up over his head. It had become street theater for the crowds below, but that wasn’t why he was doing it. When he’d started a year ago, it had been raining horizontally and he’d been soaked to the skin. There had been just Lucy and Tabletop and Valentina as witnesses. He hadn’t even told them what he was doing: he’d have preferred to be entirely alone on that first day, but they hadn’t let him. After that, it had taken on a life of its own, with thousands now surrounding the wide ring of rubble to watch him ceremonially, futilely, try to dig out the AI buried underneath.

They came, he climbed, he picked something up from the top and threw it to the ground. He descended, and they went. Pretty much it.

He flexed his arms. The pink seat flew through the crisp, still air, trailing dust. It bounced and tumbled, picking up speed as it fell. It pitched into the crowd, who ducked and dodged as it whirled by. It disappeared behind a mass of bodies, and he lost interest in it. Six weeks ago, he’d accidentally hit someone with the edge of a desk, but they’d come back the next day with a bandaged head and a shine in their eyes.

He wasn’t sure what to make of that sort of… devotion.

Petrovitch was about to turn and head back down when he remembered one of them was coming up to meet him. Because it was the first time it had happened, he wasn’t quite sure how to react. He wasn’t beholden to anyone, anyone at all. He could just go, or he could stay.

He looked out over the crowd. Normally, they’d be dispersing by now: he’d thrown his thing, his image had been captured by innumerable cameras and streamed for a global audience. They should go. They all had jobs to do, because that was why they were in the Freezone.

But they were staying, watching the figure scrabble forward, slide back just as far. Petrovitch was uncertain whether the crowd was willing him on or trying to haul him down with their thoughts.