Саймон Морден - Equations of Life

He set off after her in his own clumsy fashion, catching a few moments rest where he could press the street furniture hard against his back before moving again.

There was a body in the middle of the road, forever frozen in a sprawled, crawling, spider-like pose. Shot in the back, then shot again. He belatedly looked around him, trying to think like Madeleine did, weighing up cover and spying out shadows.

It wasn’t the same as running from a few overweight St. Petersburg cops.

He kept going, even though he’d lost sight of her. It was a confession of faith that she was ahead of him, and she’d be where she said she would be when he got there. And he’d get there, or die trying.

A gust of wind sent the pillar of smoke from St. Joseph’s down to street level. Petrovitch took a chance and ran through the drifting cloud of soot and ash to the next corner, then across to the rose-pink edifice. Its glass front was lying in shattered piles on the pavement.

He steered right and then into the gap between it and the next anonymous concrete block. It was dark and empty. He couldn’t see her at all.

He skidded to a halt, his breath labored, unable to focus. He took two sideways steps and leaned heavily against the wall. It wasn’t just his left hand feeling weak now, it was his whole arm: tingling with a thousand pinpricks.

“You Okay?”

He jumped, as did his heart. “ Yobany stos, woman!”

“I thought you knew I was here.” She shifted, and her outline was suddenly apparent.

He slid down the wall until he was squatting. “I just need five minutes,” he gasped. He tilted his head back to look at the slit of the sky. “ Chyort, it hurts.”

“I can do this for you, if you want,” she said. “I know what Sonja looks like.”

“If you hadn’t remembered, the Paradise militia want to kill you.”

“They want to kill Father John.”

“They were watching the building and they thought you were alone.” He rubbed at his sternum. “It was you they were after.”

“Then, thank you.” She played with the thick rope of her hair.

“Yeah, well. They didn’t seem too fussy where they pointed their peesi. I guess I’m off their Christmas list, too.”

She straightened up, stretching her already long legs by standing on tiptoe. “Ready to carry on?”

He puffed. “Shortest five minutes in history.”

“We can wait for a little while longer.”

“No, let’s get this over with. The sooner you can get me into Paradise, the sooner you can get back to protecting Father John.” He pushed himself up, and was dizzy with vertigo.

“Sam, I’m not going back,” she said. “I thought I made it clear I’m staying with you.”

“Yeah. I’m having a hard time believing that, so I’m giving you an easy way out.”

“I don’t want an easy way out. I have to suffer for what I’m doing.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “You sound like me. Where next?”

“Over the wall,” and she pointed. The breeze-block structure was twice as tall as he was.

Madeleine, however, had no problems at all. She holstered her gun at her hip and approached the wall at a loping run. She jumped, placed both hands on its top and ended up astride it, legs dangling either side. She waved Petrovitch on, and reached down, gripping his forearm as he gripped hers. He scrambled up the best he could, and lay beached on the thin rail of rough stonework.

“And I still have to get down the other side,” he grunted.

“Getting down’s easy,” she said, and twisted his arm in such a way that he fell off. “It’s landing that’s hard.”

She still had hold of him, fingers tight around his wrist. She lowered him down until his feet made contact with the ground, then vaulted off herself, legs together, knees bent; a perfect dismount.

“Do they teach that at nun school, or is that something you’ve picked up along the way?”

“I owe the Order everything,” she said.

“So why…”

She slipped her gun back into her hand, as natural as an extension of her body. “Because I’m possessed by some overwhelming madness that forces me to desert my vocation, my sisters, my duty, my priest—and go with you instead, you foul-mouthed, unbelieving, weak, selfish criminal who by some freak chance or divine plan has not only captured my stone-cold heart but seems to embody the virtue of hope in a way I have never experienced before, inside or outside the church. That’s why.”

Petrovitch pushed his glasses up his nose, entirely lost for words.

“What did you call me, earlier? When we were going through Hyde Park?” she asked.

“ Babochka, ” he whispered. “It’s not a swear word. It means…”

“Butterfly,” she finished for him. “I looked it up. You called me— me —butterfly. Don’t stop calling me that, but you can use Maddy as well. It’s been a long time since anyone did.”

Petrovitch gave himself the luxury of a few steadying breaths. “Right. Maddy. Do you know where we’re going?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “I used to live there.”

The most dangerous part was running across the wide, open expanse of the Marylebone Road. No matter how low or fast they were, they could have been seen, and having been seen, followed, ambushed, and killed.

But the Paradise militia had decided to expand their territory to the south, toward the bright lights and consumer durables of Oxford Street, and to the east, trying to take on the domik pile on Regent’s Park. That their excursion into the high-value shopping streets was met with less resistance than their assault on some of the Metrozone’s poorest residents proved the authorities were powerless.

“This machine thing,” said Madeleine. They turned a corner and Petrovitch found himself facing the railway station. Its shutters were down and locked tight. “Who do you think they are?”

“Oshicora loyalists. Coders on the VirtualJapan project. I don’t think anyone else in the Metrozone could have put together such a coordinated, comprehensive attack. They’ve taken down so much I don’t know what they control anymore. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they’re fighting a losing battle with their own botnet.”

“All I wanted to know was whether we could trust them or not.” She pointed to the station frontage, and they ran.

The low-level skirmish between Paradise and Regent’s Park had formed a fluid front-line ahead of them. Stray shots from that battle clattered overhead: sometimes a rooftile or a window would crack and fall in pieces to shower the street below.

Petrovitch’s back rattled against the metal screens. “Aren’t we going the wrong way?”

“We have to go this way to go back. Is that okay?”

“Since any answer other than yes will get my limbs torn off: yes.”

She grinned, and the whole of her face lit up; no longer the avenging angel, but the teenager out on her first date.

“Down here,” she indicated with a jerk of her head, and cut into a gloomy street beside the station. On one side was a terrace of pre-Armageddon, probably pre-Patriotic War, houses. They faced a battered chain-link fence that separated the road from the railway tracks, and soon she found a weakness in it.

She dragged the base of the wire up, straining at it with her clawed hands. A shower of soil and weeds and litter fell from its mesh. Petrovitch took his cue, and rolled underneath, picking up mud on his coat. She followed, after making the hole bigger.

They slipped and scrabbled hand in hand down the embankment and onto the oily ballast beside the rails.

“Watch your step,” she warned.

“Kind of figured that.” He looked back in the dark mouth of the station. The platforms were immense, jutting out from under the covered section and into the distance. He tried to imagine the number of carriages it could have served, thousands of people at a time coming from outside the city and spewed out right there, one train after another, every few minutes. “Listen.”