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.
21
What 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.”
“Your wife will not survive this. You know that. And when she is gone…” Miyamoto’s voice finished in a strangled grunt of frustration and bitterness.
“If you say that again, I will shoot you dead and damn the consequences.” Petrovitch brought his arm up straight and pointed the gun at Miyamoto’s head. “We are going to fight, and we are going to win. Got that?”
“Truly, you are insane.”
“What’s it all for, then? What is it I’m meant to do? What’s the point of being the smartest guy I know if I don’t use those smarts to do something?” Petrovitch lowered the gun.
“We have gone in a full circle,” said Miyamoto. “What do you propose to do that will save not just Lucy, and those elders, but your wife too?”
“I’m going to use the One Ring, even though I might have left it too late: I might not have enough time, or enough people, or enough anythings.” He put the gun away and got out the rat. There was still no connection. “We have to get closer to daylight.”
Slowly, the tunnel grew brighter, and there was a slouching youth waiting for him in the distance, standing between the rails, tapping his foot.
“Hey.”
[What happened? I expected you to be out of contact for no more than three minutes.]
“There were people in the tunnel. Hospital patients, and a doctor who’s going to give them all a lethal injection whether the Outies come for them or not.”
[Why does this concern you? You knew when you set out to find Madeleine that you would find those left behind. You can save one, perhaps. You cannot save them all.]
“Yeah, we’ll see about that.” He pulled the hem of his coat up. He could feel a stiff wire inside the lining, coiled like a snake, and he passed the material through his fingers until he came to a tear. He dug out the end of the cable Sonja had sent with Miyamoto, and threaded it all through the gap. “I’d convinced myself I didn’t care about anyone, and perhaps getting married would make me care. Which was why, I suppose, I wanted to cross the Metrozone against the biggest flow of refugees since Japan sank: just to show I cared about another human being.” He contemplated the end of the cable, the plastic plug with its connectors that went into the rat.