Zero History

82. LONDON EYE
Thumbing the wings to rotate, slowly, just briefly enough, in opposite directions, had
brought the penguin around, but had presented Milgrim with the iconic silhouette of a
Ruchnoy Pulemyot Kalashnikova, for which he’d instantly lost all English.
It lay across Gracie’s legs, metal shoulder-stock unfolded, as Gracie attached the curved
magazine, a humble unit about which Milgrim, in his period of government employment,
had known an absurd amount. The Russian for terminologies for every piece of
machinery used to produce them: stampers and spot-welders and so many more. He’d
noticed them ever since, on television screens, those magazines: ubiquitous objects in the
world’s harsher places, never auguring good.
“Fuck,” from Fiona, beside him, just the least little plosive. Then: “On it.”
Gracie pulled something back, on the side of the rifle, released it, sat up and forward,
bringing his knees up, settling the orthopedic-looking stock against his shoulder.
The penguin paddling down, it seemed, of its own accord, as Gracie leaned his cheek
in. Barrel moving, slightly—
Jerking, as something dark and rectangular shot beneath it. Fiona’s drone.
Gracie looked up. Through the penguin, directly at Milgrim. Who must have done that
awkward thing, though he could never remember it, the configuration she’d shown him
in the cube.
Something smashed Gracie down, and sideways, out of his sniper’s posture, an idiot
giant’s invisible hand, the penguin jerking simultaneously, image blurring. Milgrim never
saw the wires at all, those fifteen feet of them, but he supposed they were very thin.
Gracie rolled on his back, convulsed as Milgrim fired the Taser again. “Galvanism,” the
word recalled from high school biology. Gracie grabbed invisible strings. Milgrim tapped
the screen again. Gracie jerked again, held on.
“Stop!” Fiona said. “Garreth says!”
“Why?”
“Stop!”
Milgrim raised both thumbs, obedient now, terrified that he’d done something
irrevocable.
Gracie sat up, clawing at his neck, then gave the invisible string a vicious yank, blurring
the image again.
And then the penguin was rising, slowly, away from him. Milgrim’s thumbs went to the
wings. Nothing happened. He tried the tail, tried auto-swim. Nothing. Still rising. He saw
Gracie stagger to his feet, sway, then run, out of frame, as the penguin, freed of its
unaccustomed ballast of Taser, ascended of its own accord into the calm predawn air of
the Thames Valley.