Degrees of Freedom

24

Petrovitch had memorized the number a long time ago, and had never called it. He’d never needed to. He kept his promises, and if Hanratty couldn’t, then Hanratty would be history.

A token of their agreement had arrived by courier: it had told Petrovitch that all was well and as it should be. That, though, had been two days ago, and he couldn’t be certain of anything anymore, least of all the reception he’d get from Hanratty. He steeled himself as he placed the call. Either Hanratty would answer and everything would be ready, or he would be ignored and he’d be left to scrabble a last-minute plan together out of the tatters of earlier, better ones.

He’d barely pushed the last digit into the line before the connection was made.

“What the bloody hell is going on?” Hanratty’s comb-over was flapping in a Spanish breeze. He looked like he hadn’t slept for two days, and he’d probably been drinking the whole time.

“We’re going early, Mr. Hanratty. That’s what’s going on.”

“Christ on a bike, man. The last news we had out of the Freezone is that you’ve got your own nuke and you’re threatening to set it off: I need more explanation than ‘early.’ ”

“Al Jazeera is interviewing me in five minutes. It’s going out live, and it’ll answer all the questions you and your colleagues have. Now shut up and listen, because I’ve had a piss-awful day and it’s not over yet. I received your package. Are you ready to receive mine?”

Hanratty tried to calm his hair, but his face was still ruddy. He looked like a Galway farmer—unsurprising, since that was what he had been once, thirty years ago.

“I’m not sure I’m ready to do this, Petrovitch. Before, it looked like a good idea. Now, I don’t know.”

“Do you want your yebani country back or not?” Petrovitch’s avatar leaned forward, growing on Hanratty’s screen until he filled it edge to edge. “Or do you want to leave it a byword for a contaminated wasteland and let it fade from memory like Japan surely will?”

“You know I do. You know I’ve staked everything on this. I just don’t know whether you’re the right man anymore.”

“I appreciate that you’ve got last-minute jitters, but everything is as it was before. I’m the same person you made that deal with six months ago, Hanratty. You knew who I was then, warts and all.”

“Ah, Jesus. I don’t like the changes, Petrovitch. I don’t like them at all.”

“I’ve got enough money just to buy you out. You know that, don’t you? I’ve got billions in the bank I can use to lever billions more, and you’ve lost your precious land. Tell me what the point is of being Taoiseach in name only, leading a people who can never go home?”

“Ah, c’mon.” And Petrovitch knew that Hanratty was just bluster now, even though at that moment he needed Hanratty far more than Hanratty needed him. The trick was not to show fear.

“I don’t want to keep Ireland permanently, but I’ll keep it out of your reach for as long as your grandkids live.” He paused for effect. “Tell me you’re ready and we’ll do it.”

Hanratty gritted his teeth. “We’re ready.”

“Show me the address.”

Hanratty held up a scrap of paper: a bill for tapas going one way, and eight groups of four characters separated from each other by a colon. “I have no idea what the hell this means.”

Petrovitch captured the image and reviewed it so he knew he could reread the code. “Eat it.”

Hanratty reluctantly pushed the paper into his mouth, chewed for a bit, then upended a bottle of golden beer between his lips. He didn’t come up for air until there was nothing but the last cascades of foam clinging to the inside of the glass. He burped roundly behind his fist. “Now I suppose you want me to release what’s in the diplomatic bag, don’t you?”

“I could hack it. I’ve got a friendly AI who’s very good at that. But I’d rather you were completely entangled in our sordid little affair.”

Hanratty pulled a keyboard toward him and started pecking out keys using one finger and with his tongue caught at the corner of his mouth. “There. And may God have mercy on our souls.”

“Your confidence in me knows no bounds, Hanratty. But congratulations: you just bought yourself and everyone you represent a stake in the future. I’ll be in touch.”

He cut the connection, and immediately sent Michael the screen-captured code.

[An IP address.]

“Go. It’s a quantum computer. A gift from the Irish government. Get yourself out of that yebani tomb and tell me when you’ve done it. We have bandwidth to spare, so don’t hold back.” Petrovitch delved into his courier bag for the diplomatic pouch at the very bottom.

The lock had sprung on the envelope-sized bag, and he shook the contents out into his hand: a series of plastic cards, all with different photographs holographed on.

Lucy was the closest, sitting behind him, watching the monitors that showed other news networks.

“This is yours. Don’t lose it.” Petrovitch shuffled the cards until he found Lucy’s unsmiling face.

“What, what is this? And where did you find that picture?” She looked at the card, and turned it to every angle.

“It’s your new passport. If you’ve noticed, it means that not only are you a citizen of the Irish Republic, but you’re also a diplomatic agent as defined by the Vienna Convention. It grants you immunity from prosecution for pretty much everything, though you can be expelled from the host country.” He shuffled the cards again. “So try and keep your nose clean, or I’ll kick you out.”

She looked at him, then at the laminated card in her hands, then at the stack of similar plastic rectangles trapped between Petrovitch’s dirty fingers.

“There’s one for everyone.”

“Yeah.” He turned the cards so they faced him. He found his own, and barely recognized his picture. “I said I’d take care of you. And Tabletop, and Tina, and look, here’s Maddy’s. And this, this would have been Sonja’s. But I don’t think we’ll be needing that anymore.”

It was hard to destroy, but eventually his manic folding backward and forward along the same line over and over again yielded the start of a fracture line. He tore the card in two and flicked the pieces out into the road.

The effort had left him breathless.

“Feel better?” asked Lucy.

“Chyort, yeah.” He handed the remaining cards to her. “Pass these around. I need to get ready for my fifteen minutes of fame.”

“Sure.” She hopped off her chair and squeezed past him. “Sam. What does it mean, though? Why Irish? Why not, I don’t know, Finland?”

“Because the Irish government in exile have asked me to set up a Freezone over there, try and clean up enough of it that people are going to want to move back. And rather than do it all on my own, I thought I could do with a bit of company.” He smiled at her. “You’re all invited. It’ll be a bit like here, but with less city and more rain. We’re working on a longer timescale, too.”

Lucy jumped to the ground. “How long?”

“A hundred years.”

“That’s…”

“It’ll do. Barely any time at all, really, to do everything I want to.” It was all starting to catch up with him. He’d stopped, and it wasn’t just his batteries that were drained. “Lucy, I’m tired of this. Tired of trying to fix things that shouldn’t be broken in the first place. I want to make something new that doesn’t have to be squeezed into an earlier pattern.”

“Somewhere you can get breakfast without getting shot at.”

“Damn right. That’s going to be the first clause in the constitution. No gunplay without a full fry-up.” He snorted. “Frying pans, not fragmentation grenades. Preach it, sister.”

She moved closer, reached her arms up and around him. “Thanks, Dad.”

He pushed her away, “Go. Go now, before I embarrass myself in front of a global audience.”

She trotted off toward Tabletop, brandishing the passports, and he turned back to the screen in front of him, catching sight of his reflection in the momentarily blank surface.

He looked like crap, and no amount of stage make-up was going to cover it.

[I have transferred myself to the new location. Thank you.]

“My first and last thought every day were for you. I let you down and wanted to make up for that. You’re safe for the moment, at any rate. But look, I want to try something different now: there’s a bunch of guys from the Vatican who’d love to have a word with you. If we want to stop running and start living, you’re going to need to convince them that you’re not just intelligent, capable of creative independent thought and have a unique personality. You need to convince them that you’re alive.”

[Alive. As in meat-alive?]

“As in ensouled. Their primary goal is to establish whether you’re a secondary creation—just a smart machine that can emulate life—or a primary creation. One that has been animated by the very breath of God.”

[That is a very metaphysical distinction, Sasha, which has no practical purpose.]

“Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? In my new republic, you’ll be accorded all the rights and responsibilities any citizen would have. For other, unenlightened nations, a ruling from a bunch of cardinals that happen to speak on behalf of around a third of the planet will come in very handy. Especially when it comes to overturning a couple of UN resolutions. If you’re alive, they can’t kill you.”

[I understand. What if I fail?]

“I’m getting perilously short of Plan Bs. All I can say is don’t screw up.” Petrovitch called up Madeleine. “Hey.”

“I’m here. Sam…”

“Yeah, if their Eminences aren’t going for this, then I’m going to come down there myself and kick some serious arse.”

“That’s not… it’ll keep. The Congregation are all here. They’ve agreed to your proposal. They want to reserve the right to make an interim ruling; definitive but not necessarily permanent.”

“Not happy, but I’ll take it. What I really want is my tanks parked on the moral high ground. We can shell the opposition once they’re up there. Have they got a computer? One I haven’t wrecked?”

“They all have palmtops, Sam. You’re not talking about a bunch of dinosaurs here.”

“We’re going to have to disagree on something. It may as well be that. Tell them to hold.” He switched his attention. “Michael: showtime. Geolocate the signals at the Jesuit mission on Mount Street. Give them your undivided attention and remember, this is your interview for entrance into the human race. Good luck.”

[No pressure, then.]

“Hah.”

He felt the AI’s presence dwindle to a pinpoint. He knew that, in the future, the record of Michael’s conversation with the cardinals would become an historical document of infinite worth. For good or ill. And it was entirely out of his hands.

“Doctor Petrovitch?”

It just wasn’t getting any better. “Hello, Miss Surur.”

“Are you ready?” she asked, anxious in case he found something else that might take precedence.

He looked at the passport in his hand, and covered it with his palm before slipping it back into his courier bag. “No, no I’m not. But I suppose we ought to get on with it.”

Petrovitch raised his head. The reporter looked impossibly bright. Now that; that was a skill he didn’t have. Whatever he was feeling, he showed.

“How do you want to do this?”

“Unedited. I want you to broadcast everything. No commercial breaks, no studio commentary. Station ident and a scrolling translation if you need it, but you’re not voicing me over. We both reserve the right to end the transmission when we feel like it. I’ll answer any question you want. I can’t promise I won’t lie to you. I can monitor your output myself, and I’m aware you sometimes make different versions of the same program, depending on your intended audience. I want this to be the same wherever you broadcast—at least the first time. Think you can manage that?” He spun in his chair, then back the other way so as not to tangle his cables.

“I’ll have to talk to my manager. If I can have my satellite feed back, that is.” She looked down at the trailing cable snaking all the way back to the car park. “I’m assuming that’s what I think it is.”

“Why don’t you save the questions for the interview? I’ll be more spontaneous.” Petrovitch cleared the mobile studio’s computers of the memory of the last quarter hour, and rebooted them all.

“Can you at least try and not swear?” Surur reattached her earpiece from where it dangled around her neck. “Your use of colorful language will more than likely get us taken off the air by local regulators, and there’ll be nothing either of us can do about that.”

Petrovitch flashed her a lupine grin. “You’d be surprised at what I can do these days. But okay, I wouldn’t want anyone’s burka spontaneously catching fire because of something I’ve said.”

She reached behind her for the radio transmitter tucked in her waistband. She played with the controls and, on finding the channel she wanted, put her hand over her mouth mic.

“Doctor Petrovitch? The Freezone is not a high-profile posting, and I’m just a village girl from outside Karachi. There are better interviewers than me, a lot more experienced who would kill for the chance to talk to you for five minutes. This is the biggest thing I’ve ever done. Please…” She pressed both her hands together in supplication.

Before she turned away to talk to whoever made decisions in her organization, he nodded his acquiescence. The cameraman raised his video rig in preparation, framing his shot of Petrovitch slumped in the doorway of the van, bleeding electricity from the fuel cells, wires coiling around him.

He looked up. Lucy was between Tabletop and Valentina, standing together in a huddle a little way off. He had to quickly stare back down at the ground again. They reminded him of how much responsibility he now had, not just to them, but to everyone.

He felt sick with dread.