Degrees of Freedom

9

“Why can’t I go to bed?” asked Lucy. She hauled on the door handle and kicked her way out into the freezing night air.

Petrovitch reached for his seat belt. “Because if we don’t find the bomb before it goes off, you’ll be worrying about more than your yebani beauty sleep.” The belt retracted on its reel, snagging in the metalwork of his right arm. “Pizdets. This whole thing is pizdets.”

He freed himself and went for the door on his side of the pickup. As he reached for it, motors whirred and pistons breathed. In the corner of his eye, he’d installed a power meter to tell him if he was in danger of overloading his arm, and a little battery icon so he could check if he needed recharging.

His fingers tangled with the catch and he pulled. The door popped open, and he smelled mud and rust and winter. Valentina and Tabletop were already out, advancing on Container Zero, lit from behind by the vehicle’s headlights. A group of Oshicora guards shivered in the midnight air, but grew more purposeful as the women approached. Politely, and with deep regret, the leader of the squad informed them they could go no further.

Petrovitch lowered himself stiffly to the ground and stalked over.

“Hey. There a problem?” He scratched at his nose. He still missed his glasses.

“Petrovitch-san, we have strict instructions,” pleaded the guard’s leader.

“I know. Which is why we’re only going to be five minutes. I need to check something.” He studied the man’s face. “Takashi Iguro, isn’t it?”

“Petrovitch-san, please. Miss Sonja was quite explicit. Only authorized personnel are to be allowed inside Container Zero.” The man looked as if he was in pain at denying his hero, and started backing toward the closed doors of the domik. “Unless you are authorized, I cannot permit you to get closer.”

Petrovitch nodded. “That’s okay, Iguro. I’m not here to get you into trouble.” He raised his right arm and patted him on the shoulder. His hand stayed there, effectively trapping him. “Sonja said ‘inside the container,’ right?”

“Yes, Petrovitch-san.”

“That’s going to be a problem. I lost something when I was here before. I think it was stolen, but I need to check.” Petrovitch appeared to think about a way around the impasse for a moment, and drew the guard irresistibly toward him. “Why don’t you go inside and look for it, and we’ll look outside. We’re not breaking any rules if we just search around the container. And on top of it.”

“We both know that you are,” whispered the man.

Their heads were very close together.

“Do you know what was taken from here?” asked Petrovitch.

“I have heard… rumors.”

“We both want what’s best for the Freezone and for Miss Sonja, Takashi Iguro. Right now, that means you’re allowed to enter Container Zero and search for my little computer, and me and my friends can take a look around outside.” He blinked slowly and deliberately. “Right?”

“I suppose it might be.”

“Thank you.” Petrovitch released him, and Iguro staggered back. “Five minutes—then we’ll be gone.”

There could be no more objections, because Valentina was already combing the dirt by the doors to the container, seeing if anything had fallen there, and Tabletop was looking up at the sides of other, nearby domiks.

“They could have thrown it. Quick, easy.” She reached into invisible pouches at her wrists and pulled out gloves made of the same material as her suit. “I’ll need help.”

Lucy trailed over. “So what can I do?”

“Stand there. Face the wall, put your hands against it and straighten your arms and legs.” Tabletop slipped her fingers inside the gloves as she measured her run-up.

“Like that?” Lucy looked over her shoulder. “What are you going to do?”

“This.”

She took three steps, each faster than before. One foot rose up onto the small of Lucy’s back, the other lightly touched the nape of her neck, and abruptly Tabletop was waist-level with the top of the container, supporting herself on her palms.

Then she rotated her body into a handstand, and backflipped out of sight.

Lucy was staring upward, mouth open, but Petrovitch was having none of it.

“Just leave her. She’s only looking for attention.” He switched to infrared and turned slowly in a circle.

“But did you see…?”

“Yeah, I saw it. You realize that the CIA trained her to do stuff like that because it made her a better killer, not because they have a cheerleading squad.” Petrovitch tilted his head. “Maybe they do. Finally, there’s something I don’t know.”

“So what are we looking for?” Lucy peeled her hands off the cold metal wall and rubbed them together until they were pink.

“My rat. Anything else that doesn’t look like it belongs here.”

“They had to drive the bomb away, right? Tire tracks?”

“Only useful if we had a list of which car had which tires. There are hundreds of thousands of abandoned vehicles in the Freezone. They could have used half a dozen of them, one after another, and because they know they’re not being watched, they don’t even have to be careful.”

“Bummer.”

“I’m cross-checking everything I can, but there are massive gaps in the data that didn’t used to exist under the Metrozone Authority. It comes down to this; we have to stick our noses in the dirt.”

They spent the next ten minutes peering uselessly at the ground, squeezing down the narrow gaps between domiks and finding that everything they touched sapped a little more heat from them. Tabletop would appear occasionally, a shadow leaping from one container to the next, making a soft booming sound as she landed that cut through the still night air.

Then she was behind Petrovitch, breathing hard.

“I’ve found something.”

“Significant?”

“Could be nothing.”

“But more than likely not.”

She put her hand on her heaving chest. “Sorry. Spooked.”

“It’s fine. Take your time.” He straightened up properly and arched his back. Almost his whole torso was strapped with equipment. A sub-standard replacement for his rat. Battery pack after battery pack, wired in parallel to give him the voltage, then in series to give him the power. The back brace and strapping for the exoskeletal arm. It was heavy, and he was tiring fast.

“Okay,” she said, cycling her breath, in through her nose, out through her mouth. “It’s the roof of Container Zero. We can haul you up on top…”

“Or I can bluff my way in, which will be a lot less embarrassing.” Petrovitch pulled up a virtual phone and called Lucy and Valentina.

They walked back together, but Tabletop wasn’t giving anything away. He’d be able to look at whatever it was with fresh eyes, but first he’d have to get past the punctilious Iguro.

The man himself was still searching the floor of the container, on his hands and knees and using a little flashlight that spread a faint beam no bigger than his fist. Petrovitch eased himself past the waiting guards and pushed his head through the cut in the door he’d made earlier.

“Hey again.”

Iguro didn’t look up, in case he missed something as he shuffled over it. “Petrovitch-san? Have you completed your task? Mine is almost finished, too.”

“Another slight problem. One of my colleagues wants me to take a look at the roof, but I’m not going to be able to get up there, not in my condition.” As he talked, he edged further inside, while Valentina and Tabletop stood behind him and prevented any intervention by the others. Lucy kept up a constant stream of chatter, distracting them.

“It will not be possible for you to enter, as I have already explained.” Iguro inched forward, and his flashlight illuminated the toes of Petrovitch’s boots. “Oh.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell.” He held down his good hand and helped Iguro up. He pointed to the flashlight. “Mind if I borrow that?”

Petrovitch held the light high, and swept the roof with it. He frowned, and did it again. When he saw it, it was obvious. So obvious, he wondered how he’d missed it when he’d first entered Container Zero; the Armageddonist’s fault, undoubtedly.

Someone, at some point in the past, had cut through the roof in a perfect rectangle, freeing a plate two meters by three. Then they’d carefully welded it back into place. There were drill holes at the corners of the rewelded plate, also filled with molten metal.

“See that?” he said, his breath rising and breaking against the ceiling. “That shouldn’t be there. Shouldn’t be there at all.”

“Petrovitch-san?”

The welds looked new. Not brand new, but not rusted either. Two weeks, a month maybe. “Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it inevitably does.”

He turned in the gloom of the container to the figure in the chair.

“Where is it, you govnosos, you zhopoliz, you sooksin? Tell me what you’ve done with the yebani bomb.”

The Last Armageddonist grinned back. He’d not give his secrets away so easily.

Petrovitch leaned down, pressing his hands onto the mummified forearms as they rested on the arms of the chair.

“Come on, you yebanat,” he growled. “Where is it?”

He got nothing from the shrunken eyes or the shriveled tongue. No sign that he’d been heard, let alone understood, and it enraged him beyond reason. Petrovitch brought his left arm across his body and let loose with every last watt he could summon.

He backhanded the Armageddonist with the edge of his exoskeleton. A moment later, Petrovitch was on the floor, and a head, trailing the dust of two decades, lay rattling in a corner.

“Petrovitch-san. I think you should not have done that.”

The faces at the container opening seemed to agree, but Petrovitch didn’t care. He awkwardly levered himself upright and glared at the decapitated corpse, its neck of brown flesh surrounding an island of white bone. “I wish you could have suffered more. Suffered as much as we did. But no, you died here, in the quiet and the dark, and you left us all your govno to clear up. Well, listen to me, you huyesos: I’m done with shoveling. I’m going to bury you and your kind forever, and then I’m not looking back. Got that?”

He put his boot against the chair and kicked it over backward. It crashed over, leaving a pair of leather shoes dangling obscenely at the end of two dried-out legs.

No one said anything. Petrovitch grunted with satisfaction at the destruction he’d wreaked and headed for the exit. He waited for it to clear, then pushed out, catching his arm on the container only once.

He was starting to get the hang of it: appreciate it, even.

Valentina ventured, “Are we done here?”

“Oh yeah. More than done.” He stamped toward the car, leaving a wake of Oshicora guards.

Iguro called after him. “Petrovitch-san? How am I going to explain this to Miss Sonja?”

“Leave it with me. I’ll tell her as part of my official role as Freezone Cassandra.”

“But you have broken the Armageddonist.”

“That, my friend, is the least of our problems.” He hauled at the car door. “Don’t tidy up. He doesn’t deserve it.”

He clambered in, and the others joined him: Valentina and Tabletop in the front, Lucy beside him.

“Sam? What happened?”

“We’ve been set up. Set up from the very start.”

“Explain,” said Valentina.

“I haven’t got the energy. Find me a power source. Or vodka. Both, preferably.”

She twisted around in her seat, and pointedly pulled out the keys from the ignition. She looked at him until he looked away, out of the window at the bright lights and black shadows of Regent’s Park.

“Fine. I’ll tell you as we go.”

Satisfied, she started the engine, and reversed expertly between the remaining domiks until she reached the main road.

“At some point, probably while the domiks above were being recovered, someone cut down through into Container Zero. They made a hole more than large enough to take the bomb out, so I’m guessing that’s what they did. It had gone long before the regular work crews got anywhere close to it.”

The only sound was the rumbling of the tires on the resurfaced road.

Lucy pulled at her hair. “I don’t get it. If someone took the bomb, why would they bring it back? Why would they then steal it again?”

“There’s a whole lot of things I don’t get. But I’ll bet you a billion that the bomb I saw was a fake. No idea if it was identical, or even similar, but good enough that it fooled everyone into thinking it was the real thing. Even me.” Petrovitch grimaced. “Why the huy would the original thieves do that?”

Tabletop put her feet up on the dashboard. “What did you expect to see when you knew you were being taken to Container Zero? I know what I’d want to find, and I didn’t grow up with the legend.”

“There’d have to be the Last Armageddonist, and he’d have to be dead. And he had to have a bomb, ready to go off. Anything else would be too disappointing.” He spent some more battery power gripping the seat in front of him and hauling himself forward. “But that’s exactly what we would have found if we’d got there first.”

“Is it? Perhaps you’d have found absolutely nothing.” Her ghostly reflection in the windshield shrugged at the face leaning over her shoulder. “You said we were set up. You just haven’t taken the scenario to its logical conclusion.”

“Huy tebe’v zhopu zamesto ukropu.” Petrovitch let himself fall back. “None of it was real? And they still broke my yebani arm? I am seriously pissed now.”

“But why would someone want to steal a nuclear bomb they knew wasn’t real?” Lucy withered under Petrovitch’s baleful glare. “Oh, okay. We weren’t supposed to have figured this out, were we?”

“Of course, now that we have, they’re going to try and kill us.”

Valentina took one hand off the steering wheel and reached under Tabletop’s legs to the glove compartment. She produced an automatic handgun, and passed it butt-first to the back seat. Petrovitch wearily took it and laid it in his lap.

“There is another under your seat, Fiona.”

Tabletop curled her legs away and spent a moment feeling for cold, hard gunmetal taped to the upholstery.

Then Valentina reached into her jacket and pulled out a third gun, small and flat, warm from her body. “Lucy? Tomorrow I teach you how not to kill yourself with this, da? For now, be careful who you point it at.”

She took it as if it was a scorpion, and Petrovitch relieved her of it long enough to check the safety switch.

“Some dad I’m turning out to be.” Petrovitch punched the window glass, not quite hard enough to shatter it into a thousand crystal fragments, but enough to hurt himself. “Polniy pizdets.”