Equations of Life

10

He woke up, but this time not to the sounds of the streets and windmills and voices. Someone was hammering on his door with something hard and heavy.

The door was steel, reinforced with electrically operated bolts. No need to panic, he lied to himself even as ice water flooded his veins and his poor heart struggled to keep in time.

He grabbed his glasses from where he’d thrown them the night before and listened carefully. The banging wasn’t the right rhythm for breaking in—he’d expect a slow, heavy concussion with sledgehammer or a ram. Neither was it someone with more technical expertise and a gas axe or plastique; he’d have woken with the room full of smoke and a masked man standing over him with a gun.

Petrovitch pulled on the death metal T-shirt from the day before and stood close to the door. Through the insulation he could just about hear his name being shouted out.

Bangbangbangbang. Petrovitch. Bangbangbangbang.

“Ahueyet? You opezdol, you raspizdyai! Go away,” he called back, but the banging and shouting redoubled.

He pulled the first bolt, then the second, working his way around the door. Finally, he gripped the handle and pulled.

Sorenson stumbled in, shoe in hand. Petrovitch shoved him hard toward the far wall and glanced outside. Everyone there was staring at him. He let fly with yob materi vashi and slammed the door shut again.

“What the chyort are you doing here?”

Sorenson stared at him wild-eyed. He was in the same clothes—shirt and shorts—that he’d worn yesterday, and Petrovitch guessed that he’d not been back to his hotel at all.

“You were right,” he muttered. “So now I need your help.”

“You want what?” said Petrovitch. He reached for his trousers and dragged them on. “Why do you think I’d be either willing or able to help you? And how the huy did you get my address?”

Sorenson walked toward the chair and looked like he was about to sit down.

“No. You’re not staying.” Petrovitch jammed his feet into his boots and started to lace them with controlled savagery. “Who told you where I live?”

“Chain.” Sorenson stuck his hands in his back pockets. “I went to see him.”

“And you just happened to mention my name. Thanks, pidaras!”

“He wouldn’t give me anything otherwise. Then he said he’d arrest me for money laundering if I took so much as one red cent off Oshicora. So I’ve come to you: we’ve got some planning to do.”

“We?” Petrovitch threw on his jacket and his courier bag. “Let me say this in words even you might understand: I wouldn’t plan so much as a piss-up in a brewery with you because you’re a fucking idiot.”

Sorenson winced.

“What? Your little Reconstructionist soul shrinking at the bad language the nasty Russian is using? Get used to it, because you’ll be hearing plenty more.” He stamped to the door. “Get your shoe on, you raspizdyai kolhoznii. Now tell me you have money.”

“I’ve money.” Sorenson dropped his shoe and shuffled his foot into it.

“Good. Now get going: you’re buying breakfast.” Petrovitch hauled his door open, shoved Sorenson out into the corridor and heaved the door shut. He waited for the bolts to clang back into place, before blazing a trail down toward the first stairwell.

Eventually, Sorenson caught up. “Petrovitch, what is this place?”

“Domiks, after the shipping containers used to build them. It’s where refugees like me live.”

“I thought you were a student.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m not a refugee. Now,” said Petrovitch, shouldering a fire door, “straight to the bottom, and if you value what’s left of your life, don’t look at anyone.”

“I made it up here all right.” Sorenson blustered.

“All it means is that they’re waiting for you on the way down. Go, and keep your mouth shut. Yankees aren’t exactly flavor of the month.”

They walked the long, lonely staircase all the way to the ground floor. Petrovitch considered them lucky to arrive unmolested; perhaps Sorenson’s minimal dress and his aura of impotent rage made it appear that the American had already been mugged.

“Where are we going?” Sorenson blinked in the morning light and hugged himself.

“I told you. Breakfast.”

They crossed at the lights and crashed through Wong’s sticky door.

“Hey, Petrovitch. You still owe me for yesterday.” Wong flicked a filthy tea towel at him.

“Yeah. Don’t worry. The Yank’s paying. Two full breakfasts, and coffee, strong as you like.”

Wong folded his arms and regarded Sorenson. “Who this?”

“Just one of my yakuza friends. So, when you’re ready with the coffee?”

“It not enough that you bad man: you now hang out with bad men. Big cars, guns, money. It ends in early grave.” He dragged his finger across his throat.

They looked at each other across the counter, Wong swapping his attention between Petrovitch and Sorenson.

“Breakfast?” ventured Petrovitch. “Or should we go elsewhere?”

“Show me the money,” said Wong.

“Show him the money, Sorenson.”

“What? I guess.” He dug in his pocket for his credit chip and handed it to Wong, who fed it into the reader.

His thunderous expression lightened a little. “Okay, you sit down. No organizing crime in my shop.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Petrovitch kicked Sorenson over to the corner table, and chose to sit with his back against the wall and a good view of the door. “Sit your ass down. We’ve got some serious eating to do.”

Sorenson cast a suspicious glance over to the counter where his credit chip remained in the till. “I still don’t understand what we’re doing here.”

“Look. You’ve been up all night, walking the streets—and God only knows how you survived that—and have been running on nervous energy since you realized just how catastrophic the mistake you made is. We’re going to load up on caffeine and long-chain carbohydrates, then I’m going to beat you around the head until your brain restarts. Yeah?”

Sorenson stared at him.

“How old are you?” asked Petrovitch. He swept the tabletop with the palm of his hand and decrumbed it against his thigh. Wong banged down two mugs of coffee and rumbled deep in his throat. “Thanks, Wong. Really, you don’t want to overhear any of this.”

He walked away muttering about bad men.

“Thirty-six,” said Sorenson.

“You’ve been through the draft, yeah?”

“Sure, I served my country. Corps of Engineers. Five years. I made sergeant and got me a chestful of medals, including two Purple Hearts.”

Petrovitch leaned back. “Then grow a pair of yajtza, man.”

“Okay, so I screwed up taking work from Oshicora. Chain has given me one chance to put it right, and you’re going to help me.” Sorenson snagged his coffee and drank. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t the scalding black slurry that sloshed around his mouth. His eyes bugged, his cheeks bulged, but he eventually swallowed. “That’s…”

“That’s what you’ll be drinking at least two cups of, so get used to it.” Petrovitch picked up his own mug and drank nonchalantly. “So you did a deal with Chain. You told him you’d get something on Oshicora in return for a clean getaway.”

“I can take my lumps, kid. But it’s not just me. It’s my mother and my sister. They rely on my company for everything. If it goes under, they lose the roof over their heads.”

“If the stakes were so high, why didn’t you check who Oshicora was?”

“I don’t know. I’m on a sales trip, visiting hospitals and pitching my implants. I get approached by that Hijo character. His employer would like to meet me, discuss a project he’s working on. I say Okay, because, hey, I’m on a sales trip. I’m here to drum up business.”

“Don’t tell me: you got so caught up in the idea of VirtualJapan that you let your guard down.” The first hint of sympathy entered Petrovitch’s voice. “He plucked you like a ripe apple.”

“He’s got his own quantum computer, damn it. I never thought for a moment.” Sorenson ran his hand through his greasy hair. “That was my problem: I never thought.”

“Did you not even find it slightly odd that a Japanese businessman was offering an American businessman a job?”

“I…”

“Do you not realize how much they hate you? All of you?”

“I, no. I guess I didn’t. I didn’t approve of the President’s decision. I don’t even vote Reconstruction.” Sorenson sighed and started on his coffee in earnest, pulling a face every time.

“You should have made that clear to him. Oshicora’s lumped you in with the perpetual President Mackenzie and all the other Reconstructionists. As far as he’s concerned, you’re the public face of a policy that would have condemned him and one hundred and twenty million of his fellow citizens to a watery grave.” Petrovitch looked up, and Wong was advancing on them with two plates piled high with heart-stopping amounts of fried food. “Incoming.”

They sat back in their seats as Wong banged their breakfasts down. The proprietor glared at the two men, then turned his back on them.

Sorenson blinked like an owl. “What… is this?”

“It’s better not to ask. Very little of it has ever seen the inside of an animal, and most of the rest hasn’t been grown in soil.” Petrovitch leaned over and snagged a bottle of ketchup from a neighboring table. “It’s full of salt, fat, starch and protein, and honestly, it’s the best thing you can eat right now.”

“But my heart!”

“You should worry,” he said, brandishing his knife and fork. “Sorenson, just stop your complaining and get it inside you.”

The pair worked their way methodically through the bacon shapes, sausage shapes, potato shapes, reconstituted egg, and engineered beans. Petrovitch speared Sorenson’s black pudding after explaining precisely how it was made; the irony being it was the only natural product on the plate.

They washed it down with more of Wong’s oil-black brew.

“Ready to talk?” said Petrovitch.

“Guess so.” Sorenson covered his mouth to stifle a burp.

“Right. So let’s get the story so far: you’re a regular straight up sort of guy, look after your sister and your mother, done nothing illegal so far.”

Sorenson’s eyes twitched briefly. “That’s right,” he said.

“You wouldn’t be holding out on me, would you?” Petrovitch pushed his glasses up his nose. “Think very carefully before answering.”

“There’s nothing.”

“I can find out for myself.” He sighed. “I could probably find out right now if I had my rat. Forget it. Why do you think I can do something about this?”

“I saw you with Oshicora. You’ve got leverage with him. You can use that.”

“I’m not crossing him. No way, never.”

“You’re the only one I’ve ever seen him with who he actually respects. He puts his guard down with you.”

“Even if that was true…” Petrovitch chewed his lip. “No. Absolutely not. I already had one gang trying to kill me this week. Why would I want another?”

Sorenson picked his knife up and stared at the grease-stained end. “Is that your final answer?”

“Look, I already tried, okay? I talked to him. I told him that he was treating you badly.”

“And what did he say?”

“That it was no more than you deserved because you’re a stinking Yankee technocrat who did nothing while Japan drowned.” Petrovitch glanced up at the American’s flushed face and decided not to mention that Oshicora knew what it was he was hiding. “I chose not to push it. The only thing you can do is go back to work. Back to the Oshicora Tower and pray to whatever god you believe in that when you’re done, you get shown some mercy.”

“Chain will ruin me.”

“Trust me, Oshicora will ruin you a whole lot faster. Buy yourself some time to come up with a better plan.”

Sorenson leaped up and closed his hands on the tabletop, threatening to snap it in two. “I came to you for help.”

“Chain told you to. He’s using you as much as Oshicora is. All I am is a kid who knows a lot about maths and physics. How the chyort did anyone think I could help?” Petrovitch finished his coffee standing.

Sorenson kicked his own chair away in frustration.

“Hey,” shouted Wong. “You stop that now.”

Petrovitch bent down and picked the chair up. “He’s leaving. So am I.”

Wong threw Sorenson’s credit chip toward them. Petrovitch snatched at it and missed. Sorenson’s catch was more certain.

“Come on, before you get me barred.” Petrovitch squeezed out onto the busy street, and Sorenson joined him, shivering slightly in the damp morning air. Despite the American’s size, he looked small and pathetic at that moment. “Go back to your hotel. Get a shower, change your clothes. Then go to work. Go, Sorenson, just go.”

A black car with darkened windows pulled up by the curb; a door opened but no one emerged. Immediately Petrovitch was looking for a way out, but it was too late.

“Comrade Marchenkho would like a word.” The man had stepped from behind him and pressed something hard into his back, pushing him toward the open door.

Sorenson looked ready for a fight. Petrovitch put a hand out and covered his fist, then gave a little sigh.

“Stop stroking your yielda,” he told the gunman. “You’re not going to use it on me. Unless you want a half-a-million-euro contract on you.”

“That might be true.” The object left his skin and Petrovitch saw Sorenson pale. “But your friend, on the other hand, has no such protection. Get in the car.”

Petrovitch looked up at the gray sky and gave a small strangled cry.