Equations of Life

13

Petrovitch only had half his mind on his tensors. The other half was gnawing furiously at an entirely different problem.

After ten minutes, he gave up, threw his pen down in disgust and dug around in his jacket pocket. Sorenson’s card was white and shiny, with a little animated logo spinning around in one corner. It had the company phone number embossed across the front, along with the URL: the back was over-printed with Sorenson’s name and mobile number.

He tapped the card on the desk, considered putting it back, considered throwing it in the bin, considered trying to tear at its hard plastic edges until it broke. He tossed it to one side and looked at the equation he’d started.

“Raspizdyai kolhoznii,” he muttered. The card stared back at him.

But he couldn’t concentrate.

He wrenched open a drawer and unrolled a keyboard. His screen was under a pile of books he hadn’t quite got around to returning to the stacks: he dragged it out and propped it against the fading spines. Some of the pixels had failed due to the weight of paper, but he could see around them.

He tapped the rubbery keys to make sure he had a connection, then logged on to his own computer.

There was a touch pad somewhere. He moved some monographs, and it was hiding underneath. He nudged it closer to the keyboard and got the two talking.

If he’d had his rat, the whole operation would have been simplicity itself, but he hadn’t bought it to make his life easy. He’d bought it for his insurance policy, the one he’d have to cash in if his world came tumbling down around him.

He contemplated his need for his missing hardware while listening to the ringing of Sorenson’s phone.

“Sorenson.”

“Are you alone?”

“Who is this?”

“Shut the fuck up, Sorenson, and listen to me. Don’t say my name. Are you alone?”

There was a pause. “Yes. He’s just left.”

“Right. There is a very good chance that you’re still wearing a bug that Chain planted on you. I know you changed your clothes this morning, and I don’t know if that makes a difference, but I wouldn’t risk it.”

The silence that followed was long enough that Petrovitch pinged Sorenson’s phone to make sure it was still on.

“How do you know?”

“Because Chain’s just been to see me and casually let slip that he’s been listening to our conversation all morning.”

“What should I do?”

“I’m not your agony aunt, Sorenson. I’ve done the right thing, and now I’m hanging up. Oh, and I might not care about whatever horrible things you’ve done in the past, but both Oshicora and Chain seem to know all about them. Goodbye.”

He closed the connection and deleted the phone from his records, then cleared all the computer components away. He was reasonably confident that the phone call was untraceable and anonymous. Confident, but not certain.

He shook his head. There was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. He picked up his pen again and adjusted his glasses, allowing his concentration to blot out all external distractions.

His pen hovered over the paper, and then started to write. Symbols and letters spilled out, each line getting progressively longer than the one before. Then, with a blink and a pair of raised eyebrows, he started whittling away at the expressions, reducing pairs of them to simpler equations or single values.

He’d almost finished, and he felt a rush of cold heat inside. Something was falling out of the mass of complex mathematics, something that he didn’t recognize but which carried the elegance and beauty of true meaning.

He stared at the final line. Now that he was done, he felt growing doubt. Pif would look at it and laugh, then show him where he’d gone wrong. It wasn’t that he was terrible at math, just that he wasn’t as good as she was. She only had to look at an equation to taste its use and quality.

Petrovitch started to work backward, trying to justify each step to himself, testing each part for error, when he was interrupted by a polite knock at the door.

No one ever knocked. No one he knew was emotionally or socially equipped to knock and wait. Doors were to be shoulder-charged and burst through.

He set down his pen and cleared his throat. “Come in?”

It was Hijo who stepped in first. “Petrovitch-san? Is this a convenient time?”

Petrovitch felt the sudden drop in his blood pressure, and its equally sudden surge as his defibrillator compensated. His hands shook and he clamped them flat on his desk to stop their telltale movement.

“Petrovitch-san?” asked Hijo again.

“Convenient for what, precisely?”

“Mister Oshicora would like to talk to you about a matter of some delicacy.”

Petrovitch had no idea what he meant. It didn’t sound good but not only did he have nowhere to run to, he had no way of running. In his current state, he’d get halfway down the corridor before keeling over clutching at his chest.

“I suppose now’s as good a time as any.”

Hijo looked around the room, and took in the closed blinds, the pre-Armageddon paint, the unpleasantly sticky lino, the vague, haphazard attempts to humanize the workspace. He nodded and stepped back outside.

Petrovitch peeled his sweaty palms off the desk top and started to stand. Oshicora came in and closed the door. He smiled and gave his little bow.

“Vsyo govno, krome mochee,” said Petrovitch to himself, closing his eyes.

“Pardon, Petrovitch-san?”

“It’s an old Russian saying, nothing to worry about.” He decided to put a brave face on the situation. It might be his last few minutes on the planet, but he was determined to go out with his middle finger firmly extended in salute. “We’re not exactly set up for visitors here, but you can have my chair.”

“Your colleague, Doctor Ekanobi, is not here?”

“No. She went—I sent her—home. She was working all night and I thought it best.”

“I will sit at her desk, if you have no objections.” Oshicora moved the wheeled chair aside and sat on the very front of it. His attention was drawn, like Chain’s before him, to the handwritten equations. He lifted the top sheet up and examined it carefully. “It seems strange, anachronistic even,” he said, “that in this modern world there is still a place for pen, ink and paper.”

“Computers can only do so much,” said Petrovitch. “They can still only do what we tell them to do.”

“So very true,” mused Oshicora. He put the piece of paper down on the pile, exactly where he’d found it. “Your work progresses well?”

Petrovitch looked down at his own desk, at the lines of script that had fallen from his nib. “This isn’t my work. I’m just helping out.”

“You are a very talented man,” said Oshicora. “Which is rare enough. You are also compassionate. The two qualities combine to make you an attractive prospect to a certain young woman of our mutual acquaintance.”

It wasn’t about tipping Sorenson off. It was about Sonja. Petrovitch’s sense of relief was like being picked up by an ocean wave: cold, clear, irresistible. He even laughed.

“I have no feelings one way or another toward your daughter, Oshicora-san, romantic or otherwise.”

“She kissed you,” he said.

“She caught me off-guard. I didn’t know she was going to do that until she did it.”

“She is impulsive. Naïve and impulsive. I do my best to protect her without damaging her further.” Oshicora looked pensive, before restoring his mask of equanimity. “May I explain?”

“Only if you don’t have to kill me later. Otherwise, I’d rather not know.”

“I do not wish you dead, Petrovitch-san. Many years ago, I met an English teacher in Tokyo. English, in both senses: she was English, back when there was an England to come from, and she taught English. She was charming, exotic, very different from the Japanese girls I knew. We became close. We married. We did all the things that married people do.”

“I get the picture,” said Petrovitch, looking away embarrassed.

“Quite. We had children, and it suddenly became difficult for us. I was Japanese, my wife was incurably English, but our children were neither. We loved them, but…” Oshicora’s fingers curled into a fist. He forced them to relax. “It is difficult to say these things without sounding like a racist. While Japan stood, these things did not matter. Our culture, our language, our existence was secure. With it gone, everything is in doubt. It would be very easy for us to lose our identity within a few generations.”

Here was this man, this pitiless crime lord well on his way to owning half of the Metrozone by racketeering, theft and murder, talking honestly and openly about his family. From the joy of not being shot like the traitorous dog he was, Petrovitch was now grimacing as his gut contracted into a small, shriveled knot.

“I said children,” sighed Oshicora. “Sonja was all I had left after Japan fell. My wife, my two boys were lost. They disappeared, and although I have scoured the face of the planet for them, I cannot find them. All my hopes and dreams now rest in my daughter. For these reasons, she will marry a Japanese man of pure blood. And not, I regret to say, a radiation-damaged Slav.”

Petrovitch swallowed hard against his dry throat. “I don’t want to marry your daughter, Oshicora-san.”

“I am afraid our problem runs deeper than that. The attraction between me and my wife was partly because of our differences. It seems to be a case of like father, like daughter.” He raised his eyebrows.

“Chyort!”

“Her infatuation will be short-lived, but I would appreciate your cooperation in not prolonging it. Do we have an understanding, Petrovitch-san?”

“Yeah. Absolutely. I’d cut off my little finger if I thought it would make you believe me more.” The thought terrified him, but he’d do it.

Oshicora shook his head slightly. “That will not be necessary. Thank you for your discretion in this, and earlier matters. I have a policy of only employing nikkeijin within my organization. Sorenson was an exception, and I had other reasons for that which you know about. You, Petrovitch-san, would have proved very useful, above your already great service to me. Sadly, it is not to be. Still, come the revolution, you will be spared.”

Petrovitch blinked slowly, then caught the slight upturn on Oshicora’s mouth. “Very funny. In Russia, the revolution has you.”

“Have we concluded our talk, Petrovitch-san? Are we parting on good terms?”

“I believe so.”

Oshicora stood up and bowed. “Again, I am in your debt.”

“No, no you’re not.” Petrovitch got to his feet, and realized just how weak he was; physically and emotionally drained.

“You would have made a good son-in-law, I think.”

“And a lousy husband.”

On his way to the door, Oshicora said off-handedly: “I would have offered you money to stay away from my daughter. A great deal of money.”

“And I would have turned it down,” said Petrovitch. “It’s more honorable this way.”

“A good word for a virtue that is in short supply. Sayonara, Petrovitch-san.”

When he’d gone, when Petrovitch had waited for five minutes and Hijo hadn’t leaped into the room to behead him with a katana, he fell across his desk, limp and useless.

He’d gotten away with it. Again. He’d ridden his luck so hard, so far, that surely it had to be spent by now.

Coffee. He boiled up some more water, and shoveled granules into the dregs of the previous brew. Then he sat back down and couldn’t quite believe he was still alive.

There was work to do, though: he had to have something to show Pif when she came back in, even though he knew from experience that when she chose to sleep, she could be out for the best part of a day. In the current circumstances, with everything that was at stake, he guessed she’d catnap. A couple of hours and she’d return, running on adrenaline, caffeine and sugar. Much like himself.

He looked at what he’d done that morning, and wondered if he’d made a mistake copying out the original equations of state. Pif would beat him with the stupid stick if he had, so he wheeled himself around to her desk, nudging the other chair aside.

He checked every symbol with exaggerated care, finally coming to the conclusion that his errors were entirely of his own devising.

Then he spotted it, stuck to the desktop under Pif’s papers, in plain sight to anyone who looked. A bug, the same size and shape as the one he’d found in his shoe. Just like the one Marchenkho’s hired killers had used to find him.

“Sooksin,” he breathed.

It wasn’t Marchenkho. The one Sorenson had picked up had been Chain’s. And this one, slipped under Pif’s working-out when he’d fiddled with it, was Chain’s. Which probably meant that the first one had been his, too. He’d been tricked.

Then the awful realization struck him. Not that Harry Chain had let him believe that Marchenkho had bugged him, but that he was still bugged.

No, not that either. Why would Chain make an attempt to plant another device on Pif’s desk? Because the first one had gone wrong. He took off his jacket and pulled it inside out, searching every seam, folding back the collar, examining every pocket. Then his T-shirt.

Then his trousers, again turned street-side in, and his socks, damn it. Even the waistband of his pants, though he was sure he’d have noticed Chain rummaging around in there while he was still wearing them.

His boots. He took each one off and felt around inside them, then by chance and out of desperation, turned them over. It was there, on the right boot, tucked in the angle between heel and arch. The glue hadn’t adhered properly to the dirty underside, and half the tab was flapping around, folded back on itself. The plastic cover had worn through, and some of the circuitry had been severed.

Where had he gone? Walked the short distance up past the palace to Green Park. Straight from Chain’s office to Oshicora’s. It had to have malfunctioned before then, otherwise he’d have been overheard organizing a half-million-euro counter-hit with Oshicora. That Chain had missed that was down to pure, unadulterated luck.

Petrovitch was at the end of the line. It was time to get off and change trains, right now.