Equations of Life

9

Sorenson unfolded himself from his chair. He extended a shovel-like hand and grasped Petrovitch’s in a knuckle-cracking hold.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said in an inflected Midwest accent.

“You’re…” Petrovitch bit his tongue and changed gear. Sorenson knew he was an American, and Petrovitch telling him so would only mark him out as socially inept. “Very busy.”

“Mr. Oshicora pays well for good work. You doing the project too?”

“Project?” He didn’t know what the project was. “No.”

Oshicora interrupted. “Petrovitch-san has been assisting me in another matter, where he has been most helpful. Sorenson is an expert in man–machine interfaces; his skills are most apposite.”

Now Petrovitch wondered what Oshicora needed a cyberneticist for. “I thought you Americans were into gene splicing and wetware.”

“I’m the exception to the rule, then, Mr. Petrovitch.” Sorenson scratched at his thinning sandy hair, looking more like a farmer worrying about his crop than a technologist. He reached into his back pocket and passed him a business card. “If you ever need a spare part, just call.”

Petrovitch glanced across to Oshicora, whose face remained utterly unreadable. “Yeah, thanks,” he said, sliding the card into his jacket. “If you ever need, I don’t know, someone to design some building-sized electromagnets, I’m your man. Though I doubt there’s much call for that sort of thing in your line of work.”

Sorenson laughed and clapped Petrovitch on the shoulder. “You never know.”

He forced his arm back into line. “What was it you wanted me to see, Oshicora-san?”

“If Mister Sorenson will close his work, I will show you.”

Sorenson busied himself at the virtual keyboard, then moved out of Oshicora’s way.

The older man tugged his sleeves away from his wrists and reset the terminal’s language. The image of the keyboard changed and grew as it converted to use an extended Japanese character set. He typed in a single command line, and sat back.

The screen blinked, as if it were a giant eye. When it opened, it looked out on an aerial view of Japan.

“Here is Nippon, as it was on the evening of March twenty-eighth, twenty seventeen,” said Oshicora. He touched the screen, and they descended through the clouds until they were over the island of Honshu. “Here is Tokyo.”

The city sprawled around the bay, street after street. Piers jutted into the sea. Buildings rose up from the ground. Oshicora brought them down to pavement level, where the scene slowly rotated. Shops, brightly lit, filled with the goods of the world. Everything was as it had been, the day before the whole island chain started to turn into Atlantis. Everything, except the people.

“I get it,” said Petrovitch. “How detailed are you going to make this?”

“Perfectly so. Down to the feel of the silk on a kimono.”

“That’s ambitious. No wonder you need Sorenson. You want a totally immersive city.”

“I beg to correct you, Petrovitch-san. A whole country. Every tree, every blade of grass, every grain of sand. Mapped and reproduced from the memories of one hundred and twenty million Japanese survivors. Not just houses, but everything in them. Not just parks, but the scent of chrysanthemums. Cherry blossom will fall like rain once more. It will be exact. Our homeland will rise from the sea as if it had never fallen. The shinkansen will run again.”

Petrovitch wondered if his heart had skipped a beat. “Nu ti dajosh! What the hell are you running this on?”

“Below this building is a room. It is bombproof, fireproof, waterproof, electromagnetic and radiation hard. In it is a quantum computer. If every nikkeijin visited the simulation at the same time, it would still run flawlessly.”

“Ooh.” Petrovitch’s fingers tingled. He started to think about all the things he could do with such massively parallel processing, and broke out in a cold sweat.

“Petrovitch-san? Are you unwell?”

“No, I’m fine.” He rested his hands on the table. “Just taking a moment. That’s really very impressive.”

“I am happy. Now, I will leave you briefly in the care of Sorenson, while I attend to the other matter we discussed earlier. If you will excuse me?” Oshicora bowed and left the shrine, leaving the single chair unoccupied.

“Mind if I?” asked Petrovitch.

“Knock yourself out, kid,” said Sorenson. “So what do you make of our employer?”

“He’s not my employer,” said Petrovitch firmly, searching for the toggle that would give him a standard Roman keyboard. “I sort of bumped into his daughter this morning.”

“Sonja: I’ve seen her around, though I’ve been told not to talk to her. But I haven’t seen a wife, and he doesn’t wear a ring.” Sorenson looked around to see if he could be overheard. “Not that you have to be married to have kids. Not over here, anyways.”

“And how is the Reconstruction?” Petrovitch gave up, and used the touchscreen instead, navigating around the streets. The walls were solid. Doors were tabbed to open. When he ran a virtual hand over a clothes rail, the dresses moved in exquisite detail.

“You one of these people who expect every American to be a card-carrying Reconstructionist? That gets old real quick.”

“No. I rather assumed you weren’t one of them, since you’re working for Oshicora.”

“It’s a few weeks” consultancy, nothing more.” Sorenson dug his hands in his pockets. “What do you mean? What’s wrong with working for Old Man Oshicora? Because he’s a Jap?”

“Not at all.” Petrovitch glanced over the top of his glasses. “Because he controls the fastest-growing criminal organization in the Metrozone.”

“He what?”

Petrovitch raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t know? Oh dear.”

“Hey now, wait just a…” Sorenson chuckled. “Funny, kid. You had me going for a minute.”

“Sorenson,” said Petrovitch, “it’s not a joke. That ‘other matter’ that Oshicora’s gone to see about is to save me from being shot by the Ukrainian zhopu who tried to kidnap his daughter this morning. I’m not here for any other reason but to try and keep my skin intact.”

A look of doubt flickered across Sorenson’s broad face. “Kid,” he started.

“And stop calling me kid. ‘Kid’ would describe the girl who tried to drive a perspex pick into my guts on the tube.”

“Okay, Petrovitch. I don’t know where you’re getting your facts from, but this gig is legit.” Sorenson was growing angry. Petrovitch could see the storm start to rise behind his eyes. “Just butt out of my business. What is this? Revenge for the Cold War?”

“Neither of us was alive for that.” Petrovitch turned his attention back to the screen. “What you do with the information is up to you. Don’t blame the messenger.” He deliberately leaned forward and absorbed the sights of the eerily empty city.

“I don’t have to take this.” Sorenson stood behind the screen. “I don’t even know you.”

“Yeah, look.” Despite his desire to keep on playing the man, Petrovitch was aware that Sorenson could not only beat the govno out of him, but seemed quite willing to do so. “I don’t care. You’re not interested in anything I have to say because it’s me saying it. So I’m going to do the grown-up thing and let you get on with your coding.”

He got up and walked away, letting the chair fall back with a bang onto the wooden boards. But he didn’t know how far he was permitted to go in the park, so he sat down on the shrine’s wide bottom step and waited.

The chair scraped as it was set upright. “Who’s your source?”

Without turning around, Petrovitch said: “You seem bright enough. Work it out yourself.”

“Okay. I’m sorry. Tell me who I need to talk to.” Sorenson sat down next to him, and had the grace to look troubled.

“DI Chain. Works out of Buckingham Gate.” He looked up and saw Oshicora making his stately way toward them. He finished in a hurried whisper: “Do not mention my name. I’ve no intention of renewing my acquaintance with the man.”

Petrovitch scrabbled to his feet and went to meet Oshicora on the apex of the wooden bridge.

“Petrovitch-san,” said Oshicora, bowing.

Petrovitch bowed in return.

“I have made the arrangements you requested. A counter-contract of five hundred thousand euros has been placed. I imagine you will be safe even from Marchenkho himself.” He looked inordinately pleased with himself, getting one over on an old rival.

“Thank you, Oshicora-san. I kind of assume that our paths won’t cross again.” Petrovitch chanced a half-smile. “I’m rather hoping they won’t. I like a quiet life.”

“Stranger things have been known to happen. If you find that your life is not as quiet as you wish, I will instruct my staff to come to your assistance, as you did to my daughter’s. If you call, they will come.” Oshicora contemplated the carp moving in circles beneath his feet. He dipped his fingers in his pocket and came out with a few compressed pellets of fish food. He dropped them one at a time into the water, and the fish fought for the honor of eating.

“Thank you also for showing me this garden, and your quantum computer project. I hadn’t known there were any in private hands. I wouldn’t be so unwise as to spread that around, either.”

“We understand each other perfectly, Petrovitch-san. Come; I will take you to Hijo, who will show you out.”

As they walked, Petrovitch glanced behind him at Sorenson, standing by the shrine, fists clearly clenching and unclenching. “I think you should have told him.”

“Told him? Ah, yes. Sorenson. You believe I have ruined his life?”

“I think you might have given him the choice first.”

“Do not waste your sympathy on him,” said Oshicora. “He appears to be what the Yankees call a hick, but he has a past which he manages to hide from his own Homeland Security, from himself even. I, however, believe I have discovered his secret. That aside, the mere fact of his relationship with me will ruin him when he has completed his work and tries to return home. It is good that he suspects nothing; it will be an unpleasant surprise for him.”

Petrovitch nodded, and managed somehow not to swear out loud.

Oshicora appeared not to notice the abrupt whiteness of Petrovitch’s skin, and he carried on. “One word from me, and he will lose his citizenship, his company, his assets. He will be stateless, a refugee like we once were. You, I will deal with honorably. After the way the Americans treated my countrymen and women, I have no compunction in exploiting any one of them mercilessly.”

“Yeah, well.” They were at the lift again. Hijo was as immobile as when Petrovitch had left him. “Thanks again, and goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Petrovitch-san. I wish you good fortune and success in your studies. The secrets of the universe are elusive, but perhaps you are the man to catch them.” Oshicora turned to Hijo, who bowed low. “Petrovitch-san is leaving us now. Please make certain he arrives home safely.”

The last sight of Oshicora that Petrovitch had was his smiling face being narrowed to a line by the closing doors.

Hijo led him back through the sea of Japanese faces to the lobby, but didn’t leave him there. Instead, they went through a side door and down a spiraling ramp to an underground loading bay. Sharp white light lit up a pillar-supported concrete chamber. A car sat silently, waiting for them.

It was big and black and crouched low on its suspension. Polarized glass rendered its windows opaque. Petrovitch wondered if there was anyone in it—whether or not it was completely automatic—when the rear door rolled aside electrically and the courtesy light came on.

“Please, Petrovitch-san.” Hijo gestured to the open door, and Petrovitch climbed in. He’d been wrong. There was a driver, and someone riding shotgun. Then Hijo himself got in beside him and tapped the shoulder of the man behind the wheel.

“I didn’t realize you were coming with me,” said Petrovitch. He was eager to be away; he didn’t trust Sorenson to keep his mouth shut.

Hijo pulled the seatbelt across his body and clicked it into place. “My employer would be most displeased with me if something happened to you while you were in our care,” he said by way of explanation.

“So I get a ride in a bullet-proof car.” Petrovitch took a deep breath, and followed Hijo’s example with the seatbelt. “Does this thing go south of the river?”

Barely aware that the engine was running, Petrovitch felt the car ease forward toward a steel shutter that rolled upward. They were outside in a recessed road that gradually rose to join another. He twisted in his seat: he could see the base of the Oshicora Tower behind him, but not its top. They turned, and he lost even that view.

He was driven down the Strand, and across Waterloo Bridge, which neatly skirted the parliamentary Green Zone, then back west along the river before heading south. He even caught sight of the old Palace of Westminster brooding, black and cold, behind concrete walls.

The driver’s wraparound sunglasses showed him which way to go, and Petrovitch became a mute passenger until he felt he was back on his own territory.

“If you drop me here, that’ll be fine. I want to get a coffee.” They knew where he lived, but he didn’t have to take them to his door.

Hijo tapped the driver again, and the car pulled up next to the curb nearest Wong’s.

“Chyort!”

“Sorry, Petrovitch-san?”

Petrovitch pressed his fingers into his temples. “This morning, I had a brand new Random Access Terminal delivered. Detective Inspector Chain took it in for questioning, and it vanished from the evidence room. Your lot didn’t have anything to do with that, did they?”

“I believe not, but I will ask. Should I return it to you if we have it?”

“Bring it here,” he said, “Wong will look after it for me. No offense, but the less I get seen in your company, the better.”

“As you wish, Petrovitch-san.” Hijo slipped his seatbelt and opened the door. He got out first for a precautionary look around, before allowing Petrovitch to step out onto the litter-strewn pavement.

They were attracting more than a little attention, not least from Wong who was at his shop door with his arms folded disapprovingly.

“Right then,” said Petrovitch. “Dobre den.”

“Please,” said Hijo, “I would like to know: why did you help Miss Sonja?”

Petrovitch could already taste coffee in his mouth, bittersweet and strong. “Tell you what, Hijo,” he said, pushing his glasses back up his nose, “I’ll answer that if you tell me what the yebat she was doing out on her own.”

Hijo looked like he’d just been slapped.

“Yeah. Thought so,” said Petrovitch, and shouldered his way past Wong in search of an empty table, cries of what a bad man he was ringing in his ears.