The Curve of The Earth

17

Petrovitch set the plane down in a clearing, dropping from treetop to forest floor quickly as they were no longer under power: he had as much control over the vessel as he would a hot air balloon, and he’d rather not scrape the paintwork — or one of the antigravity outriggers — on a trunk.

He folded the undercarriage out, and it made uneven contact with the ground. They were listing slightly to port, but he was satisfied he could correct for that on take-off.

The instrument panel glowed with a soft pink electroluminescence for a moment after landing. Then it winked out.

Petrovitch blew out a thin stream of air between his pursed lips. “We seem to be still in one piece. Good.”

Newcomen peeled himself off the co-pilot’s chair. His armpits were dark with sweat. “That was terrifying.”

“You thought so? I quite enjoyed it. I lived mainly on adrenalin when I was younger, though, so maybe that has something to do with it.”

“Did we steal this?”

“No. I hired it. Technically, someone else hired it, because if I’d hired it under my own name, the computer would have flagged it up to the authorities. But it amounts to the same thing. I hired it, got it fuelled, filed an entirely bogus flight plan — which is a low-grade federal offence — and then took remote control of it after knocking out its automatic locator beacon, which is another one.”

Petrovitch looked around the cockpit and frowned.

“What?” asked Newcomen.

“It’s always worried me how wildly complicated these things are, when they should grow simpler the more advanced they get. All the pilot does is choose the direction, altitude and speed. That’s it, really. You might be interested in how fast the engines are turning and how much fuel you’ve got, but if you’re running hot or going to be out of juice before you reach your destination, the computer should tell you first.”

“Do you actually have a pilot’s licence?” asked Newcomen, “Or are you insane?”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive. And in the Freezone, we don’t do the licence thing. We concentrate on whether the man or woman at the controls is competent to make the flight.” Petrovitch slipped from his seat and started towards the small cabin. “Rely on a piece of paper to tell us if someone can fly? No thanks.”

Newcomen unbuckled his harness. Having struggled into it mid-flight, he now had to wrestle his way out. Petrovitch moved up the passageway, collected his carpet bag, and opened up the external door.

The scent of cold and pine burst in, and he breathed deeply, ridding his nose of the smell of his passenger’s fear. The forest seemed quiet enough: snow slipped off branches and birds called to each other through the dense green foliage. Apart from that, the most sound came from the cooling engines, ticking and clicking as the cowlings contracted.

A ladder unwound from underneath the opening in the fuselage. Petrovitch dumped his bag on the top step and collected it again when he was one foot from the ground.

He jumped. The undisturbed snow crunched and the leaf mould underneath gave. After their frantic escape, such stillness was welcome.

Newcomen appeared, blinking in the white reflected light. “Why are we going outside?”

“Because it’s nice out, and trees are opaque to infrared. Come on.”

Petrovitch tramped across the clearing and under the canopy of green. The forest was mature, and the trunks far apart, although they had to manhandle the overlapping branches in order to push through. When they were thoroughly embedded, and as far as Newcomen was concerned, completely lost, Petrovitch stopped and settled down on a mossy rock protruding from the carpet of soft brown needles.

Newcomen realised he wouldn’t be able to sit anywhere he wasn’t going to get his suit stained. So he stood instead, trying to shake the melting snow out of his shoes.

“Why did we run? I mean, we both know we’re going to end up in Deadhorse sooner or later. They’ll be waiting for us, despite this.”

Petrovitch opened his bag and started to sort through the equipment inside. “I hate being watched. I hate being controlled. Most of all, I hate being at the end of such unmitigated spite and obstruction. My girl is still out there, and I’m having to deal with all this govno.”

He found what he was looking for: a slim box with several slots in each side. He powered it up and gestured for Buchannan’s data card.

Newcomen reluctantly handed it over, and Petrovitch peered at it, checking it for spyware. It was clean, literally a dime-adozen standard data card that could be bought from any electronics chop-shop across America.

Petrovitch located the right hole in his card reader. A yellow light winked away on the box to show it was busy. While they were waiting for the data to upload, he closed his eyes and tilted his head back.

When Newcomen cleared his throat, Petrovitch tutted. “Shush.”

The yellow light was replaced by green.

“It’s done.”

Without opening his eyes, Petrovitch said: “There can be terabytes of data on each card. It all needs to be sorted and checked.”

“By you?”

“By a committee. It’s private information. If I need to know any of it, they’ll pass the relevant files to me.” He sighed and put the card reader next to him on the rock. “We value privacy much more than you do.”

“You have an all-seeing artificial intelligence monitoring everything you do and everywhere you go.”

“That’s because Michael is an infovore. That’s what he does. It doesn’t follow that he passes that information on to everybody else. Or even anyone at all.”

“So you’re happy that this machine knows everything about you?”

“Are you happy that your God knows everything about you?”

Newcomen took a sharp breath in. “That’s not…”

“Not the same?” Petrovitch smiled. “No. Michael can’t send me to Hell if he thinks I’ve been bad.”

“Doesn’t mean that God won’t.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Yeah, I’m an arrogant little shit, but I pay for it. Who on your side is going to pay for abandoning a twenty-four-year-old to the Alaskan winter? You going to go home and hand out the indictments?” He mimed the scene. “One for you, Mr Director. Here’s yours, General. Don’t worry, Mr Secretary of State, I haven’t forgotten you.”

“You’re just mocking me now.”

“I would much rather see justice done in this life than wait until the next. Mainly because I think the idea’s a pile of govno, but also because justice delayed is justice denied. Waiting till some of these wily old bastards die is just plain wrong.” The light on the reader flicked back to yellow. “Interesting.”

[The Secrets committee has met. There are files on the data card that would be detrimental to the personal security of several individuals should they be read by agents of the United States government. They have therefore requested that those files are deleted locally, while I retain secure copies.]

“What’s going on?”

“Hang on.” Petrovitch held up his hand and addressed Michael. “So what do we have?”

[Access codes to FBI funds and assets within the state of Alaska, along with contact details of personnel. Chiefly, though, we have been given the encrypted v-log of Assistant Director Leopold Buchannan, detailing his personal thoughts over the last week. His words are occasionally banal, but sometimes enlightening. One entry in particular is most revealing, and the committee wishes to share this information with Joseph Newcomen as well as you, since it most directly affects him.]

“Right,” said Petrovitch to Newcomen. “Buchannan gave us his diary. You still got that screen I gave you?”

Newcomen patted his pockets, then searched through them, eventually coming up with the flat sheet of plastic. “I’ve got it.”

“But you’ll have no sound.” Petrovitch thought about matters for a moment, then delved back in his bag. “So let’s do this properly.”

He came back out with a sealed plastic bag containing three pieces of equipment: an earpiece, a screen-reader, and a slim, curved rectangle in white. He tore the plastic with his teeth and sorted out the components on his lap.

“This is a Freezone thing, and you’re the first person not in the collective to ever be offered one.” He glanced up at Newcomen’s sceptical expression. “It’s not because you’re special or anything. This is a purely practical decision. Now pull your shirt up.”

“Like I’m not cold enough already.”

“Stop being a baby and do it.” Petrovitch lifted up the white rectangle and pulled a sheet of backing material off one side. “Turn around a bit.”

Newcomen did as he was told, and felt faintly ridiculous. Petrovitch positioned the device over the left kidney region and got Newcomen to breathe in. Then he slapped the rectangle against cold white skin and held it there.

“Breathe out.”

Newcomen did so, and Petrovitch took his hands away. The thing was stuck on.

“Fine. Tuck yourself back in. You’ll notice it’s there to start with, then not at all. When it warms up, it’ll get to work. You’ll need this too.” Petrovitch turned Newcomen’s palm upwards and pressed the earpiece on him. “Choose an ear and shove it in.”

Newcomen tentatively offered the grey capsule to his right ear, but it kept on falling out.

Petrovitch took it from him and rammed it home. Tiny clamps bit into Newcomen’s ear canal and held it firm.

“Ow.” He shook his head to try and dislodge the thing, but it wasn’t coming out. “It hurts.”

“You really are a balvan, aren’t you?” Petrovitch gestured to Newcomen, who bent over, proffering his ear. “Tap the end twice with your fingernail. Like this.”

The clamps pulled back and the device dropped out into his hand.

“I suppose I have to put it back now.”

“If you want to know what Buchannan said, yes.”

Reluctantly, Newcomen did as he was told. He winced when the clamps deployed, but at least he kept his mouth shut. He frowned after a moment, listening to a voice only he could hear.

Michael was talking to him, running him through the protocols that he needed to know about being connected through the Freezone. He didn’t have full access to the power of the system, but for someone unused to the always-on, augmented reality it provided, even partial exposure could be surreal.

Newcomen spoke to confirm his name, date of birth, and address. He seemed bewildered by the experience: there was something strapped to his side, another thing planted in his ear, but combined, they formed a presence that was both distant and immediate at the same time.

And the Freezone had been raising kids with this technology for almost a decade now, a whole generation coming through who’d known nothing else but their own personal mentor, guardian, friend being no more than a breath away.

“It says — he says — for you to give me the screen.”

Petrovitch held it out and Newcomen took it. The plastic bloomed into life, fuzzy moving images blurred by being shot on a cheap camera flickering inside its translucent surface.

“It’s Buchannan.”

“I know. I can see it too.”

Newcomen pointed to his screen. “But you’re not…”

“I’m a yebani cyborg.” Petrovitch reached up and tapped his skull. “It’s happening in here.”

It was, too. The Assistant Director was sitting on a park bench, swaddled up against the cold. Snow was drifting down around him, settling on his shoulders and melting on the lenses of his glasses. There was a lot of shake: he was videoing himself at arm’s length.

“My name,” said Buchannan, “is Assistant Director Leo Buchannan, FBI. The time is,” and he glanced at his wrist, “ten forty a.m. on Friday February tenth, twenty thirty-four. I have just been approached by two men who declined to identify themselves but who knew the correct access codes for both the FBI building and my office. I shall call them Ben and Jerry, for want of anything better to call them.”

Buchannan looked around him before continuing. “I have been asked to obstruct a federal investigation for the good of national security. A foreigner called Lucy Petrovitch is missing in northern Alaska. For reasons that are on a need-to-know basis — and I’m told I don’t need to know — Miss Petrovitch must not be found, and no search for her should be made. I have to keep up the appearance of looking for her without actually doing so.

“To this end, I have been told to assign an agent to the case who is totally unsuited for the task. Agent Joseph Newcomen will escort the girl’s father wherever he goes, but since this is not his area of expertise, any help he might render will be incidental rather than directed. I am also to withdraw any other agents from the investigation.

“I am very angry about the position I have been put in, and angrier about placing Agent Newcomen at risk from Samuil Petrovitch, who is known to display psychopathic tendencies and is a violent American-hating recidivist. However, my hands appear to be tied, and my orders come with the very highest clearance.

“This is the most distasteful episode in my professional life to date. I am making this recording and keeping it with my personal papers in case of internal investigation or audit.”

The media stream finished.

Petrovitch cleared his vision. Newcomen seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

“Why don’t we go back to the plane,” he said, “and see if it comes with a drinks cabinet?”