The Curve of The Earth

19

“I want to say goodbye to Christine,” said Newcomen.

“You sure?”

The plane was making a loop over another collection of huts and a disused landing strip, this time in the dark. Lights burned pockets out of the shadows: the rest was featureless void.

“I think it’s pretty clear I can’t go back, and I owe her an explanation as to why.”

Petrovitch puffed his cheeks out. “So you’re going to tell Christine that her dad hates you so much he got the Director of the FBI to send you on a suicide mission. And you think she’s going to believe you?”

“But I’ve got evidence — AD Buchannan’s recording.”

“Ooh, I can see a few problems with this already.” Petrovitch lined up the plane over the landing pad and started the descent. He nudged the nose around so that it pointed upwind. “Just give me a moment. This is easier than it used to be, and still there are a half-dozen ways to screw up.”

The radar altimeter told him his height, and he lined up the virtual crosshairs beneath him. The plane sank lower, and a telltale went ping when the wheels touched the ground.

“Fine.” He started through the power-down procedure. “Where were we? That was it: you making a series of crashing mistakes. Why did you want to talk to Christine again?”

“To say goodbye.”

“Not to try and explain what’s been going on to make yourself look heroic, or tell her what a monster her father is?”

Newcomen started to answer, then shut his mouth.

Petrovitch turned off the flight instruments. The cockpit was as dark as the outside, except for the two points of red light behind his eyes. “It’s perfectly human of you. I’m not blaming you for wanting to do this, but it can’t happen the way you want. You can’t tell her about the bomb. You can’t tell her about her father. You can’t tell her about Buchannan. You can’t tell her where you are…”

“Which is?”

“Watson Lake, Yukon Territory. You can just ask your link, you know.” Petrovitch shook his head, then remembered where he was on his list. “And you can’t tell her where we’re going. That really doesn’t leave much to hang a story on.”

Newcomen straightened up. “Why can’t I tell her those things?”

“Mainly because it’ll get you, or her, or someone else, killed. And even if you don’t care about yourself, I’d have thought Christine would have been somewhere in your thoughts.”

“She’s never out of them. No one would kill her, that’s just,” he threw his hands in the air, “stupid.”

“It would probably be the same people who’d kill Buchannan. And Logan. And his wife.” Petrovitch saw the confusion on Newcomen’s face. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“No.”

“How were you going to talk to Christine?”

“Not on my phone, since you destroyed it. On this link, I guess.”

“Has Christine got a link?”

“You know she hasn’t.”

“So? Come on, join the dots.”

“You’re saying her phone’s bugged?”

“At last. Bearing in mind we’ve just endured two days of constant and intrusive surveillance, did you think any conversation you could possibly have over an unsecured network would stay private?” Petrovitch pressed his fingers into his temples. “I’m surrounded by yebani idiots.”

“So I can’t even say goodbye.” Newcomen slumped back in his seat. “That’s just… dandy.”

“No. Saying goodbye is pretty much all you can do. No reasons, no excuses, no evidence. Just: ‘Hey. I won’t be seeing you ever again. I love you very much. I hope you have a nice life.’ Any more than that, and you’ll be signing her death warrant.”

Petrovitch unbuckled his harness and peered at the condensation freezing on the windscreen. It was minus twenty-three outside; a real cold snap, even for February, though Michael informed him the record there was minus sixty.

[Be grateful.]

“I am. Keep a close eye on Farm Boy, will you? If he wants to call Christine, he should, but put him on a delay and censor him hard, because I’m still not sure he gets it.”

[It is regrettable that full information disclosure cannot be practised at this time.]

“Yeah. First law stuff. Hard lines.”

[Information wants to be free, Sasha.]

“You could reasonably argue that Buchannan could have stood up to Ben and Jerry and told them to swivel on it. But he has kids, and a wife, so he didn’t, and we’re left with this mess. It’ll still be difficult to make parts of this public when we write the history.”

[The Secrets committee?]

“Best let them know now. See if they think some lockdown on the more sensitive bits is needed.” Petrovitch went to see about refuelling, both the plane and him.

If it had been cold before, it was now like stepping into an industrial freezer.

“Yobany stos. I hope that outdoor gear’s ready.”

[It is en route, currently in a box at Fairbanks airport. It will be delivered to the address tomorrow morning.]

“Good. It’s cold enough to freeze my yajtza off.” He stamped his way across the snow to rustle up some help. “Any sign of movement from the Yanks?”

[Your evasion of them this morning has not been reported at all in the public media. Since you are only guilty of filing an incorrect flight plan, and one count of violating local air restrictions, it has been reasonably simple for them to just ignore the incident. The scrambled planes were stood down, and Washington air traffic control resumed operations within the hour. The delay was blamed on computer error.]

“Newcomen still on the active list?”

[He has not been officially withdrawn, although there is a great deal of activity surrounding his file: it has been accessed no fewer than one thousand and fifty-nine times since midnight last night.]

“Any redaction or alteration to it?”

[Some minor editing regarding his medical history. New MRI scans have been substituted for the originals, and they now indicate that Joseph Newcomen has an undetected aneurysm.]

“Head or heart?”

[Head. It is clear that if they wish to kill him at an appropriate moment, they have a ready-made cover story.]

“I ought to let him know. Though I very much doubt if even they can pretend that a bullet through the brain is a pre-existing medical condition.”

He found the right hut, and the man asleep in his chair reluctantly left the warmth of his two-bar fire to do the deed.

Petrovitch took his place, just for a moment. He closed his eyes and dreamed.

It was dark, but not the dark of night, or of a closed room. This darkness was vast, unending, holy. It called to him to stare deep into it, because it held everything that ever was and ever would be. He looked, and was lost in wonder.

[Sasha? There has been a…] Michael paused.

He was instantly awake.

[Development.]

“The last time you said that, my world fell apart.”

[It is not your world this time, Sasha. It is Joseph’s.]

“I thought it had fallen apart already. You mean he’s got further to go?”

The door to the fuel hut banged open. Newcomen staggered in, suffering from the cold and the extreme anxiety that had gripped him.

“You’ll need to close that,” said Petrovitch.

“We have to go back,” slurred Newcomen. “We have to go back now.”

Petrovitch reached past him and kicked the door closed. He grabbed the unresisting man and pushed him in front of the fire so his face could defrost.

“It’s Christine. She’s in terrible danger.” Newcomen tried to wrestle Petrovitch out of the way.

“I don’t care if she’s fallen down the old well, Lassie: we’re nearly fifteen hundred k north of Seattle and there are easier ways of helping than presenting ourselves back there with massive targets painted on us.”

Newcomen hit him. Not hard enough to really hurt, but it was a surprise all the same. He only managed it once. Petrovitch closed his fist around Newcomen’s own and squeezed.

Newcomen gasped and slipped off the chair on to his knees, shaking uncontrollably.

“Don’t ever do that again. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Michael, what the huy is going on?”

[Joseph Newcomen wished to communicate with Christine Logan. I initiated the call and secured it from the repeated attempts to trace our location. I was even able to provide him with a visual feed from spyware located throughout the Logan residence.]

Petrovitch let go, and left Newcomen clutching his bruised fingers. “When you say throughout, you mean that in your precise, unambiguous way, right?”

[Areas that would normally be considered private for humans such as bedrooms and bathrooms are being actively surveilled. I have discussed the implications of this discovery with Joseph Newcomen.]

“Which is why he’s crying at my feet and demanding I take him back to Seattle.” He looked down. “You know, I could do without this.”

[It is highly likely that Joseph Newcomen will make repeated attempts to return to Christine Logan alone, no matter how forcefully you prevent him. In addition, his psychological state will render him ineffectual.]

“More ineffectual? He’s positively a black hole of effectiveness as it is. So what you’re saying is we have to do something, or I’m going to end up kicking him out of a moving plane flying at five hundred k over the Canadian tundra just to get some peace and quiet.”

[Essentially, yes.]

“It’s not illegal to put surveillance cameras up in your own property, is it?”

[One of the fundamental tenets of Reconstruction is that a family is free to order itself within its own dwelling space, with no government interference.]

“Newcomen? I might be able to turn my ears off so I don’t hear your whining, but I still know you’re doing it. Sit in the chair and shut up. The grown-ups are trying to work out what to do.” Petrovitch scratched at the stubble on his chin. “Could never grow a proper beard. Now, Archie’s? That was serious beardage. Right, Michael: call an ad-hoc. I want to go after the house computer.”

Half a world away, a committee was formed, told of the reason, and asked to come to a decision.

They did. It wasn’t quite what he expected.

“Newcomen. I can make you an offer.”

Newcomen looked up for the first time in a while. He regarded Petrovitch suspiciously. “Go on.”

“Michael can attack Logan’s house computer: wipe its memory, erase its programs. The security system’s such that it’ll go into fail-safe mode, and Christine’s going to have to be rescued by the fire department cutting through the front door. That’ll get her out of the house for a couple of days.”

“But won’t Logan just load everything back up again?”

“Yeah, course he will. Trashing his computer is conditional on you telling Christine what we’ve done and why.” Petrovitch shrugged. “The ad-hoc says she has a right to know. Difficult to argue with that. And if you don’t do it, I will; I imagine she’s more likely to believe you without me having to get technical on her about where the spy-eyes and mics are hidden.”

“I…”

“Five minutes ago you wanted us to turn around and appear on her doorstep. What, precisely, were you going to say to her then?”

“I hadn’t really thought it through,” admitted Newcomen.

“No. Let’s try the brains before the balls, okay?”

Newcomen nodded. “Okay. I’ll tell her.”

“Good. Michael? Time to go to work.”

The AI bore down on the Logan house computer and inserted itself like a crowbar between its external face and its internal functions. It systematically deleted reams of data, all the while telling the program that was supposed to watch for that sort of thing that everything was just fine.

Once it had erased pretty much everything, it started on the security system itself. Doors locked, shutters fell, alarms sounded. No more than a shell running a few lines of code, the computer turned itself off. Phones, lights, power. Everything gone. Christine and her mother were left with their mobiles to call for help.

“Done,” said Petrovitch. “We need to get back in the air.”

“That’s it?”

“What did you expect? A really big explosion?”

“I don’t know. Can I check on her?” asked Newcomen.

“Michael’s monitoring the police: the dispatcher has just sent a squad car, and Mrs Logan’s called her husband. They’ll be out within the hour, even if they have to use a shaped charge.” Petrovitch rested his hand on the doorknob. “This is just a distraction. Saving your ex-fiancee from her pig of a father is not why I’m here. It’s not why you’re here, either. I’m glad you’re happier, but we did this so you could concentrate on finding Lucy.”

“I’m still grateful.”

“Good. Hold that thought.”