The Curve of The Earth

20

Petrovitch kept on heading north, and again he immersed himself in the being of the plane. He’d turned from a kid who’d die if he ran too far into a man-machine hybrid who believed he could fly. It wouldn’t stop there, either. Not if he had his way.

At some point, Newcomen excused himself and went to sit back in the cabin to talk to Christine: it wouldn’t have made any difference whether he stayed or not. Petrovitch was entirely content to leave the matter to Michael, and was mostly unaware of anything that was happening in the cockpit.

A long time later, Newcomen came back. Petrovitch emerged from his fugue long enough to see that the man was red-eyed and occasionally shuddering with an escaping sob.

It must have been like a funeral, to finally see all your hopes and dreams piled up in one heap, then have someone hand you the match to light the cordwood that would turn them all to ashes.

Petrovitch retreated.

[He has told her.]

“Yeah.”

[The conversation went as expected. Joseph Newcomen will be emotionally fragile for some time: we must factor that into our future treatment of him.]

“A broken heart is the least of his worries.”

[As far as he is concerned, it is his only worry at the moment. He asked for music afterwards: Kenny Rogers, specifically.]

“It’s worse than I thought. All this sitting around is giving him too much time to think: it’ll be different when we get to Fairbanks. Whatever it is they’ve got waiting for us won’t be bread and salt, at any rate.”

[There is further analysis of the events of February third. Do you wish to review it now, or wait until you land?]

“It’s fifteen minutes till Dawson City. It’ll keep.”

He dropped down into the Yukon Valley, the high mountains rising up either side. He turned hard to starboard, then to port, and suddenly there were lights on the ground in an unnatural geometric grid, burning bright against the snow. They illuminated the streets, and beyond: the glow carried out over the river ice. This was where he had to throttle down, and head up the Klondike to the airport. The residents wouldn’t appreciate yet another jet roaring in overhead.

Beyond the strange wormy landscape of mine tailings, he spotted the airport squeezed in between the valley sides. He cut the power further and drifted in over the runway. There was a collection of half a dozen small cargo planes clustered around the main terminal, and he slotted his craft down behind them. Compared with the bulky outlines of the next nearest plane, his own looked fragile.

“Last stop before Fairbanks. Time to stretch your legs, Newcomen.”

“I can stay here. I’ll just get in the way otherwise.”

Petrovitch pursed his lips. “You can mope all you like. But you’re not doing it on my time. Now, out of your seat, and come with me.”

“And how cold is it outside?”

“Why don’t you talk to your link and find out? It’s there: use it.”

When Newcomen discovered it was minus thirty-five, he rebelled. “No way.”

Petrovitch pointed through the windscreen at the next plane. A slit of orange light showed its cargo bay door was ajar. “We’re going as far as there, that’s all.”

“So whose plane is that?”

“This is the way it works: Freezone people don’t ask stupid questions because they’re not lazy and they can find out the answers for themselves. It means that conversations can be direct, to the point, and mercifully short.” He left it there, and made his way to the cabin door.

The ladder dropped its feet into the snow. Petrovitch trotted down and headed straight for the sliver of light. Minus thirtyfive was genuinely awful without the proper gear, enough to turn his skin waxy and freeze the liquid lubricating his eyes. As he approached the other plane, the door opened wider, and more light spilled out. A preternaturally tall figure stood inside, waiting.

Petrovitch turned sideways through the gap, making sure he didn’t touch any of the metal, and found himself enveloped in strong arms and a warm coat.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey yourself,” she replied. “You made good time.”

“It’s fast, even if it does look like it’ll break if you drop it.”

Madeleine squinted through the door. “It will break if you drop it. You haven’t dropped it, have you?”

“Not a scratch on it. We might even be able to return it in one piece.”

“Something tells me that’s not going to happen.” She looked over his head. “Newcomen.”

“Mrs Petrovitch.” He stood in the doorway, looking uncertain.

“If you come in, I can close the door.” She let go of Petrovitch and thumbed the mechanism. The door cranked shut with a bang, and Newcomen shivered.

Madeleine threw another coat at him, and he caught it and put it on quickly. He noticed that beneath her own coat, she had an armoury hanging from her wide belt.

“Those don’t look like they’re for bears.”

“Is that what he told you?” She snorted. “And you believed him?”

Newcomen looked across at Petrovitch, who was sealing his coat at the front and lifting the fur-lined hood over his head.

“Doesn’t mean there aren’t bears, all the same.”

“Of course, if we’d done this my way…”

“And you were voted down.” Petrovitch’s face was framed by the hood. “There’s still plenty of time for this to turn into a hot war.”

It was then that Newcomen realised just what was in the cargo hold with him. Long metal crates, with serial numbers and scripts in different languages. “These boxes. You can’t be serious.”

Petrovitch looked around him. He knew what was inside each one, and it still surprised him. “Maddy figures that turning up to a fight with nothing more than good intentions is a quick way to get yourself killed. But we’re not looking to start the fight.”

“They are,” said Madeleine. “They’ve been moving assets north for the past week.”

“Assets?” asked Newcomen. “What sort of assets?”

“We can’t see through the tops of the trucks hauling north on the Dalton Highway, but we’ve a pretty good idea of what they’re carrying. We thought we might need something to level the odds.” She rested a foot on top of a steel case that looked like it might contain a surface-to-air missile launcher.

“You can’t start a war. Up here. That’s… ridiculous. There’s two of you.” Newcomen saw that both Petrovitchs wore identical expressions. “All these planes are yours, aren’t they?”

“They might be.” Madeleine jerked her head at her husband. “And he’s never needed any help starting a war. The rest of us are only here to make sure it’s done right.”

“You’re all insane.”

“You think so?” Petrovitch tapped Newcomen’s top pocket. “Get your reader out. Michael has something to show us.”

Newcomen fumbled with his cold fingers for the plastic rectangle. Petrovitch didn’t need one, hadn’t needed one for a decade. He called up his sandbox and sat down beside it with Michael.

“Hey. What’s the news?”

[We believe SkyShield targeted a satellite of currently unknown origin. If our theory, which currently enjoys some seventy per cent confidence, is correct, it has serious implications for global communications in general, and the integrity of the Freezone in particular.]

Ten years on from the lanky Japanese kid who’d guided him though the Outie war, Michael’s preferred form was disturbingly like a young Hamano Oshicora. He could be literally anything he wanted, but this was his settled identity. It did no harm, and Petrovitch wondered if the AI had done this consciously: he never asked, and Michael never offered an answer of his own.

“No one’s complained about any missing hardware.”

[Which indicates that there are two secrets here: firstly, why the satellite’s owners wish to remain anonymous, and secondly, what reason the Americans had for shooting it down,] said Michael.

“Unless the Yanks are testing out a new anti-satellite system on a bird they’ve put up themselves, in preparation for blanking out the sky for the rest of us.”

[This is a possibility that falls within the thirty per cent uncertainty. Other options include a malfunction of SkyShield, the accidental targeting of a bolide, or indeed the deliberate targeting of a piece of debris that might have posed a threat to people on the ground.]

“But most of the analysts don’t buy any of that.” Petrovitch leaned over his sandbox, which transformed itself into a map of the northern hemisphere, pole uppermost. “Show me.”

Michael started to draw his explanation. Red lines representing the orbits of objects in space, blue to mean the objects themselves.

[The raw data has been extrapolated to a best-fit scenario, but some things we can be certain of: a SkyShield interceptor in Low Earth Orbit fires a kinetic energy weapon at zero nine thirteen, Universal Time. Eight seconds later, a flash is observed one hundred and twenty kilometres away from the interceptor by a Freezone micro-satellite. The images captured are compromised by the low angle at which they were acquired, taken through the outer reaches of the atmosphere.]

“The originals look like govno, right?”

[A considerable amount of processing was required to extract useable data, yes. The object re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and, at zero nine twenty-three Universal Time, caused a seismic event measuring three point seven Richter. This equates to a yield of approximately one half to one third of a megatonne ten kilometres above the epicentre, south of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.]

“That’s way too much for a satellite.” Petrovitch frowned and looked at the blue line described in the air in front of him, which arced down from space and terminated above the North Slope. “Or way too much for a regular satellite. What the hell did they have in there?”

[Barring a matter — antimatter collision, the conclusion is that only a nuclear explosion could provide such prompt energy.]

“A nuclear power plant won’t blow up just because you hit it.”

[Again, it is more likely that the explosion was a deliberate fail-safe against the re-entry and recovery of identifiable debris.]

“So, to summarise: someone put a satellite into orbit, carrying something so secret that they put a nuclear bomb on board too. The Americans got wind of it and took it out. The satellite starts to drop from the sky, and the bomb goes off before it hits the ground. Is that about right?”

[With the usual caveats, yes.]

“Then why the huy haven’t we heard anything about this before now? We’re supposed to be the planet’s most sophisticated information-gathering system, working every minute of every day, yet we miss something like this? Yobany stos, this is not just pizdets, this is a whole new category of pizdets.”

[We now know where to look and what to look for. This situation may yet yield results. We are checking the orbits of all known satellites, and attempting to locate visually those no longer in contact with their base stations, to confirm we have not missed a single one. This will take time.]

“And recent launches.” Petrovitch swung the map around until he was looking up from underneath it, as if he was in Lucy’s position, in a series of snow-covered huts under the dark sky. “Do you think it’s the Chinese?”

[That possibility has been raised. They possess both the lift capacity and the required level of secrecy. It is also known that the Americans have active agents within the Chinese National Space Administration: perhaps one of them has leaked information about this project.]

“There aren’t supposed to be nukes in space.”

[No. China have signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996, putting them in the same position as the United States of America. What this means in practice is, I believe, moot.]

Petrovitch played the simulation again. The SkyShield component blazed away with its rail gun, sending a cloud of tungsten flechettes into the path of the oncoming satellite. The object deorbited rapidly, and as it came down, exploded.

“Everything is wrong.”

[Please explain.]

“We’re trying to fit the facts to the scenario: it should be the other way around. There’s a whole stack of things that don’t wash. The chief of which is why they left it so late to press the self-destruct button. Surely, once you know you’re hit and out of control, that’s when you do it — not when it’s about to crash into the ground. And how did it get so far without breaking up? It had to have a re-entry shield. But why? What was in it?”

[We will have answers, Sasha. Soon.]

“If you can work out what this has to do with Lucy while you’re at it, I’d be grateful.”

Michael loved Lucy. She was the second person he’d ever talked to. He was her big brother, and her absence caused him something akin to pain.

[Do not be ill-tempered,] he said. [We are working — all of us — at our capacity. The resources of almost the entire Freezone are being dedicated to this.]

“Okay, sorry. We’re missing something, though. Something big. Something yebani enormous.”

[Your wife and the FBI agent wish to speak to you. They have seen the same simulation, with commentaries suitable to their level of comprehension. Joseph Newcomen has very little grasp of the technicalities of orbital mechanics, and therefore I cannot say how much he understood.]

“For once, it really is rocket science. Keep going. Let me know as soon as anything significant turns up.” He smiled ruefully. “And thanks.”

He kicked himself out of the virtual world and was once again sitting in the cargo hold of a small aircraft, with his wife and Newcomen. He looked at their faces to judge their reactions: Madeleine was watching him for the same reason, while Newcomen was sitting on a crate with his mouth open.

“The Chinese?” he said. “Nobody said anything about the Chinese being involved.”

“We don’t know that for certain.” Madeleine put her reader away inside her coat. “There’s a lot we don’t know for certain.”

“But what if the Chinese want what’s left of their satellite back?”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” said Madeleine. She extended herself to her full height and stretched. Her hands pressed against the cargo hold’s roof. “After an explosion of that size?”

“There’s one way to find out,” said Petrovitch, “and that’s ask them.”

Newcomen baulked. “What? Dear Comrade President, have you lost some space hardware that just happened to contain an atomic bomb?”

“Something like that, except you address him as Chairman. You might not know how Chinese bureaucracy works, but I do. You find some low-level functionary that’ll take your call. They clearly don’t have the authority to deal with such a question, but they’ll issue a blank denial as a matter of course. Meanwhile, the note gets passed up the food chain until someone decides that someone below them should look into the matter.” He shrugged. “It takes time. I’ll get a call from a middle-ranking civil servant, who will ask me obliquely what I know. I’ll tell him what I think he needs to know. It can go on like that for weeks.”

“And you’re happy with that?” Newcomen seemed both outraged and relieved.

“My happiness or otherwise doesn’t make them move any faster. But they might tell me something useful I can’t find out any other way. If it helps, I’ll take it.” Petrovitch looked up at Madeleine, and she down at him. “Newcomen?”

“Yes.”

“For reasons that should be self-explanatory, even to a naif like you, I’d like some time alone with my wife.” He raised his eyebrows and waited.

“Oh. Yes. Okay. I’ll just go back to our plane.”

“Thank you.”

Madeleine opened the door for him, and closed it again after.

“Hey,” said Petrovitch again.