The Curve of The Earth

24

There were several roads that led out of Fairbanks. Route Eleven headed north towards the Arctic Ocean and Prudhoe Bay. Sometimes it made seemingly random turns, swinging to the left or right to navigate a hidden obstacle or difficult terrain, but what it did do was follow the pipeline wherever it went. The two were never far apart, and in winter, when snow and ice covered the landscape, it was often the only indication of where the road was: somewhere parallel to the fat grey tube held clear of the ground on pylons.

The pipeline ended where Petrovitch’s search started, six hundred kilometres away on the shore of a mostly frozen sea, inhabited only by oil men and natives — some of whom were also oil men.

He was flying low, out of necessity, out of habit, bare metres above the trees where there was forest, and the folds in the ground where there wasn’t, following the road north because that was the way Jason Fyfe would have gone. Cross-country wasn’t an option in anything but a tracked vehicle: the RV that Fyfe had borrowed had fat balloon tyres with studs for gripping the frozen surface of the snow, but if it had left the hard substrate of the road surface, it would have foundered.

He knew — Michael had told him — that most of the oil companies moved their personnel by plane, and most of their equipment by landship around the coast to avoid the mountain range between south and north.

That was what had made the trucks heading towards Deadhorse stand out so. Anonymous, white, big. Taking the road was the quicker option, and a series of massive transport planes dropping in on a runway at the edge of the world would have been simply blatant.

Even if the Freezone hadn’t been watching for it, someone else — the Chinese, perhaps — would have seen them from space.

Something was going on, and it infuriated him that he didn’t know what. Yet. He would, eventually. And he’d find Lucy, too, and bring her home.

There was a lot to concentrate on: the act of flying, the minute course corrections even when the road was straight, the slew of other data flooding in, his own thoughts, the gun burning heavy and hard against his chest. They flew on, and the trees petered out. Nothing now but rock and ice until the sea — not a featureless landscape, but muted; its vastness muffled and softened by the deep drifts of snow.

He almost missed the figure raising his hand to the plane as it roared overhead in the half-light, dragging a snowstorm in its wake.

“Did you…?” asked Newcomen, twisting around in his seat, as if he could see behind him through the opaque fuselage of the plane.

“Barely.” Petrovitch pulled back on the throttle and executed a long looping turn that took them wide over the tundra. As they turned, they could see the man again as a dark shape against the white ice. A snowmobile stood a little way off, and behind that, a towed sled.

The man had his arms outstretched, angled up. He held them there, turning to face the plane as it came back around.

“What does he want?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” said Petrovitch. “And that’s talk to him.”

He lined up with the road and lessened the power to the gravity pods. They sank towards the ground and started to drift laterally. He gave the control surfaces a nudge: the plane turned, and he came to a halt with the nose diagonally to the direction of travel.

The man lowered his arms. Petrovitch could just make out button-bright eyes hiding beneath the fur-rimmed hood, and the outline of a rifle slung across his back.

“Muffle up. It’s even colder outside than it was in Fairbanks.” Petrovitch slid from his seat and made his way back to the cabin. He cracked the door open, dislodging a thin layer of ice that had formed there.

The ladder extended reluctantly, and he jumped the last step down on to the iron-hard surface. His coat steamed with stored moisture, and a white crust formed on its skin. Newcomen followed him into the freezing air, shuddering at its touch.

“Hey,” said Petrovitch, when he was close enough. “We almost missed you.” He could feel the hairs in his nostrils bristle and grow hard.

The man pulled his collar down to expose his sallow, tanned face. “Hey. Where’re you from?”

Petrovitch looked around, flicking from visible light to infrared and back. The skidoo was just about warmer than its surroundings, meaning it had been there a while without having been parked overnight.

“Out of Fairbanks,” he said. “You?”

“Allakaket.”

The man was an Inuk, then. Petrovitch could cobble together some Inupiaq, but he wasn’t confident he’d be at all intelligible. He stuck to English.

“Hunting?”

“Got me some wolf.” He nodded over at the sled, and the lumpy tarpaulin covering its contents. “I heard you coming from the south. A vehicle’s come off the road: I was going to report it next place I came to, but seeing as you’re here…”

Petrovitch’s eyes narrowed. “RV?”

“Big one. It’s in a river just over there. I wouldn’t have seen it, but I went over its rear fender.”

“Plates?” asked Newcomen.

The Inuk turned his attention to the tall American, dressed in traditional clothing but on a vastly different scale. His face sneered for a second in a way it hadn’t when talking to Petrovitch.

“Alaskan. I wasn’t going to dig it out any further than that: it’s nose down on the ice, and the snow’s covering it all.”

“We’ll have a look,” said Petrovitch. There was a shovel strapped to the side of the skidoo, and he pointed to it. “Okay if we take that?”

“No reason why not.” He freed it, deftly manipulating the clips despite his thick mittens, and led the way below the underside of the plane to a spot that looked almost exactly like every other, except for the small mound of freshly turned snow.

Petrovitch walked towards it, off the road surface, and started to wade. His feet sank in to his knees, and there was much further to go if he wanted. He bent his head to the hole, and could see the yellow and blue of the registration plate, almost flat to the ground. Part of the rear bumper and some of the black paintwork framed it.

He read the number. “Yeah, this isn’t good.”

Newcomen scrambled over and peered down. “Fyfe?”

“The number matches. Only one way to find out. Ask our friend for the shovel.”

As Newcomen straightened to speak to the Inuk, Petrovitch undid his parka and pulled off his mitten. He dipped his hand inside, and came out with his gun. He flicked the safety to off.

The man’s eyes widened, and he thought about going for his rifle.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t,” said Petrovitch. “You’re a hunter: a crack shot, patient and careful. I’m a complete bastard who doesn’t need an excuse to put a bullet in your head. And these are explosive bullets. You’ll be lucky if you’re left with anything above your belly button.”

Newcomen twisted around. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to work out why he’s lying to us. I’d rather do that without him having a rifle over his shoulder.” His aim didn’t waver.

“And how do you know he’s lying?”

“Because there aren’t any snowmobile tracks anywhere near this wreck. He no more ran over it than I used to wear a minidress and go by the name of Brenda. Which means we’re being set up.”

Maybe the man thought Petrovitch was distracted for a moment. His hand strayed towards the strap of his rifle.

Petrovitch shook his head. “Whatever they’re paying you isn’t enough. Newcomen, go and get his gun before he has an attack of the heroics.”

Taking care not to come between Petrovitch and the man, Newcomen waded back to the road and circled the Inuk until he was behind him. He lifted the rifle up and over the man’s head. The shovel lay at the man’s feet, and he went to kick that away too.

Petrovitch stopped him. “Okay, let’s get this out of the way. Two sorts of people in the world, aren’t there? Those with guns, and those who dig.” He pointed at the shovel, then at the Inuk. “You dig.”

The man bent down for the shovel, and stood up again holding it. Newcomen was at his back, rifle pointing nowhere in particular, and Petrovitch was at his front, the barrel of the pistol not even wavering with a tremulous heartbeat.

“I didn’t mean to cause trouble,” the Inuk said. “Just doing a job.”

Petrovitch waved him over. “What job was that?”

“Two guys told me to point out this crashed RV to another couple of guys who needed to see it. That’s all.”

“How long have you been here?”

“A day. Two. They told me you’d be in some fancy executive plane, and I was to flag you down.”

“What if we’d kept on going?”

“Just to radio back to them that I’d seen you.” The man put the shovel blade in the snow and took out a chunk of the RV’s paintwork. “They said I’d get paid a bonus if you stopped.”

The corner of Petrovitch’s mouth twitched. “Worth the money?”

“Not really.”

Petrovitch carved himself a seat and sat down while he watched the rear of the vehicle slowly emerge from the drift.

“What’s your name?” he asked, just to see if he’d lie about that, too.

“Josie. George Josie.”

He hadn’t lied. “That’s Newcomen. I’m Petrovitch.”

The man stumbled and paused, then dug with renewed energy.

“If they’d told you, would you have thought twice about taking the job?”

“Maybe more than twice,” said Josie. “The rear windshield’s all busted up. Snow’s inside.”

Petrovitch crawled up the bank made by Josie’s digging. The snow had crusted over what remained of the back window, and the shovel blade had gone straight through into the dark pit beneath.

Ice crystals dribbled into the hole and out of sight.

“I’ll put my gun away if you promise not to hit me with the spade,” said Petrovitch. “It won’t do you any good, and I’ll kill you straight after with my bare hands. Deal?”

“Guess so,” said Josie warily.

“Good decision.” Petrovitch put the safety back on and slipped the gun back into a pocket. “Now, let’s get this hole cleared. Newcomen, over here.”

“What do I do with the rifle?”

“That’s another of those leading questions you ought not to be asking. I don’t really care: George here isn’t going to shoot anyone. Are you?”

Josie moved another handful of snow away from the granulated glass. “Are you going to shoot me?”

“I’m kneeling next to you, digging. That should tell you all you need to know.”

The three of them cleared the rectangle of snow from around the window, and it grew clear that the interior of the RV was charred black. There should have been a smell, but it was cold, so very cold.

“You still got that torch, Newcomen?”

“It’s back on the plane. I can get it if you want.” He made to go, but Petrovitch shook his head.

“We can do without. But there’s little variation in temperature: everything’s yebani freezing.” He knocked away the remaining glass that clung to the rubber seal. It fell away, twinkling in the dark. “Lower me down. I’ll take a look.”

Josie was slowly working things out. “Is there someone still in there? They must be… you know.”

Petrovitch ran his mitten across the scarred interior roof of the vehicle, and showed a black hand to the Inuk. “He was dead long before he came off the road.”

“Soot?”

“I’m guessing an air-to-ground missile or a few depleted uranium rounds. Incinerated the contents in an instant.” He swung his legs around and dangled them through the hole. “And when I say contents, I mean Jason Fyfe.”

There was a fitted cupboard within reach. Petrovitch pressed against it with his toe, and though it creaked, it held. Everything loose had catapulted down to the front, and there was a jumble of soft furnishings and equipment piled around where the driver should have been.

It didn’t smell burnt. But he could taste it, a catch in the back of his throat. He slid inside and crouched. He could climb down using the wall of what was probably the toilet, and then to the bench seats in the kitchen area. That would put him just above the mess of debris.

It wasn’t like he didn’t know what he was going to find. He just needed to be certain.

He looked up at the impossibly bright sky. “I won’t be long.”

Petrovitch turned and lowered himself to his next perch. The wood bent under his weight, and the door popped open with a click. It waved at an angle for a moment, then one of the hinges gave, leaving it dangling.

“Everything okay?” asked Newcomen.

“It’s fine.” He looked down. “I hope.”

He shuffled so that he was standing on the part of the wall that was fixed to the floor, then eased himself across to the back of the first row of seats. Then again to the ones facing them: the table that should have been between them had fallen forward.

He was above the driver’s seat. The seat belt still seemed to be attached to the door pillar, the webbing strained forward and locked into position. The seat itself, seared and burnt, was lost under some singed cushions, which he scooped out of the way.

Kneeling down, Petrovitch reached forward to shift the table, which he’d just exposed. He heaved with his left hand, and it moved enough to see under it.

It was the back of a head, cracked with deep red lines between the black. No hair — the mass of brown curls had burnt off. The arms were clenched around the steering wheel, and the elbows locked in place.

“Is it him?”

“Unless you’ve got his gene sequence and a portable DNA tester, I’m going to have to do this old-school. I can pull his dental records, but yeah…” He adjusted himself on his perch. “No rings, no jewellery that I know of. Even his mother’d have trouble recognising him.”

Petrovitch looked to see if he could get any closer. Snow had forced its way through the shattered glass of the windscreen and side doors. He stamped some of it down and moved on to it.

He looked up into the rictus grin. He had Fyfe’s picture in his databanks, and used some software to overlay it on the tootight skin.

“Yes, no? What do you reckon?”

[The low light levels and the damage to the gross facial features introduce error, but we can confirm with a high degree of confidence that this was Jason Fyfe.]

“I remember once before being shown a body and I leapt to all sorts of conclusions that weren’t helpful. Or even right.”

[Then a full investigation must be carried out by the relevant authorities before the identity of the body can be established for certain. However, as a working hypothesis, it would be reasonable to assume that it is Fyfe.]

“Yeah.” He huffed. Moisture from his breath collected on the frost-rimed burns. “If things had worked out differently, this poor bastard could have been my son-in-law.”

He straightened and judged his journey back.

“I’m coming up.”