The Curve of The Earth

29

Petrovitch slotted the plane back into the same hangar bay they’d left, and it was like they’d never been away. Everything was as cold and still as before. The only difference was the creaking noises made by the building’s superstructure as it flexed in the wind.

“I’m going to refuel now, save time in the morning. Besides,” he said, peering through the windscreen, “you never know when a quick getaway might be needed.”

“You really do think she’s here, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I do. Someone’s hiding her. Sooner or later they’ll find out I’ve arrived, and that’ll be when the fun and games really start.”

“It’ll have to be someone they’ve not replaced. Can you get a list?”

“Sure, but so can you. We can’t go around just interrogating people — they won’t want to die — but we need to be alert for subtle signs.”

“You. Subtle?” Newcomen raised his eyebrows.

“Past’ zebej,” said Petrovitch, but there was no force behind his words. “Whoever it is is risking their life to protect Lucy. They’ll be terrified of discovery, of giving themselves away, of just breathing out of turn. Yet they’ll have to maintain the pretence that nothing is wrong, every second of every day. That’s bravery for you, Newcomen. Yajtza bigger than the Moon.”

Newcomen was very still for a while, then he got up abruptly and went to the door, poking at the release mechanism until it responded.

[Be careful, Sasha.]

“Yeah, well. I’ve tried being nice, I’ve tried indoctrination, I’ve tried appealing to his better instincts. All I’m left with is shame.”

[He is conflicted. He is torn between doing his duty to the country that is actively betraying him, and returning Lucy Petrovitch unharmed to the Freezone.]

“We both know which way he’s going to jump. His instincts will make the mudak side with Uncle Sam, even though they’re going to kill him with no more thought than they’d spend over swatting a fly.”

[He may yet surprise you.]

“Which is the only thing keeping him alive. I don’t need a bomb next to his heart any more. Up here, I could shoot him in what passes for daylight in front of a dozen witnesses, and all the response I’d get would be ‘Where’s the girl?’ ”

[As you have adequately demonstrated. Although the probabilities have shifted, my analysis indicates he is still a significantly positive factor when measuring possible outcomes.]

Petrovitch heard Newcomen’s footsteps ping down the metallic steps, and the cold began to seep into the cockpit. “If you mean having him around is keeping me alert and angry, sure. I still reckon I can maintain the required level of rage all on my own.”

[He raises your chances of success from zero to almost zero. That might be the best anyone can offer.]

“Then I’ll suppose I’ll have to take it.” He roused himself. “This isn’t getting fuel in the tank.”

Petrovitch dressed for the outside again, and went in search of the bowser. Up here, in the high Arctic, no one was going to do it for him. Everyone was expected to be capable, or have someone with them who was. Winter was no place for tourists.

The electric cart that pulled the tank of fuel was stored away from the aircraft — of course it was, because anything else would have been stupid — so he had to trek to a separate building and wheel it back. He’d got there, nodded at Maintenance Guy, who wasn’t on his roll call of genuine people, and was halfway back when Newcomen ran up to him, breathless and shaking.

He looked around for a fire. There wasn’t one. Yet.

“Yeah, when you calm down, that sweat’s going to freeze hard.”

Newcomen gasped and blew. “Come and see.” He leant down and braced his hands against his knees.

Petrovitch looked around at the several thousand litres of fuel he was towing. “It’s going to have to wait.”

“But… you have to come now.”

“Yeah. Your priorities are not my priorities. I’m going to refuel the plane, then I’ll come. It’ll wait, right?”

Still shaking, Newcomen looked around at one of the other hangars. “You don’t understand.”

Petrovitch followed the direction of Newcomen’s gaze. There was nothing to differentiate that building from the ones either side. Something inside, then. He had a pretty good idea what.

“Seriously. I want to keep the plane topped up, for all sorts of reasons, and I won’t be deflected from that by some wild goose chase they’ve dreamed up for me.” He thumbed the button on the handle, and the bowser swayed and sloshed its way towards its destination.

Newcomen, agitated and upset, trailed along behind. He watched Petrovitch wheel the tanker into place, then wrestle with the hoses until he was satisfied with his connections.

“I could do this quicker if you helped.”

“I wouldn’t know how.”

“And learning is against your religion?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Uh-huh.” He got the fuel pumping, and watched for leaks.

“I’m going to be dead soon. Why do I need to know how to put aviation fuel in an aeroplane?”

“If not curiosity, what about necessity? It’s the mother of invention.” The mechanical counter clicked over — gallons and parts thereof — as the pump whirred. “So, what have you found? Scary?”

“I’ve seen them on the news, and at the movies. That one at the airport. They’ve always been on my side before.”

“And now they’re not. Maybe next time-”

“If there is a next time.”

“Next time, you’ll have a little more empathy with their victims.” He checked the counter. He didn’t want to overfill, but he needed enough for what he’d planned, and maybe a little more for emergencies. Not that the whole situation wasn’t a big bag of pizdets anyway. “How many were there?”

“I don’t know. The hangar door was closing as I walked past. The guards with them stood in the way and made it difficult for me.”

“More than one, though.”

“Three, at least.”

“Uplink stuff? Relay station? The jockeys themselves?”

“I, I don’t think so.”

Petrovitch glanced at the counter again. A little more. “Yeah, those guys will be in some warehouse in Nevada, getting hyped up on battle drugs and heavy rock. No one’s going to put their meat on the line: way too valuable to lose.”

His hand hovered over the cut-off switch. In the distance, a door slammed shut. Newcomen started, but it was just one of the Inuit workers taking a short cut. He had a bag heavy with tools and a metre-long adjustable wrench slung over one shoulder.

He nodded under his furred hood at Newcomen, and then at Petrovitch, as he passed by.

“Real,” said Petrovitch, when the man had gone through the door at the front of the hangar. He flicked the pump off, then began the laborious task of unscrewing the hoses and coiling them back up, ready for the next user.

Newcomen was in an agony of impatience. “Tell me you don’t have to take that back across the airfield.”

“I ought. But I don’t have to. No one’s going to say anything to my face.” He patted the side of the tank. “I’ll leave it here.”

“So you’ll come now?”

“I’ll get my things.” He trooped back up the steps, gathered his bag from the cabin, and on a whim scooped up the axe he’d bought too. He met Newcomen back in the hangar. “Let’s go and see what we’re up against.”

Once outside, Newcomen pointed to the next hangar but one. It looked locked down, no lights showing, no one hanging around. Petrovitch searched for cameras, telltale signs of digital transmissions: they were there, and there, and there too, and those were just the nearest ones. As they walked, images were sent and commands were received, broadcasting from a building the other side of the runway.

He glanced up as a camera’s housing turned slowly to face him. He wondered if Ben and Jerry were hunkered down over the monitor, maybe a coffee in hand, watching him back, wondering what he was doing.

They weren’t going to have to wonder for long.

“This one?” Petrovitch rattled the door.

“They’re not just going to let us in, are they?” Newcomen looked around nervously.

“You still don’t get it, do you?” He dropped his bag in the snow and rolled the axe off his shoulder. The lock was just below the door handle. “We can do what the huy we want.”

He kicked the lock with the heel of his boot. Not only did the door give, it bent. It shuddered back on its hinges and banged against its stops. The cold, dark space beyond beckoned.

Finally there was some activity behind him. He could hear motors starting up: two, three petrol engines. They weren’t going to get to him before he’d had a good look around. He swung his bag through the opening, and held the axe loosely in his left hand.

He switched to infrared as he stepped over the threshold. There were the softly glowing shapes he was expecting, but what he was really looking for was the light switch.

There, the other side of the main doors: a big board, complete with fuses. “Wait here,” he said to Newcomen, and navigated his way over to the still-warm switches.

He clicked them on, one by one. The lights in the high ceiling flickered on in banks, slowly illuminating the scene. When he’d done, he saw that they’d sent thirty-two fully armed and armoured teletroopers after him.

They sat in neat rows, crouched over and dormant. Their heads rested on their massive chests, and their gun arms pointed at the ground. Their reversed knees were bent slightly. Whip aerials extended over their backs, and cooling fins radiated like coral growths from their spines.

“Ugly bastards, aren’t they?”

He walked up to one and looked into its stereoscopic imaging equipment. It looked disturbingly like huge black eyes.

“What are we going to do?” asked Newcomen.

“I thought we’d spray-paint them pink and give them each a girl’s name.” Petrovitch circled the one he was closest to. “Isn’t that right, Svetlana?”

“There are so many of them. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, I’ll agree with you there. This is a lot of hardware for just us. Almost as if they’re expecting a much bigger party than the one we might possibly throw.” He reached out and laid his hand on Svetlana’s thigh. Her hip was as high as his head, and the joint — every joint — was carefully recessed and protected with interlocking plates. Not enough room to even wriggle his fingers inside.

They were designed to be tough to kill, to take the bricks and the bottles, the bullets and buckshot, even the smaller anti-tank rounds. They could dish it out, too. Rotary cannon and assault shotgun, grenade launcher. Shoulder-mounted rockets, even.

A man, maybe a thousand k away, would sit in a virtual rig and control it all like it was one big video game. Boom. Head shot. Soldiers under fire would find cover, call in an air strike, scramble back to safety, and only rarely press on to their objective. A teletrooper would shrug off the small-arms fire and just keep going. The rattle of shells and shrapnel against its hull would be muted, less it was distracting.

The cavalry finally arrived. Engines roared outside, doors opened and boots clattered. Petrovitch carried on his circumnavigation of the teletrooper, ignoring the fact that he was being surrounded by men dressed in Arctic camouflage. They all had guns, and they all pointed them at Petrovitch.

He watched them watching him through their full-face masks, each of them printed to resemble the same skull that sat beneath their skin. Except the eye sockets were larger, and the grins more toothy. Ghouls. He was encircled by ghouls.

“Step away from the machine, Dr Petrovitch.”

He looked around for the source of the voice. A figure, dressed in bulky, expensive top-of-the-range civilian kit, but still wearing the skeletal mask, stepped through the ring of soldiers. He had a shotgun held loosely in his hands.

“So which one are you? Ben or Jerry?” Petrovitch looked around for Newcomen. The American was being ignored by his countrymen as someone of no consequence, a mere bit-part player to the main act.

The question confused the man. His hidden face flexed the surface of the mask. “I said, step away from the machine.”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?” Petrovitch’s bag was by the door, but he was still carrying the axe. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“For the third and last time, step away from the machine.” Even his voice was disguised, subtly filtered and modulated.

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.” Petrovitch switched the axe into a two-handed grip. “Where’s my girl?”

The man, Ben or Jerry, raised his shotgun and fired it without warning. The taser round caught Petrovitch in the fleshy part of his outstretched palm. The impact rocked him backwards. He kept his feet, but he couldn’t prevent the discharge that followed.

No matter that he could block the pain: he had no control.

He swung the axe, but couldn’t see where it hit. His arm thrashed, and the weight of it threw him to the floor.

Someone had modified the taser. The shock went on for far longer than it should. If he’d taken it to the chest, it would have stopped his heart.

It ended, eventually. Petrovitch looked up at the circle of gun barrels and fixed-grin faces. He gripped the plastic body of the shell and pulled the barbs out of his hand. Blood oozed out.

“Step away from the machine, Dr Petrovitch.” The man in the skeleton mask chambered a fresh shell, indicating that he was more than prepared to keep shocking him until he complied. The used cartridge clattered on to the concrete.

The axe had embedded itself in Svetlana’s leg. The blade was wedged in the shin, enabling Petrovitch to use the haft to lever himself up. “I want to know where Lucy is.”

With a sound like a sigh, the man raised the butt of his shotgun to his shoulder.

“I can keep this up all night if I have to.”

Petrovitch gripped the axe, tore it free. “It’s the only thing you can keep up all night, dickless.”

This time, the taser hit his side. He was just too slow, too disorientated, too full of interference and conflicting signals to parry it. The electrodes had to punch their way through his dense jacket, though, and only just grazed his skin. He was thrown to the floor again, but as he fell, the device shifted and lost contact.

It gave him a moment to recover. The man, with a hiss of annoyance, worked the pump for another shell.

“That’s enough.”

Petrovitch thought at first it might be his own voice. He blinked away the stars to see Newcomen, armed with his own FBI-issue pistol, aiming at his tormentor’s back.

“Agent Newcomen,” said the man. “What in God’s merciful name are you doing?”

“I’m stopping you. This, this isn’t right.” Newcomen’s voice was wavering, but his gun was steady.

“I think you’re forgetting which side you’re on.”

“No,” said Newcomen. “I know which side I’m on. I’m on the side of the law.”

“Sometimes, Agent-” said the man, but Newcomen interrupted, his voice a roar.

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. That’s the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States of America, you bastard, and you will obey it.” He was gasping for breath by the time he’d finished. He also looked ready to pull the trigger.

Petrovitch hauled himself up again. He was sore, deep inside. He used the axe as a crutch and walked forward until the barrel of the shotgun taser was against his chest. “If it was me, I’d have killed you by now. I’d have put a bullet in your head, because, hey, it’s what I do. And you’d deserve it. Newcomen here? You should be on your knees thanking him that he still plays by the rules. He’s an idiot, because he thinks the rules haven’t changed, but I’ll take an honest idiot any day over a niegadzai sooksin like you.”

Beneath the mask, muscles twitched and a decision was made. “Okay. Let’s move out.”

The soldiers snapped their guns upright and jogged to the door. The man in charge was in their midst, surrounded, safe. Then they were gone. Engine sounds faded away, and they were left with the creak of the hangar and the sympathetic swing of the lights.

Newcomen was locked rigid in his shooter’s stance. Petrovitch hobbled over and rested a hand on the agent’s wrist.

“We’re done here.”

Newcomen’s expression turned from concentrated determination to startled bewilderment. “What just happened?”

“You rediscovered your spine.” Petrovitch pushed the gun down until it was pointing at the floor. “And I’m grateful.”