The Curve of The Earth

8

There was a long queue for the taxis, but there was also a long queue of cabs waiting for a fare. It was painfully inefficient, with all except one access point roped off and the order enforced not just by public opprobrium but by a couple of uniformed cops, buttoned up against the cold. The cab driver at the front of the procession of cars would leap out, glad-hand his fares and stow their luggage, then drive off. Everyone would move up one space, and the ritual would be repeated.

If they’d allowed everyone who needed a ride just to grab one, both queues would have vanished in an instant.

“Who the huy designed this?” muttered Petrovitch.

“We have to wait in line. It’s the way we do things here,” Newcomen explained. “It’s polite.”

Petrovitch writhed in mock agony. “Arrgh, the stupid: it burns, it burns!”

Things were moving, though. Slowly, but moving. Seeing no easy way to subvert the system, Petrovitch seethed his way through the next five minutes and watched the aircraft drifting lazily overhead as they rose to their operating altitude. It was strangely subdued. Objects that size should have been making a thunderous noise. As it was, giant cigar shapes were hanging in the clear air, their engines ticking over, barely producing enough thrust to clear the airport. Just because he’d made that whole process possible didn’t mean he was comfortable with it.

Newcomen’s luggage trundled up a few more steps as they approached the head of the queue.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Embassy. I’ve a few things I need to pick up.”

“Couldn’t someone have met you here? It would have saved you the time, and we could have got to Seattle quicker.”

Petrovitch finally got to stand on the kerbside, and he half-heartedly raised his hand. He certainly wasn’t standing there for the benefit of his health. “Newcomen, we’ll be back in plenty of time for your hot date.”

Newcomen coloured up. “How did you…?”

“Because we’re listening to every single conversation you have over every network and every medium you can think of. Even if you wrote Christine a letter and had it fast-couriered to her by pigeon, I can near enough guarantee we’d know what it said before she got it.” Petrovitch reached up and closed Newcomen’s mouth for him. “Your table’s booked for half eight. You’ll be there in plenty of time.”

The taxi driver flung his door open and raced around to the boot of his cab. “Welcome, welcome, gentlepeoples. You have good journey so far, yes?”

“No, it’s been fucking awful. Get Farm Boy’s case in the trunk — if it’ll fit. Otherwise we’ll just leave the pile of crap here and have done with it.”

There were more open mouths, and the two cops started to move towards them.

“Diplomatic immunity,” said Petrovitch, opening the passenger door for himself and getting in. “Go screw yourselves.”

Newcomen climbed in behind him, furious. “You are going to have to stop doing that.”

“Why? It’s not like I’m going to bring down Reconstruction with mild invective, am I?”

“Mild? Mild? People don’t need to hear such appalling profanity anywhere, let alone on the street.”

Petrovitch twisted in his seat. “Yeah. You think that’s coarse? Screw up finding Lucy and you’ll find out just how profane I can get.”

The driver eventually managed to close the trunk on Newcomen’s case, and dashed back to his position. He was surprised to see one of his fares next to him: they normally rode in the back.

“You should not say such things,” he laughed. “Where to?”

Petrovitch gave him the address in the man’s native language, and with a bigger grin than he’d worn all year, the driver pulled away from the pavement and out into the traffic.

“Inch’pes yek’ chanach’um?”

“Read your licence plate, searched for your name and history. A few background checks.” It was strange being in a car that wasn’t driving itself and couldn’t be taken over at a moment’s notice. “I’m being followed by a whole alphabet soup of security agencies, despite having my own personal G-man here. I wanted to make sure you weren’t a plant.”

“You are wanted?”

“Yeah. No. It’s complicated.” He stuck out his hand. “Petrovitch.”

The driver took his hand off the wheel to respond, causing Newcomen to cough loudly.

“Artak,” said the driver.

“I know,” said Petrovitch. “I know everything about you.”

“Petrovitch. The Petrovitch?”

“Don’t shout about it. Everybody will want one.”

“I will not get into trouble for this?” Artak’s fingers clamped back on the steering wheel, white-knuckle tight.

“I come with my own FBI escort. You’ll be fine.” Petrovitch peered out through the window.

They were driving down the Expressway through Queens, and there wasn’t much to see yet. The buildings of Manhattan rose tall and slender through the gaps in the street plan, and occasionally he caught a glimpse of the Staten Island arcology, looming bulbous and organic in the distance.

“You ever been in the arco?” Petrovitch said to the back seat.

Newcomen leaned forward. “I’ve never been to New York before. Except for the stopover.”

“One building with a hundred thousand inhabitants. Even I’m impressed by that: a serious piece of engineering.”

“I could get you an invitation,” said the agent.

“I’m not here as a tourist. Besides, we’ve stolen all the ideas we want from it already. Suggested some improvements to the architects, too, though I don’t know whether they think our knowledge is dangerously tainted or not.”

The car reached a bend in the road, and suddenly the commercial heart of America was right in front of them, across the East River. Towers as thin as needles rose into the sky, holographic adverts projecting around their crowns like medieval haloes. There were so many structures it looked like a forest of thorns.

The taxi slowed briefly for the toll booths. Artak chose one of the automatic lanes, his pass on the dashboard talking to the barrier on the booth. Money was deducted from his account, money he’d add to his fare on arrival.

It went dark, and the lights of the tunnel reflected off Petrovitch’s eyes as he turned again to Newcomen.

“If you were wondering, we’re going to the Irish consulate on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Tenth Street. I have to clean you off.”

“Clean me?”

“You’re lousy with microbugs, stuck to your back like burrs. Someone must have dosed you at the airport. Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll sort it.”

Then they were out in the daylight again, no longer covered by the radio shadow of the tunnel, and Petrovitch stopped talking. He put his finger to his lips, just in case Newcomen hadn’t understood properly.

The daylight didn’t last long. As soon as they were clear of the tunnel, they were in amongst the buildings, which blocked out the sky. A thin slit of blue glowed overhead, but street level was lit with a gaudy mix of adverts, projections and fluorescence.

People crowded the pavements — properly sidewalks now — in a thick carpet. Like the Metrozone used to be before successive disasters had struck it, and how it would be again one day. Store windows blazed with shifting lights, many of them red and patterned in the shape of hearts.

“Valentine’s Day. It’s today, isn’t it?” Petrovitch leant his head back against the seat. “So that’s why you’re in such a hurry to get back to Christine. Apart from the obvious, of course.”

“What do you mean? Of course it’s today. Doesn’t your wife expect, I don’t know, something?”

“It’s not her saint’s day. Oh, you mean the other thing.”

“I’ll put up with almost any indignity you want, but don’t be crude about my fiancee. Okay?” Newcomen’s tone was guarded, but it wasn’t pleading.

“Yeah, okay. Got to protect the purity of young love.” Petrovitch looked at Artak as he navigated the streets with exaggerated care. “Na mi kuys.”

“Dzer kartsik’ov, aydpes?”

“Yeah. Absolutely certain. I recognise the signs.”

They passed a police podium at the next intersection, raised above the level of the street to allow the two officers on top to spot and stop any trouble before it started. No one seemed to be doing anything illicit: the cops were watchful, though, because they knew they were being watched as well.

The taxi nosed left, on to Sixth Avenue, and started the trek down to where Tenth Street crossed, down towards the south end of Manhattan Island, past some of the two million people who lived there and the two million who travelled there every day to work.

It made the Clapham A domik pile where he’d lived previously seem like a wilderness by comparison. So many, crammed into such a small space. It was a wonder they didn’t all go mad and kill each other, just to have room to move their elbows.

It was Reconstruction that made it possible. Without it, it would never have even tried to grow so big. Petrovitch wondered what other surprises America had lined up for him.

Then they were there, outside the old Jefferson Market library. Made of municipal red brick, it looked like a church with its tall windows and arches, but the tower attached to it was more reminiscent of a Soviet-style rocket.

“Inchkan?”

“No charge,” said Artak.

“Yeah, you’re just being silly now.” Petrovitch pulled out a stack of cash cards and sorted through them until he found one in the right currency. “Unless you want paying in yuan.”

He grabbed the reader and peered at it for a moment, deciphering its idiosyncrasies, then slotted in the card and debited the amount on the glowing fare meter, adding a tip large enough that at least one of Artak’s kids could make it through college unburdened by debt.

The driver would find out later. Petrovitch felt no need to make a song and dance about it.

“Merci,” he said, springing the door. “Shat hatcheli e’.”

Newcomen scrambled out, and Artak dumped his case on the kerb.

“Thank you,” the agent remembered to say. Petrovitch was already diving through the flood of pedestrians on his way to the seven stone steps leading to the consulate’s wooden doors.

A little brass plate on the stonework stated the building’s purpose. Petrovitch looked up and down the street and at the blank-faced building opposite. The library was an island from the nineteenth century stranded in the twenty-first.

“You know how many cameras are trained on us at the moment?” he said to Newcomen. “The NSA, the FBI, INS, CIA, ATF, Homeland Security, Treasury. Pretty much every single one. It’s not like we don’t tell them what we’re up to.”

“You do?”

“Most of the time.” He smiled slyly.

The door opened, despite Petrovitch not having even knocked.

“Hey, Sam.”

“Hey, Marcus. Don’t touch the hired muscle: he’s broadcasting.”

A thin black man with puffball grey hair stood to one side and waited for Petrovitch and Newcomen, followed by his case, to come inside. He pushed the door shut behind them, and paused while some definitely un-Victorian-era locks whirred into place.

“So,” said Marcus, “you made it this far.”

“Relatively unscathed. If they left us alone, we’d get this done so much quicker.” Petrovitch held open the door to a metal cabinet in the corner of the foyer, revealing a space just large enough for a man to stand. “Get in. Stand perfectly still.”

“Uh, what is this?” Newcomen asked, even as he was drawn irresistibly towards it.

“It’s a bigger version of what Tabletop used at the airport. Rather than spend an hour picking each individual bug off you, we’ll just nuke the lot of them.” He jerked his head at the container. “You might see some bright flashes, smell something funny or convince yourself you’ve seen God. Just side effects — they don’t last.”

Newcomen squeezed in, still uncertain. There were no windows, or even a light. He hesitated, causing Petrovitch to sigh. “What now?”

“I might be claustrophobic.”

“Well, perhaps you should have worn your big girl pants when you got up this morning.” He slammed the door and pressed the button. As the capacitors charged up, he retreated across the foyer to stand with Marcus.

“How’s he shaping up?”

“I don’t think they could have sent anyone worse.” Petrovitch pursed his lips. “All I have to do is figure out whether that’s bad for us, or bad for them. He grew up on an automatic farm, so he’s only not quite a pampered city kid. He played college football, but gave it up after one bad accident. He was an English major, not a proper subject. He’s served his two years in the army, but no one ever shot at him. He got through the FBI selection in the middle of his class. He’s been a special agent for two and a half years, yet he’s never made an actual arrest. He seems to be a perfectly blank slate. If he has any identifiable skills, I’ve yet to see them: if he holds any opinions, apart from on my vocabulary, I’ve yet to hear them.”

Marcus stared at his shoes. “He is a Reconstructionist, though. To the core.”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m holding out some hope. If they’re passing over the candidates who’re actually qualified for this job in order to give it to party apparatchiks, the whole Bureau — hell, the whole system — might be staffed by incompetent ideologues we can have fun running rings around.” Petrovitch snorted. “How very Soviet of them.”

The capacitors were full. The energy they stored was dumped into a series of coils made of wire fat enough not to melt, and a high-intensity magnetic field briefly enveloped Newcomen.

Even outside the shielded box, Petrovitch felt the surge.

“If that wasn’t enough, they’ve been hardening their spyware.” He walked over and hauled on the door. “Okay. Out. Assume the position.”

Petrovitch produced a wand, which he ran slowly and care-fully over Newcomen, who stood, spreadeagled, with his palms on the now-warm cabinet.

“Clear,” he said eventually. “Marcus’ll dump your luggage in too, but right now? A decent cup of coffee, and I can show you why I think Lucy’s still alive.”