by Simon Morden
“So. If all they’re doing is reacting to events as fast as they can, we need to work out the order in which they happened. For that, we need evidence.”
“We can get evidence. I’m still an FBI agent.” He looked up at Petrovitch. “For the moment.”
“You’re still listed as active. Buchannan might suspect you’ve gone feral, but I don’t think, given his confession, he’s going to be telling anyone soon. And what they’ll be counting on is your loyalty: in a crunch, they know which way you’ll turn.”
“Do they?”
“They think they do. I wouldn’t count on them being wrong, either.”
“What do you mean?”
“That your sudden change of heart is conditional, depending on the stakes. If it’s just a few security officers going off the reservation, you’ll stick with it. If it means destroying everything you’ve ever known? No way. Somewhere in the middle is where you draw the line, but you have no idea where that line is. What’s more, it’ll keep shifting.” Petrovitch shrugged. “I can live with the uncertainty, not because I have insurance that if you turn against me, it’ll be the last thing you ever do, but because I’m more comfortable with moral ambiguity than I am with laser-like certainty.”
He stood up and stretched, pressing his hands against the low roof of the cabin.
“It’s a long way, and it’s not getting any shorter by us waiting,” he announced, and shuffled back to the cockpit.
Newcomen followed, and slumped into the co-pilot’s seat. The display lit up, and lights started winking into life. The engines started to turn, breaking the naturalistic calm with their crude modernity.
“Last chance to get off the Futility Express,” said Petrovitch.
“I’ll stick around. See what happens. As long as you hold off on choking me to death.”
“I’ll do my best. I’m a man of sudden impulses.” He returned his gaze to the forest outside. “We’ll take off hard. The wind’s getting up, and I don’t want to ram a tree.”
Newcomen took the hint and buckled up.
Petrovitch overlaid his vision with all the head-up displays he’d need. What was more important was that he could feel the aircraft. There was pent-up energy in the batteries; there was fuel sloshing in the tanks. The jets were warming up, and the antigravity pods on their streamlined outriggers were waiting to fulfil their destiny. The skin of the fuselage was his skin, the throttle his legs: he could taste its well-being with his tongue.
All he had to do was jump and run.
He poised: the aircraft came level, hovered for a moment, then rose straight up to treetop height. The engines flared, and steady pressure pushed his meat body back into his seat. Outside of it, he was leaning forward, angling his flight up and over the rise of the island, spilling down the other side. He could spread his arms wide and the whole sky was his.
It was his drug, his joy and his peace.
He aimed north-north-east, heading deeper into Canada and avoiding the finger of land that was Alaska on the Pacific coast. Let the Americans play their games: he had some surprises of his own ready and waiting in the high Arctic.
Trees and snow, rock and ice: pretty much all there was, all the way to the seasonally frozen pole. That, and a few scattered townships that were mostly no more than a collection of huts and an airstrip. These days, now a plane didn’t need a runway for anything more than to stop itself from sinking into the melting permafrost, even those were falling into disuse. All these communities needed was a concrete slab and a tank of methanol.
Which suited Petrovitch just fine. The plane he was flying was modern, fast, and drank like a fish, the airborne equivalent of a Ferrari. He was more used to clunky cargo carriers, slow and steady, and parsimonious with the fuel. His range was little more than nine hundred k, and he had to go a lot further than that.
He hit the first stop dead on. With satellites to guide him and a map in his head, there was no guesswork. One moment there was nothing to see but white-capped trees; the next there were grey roofs laid out in a grid pattern and streams of woodsmoke rising into the sky.
He circled once, taking a good look at all the aerials, dishes and wires strung from chimneys and eaves, then sat the plane down on the pad in a blizzard of loose snow.
Petrovitch blinked, and he was back in the cockpit. Newcomen was beside him, eyes closed and head back, snoring slightly. They’d been flying for an hour and a half.
“Hey, Newcomen. Wake up.”
The man started violently: the only thing to stop him falling to the floor was the fact that he was strapped in.
“What? What’s wrong?” He gripped the arms of his seat. “Why’ve we landed?”
“Because I don’t want to run out of gas in the middle of nowhere. And if you thought parts of Iowa were empty, we’re flying over places that have probably never known a human footprint.” Petrovitch unbuckled and headed for the door. “I need to find someone to take payment for the fuel and help me hook up the hoses.”
“I can do that last thing.”
“Sure you can.” He started to open the cabin door, and the cold didn’t so much steal in as conduct a full-frontal assault with tanks. “It’s minus twenty outside: combined with the wind chill, it gives a figure of minus twenty-eight, which is more than enough to freeze flesh to metal. Which you’d know if you’d asked your link.”
To illustrate the point, he pulled his sleeves down over his hands before he climbed down into the hard-packed snow. The door started to close again.
“It’s there to be used, Newcomen. Freezone people know that.”
Petrovitch stamped his way to the nearest hut. Nothing to mark it as anything different, but before he’d landed, he’d tagged a map of the town with all the information he needed. It was so instinctive, he didn’t really need to think about it any more: it was just there.
The door was stiff, and he had to kick it. Inside was yellow light and brown shelves.
“Hey,” said the grizzled proprietor, looking up from his screen reader. He watched Petrovitch knock the snow off his boots. He knew everyone for a hundred k in every direction, but not this guy. Then he took a second look.
“Hey,” said Petrovitch. “Great beard.”
“I’m…” He almost said honoured, then figured that wasn’t the thing to say. “What can I get you?”
“I’ve hired some fancy pimped-up executive jet that’s currently parked out on the pan. Good for outrunning the USAF, but not so hot for economic driving. So I guess it’s fill ’er up.”
“Sure.” He levered himself up, and reached for his long caribou-skin coat, his furry hat and massive gloves. “Anything else?”
Petrovitch looked around the shelves. “I don’t want to seem pushy, but does anyone do hot food here? I’ve been through all kinds of hell today and I’m still in a hurry, but I’m as much in need of refuelling as the plane.”
The shopkeeper narrowed his dark eyes. “I’ll make a call. Ten minutes good for you?”
“Yeah. That would be brilliant. There are two of us.”
Petrovitch kicked his heels and looked at the stock. There was pretty much everything anyone could possibly want and couldn’t kill or cut for themselves. The shelves kept on going back, and there was barely any room to walk between them.
He was admiring the wood axes when the door opened again, and the temperature inside dropped like a stone.
“Archie?”
“He’s out fuelling the plane,” called Petrovitch. He stepped out from between the shelves and saw a tiny Inuit woman with a foil-lined cardboard box.
“Then this will be for you.” She held out the box and he walked over to claim it.
“Bacon,” he said.
“And cheese.” She looked up at him from her wrinkled brown face. “Hope you find your daughter, Dr Petrovitch.”
“Thanks.”
“When you get to where you’re going, tell them Mary wants them to look after you.”
She left the sam
e way she’d come in, with the minimum of fuss and no expectation of payment. Petrovitch put the box on the counter and patted his pockets, looking for his cards.
Shuffling through them, he found his Canadian dollars, checked the local meths prices, added ten per cent, then went back for the axe. It was a beautiful piece of work, easy to swing and effortlessly sharp. He added it to the bill and pressed it to the reader.
He gathered up the box and the axe haft, and stepped out into the cold again. The man — Archie, he had to assume — was swaddled up well against the weather, with barely any flesh visible. He raised his hand and unhooked the fuel hose as Petrovitch approached.
“You’re good for a few hundred more.”
“I’ve paid already. If it’s not enough, tell the Freezone.”
“We make most of the stuff ourselves in a digester. It’s not free, but it’s cheap.”
“You probably overcharged me then. Keep the change.” Petrovitch told the plane to open the door, then reached up to slide the box of food inside, and followed it with the axe. “I thought I might just need one.”
“You never know.” Archie took off his glove to shake hands. “Good luck.”
“Yeah. That and the axe, we’re sorted.” He climbed up, and shut out the night.
Newcomen was still in the cockpit, staring out through the windscreen. He looked around idly, and Petrovitch raised his eyebrows.
“That smells good,” said Newcomen.
“One of the old girls fixed us some food.” He pushed the box ahead of him and indicated that the man help himself. “The gun’s for bears.”
“Sorry?” Newcomen tried to speak around a plate-sized bread bun filled with rashers of bacon and melting squares of processed cheese.
“In my bag. I know you’ve been looking. The gun has explosive bullets and will reduce a polar bear to chunks of husky meat. It’s important where we’re going.”
Eventually Newcomen started chewing again. When he’d swallowed, he said: “You know it’s illegal to smuggle a gun into Canada.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why, unlike you, I have a permit for mine. Don’t worry,” said Petrovitch. “I won’t turn you in.”
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 acces
sed 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.