by Simon Morden
It looked like a big oval serving dish, curved on both upper and lower surfaces. Its matt grey surface shone dully in the candlelight.
“No space jelly left?”
“It seemed to go from gel to liquid, then evaporate away. I think it was there just to protect this.”
Petrovitch pulled his mittens off and laid them by his side. “By the way.” He opened his bag and pulled out the components of a link. “Present for you.”
“Thanks.” She took it from him and unwrapped the curved computer. After she lifted up the polyester fleece she wore under her parka, there were two more layers after that, and only then her bare skin. “I so need a shower.”
Petrovitch leaned in close enough for his breath to mist the object’s surface. Droplets of water formed on its cold surface, and started to run off. “Low friction.”
“It’s as slippery as soap. I dropped it. Twice.”
“No boom?” He pulled his thin gloves off and added them to the pile.
“No boom.” Lucy readjusted her clothing and took up the earpiece.
Petrovitch ran his bare palm over the object. There was no join, or seal, or button or switch. It appeared completely featureless. He turned it over, with difficulty because it was so hard to hold, and searched the other side. “So I don’t spend time we don’t have wondering, does it open?”
“It opens. Took me long enough to work it out, and then only by accident.” She screwed up one eye as the earpiece clamped on inside her ear. “Hey, Michael.”
She smiled at the response.
On a whim, Petrovitch flicked his eyes to see infrared. It was a completely uniform temperature. He pressed his hand against it, and the heat just leaked away. When he took his hand off again, the whole of it was very slightly warmer.
“Superconductor of heat,” he said. On a whim, he tried ultraviolet. There was nothing. He flipped the object again — it was heavy, but not suspiciously so — and saw, in faintly glowing outlines, a block of symbols in between two largish circles.
“You can’t see UV, can you?”
Lucy frowned. “Well, no. Being completely biological and all.”
“You missed the writing.”
“There’s writing?” She went back into the bag for her screen. “Show me.”
Michael fed her real-time images — barring the lag of transmitting the feed up to a satellite and beaming it back down again — so that she could see what Petrovitch saw.
“How was I supposed to know?” She moved her finger over the surface. It obscured some of the angular symbols. “I’ve been in the dark for eighteen hours a day.”
Lucy held up the screen so Avaiq could see. He took the little rectangle in his hands and stared. “Doesn’t look like any letters I’ve ever seen before.”
“I think you’ll find,” said Lucy, “that’s only to be expected, given where this is supposed to have come from.”
“And those circles? That’s where you put your hands.”
“Which would have made it obvious from the start.”
Petrovitch rubbed his palms on his trousers. “Do I say a magic word or something? Abracadabra?”
“What do you think?” said Lucy.
“Just checking.” He put one palm on the glowing disc on the left, then his other on the right. Nothing happened for long enough to allow him to raise an eyebrow and glance at Lucy.
Then the writing faded, and a crack appeared down the centre line of the object; simultaneously, another fissure ran around the whole circumference. The object started to split apart, two halves of the lid folding upwards.
Inside was…
“Yobany stos.”
“That’s what we thought.”
It looked exactly like an alien weapon should. It had a black barrel, surrounded by a split four-piece blued metal shield that ran its length. The grip was designed for something that didn’t have an opposable thumb, and was embedded inside the device, so that the user would have the shield covering their forearm.
It was held in the case in a tightly fitting surround that was almost invisible. “Is that an aerogel?” asked Petrovitch, poking it.
“Only you could be more interested in the packing than the cargo.” Lucy reached out and picked up the device. It resisted for a moment, then popped free.
She held it in both hands and presented it to him.
Petrovitch’s mouth was suddenly dry. “This, this is stupid.”
“When has that ever stopped you?” She proffered it again.
“It looks like a yebani ray gun!”
“We know. That’s why we hid it.”
“Why are aliens we’ve never met sending us hardware like this?”
Lucy finally forced the thing on him. “I’ve had nothing to do but think of possible answers to that question. Lying here in the dark, with it just there at my feet.”
He hefted it, checking its weight. It didn’t seem particularly dense, but it was strong and rigid. The material it was made from — he daren’t call it metal, even though that was what it closely resembled — was cold to the touch.
He peered down the barrel. There was no hint of a mechanism inside.
“I take it you haven’t…”
“We don’t even know if it is a weapon. It could be anything at all. And if it is, using it could be a sign that we should all die.”
“Or that if we don’t, we’re all doomed.”
“Or it could perform some sort of ceremonial function, like giving gifts of whisky and rifles. What if it needs bullets, or a power pack, or a password, or we’ve accidentally left the second part of it in the pod, or there was a second pod that burnt up or fell out to sea?”
“Yeah, okay. I get the idea.”
“I’ve got all these things floating around in my head, and I don’t dare find out which one is true.”
Petrovitch pointed the barrel downwards and looked at the other end. There was a bulb-like grip, with five thick grooves running down it. It looked like a lemon squeezer with fewer teeth. He could put it in the palm of his hand and close his fingers around it. Whether anyone who didn’t have a cybernetic arm could then support the weight of it was just one question amongst many.
“I haven’t tried to hold it in what looks like the proper way. There are metal surfaces at the far end of the grip. In the absence of anything else to press, those could be the controls.” Lucy pointed out the smooth mirrored insets at the base of the grip, barely visible through the gap in the shield sections.
“I’m holding something from another planet. Another solar system. Something that travelled trillions of kilometres to get here. Imagine the astrogation needed. All that information, all that technology, gone in a instant.” Petrovitch looked up at Lucy. “A starship. And we shot it down.”
“Shot it down?” Lucy’s eyebrows rose.
“SkyShield.” He was tempted just to reach into the device and wrap his fingers around the smooth ridges of the grip. “Railgunned it out of the sky. Even though it was the Americans who did it, do you honestly think that whoever sent this will notice the difference between all our squabbling little factions? We could be in deep shit here. Nova bombs, relativistic kill vehicles, von Neumann swarms. This thing.”
[Do you still want to sell half of it to the Chinese?]
Petrovitch blew out a deep breath, and Lucy pulled a face.
“You wanted to do what?”
“It was an idea I had. We still might have to do it, if it means getting out of here alive.”
Avaiq stamped his foot. “I want to be in on this conversation. If it concerns me, I want a say.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” Petrovitch stroked the smooth line of one of the shield panels. “There are people coming to rescue us. Whether or not they can is out of my hands, and is trusting a lot to luck. I wanted to make sure we had a bargaining chip if it came down to a stand-off, and one way would be to sell a share of this to someone with the clout to make the Yanks hold back.”
“You can’t,”
said Lucy.
“I know I can’t. But apparently you can. It’s yours. You found it. You get to decide what happens to it.” He reluctantly held it out to her, and she took it from him, cradling it in her arms.
“Is that actually true?” asked Avaiq.
“Apparently. Our tame lawyer reckons that according to Alaskan state law, it’s legally Lucy’s. I don’t think that’ll bother the US government one bit, considering they just levelled Deadhorse.”
Lucy blinked. “They did?”
“Yeah.”
“Is there anything else I should know?” she asked, her voice rising.
He shifted guiltily. “Probably.” He really hoped Michael wouldn’t tell her about Jason Fyfe. Not just yet.
She gave him a hard stare, but thankfully didn’t ask any more questions. “There’s always the UN. That way the Chinese have an interest in it, and so does everyone else. Including the Americans.”
“If you hand it over to UNESCO, you’ll never see it again. I doubt if anyone else will, either. No one will be allowed to touch it because the arguing will go on for decades.” Petrovitch flipped over so he could sit down and stretch his leg. “You’ve realised that this thing is what the aliens considered most important.”
“Duh. Getting this to us was the whole point of the mission.”
“I wonder if there was a pilot. Or pilots.”
Lucy started to say something, then stopped. “I was about to say, we’ll never know. But that’s not actually true, is it?”
“No. No, it’s not. One day I’ll ask them.”
Avaiq coughed. “Can you two keep your minds on how we’re going to save our skins? I’m just a mechanic. I fix stuff. I’m not like you.”
Petrovitch rubbed at his face. “Okay. Our lot are about thirty minutes away. We can be back in Canada, if we go in a straight line, in less than three quarters of an hour after that. We’ve got to cover our arses for an hour and a bit. Any suggestions?”
[There is always the Attack faction. My efforts would be partial, and the effect here would be limited. It would also serve to antagonise the Americans further.]
Both Petrovitch and Lucy shook their heads.
[I am also picking up satellite-bound transmissions from the research station. It is likely that Joseph Newcomen is now in the custody of other US agents.]
“Who?” mouthed Lucy.
“Later,” said Petrovitch. “He doesn’t know where we are.”
[He knows which direction you were heading. They will follow your tracks along the river, and then they will find the vehicles. Then they will find you, no matter how well hidden Lucy’s shelter is.]
Lucy kicked him. “I hide out in the middle of nowhere for over a week, and within minutes of you turning up…”
“I should have been more careful,” said Petrovitch. “I should have shot him.”
“What are you talking about?” Avaiq’s temper was stirring.
“They’ve got Newcomen. That means we’re going to have company.” Petrovitch leaned forward and pressed his fingers into his damaged ankle, feeling for the muscles and ligaments. “About the same time as our lot turn up, so will they.”
“Okay,” said Lucy. She suddenly launched into a flurry of activity, pushing the weapon thing back into its case and slapping her hands on the two halves of the open lid. “The cold might have made you stupid, but not me. I suggest we run for it rather than wait for certain death. Less futile, slightly healthier.”
The artefact’s lid folded back down, and the join became a crack, a line, then vanished. She wrapped it up in the sealskin and slid it towards the entrance, then started buttoning up her parka.
“She’s right, of course,” said Petrovitch.
“Of course I’m right.” She pulled on her mittens and gave herself a shake. Clearly, she was missing something. She lifted up her sleeping bag, swept her hand under it, and came out with a ceramic carbine. “Ready. Let’s go.”
38
Lucy sat behind Petrovitch. Sandwiched between them was the carpet bag: zipped inside it along with all his other kit was the sealskin-wrapped case. He could feel it pressing into his back.
[You are going to run out of land.]
“Yeah, where we’re going, we don’t need land. The sea ice’ll be thick enough.” He squinted down at the controls. “I’m more concerned about running out of fuel. These things burn meths like it’s going out of fashion.”
[Based on the vehicle’s previous performance, you have sufficient for another forty-five kilometres. However, Lucy Petrovitch is an extra load on your engine. This will cut the range to around thirty kilometres unless you lower your speed.]
“How about the chasing pack?”
[There are too many unknowns. Judging from the position of the satellite phones some of them carry, they are travelling faster than you. This might mean they catch you up, or it might mean they empty their fuel tanks before they reach you.]
“And this will all happen in the next ten minutes. Those planes out of Eielson? How are they doing?”
[The ones that attacked Deadhorse are returning to base. They have scrambled two more that were not at combat readiness, but since Eielson is some six hundred and forty kilometres away, those aircraft will not be overhead for another half an hour at least.]
“This isn’t inspiring me with confidence.”
[I can all but guarantee their planes will not find our planes. My chief concern is that they are guided to their target by visual cues given by personnel on the ground.]
“Can you jihad the planes?”
[These are the Wild Weasel variant that are specifically hardened against electronic countermeasures. Sasha, again: just because they are Americans does not mean they are stupid.]
“I’ll take that as a no.” They were close to the sea. Ahead of them was the pressure ridge of ice that had been forced up on to the shore by the tides that still raised and lowered the water that lay beneath. “In fact, if I didn’t know any better, they’ve got us pretty much where they want us.”
[Considering all the resources expended to make sure you were never supposed to get this far, we are technically ahead.]
“Go on, make it worse, why don’t you?”
[As you wish. If you cannot locate suitable access, you will need to carry the snowmobiles over the broken littoral zone to reach the flat pack ice.]
“Yobany stos, stop it.”
Lucy interrupted, speaking over the link even though she had her head against his shoulder blades.
“What are we going to do?” She’d worked it out. Michael had been talking to her at the same time as Petrovitch.
“The obvious thing.” Ahead of them, at the mouth of the river, Avaiq had already throttled down. Thick slabs of bluewhite ice stood cracked and jumbled in front of him, as chaotic as a Victorian graveyard.
Petrovitch pulled up next to him. He tapped Lucy’s hands so he could dismount.
“There’s usually a way through along the sand spit that sticks out into the bay,” said Avaiq, pointing north-east.
“Good,” said Petrovitch. He laid his bag across his seat and unzipped it. He took out the sealskin, and tied it tightly on to the snowmobile’s carry-rack.
“Sam? You can’t,” said Lucy, though she already knew that he could.
“Yeah. I’m doing that thing that fathers do at times like this.” He unclipped the axe and threw it into the snow. “So let’s assume we’ve had the argument, the tears, the rest of it, and it turned out that I was right all along. Go.”
She unslung her carbine and gave it to him.
“Avaiq will see you safely on to the ice. Michael will guide Maddy to you. There is,” and he popped up a map, “a massive iceberg grounded some five k offshore. Make for that.”
Avaiq looked confused. “Aren’t you…?”
“No. No, I’m not. You’re going to drive behind to make absolutely certain that the alien doohickey doesn’t fall off.” Petrovitch threaded his arm through the
gun’s strap, picked up the bag and the axe, and started towards the ice ridge. Halfway there, he turned and shouted. “What are you waiting for? Pascha?”
“Sam?” said Lucy over the link.
“We’re not discussing this. You and the artefact go. I stay.”
“I just wanted to say that I love you very much and you’re the best replacement dad a girl could hope for.”
“If I cry, my targeting system won’t work properly.” He kept on walking. “You can say all this as you drive. Probably better that you don’t, though. I don’t need distracting.”
She slid forward to take Petrovitch’s place and opened the throttle. The engine roared, and she drove off, heading east along the coast. Avaiq stared at Petrovitch for a moment, then followed Lucy. The two of them vanished into the fog bank, and he watched the glow of them in infrared fade and wink out.
He looked around. It wasn’t the best place to make a last stand, but he guessed that choosing somewhere appropriate wasn’t a luxury that most people in his position could afford. He climbed up the ice barricade to the top. He could hear motors buzzing away, but the noise seemed to be coming from all around him. That couldn’t be the case, so he slowly turned his head and ran the waveforms through an analyser.
He could discount the two sources behind him. The ones ahead were coming at him in a line, stretched out wide so they could cover the maximum area without losing sight of each other.
That would work to his advantage.
“Tell me as soon as they’re picked up.”
[Due to the nature of the aerial threat, the Freezone units are maintaining complete radio silence. I have instructed Lucy to do the same. Their links are switched off so they do not emit any radiation at all. Confirmation will come as an audiovisual signal, which you will have to confirm.]
“Distress flare, then. Okay.” He checked his pistol, and sorted through his bag for the gifts from the Freezone’s weaponsmiths.
A couple of quantum gravity devices: old school, but still terrible. Three pop-ups, which he would have planted already but he’d run out of time. He had a good arm on him to increase their range. A remote, too. He ought to get that going now.
He worked quickly: it came in almost unrecognisable parts that clipped together around a first-order antigravity sphere. The remote would hover at knee height, and move around with little electric fans. On the bottom was a hook, and on that hook he hung one of the gravity bombs.