by Simon Morden
“You have the knowledge, yes?”
“I know pretty much what to do. I could have probably done all this myself, got all the makings for it, but I would have ended up making the mistakes that you’ve already fixed. I don’t have time to make mistakes, Herr Krenz.”
“You have fear?” He snorted like a bull. “You?”
“I know my reputation precedes me. But I’m not like that, really.” He looked up at Krenz. “I just have a lot on my plate at the moment.”
“It is not for me to give you the questions.” Krenz checked the fuel gauge on the genny and thumbed the starter button. “I have one only.”
The motor puttered into life, and he checked its performance by cocking his ear and listening to the quality of the sound it made.
“The question is this: how will you pay? No Freezone, no EU, no UN. No Oshicora.” Krenz wiped at his bald head. “I meet Samuil Petrovitch. That is enough for today, but I am not a…” He struggled for the word.
“Charity.” Petrovitch saw that the younger Krenz was attaching tubes to the top of the plastic sheet. Almost ready to inflate. “Don’t worry, Herr Krenz. If you want money, I’ve got an extensive overdraft.”
“A wass?”
“Credit. Two and a half billion euros’ worth. Should be enough.”
Krenz carried on working, fastening the plastic former to the fan by way of a flexible hose. Then he stopped. “Billion?”
“Yeah. I won’t tell you the bank’s name in case you mention it to them and a human manager takes exception. But their computer is fine with it.” Petrovitch reached past Krenz and flicked the fan’s switch. The blades cut the air with an audible chop, then it speeded up, sending a draft down the thick hose and causing the plastic sheet to ripple. The structure started to swell.
“They must find out. Tomorrow. Next week.”
“The line of credit’s only temporary, to be paid back in full tomorrow. In the meantime, if they kick up a fuss, I have a list of their other customers.” Petrovitch smiled. “It includes some really very unpleasant people, and I’m guessing that unless they want half of Africa camped out on their doorstep demanding their stolen money back, they won’t want it made public.”
After twenty minutes, a shiny gray hemisphere quivered tautly on the dockside. In the meantime, the Krenzes had cooked up a batch of filler, and now started to pump it down the tubing.
“How long?” asked Petrovitch over the noise.
Young Krenz answered him. “Half an hour to fill. Five minutes to cure with the ultraviolet light.”
“If I wanted one, I don’t know, a hundred meters across? How would you do that?”
“We do not, we cannot…”
Petrovitch brushed his excuses aside. “The science is sound. It’s just an engineering problem.”
“Why would you want one that big? The domes are connectable. You just build more.”
“I really want one bigger than that. Two hundred, maybe two fifty across. The solution for one hundred will be the same as for two hundred.”
“But, Doctor. The air former would collapse under the weight of the uncured polymer.”
“Yeah. But you don’t cure as you go, do you? You fill completely, then set it solid with the UV. What if you fixed the bottom part of it even as you were pumping more on top? That’s how Brunelleschi built his domes. Six hundred years ago.”
“Yes, I understand that. I can only say we have never been asked to build one as big before now.” Young Krenz frowned. “Why would you want to?”
“Because,” said Petrovitch, “I saw it in a dream. Then when I had the time to look into it, I found your company. They’re exactly the same. Just smaller.”
“But a two-hundred-meter dome? You could put a village under it.”
“Yeah. Something like that. Along with heat exchangers, a water reclamation system, hydroponics, air scrubbers. You do a passive photochromic coating for when it gets sunny, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t do a translucent photovoltaic one instead. It’s pretty much free off-grid power. Use it to make hydrogen and store it for a fuel-cell power plant.”
Older Krenz interrupted. “Herr Doktor. Why do you need us at all?”
“I could steal your tech. I could buy your company. Or I can behave like a decent human being for once and trade with you rather than ripping you off or taking over. Why don’t we wait until we’re ready before we talk terms?”
The pump finished filling the space between the two skins of the former, and the UV tubes already underneath flashed darkly into life. Petrovitch rested his hand on the gray outside and felt the warmth of the uncured resin. He pulled his hand away, only to see the slight impression remain. It had gone hard already, and had preserved his palm-print for posterity.
He turned around. Older Krenz had an old-fashioned stopwatch which he turned face out toward him.
“You must wait. Three minutes.”
He reluctantly backed away and, at the end of three minutes, the Krenzes set to work on the former, disconnecting the pipes and cutting through the thick plastic sheeting with short, curved knives. Petrovitch made a mental note that the formers he was going to use ought to be reusable.
They disconnected the fan and turned off the generator. After the constant noise, the silence was profound. There were sounds in the distance—the heavy, rhythmic thud of a pile-driver, the light chatter of a road-drill, and from across the river, traffic and sirens—but nothing to distract him from the imminent unveiling.
Young Krenz took one side, his father the other, and together they peeled the outer covering off the dome. The internal former had fallen away. All that was left was a trick of the light, an optical illusion.
The material was crystal clear: only the lensing effect made its presence visible. Petrovitch walked forward, the fingers of one hand stretched out in front of him, stepping slowly until his fingertips brushed against a smooth, oily surface. He left smears that seemed to hang in mid-air.
“Yobany stos.”
He paced around it, watching the way the images of the Krenzes warped and shifted through the plastic shell, until he arrived back at the start.
“Is it what you wanted?” asked Young Krenz.
Petrovitch hesitated before answering. In a moment, he was old again, looking down on a shoreline that was pocked with domes, while above him in the blue sky, flecks of light were rising out of sight. He was dying, and he didn’t care.
“Yeah.” He didn’t need to imagine what it would look like scaled up. He’d already seen it. “Let’s deal.”
He offered them straight cash, in return for a licensing deal, access to their plans and their suppliers. He offered them enough that Young Krenz assumed that his father was going to take it, but Older Krenz had other ideas.
“I would make you a hundred-meter dome. I would that you show me the way to make it. I believe that, yes, we make playhouses and greenhouses and swimming pool covers, but we can make them bigger? You show me how. You show me these coatings. We are family business: small and reliable, but not…”
“Imaginative,” interrupted Young Krenz. He looked rueful, as if he’d had this conversation a hundred times before.
“Yes, yes, that. You tell us how to build bigger, and we will do it for you.”
“I won’t be asking for just one dome. I’ll want several to start with, then more. I want to be able to do this myself. With help, sure, but something that a few people can put up in a day or so. Are you worried that I’m going to set up in competition against you?”
Krenz nodded.
“Herr Krenz, in two weeks’ time, I’m going to need somewhere else to live. When the Metrozone Authority takes over, it’ll be a matter of hours before I’m dragged in front of a judge on one extradition warrant or another. I’m not interested in Petrovitch Industries, I’m interested in my own survival. So, how about this? I will give you everything I can think of. Every last technical detail of every innovation I can come up with. In return, you do
the same for me. Everything. No hiding anything to get a commercial advantage, because there won’t be any. You’ll be the only one selling Krenz domes. Think you can do that?”
“A… what is the word?”
“Partnership. I think.”
The Krenzes looked at each other across the quayside, and at the smaller figure standing between them.
“Okay. Where do you want the first one built?”
Petrovitch started to laugh, and he laughed so hard that his lungs ached. “That, gentlemen, I can’t tell you.”
“But…”
“Because I don’t exactly know.”
“You do not know?”
“Not yet.”
“How can we then go forward?”
Petrovitch dug his hands in his pockets. “Go home. Order formers for a hundred-meter dome. A dozen of them. Get all the stuff together that you’ll need—I’ll send instructions for the extra kit. Then you wait for my call. If it clicks past two weeks and I’m all over the news chained up in an orange jumpsuit, you’ll have to assume the deal’s off.”
“We will be rich, or bankrupt.” Young Krenz digested the news, and Older Krenz scratched at his head. “This is not a choice I wanted to have.”
“That’s fine. I’ll give you two million up front.” Petrovitch blinked. “Done. Don’t spend it all at once.”
He started to walk back toward where the new skyscrapers were taking shape, where the cranes were tallest and the sounds of construction the loudest, when Young Krenz called after him.
“Do you want nothing in writing? A signed agreement? Something? Anything?”
Petrovitch twisted around and walked backward, unerringly navigating any of the obstacles in his path. Just because he couldn’t see them didn’t mean he wasn’t looking. He considered telling the Krenzes that he’d recorded everything that had gone on: every word, every gesture, every detail of the equipment and the chemicals they’d used. He decided that would weird them out completely, and he needed them.
“I have your word. Do I need anything more?”
“I suppose not. This is most irregular, though.”
“CNN called me an international criminal mastermind this morning. The Jyllands-Posten only has me down as the most dangerous man alive, which is slightly better, but not much. Yeah, of course I’ll sign something if you want. Or we can keep this below the radar for as long as we can. Your call.”
“We will do as you say, then. Two weeks? That does not give us much time.”
“You and me both, Herr Krenz.” Petrovitch took one last look at the dome, glittering in the low winter sun. The surface was cooling, and attracting moisture. If that was the case, he could have dew traps all around the base…
Then he turned again. He went back on the ’net, searching for anything of significance, while he let client software take over his walking.
It seemed like the whole world was intent on tearing itself apart, and he was setting himself up as the only one who could mend it again. Stupid, stupid, hubristic delusions. And yet he’d contacted a couple of obscure German engineers in their quiet Bavarian town, and they’d come of their own free will. No one had put a gun to their heads: a tactic Petrovitch was so used to, he’d grown sick of it.
His phone—the virtual one in his head—rang. He absently picked up the call before he’d checked the number, before he’d run it though a search program to tell him where the dialer was and who they were. He was distracted. A mistake, and he didn’t often make that sort of error.
“Yeah?”
“Is that Samuil Petrovitch?”
The voice was American. The face attached to the voice tickled a memory buried deep inside his mind: it was clean-cut, well-fed, healthy. That was now, but back then he’d been bruised, ragged, terrified and desperate.
“Just to get this straight: your name didn’t used to be Petrovitch when you lived in St. Petersburg four, five years ago. You worked for a man called Boris. He kidnapped me…”
“Chyort. Dalton.”
3
I suppose this conversation was inevitable, but I’m pretty certain that when we went our separate ways, we had an unspoken agreement that we’d never talk to each other ever again.” Even though Petrovitch was transmitting voice-only, there was no point in denying who he was.
“That,” said Dalton, “had always been my intention, too. Forget St. Petersburg, forget Boris, forget you. Then suddenly a year ago, you became public enemy number one. It was kind of hard to ignore you. Walmart were selling caricature masks of you for Halloween.”
“Yeah, well. What happens in St. Petersburg, stays in St. Petersburg.” Petrovitch took a long look at Dalton, the office behind him, and the view from the window in what must have been an achingly tall tower of glass and steel. “You seem to have bounced back.”
“What do I call you?”
“A lot of people ask me that. I tell them the same thing: Petrovitch.”
“Doctor Petrovitch?”
“If they’re being kind. You were always Dalton when I remembered you. Just call me Petrovitch and have done with it. Speaking of which, you shouldn’t really be calling me anything. I’m the Antichrist, the devil incarnate and the villain in a thousand badly written and factually incorrect stories. You could be arrested for even talking to me.”
Dalton stroked his fantastically smooth, tanned, moisturized chin. He leaned over and opened a slim cardboard file. The first sheet of paper had the picture of a man, a little younger than Petrovitch, with a shock of black hair falling over his left eye. “Know who that is?”
He did. “That’s Anarchy. Wannabe-überhacker. Hit the NSA three months ago with a modified trojan, caused all sorts of problems, some of which they’re still sorting out. Yeah, he’s several steps ahead of the usual script-kiddies, but he got caught.”
“He’s a client of my firm. He assured me that this line is entirely private.”
“There’s no such thing as private anymore, Dalton. Not in this brave new world. Information wants to be free.”
“Private enough, then. Enough to take the risk in contacting you.”
“And why would you want to do that? You seem to have been doing fine without me.” As Petrovitch talked, he was searching the public and not-so-public records for an indication as to just how fine. “There you go: partner in the business, equity share, big corner office, married, a son and daughter, and another on the way—congratulations—house in the Hamptons. Kind of expensive, but you married money. Your wife’s father is a hardcore Reconstructionist, a senator, no less. You have done well. Too well to want to blow it all on saying hello to me.”
Dalton seemed to be having trouble breathing. “Whoa. Marie’s pregnant?”
“She went to a specialist yesterday. The day before, she bought three different off-the-shelf testing kits. It looks likely.” Petrovitch coughed. “Sorry if I ruined the surprise.”
“I’ll have to pretend I don’t know.” Dalton had his fist closed over his chest. “Are you just yanking my chain?”
“Not this time, tovarisch. She’s probably just waiting for the right time to tell you. Sure you don’t want to hang up on me?”
“I made my decision a while back. I… I’m a coward, Petrovitch. You know that better than most. I went to pieces, and it was only because you kept your head that I’m here today. Everything I have now, I owe it to you. I want—five years too late—to thank you.”
“Dalton, I raped your bank accounts. I took pretty much everything you had at the time. I beggared you. Or have you forgotten? Maybe you’ve forgotten too about all the other people that Boris kidnapped and I didn’t help? Or the ones where something went wrong—when the ransom wasn’t paid or there was a trace on the account—what about them? The ones he killed. The ones where he put his hands around their neck and crushed their larynx so that they’d suffocate, nice and slow. Every time that happened, I just turned the page on whichever textbook I was reading, and was glad it wasn’t me.”
“Petrovitch, I’ve been in denial ever since I got back from St. Petersburg. Some mornings I woke up and I even wondered if it had even happened to me at all. Then your face was all over the news and I found I couldn’t suppress the memories any longer. But who can I talk to? This man, this Russian kid who saved me, is the same one who’s an enemy of the state. Maybe if I’d have come clean a year ago, things would have been fine. I couldn’t, because I was a coward then, and I’m a coward now.”
“You’re not a coward, Dalton. You didn’t ask to be kidnapped. None of Boris’ victims did. And I wasn’t some yebani angel, sent from above to help you. You were the opportunity I needed to bail out, and it could just as easily have been someone else.”
“You don’t understand, Petrovitch…”
“Then explain it better, man!”
“I’m trying to. In court, I’m this silver-tongued magician. Opposing counsel are actually afraid of me. Me? Can you believe that?”
“Okay. You feel like you owe me something. I want nothing from you. I took what I needed at the time. I can even pay it back, though that’s as likely to get you into trouble as anything else.”
“The money means nothing to me.”
“You weren’t impressed at the time.”
“You made me reassess all my priorities. Everything I have dates from the moment I stepped back onto U.S. soil. My family, my career. I earned more money in the twelve months after I came back than you took from me.”
“It was enough. Enough to get me away, enough to hide me. I was, if not happy, fulfilled. And I hadn’t had to kill anyone to be that way. It was a good deal, Dalton. Both of us got something we wanted out of it. It was fair. Okay, your thanks is welcome, but why drag this up now, unless you’ve suddenly developed a death wish? What are you going to tell your wife when she asks you how work was?” Petrovitch’s eyelid twitched. “She doesn’t know any of this, does she? When you said, who could you tell, what you meant was, you haven’t told her anything.”
Dalton made a little gesture of defeat with his shoulders.