Degrees of Freedom

by Simon Morden

  “I’ve been married for just over a year,” said Petrovitch, “and even I know that not telling your wife stuff is bad.” He went off on his own reverie for a moment, before snapping his concentration back to the American. “Doesn’t mean I follow my own advice, though.”

  “Every time you come on the news—and that’s a lot—she starts up on this tirade of abuse. About how you’re like Hitler and Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao all rolled into one. That you’re coming for us while we sleep, because freaks like you don’t need sleep; about how you’re plotting to take away our country and our values and our children. She’s smart, and loving, and kind. She runs charity fundraisers for good causes. She’s leader of the women’s circle at church. She’s a good person, Petrovitch, a godly person, the mother of my children.”

  “All three of them.”

  “That. And every time she starts, I want to shake her and shake her until she stops because you’re the reason I’m there at all.”

  Petrovitch tilted his head to one side. “You could just stop watching the news with her.”

  “I have to tell her. I have to tell her tonight.”

  “That’s up to you, Dalton. I wouldn’t. I’d bury it so deep it’d take a geological age to bring it to the surface again. You have a good life: don’t throw it away. Look—what she believes might be true. I tricked Boris into letting you go, and in doing so, I betrayed the trust of a man who’d shown me nothing but kindness. The money he gave me kept me and my mother and my sister fed. It allowed me to study. When I fucked Boris over, I did it for cold, hard cash, and I still haven’t dared to find out what happened to the rest of my family. You can keep on fooling yourself about my motives for saving you, but I know what went through my mind that night.”

  Dalton leaned back in his chair and looked around his office, at all the accoutrements of his position and his power. “I’m a lawyer, right? I do corporate law. The guys I work with, both clients and partners, play hardball with each other to get even the slightest advantage. They don’t give anything away, either. Sure, we’re all brothers in the Reconstruction: we all stay sober and clean, we don’t swear or hire hookers, we all smile and gladhand each other and ask about each other’s wives. Maybe some of them actually believe it.” He put his tongue in his cheek and rolled it around, the bulge visible from the outside. “The thing is, what they’re doing to each other is all the more savage and brutal because they have the outward appearance of being decent, dependable men—while the truth is, every last one of those robbers would have left me to rot in that St. Petersburg basement.”

  Petrovitch tried to voice his objections, but didn’t get any further than a stuttered “I…”

  “You had all my money, hundreds of thousands of dollars of it. You could have cut and run. Instead, you came back for me. You scammed Boris and if he’d known any of it, if he’d suspected a single thing, he would have killed the pair of us in an eyeblink. You risked your life to save mine.” Dalton jabbed his finger at the camera. “I know your secret, Petrovitch. I know that you are a good person and you will always be that way.”

  “Yeah, well.” Petrovitch blew out a stream of air. “Don’t spread it around. I’ve a reputation to keep.”

  “I want to help you. I want to do for you what you did for me.”

  “I’m not lying on a filthy mattress in a kidnapper’s freezing-cold basement getting trashed on cheap vodka just to stay warm.”

  “Your colleague Doctor Ekanobi is. Apart from the vodka part.”

  “We had one of your CIA agents in custody, and I’d hoped for an exchange, but Sonja said she was forced to just hand her back. We got nothing in return.” Petrovitch pursed his lips. “No one has seen Pif for ten months. Homeland Security have her… somewhere. Even I can’t find out where. You know, all your really confidential stuff is done on hand-written notes now. You use typewriters. You courier it in briefcases wired to incinerate their contents if they’re tampered with. I have nothing, Dalton. I can’t even suggest where to start looking for her.”

  “Why don’t you let me deal with that?”

  “If the Nobel committee can’t find her, what makes you think you can?”

  “Because I’m flying to California tomorrow with a writ of habeas corpus in my pocket. I’m going to serve it in the State Supreme Court, and I expect them to rule on it in a couple of days. Wherever she is, whoever has her, will have to bring her to court and argue their case in front of a judge.”

  “Far be it from me to point out some flaws in your plan, but are you a complete mudak? Apart from the fact all they’re going to do is laugh in your face when you wave your little piece of paper at them, you’re going to end up dead on the court steps. If someone doesn’t shoot you first, a rent-a-mob will beat your brains out with their fists.”

  “They won’t laugh at me, Petrovitch. The justices take their responsibilities very seriously indeed. They have to act. They have no choice. Habeas corpus applies equally in all courts. It applies to every branch of the judiciary and the executive. It applies to everyone, citizen or not. They have to produce her person and give their reason, in law, why they can continue to hold her. There are no exceptions to this rule, and believe me, I’ve done my homework.”

  “So why the chyort has no one done this before?”

  “Because you have no friends over here. No one’s going to stand up for you, or her. I know you tried to ginger up some interest, but you’re fighting against Reconstruction. We all know what waits for us if we step out of line.”

  “What I don’t get is why you’re willing to risk that. Dalton, we were done. We had a deal and we carried it to a mutually beneficial conclusion. It’s over. You don’t owe me anything, anymore than I owe you.”

  “I’ve read everything about you. I know what you’ve done, what you had to go through to do it. I know about the Sorensons and the CIA. I know about this… thing you call Michael and where it came from. I know about the Long Night. I know what you are. I know you. You don’t get me because you’re not me. You don’t know anything about me, about the thousand little compromises I make every waking hour just to fit in with this vast, cold monolith called Reconstruction. If you knew me, you’d curse me and call me a coward, because that’s what I’ve been like every day for five years.” Dalton looked above the camera. There must have been a clock on the wall behind it. “I was only supposed to be on for five minutes. Six max. No matter how careful I’m being, they can still trace this call.”

  “I can deal with that,” said Petrovitch. “You know they’re going to crucify you. You’re going to lose everything. Your wife is going to leave you and take your kids with her. Her daddy’s going to ruin you. And you’ll be so fired, I’ll be able to see the detonation from orbit.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re still going to go through with this?”

  “Yes. Flight’s booked. My case is packed. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I’m supposed to be the king of the futile gesture, and here I am, trumped by some stupid Yankee lawyer. I can only say this one more time: Dalton, don’t do it.”

  “The time when you could tell me what to do is long past, Petrovitch. I don’t think I’ll have to call you again to let you know how I’m doing. I think that’s going to be pretty obvious.”

  “Just… when all this is over, and you need somewhere to hide: I can do that for you, too.”

  “Thank you.” There was a tone, and a woman’s voice announced that his next appointment was outside. “I won’t keep him a minute, Adele.” Dalton muted the intercom. “Not that it’s going to matter. All my clients will drop me like a scalding-hot stone when they find out.”

  “You’d better go.” Petrovitch blinked. He’d walked all the way to Limehouse. A truck was rattling slowly up behind him, its back full of blue-overalled nikkeijin: an Oshicora work crew. He raised his hand to the driver, who brought the vehicle slowly to a halt.

  “Goodbye, Petrovitch.”r />
  “Goodbye, Dalton. And good luck.” Petrovitch caught the outstretched arm of one of the workers and clambered up over the tailgate. The men and women shuffled aside to make room for him, and he sat down, back against the low metal side.

  “Petrovitch-san,” said the foreman, “you are crying.” He proffered his own packet of paper tissues, of which there was one left.

  “It’s dust. And these yebani eyes.” Petrovitch tapped the white of his left eye with his ragged fingernail so that it made a distinct hollow tock. “It always happens when it’s cold.”

  4

  The truck took him all the way to Green Park, through the area worst affected by the Outie advance: the East and West Ends, Commercial Road and Whitechapel, Aldgate and Holborn, and Aldwych.

  A few of the damaged buildings were being saved. Most had been torn down, the remains of them carted away to be picked through and recycled by Metrozoners south of the river and desperate for work. There were lucrative contracts for that, like there were contracts for everything these days.

  In place of the lost historic facades, towers of steel and glass rose up to touch the sky—and the Freezone was making sure that each and every one of them could generate their own power, cool themselves down in summer and heat themselves up in winter, and be as safe and clean and bright as they could be.

  The architects loved Petrovitch, too.

  As soon as the truck stopped, he vaulted off the back and onto the road. He made his sayonaras, and started down Piccadilly. He glanced up at the ruins of the Oshicora Tower, its pinnacle catching the low winter sun as it sneaked through a gap in the high cloud.

  Father John had evidently made it down again. Petrovitch didn’t care much if he’d done so in one piece. It was tempting to make the ascent again, just for himself, like it had been in the beginning. He toyed with the idea before dismissing it: if he broke the established ritual, someone might ask why. Which would be bad. He needed to keep everyone’s attention focused on the things he did in the open, so that they wouldn’t start looking for his sleights-of-hand.

  Misdirection. It was harder work than mere secrecy.

  He rounded Hyde Park Corner. He had a suite of rooms in the nearby Hilton, what was left of it. No one would be there, though: Valentina and Tabletop would be stalking the streets, searching for the unaccounted-for CIA agent Slipper, while Lucy was busy—at least, should be busy—in Petrovitch’s lab. New lab. There wasn’t much left of the old one, or anything else around it. V’nebrachny Americans.

  They were building on Hyde Park, just like they seemed to be building everywhere, though the work was slower because of the bodies they kept on exhuming and carrying away to a temporary mortuary on the edge of the site. But they worked none the less. Cranes, trucks, workers. Pile-drivers, welders, scaffolders. So much noise where there had been only silence.

  He dug his hands into his pockets and kept walking, right past the end of Exhibition Road, still cordoned off with temporary wire barriers while the college and the State Department argued about who was responsible for the damage. Petrovitch lingered again: all that remained of the whiteboard Pif had used to extract the first of her equations was a grainy photograph taken on her camera. His original floating sphere was somewhere underneath it.

  Everything was temporary. Nothing lasted forever, not things, not people, not love, not time itself.

  He shrugged and walked on. Of course there was no question over who was responsible, just one over who was going to pay for it. In the meantime, he carried on past the Albert Hall to the building just next door—an arts college—which he’d co-opted until they could find some artists.

  Glass-fronted edifices had fared badly, and this one had been no exception. The front was swathed in heavy plastic that rippled in the wind and did nothing to insulate the inside from the biting cold. But there was electricity, and light, and network access. He’d decided that it was good enough, and set up shop in the basement.

  He peeled his way through the doorframe and let the translucent sheet fall back behind him. The sounds of outside became muffled and changed. It was more like a ship at sea now, crackling and groaning with every gust and gyre.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Out of sight, Lucy answered into her mouthpiece. “I was waiting for you.”

  Petrovitch headed for the stairwell. “Are you done?”

  He could hear her breathing: she would insist on balancing the microphone just too high so that it was between her nose and her upper lip. “I don’t know. I mean, I followed the instructions, and it looks like it could work. There were some bits left over.”

  “There always are.” He trotted down the stairs and through the fire doors.

  “It’s not going to blow up, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah. Well, the flywheel might. As long as you don’t stand directly in the way, it’ll be fine.” He barged through another door. The room had originally been for the curation and restoration of old paintings, big enough for what he wanted, but the machine in front of him was now too tall, too wide, to ever make it outside. He looked back at the exit. “Can’t think of everything.”

  Lucy peeled her headset off and threw it casually on the side of a sink. “For what it’s worth,” and she made a little show of revealing her creation, as if she were a magician’s assistant.

  Which, in a way, she was.

  She looked so painfully young, so painfully alone. Petrovitch was a poor substitute for a parent: he had no idea how to make it better. Keeping her occupied like this was the best he could do, but it didn’t stop her from waking in the night, calling out for her lost mother and father, and sobbing when she realized that they were never coming back.

  “Are you going to start it up, then?”

  She went back to her printed notes. “Okay. Turn it on at the wall—done that. Take the manual brakes off the flywheel and the oscillator.” As she spun the two wheels that released the clamps, she asked, “Did you get a call today? From a Catholic priest?”

  “Yeah. No; he came to talk to me in person. Haven’t seen any old guys in red robes wandering around yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

  “What’s it all about? He asked me about Michael, whether I’d be willing to talk to some committee or other. I’d said he’d need to check with you first.”

  “He had checked with me first. I told him I’d rip his arms off and beat him with the wet ends if he bothered you.”

  “I guess it’ll suck to be him, then.” She looked down at the sheet of paper in her hand, and flicked two switches.

  “Tell me if he tries to contact you again. Or anyone else on the same subject.” He wondered how far to take it. “I’m not going to forbid you from talking about Michael—not really my style—but, you know. I’d prefer it if you didn’t. Not to them.”

  “I won’t.” She tugged at her ponytail and flashed him a smile. “Don’t worry.”

  “The judge said it’s my job to worry about you.”

  Her smile slipped, and she turned her back on him.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Stop apologizing. Just, just press a button, or something.”

  Petrovitch sighed and reached past her to thumb the big red button on the front of the control panel. The machine’s central column sank down smoothly, then with only the top part of it showing, it rose again to its full height. It paused for a moment, then started to sink again, repeating the cycle.

  Lucy looked up. “That bit works.”

  “Engage the magnetic coupling.”

  “You love this, don’t you?”

  “You’ll learn to love it too.” Petrovitch watched as she closed the circuit-breaker on the electromagnets. There were actual honest-to-god sparks, fat blue ones that leaped out at the copper contacts.

  She gave a little squeak, but there was no harm done.

  A needle started to pulse across a meter, creeping ever closer to the end-stop. The machine began to
sing with a low bass note.

  Petrovitch eased Lucy aside and inspected all the dials and readings. At some point he was going to have to modify the test rig so that it gave a digital read-out that he could then arrange in neat graphs and publish in a reputable peer-reviewed journal.

  For now, he contented himself with making a recording of everything he saw, storing it away on the hard-drive he kept in his pocket.

  The flywheel was starting to push the limits which he’d set and, with no load, there was nothing to stop it eventually spinning itself to destruction. The pitch it was calling at was beyond a middle-C: time to let it slow down. He heaved the switching gear back and thumbed the red switch.

  The central column stopped its steady rise and fall, and the flywheel’s note slowly ran down through the octave.

  “So what did we just do?”

  Petrovitch lined up the footage he’d shot, editing it down and splicing it to a convenient thirty-second clip that a news channels could stream without effort. “Solved the world’s energy needs for the foreseeable future.”

  “How?”

  “By using a second-quantum repulsor to lift a weight, which then falls and does work. But the energy we use to power the repulsors to raise the load is less than we generate when it goes down. It’s a perpetual motion machine.” The video clip and the accompanying notes were ready to go. “If you’ve got shares in energy companies, tell me now.”

  “Hang on.” Lucy walked around the base of the machine. “We put electricity in. We get electricity out. More comes out than we put in, so we can use that electricity to run the machine and still have some left over. Right?”

  “And it’ll never stop. Once you’ve built one, you have free power—until it breaks down, of course. Even I can’t prevent that.”

  “How much free power?”

  “Out of this thing? Barely enough for a two-bar electric fire. But they’ll get bigger, better. No one will ever build a power station again that doesn’t use these.”

  “You’re serious.”