Degrees of Freedom

by Simon Morden

“Lucy? You know how much of a fan I am of Occam’s Razor.”

  “Sam, what are we going to do?” She pulled at her plait and dragged it over her shoulder. “I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been.”

  “It’s been staring us in the face since the very start. But I was looking for one person who knew everything, and the reason I could never work out who was because there was two of them.” He tried to flex his left arm. His fingers would move, but the rest of it had set solid. He couldn’t overcome the resistance offered by the motors. “As to what we’re going to do…”

  Petrovitch dragged himself upright and restuck the computer to his side. He set his face in the direction of the Post Office Tower, but his view was obscured by Madeleine, who moved in front of him. She put the flat of her hand against his chest.

  “No.” Her voice was firm.

  “Out of the yebani way. I’m going to rip her a new zhopu with this,” and he brandished his broken arm, “then I’m going to see how well she flies.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I’m pretty sure I can. I’m pretty sure that no one’s going to stop me from doing it either.” He looked up into his wife’s face. “She won’t lift a finger to save herself, because she loves me.”

  “Do you really think that? Do you really believe she’s not going to fight to keep what she has?”

  “She has nothing left.” Petrovitch gestured to the rubble pile. “She’s lost the Freezone, she’s lost me, she’s lost the nikkeijin, the organization around her is falling apart, she’s got no home, no purpose, no inheritance and no legacy.”

  “Then maybe,” said Madeleine, “you should just leave her alone for the moment. Not that we both don’t have a reckoning with her at some point…”

  “And with the priest.”

  “And with John. He’s lost everything too. His very identity as a priest, even. But if Sonja’s lost the Freezone, who’s there to catch it if it falls?”

  Still he tried to go through her, to get at Sonja. “I saved her. And for what? So she could do this to me?”

  Madeleine pushed him hard enough to rock him back on his heels. “You just told these people to go to work. They don’t have electricity or computers, thanks to you. That means you haven’t got the time to spare on this self-indulgent crap, because like them, you have work to do.”

  “Don’t you want to get at her? At Father fucking John?”

  She lowered her voice to barely a whisper. “Oh yes. But they can wait. Look at their plans—what have they come to? Nothing. We have a city to run, we have another CIA hit-squad to find. We have a thousand and one people to talk to, to assure them that we’re not going to drop the ball.”

  Petrovitch fumed. “I know what you’re saying makes more sense. But I still prefer my version.”

  “I prefer your version. It’s just a shame we don’t have the luxury of doing what we want. You always said the Freezone was a good idea because it was your idea: are you going to throw it away because you want to act out your revenge fantasies?”

  “It’s so very tempting.” He stopped his attempts to bull his way past her. “Yobany stos, all right. Have it your way.”

  Valentina looked pointedly at her watch, and Petrovitch scowled.

  “Like you’re a yebani metronome. You might not show it, but you’re just as pissed as I am.”

  She conceded the point. “So what do we do? And in what order do we do it?”

  “I need this arm back. That’s not going to happen until I get the power back on. I would also like something to eat and drink because it’s been a very long time since any of us have done either. That’s not going to happen until I get the power back. These good people need to do some work, and guess what?” Petrovitch wandered away across the road, staring down every so often. His lips moved silently as he counted.

  “Sam, what are you doing?” called Lucy.

  Petrovitch eventually pointed to a black metal cover set into the tarmac. “We need to get this one up.”

  She turned to Tabletop, standing beside her. “What’s he doing?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I do,” said Madeleine, cupping her hands around her mouth. “I thought the idea was to persuade everyone we hadn’t lost the plot.”

  He shouted back. “You want power? This is how we get it. In every way.”

  While Valentina went to fetch the tire iron from the trunk of the car, the other three went over to where Petrovitch was standing.

  Madeleine crouched down next to the manhole. “You realize the Yanks are going to want to nuke us if we do this. We’ve dodged a pretend atomic bomb only to walk into the path of a real one.”

  “You asked me if I had a plan for when I got him out. I did then, and I still do.” He took a step back and allowed Valentina to dig the edge of the iron between the cover and the lip of the hole. “I’ve let the Americans dictate what happens to Michael for too long. No more.”

  As the cover broke free of the collected muck that held it down, Madeleine dug her fingers under it and dragged it scraping to one side. There was a brick-lined black hole, and a ladder thick with rust descending into it.

  “We are going to get Michael, da?” Valentina threw the tire iron aside.

  “Yeah, we are.” Petrovitch flipped his feet into the hole and adjusted his useless arm down to fit close by his side. He toed the first rung, testing his weight on it. “We’re going to need the cee-four.”

  Tabletop looked at the distance between them and the tower. “Okay. But let me go first. We’ve come too far to let any more surprises get in the way.” She pulled the hood of her stealth suit over her head and covered her eyes with the integral goggles.

  Petrovitch moved to one side, and she used partly him, partly the road, to lower herself into the void. She swarmed down the ladder and, within moments, was out of sight.

  “Right,” he said to those remaining. “Down the rabbit hole.”

  20

  Away from the small circle of light, the darkness was like a wall. Petrovitch switched to infrared, and watched while Madeleine descended.

  “Still not that sweet,” she said, and raised her arms to guide Lucy’s feet onto the corroded metal rungs for the last few steps. “You’re there.”

  “What is this place?”

  Petrovitch was about to answer, when Madeleine cut in, sounding casual: “It’s a river. An underground river running through the heart of London.”

  “Then why can I smell, you know…” Lucy looked around her, then at her feet.

  “Because it doubles as a sewer.”

  “Eww.”

  Valentina swung herself over the hole in the road and held out her AK. Madeleine took it and passed it to Petrovitch, who could actually see where he was pointing it.

  “Case. You catch.” She dropped a steel briefcase and Madeleine caught it cleanly. “Do not get wet.”

  “You might want to warn me before you start throwing explosives around.”

  “Hmm,” said Valentina, and trip-trapped down the ladder, “and you might warn us before telling lying priest everything.”

  “Knock it off.” Petrovitch stepped out of the alcove and into the tunnel proper.

  “In Soviet Union, priests were shot.”

  “Tina. Really.”

  “Against wall. With blindfold.”

  “Yobany stos, past’ zabej!” He thought about leaving the two of them to get on with it, but Lucy was also present, and there wasn’t much room for hand-to-hand combat without hurting the bystanders. “Just leave it upstairs, okay? Down here it’s cold, it’s dark, it’s got water and slime, and shortly we’ll be setting off some shaped charges. We all have to work together, whether some of you like it or not.”

  Petrovitch retrieved Lucy and put her mid-stream, then dragged Madeleine up behind him.

  “Tina, go behind Lucy, hold her hand. Maddy, get Lucy’s other hand and grab hold of me. And no pulling or shoving. Or I’ll tell teacher.”

  He l
ed the way upstream, to find that Tabletop had already discovered the breach in the culvert’s wall. She’d turned the lights on, and was exploring the gently sloping tunnel.

  Lucy climbed in first, then Valentina, and Madeleine boosted Petrovitch through the hole before stepping up herself.

  “Right,” said Petrovitch, “let’s get all the ‘how did you know this was here?’, ‘when did you do this?’ and ‘frankly this looks ludicrously unstable, what were you thinking?’ questions out of the way before we start. I’ve been at this for eleven months, and I would have got away with it but for recent events. Needs must, however. At the far end is the outside of a concrete tube that should lead straight to the quantum computer beneath the Oshicora Tower. There’s about half a meter’s worth of ferroconcrete between us and it, and it would be brilliant if we can cut through it without collapsing this tunnel.” He looked at Valentina’s pale, pinched face in the glimmering light. “Can you get us through?”

  “Concrete, yes. Rebar is problem. I will need to take two, three separate blasts to cut metal rods.” She lifted her case onto her outstretched legs and popped the catches.

  Tabletop pressed her hand against the curved wall she was crouching next to. “When were you going to tell us? I mean, I suppose you could have chosen never to do so.”

  “I always thought,” said Petrovitch, “that I’d be able to do this on my own. That I wouldn’t have to involve any of you in this, well, highly illegal enterprise. Freezone signed up to both the UN resolutions and imposed their own penalties.”

  “Ten years,” murmured Madeleine, “or an unlimited fine. Or both.”

  “Bearing in mind I can record this, and we’re in charge now: all those in favor of revoking that particular law?” Petrovitch raised his right arm and glanced up at it.

  Madeleine put her hand on the tunnel roof, Lucy’s pale fingers wiggled in the half-light, and Valentina looked up from her makings long enough to register her approval.

  “Tabletop?”

  “I’m not a citizen,” she said. “I’m not really anyone.”

  “Executive order. You are now.”

  “Do you think my—the Americans: they’re going to want to stop you.”

  “Yeah. And we already know there’s another CIA team of who knows how many agents. Or they could just drop a missile on our heads, and this time it might not be a thermobaric warhead.”

  “Fuck them.” She showed her hand.

  “Unanimous. Tina, do your worst. Everyone else out.”

  Tabletop stayed behind to help Valentina, while Madeleine helped Petrovitch get back out into the main tunnel. The blue-white glow from inside the hole glittered against the drops of moisture on the brickwork.

  “Seriously,” asked Lucy, standing as close as she could to Petrovitch and shivering. “Were you ever going to tell us?”

  “I didn’t want to give them any reason for thinking you had anything to do with this.”

  “Them. But Madeleine would have had to arrest you. She wouldn’t… would she?”

  “Just another reason not to tell anyone. She’d sworn to uphold the Freezone law. Giving her a dilemma like that?” He puffed out his breath and watched it condense in the cold, still air. “Yeah, I would have told you. Long after the event, long after we’d…”

  “We’d what?” She pushed in against him and leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “We’re getting out of here. All of us. Including Michael. This,” and he pointed up and down the tunnel with his right hand, draped over Lucy’s shoulder, “this isn’t how I’d planned it. We were supposed to show a clean pair of heels, just slip away in the night in a ‘my work here is done’ sort of way. Now, we’re going to be born in blood and fire whether we like it or not.”

  “Doesn’t sound good.”

  “Meh. We’ll be fine. It’s everyone else I’m worried about, especially the ones who get worked up about AIs: they get all unpredictable and dangerous, and I don’t like that.”

  “Just one other thing. You know you had me make one of those singularity bombs every day, off the renderer?”

  “Yeah. I used them every night down here.”

  “I know that now, but I thought you were hoarding them. I,” and she coughed, “might have made some spares.”

  “What the chyort did you think I was going to do with three hundred bombs? Start a war?”

  “It’s not like you haven’t done that before,” she mumbled. “I thought I was helping.”

  “How many?” asked Petrovitch, dreading the answer.

  “There’s about a cupboard full. The one next to the sink. In the lab.” She shrank away from him. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. As it turns out, if we didn’t have a shed-load of cee-four from the fake bomb, we’d be using them right about now. But,” he said, trying to be serious when he was actually pleased, “no more making black holes without telling me first, okay?”

  She looked up as Madeleine climbed out to join them. “Okay.”

  Madeleine was followed by Tabletop and finally Valentina, trailing a thin two-core cable behind her. She passed the end out to Petrovitch, then reached back in for her case.

  “So: first charge to crack concrete. Have added copper core to slice rebar, but maybe one more after.” She handed the case to Tabletop, who held it up to the light while she retrieved the hand-cranked dynamo.

  “Should we move?” asked Lucy.

  “Is small explosion, little one. Loud, but small.”

  “She knows what she’s doing,” assured Petrovitch. He passed Valentina the bare wires, and she attached them to the terminals with an easy dexterity born of familiarity.

  “Against wall, please. Will be loose debris, and dust.”

  When she was ready, and she’d checked everyone was staying where she’d put them, she reached into her jacket pocket for earplugs. She pushed them home with a grunt, then vigorously wound the handle on the cylinder in her hand.

  She followed her own advice and stepped back against the damp brickwork. “Tri, dva, adin.” Her thumb closed on the button.

  A circle of light like a flashbulb imprinted itself against the tunnel wall, and the sound of a thousand hands clapping slammed into the air, making it hard and unyielding. A cloud of brown dust blew outward as if fired from a cannon, and the lights flickered: blinked on, off, then on again, illuminating the inside of the haze and making it glow.

  Petrovitch listened for the inevitable rumble and slide of a roof collapse. He waited and waited, and realized he was holding his breath. A year’s secret work, and it came down to whether he’d secured the tunnel supports properly. He felt his heart surge, and he let it run.

  There was benefit in being able to control parts of his physiology. There was also something to be said for letting him feel human, just once in a while. Terror, anticipation, euphoria even. Being alive was a drug, and he was addicted.

  The noises he feared the most never materialized. He heard the sounds of coughing and complaining instead.

  Lucy peeled her hands from her ears. “I was expecting, I don’t know. More flames.”

  “I made that mistake once. Tina’s an expert: you could learn a lot from her.” Petrovitch splashed his way to the gap in the brickwork and peered in.

  The dust was settling in a fine hissing rain, making shifting shapes and sheets in the light. Valentina appeared next to him and she cast a critical eye over the scene.

  “Hmm. Is okay.” She passed the dynamo back to Tabletop and boosted herself up. Her legs wriggled, and she found a handhold to drag herself over the top.

  Once she’d gone to inspect the damage she’d caused, Madeleine thought it safe to speak.

  “You never did say what you were going to do with Michael once you’d got him out.”

  “Didn’t I? We’re back on plan B anyway. Shame, really. Plan A was brilliant, even if I say so myself.” Fine dust was settling on his eyes, and he cried it away. “If Michael’s not in a fit state, I don’t know what
I’m going to do instead. It’s taken the NSA months to purge Anarchy from its network; clearly, I’m better than they are, but it’ll still take time.”

  “Sam.” She was standing right behind him, pressing into his back. “What were you going to do with Michael?”

  Valentina came scrabbling back, a shadow that slowly solidified. “Petrovitch. Come. See.”

  “Sorry,” he said to Madeleine, “it’ll have to wait. Shove me up.”

  She did so with a little more force than was strictly necessary, and he landed in a heap at Valentina’s feet.

  “Yobany stos,” he muttered. “I’m already broken enough.”

  Valentina crouched low and led the way back to the tunnel face. Where there had been a slick gray wall was now a gaping black maw. When she settled against the last roof prop, she looked uncommonly pleased with herself.

  Petrovitch crawled over her legs and moved his left arm so that it supported itself on the lip of the hole.

  The cut was sharp on its outer edge, and grew ragged as it worked its way in. Loose rubble clung to the sides and cracks radiated out. The steel mesh that reinforced the concrete had been severed as neatly as if it had been sawn through. The exposed ends of each bar looked like they’d been melted.

  “I thought you said you’d need at least two goes at it.”

  “I am better than I thought.”

  Petrovitch grinned. The explosion had created a hole that was perfect. “Yeah. Orders of Lenin all round.”

  “At least, am good for something.”

  “You’re good for lots of things, Tina.” He took a fragment of concrete and dropped it over the edge. Being able to time the fall accurately, he calculated that the bottom of the shaft was only three and a half meters down. “Most of all, you’re a good friend.”

  She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. “I must say this now.”

  He was busy peering through the hole, checking to see if there was debris clogging the shaft, and how much they might have to shift before getting to Michael. The air inside was cool blue, uniform but for a faint glimmer of brighter notes in a rectangle set into the wall down at the level of the concrete floor. He brought his head back through.