Degrees of Freedom

by Simon Morden

  “Yeah, about that. I’m coming through whether you like it or not. So either you shift these cars, or I’ll shift them for you.”

  The man in charge—at least, the man who had assumed leadership in the absence of anyone else—regarded Petrovitch’s broken form. “That would seem unlikely.”

  Petrovitch set his bottle of water down on the road and unhooked one of the spheres hanging from his arm. “Unlikely? Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I could move the world.” He put the hook through the door handle and fiddled with a switch.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m priming this singularity generator. I’ve never used one of these things in the open before, so I have no idea what’s going to happen.” He made a face. “That’s not strictly true: I know that for a length of time too small to measure, a black hole is going to appear at the very center of this ball, and everything around it is going to want to fall inside it, even light itself. I’ve used them for tunneling, and once, I destroyed the inside of a house using just one of these.”

  “Is it a bomb?”

  “No. Bombs explode.” He gazed over the top of the car. “This sucks big time, and I really wouldn’t recommend being anywhere near it when it turns on.”

  He leaned forward and pressed the button next to the switch. A light flicked from green to red. He scooped up his water and started to back up. The men on the far side of the barricade began to move away, too.

  “The thing is,” called Petrovitch, “the timer was made by a fifteen-year-old girl. She’s normally pretty good at stuff like this, but you know how difficult it is to read the right value off a resistor when it’s late and your eyes hurt.”

  He’d put five meters between him and the device and he was sweating. It wasn’t far enough, and he hadn’t been joking about the timer. He kept on walking backward, as fast as he could manage.

  Yet perversely, he didn’t want to miss a single moment.

  And right on cue, the bomb vanished like a darkly shining flashbulb. The car it was attached to spasmed and warped. In a blink, it was tiny, inside out, glowing with blue fire. The road pocked, bloomed, tarmac ripped free, the cobblestones underneath shattering into dust. The vehicles on either side jerked like they’d been struck by a runaway truck, twisting around, dragging their tires, bending, breaking, glass flying.

  He could feel the momentary pull himself, a vast hand reaching out to haul him irresistibly inward. He stamped down hard, leaning back, and lost his footing anyway. His backside connected with the road surface at an angle, and slid a heart-stopping but insignificant distance toward the mangling wreckage and opening crater.

  The air was full of fumes. There was a pop, and a pool of gasoline ignited, burning with a sooty red flame. Within a second, everything had stopped moving, and Petrovitch could get up again.

  The flanking cars were both half in the hole in the road, their paintwork cracking and flaking in the heat, their panels hanging off and their chassis bent like toffee. Of the third car, there was nothing to be seen. Yet the windows in the surrounding buildings were untouched.

  He still had three of those bad boys hanging from his arm, and he felt invincible. He skirted the tipped-up rear of one car and ignored the guards sprawled in the road, mere mortals all.

  “Hi, Sonja.”

  “Oh my God.” She would have seen it all. She would have had a better viewpoint than Petrovitch. “That’s what it does.”

  “Tell whoever’s on the front desk not to get in my way. I know you can’t call them, but the ground floor is only thirty seconds away. You can’t bar the doors against me, and if you block the lifts, I’ll just walk up. It’ll take longer, and I’ll be pissed off when I get there, but it’s inevitable all the same.”

  He heard her issue a hurried instruction, then come back breathless. “Sam. I can’t… I’m scared.”

  “I’m not. Not anymore.” The low building that sat at the base of the tower was just beyond the next junction. He was being watched, but not by millions across the globe: just by a few hundred. Some were pressed, like their employer, against their office windows as he strode up to the street-level canopy that hung over the doorway. Others, armed guards forming a secondary line of defense, huddled in doorways and behind pieces of street furniture. They let him pass, and he didn’t expect anything less.

  He had schematics, architects’ plans, photographs. He could navigate his own way to the elevator shaft, and he’d ride in one all the way to the top, despite his dislike of that mode of transport. It was true: he wasn’t frightened at all, by anything.

  Petrovitch barged through the doors and marched through the foyer.

  “Get the kettle on. I’m coming up.”

  29

  The acceleration of the elevator made him feel squat and heavy. Its deceleration made him fluttery and dizzy. He’d ridden up alone, and now waited for the doors to spring wide.

  When they did, he found himself looking out at a whole crowd of people pressed together, forming a rough semi-circle around the elevator. They shrank back as one as he stepped forward, then silently filtered around him, trying to put as much distance between them and him as possible. One by one, they squeezed into the elevator car, and when it was full, the doors closed again.

  There was just a handful left behind, and as the second elevator came back up, they hurriedly left too. All that remained were empty desks, blank computers, and abandoned chairs halfway across the floor. The humanizing knick-knacks of office life were still present—photographs, mascots, pot plants—but not the humans. Bar one.

  The great circular sweep of the windows provided a complete view of the Freezone, and Petrovitch could understand why Sonja had placed the Freezone bureaucracy here: it had given her the illusion of control and, for those who worked for her, the illusion of being constantly watched.

  He walked around quite slowly, not so much as to delay the meeting with Sonja but to put it in its proper context. Here was the city laid out beneath him: he’d saved it twice, and he’d be damned if he was going to have to do it a third time. It shouldn’t need saving from its friends, only its enemies.

  As her desk became visible from behind the inner curve of the room, he could see her. She was upright, hands folded in her lap, dressed in a smart white blouse and dark jacket. Quite the image of Madam President Oshicora, when all she was was Sonja, only surviving child of a dead refugee, washed up on the shore like flotsam. The clothes, the title, meant nothing now. She’d inherited a business empire, and she was left with what she wore and nothing else.

  He was almost sorry for her, but she and she alone was the reason he was carrying quantum destruction on his shattered arm and there was no food in his belly.

  She didn’t look at him as he approached, not even when he pulled up a spare chair and parked himself down in front of her. He had no such qualms, and stared at her until she finally stole a glance at him from under her fringe.

  “Yeah, so you are in there.” He drank the rest of his water, and engaged in a futile search for a steaming mug or a pot of coal-black brew. “Anything to say about this? Anything at all?”

  “I did it for you,” she said.

  “You’re going to have to explain that, because I’m not grateful.”

  She pressed her lips together and reached up to scratch at the corner of one eye. Her whole body was tense, and when she lowered her hand again, it made a claw before it disappeared back onto her knees.

  Then she dropped her chin onto her chest and sighed. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s over, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty much. You can still make some decisions that are important, like getting your crew to put their guns down, and telling them I still need them. Which I do.”

  “I can do all that, but it won’t make a difference.”

  “It will to me.”

  “No. Because you’ll be dead soon enough.” She caught his gaze and held it. “I can’t protect you any longer. Everything I’ve done,
everything I’ve tried to do: it’s come unraveled because you’re too stubborn, too independent, too good at getting out of the trap I set for you. I thought I’d thought of, if not everything, enough. I was wrong.”

  Petrovitch blinked in surprise. “What have you done?”

  “I’ve been keeping the Americans from killing you. They told me that if I didn’t do something about you, they would.” She looked up at the ceiling. “So I said I’d, well, emasculate you. Ruin your life, your reputation, your support. Isolate you, run you down, capture you and make sure you’d never be a threat to them again. I promised I’d do all that because I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”

  “Ah, chyort.” He leaned forward and put his head on the desk.

  “I found the Prophet of the New Machine Jihad in the Metrozone and kept him and his crazies safe until I needed them, I set up Container Zero, I used mercenaries to take the bomb from you and give it to the Jihad. I made sure that no one could connect me to any of the separate parts of the overall plan, and I made sure by getting rid of anyone who was involved. The number of ways you can lose inconvenient bodies when you’re in charge of waste disposal are almost limitless.” She sighed. “Then you decided that you weren’t going to roll over after all. You decided you were going to fight back—had already decided months ago that you were going to fight back against every and any thing that stood in your way—and it all fell apart.”

  He slowly sat up and rubbed the crease in his forehead caused by the edge of the desk. “You, you,” and he struggled for the right word, one that would convey the utter futility of her scheme and his complete contempt for it. “You muppet.”

  “I lost control. Of you, of the Jihad, of my own people. I couldn’t keep it together any longer. Now, you’re going to die, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” She slumped back in her chair, finally relieved of the burden she’d been carrying. She even smiled. “Sorry doesn’t really cut it, though.”

  “No,” said Petrovitch quietly. “No, it doesn’t. How long’s this been in play?”

  “Ten months. Someone came to see me, early on. My seat was barely warm. I thought he was here for one thing, turned out he was here for something completely different. You know how they work now: no electronic communications, everything done in person, records written down on paper. He convinced me that you were a hair-trigger away from being assassinated, but the U.S. wanted to avoid another showdown with the EU, so soon after the last one.”

  “You know what you should have done, don’t you? Right there and then? Held him at gunpoint and called security. We could have won that battle diplomatically, and no one would have had to die. You know who that man was?”

  “He was CIA…”

  “He was the controller, the top dog, the big man. Tina and Tabletop have been trying to find him forever. And he was here in your office. That was when you fucked up, not yesterday.”

  “Either I did what he said, or he’d kill you.” She shrugged. “I did what I thought was best. For you. I really did do it for you. I know you’re going to hate me now. I know you’re going to tell the whole world what I’ve done. It won’t save you. In fact, they’re probably going to kill us both now.”

  Petrovitch stood up, the back of his legs pushing hard against the chair seat and shoving it across the floor. He dragged his fingers through his greasy hair and scratched at his scalp. He picked up his empty water bottle and crinkled it with his fingers before throwing it ineffectually at the line of windows. He watched it fall short, and scowled at it for not producing the satisfying sound he felt he needed.

  “Even if you hadn’t shopped him straightaway, imagine what we could have done. We could have stitched up his whole cell and paraded them handcuffed in front of the world; a farewell gift from the Freezone. But no. You decided—you, just you—to bend over and take it as deep as they wanted.” He wrestled his chair back in front of her again. “You should have told me. At the very beginning.”

  “He said if I did that, they’d kill you anyway.”

  “And just how was he going to find out? If he was bugging you, I could have stopped him without him even noticing. If he was watching you, there are a thousand different ways of losing a tail. If he had someone on your staff, all you had to do was be alone for five minutes. There was no need for any of this.” Petrovitch threw himself down in the chair and wheeled it right up to the desk. “He didn’t have the resources to do anything. I was too well protected, and using you was the only way he could get to me. And you fell for his smoke and mirrors, when you should have told him to shove it up his zhopu.”

  “I wasn’t willing to take the risk. They’re not amateurs, Sam.” Now she was sitting forward, wanting him to understand even if he didn’t agree. “Look what happened last time—they did everything they set out to do and you couldn’t stop them then. They brought the Oshicora Tower down, they trapped Michael…”

  “They didn’t get me. They didn’t get Maddy. They didn’t get you.”

  “That was just luck. All three of us had agents working next to us, day in, day out. None of us noticed.”

  “Harry Chain did,” he countered.

  “They blew him up! I saw the pictures of what he looked like after he’d been cut out of his car.” Suddenly, it was Sonja of old: passionate, driven, determined to get what she wanted. “You’re not indestructible. I had to do something to keep them from killing you—all this time you’ve had, nearly a year, you’ve been able to live free and do whatever you want. It’s because of the sacrifice that I made for you. The Freezone has got this far, because of me. Don’t tell me I did something wrong. I made the right decision.”

  “The huy you did,” he shouted at her, his heart spinning faster, his breathing tight and quick. “It wasn’t your decision to make, Sonja. You don’t get to decide how I live.”

  “I got to decide whether you did live, though. I chose right.”

  “What you chose was that I’d live and everyone else involved with your crazy-stupid plan would die. The people you hired. The New Machine Jihad. My friends. My wife. Lucy. All of them, expendable, as long as you saved me.”

  She jutted her chin. “Yes.”

  He picked up the desk between them: lifted it up with one hand and hurled it aside. This was the chaos he wanted: the ripped cables, the fluttering paper, the clatter and crash of office stationery.

  “What sort of life would that be, you dura? Everything that I have to live for would be gone.”

  She pushed away from him, pedaling backward until she banged against another desk, knocking it hard, while he remained where he was.

  “Did you think I’d ever agree to what you’ve done?”

  “No. That’s why I was never going to tell you. You’d never find out what I had to do and you’d be—if not happy—content. And if not content, at least you’d be alive.”

  He gritted his teeth and sent a monitor flying with a well-aimed kick. “That’s not living. That’s worse than dying.”

  “There’s nothing worse than dying. It means the end. No more opportunities, no more choices, no more chances. Anything can happen, but not if you’re dead.” She found her feet and stood shakily. “I’ve lost my mother, my brother, and my father. They don’t get a say in what happens anymore. They can’t help me. They can’t do anything because they’re dead. I used my life to make sure that the one person—the one man important to me—didn’t die.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? You just don’t get it.” He circled around her. He didn’t trust himself to be anywhere within arm’s reach of her. “You might be able to live with the choices you’ve made, all from the best possible motives, all strung together with impeccable logic. But I can’t.”

  “I still did it for you.”

  “I know that. I know you paid some anonymous people to fabricate Container Zero, then fed them into the incinerator. I know you encouraged the Prophet of the New Machine Jihad to believe he could free his god while all along you were plann
ing to blow him up with his own bomb. I know you used Maddy’s priest to poison our marriage and try and make us hate each other. I know you sent Iguro to try and clean up the mess you made, and now he’s lying in a fridge somewhere. I know you did all that for me. I know Tina and Tabletop and Lucy are just inconveniences and you’d have to get rid of them, too. I know you’d have left Michael to wonder forever why no one was coming to find him.”

  “That’s what I did. That’s what I’d do. That’s the cost of your life.”

  “But it’s not you paying, is it? It’s always everyone else, and I don’t think it’s fair.” He laughed, harsh and abrupt. “Look at me. I’ve got morals all of a sudden. Yeah, well, let’s run with this. It’s not fair that you used people without their permission. You should always give them a chance to say no.”

  “But what are they there for, otherwise? We’re more important than they are. We actually give their lives meaning. You think a soldier is more important than the general? A salaryman more important than the CEO? They’re nothing, and they know it. They wait for leaders like you and me to use them, and they’re glad when that happens. You’ve done it yourself: you got Michael to make the EDF believe they were getting their orders from Brussels, when they were getting them from you. You used them and you didn’t ask their permission. They were there, and you needed them.” She saw she’d scored a hit by the sour look on Petrovitch’s face. “Morals are nice, but people like us have to forget about them sometimes. We see the bigger picture, we see what needs to be done.”

  “Okay.” He held up his hand. “Bang to rights. That’s exactly what I did. I thought that was what I had to do to break the Outies, and for the best of reasons, too: I wanted to find Maddy. Hers was the life I had to save, and the rest of them could go to hell. I behaved just like you’ve done.”

  “Maybe then,” said Sonja quietly, “we can work something out.”

  “One problem.” He still had his hand up, and he swapped his open palm for a rigid index finger. “Just one. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have taken away someone’s right to decide whether they fight or run, or to work out for themselves whose side they really want to be on. It was a mistake, and I won’t make it again.”