Degrees of Freedom

by Simon Morden

  “Ireland,” he mumbled. “We’re supposed to be going to Ireland, set up a Freezone on a long contract. We’re citizens—diplomats, even. It’s all arranged, everything. Michael is there already; the Irish government in exile have installed a quantum computer in the Cork mission station. That’s what we were going to do.”

  “Then why are we sitting in a cold dark tunnel under the center of what used to be London, trying to protect something that is no longer of any importance, trying to persuade some zealots not to blow themselves up?”

  “Because I have to. Because I’ve lived my whole life in fear of the Armageddonists. I’ve done some really shitty things to all kinds of people—good, bad, mad—because I’ve been so very afraid, and I have to show that I can choose to do the right thing, just once. If I stop them, I get to cancel out all the crap I’ve dealt out over the years.” He chewed at his lip. “But mostly because I hate them and what they’ve done to me.”

  “The question is, do you hate them more than you love me?” She pressed his hand tighter. “While there was still a chance, then of course we had to try and prevent this, this outrage. We did our very best. We couldn’t have done more. We have all been, at times, utterly magnificent. And it still wasn’t enough. They’ve chosen their path: it’s time for us to choose ours. While we still can.”

  Petrovitch rested the back of his head against the tunnel wall and groaned long and loud. “Every time. Every time I play their yebani game, they win.”

  “Then stop playing. Only an idiot keeps gambling against someone with loaded dice, and you’re not an idiot. Recognize this for what it is: a stitch-up from start to finish. I’m more than willing to die down here with you, but I’d like to be able to look St. Peter in the eye and not have him think me weapons-grade stupid for throwing my life away in such an heroically pointless manner.” She fixed him with her electronically enhanced stare for a moment, before looking at the ground between their legs. “How about it, Sam?”

  “I can’t argue with that,” he said. “Everything you say makes perfect sense.”

  “But we’re still going to go out like Butch and the Kid, right?”

  “No. No we’re not.” He freed his hand and raised her chin. “You’re absolutely right. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. Plan B.”

  “Do we have one?”

  “We do now. The vault needs to be properly shut.” He reached for the shovel and presented it to her. “You’re the only one who can do this in time, however much time it is we have left.”

  She snatched at the shovel and threw it through the hole, where it clanged hollowly against the rubble at the bottom of the shaft. She wrapped her waist with the rope, and positioned herself on the lip of the drop.

  “Watch my back,” she said, and started down.

  Petrovitch dragged his pistol out and dared the door to open any further than the crack it already was. Madeleine reached the bottom, stooped briefly to pick up the shovel and ran to the vault.

  The tiny green light glowed in all its lonely glory.

  She knelt down and hooked the cable in one hand, and with the other, slipped the blade of the shovel in the gap. She leaned in on the handle, and the perfectly balanced door moved in sympathy.

  Someone was waiting, but they wasted their first fusillade into the back of the heavy steel blast door. Sparks illuminated the shaft and Madeleine’s crouched form: she turned her face away from the sudden brightness and the angry whine of deflected bullets.

  A second later, she brought the shovel down on the cable, cutting it neatly in two. She took the end that led to the computer and gave it a sharp tug. The firing started again, and she pressed herself against the concrete wall.

  It fell silent, and she looped the slack cable around the shovel’s handle, once, twice, tugged it tight, then threw the whole assembly through the door into the corridor beyond. The result was predictable, but Madeleine rolled across the floor and got her back to the door. She heaved, and the door swung shut, cutting off the crack of rifle fire the instant a seal was made.

  The locks hummed, the bolts slid home, and the green light winked red.

  “Tell me again why I’m doing this?” she called, panting.

  “Because it’s a bomb-proof bunker,” shouted back Petrovitch. “Now get back up here.”

  She ran back and took hold of the rope. “You can’t possibly be serious.”

  “Yeah. If we can’t stop the explosion, we might be able to stop the fireball breaching the surface.”

  She pulled hand over hand, and the rope creaked in protest.

  “Come on, come on!”

  A hand reached over the lip of the hole, and gripped the jagged edge. Sharp stone and iron cut into her palm, but she used the hold all the same. She put her other hand over and flailed for something to hang on to. Petrovitch caught her wrist and jammed his feet against the soft rock, pulling hard.

  He felt himself sliding, and her with him. The soles of his boots banged against the outside of the shaft, and he locked his knees. She was still slipping, and he wasn’t strong enough to hold her.

  The bloodied hand that had inconstant contact with the concrete let go and lashed out. It found the metal ring around his left elbow, and her fingers tightened around it. His arm straightened and stretched. His backbrace took her full weight, and he screwed his eyes tight shut against a moment of excruciating pain before he managed to block everything.

  She got her shoulders through the gap, and let go of him, pushing back on the sides of the hole and heaving herself across the threshold as far as her waist. Impact gel oozed slick down her front.

  Madeleine twisted onto her back and lifted her legs in. “Sorry.”

  Petrovitch started breathing again. “Get one of the bombs,” he gasped. He was scared to move in case something had been wrenched off.

  She reached down and unhooked one of the spheres. “What now?”

  “Okay. Get the rope, tie a bucket to the rope, put the bomb in the bucket. Flick the switch on the top, press the button, and drop it down into the shaft. We’ll have about fifteen to twenty seconds to get out of the tunnel.”

  She was already pulling the rope up. Petrovitch brought sensation back to his body, and didn’t enjoy the feeling at all. “Yebani v’rot.” Something was irrevocably wrong in his arm. It felt dead, numb, like it was someone else’s limb tacked on to his body.

  “Get going,” she said, crouched over her task. “I’ll catch you up.”

  “I’m going as fast as I can.” He used his good hand to hang on to a tunnel prop and shuffle himself to sitting, coiled his legs and pushed up the slope. It was neither quick, nor elegant.

  The bomb clanged into the bucket. She armed the timer and swung the bucket out over the void.

  “Is this going to work?”

  “It’s all we have.” The closeness of his voice made her turn, the pale green light of her night-vision goggles seeping down her cheeks. “Do it.”

  She reached into the bucket, pressed the button, and let the rope slide through her hands, smearing the nylon cord with blood as it zipped by. Then she closed her fists to brake the bomb’s fall. The bucket rattled, and she let it go again, this time forever.

  “Go, Sam.”

  “I am.” He growled in frustration at his lack of speed. She climbed over him, past him. He got a knee in the guts and her hand on the side of his head. She reached through his T-shirt to take hold of the metal rod running down his spine, and pulled him backward.

  The clock in the corner of his eye clicked around to eleven, twelve—they were still in the tunnel, just reaching the brick wall between them and the stream. She picked him up and threw him out with a grunt that ended in a scream. She jumped, pivoted her hips and tumbled out into the water next to him.

  Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and Petrovitch was starting to think that his bomb was a squib, and it wasn’t going to go off, when up subtly changed direction. The river water swirled chaotically around him for a moment, and
he lifted his head. Something vast and heavy was beginning to move.

  “Surface,” he said, but Madeleine was already on her feet. With room to maneuver, she put one arm under both of his and across his chest, lifting him clear and dragging him toward the ladder that led up to street level. The low moan of tortured steel rose suddenly to a shriek and there was a distinct snap as a beam failed. The roaring of falling rubble built from that first sound until the air itself was shaking.

  The culvert, already weakened by successive impacts, started to collapse. Bricks popped from the roof and fell with a splash, to be joined moments later by their neighbors. Sheets of bricks were peeling away and choking the water.

  Madeleine heaved Petrovitch into the alcove, then swarmed up the rusted ladder to the iron manhole cover far above her head, leaving him there as dust filled his lungs and the river swirled around him.

  A crescent, a half-moon of light, then a full circle showing clouds and faces. Something hit the black water next to him: the discarded night-vision goggles, then it was her, splashing down beside him.

  “Can you climb?”

  “Even if it kills me.” He hooked his good hand around the side of the ladder and she helped his foot onto the lowest rung.

  Petrovitch swung his hand above his head, latched on, stepped up, and repeated the process, standing as close in to the ladder as he could so that he didn’t fall too far outward every time he changed his grip.

  The air around him was gray, and the noise like a full-throated bellow from a Jihad-constructed giant robot. His head rose above the pavement, half expecting to see some giant mechanical insect thrashing its way across the city.

  Hands dipped down to seize him, haul him up, sit him down.

  Valentina knelt in front of him. “Did you stop them?”

  “No.” He hawked up the dust from his lungs and spat it down on the flagstones. “We have to run.”

  Madeleine crawled out. Her head was cut, blood seeping down her scalp and around her ear. The rest of her face was caked in dark dust, as was her armor. Only her eyes were white. He realized that he would look just the same.

  Valentina’s only response to Petrovitch’s answer was “How far?”

  He didn’t know for sure.

  “Michael?”

  [Welcome back.]

  “Yeah, yeah. We screwed up. Assume you’ve got a one-kiloton demolition nuke in your vault and I’ve just dropped the remains of the Oshicora Tower down the access shaft.” He tried to get up, and inexplicably missed the ground. He was caught and held: Madeleine on one side, Tabletop on the other. “Any chance of containment?”

  [There are complex, unknown variables… ]

  “I’m asking you to guess. And I need an estimate on damage and fallout concentration. I’d do it myself, but I’ll be busy trying to stay alive.”

  They had no cars, no trucks, nothing. They had to do it by foot, or not at all.

  [Head north or west. Complete structural failure of buildings not designed for earthquakes is likely up to five hundred meters from ground zero. Containment is possible—I assign a likelihood of fifty percent—but if the fireball reaches the surface, blast and thermal damage will result. Fallout will spread south and east over the Metrozone, promptly lethal and decreasing to below lethal after forty-eight hours.]

  “Chyort. Tell the Metrozone. Sound the alarms.” He was vaguely aware that he was in a stumbling, falling, dragging run, supported on either side. They were heading toward Berkeley Square. Boots clattered on the road, but no one spoke. Everyone was saving their breath for something more important.

  Across the river, the ancient sirens started to wail, a tone that rose and fell, putting cold, hard fear into every heart.

  It was almost half an hour since a tipped-over camera had recorded the fleeting images of men running past. Almost. Less than two minutes to go.

  Of course: they’d armed the bomb outside, breaking open the code keys, verifying them with their commander-in-chief, setting the timer. Thirty minutes to be on the safe side, cope with the unexpected, place it as close as possible to the anathema that was Michael—and discovering that they could get into the same room as the quantum computer, realizing that they could have just put a magazine full of bullets through the machine but still had to contend with a clock that was counting down and was impossible to stop, a clock attached to a small nuclear bomb that was going to have to detonate, no matter what, when the counter reached zero.

  It was inevitable.

  He imagined them, sitting in the dark of the vault, just the scattered blue-green glow of chemical lights and each other for company. And that bastard bomb, electronic numbers flickering what remained of their lives away.

  He was glad it was them, and not him, even though his own lungs burned like they were filled with acid, every muscle was made of agony, every step an effort too great, every moment a conscious torment. He was alive, and if he got far enough away from ground zero, he’d stay alive.

  Not like them. Not like them at all.

  33

  They’d reached the far end of Berkeley Square—an oval of dead trees and brown grass—when Petrovitch felt the first signs. His eyes were momentarily filled with white noise, and the computer he was relying on to keep him going stuttered.

  He fell, his sudden rigidity tearing him from the grasp of his bearers. As he went down, the shock front traveling through the ground brought it up to meet him. Hard. He was suddenly flying, and an enormous roaring filled his ears.

  His vision cleared. He was on his back, facing the way he’d come, and a wave was rolling toward him, made of tarmac and concrete and soil. It lifted the road like it was the surface of the sea, and it lifted the buildings like they were ships catching the tide.

  As they rose, they gave out shrieks and screams—but remained more or less intact. As the crest of the wave passed underneath, and the ground started to fall away again, cracks tore through the facades: roofs kept on rising while the masonry below separated out along great fissures that opened up. Glass snapped, brick broke along the ageing mortar, stone broke in two.

  The wave hit Petrovitch, and he was airborne again. The building behind him at the head of the square leaned away from him, and then started to collapse in on itself.

  A whole train of shocks chewed their way through the streets, and, partially obscured by the pall of pulverized city, a vast black dome of subsurface rock blossomed above the vault. Its skin was marked by flecks of road, of lamp-posts, of concrete and plastic panels and brightly colored carpet.

  The great bulge threatened to burst, to spew its fireball out into the air and drag hot contaminated dust with it, where it would be caught by the wind and darken the sky even further. Orange fire glittered through the veil of debris, barely constrained.

  It hung there, supported from inside by an incandescent cloud trying to pull free of the ground, perfectly balanced against the hauling back of gravity.

  Then it started to sink: the fire held in it began to die, turning from fierce light to glowing ember. As it flattened, it spread, a fresh storm of rolling dust climbing over and around the falling buildings, punching out walls and windows.

  By the time it reached Petrovitch, it was a gritty slap in the face, weak and growing weaker. The skyline around him was lost. The air became opaque. The noise of splitting and cracking and crumbling gradually lessened, and finally dropped to a level where shouting and coughing and retching could be heard.

  He couldn’t talk. His mouth, dry as the desert, seemed to have set half-open. He could barely see: his eyeballs were scratched and pitted, and he’d run out of tears. He blinked, and it felt as if he was trying to dislodge boulders. His nose and ears were clogged, and his lungs spasmed at his efforts to breathe.

  And he had no connection: not just no signal, but no sign of a signal.

  There was a man to his left, one of Valentina’s volunteers, who slowly rose up on his hands and knees. There was blood in his mouth, dribbling down the cake
-white dust on his skin. His stare was wild and uncomprehending.

  Petrovitch found enough spit to loosen his tongue. “Pizdets.” He looked up and around, peering through the haze. Shadows played as the air thickened and thinned on the wind.

  “Sam? Sam!”

  “Here,” he managed to croak, before his throat tightened and he coughed hard enough to break ribs.

  Madeleine stumbled toward him, and sat in a heap at his side. Any movement stirred more dust into the air. She put out her hand and rested it over his heart, just to feel the hum of the turbine beneath his skin.

  There was blood in his phlegm, and he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Still not dead, then. He circled his finger to encompass all of them, and pointed north. She nodded, and started to bring the others to him, to sit them down and get them to wait.

  She found Valentina, whose dark hair had turned white and stiff, her tightly belted jacket hanging open, her blouse missing buttons, cuts to her stomach and her legs, her trousers ragged. Petrovitch put his arm around her shoulders, but she didn’t react.

  Madeleine found the other volunteers, with their breaks and lacerations and bruises and punctures. Her impact armor had protected her where mere skin and bone had failed.

  She found Tabletop last of all, wandering in the fog, and took her arm and led her back to the rest of the group.

  “They did it. They did it,” mumbled Tabletop. She looked at Petrovitch. “They did it.”

  “Yeah. They did.” He hawked up more slurry. “We need to get cleaned up. Everyone stay together. No one gets left behind.”

  He disentangled himself from Valentina, and used her shoulder to stand. His leg tried to fold under him, and he forced it to straighten. When he looked down, there was something sticking out of his calf. It was too big to be called a splinter—he’d been impaled by a pencil-width shard of wood that was going to cause more damage coming out than it had going in.

  His left arm was still numb. He touched it with his right, pinched the skin roughly. Nothing. It seemed to be the least of his problems; at least it didn’t hurt anymore.