The Petrovitch Trilogy

by Simon Morden

  “You mean, I am so busy running my empire of crime that I can snatch only brief moments of rest?” He laughed, loudly and freely, his head tipped back. “Really, there is not that much to do. The secret is to choose your key managers carefully. You only have to take the critical decisions, or at least those which your managers deem to be critical. I have plenty of time to devote to matters of culture and learning. Much like yourself.”

  “That’s very kind,” said Petrovitch.

  “You are downplaying your achievements, Petrovitch-san. You obtained a first-class honors degree from a top-rank university. You have a scholarship supplied by wise benefactors in Russia. Soon you will be Doctor Petrovitch, and you will become eminent in your chosen field. Good. It becomes everyone, great or lowly, to achieve their potential.” Oshicora rested his hand on his chin. “But you are wary of me, uncertain whether to accept a compliment in case it is snatched away and replaced with malice. Try not to fear me. Here we are: a young man on the cusp of his life, an older man imagining what his legacy will be.”

  “Yeah. About that life: it’s why I came to see you.” Petrovitch turned his toe in the gravel. “Did you hear about Marchenkho?”

  “I hear lots of rumors about that man.”

  “The contract? The two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-euro one on my head?”

  Oshicora pretended to think for a moment. “I sent Hijo to the hospital to escort you to safety. He informed me you walked away.”

  “That’ll be me not being in full command of the facts. I’ll apologize to him later for his wasted journey. So I nearly ended up with a knife in my back today, and I’d rather not repeat the experience.”

  “You require my protection? It is yours.”

  “No,” said Petrovitch slowly. “Not exactly.”

  “Perhaps we should take tea while you explain.” Oshicora walked around the perimeter of the Zen garden and toward a small table set with a delicate white china tea service.

  Petrovitch sat on the edge of his chair and gazed at Oshicora’s deft movements setting out crockery and pouring fragrant green tea.

  “It’s like this,” he said, cradling the tea bowl in both hands, “Chain has warned Marchenkho and his associates off by all but convincing him I’m not in your pay. The contract’s been canceled, but it seems that Marchenkho isn’t too bothered about letting everyone know. The last thing I need is for him to see me with one of your men. Or women; I’m sure it’s all equal opportunities here. Even if they’re brilliant, I’ll still be marked for death and I’ll still have to explain to my tutor why I have an armed bodyguard following me around.”

  Oshicora leaned over his bowl and bathed in the rising steam. “Most interesting analysis. Carry on.”

  “So what I’d like you to do is trump the original contract. Anyone who kills me gets taken down for say, five hundred thousand. It’ll spread like wildfire to everyone who needs to know, and I can go to the corner shop again without worrying about snipers.”

  “What if,” asked Oshicora, “Marchenkho has a change of heart, and bids higher?”

  “You can always top him. That’s why I came to you.” Petrovitch blew across the surface of his tea, watching the patterns the steam made. “This is going to be a nine-day wonder. Next week, no one will care who I am. But for those few days I need the extra insurance.”

  “Ingenious. I’m impressed by your grasp of the intricacies of such a dark subject. It is almost,” he mused, “as if you have some experience with the way these things are done.”

  “I grew up in St. Petersburg during Armageddon. Everybody there has some relevant experience.”

  “Ah yes. You’re not a native to these shores, much like me. You arrived here when?”

  Petrovitch narrowed his eyes, squinting into the past. “Twenty twenty-one. I started at Imperial in twenty twenty-two.”

  “When you were nineteen?” Oshicora demonstrated his recall of incidental facts. “That seems a little young to tackle so difficult a subject.”

  “I’d passed the exams. Didn’t seem much point in waiting till my balls dropped.”

  Oshicora laughed again, sending waves across his tea. “Good, good. Tell me; what’s the next big thing in the world of physics? Do we have fusion power yet, or is it still ten years away?”

  “Not if I have anything to do with it,” said Petrovitch. “But showing it can work on a computer and building a reactor are two different things.”

  “And,” said Oshicora, looking across the table at him, “any closer to a Grand Unified Theory?”

  Petrovitch almost dropped his bowl, which probably gave the game away there and then. Hot tea poured into the palm of his hand as he regained his grip, almost causing him to fumble his catch. He gritted his teeth and put the bowl on the table.

  “Your colleague, Doctor Ekanobi, has an announcement to make?” Oshicora handed him a starched napkin.

  “Not just yet.” Petrovitch took the cloth and held it inside his fist. “It might be nothing.”

  “On the other hand, it might be everything. Do you know how close other research groups are?”

  “No. I’m not even formally part of the Imperial GUT group.” The pain was fading now, and he inspected the damage. His hand was wetly pink, but there were no blisters or peeling skin. “More of a hanger-on. I help where I can.”

  “Stanford believe they are, at most, two or three steps away.” Oshicora drank tea, and topped up Petrovitch’s cup before continuing. “I believe it vital to keep up with these matters. Others are too short-sighted. Their loss. So, has there been a breakthrough?”

  “It’s not for me to say.” He looked away, across the garden. The lift shaft was invisible. He was on a floating island in a sea of concrete and steel. “To be honest, I feel a bit uncomfortable talking about it.”

  “Of course. You have your professional confidences as I have mine. I apologize. But,” said Oshicora, “perhaps we can discuss the practical implications of such a discovery. Unlimited power from zero point energy. Transmutation of elements. Space travel that is not just affordable, but fast. Access to the solar system, to other stars. What else can you imagine for me?”

  “The door to the universe is ajar,” said Petrovitch, then shook his head as if he’d been in a dream. “Maybe in a hundred, a thousand years. Just because we know something is possible doesn’t mean we can do it. Materials, equipment, gaps in our knowledge: anything might hold us up.” He gave a wry smile. “Don’t go to the bank just yet.”

  “Petrovitch-san. Finish your tea. There is something I would like to show you.”

  Nervously, Petrovitch finished the light green liquid in his refilled bowl and replaced it on the lacquered tray. Oshicora led him through the garden, over one of the bridges from where he could see the peaks of the central Metrozone skyscrapers around him and the slow, lazy motions of koi carp beneath his feet.

  “Japanese companies have always looked ahead,” said Oshicora. “Not a year, not five years. Not ten. They have business plans that stretch decades, a century or more. Now that we have no homeland, we must look even further.”

  A small shrine sat on a low mound in a dense grove of maple trees. The shrine was an ornate, curved roof resting on four carved pillars. Inside was a table, and at that table sat a man—a white man in a checkered shirt and fraying shorts. He was looking at a screen and typing on the tabletop, oblivious to their approach.

  They walked up steps to the platform. The boards creaked, and the seated man’s eyes flickered to capture their image before turning their full attention back to the screen.

  The screen was dense with code, which he was splicing together with reckless confidence.

  “Petrovitch-san, may I introduce Martin Sorenson? He is helping me build the future.”

  9

  Sorenson unfolded himself from his chair. He extended a shovel-like hand and grasped Petrovitch’s in a knuckle-cracking hold.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said in an inflected Midwest accent.r />
  “You’re…” Petrovitch bit his tongue and changed gear. Sorenson knew he was an American, and Petrovitch telling him so would only mark him out as socially inept. “Very busy.”

  “Mr. Oshicora pays well for good work. You doing the project too?”

  “Project?” He didn’t know what the project was. “No.”

  Oshicora interrupted. “Petrovitch-san has been assisting me in another matter, where he has been most helpful. Sorenson is an expert in man–machine interfaces; his skills are most apposite.”

  Now Petrovitch wondered what Oshicora needed a cyberneticist for. “I thought you Americans were into gene splicing and wetware.”

  “I’m the exception to the rule, then, Mr. Petrovitch.” Sorenson scratched at his thinning sandy hair, looking more like a farmer worrying about his crop than a technologist. He reached into his back pocket and passed him a business card. “If you ever need a spare part, just call.”

  Petrovitch glanced across to Oshicora, whose face remained utterly unreadable. “Yeah, thanks,” he said, sliding the card into his jacket. “If you ever need, I don’t know, someone to design some building-sized electromagnets, I’m your man. Though I doubt there’s much call for that sort of thing in your line of work.”

  Sorenson laughed and clapped Petrovitch on the shoulder. “You never know.”

  He forced his arm back into line. “What was it you wanted me to see, Oshicora-san?”

  “If Mister Sorenson will close his work, I will show you.”

  Sorenson busied himself at the virtual keyboard, then moved out of Oshicora’s way.

  The older man tugged his sleeves away from his wrists and reset the terminal’s language. The image of the keyboard changed and grew as it converted to use an extended Japanese character set. He typed in a single command line, and sat back.

  The screen blinked, as if it were a giant eye. When it opened, it looked out on an aerial view of Japan.

  “Here is Nippon, as it was on the evening of March twenty-eighth, twenty seventeen,” said Oshicora. He touched the screen, and they descended through the clouds until they were over the island of Honshu. “Here is Tokyo.”

  The city sprawled around the bay, street after street. Piers jutted into the sea. Buildings rose up from the ground. Oshicora brought them down to pavement level, where the scene slowly rotated. Shops, brightly lit, filled with the goods of the world. Everything was as it had been, the day before the whole island chain started to turn into Atlantis. Everything, except the people.

  “I get it,” said Petrovitch. “How detailed are you going to make this?”

  “Perfectly so. Down to the feel of the silk on a kimono.”

  “That’s ambitious. No wonder you need Sorenson. You want a totally immersive city.”

  “I beg to correct you, Petrovitch-san. A whole country. Every tree, every blade of grass, every grain of sand. Mapped and reproduced from the memories of one hundred and twenty million Japanese survivors. Not just houses, but everything in them. Not just parks, but the scent of chrysanthemums. Cherry blossom will fall like rain once more. It will be exact. Our homeland will rise from the sea as if it had never fallen. The shinkansen will run again.”

  Petrovitch wondered if his heart had skipped a beat. “Nu ti dajosh! What the hell are you running this on?”

  “Below this building is a room. It is bombproof, fireproof, waterproof, electromagnetic and radiation hard. In it is a quantum computer. If every nikkeijin visited the simulation at the same time, it would still run flawlessly.”

  “Ooh.” Petrovitch’s fingers tingled. He started to think about all the things he could do with such massively parallel processing, and broke out in a cold sweat.

  “Petrovitch-san? Are you unwell?”

  “No, I’m fine.” He rested his hands on the table. “Just taking a moment. That’s really very impressive.”

  “I am happy. Now, I will leave you briefly in the care of Sorenson, while I attend to the other matter we discussed earlier. If you will excuse me?” Oshicora bowed and left the shrine, leaving the single chair unoccupied.

  “Mind if I?” asked Petrovitch.

  “Knock yourself out, kid,” said Sorenson. “So what do you make of our employer?”

  “He’s not my employer,” said Petrovitch firmly, searching for the toggle that would give him a standard Roman keyboard. “I sort of bumped into his daughter this morning.”

  “Sonja: I’ve seen her around, though I’ve been told not to talk to her. But I haven’t seen a wife, and he doesn’t wear a ring.” Sorenson looked around to see if he could be overheard. “Not that you have to be married to have kids. Not over here, anyways.”

  “And how is the Reconstruction?” Petrovitch gave up, and used the touchscreen instead, navigating around the streets. The walls were solid. Doors were tabbed to open. When he ran a virtual hand over a clothes rail, the dresses moved in exquisite detail.

  “You one of these people who expect every American to be a card-carrying Reconstructionist? That gets old real quick.”

  “No. I rather assumed you weren’t one of them, since you’re working for Oshicora.”

  “It’s a few weeks” consultancy, nothing more.” Sorenson dug his hands in his pockets. “What do you mean? What’s wrong with working for Old Man Oshicora? Because he’s a Jap?”

  “Not at all.” Petrovitch glanced over the top of his glasses. “Because he controls the fastest-growing criminal organization in the Metrozone.”

  “He what?”

  Petrovitch raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t know? Oh dear.”

  “Hey now, wait just a…” Sorenson chuckled. “Funny, kid. You had me going for a minute.”

  “Sorenson,” said Petrovitch, “it’s not a joke. That ‘other matter’ that Oshicora’s gone to see about is to save me from being shot by the Ukrainian zhopu who tried to kidnap his daughter this morning. I’m not here for any other reason but to try and keep my skin intact.”

  A look of doubt flickered across Sorenson’s broad face. “Kid,” he started.

  “And stop calling me kid. ‘Kid’ would describe the girl who tried to drive a perspex pick into my guts on the tube.”

  “Okay, Petrovitch. I don’t know where you’re getting your facts from, but this gig is legit.” Sorenson was growing angry. Petrovitch could see the storm start to rise behind his eyes. “Just butt out of my business. What is this? Revenge for the Cold War?”

  “Neither of us was alive for that.” Petrovitch turned his attention back to the screen. “What you do with the information is up to you. Don’t blame the messenger.” He deliberately leaned forward and absorbed the sights of the eerily empty city.

  “I don’t have to take this.” Sorenson stood behind the screen. “I don’t even know you.”

  “Yeah, look.” Despite his desire to keep on playing the man, Petrovitch was aware that Sorenson could not only beat the govno out of him, but seemed quite willing to do so. “I don’t care. You’re not interested in anything I have to say because it’s me saying it. So I’m going to do the grown-up thing and let you get on with your coding.”

  He got up and walked away, letting the chair fall back with a bang onto the wooden boards. But he didn’t know how far he was permitted to go in the park, so he sat down on the shrine’s wide bottom step and waited.

  The chair scraped as it was set upright. “Who’s your source?”

  Without turning around, Petrovitch said: “You seem bright enough. Work it out yourself.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry. Tell me who I need to talk to.” Sorenson sat down next to him, and had the grace to look troubled.

  “DI Chain. Works out of Buckingham Gate.” He looked up and saw Oshicora making his stately way toward them. He finished in a hurried whisper: “Do not mention my name. I’ve no intention of renewing my acquaintance with the man.”

  Petrovitch scrabbled to his feet and went to meet Oshicora on the apex of the wooden bridge.

  “Petrovitch-san,”
said Oshicora, bowing.

  Petrovitch bowed in return.

  “I have made the arrangements you requested. A counter-contract of five hundred thousand euros has been placed. I imagine you will be safe even from Marchenkho himself.” He looked inordinately pleased with himself, getting one over on an old rival.

  “Thank you, Oshicora-san. I kind of assume that our paths won’t cross again.” Petrovitch chanced a half-smile. “I’m rather hoping they won’t. I like a quiet life.”

  “Stranger things have been known to happen. If you find that your life is not as quiet as you wish, I will instruct my staff to come to your assistance, as you did to my daughter’s. If you call, they will come.” Oshicora contemplated the carp moving in circles beneath his feet. He dipped his fingers in his pocket and came out with a few compressed pellets of fish food. He dropped them one at a time into the water, and the fish fought for the honor of eating.

  “Thank you also for showing me this garden, and your quantum computer project. I hadn’t known there were any in private hands. I wouldn’t be so unwise as to spread that around, either.”

  “We understand each other perfectly, Petrovitch-san. Come; I will take you to Hijo, who will show you out.”

  As they walked, Petrovitch glanced behind him at Sorenson, standing by the shrine, fists clearly clenching and unclenching. “I think you should have told him.”

  “Told him? Ah, yes. Sorenson. You believe I have ruined his life?”

  “I think you might have given him the choice first.”

  “Do not waste your sympathy on him,” said Oshicora. “He appears to be what the Yankees call a hick, but he has a past which he manages to hide from his own Homeland Security, from himself even. I, however, believe I have discovered his secret. That aside, the mere fact of his relationship with me will ruin him when he has completed his work and tries to return home. It is good that he suspects nothing; it will be an unpleasant surprise for him.”

  Petrovitch nodded, and managed somehow not to swear out loud.

  Oshicora appeared not to notice the abrupt whiteness of Petrovitch’s skin, and he carried on. “One word from me, and he will lose his citizenship, his company, his assets. He will be stateless, a refugee like we once were. You, I will deal with honorably. After the way the Americans treated my countrymen and women, I have no compunction in exploiting any one of them mercilessly.”