The Petrovitch Trilogy

by Simon Morden

  “This is important. We have to know if we can reason with it or not.”

  She looked down at him. “We also have to work out what we do if we can’t.”

  Petrovitch tried to sit up. He leaned on his injured hand, but still couldn’t feel it. “I don’t know if we can kill something that isn’t alive.”

  Chain looked around, through the open doors to where Carlisle and Sonja were standing. “What do we tell her?”

  “She’s not a child. Tell her the truth.” Madeleine put her hand between Petrovitch’s shoulders and propped him up.

  “We can’t even agree what the truth is,” complained Chain. “What if it is Oshicora?”

  “Yobany stos, Chain. Oshicora was competent: the Jihad are oblom! It’s no more Oshicora than I’d be if I put on a funny accent and make my eyes go all slitty. The New Machine Jihad is based on Oshicora, a poor man’s copy and nothing more.”

  “It answered to his name.”

  “It’s confused.”

  Chain looked mildly disgusted. “You don’t feel sorry for it, do you? How many deaths is it responsible for so far?”

  “It doesn’t know what it’s doing. It’s two days old and it’s trying to make sense of a whole new world.” Petrovitch wanted him to understand. “It asked for help.”

  “My job is to serve the citizens of the Metrozone.” Chain looked at his warrant card, his face on the picture and the gold chip that encoded his biometrics. “The New Machine Jihad isn’t one of them. It’s a threat to the very existence of the city itself. We need to stop it. Find out where the off switch is and use it.”

  “So who is this ‘we’ of which you speak?”

  Chain turned his card around so that Petrovitch had more than enough time to study it. “Let’s get one thing straight: identity fraud, possession of a firearm, assisting organized crime, info-crime, murder. I usually find it very hard to forget about any of those; it’s only because current circumstances are so far beyond usual that you’re not already doing twenty years in a radiation zone.”

  “Let’s get something else straight, Detective Inspector Harry Chain.” Petrovitch used his good hand to draw the Beretta and press the barrel between Chain’s eyes. “I could kill you stone dead and everything you know about me would be spread across the bulkhead behind you. You’d be just one more body on the million-high pile.”

  Madeleine reached forward and irresistibly steered Petrovitch’s arm aside.

  “Will you two stop it?” she said. “Work out that you need each other. Threats aren’t what you want; it’s cooperation.”

  “Never do that again,” said Chain to Petrovitch.

  “Throw me in prison after we bring the Jihad under control, fine. Before, and God help me, I’ll pull the trigger.”

  Chain found he could move again. “So what are we going to do?”

  “Talk to the Jihad.”

  “You’ve tried that.”

  Petrovitch shook his head. “Not face to face.”

  “I can’t even begin to wonder how you’re going to do that.”

  “That’s because you lack imagination, Chain.” Petrovitch put his gun away, and looked around at Madeleine. “I have to talk to Sonja.”

  “I’ll call her.”

  “I have to talk to her alone. Just get me to my feet, and I’ll take it from there.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her mouth formed a thin-lipped line. “Remember what I said, Sam.”

  “I’m not likely to forget,” he said, and she pulled him up, holding him while blood surged around his neglected extremities.

  “You Okay?”

  “For the moment.” He walked with exaggerated care to the back of the wagon. “Sonja?”

  She stopped listening to the sporadic gunfire which had attracted Carlisle to the street corner, and she turned her head to him. “Are you going to take me to the Jihad now?”

  “It’s… complicated,” said Petrovitch. He jumped down, stumbled, ended up resting his bandaged hand on the road. The first sparks of sensation jagged up his arm.

  Carlisle was crouched by a wall, looking out into the main road. Madeleine and Chain were in the wagon. Sonja was only a step away, but he was still forced to stand without her help.

  “How much do you know about VirtualJapan?” he asked, walking away from the wagon and out of earshot of the others.

  “My father would talk about it often, about how it would bring the Japanese diaspora back home. How it was the greatest computer engineering project ever undertaken.”

  Despite her evident pride, it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “I’m talking about the guts of it: how he was going to make it work. Did he ever get technical with you?”

  “Once or twice.” She smiled prettily, probably the same smile she used on her father when he tried to explain the interface protocols or the physics engine to her.

  “Okay, look. Most of this is guesswork, but as far as I can tell, the Jihad is the moderator part of VirtualJapan, the system that supervises people’s behavior and interaction. Your father based it on his own personality, but since he died, it’s taken on a life of its own. The really complicated bit is that it’s somehow conflated itself with actually being your father. It knows you. It wants to protect you. It will kill everyone who gets in the way. When you’re safely out of the city, it’ll destroy the Metrozone, and create something else: for all I know, that something else is Tokyo.” He dismissed the idea with a wave.

  “Stop,” she said, holding up her hand. “The Jihad thinks it’s my father?”

  “I don’t think it knows what it is. If it is an AI, then it’s thrashing around in the dark much like the rest of us. But it can’t distinguish between being programmed to protect you and biological imperative: it just assumes that it is your father.” Petrovitch felt tired again, a tiredness that burrowed deep into his bones. “I need to talk to it on its own territory. I need to talk it out of wiping the Metrozone off the map.”

  “What do they think?” She tossed her hair in the direction of the wagon.

  “They want to know how to kill it.” He looked around. “If the Jihad is the first AI to achieve full sentience, I’m not going to be the one responsible for pulling the plug. I don’t care if it thinks it’s Moses, Mohammed or Mao, it’s not getting erased.”

  “The others won’t like that.”

  “I’m not doing this to be popular. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything to be popular.” He tweaked his bent glasses and looked out of his one good lens at her. “What I need to know is where your father went to access VirtualJapan.”

  “There is…” she started. She thought about it, torn between loyalties, then gave up the information Petrovitch wanted. “There’s a room below the garden which can only be reached from the Shinto temple. From the floor underneath there’s no sign it even exists.”

  Petrovitch blew air out between his teeth. The climb to the top might finish him off. “So how do I get to it?”

  “You can’t. There were only ever two people who could go there. I’d have to come with you,” she said. She looked at him from under her fringe. “If the New Machine Jihad is part of my father, I won’t let anyone harm it.”

  “I’ll have to work some things out if we’re going to do this. It’s not going to be easy, but considering none of this has been easy so far, I’m due a lucky break or two.”

  “Should I be sorry that you ever became involved? I mean, I’m not, but I’m wondering if I should feel regret.”

  “I don’t know,” said Petrovitch. “Wishing I could change the past isn’t something I do.”

  “Why did Hijo kill my father?” she asked. “Why did he have to betray us?”

  Petrovitch shrugged the best he could. “Maybe he was always planning to do so and was waiting for the right moment, for when Oshicora-san was too distracted by events to worry about his back.”

  “And perhaps something tipped him over the edge. Like kissing you. He used to look at me sometimes—you
know, like that. I’m not sure my father ever noticed, but I did.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.” He was uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. That and the gunfire which was creeping closer. “The only one who knows why is Hijo. If you ever see him again, you can ask him.”

  “I will ask him,” she decided, “and then I’ll have him beheaded.”

  “I’m sure that’ll concentrate his mind. We seem to have more immediate problems than getting revenge on Hijo.” He could see out of the corner of his eye, refracted by the broken lens, Carlisle beckoning them to join him.

  As they reached him, he held out his hand to stop them going any farther.

  “Zombies,” he said.

  A sliver of ice touched Petrovitch’s spine. “Slow or fast?”

  “Slow.”

  “You’re pulling my peesa, right?” Petrovitch leaned around the corner.

  A little way down the road—closer than he’d expected, which ramped up his mounting fear—was a gray, shambling horde. They wore both tatters of rags and new shirts, price tags still fluttering from pressed cuffs. They were eating, too, hands filled with unidentifiable food which they crammed to their faces.

  “It’s all right,” he said, just to hear his own voice. “I know who these people are.” Then he stepped out into the road and raised his bandaged fist in greeting. “Prophet? Prophet!”

  “Machine-man!” came the reply. The prophet barged through his followers, a steel pole in one hand and his mobile phone in the other. “You dare defy the New Machine Jihad? You traitor, you turncoat, you Judas!”

  Clearly the Jihad had passed on Petrovitch’s promise to oppose it. “No. It’s not like that. I’m trying to save it—save it from itself.” He was still walking toward them, even as his pace slowed.

  The prophet strode closer. He was bare-chested, better to show off the oil runes painted on his skin. “The Machine knows all, gives all, takes all. It turns its face from you, unbeliever.”

  Petrovitch turned to Carlisle and Sonja, back at the turning into the side street. “This isn’t going the way I expected. Get back to the wagon. Close the doors. Start the engine.” He jerked his head. “Go. Run.”

  He returned his attention to the prophet.

  “I’ve done everything the Machine wants. How do you think I got to look like this?” Petrovitch started walking backward as the prophet spun his weapon like a quarterstaff. “I rescued Sonja Oshicora.”

  “You are unworthy,” roared the prophet, and struck the road with the end of the pole. Sparks flashed out. “Unworthy to speak the holy one’s name. Seize him, brothers. Drag him down, sisters.”

  The gray-skinned people kept coming at the same snail’s pace, even as the prophet urged them on. But some of them dropped their food, and raised their hands out toward him. Some of them moaned, deep in their throats.

  Petrovitch ran, bile rising into his mouth. He turned the corner.

  Madeleine was lying face down in the road, barely stirring, completely dazed. There was no wagon, merely the hint of blue diesel smoke and a distant grind of gears.

  “Polniy pizdets.” He sagged to his knees next to her, the fight finally beaten out of him. And he’d lost the rat again. “Chain? Pl’uvat’na t’eb’a.”

  31

  He dared to touch her body. He rested his hand on her back and pressed between her shoulders. Muscle yielded to his touch beneath the armor.

  “Maddy. Get up. If you don’t we’re going to get torn apart.”

  He looked around. They were still coming. Slowly, ever so slowly.

  “Madeleine?” Petrovitch bent down and put his face against hers. There was blood coming from her nose, pooling red and sticky on the ground. She looked at him with unblinking brown eyes. “Get up. You have to get up. I can’t carry you. I can’t drag you. I have six bullets in my gun and it’s not enough. I can’t protect you.”

  The first of them—a man, he guessed—shuffled painfully toward Madeleine’s outstretched legs.

  “I can’t do this on my own,” said Petrovitch, pressing his lips against her ear. “I thought I could, but I can’t. I need you.” He straightened up just as the man bent down, fingers clawing at Madeleine.

  Petrovitch slapped him with his pistol-filled hand and the man crumpled. He looked at the gun, then at the skeletal figure on the tarmac.

  “Yobany stos.”

  There were three more. He dodged an outstretched arm by simply ducking under it, then planted his fist hard against one chest, two chests, three. They fell like shop-window dummies, and struggled to get up again.

  Behind them, the prophet was urging them on, words of exhortation ringing through the smoke-tainted air. Petrovitch stood astride Madeleine and dared any of them to have a go.

  They did. The main mass of them surged forward, surrounding him, opening and closing their mouths in silent cries, batting at him with their leathery, fluttering fingers.

  And though it was awful, all he had to do was knock them down, one by one or several at a time, punching and pushing, knocking his shoulder into their wizened, starved frames and watching them tumble in a heap of bones and cloth.

  They formed a circle around the two of them, a heap of still-moving bodies that any attacker had to climb over to reach them. Hands that crept out from the ring toward Madeleine were battered back with the toe of his boots.

  The prophet was furious, and as the last one of his followers folded to join their fellows, he rushed Petrovitch, swinging his length of pipe. He feinted for Petrovitch’s head, then aimed low.

  It caught him on the thigh, and Petrovitch staggered back, raising his bandaged hand as a shield. He tripped over Madeleine and ended up on his backside, entangled in her legs.

  “Enough of this!” He brought his gun around, only to have it hammered from his nerveless grasp by another swing of the steel tube. He rolled in the direction in which it had flown, only to come face to face with a hollow-faced skull, skin stretched tight over cheeks as sharp as axe-blades. The deep-set eyes blinked dryly at him.

  The Beretta slipped between the bodies and out of sight. Petrovitch rolled back as the pipe descended again. It hit him on the shoulder, rather than on the forehead, and it hurt like hell. He looked up through the bright mist of pain and crazed glass, and brought his foot up as fast as he could manage.

  The prophet’s eyes bulged as an ex-army boot connected with his groin. His face contorted and he clutched himself, all thoughts of attack gone.

  Petrovitch struck out again, kicking at a bent knee-cap. The prophet twisted and collapsed with a ragged, drawn-out groan.

  Everyone was down. Petrovitch dragged himself toward Madeleine. Something was grating inside his shoulder. Every movement of it made him hiss what little breath he had left out through his clenched teeth.

  “Sam? Sam!”

  “Right here.”

  “What happened?”

  “I could ask you the same question, except we don’t have time.” Petrovitch closed his eyes and gasped as he moved to sitting. “The phone.”

  “Whose phone?”

  “The prophet’s phone.” He tried to stand, nearly vomited, and instead shuffled forward on his knees.

  “Get away from me.” The prophet tried to hold Petrovitch off with one hand. Petrovitch just knelt on his legs and patted the man’s many-pocketed trousers, checking their contents.

  “Got it.” He tried to wriggle it free, but the prophet was doing his own wriggling.

  “I need that,” gasped the prophet. “I need the Machine!”

  “Yeah. We have way too much Machine right now. Hey, Maddy: some help here.”

  She lumbered to her feet, blood still dripping down her face, staining her front. She looked terrifying, a goddess of war. She put her foot on the prophet’s chest and slowly put her weight on it.

  After that, the phone came free quickly, and Petrovitch held it aloft like it was first prize.

  Madeleine scooped up the discarded len
gth of pipe in one hand, and Petrovitch in the other.

  He tottered like a new-born and leaned against her, light-headed and nauseous.

  “Where’re the others?” she asked. She put her arm around his waist and carried him over the slowly reanimating ring of bodies.

  “You don’t know? What’s the last thing you remember?” Petrovitch squinted at the phone’s screen. The battery was almost flat.

  “I went to close the doors. Then something hit me. In the back.” She rubbed the back of her hand against her nose, streaking it with deep red blood.

  “That would be Chain shooting you, dumping you on your ass in the street and driving off with Sonja.” He looked around. “The mudak. We have to get to the Oshicora Tower before they do, or Chain’s going to screw everything up.”

  “Sam, they have an armored car. We have half a scaffolding pole.”

  “We also have this phone.” He slipped it in his pocket and concentrated on walking. “I think I broke my shoulder.”

  “I think I broke my nose.”

  “It’s not going to get any better. Can you get us somewhere safe? I need to make a call.”

  “Safe? Safe?” she said in a rising voice. She listened to the staccato gunfire that was only a few streets away. “There is nowhere safe.”

  “We’re going to have to improvise, then. Down here.”

  They lost sight of the prophet and his disciples, and dragged themselves down the faded white line in the middle of the road.

  “Where are we?”

  “Heading south. Which is good.” He spotted an overgrown garden behind a tumbledown wall. “In there.”

  She lifted him over the first line of bricks and then forged ahead through the whip-like branches of the dense scrubby shrubs. There was a drop into a basement skylight; there were bars over the window, but the pit itself was accessible.

  She jumped down and caught him as he tried to sit on the edge but pitched himself forward instead. She lowered him to the damp, mossy interior, and squatted beside him.

  “Right. First things first.” He reached into his pocket, wincing as the ends of his clavicle ground together. “You dial.”