by Simon Morden
“The mobile network is down, Sam.”
“The Jihad will work its magic. Last number redial.”
She pressed a button and held the phone to her ear. “It’s ringing,” she said, eyes wide with wonder.
Petrovitch tried to take the device in his bandaged hand, but none of his fingers were free to grasp it. Neither could he raise his other hand high enough. She kept hold of the phone, while he leaned into it.
He could almost hear in the silence a vast machine making billions of calculations a second.
“It’s Petrovitch,” he said.
“Save Sonja,” it said, “save her.”
“Yeah, there’s been developments, not necessarily for the better. Right now, it’s saving you I’m more worried about.”
“I am the New Machine Jihad,” it said. “Prepare for the New Machine Jihad.”
“I always thought that when I finally got to talk to an AI, it’d understand what the Turing Test was and play along. But, no: not you. You have to spout gibberish and make me guess what it is you mean.”
“Save…”
“I’m running low on watts, Okay? So shut up and listen. There is a room in the Oshicora Tower, below the temple in the rooftop garden. Sonja has access to it, and Harry Chain has Sonja. He wants to turn you off, wipe your mind, take you apart bit by bit so all you can do is recite ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’ You got that? Can he do that from there?”
“I am the New Machine Jihad.”
Petrovitch growled with frustration. “Can Chain hurt you using the interface in that room? Yes or no.”
“No. He cannot.”
“But someone else can? Sonja?”
“Yes.”
“Right. Delay him: as long as you can, but remember he has Sonja, so no ninja-throwing drones or stuff like that. I’ll be there as soon as I can, but I have pieces dropping off me like I’m a hyperactive leper. One more thing: do you remember the promise you made to me when you were still flesh and blood?”
“Come the revolution, you will be spared.”
“Whatever it is you’ve heard, I’m still for you. Okay?”
“Shinkansen ha mata hashirou.”
The line went dead.
“Sam?”
“He’s… it’s gone.”
She turned the phone to her and looked at the flashing battery icon. “I don’t understand why it is that you’re taking the side of a machine that’s indiscriminately killing people?”
Petrovitch shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not. I’m lying through my teeth every time I talk to it. So far I’ve found out the New Machine Jihad is really Oshicora’s VirtualJapan supervisor, the whereabouts of the secret room, the information that yes, it can be damaged by something there, and I’ve got a promise it won’t try and kill me just yet. Tell me who else can get close enough to the Jihad to disable it?”
“You lied?” She sounded shocked, and Petrovitch was outwardly disappointed but inwardly pleased.
“Maddy, I lie all the time. About almost everything. My entire life is constructed on a lie, and if it means I get to save the Metrozone, I’ll carry on lying until my pants spontaneously combust.”
“So why did Chain get rid of us?”
“Because despite your ‘why can’t we just get along’ speech, the idiot thinks I’m pro-Jihad. In his binary mind, that means I’m willing to let the city burn, and because you’re naturally going to take my side in everything, he sees you as part of the problem.” He wanted to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He had no way of doing so; he’d run out of hands. “If Chain gets to the tower before I do, any advantage I might have had has gone and you can wave the city goodbye.”
She sat back on her heels, wiping the worst of the congealing gore on her face away with her armored sleeve. “There must be something we can do.”
“Short of calling down a nuclear strike, no.” He tilted his head to see her better, her worry lines, her misshapen nose, the black scab perched at the end of it and the streaks of blood on her lips and chin. “I’d do it, too, if I thought anyone would believe me.”
“I believe you.”
“All we have is some scaffolding and a phone that no longer works.” He grimaced. “And a mad computer who thinks we’re on its side. I don’t know if it’s enough.”
She ventured an uncertain smile. “I’m used to doing things knowing there’s a whole team behind me: that if I fall, there’s someone else there to pick up where I left off.”
He struggled to his feet and looked over the lip of the pit. “You have my pity: I wouldn’t like to rely on me, either.”
She joined him. “It’s getting darker,” she said, looking up at the cloud-shrouded sky. There was no hint of orange in it at all.
“This is going to be a night like no other,” said Petrovitch. “The Jihad must have cut the power completely. When it gets properly dark, it’ll be chaos.”
“Then,” she said, lifting herself up to ground level, “we’d better get moving.”
Petrovitch lifted the steel pipe onto his foot and lofted it in the air so she could catch it. “I have a plan,” he said. “We’ll need that.”
She reached down and wrapped her arm around his back. Their faces were very close. He didn’t know what to do.
“I’m lost,” he said. “I don’t know which way to turn and I have no map to guide me.”
“You think I do? Until this morning, I was a nun.” She adjusted her grip and heaved him up. “It’s like the blind leading the blind.”
The pain in his shoulder flared bright, and he closed his eyes against it. Something warm and soft pressed against his, dry, cracked and dusty lips.
He opened one eye. “Did you just kiss me?”
“Maybe,” she said, and looked away. “What’s the plan?”
“We steal a car.”
“And the Jihad…?”
“Won’t be able to touch us in a pre-Armageddon wreck. In fact, the older the better. Only, I can’t hotwire anything at the moment, so you’ll have to do it. Can you stand being ordered around by me?”
She spun the pipe over her wrist, up her arm, down the other until it slapped into her open palm. “Sam. Yes, for the last time.”
“I still don’t know why.” He started to push through the bushes back toward the street.
32
The only cars left on the road were old: the newer majority had been conscripted by the Jihad. Petrovitch picked an ancient, rusting Skoda, one that had clearly been through several wars already, and one he knew how to take. He nodded to Madeleine, who smashed the passenger window with the steel pipe. Chips of glass exploded across the back seat, and she quickly reached through to open the door.
“It wasn’t locked,” she said.
“Yeah. Beginner’s mistake. Don’t worry about it.” He clawed at the driver’s door and helped it open with his boot. “Pole, through the steering wheel, and twist hard.”
The steering lock snapped and Petrovitch crouched down by the dashboard.
“The plastic bit under the steering column. Get your hand behind it and rip it out.”
Kneeling beside him, she reached in and tore the fascia away. She threw it behind her, and Petrovitch retrieved a nest of wires. He got his thumb through them and jerked them free.
“Okay. The two red ones. Twist the bare ends together. Now the black one; just wind it round where the other two join. Huy, check it’s not in gear.”
“How do I do that?”
He stopped and blinked. “You can’t drive?”
“No.”
“I hate to say the words ‘crash’ and ‘course’ together, but you’re about to get a crash course. Get in.”
“Why not you?”
“Because I can’t hold the steering wheel, I can barely see and I can’t work the gear stick.”
She got in, and barked her knees against the dash. “You should have stolen a bigger car.”
“Push the seat back, woman! Lever under your seat, pull i
t up and kick back.”
Madeleine shot back with a bang that jarred her neck.
Petrovitch ground his teeth. “Yobany stos. Put your hand on the gear stick: move it from side to side.”
“It won’t,” she said.
“Pull it down until it comes loose.”
“Done.”
“At last. My record in St. Petersburg was fifteen seconds, from brick through the window to driving away. I’m embarrassed how long this is taking.” He reached over her legs to fumble at the wires, touching a blue-shrouded cable to the spliced ends. It made fat blue sparks as he ran the frayed copper end up and down the bare metal.
The engine turned over and didn’t catch at first.
“Right foot on the gas. Lightly,” he added quickly as she stamped down, “not all the way.” He tried the wire again, and after a few asthmatic wheezes, the engine caught and spluttered into life, but always threatening to stall again. “More gas. Don’t flood the carb, though.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” she yelled over the clattering roar.
“Just don’t touch anything until I’m on board.” He slammed her door shut and jogged as best as he could around the bonnet. As he slid into the passenger seat, she was fixing her seatbelt in place.
“What?” she said, looking at him looking at her.
“Actually, that’s not such a bad idea.” He tried to reach behind him, and each time the pain in his shoulder made him pull back. “Okay, forget it. Handbrake.”
“Which is…” Her hands fluttered over the controls.
“Here! Behind the gear stick. Never mind.” He winced as he gripped it and gasped as he let it free. “Right. Turn the wheel all the way to the left, put it into first gear and let’s get the huy out of here.”
“And I do that…?”
“You use the clutch.”
“You know,” she said, “you’re dead bossy.”
“I’m trying to save upward of twenty-five million people. I think that allows me to do a bit of shouting.”
“Just saying. Clutch. Which one was that?”
Petrovitch rubbed his bandaged hand against his forehead. “Chyort. Left-hand pedal. All the way down. Look, don’t worry about the gears: I’ll do them.”
“Won’t that hurt you?”
“I’m past caring. Chain is at least half an hour ahead of us already, and we need to go. Now!”
“Clutch down.”
Petrovitch knocked the gear stick into first. “Slowly let the clutch back out. The car will start moving forward. It’s supposed to happen. Keep your foot on the gas.”
The car skipped forward, ground its wing against the car in front, then leaped out into the road, heading straight for the opposite curb.
“Oops,” said Madeleine.
“Wheel to the right. Down the road, not across it.”
They lost both wing mirrors as they careered between two lines of parked cars. Since they were only held on with black tape, it was no great loss.
“Is this all right?” she said.
“You hear the screaming noise the engine is making?”
“What?”
“Clutch!”
He dragged the gear stick back into second, and the car jerked forward again, but faster.
Madeleine squinted out of the filthy windows as they approached a junction. “Where am I going?”
“Right,” said Petrovitch, trying to work out where they were. “Go right.”
She spun the steering wheel, and the car attempted the corner into the wide shop-lined street. The wheel banged up the curb and a lamp-post scraped a layer of paint off the passenger door. He was treated to a close-up view of several retail outlets stripped clean before they swerved back onto the tarmac. They were just about back on the road when they were confronted by a burnt-out wreck straddling the white line.
Madeleine turned to look at Petrovitch, who was busy crawling backward into his seat. They hit the obstruction on the blackened front wing and spun it out of the way. Their car rocked; metal screeched and glass broke. Then they were through.
“You haven’t told me where the brakes are,” she said as she regained a modicum of control.
“My mistake,” squeaked Petrovitch. “It’s the one in the middle. Clutch and brake at the same time.”
“That’s better. Anything else you think I might need to know?”
“Yes. The road ahead seems to be under water. So brake now.”
She stamped down hard, and the Skoda’s wheels locked in a full skid. They ended up broadside onto a dark, oily lake that stretched out down the street, deepening as it went. By the time it was lost in the distance, it was up to the first-floor windows. They stared at the drowned buildings, the note of the car’s engine rising and falling as if it was breathing.
The surface of the water was so thick with jetsam that it looked almost solid: all the debris of the river was advancing inexorably over the land with the same restless shifting of the Jihad’s motorized hordes.
“This,” said Petrovitch, “this complicates matters. Back up.”
While they sat, the water was starting to flow under them. Dark shapes swirled in front, edging ever closer.
“Reverse is where?”
“Why don’t I find it for you?” He pushed the gear lever all the way over, and forced it down. “Foot off the brake and slowly off the clutch.”
They were going backward, but Madeleine was still determinedly looking forward. Petrovitch twisted uncomfortably in his seat. Something moved across the skyline, appearing for a moment between two glass-clad towers, but due to the gathering gloom he couldn’t make out its shape.
He turned his head to see better, and his shoulder flared in warning.
“Okay, Okay. Far enough. Wheel hard round to the right.”
The rear bumper crunched against a concrete pillar, rocking the interior. Madeleine struggled to keep the engine running.
“You’re fine, you’re fine.” Petrovitch looked again at the sky. “You’re not doing badly at all.”
“For a beginner, you mean.” She sniffed and scraped at the crusted blood inside her nostrils with a ragged fingernail.
“Don’t do that while you’re moving,” he said. “Hard left. We’ll have to find a different route.”
They drove back up the road, with Petrovitch leaning forward and scanning the rooftops.
“What? What is it?”
“There’s…” He frowned. “There’s something moving out there. Something big.”
“I don’t understand.” Her distraction steered them toward an abandoned, gutted van, and she swerved at the last second to avoid it.
“Slow down. Right here.”
Again, she took the corner too wide, mounted the pavement and almost introduced the car to a set of torn steel shutters.
“Sorry.”
“Promise me you’ll get lessons before we have to do this again.”
The windscreen pocked. A matching hole appeared in the back window a second before the whole pane crazed and fell inward in a curtain of crystal.
There were people in the side street that they’d turned down, spread out in a loose line between the pavements. They had big wire-mesh trolleys stacked with looted goods, but there was clearly room for a little more.
“Where was reverse again?” asked Madeleine, and she threw herself across Petrovitch. The seatbelt caught her halfway, so she dragged him down behind her.
The windscreen disintegrated, and Petrovitch could feel three distinct impacts. One hit his seat, sending out a puff of upholstery padding. Two hit Madeleine: her armor shocked stiff and slowly relaxed, like a muscle spasming.
The car stalled and rolled forward.
“Out, out,” grunted Petrovitch, his voice muffled by his confinement.
Madeleine freed herself from her seatbelt, and kicked the door open, all the while trying to maintain the lowest position possible. Petrovitch opened his door and fell out onto the pavement.
A shot smashed the door window, right above his head. He ducked the shower of glass and started for the back of the car, spitting out sharp fragments as they trickled down his face.
“Maddy!”
She was crouched by the boot before he’d even got past the rear wheel. Another shot, another window.
“Paradise militia,” she said. “Recognize them.”
“So we run. Go.”
“You first.” She shoved him forward, then rose behind him. It wasn’t gallant, but it was expedient. She could give him cover.
He ran, doubled over, in a straight line away from the car. He got as far as the corner and slid to a halt. Madeleine knocked him flying and tumbled to the ground herself.
Petrovitch’s coat had flapped up and covered his head, but he was so befuddled, he couldn’t work out why it had gone so dark so quickly. Then he remembered why he’d stopped running in the first place. He looked up.
There was a building in the middle of the road, one he’d have sworn hadn’t been there a moment before.
He clawed his coat away. Madeleine’s legs were directly in front of him: her body was braced, her arms aloft in a fighting stance. What she was trying to protect him from was the bastard child of an industrial crane and a scorpion, five stories tall.
Hydraulics hissed and servos clicked. A leg, composed of industrial-gauge steel latticework, lifted high and swung through the air. As it descended, the tip of it gouged the road surface and punctured it, piercing the sewers below.
“Polniy pizdets,” he breathed. “Maddy?”
“Sam?”
Another leg traveled, demolishing a shop front and causing the whole building to fall into the street in a roar of masonry.
It had a head too, and the head had lights, culled from the front of an articulated lorry. The beams cut through the dust cloud like searchlights, and the path of illumination dropped ever lower until they were at its center.
It was so bright, it burned.
Petrovitch dragged himself upright and took his place in front of Madeleine. He held up his bandaged hand to shield his eyes.
“Sam, what are you doing?” she asked quietly.
“Keeping us alive.”
The mechanical wheezing and gasping ceased. Even the Paradise militia were silent, their booty forgotten in a rare moment of terrified awe.