by Simon Morden
He got up slowly, so as not to scare the Joans.
“You and your cabal are history. I can trust Carillo to make sure of that. And next time—if there is a next time, which I’m guessing there won’t be—don’t go in with someone so paranoid that she doesn’t even tell her CIA masters her plan. It really won’t work.”
Petrovitch edged back along the pew to the side aisle.
“Is that it?” said Father John, rising. “Is that it?”
“Yeah,” replied Petrovitch, “I’m done. What did you think I was going to do? Lunge for your throat and force Sister Marie to kill me? You are so yebani transparent. And as I walk away, you’re going to try and wrestle one of the Joans’ guns from them. Good luck with that. You’re going to need it.”
He turned his back to the sounds of a brief but intense scuffle and went to join Carillo at the back of the church.
The cardinal looked rueful. “You’re right. I don’t know everything.”
“Meh,” said Petrovitch. “My lift’s outside. I’d better go.”
“You know where to find me if you ever need any relationship advice.”
“From a celibate priest? Even if you do have a decent taste in liquor, I don’t think so.”
“Like I said, I’ve been around the block a few times, and I want you to do well.” Carillo proffered his hand. “Look after yourself.”
Petrovitch had no reservations in shaking it. “Here comes the future.”
“We’re all traveling into it, one second at a time.”
Petrovitch pushed at the doors with his back, and started to place a call to his tame Bavarian dome-builders.
“I think you’ll find,” he said, “that some of us are going much faster than that.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Long-term success in any artistic career—painting, writing, composing, whatever—seems to rest on talent, luck, and perseverance: pick any two. I’ve certainly persevered, but I’ve also been lucky. (The folk band Show of Hands make the point that the harder you practice, the luckier you become, adding that it helps if you can play an instrument. And they’re right.)
Having an agent does help, though, which is why there’s an oft-repeated complaint from authors that it’s harder to get an agent than it is to get a publishing deal. I met mine through another of those unlikely chain of events that happened simply because I’d been hanging around long enough.
I could write all sorts of things here, but I’ll save both our blushes and simply say: this book is dedicated to Ant.
Meet the Author
Dr. Simon Morden is a bona fide rocket scientist, having degrees in geology and planetary geophysics. He was born in Gateshead, England and now resides in Worthing, England. Find out more about Simon Morden at www.simonmorden.com.
interview
Doctor Morden, I presume?
Guilty as charged. I got my PhD in planetary geophysics at the tender age of 24—unfortunately I’d managed to specialize myself into a corner and when the grant money ran out, I had to take on a series of bizarre jobs beloved of authors for their biographies. Then I became a full-time househusband looking after my kids. I now teach part-time at a local primary school, where I’m responsible for building hovercraft, airplanes, bomb shelters and gravity cars. There might be some blowing stuff up, too.
So you became a science fiction writer because you’re a scientist?
It’s almost the other way around: reading SF lead me to become a scientist. I was a horribly precocious child who started on adult books at a young age—I was just let loose in the library and told to get on with it, which led me to read some gloriously age-inappropriate novels. But one of the first I picked up was a James White Sector General story: that put me on the right path for the next thirty years or so. I devoured Clarke and Azimov, read every Niven and Bradbury story I could lay my hands on. That sort of thing is like dynamite to a kid’s brain.
I don’t think it occurred to me that I could be a writer until quite late on: seventeen or so. Yes, I made up stuff—a very rich interior life, as the psychologists would say—and it was all genre, but it was more directed toward role playing games. I discovered Dungeons and Dragons through my interest in wargaming, and I was hooked instantly: I could be in stories like the ones I read. I started designing my own scenarios; adding in history, geography, ecology, and ending up with some serious world building. But that’s Morden’s First Law of writing: nothing is ever wasted.
I finished my first novel at the same time as my thesis—fantasy, because it was different to my studies, and what I was used to GMing—fortunately the thesis was more impressive. That novel is in a drawer slowly turning into coal, but I had caught the bug: I wrote another book, SF this time (also unpublished and unpublishable), and just kept on going. I finally sold a short story in 1998, eight years after that first novel. I don’t know whether you’d call it persistence or sheer bloody-mindedness. But it was a good apprenticeship, all the same.
There’s a very rich back-story to Equations of Life.
Yes. Yes, there is, and it has a story all of its own to go with it. Some of this is in the dedication, but here’s the rest of it.
Back when I was a new writer and I was looking for markets for my short stories, the editor I was working with at the time (and eventually, the publisher didn’t take the novel) noted that I lived quite close by another writer who’d just pitched a charity anthology to him, and that I ought to make contact. That story was “Bell, Book and Candle” and was one of my first “pro” sales. It was also the first story I’d written set in the London Metrozone after Armageddon.
I kept on coming back to that world, and I realized I’d almost written enough stories to make a collection—something I successfully pitched to Brian Hopkins at Lone Wolf Publications. Thy Kingdom Come—twenty stories in all—was published in 2002. That was where Petrovitch, Harry Chain, Madeleine and the Sorensons all first appeared. I’d been kicking the idea for a novel set in the aftermath of Armageddon around for years, and I’d had repeated stabs at the idea before, but nothing that anyone would publish.
Then I wrote Equations of Life, and everything that was missing before suddenly turned up. Theories of Flight came without a break, and Degrees of Freedom charged relentlessly behind. By this time, I’d sold the trilogy to Orbit and had a deadline—and I put in some seriously stupid hours getting it finished: books two and three in little more than a year.
There are some continuity issues between Equations of Life and Thy Kingdom Come, and I have thought about going back and retconning the short stories so they fit. I still might. If you’re interested, all the stories in Thy Kingdom Come are free to read or download from my website.
It’s not a particularly happy view of the future, is it?
Or the past—I have the timelines splitting in 2000. But it’s difficult to answer this question without looking back at to what I thought the future was going to be when I was a kid. I grew up, almost literally, in the shadow of the nuclear holocaust. My house was stuck between Aldermaston, where they built atomic bombs, and RAF Burghfield, where they armed them. Greenham Common was just down the road. If war had broken out, my atoms would have been some of the first in the stratosphere.
But it didn’t happen. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union collapsed. The EU have integrated former communist countries into a partnership based on trade and cooperation, not fear and armaments. I live in a future that my parents would never have dreamed of forty years ago.
I’m a father myself now: what makes me hopeful is that people of goodwill, of all colors, creeds and political persuasions, want to work together to make the future viable for all of us, and that’s certainly what I’m raising my own kids to be part of. What makes me fearful is that it might not be enough.
Now’s your chance to say something nice about Americans.
Sorry about that. But it’s not like other countries have had it easy, either. Britain has ceased to exist as a political entity, Ireland
is entirely depopulated, Russia is a barely-functioning kleptocracy, the European Union couldn’t come to a joint decision on anything more complicated than which biscuits to serve at meetings and Japan has sunk beneath the waves. The U.S.A. voting a highly conservative, isolationist, quasi-religious party into power is mild in comparison.
I have been to the U.S., and everyone was uniformly lovely to me, even immigration and customs officials. The beer, on the other hand, was pretty dreadful.
You don’t shy away from religious characters or using theology in your plots—which is not the norm for SF books.
Which is a fancy way of asking, why the god-bothering? Faith is something that seems to be hard-wired into many people—like music or storytelling. Faith, in whatever form it comes in, can inform and direct someone’s choices, show in their characters, lead them to points of crisis and moments of decision. It doesn’t have to be an individual’s religious faith: it can be a child believing their parents love them, or a society believing in scientific progress.
It’s often an important part of people’s lives, along with class, wealth, nationality, race, sexuality, and politics. I’d find it strange to have smart characters who didn’t consider the big questions that science, philosophy and religion try to answer, and stranger still that they wouldn’t try and behave differently because of their beliefs.
That doesn’t mean that their behavior is predictable, consistent or compatible with the general good, though. Much like real life.
You’re on record as saying that reading science fiction is a virtue.
It is. For example, a reader is simply smarter for having picked up this book. Not just because I wrote it, but because it’s a science fiction book. One of the biggest questions anyone ever asks themselves is ‘what if?’ Science fiction is all about ‘what ifs,’ and SF stories are deliberately told to explore the possibility of, whatever—time travel, genetic engineering, computers in people’s heads, teleportation, what happens when the oil runs out, what do we do if we’re contacted by aliens.
It doesn’t just explore though, it works through the scenarios—it trains you to think differently, to dream differently. Ray Bradbury, one of my all-time favorite authors said: ‘People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it.’ I’m certain that if more politicians read science fiction, we wouldn’t be in half the messes we’re in now, because they would have foreseen the problems beforehand.
Ray Bradbury went straight on to say: ‘Better yet, build it.’ Science fiction inspired me to become a scientist: he, and the other great writers I read all those years ago helped to make one scruffy, awkward English kid think about all his possible futures, and made him want to live in the good ones. We’re not there yet: we may never arrive at our destination.
But the journey? Oh yes…
introducing
If you enjoyed
THE PETROVITCH TRILOGY,
look out for
THE CURVE OF THE EARTH
by Simon Morden
WELCOME TO THE METROZONE. Post-apocalyptic London, full of street gangs and homeless refugees. A dangerous city needs an equally dangerous savior. Step forward Samuil Petrovitch, a genius with extensive cybernetic replacements, a built-in AI with godlike capabilities, and a full armory of Russian swear words. He’s dragged the city back from the brink more than once—and made a few enemies on the way. So when his adopted daughter, Lucy, goes missing in Alaska, he has some clue who’s responsible and why. It never occurs to him that guessing wrong could tip the delicate balance of nuclear-armed nations. This time it’s not just a city that needs saving: it’s the whole world.
Chapter 1
Petrovitch wanted to be alone, to worry and to brood, but he was part of the Freezone collective and that meant never having to be alone again. Company was built in, through the links they wore. Except for him. He didn’t wear a link: he was so connected that, at times, it felt like it wore him.
So he’d taken himself off so he could pretend – not far, just to the top of the hill which overlooked the collection of different-sized domes below. The narrow strip of land before the sea looked like a collection of luminous pearls cradled in the darkness of a winter night.
He’d reached the summit, as determined by at least four satellites spinning overhead, and sat down on the wet, flowing grass to wait. He faced the ocean and felt the first tug of an Atlantic gale stiffen the cloak he’d thrown around him.
[Sasha?]
“Yobany stos.” He’d been there for what? A minute? Less. “When there’s news, vrubatsa? Otherwise past’ zabej.”
He hunched over and stared at the horizon. The last vestiges of twilight were fading into the south-west, but the moon was almost full behind the racing clouds. Enough light for him to see by, at least, even if the climb up would have been crazy for anyone else.
Somewhere over there, over the curve of the Earth, was his daughter, his Lucy, and she had been out of contact for fifty-eight hours and forty-five minutes.
These things happened. Once in a while, the link technology they all carried failed. It meant a break in what kept each individual bound together with the rest of the collective, and a quick trip to the stores for a replacement.
White plastic pressed against bare flesh. A connection restored, and the collective was complete once more.
Lucy was beyond the reach of any Freezone storeroom. She was on the other side of the world, and even he couldn’t just pop over and present her with another link. There were difficulties and complications, not entirely of his own making.
The clock in the corner of his vision ticked on, counting the seconds. Relying on other people still didn’t sit easily with him, though he’d had a decade to get used to the idea. Relying on the Americans and their ultra-conservative, hyper-patriotic, quasi-fascistic, crypto-theocratic Reconstructionist government?
His heart spun faster just thinking about it. They had a joint past, one that barely rose above mutual loathing, and he was certain there was something they weren’t telling him. There’d been – a what? At this distance it was difficult to tell. The Freezone had only just started the laborious process of gathering the raw data and trying to fashion meaning from it.
He pulled his cloak tighter around him, not for warmth but for comfort.
[Sasha?]
There was a figure standing next to him, dark-clothed, white-faced. It hadn’t been there a moment before, and it wasn’t really there now. It stared west with the same troubled hope that Petrovitch had.
[There’s,] and the voice hesitated. It hardly ever hesitated. The only times it ever hesitated were when it was dealing with meat-stuff. Important meat-stuff.
“What?”
[There’s been a development.]
“Tell me.”
[There is no sign of Lucy.]
“Yeah. That figures.” Petrovitch clenched his jaw and bared his teeth. “Where the huy is she?”
[The search-and-rescue team’s initial findings do not indicate the actions of any outside agency.]
“They wouldn’t, would they? I knew it. I knew it was a mistake to let her go. I should have—”
[Forbidden it?] said Michael, looking down on Petrovitch. [She is twenty-four years old and an autonomous citizen of the Freezone.]
“She’s still my responsibility.”
[Not by law or custom. Need I remind you what you were doing when you were twenty-four? Or when you were eighteen?]
Petrovitch fumed. “It’s not the same.”
[Sasha, we will find her.]
“Of course we will. Tell me what they’re saying.”
[That at eleven fifteen local time, a search-and-rescue team comprising USAF, Alaskan police and University of Alaska personnel, flying out of Eielson Air Force Base, conducted a preliminary search of the University of Alaska Fairbanks North Slope research station. The single known occupant of that research station, Dr Lucy Petrovitch, was not located despite a thorough search of all the solid struc
tures. There was nothing to indicate that she had either left the station on an expedition, or been forced to leave against her will. A search of the immediate area has commenced, though it will be necessarily limited in scope.]
“What the huy does that mean?”
[It means they have four hours of daylight in any twenty-four-hour period, and the air force transport must return to base. An overland expedition is being arranged. They estimate it will arrive in a week,] and Michael paused again. [Which seems unnecessarily delayed. I will attempt to ascertain a reason for this.]
Petrovitch felt impotent rage rise like a spring tide. His skin pricked with sweat.
[Talk to me, Sasha,] said Michael. [Tell me what you’re thinking.]
Lucy’s link was standard Freezone issue. Satellite enabled, always on, not just reliable, but dependable: powered by the heat from her body.
“They don’t go wrong. They just don’t.” He looked up at Michael’s avatar, framed against the silver-lined clouds. “She took a spare. I made her, because I’m a good father. And neither of them are working.”
To prove the point, he pinged her machine – both of them. He got nothing, and there was so rarely nothing.
“Something’s happened. I want to know what. I want to know now.”
[How many of our protocols are we going to break this time?] asked Michael. “As a point of reference? More than the Baku incident?”
[More than Beirut. We’re going to break them all if we have to. Assemble an ad-hoc. They can decide.]