The Curve of The Earth (7 page)

They looked like they were from different species. He wondered how long it would be before that became true.

They’d been booked business class, but Petrovitch had upped the ante and upgraded them to first. He could have bought the airline, but he didn’t normally need one. Just this time – and it wasn’t like he was a frequent flyer – he decided he’d take the easy way out and give himself some leg room.

The flight attendants treated him like he was an egg, and Newcomen noticed: how they referred to him as Dr Petrovitch, showed him to his seat, asked if they could stow his luggage and to be sure to call if he needed anything.

He noticed Newcomen’s sideways glance.

“It’s either because they’re scared of me, or because I’m as famous as a physicist is likely to get. Look out the window.” Petrovitch had the window seat, and Newcomen had to lean over him to see. “Those bumps on the wing? I invented the things inside them. Remember when you were a kid on the farm, and all those planes you used to see flying overhead like little silver crosses? They’re rusting in a desert somewhere in New Mexico because of me.”

“Uh, sure.”

“We’re not sitting in cattle class, are we? Even our tame spooks have had to get bumped so they can keep tabs on us.”

Newcomen looked out of the window again. “It still has wings.”

“They don’t do much of anything except act as something to strap the engines to.” Petrovitch frowned. “You didn’t honestly think something this vast could fly on those stubby little things, did you? Or did you just not think at all? You flew from Seattle to New York. Then again from there to here.
Yobany stos
, man. Didn’t you notice the difference?”

“We took off and landed.”

“Vertically?” Petrovitch threw himself against the back of his seat. “I’m going to throw you out mid-Atlantic. Is that all right with you?”

The fuselage filled up with passengers; not that many of them came into Petrovitch’s part of the cabin. The secret service guys turned up, dark suits, infoshades, and eased into the rearmost seats. Made aware of their arrival by an alarm he’d placed on the manifest, Petrovitch half stood and gave each one in turn a good minute of his undivided attention.

They stared back at him in return. He’d rather not have had them on the flight, and it would have been straightforward for him to have made the carrier lose their tickets. But a wave of their badges and they’d have been allowed to board anyway. Only US planes could fly to the US, and the carrier depended on a permit from the government to fly. Petrovitch still had to work within the bounds of what was possible. He wasn’t omnipotent enough to just wish his dreams into being. Not yet, anyway.

“Problem?” asked Newcomen when Petrovitch had sat down again. He’d been leafing through the safety information on the little handheld screen tucked in the pocket of the seat in front.

“Spooks. Back of the cabin. Don’t worry about them for now. They’re as trapped here as we are.”

“Doesn’t mention your name in any of the literature.”

“Bet you it doesn’t mention Frank Whittle, either.”

The cabin staff toured the seats, checking all the passengers were sitting comfortably and securely. The pilot started to taxi them to the edge of the runway, nudging the jets to above idle. They rolled on their fat black wheels out away from the terminal buildings, and Petrovitch watched the cracks in the concrete slide by.

By bending lower, he could see a China Eastern flight coming in from Shanghai, the vast torpedo shape occluding the sky as it drifted overhead. Its undercarriage was down, ready to receive the ground, and its engines pushed it forward until it had a clear space to land on.

The fat, rocket-shaped body rumbled away into the distance, and it was their turn.

The pilot engaged the repulsors. The airframe creaked as the weight shifted, and when the wheels were clear of the runway, they retracted with a series of positive clunking sounds.

The ground dwindled away. With no forward power, they spun slightly, giving Petrovitch a view of the towers of the Metrozone, then the wilds of the Outzone looking towards Windsor down the Thames valley. Tangled trees held their bare arms up in amongst the sighing walls and fractured roads.

They passed through a layer of cloud. The map of the ground was obscured, and they spiralled upwards into the thinner air unsighted.

With the aircraft’s nose pointing north-west and bright pillows of cumulus beneath them, the engines started with a rumble that grew into a roar. Shortly into the flight, they passed over Ireland, almost directly above the domes of the Freezone.

Petrovitch felt a pang of longing, and wondered if he’d ever see his home again.

Five and a half thousand kilometres later, Petrovitch landed at John F. Kennedy airport at the same time he’d left Heathrow.

It didn’t feel right, like so many things. They’d come in over frozen Newfoundland, and he’d shivered at the sight of so much ice and snow. Yet he’d been brought up in a city ten degrees further north. He was out of practice, and he knew he had to get back up to speed quickly. Lives might depend on it. Lucy’s. His. Even Newcomen’s.

They slid down the east coast until they were poised above Long Island Sound, where they made their descent. It wasn’t like at Heathrow, where the airspace outside the M25 was Outie-controlled, and on the off chance one of them had a still-working surface-to-air missile, the planes landed straight down. Here they glided in old-style, lining up with the runway while they were over Long Beach.

The plane touched down with barely a shudder, but next to him, Newcomen visibly relaxed.

“Back on home soil, yeah? Don’t let it go to your head.”

“The land of the free,” sighed Newcomen. Even his fingers had softened from the stiff claws they’d been from the bouncing around they’d had just south of Greenland. Just in case someone had accidentally boarded the wrong flight and needed it pointing out to them where in the world they were, the tannoy started the opening bars of “The Star-Spangled Banner”. A legal requirement, apparently.

“Oh, please.”

Newcomen stood, along with most of the other passengers. Petrovitch stayed resolutely sitting down.

The woman in front of him noticed his unseemly rebellion and raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him. Her chiffon scarf would have cost more than Petrovitch’s entire ensemble, and she thought it only fair to deliver her judgement to the unbeliever.

“Communist.”

“Yeah. What of it?”

The woman’s husband noticed the sudden chill flowing from his spouse. He turned and frowned.

“Henry, this… man; he says he’s a communist.”

What would they have seen? A thin-faced blond-haired man, cheekbones sharp and Slavic, eyes the colour of old ice. They would have seen the fine white scar that ran from one side of his face to the other, and that he was missing an earlobe. No suit or smart casual for him, either. The last time he’d worn a jacket was on his wedding day. He had an ex-EDF combat smock, and cargo trousers with a hundred pockets.

Definitely not Reconstruction. Anti-Reconstruction: put the two together and wait for the explosion.

“Newcomen? Sort this out. I haven’t got the energy.”
Petrovitch pushed the agent into the aisle and levered himself across the seat. “It’s not like I’m going to be leaving copies of
Das Kapital
in hotel rooms across America any time soon.”

“Ma’am, I’m sure he meant no harm.” Newcomen reached for his badge. “He’s on his first visit, and he’s not used to our ways yet.”

Petrovitch, his back turned to the stuffily indignant couple, caught sight of the secret service men. Against all the rules of engagement, he stopped on his way past.

“What did you expect me to do? Parachute out over Massachusetts? Or were you just making sure I wasn’t going to hijack the flight?”

They, sticking to their roles, refused to acknowledge him.

“Hey. Spooks. Talking to you.” He was blocking their exit. They had no choice but to listen to him. “Where’s Lucy? You know anything about that, do you? Or are you too low in the food chain?”

Newcomen, having placated the McCarthyites, found himself with a completely different level of altercation.

“Not here,” he said into Petrovitch’s ear, and tried to bundle him along.

Petrovitch was the immovable object, and Newcomen’s force was far from irresistible.

“Not here? Then where? Maryland? And before you say I shouldn’t piss these guys off, tell me why they’re even here. They’re just getting in my face, and I don’t like that.”

The whole cabin had fallen silent when Petrovitch had said the word “piss”. Newcomen was gritting his teeth and had one eye closed, just so he could see fewer shocked expressions.

Petrovitch didn’t bother lowering his voice. “Is this what it’s going to be like? Your government have agreed that I can come
and watch while you fail to find my daughter, and yet I’m treated like a criminal before I’ve even left neutral ground.
Yobany stos
, I’ve been here less than five minutes and already I want to kill someone.” He eyed the nearest NSA agent. “You, specifically. If I see you on my tail again, I’ll blank your bank account.”

He growled and headed for the door, while Newcomen had to explain that the sweary man had diplomatic immunity and wasn’t going to be hit for the usual twenty bucks profanity fine.

“Have a nice day, Dr Petrovitch,” said one of the cabin staff as he passed through the outer door. “Welcome to America.”

“Someone is,” he muttered, “but sure as hell isn’t me.” He kept on going.

“Did you have any hand luggage, sir?” came the worried voice from behind him.

“No. No, I didn’t. It gives them less to bug.”

Once out of the transit tube and in the airport proper, he loped along the travelator, past his fellow travellers, who seemed content to let the moving walkway take them to baggage reclaim.

He was thin enough to slip through any available gap, unencumbered and light on his feet, almost elfin against the genengineered body shapes of the locals. Everybody’s parents had gone for height. If they’d selected a boy, they’d gone for muscle bulk; a girl meant either Midwestern natural or Californian beach. Those too old or too poor for the vats were more or less balloons, with expanding waistbands and no necks.

But of the people he could see, most of those under thirty looked the same, and it depressed him.

Somewhere back down the corridor, he could hear Newcomen struggling to catch up. He was never going to make it. Petrovitch didn’t need to wait around for a suitcase to come spinning around the carousel.

He stepped off the end of the walkway to the distant sound of “Federal agent, coming through,” and strode out towards customs. He had nothing to declare but his own genius, and slipped through the green channel.

It was either honesty or fear of accidentally breaking one of the arcane rules governing imports that drove most people into the red queue. The customs officers – two men, one woman – watched him pass under the brims of their peaked caps. He carried a card that meant they had to leave him alone: that message was being buzzed into their earpieces as he approached, and from the questioning tone of their responses, they didn’t like that instruction at all.

He was still officially an enemy of the state. His immunity was only a temporary concession.

Immigration was next – a choice of one of three queues. US citizens could step through a screen, glancing up at the camera that read their retina and confirmed their identity from the tags on their passports, and be out in the arrivals hall without further checks. NAFTA members had to have their documents machine-read before going through a similar arch. Everyone else was herded to one side like cattle, and subjected to a laborious manual process that was going to take the best part of an hour.

“Screw that,” said Petrovitch to a passing teletrooper. It heard him, and its metal feet stamped to a halt. It turned what passed for a head towards him, and light flashed out across his face from its visor. And again. It couldn’t work out who he was that way, and its camera lens whirred as its vaguely humanoid metal frame leaned in for a closer look.

Petrovitch could feel its presence: not just the burnished metal skin and hydraulic pumps that marked its physicality, but its electronic self, its processors and servos. That someone
in a room nearby was hooked up to a VR rig was almost immaterial. The thing itself was what was important. It reminded him of the New Machine Jihad.

He probed the protocols and routines that joined the two entities, slave and master. Not tamperproof, then. Not this model, anyhow. He mentally backed away and kept the information for later.

The teletrooper still couldn’t work out who he was looking at, and repeatedly tried to scan him. Petrovitch smiled up at the camera. “Done? Good.”

He turned his back on the metal giant and started for the US-only gate. He reached into one of his pockets for a bag. It contained two squash-ball-sized spheres, and he tore at the bag with his teeth, spitting out the strand of plastic when he’d done.

He selected one of the spheres and held it up at head height as he walked through the scanner. This time when the camera peered down at him, it could find a name, an address and a social security number. He strode through, following the plaid back of a man just in from Kansas.

Petrovitch was done with the visible security presence. He had no doubt that he’d been picked up already by human agents, but he didn’t bother sifting through the digital chatter for code words deliberately designed to be obscure and difficult. The Freezone data miners could do that later at their leisure.

Instead, he stood and waited for Newcomen to catch up. He could see him through the high perspex barriers that separated the airside from the landside, searching the non-US line for his charge. At first he appeared merely harassed, but on his second trip along the queue of patient supplicants, he grew more agitated.

He stopped, put his hands on his hips and appeared completely
bewildered. He looked around jerkily, searching every face, his head turning one way, his body another.