The Curve of the Earth

22




Petrovitch caught the waitress’s attention with a raise of his hand. She had epic breasts and a slightly too-tight blouse: not quite enough to get her hauled up on a public lewdness charge, but more than sufficient for Newcomen to blush pink and make a poor attempt at looking away.

“Whatever my friends had last time – unless you’d like something different – and whiskey for me and Joe Friday. Stagg if you’ve got it. Better still, just bring the bottle and some glasses.”

“Sure thing, hon,” she said. She collected an empty bottle of lite and went back to the bar. Her skirt was on the tight side, too, and Newcomen’s gaze was drawn away from the table.

Petrovitch turned Newcomen’s head back around and scraped his finger at the corner of the man’s mouth. “Let’s just wipe the drool away, shall we?”

“But she’s barely wearing anything,” said Newcomen, his forehead damp.

“Yobany stos, she can wear what she likes. Unless you’re going to arrest her, leave her alone.” He returned his attention to Alan. “So. Jason’s a postgrad in your department, right? And you know him pretty well.”

“He’s my lab supervisor. He’s pretty cool.” He kept on glancing at Jessica, almost as if he was checking everything he was saying with her.

She wrapped her fingers around her soda and made the ice rattle. “He lets me hang out in the lab. I’m an arts major, and so I’ve got plenty of time spare. It made it easier for me and Alan, you know, to…” She watched the bubbles rise in her glass. “Spend time together.”

“Yeah, look,” said Petrovitch. “Anything that’s going to help me find either Jason or Lucy is good. I need to know it all, no matter how uncomfortable it might make either you or me. Okay?”

Alan nodded. “Okay. Jason. Nice guy. Smart, but he had a talent for explaining hard stuff so that even a freshman could understand. He could be kind of intense at times, talking about his subject, or his music: this stuff, jazz. I liked him.”

“How well did he know my daughter?”

“Pretty well, I guess. They hung out together: them both being foreigners was maybe a reason.”

Jessica cleared her throat. “I think he wanted to know her a whole lot better.” Alan raised his eyebrows at her, and she scowled back. “It’s a girl thing to notice the vibes. He acted differently around her to when he was around me. I was a friend; she was someone he wanted to be more than a friend.”

She stopped as the waitress reappeared with bottles and glasses and a pitcher of water balanced on her tray. She dealt out the coasters like a card sharp and got everyone’s drinks right without prompting. Somehow she guessed that Petrovitch drank his whiskey straight up, and it was Newcomen who needed the water.

Newcomen winced once when she bent forward to push Alan’s bottle of beer over to him, and again when she placed the shot glass in front of Petrovitch. When she’d gone, he glared.

“You kicked me.”

“You were staring at her chest.” Petrovitch cracked the seal on the whiskey and poured himself a generous measure, then slid the bottle down to Newcomen.

The agent splashed a little spirit out, barely enough to wet the bottom of the glass, and topped it up with water.

Petrovitch shook his head and raised his glass. “Na bufera!”

Without knowing what they were saying, the others joined in the toast. He hid his smile behind his glass.

“Where were we? Jessica?”

“Jason would look at her, at Lucy, when she was busy with something. You know, like when she had her head in something electronicky, or when she was doing the math at the whiteboard, or when she was halfway up a ladder fixing an aerial thing. He’d look at her that way you look at someone when you don’t want them to know how much they mean to you.”

“She didn’t notice, did she? She broke his heart and she never realised.” Petrovitch poured himself another finger of whiskey. “That’s my girl.”

“I’m pretty sure he wasn’t the only one. But I think he had it the worst.” Jessica stirred her half-melted ice cubes with her straw. “I guess she didn’t know the effect she had. Some girls do that innocent act, in order to attract the guys. Your Lucy didn’t act.”

“Considering some of the stuff she’s done, it’s a wonder she turned out sane, let alone innocent. What did Jason do when he found out she was missing?”

“We were junking burnt-out circuits,” said Alan, “and someone, can’t remember who, stuck their head around the door. Said Lucy was out of contact. The next thing I knew, he’d gone, and had left a note with the Dean saying he’d taken some days off.”

Newcomen hunched over, deep in thought. “There was a snowstorm. Lucy wasn’t actually reported missing until three days later, when the plane from Eielson made it out there.”

“We found out about that on the Monday, but Jason was long gone by then. I thought at the time he’d be interested in the news, but I had no way of reaching him. I didn’t realise that he had a thing for Lucy.”

Jessica put on her ”stupid men” face and poked Alan in the ribs.

Petrovitch brooded, while the others looked on. Eventually he asked: “Anyone else been asking questions?”

Alan shrugged. “Not of me, or Jessie. Maybe some of the tenured staff, but none of the students. We talk about it sometimes, but when we ask the faculty, they say Jason’ll come back when he’s ready. They don’t say anything at all about Lucy.”

“I’m really sorry, Dr Petrovitch,” said Jessica. “I got to know Lucy a bit: not many girls in a physics department, I guess. I asked her once if she minded all the things that they said about you.”

Petrovitch drained his glass. “What did she say?”

She fixed him with her dark eyes. “She said you were the best dad a daughter could wish for. I know you adopted her and everything, and that you’re only a few years older than she is: that was a really cool thing you did for her. I really hope you find her soon.”

“Yeah. So do I.” He sighed. “Thanks for talking to me, and I hope everything works out for you two. Keep your grades up: smart kids with qualifications go places that other kids can’t. And if things get rough, the pair of you might want to give the Freezone a call. We’re always hiring.”

Alan and Jessica looked at each other, wearing expressions of surprise and fear.

“Even if being together is what you want most of all in the whole world,” continued Petrovitch, “you still have to be useful to somebody else. Vrubatsa?”

Alan nodded nervously. Below the table he was holding Jessica’s hand.

“Right, Newcomen. Time to go.” Petrovitch grabbed his hat and set it on his head, then dragged the bottle of whiskey towards him and hid it inside his open coat.

While Newcomen laboriously dressed for the outside, Petrovitch paid the tab.

When he came back over, he pulled his gloves on, then the mittens over the top. “Remember not to look up or around as we pass through the door,” he said, and led the way into the below-freezing night air.

Out on the pavement, Petrovitch stamped off into the night, leaving Newcomen to skitter along behind. His half-silvered contacts made it almost impossible for him to see where he was going, and he kept on running into street furniture.

“Wait up,” he called, but Petrovitch was in no mood to slow down. He was angry and sad in equal measure.

Eventually Newcomen drew level and peered blindly at the shorter man. “What? What have I done wrong?”

“You’ve singularly failed – again – to understand what it is about your country that I hate the most.” Petrovitch stopped to fume. “Take those lenses out. You look ridiculous.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Then suffer. I don’t care.” He turned to go. “You really are the most useless sack of govno I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. Do something for yourself for a change. Anything. You’re a grown-up. When I think of all the things I’ve done, then look at you…”

“No one ever asked me to do the things you did.”

“But you never even did the things you were asked to do.”

Newcomen pulled off his mitten and stuck his gloved finger in his eye. The contact peeled off and dropped to the hard, rutted ground. He did the same with the other. “I’ve done everything I’ve been asked to do.”

“Otlez’ gnida. I had to put a bomb in your chest just to make you care about finding Lucy.” Petrovitch jabbed his mitten hard against Newcomen. “Everything good that you do is dragged from you while you complain.”

Newcomen took the risk of batting Petrovitch’s hand away. “I’m not to blame that the world doesn’t work the way you want it to.”

“Yeah, well. It should do.” He started to walk again, dipping down and grabbing a handful of snow. He squeezed out a snowball and launched it against a left-turn sign. The sign bent, and shards of ice whipped through the air with the speed of ricocheting bullets.

“You’re foul-tempered at the best of times, but what’s got into you? Is it what those kids said about Lucy?”

“Or is it the fact that they hadn’t had the opportunity to say it before? Maybe you don’t think that Jason Fyfe’s parents deserve some answers about what’s happened to their son. They’re sitting at home, worried sick that their boy’s not coming back, and they don’t even know why. Are you going to tell them? Would you even know, if we hadn’t sneaked in here under the radar to ask the questions that no one else has either the wit or the inclination to ask? No, no, you’re not going to tell them.” He shrugged his shoulders at Newcomen. “I’m going to have to do it because no one on your side gives a shit. Thanks for that. Terrific.”

“You think he’s dead, don’t you?”

“I know he’s dead. He went after Lucy, and because Lucy mustn’t be found, he was disappeared. And no way am I saying that until I’m absolutely certain it’s true. Pizdets. This whole thing is drowning in a sea of pizdets.”

Newcomen caught up with Petrovitch again, putting his head down against the wind. “You’re going to tell me what was up with those kids too, aren’t you?”

“They’re not kids. He’s twenty-two, she’s twenty-one. I’d saved the world twice by that age, and that’s not a job for kids, is it?” They were back on the road out of town, heading towards the house and the hidden plane. “How are you on Huxley?”

“T. H. or Aldous?”

“Brave New World. The genetic underclasses, as represented by little Jessica, don’t really have much of a future in the society you help maintain.” Petrovitch dug his hands into his pockets. It was getting colder by the minute. “Jessica’s parents didn’t get her assayed. They didn’t grow her in a tank. They managed – as humans have for tens of thousands of years – to produce a bright, good-looking girl. Bright enough to make it to university on a scholarship. Alan’s parents, however, like your parents, selected him, tweaked his genes and grew him in a vat of carefully monitored nutrients. Imagine how they feel, spending all that money only to face the prospect of their grandchildren being just plain normal.”

“It’s a shame, for sure. But they’ve invested a lot in their son. You can’t say that his parents shouldn’t know about the company he’s keeping. It’s their right.”

“His genetic inheritance is not their property.”

Newcomen pulled the collar of his coat down and knocked off a shower of ice. “It is. That’s basic commercial law. If the boy’s parents have forbidden him to marry her, they’re committing a crime if they, you know…”

“F*ck, you mean.” Petrovitch spat the word out.

“Have children.”

“You don’t need to get married for that to happen.”

“You do in this country.”

“Yeah, because if you do otherwise, your foetus is a copyright violation.” Petrovitch’s hands came out of his pockets again, and he started to wave them around. “Yobany stos, you don’t even pretend you’re created in God’s image any more. You’re made in some recombinant technician’s idea of Homo superior. Short-term advantage over long-term gain.”

“Sorry?” Newcomen was utterly baffled.

“What makes us strong is our genetic diversity. While you’re busy making yourself practically perfect in every way, you’ve forgotten that’s how evolutionary dead ends occur. It’s not who fits their niche best. It’s who fits most niches best. Adaptability, not specialisation.”

“I don’t see you doing much to ensure the survival of humanity.”

“I’m making sure your gonads freeze and fall off before you get to spawn, aren’t I? The future will thank me.” Petrovitch growled and kicked at a lump of snow that had fallen off the roadside levee. “And I’m building a star drive, so past’ zebej. I’m doing what I can.”

“Uh-huh,” said Newcomen.

Petrovitch rounded on him. “I’m this close.” He showed Newcomen the narrow gap between his thumb and fingers, showed it to him right up against his nose. “The maths is simple. It’s the engineering that’s ludicrously complicated, but it’s only just out of reach. When I get there, I’ll give it to the world. Free. Except your lot: we’ll ban you from going anywhere. The rest of us will travel to the stars and it’ll take days, not centuries. We’ll spread out, carrying the virus of life with us, and we’ll have seeded the universe with the possibility of consciousness for as long as there is space and time.”

“And how long is that?”

“Maybe another ten billion years. Depends on whose model you buy into.” The cold was getting to him: he could feel it in his metal and his bones. It was time he stopped arguing, no matter how much fun it was. It was time they both went inside and got some sleep. “Alan and Jessica? They can come with us. They can have as many children as they like and they’ll be light years away from anyone who says they can’t.”

He turned away, towards the house that promised shelter. Then he turned back to Newcomen. He grabbed the front of his coat and pulled him down until they were face to face.

“You know something? You used to be brilliant. The whole country from sea to shining sea. You did some really shitty things, but you also gave us miracles. You built rockets that went to the yebani Moon. There are spaceships you launched that are out of contact with the Earth because they’re simply too far away. You cured diseases, you made movies, you invented and thought and created your way to most of the Nobel Prizes ever awarded. You were giants. You made our music and you wrote our books. You had Lincoln and King and Feynman. The world lived and breathed you, whether they liked it or not.

“Then along came Reconstruction, and you started going backwards. Pif and me beating you to the Grand Unified Theory, two kids with nothing more sophisticated than pen and paper, was just a symptom. You were ruined long before that. Reconstruction meant you gave up being daring. That’s what I resent the most: that you let me down before I was even born.”

He released Newcomen, and batted out the creases on his chest. “The Freezone are here now. We’re going to do what you don’t have the yajtza to do any more. I just want my Lucy to be part of it too. I promised her. I promised her, and I’m not going to let her down.”