The Curve of the Earth

34




The sky was invisible behind a storm of snow. Petrovitch spat out a mouthful and turned his head out of the wind.

“I can’t see a yebani thing.”

[You must hurry. Only with Paul Avaiq will you stand a chance of finding Lucy in time.]

“Give me a map and find me some transport.”

A wire-frame model of Deadhorse popped up in his vision. Buildings, teletroopers, roads, all marked out in the overlay, even if everything was lost in the whiteout. His path was shown by a thick yellow line on the ground. Eyes down, he started to follow it.

It led off to his left, towards the faint burning mass of Ben and Jerry’s ruined control centre. “We can’t make too many more mistakes.” Petrovitch turned into the wind, and was all but blind. “What are they going to drop?”

[Fuel-air explosives to destroy the solid structures. The second wave will use napalm and phosphorus. Conventional explosives will be more or less undetectable to the global seismology network, and there will be no telltale fission products on the wind.]

Petrovitch kept on walking, head down, following the line at his feet. Just ahead was a building on fire, the snow hissing as it touched the flames, and before it, a skidoo.

Petrovitch reached out and heaved the white-coated body off the seat and on to the ground. The single shot had punctured the man’s back, and he’d slumped over at the controls. He’d bled out over the left-hand side of the cowling, and it had mostly frozen already. Mostly.

[Does it disturb you?]

Petrovitch bungeed his bag to the carry-rack and sat astride the vehicle. “What? That he’s dead, or that the seat’s a little sticky?”

[Human disgust responses seem to be abnormally absent from your psyche.]

“Hardly news.” The magnetic key was missing, and he spent a few extra moments he didn’t have dismounting, rolling the body over, and patting down its pockets. “It’s meat. Nothing more.”

He came up with a key ring and a coded plastic card. He got back on, and pressed it to the ignition. The lights came on, and the fuel cell started pushing power to the turbines. The path changed direction, pointing towards where Michael hoped Avaiq would be.

[I can try and stop the planes. They will be more difficult to interfere with than missiles, but I can attempt to hack the GPS signals: they will be flying on instruments and I should be able to fool them into missing Deadhorse completely.]

“Maybe. But we don’t know where Lucy is. Tearing up a random piece of tundra might be exactly the wrong choice.”

[Then you have less than ten minutes to find Avaiq and Lucy and get to a safe distance.] Michael paused. [That is not long.]

Petrovitch glanced at the controls, worked out what they all did, and dragged on the accelerator. The tracks at the back bit into the soft surface and dug in until they reached the hard, compacted ice below. The machine lurched forward, and he had to hang on.

“I’m going as fast as I can.”

The snow shovelled itself at his face at twice the speed now, so it became a freezing, stinging blizzard. He drove flat out until his route indicated a hard left; he throttled back in order to take the turn, then opened it up again. He was the only vehicle moving. Even the teletroopers, the ones that couldn’t make it to the edge of town, were still.

“Who’s left here?”

[Those who have not fled with the security forces will probably be hiding. The buildings are well insulated. The teletroopers’ infrared capabilities cannot see through the walls.]

Petrovitch turned right on to the road that would take him past the hotel. He glanced up to see it properly on fire, orange flames pulled ragged by the wind. “I think we should warn them to get out. Can we do that?”

[Door-to-door searches for survivors are time-consuming. I can announce the impending air strike like this:]

Every teletrooper blared out: “Warning. Warning. Warning. Residents and workers of Deadhorse. An air attack on your settlement is imminent. Evacuate immediately. The Freezone guarantees the teletroopers will not harm you. You have nine minutes.”

[The cellphone network has been disabled, although I am detecting several satellite phone signals. I will contact them personally and assure them of our good intentions.]

The glowing yellow road lurched abruptly right again, and terminated at the foot of a two-storey building that loomed out of the snow so fast Petrovitch thought he might not be able to stop in time.

He hung the back out, and slid around in an almost perfect circle, ending up nose on to the wall. “Yeah. I bet you I couldn’t do that twice.”

The teletrooper at the crossroads lumbered around. One leg was stiff, immovable. “Warning. Warning. Warning.”

Petrovitch pitched himself off the snowmobile, picked up the bag and his gun, and dragged his foot all the way to the door.

“You have eight minutes,” called the teletrooper.

“I know I’ve got yebani eight minutes.” He rattled the handle, found it locked, and kicked out at the wooden frame. It splintered. He went back for another go. The lock gave and the door slapped back on its hinges.

He was in a corridor which went left and right. There were stairs at either end, and in between door after door. If he had to check each one, he was going to be incinerated along with everyone else.

He filled his lungs with cold air. “Avaiq! Paul Avaiq! It’s Petrovitch.”

The sound of his voice trailed away, to no response.

“Pizdets. Why is nothing ever simple? Which room is he supposed to be in?”

[First floor, two-one-two. Go left.]

He was halfway down the corridor when a figure appeared at the far end. “Dr Petrovitch?”

“Yeah. Paul Avaiq?”

Petrovitch stopped, because he was tired, and behind his tiredness, everything hurt.

Avaiq was dressed for the outside, parka already fastened, hood down to reveal his sallow face and short black hair. He hurried towards Petrovitch. “You took your time.”

“Yobany stos, man, I think I was pretty smart considering how little I had to go on.” They were nose to nose. Avaiq was fractionally smaller.

“Those things out there are saying—”

“I know what they’re saying. I got them to say it. The Yanks are going to bomb the crap out of Deadhorse, then cremate what’s left. Where’s Lucy?”

“She’s not here.”

“Then where the huy is she? And how about the other… others?”

“What? No.” Avaiq was agitated, almost vibrating with tension. “It’s not—”

“Explain on the way.” With both gun and bag, Petrovitch had no free hand to grab hold of Avaiq’s collar and propel him to the door.

“Where are we going?”

Petrovitch growled. “Do you know where Lucy is?”

Avaiq steadied his nerve. “Yes.”

“Then what are we waiting for? In seven minutes’ time, this place will be matchwood.”

[It is now six.]

“Thanks for that.” Petrovitch heard a noise behind him, a door opening. The hinges squeaked, giving him a moment’s warning.

A man leapt out, already firing an automatic pistol. Maybe if he’d taken the trouble to sight it, rather than just pulling at the trigger while falling, he might have hit one or other of his intended targets rather than blowing holes in the plasterboard.

He managed three shots before he collided with the opposite wall, throwing his gun hand high.

Petrovitch aimed for his head and left a neat hole above the left eyebrow. “Yeah, and you can f*ck right off.” He swept the corridor front and back for anyone else. Avaiq was crouched on the floor, arms wrapped around his head. “Michael? You didn’t get them all.”

[Inevitable. Can I suggest you leave the locale immediately?]

“Gladly. Avaiq? Up.” He kicked the man for want of anything else he could do. “You are the only person on the planet who can tell me where my daughter is, and you are coming with me.”

“He could have killed us,” Avaiq pointed out.

“Could have, but didn’t. Get up, man!” Petrovitch dropped his bag, dragged the Inuit on to his feet, and grabbed the handles again. “You’ve shown yourself to be an exceptionally brave and resourceful man. You’ve protected Lucy against every threat for the past week. You only have to keep going for a little longer, and then you can stop. Promise.”

It seemed to be the right thing to say. Avaiq only flinched once when he had to step over the legs and the blood welling out of the shooter. There was a spatter mark on the skirting board, and he looked away sharply.

Then they were back out in the driving wind and snow, the sky luminous with both celestial and earthly fire.

“Can we find our way in this?” Avaiq shouted to Petrovitch.

“Yeah. We can. Hopefully they’ll have more trouble.” Petrovitch stood astride the snowmobile. “Got your own?”

“It’s still in the shop.”

“Then get on, you mad bastard. We have less than six minutes.” He nodded to the back of the seat and pressed his bag on the man. “Put this between us: there’s nothing in there that’ll break. Sit down and hang on.”

[Less than five. The planes are lining up for their first run.]

“Really hang on,” said Petrovitch. He backed up for a metre, then started to accelerate forward, heading between the accommodation block and the next building. Beyond that was the river, frozen hard, snow blowing in sheets across its surface.

There was a small windshield, barely enough to deflect the freezing wind around his body, and certainly not tall enough to hide his face behind. He was blind: but for the overlay of wire shapes and coloured lines, he’d have driven into one of the supply lines that ran to the pipeline proper.

The path he had to follow directed him around the end of the pipe. It meant another minute within Deadhorse.

[The first of the bombs has been released. They are parachutedropped, and will take about ninety seconds to descend to detonation height. Due to the adverse weather conditions, the bomb yield and blast radius will be degraded, but still considerable.]

“Will we make it?” He was going so fast, every rut and crack in the underlying ground felt like a chasm.

[One moment.] The yellow line abruptly changed direction, no longer trying to guide him south-east. Due east now.

“Chyort.”

He was on the river ice. The valley was so shallow as to provide him and his passenger with no protection at all. Somewhere on the other side was a service road that would be brilliant if he could hit it, because it felt like what was left of his internal organs were being jolted out of what was left of his body.

He kept going, his teeth clenched, his eyes screwed tight shut, relying solely on what Michael could show him.

[Right. Go right.]

He did, and felt, rather than saw, the light. The ground trembled, and a second later came the sound of God clapping his hands: low, sonorous waves of noise that felt like a punch in the gut and just as churning.

It was all but impossible to control the snowmobile at the speed he was going. He wasn’t dead yet, so he cut the speed and glided it to an almost-halt. They were the other side of the river, lost in the snow.

Flashbulbs were going off over the scattered structures of Deadhorse, and the air was stiffening with every explosion of orange-white.

Petrovitch waited for a lull, then asked, “You okay?”

“I guess so.” Avaiq relaxed his death grip for a moment. “Why? Why are they doing this?”

“Because they’re scared. That’s why.”

There was nothing to see but the changing brightness of a wall of snow. Time to finally get the answers he craved.