The Curve of the Earth

35




By the time Petrovitch steered the snowmobile next to Newcomen’s, he was so cold he could barely let go of the handlebars. His fingers had set into claws, and he wondered if he’d lose some to frostbite.

It was only meat, he told himself. Just flesh and bone. Replaceable. Upgradable.

He forced his mouth to work. “Off.”

The snow had eased, temporarily: enough so that he could see the black buildings of the research station against the white of the ground and the grey of the sky.

Behind him, Avaiq backed off the pillion seat and stumbled in an uncompacted drift. He muttered as he tried to regain his balance, failed, and sat down in the powdery snow.

Petrovitch rubbed his mittens against his jawline, turning the hard crust of frost inside his hood into flakes of ice he could inexpertly scoop out.

Avaiq stayed where he was, slumped, defeated.

“I can’t go back, can I?”

“There’s nothing left to go back to. The town’s gone: the pumping stations, the company facilities, the hospital, the airport. There’s nothing left, and by the time the Yanks have shot all the survivors, there’ll be no one to say what happened either. They’ll put it down to a series of massive gas explosions – which, in a way, it was – and rebuild the place a kilometre or two down the coast.”

“I know that,” said Avaiq, looking up at Petrovitch. “What I meant was, I can’t go back.”

“No. You can’t. Sorry. And neither can Newcomen, because I’m probably about to shoot him in the head.” He threw a handful of frost to the ground. “Unless I think it’s too much like hard work. You can claim asylum in Canada. If you don’t think that’s far enough away, you can come and work for the Freezone. We’re always hiring.”

“So. It’s all over.” When Avaiq breathed out, his whole body sagged. “I suppose I shouldn’t regret what I did. But I do.”

“Well, I’m grateful. The whole of the Freezone is. And if it’s any consolation, your fate was sealed the moment you and your friend with the dogs decided to see if the strange European girl needed help.” Petrovitch tried to stand, and ended up in a heap next to Avaiq. “Chyort. That was what happened, wasn’t it? You were, where? Down by the edge of the sea ice, about ten k north of here? You saw the light in the sky, and you had your camera. Then everything electrical you had stopped working. While you were trying to work out what happened, you saw it fall. The capsule. Where did it land?”

Avaiq frowned. “What d’you mean?” He turned over on to his hands and knees and pointed to the frozen river below the slight rise on which the research station was positioned. The broad, flat valley was pocked with shallow lakes, and the river meandered around and through them on the way to the Arctic Ocean. “Right there. That’s where it came down. I thought you knew.”

One of the lakes had a circular ring of ice on its surface: great jagged plates thrown up by whatever had impacted its centre. In the daylight, it was obvious. It may as well have had a kiosk next to it, selling postcards.

“Yebat’ kopat.” Petrovitch stood and stared. “How the huy did that get past us?”

[You came here in the dark, and we have no centimetreresolution satellite imaging capacity ourselves.]

“That has got to change.”

Then Newcomen came out of the main doors of the research station. “Petrovitch? I thought…”

“What exactly did you think, Newcomen?” Petrovitch batted the snow away from his chest and dipped inside for his gun. He pulled his mitten off with his teeth and spat it in the direction of his skidoo. “This is Paul Avaiq, by the way. ARCO engineer. Avaiq, meet – albeit briefly – Joseph Newcomen, FBI.”

Petrovitch straightened his arm. Newcomen looked like he might make the draw sign. Slowly and deliberately, he put his hands down by his side.

“Can I ask what I’ve done?”

“What did you tell them? Last night in your room, you had visitors. Didn’t exchange a single word, but they wrote stuff down and held it up to you, and you, in turn, gave them an answer.”

Newcomen closed his eyes and clenched his fists.

“F*cking look at me, you bastard. What did you tell them?”

“Why don’t you just kill me now? One command. Boom. You don’t even have to pull the trigger.”

Petrovitch took a step closer. The barrel of his gun was a bare breath away from the bridge of Newcomen’s nose. “You told them I thought Lucy was in Deadhorse, didn’t you?”

He opened his eyes. “Yes. I told them.”

“What did they promise you in return?”

“Nothing. They told me I was a loyal American, and that the President thanked me for my continuing service.”

“That was all it took?” Petrovitch’s breath condensed in clouds in front of him. “Pet the dog once and everything’s all right again. Have you forgotten that even your own boss dry-f*cked you and left you swinging in the wind?”

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten that,” said Newcomen. “I remember it all, every last thing they did to me. What I do know now is that there was a reason for it. I understand they did what they did for reasons of overwhelming national security. That was why Buchannan sacrificed me. Why the Director ordered it. I signed up to protect and defend the United States of America and that’s exactly what I ended up doing. Part of me wishes they’d told me first, but you’d have got that out of me one way or another. Considering what you did to me, I’m glad they didn’t tell me.”

“What I did to you?” Petrovitch shifted the weight off his ankle. It hurt. A lot. In unguarded moments, it felt like it was on fire.

“You put a bomb in my heart.”

“Oh. That.” His eyelid twitched. “I lied.”

“You what?”

“I lied. While you were unconscious, I just put a strip of skin on your chest, then lied my zhopu off.” Petrovitch frowned. “Is that worse that actually cutting you open and placing explosives in your chest? I don’t know.”

“You bastard.”

“I can say that: you can’t. Twenty dollars. Look, everyone expected it of me. Those watching us certainly did. They didn’t care as long as I led them to Lucy. But with your new-found enlightenment, you agree with that. Everything that was done to you, every last little indignity they heaped on you. I’m a lot less sanguine about it than you are. Then again, I’m not serving the ravenous god of national interest.”

“I served my country. They were a better judge of my character than I was. They used me like a weapon, and yes, I submit to their authority.” Newcomen’s hand had lost its mitten, and now he made the draw sign. His automatic slapped into the palm of his hand and his stance mirrored Petrovitch’s. “Lucy’s dead, and you’re under arrest.”

Petrovitch squinted into the shadow inside Newcomen’s gun. “You do realise your gun hasn’t even got a firing pin.”

Newcomen had to try. He managed to move his finger the small distance required to pull the trigger. He was expecting the gun to kick, an empty shell to spin out, and the recoil to load another bullet. All he got was a click.

He tried again, and again. He pressed the gun against Petrovitch’s forehead, twitching his index finger as fast as he could.

“I didn’t want you shooting me by accident. Or design.” Petrovitch knocked Newcomen’s arm aside, hopped forward and brought his knee up hard. All the bombast flew out of the American in one explosive gasp. “Looks like a smart move now.”

Newcomen roared in pain, and, to his credit, tried to stand, his gun dangling from its tether. Petrovitch simply put a foot in his chest and heaved him on to his back.

“Come on, you must have had worse playing football. On your feet, soldier. I want you to regret you’ve only one life to give for your country.” Petrovitch felt a hand rest hesitantly on his shoulder, and he shook it off. “I thought you’d woken up! Turns out you think just like them. It’s not just the planet that belongs to you. It’s the whole of space, too. I just hope we don’t find out that you’ve committed the biggest f*ck-up in recorded history.”

Again the hand, and again the angry brush-off.

“We had one shot at this. One chance to get it right. It fell to you, and what did you do? You blew them up! Huy tebe v’zhopu!” Petrovitch went to kick the prone Newcomen, and this time the hand clamped tight.

“What are you doing?” Avaiq pulled him around, and Petrovitch finally remembered it wasn’t just him and Newcomen. “He’s down. Beaten.”

“I want to make him realise what he’s done.”

Grabbing a handful of Newcomen’s parka, Petrovitch lifted the man bodily off the ground and threw him in the direction of the frozen river. He landed heavily, slid a little, dug in through the crust of surface snow to the soft powder beneath.

“Petrovitch, you have to stop.” Avaiq stood between them.

“He needs to know.”

Newcomen, shaking snow from his head, half sat, half lay on the ground. “What? What do I need to know?”

“Look behind you.”

“Do you really think I’m going to—”

“Just look. There. Right there. That’s where it came down. Part of it. It fell from the sky and came down right there.”

Newcomen finally looked over his shoulder, and saw the ice ring. “What are you saying? What is that?”

“It’s an impact crater. It’s an impact crater made by the re-entry vehicle from an alien spaceship that the United States of America shot down using SkyShield. A spaceship that had a working fusion drive, a spaceship that exploded in the atmosphere some twenty k south of Deadhorse, a spaceship that started its journey around another yebani star and made it all the way here across light years of nothing, only to get blown up as it arrives – by you!”

Newcomen was looking alternately at the crash site and Petrovitch. “You’re ragging on me.”

“Ragging on you, Farm Boy? Does it look like we’re ragging on you?” Spinning around, Petrovitch held his arms out wide. “Didn’t your handlers explain this to you? This is what it’s all been about. From start to finish. My little girl found an alien spaceship in her back yard.” He pointed to Avaiq. “This man saw it. He was here when they opened it.”

Newcomen’s eyes were suddenly bright with fever. “Opened it?”

“Yeah. Opened it.” Petrovitch glanced at Avaiq. “You did open it, right?”

“Of course we opened it. What were we supposed to do? We thought there might be someone inside. Someone who needed our help.”

Now Newcomen was slithering backwards, pushing with his hands, trying to distance himself from Petrovitch and Avaiq. “Get away from me.” His voice started off normal and ended in a low moan. “Get away! You said it was the Chinese. You said!”

“I was wrong,” called Petrovitch. “It wasn’t the Chinese after all. I should have worked it out a long time ago, but your lot have known ever since the beginning. They’ve got what’s left of it after they hit it with a cloud of tungsten flechettes and forced it to break up in our atmosphere. They came here and took everything, hoping to make it look like nothing ever happened.”

“Nothing did happen here,” screamed Newcomen. “Nothing. Nothing at all. No aliens. No spaceships. Nothing.”

Avaiq, listening, called out: “That’s not true.” Petrovitch turned to stare, and he added quietly: “About them taking everything.”

The final piece of the jigsaw slotted home, and Petrovitch shivered with anticipation.

“What was it?”

Avaiq shrugged, his parka rising and falling. “I don’t know. A thing. She’s got it with her. She might have even figured out what it is by now.” He nodded at Newcomen. “Why is he acting like this?”

“I don’t think it’s an act,” said Petrovitch. “I think he’s genuinely lost it.”

“I want to take you to your daughter, and we’re just wasting time here.” The Inuit regarded the sky. “You need to do something about him – either leave him, or… whatever.”

“Tempting, but no.”

Petrovitch advanced on Newcomen, and the struggle was brief and to the point. Newcomen tried to keep the smaller man away, using the still-tethered pistol as a club. Petrovitch grabbed it, ripped it free, threw it away and slapped him on the side of his head with his left hand. It was like being hit with a bag of bolts.

“It could have been different. It should have been different. Yobany stos, I was actually starting to like you. I was even ashamed of lying to you.” Petrovitch went through Newcomen’s pockets for the snowmobile key. “It was Tabletop who suggested the bomb: the others agreed, and I fought it all the way. I beat them down to faking it. I still went along with it, though, so yeah. I was ashamed.”

He found the key, a silver bar with a plastic fob, and straightened up.

“We were meant,” Newcomen slurred, “we were meant to be alone.”

“I hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t look that way.”

“You’re wrong. They’re wrong. It’s all a mistake.”

“It’s too late for that, Newcomen. You can’t pretend. We’re going to get Lucy. Good luck with whatever it is you decide to do now. I’m sure someone will come for you at some point. Maybe even before you freeze to death.” As he limped away, he told Michael: “Terminate his link. He won’t be needing it again.”