The Curve of the Earth

7




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.

Petrovitch decided to put him out of his misery when the teletrooper started showing an interest in the agent’s increasingly erratic behaviour.

He dialled Newcomen’s number, and eventually he picked up.

“N-Newcomen.”

“You’re looking in the wrong place. Through the screen. I’m waving at you.”

Petrovitch raised his hand and waggled his fingers, and he couldn’t tell whether Newcomen was going to faint dead away or burst into tears.

Whichever, he forgot to look up as he cleared the arch, and had to be manually scanned by one of the transportation officers with a gun-like device which they pressed against Newcomen’s eye socket.

He was still blinking away the after-image when he staggered up beside Petrovitch.

“How? How did you get through so quickly?” The agent’s luggage trailed after him like a lost puppy and banged into the back of his legs.

Petrovitch uncurled his hand to reveal two artificial eyes, the irises staring boss-wise up from his palm. “It’s not like it was difficult.”

Newcomen reached for one of the eyes and Petrovitch closed his fist firmly before rebagging and pocketing the items.

“You went through the wrong channel.”

“So sue me.”

“You’re just making a mockery of, of…”

“Everything? Newcomen, so much of this is beyond parody. This whole building is dedicated to security theatre, and it plays every single hour of every single day. Very little of what goes on here actually makes you any safer, but because you all participate in this consensual illusion, you’re willing to put up with all the indignities and intrusions.” He snorted. “Meh. Eto mnye do huya. What you do in your own country to your own citizens is up to you. But you don’t do it to me.”

They stood while all around them people passed by. The babble of voices, the sounds of the announcements, the bright displays, the steady stream of bodies and odours: it was a world away from the near silence of ruined Dublin.

Petrovitch, the city street kid, overwhelmed by crowds now as well as awed by snowfields.

He was going to have to get a grip. He was soft.

Finally he said: “How were you planning to get us out of this mad house?”

Newcomen blinked. “Uh. What? There’s the connecting flight to Seattle in,” and he searched the sky for a clock when there was a perfectly serviceable one on his wrist. “Four hours. We could grab a coffee, something to eat…”

“Okay, Newcomen, it’s like this. Firstly, four hours here is going to make me go postal. Secondly, I’ve changed the flights. We’re going later.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Clearly I can,” said Petrovitch. “What you’re saying is I shouldn’t. I have things to do here in New York. And you have to come with me, whether you like it or not.”

“Our travel plans were made days ago. They’ve been filed.”

Petrovitch reached up and snagged Newcomen’s neck. He tried to pull away but found he couldn’t. They were touching foreheads when they spoke again.

“I’ll do what’s necessary to find my Lucy. Anything and everything. If that means messing last minute with someone else’s schedule, I’ll do it without hesitation, and if they don’t like it, they can suck my yelda.”

Newcomen recoiled, and Petrovitch increased his pull.

“At least let me tell AD Buchannan.”

“You don’t get it, do you? Your saintly Assistant Director already knows. For the moment, he’s content to let it happen. They have to allow me the appearance of acting freely. Only at the last moment will they try and pin me down.”

“You’re paranoid. First you think your daughter’s disappearance isn’t an accident, and now you think everyone’s out to get you.”

“It wasn’t, and they are.” Petrovitch let go, and Newcomen massaged away the finger marks. “Now, are you coming?”

“I guess so.”

“Taxi rank’s that way. Let’s find us a yellow cab.”