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Synopsis
Simon Morden scored hits with the first two volumes of his acclaimed Samuil Petrovitch series. The final book in the trilogy, Degrees of Freedom finds Petrovitch still trying to make his way in the post-apocalyptic nightmare world he calls home. His girl has left him—though he’s sure she still loves him. The New Machine Jihad is calling out to him—even though he destroyed it once already. And the Armageddonists are hell-bent on blowing the world up—again. It seems everyone wants something from Petrovitch, but all he wants is his freedom.
Release date: June 1, 2011
Publisher: Orbit
Print pages: 384
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Degrees of Freedom
Simon Morden
It was cold. Petrovitch had climbed the monumental mound of rubble in the heat and the rain and the wind, and now the weather
was turning again. His breath condensed in numinous clouds, breaking apart against his greatcoat and turning into sparkling
drops of dew that clung and shivered on the thick green cloth.
He had a route: he knew which of the fallen metal beams would support his weight, and which of them would pitch him into a
lake of broken glass; that concrete slab was unstable, but this seemingly inconsequential block rested on solid ground. He’d
programmed it in, and it showed as a series of waymarkers, of handholds and foot-fasts, but only to him. It had been dangerous,
winning that knowledge.
Dangerous to the extent that he was surprised to see another man making his way toward the summit from the other side. No
one else had ever tried it before, though he’d never indicated that no one could. It wasn’t like the remains of the Oshicora
Tower were his in any moral or legal way.
That he had company had to mean something, but he’d have to wait to find out what.
He wasn’t going to let this novelty get in the way of his ritual, performed as he had done every day at the same time for
the previous three hundred and forty-eight days. He carried on climbing, barely having to think about his muscles, letting
the weight and carry of his body fall into a series of familiar, learned movements.
He used the time to think about other things instead: on how his life had gone, how it was now and how, in the future that
he was trying to shape, it might change. His face twitched, one corner of his mouth twisting slightly: the ghost of a smile,
nothing more. He was haunted by a vision that held almost limitless promise, yet still stubbornly refused to come into being.
He was almost there, but not quite: figuratively and literally. The summit of the ruins of the Oshicora Tower was in sight,
turned by his successive visits into a hollow crown of arching, twisted steel. He stepped up and over, and was already searching
for something symbolic to throw.
He kicked at the surface detritus, at the pulverized dust and the shattered glass, the cracked ceiling tiles and strips of
carpet, the broken particleboard and bare wires—all the things the tower contained before it was collapsed by cruise missiles.
There was the edge of a plastic chair. He reached down and lifted it up, pulling it free. It was pink, and had become separated
from its wheeled base. It was cracked almost in half, but not quite. It would do.
He took it to the precipice, and held it up over his head. It had become street theater for the crowds below, but that wasn’t why he was doing it. When he’d started a year ago, it had been raining horizontally and he’d been soaked to the skin.
There had been just Lucy and Tabletop and Valentina as witnesses. He hadn’t even told them what he was doing: he’d have preferred
to be entirely alone on that first day, but they hadn’t let him. After that, it had taken on a life of its own, with thousands
now surrounding the wide ring of rubble to watch him ceremonially, futilely, try to dig out the AI buried underneath.
They came, he climbed, he picked something up from the top and threw it to the ground. He descended, and they went. Pretty
much it.
He flexed his arms. The pink seat flew through the crisp, still air, trailing dust. It bounced and tumbled, picking up speed
as it fell. It pitched into the crowd, who ducked and dodged as it whirled by. It disappeared behind a mass of bodies, and
he lost interest in it. Six weeks ago, he’d accidentally hit someone with the edge of a desk, but they’d come back the next
day with a bandaged head and a shine in their eyes.
He wasn’t sure what to make of that sort of… devotion.
Petrovitch was about to turn and head back down when he remembered one of them was coming up to meet him. Because it was the
first time it had happened, he wasn’t quite sure how to react. He wasn’t beholden to anyone, anyone at all. He could just
go, or he could stay.
He looked out over the crowd. Normally, they’d be dispersing by now: he’d thrown his thing, his image had been captured by
innumerable cameras and streamed for a global audience. They should go. They all had jobs to do, because that was why they
were in the Freezone.
But they were staying, watching the figure scrabble forward, slide back just as far. Petrovitch was uncertain whether the crowd were willing him on or trying to haul him down
with their thoughts.
He sat down, his legs dangling free over the edge of the rubble. It was risky, certainly. Part of him realized it and relished
it. It wasn’t as if the remains were in any way stabilized. They would, and did, occasionally shift.
The man making his way up was taking a yebani long time. The clock in the corner of his vision counted out the seconds and minutes, and a quick consultation with his diary
told him he needed to be somewhere on the other side of the Freezone in an hour.
“Are you going to get on with it, or should I come back tomorrow?” he called down.
The man’s face turned upward, and Petrovitch’s heart spun just a little faster.
“You could come and help me,” said the man.
“Why should I make it easy for you? You never made it easy for me.”
“You could have asked for someone else to officiate.” He stopped and straightened up, giving Petrovitch a good view of the
white clerical collar tucked around the neck of his black shirt.
“Madeleine wouldn’t have anyone else. And whether she was punishing you or me, I still haven’t worked out.”
“Both, probably.” The priest scrubbed at his face. He was sweating, despite the cold. “We need to talk.”
“It’s not like I’ve been hiding.”
“We need to talk, now.”
“I’m not shouting the rest of the conversation.”
“Then help me.”
Petrovitch considered matters. It’d be entirely reasonable to raise his middle finger and strand the priest on the side of an unstable rubble pile, leaving him the equally difficult
climb down.
“I should tell you to otvali.”
“But you won’t. You’re tired, Petrovitch. The things you want most in the world are just as much out of your reach as they
ever were.”
Perhaps it was true. Perhaps he’d grown weary of continual confrontation. Perhaps he had, despite himself, changed.
“Meh.” He jumped down and slithered the ten meters between them, closing the distance in bare seconds. He tucked his coat-tails
underneath him and sat down where he’d stopped. “Here’s good. Say what you have to say. Better still, say why you couldn’t
have said it anywhere else. Unless you crave a ready-made audience.” Petrovitch frowned and sent virtual agents scurrying
across the local network nodes. “You’re not wired, are you?”
“Priests, above everyone else, should be able to keep secrets.” Father John looked around him for a suitable perch, and Petrovitch
rolled his eyes: servos whirred, and tiny pumps squeezed some more moisture out to coat the hard surfaces of the implants.
“It’s not comfortable for me, and I don’t care if it is for you. I have somewhere else to be soon enough, so you haven’t got
me for long.”
The father crouched down on his haunches and tried to sit. He started to slip, and Petrovitch’s arm slammed, not gently, across
his chest. It forced him onto his backside.
“Plant your feet, you mudak. Be certain.” When he was sure the priest wasn’t going to start a landslide, he put his hand back in his lap. “It’s all about
confidence, misplaced or otherwise.”
“A metaphor for your life?” Father John rocked slightly from side to side, trying and failing to create a buttock-shaped depression
underneath him.
“Poydi’k chertu. It’s worked well enough so far.”
“So far,” said Father John, “but not any longer. You’re stuck, aren’t you?”
“Jebat moi lisiy cherep.”
“And if you’d stop swearing at me and listen, I might be able to help.” He risked falling to gesture at the people below.
“So might they.”
“I…” started Petrovitch. He looked at the crowd. He zoomed in and panned across their faces. He could have, if he’d wanted,
named every one of them from the Freezone database. “They come here, day after day, and they don’t say anything. None of them
ever say what they want.”
“You must have some idea.”
“I haven’t got a yebani clue.” Petrovitch shrugged. “I’ve never been too good at the human stuff.”
“That much is true. Did it never occur to you to speak to them? That that’s what they’re expecting?”
Petrovitch’s mouth twitched again, and he pushed his finger up the bridge of his nose to adjust his non-existent glasses.
“What?”
“For the love of God, man.” It was the priest’s turn to be exasperated. “You might be reviled by every politician from the
Urals westward, but they,” and he pointed downward again, “they love you. You saved them. Twice. The ones who actually think
about it know they owe their lives to you. Even those that don’t think you’re a living saint are indebted to you to a degree
that any leader, religious or secular, would give their eye teeth for.”
“I don’t ask for it or need it.”
“Yes, you do. You come up here every day and do this, this thing that you do. You know it’s futile, pointless even. You could
have spent your time lobbying the EU, the UN, but as far as I know, you haven’t talked to anyone about what’s trapped under
here.”
“Not what. Who. He has a name.” Petrovitch felt the old anger rise up, but he knew how to deal with it. Breathe slowly, control
the spin of his heart, play a brainwave pattern designed to mimic relaxation.
“Michael,” said the father. “That girl said…”
“She has a name too. Lucy.”
The priest looked troubled for a moment.
“We’re not talking about Lucy now. Or ever. So stick to the subject because the clock’s ticking.”
“How long is it going to take you to dig out Michael from under here, using your bare hands?”
Petrovitch leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “When you say the magic words over your bread and wine, is it
you who changes them to body and blood?” He knew he was on controversial territory, but he was doing more than enough to pay
for the right, just by sitting and listening.
“No. It’s by the power of the Holy Spirit—not that I expect you to believe that.”
“So why say the words at all?”
“Because the words are important.”
“And you have the answer to your question.” Petrovitch stroked his nose. “This is a symbol.”
“But it has no efficacy.”
“What?”
“This. This throwing something down off this mountain. You’ll be dead before you finish and the A… and Michael will still be trapped. The sacraments have the power to
save. This is nothing but an empty gesture.” Father John waved his hands in the air, to indicate just how great the nothingness
was.
“One man’s empty gesture is another’s meaningful ritual.” Petrovitch pursed his lips. “You don’t want to go down that road.
Not with me.”
The priest pulled a face. “Look, I’ve been sent here. Sent here to ask you a question, and this is the only time you’re ever
alone.”
“It’s not like my answer is going to change in company.” His interest was piqued, though. “Who sent you?”
“The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”
Petrovitch raised his eyebrows. “The Inquisition? That’s unexpected.”
“Give it a rest. They haven’t been called the Inquisition for over fifty years.”
“So what do they want?”
“They want to know whether Michael can be considered to be alive. And if he is, does he have a soul?”
“Really? He’s been trapped under this mound of rubble for almost a year and it’s only now they decide to take any notice.
Where have they been?” He snorted. “Up their own collective zhopu?”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” said the priest. “They’ve been doing nothing but debate this since the Long Night. What
if an AI shows signs of independent, creative thought? What if it can empathize? What if it has the capacity for generosity,
altruism, compassion?”
“I could have given them the answers eleven months ago.”
“That’s not the point. They needed to decide theoretically about all those what-ifs. If it could, what should we do about
it, if anything? They have,” and he hesitated, “a protocol they’ve drawn up. A sort of Turing test, except it doesn’t measure
intelligence. It measures animus.”
“So the Vatican wants to know if Michael is a spiritual being, or the equivalent of meat.” Petrovitch blinked. “Yobany stos. They want to know if it can be saved.”
“Something like that. The Holy Father ratified the protocol last night. The Congregation called me straightaway. They haven’t
been sitting on their hands; for the Church, this counts as indecent haste.”
Petrovitch considered matters, then made his decision.
“No,” he said.
“No? I haven’t even told you what the Congregation wants.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He got up and brushed the tails of his coat down. “The answer’s the same. I’m not playing.”
“If the Church declares Michael ensouled, then there’s a moral duty laid on every Catholic to help free it.” Father John tried
to stand too, but Petrovitch had moved far enough away to be out of reach. The priest’s feet started to slide again. “I thought
that’s what you wanted? You need us.”
“Yeah. So you say.” Petrovitch reached out and took hold of a broken iron beam. He knew it would take his weight, and he swung
up on it. From there, he could regain the summit.
“Petrovitch! I thought you’d be pleased.”
That stopped him. He looked back over his shoulder and shook his head slowly. “What the huy made you think that? Listen to me, because I’m only going to waste my breath saying this once. I don’t care what a bunch of old men—and they are all men, aren’t they?—I don’t care what they say
about Michael, whether they think he has a soul or not, whether he’s worthy enough to be freed or whether he’s going to be
left here to rot for as long as his batteries last, slowly going mad in the dark. He is my friend, and I will not let him
die. Vrubatsa?” He turned to leave, then realized he had one more thing to say.
“What?” said the priest.
“Stay away from Lucy. If I find you’ve so much as glanced in her direction, I’ll gut you from neck to navel with a rusty spoon.
You can tell Cardinal Ximenez that, too.”
“That’s not…” Father John gave up. “You can’t stop them. Your cooperation is not necessary.”
This time, Petrovitch did give the priest his middle finger. “You’re about to find out just how wrong you are.” He climbed
up, and out of sight.
The crowd shifted nervously. They were missing something, but couldn’t tell what. Most of them started to drift away. Others,
the hard-core watchers, decided that they’d wait for someone to tell them what had happened.
Petrovitch shook their hands: solid, Germanic greetings that went on for slightly longer than strictly necessary. The elder
Krenz was a bullet-headed Bavarian with a clear liking for potato dumplings. The younger had sandy hair and an athletic build,
but it was going to be a bruising fight with his genetic inheritance if he wanted to keep them.
“Guten tag, Herren.” Petrovitch looked at their suits, and decided that they were as uncomfortable with them as he was. “Welcome to the Freezone.”
“Thank you,” said the younger man. He looked around the empty dockside—empty but for the one container that had just been
lifted off a ship and onto the quay. “This is ours?”
“Yeah. Sorry for having to drag you all the way over here, but my immigration status is a bit up in the air at the moment.”
“Yes. So I understand.” He hesitated. “What do I call you?”
“Petrovitch will do fine, Herr Krenz. No matter what you’ve heard to the contrary.”
“Doctor Petrovitch, then.” He looked at his father. “We can demonstrate the system for you, mostly wherever you like. We have
included the formers for the five- and fifteen-meter structures, which is the largest we can go without prepared foundations.”
“How about here?” Petrovitch shrugged. “It’s as good a place as any.”
There followed a moment of confusion, while the two Germans conversed in their native tongue.
“We thought that we were going to have a, a larger audience. Sonja Oshicora perhaps. Someone else from the Freezone Authority.”
“Gentlemen. The Freezone Authority’s mandate runs out in a couple of weeks’ time. If this was a demonstration for them, they’d
be here. It’s not: it’s a demonstration for me.” He rubbed at his nose. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“I… nein. No, I mean.”
“I know what you mean. I have a massive online dictionary and grammar checker open, and I can translate pretty much everything
you say, whether it’s in Hochdeutsch, Mandarin or Navaho.” Petrovitch put his hand on the container’s long-levered handle.
“Shall we get on with it?”
Inside the container—very much the size of his old domik—were crates and bundles and, at the back, barrels of solvent and
bulging black bales of granulated polymer. The two Germans started to unroll a large plastic sheet out on the gritty surface
of the quay, while Petrovitch poked around.
He’d seen the company’s videos. He’d seen the pictures of the finished product. What he wanted, almost more than anything,
was to see one for himself.
He dragged the generator out on its sledge, and plugged the industrial fan in. Krenz the elder watched him.
“You have the knowledge, yes?”
“I know pretty much what to do. I could have probably done all this myself, got all the makings for it, but I would have ended
up making the mistakes that you’ve already fixed. I don’t have time to make mistakes, Herr Krenz.”
“You have fear?” He snorted like a bull. “You?”
“I know my reputation precedes me. But I’m not like that, really.” He looked up at Krenz. “I just have a lot on my plate at
the moment.”
“It is not for me to give you the questions.” Krenz checked the fuel gauge on the genny and thumbed the starter button. “I
have one only.”
The motor puttered into life, and he checked its performance by cocking his ear and listening to the quality of the sound
it made.
“The question is this: how will you pay? No Freezone, no EU, no UN. No Oshicora.” Krenz wiped at his bald head. “I meet Samuil
Petrovitch. That is enough for today, but I am not a…” He struggled for the word.
“Charity.” Petrovitch saw that the younger Krenz was attaching tubes to the top of the plastic sheet. Almost ready to inflate.
“Don’t worry, Herr Krenz. If you want money, I’ve got an extensive overdraft.”
“A wass?”
“Credit. Two and a half billion euros’ worth. Should be enough.”
Krenz carried on working, fastening the plastic former to the fan by way of a flexible hose. Then he stopped. “Billion?”
“Yeah. I won’t tell you the bank’s name in case you mention it to them and a human manager takes exception. But their computer
is fine with it.” Petrovitch reached past Krenz and flicked the fan’s switch. The blades cut the air with an audible chop, then it speeded up, sending a draft down
the thick hose and causing the plastic sheet to ripple. The structure started to swell.
“They must find out. Tomorrow. Next week.”
“The line of credit’s only temporary, to be paid back in full tomorrow. In the meantime, if they kick up a fuss, I have a
list of their other customers.” Petrovitch smiled. “It includes some really very unpleasant people, and I’m guessing that
unless they want half of Africa camped out on their doorstep demanding their stolen money back, they won’t want it made public.”
After twenty minutes, a shiny gray hemisphere quivered tautly on the dockside. In the meantime, the Krenzes had cooked up
a batch of filler, and now started to pump it down the tubing.
“How long?” asked Petrovitch over the noise.
Young Krenz answered him. “Half an hour to fill. Five minutes to cure with the ultraviolet light.”
“If I wanted one, I don’t know, a hundred meters across? How would you do that?”
“We do not, we cannot…”
Petrovitch brushed his excuses aside. “The science is sound. It’s just an engineering problem.”
“Why would you want one that big? The domes are connectable. You just build more.”
“I really want one bigger than that. Two hundred, maybe two fifty across. The solution for one hundred will be the same as
for two hundred.”
“But, Doctor. The air former would collapse under the weight of the uncured polymer.”
“Yeah. But you don’t cure as you go, do you? You fill completely, then set it solid with the UV. What if you fixed the bottom part of it even as you were pumping more on top? That’s
how Brunelleschi built his domes. Six hundred years ago.”
“Yes, I understand that. I can only say we have never been asked to build one as big before now.” Young Krenz frowned. “Why
would you want to?”
“Because,” said Petrovitch, “I saw it in a dream. Then when I had the time to look into it, I found your company. They’re
exactly the same. Just smaller.”
“But a two-hundred-meter dome? You could put a village under it.”
“Yeah. Something like that. Along with heat exchangers, a water reclamation system, hydroponics, air scrubbers. You do a passive
photochromic coating for when it gets sunny, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t do a translucent photovoltaic one instead.
It’s pretty much free off-grid power. Use it to make hydrogen and store it for a fuel-cell power plant.”
Older Krenz interrupted. “Herr Doktor. Why do you need us at all?”
“I could steal your tech. I could buy your company. Or I can behave like a decent human being for once and trade with you
rather than ripping you off or taking over. Why don’t we wait until we’re ready before we talk terms?”
The pump finished filling the space between the two skins of the former, and the UV tubes already underneath flashed darkly
into life. Petrovitch rested his hand on the gray outside and felt the warmth of the uncured resin. He pulled his hand away,
only to see the slight impression remain. It had gone hard already, and had preserved his palm-print for posterity.
He turned around. Older Krenz had an old-fashioned stopwatch which he turned face out toward him.
“You must wait. Three minutes.”
He reluctantly backed away and, at the end of three minutes, the Krenzes set to work on the former, disconnecting the pipes
and cutting through the thick plastic sheeting with short, curved knives. Petrovitch made a mental note that the formers he
was going to use ought to be reusable.
They disconnected the fan and turned off the generator. After the constant noise, the silence was profound. There were sounds
in the distance—the heavy, rhythmic thud of a pile-driver, the light chatter of a road-drill, and from across the river, traffic
and sirens—but nothing to distract him from the imminent unveiling.
Young Krenz took one side, his father the other, and together they peeled the outer covering off the dome. The internal former
had fallen away. All that was left was a trick of the light, an optical illusion.
The material was crystal clear: only the lensing effect made its presence visible. Petrovitch walked forward, the fingers
of one hand stretched out in front of him, stepping slowly until his fingertips brushed against a smooth, oily surface. He
left smears that seemed to hang in mid-air.
“Yobany stos.”
He paced around it, watching the way the images of the Krenzes warped and shifted through the plastic shell, until he arrived
back at the start.
“Is it what you wanted?” asked Young Krenz.
Petrovitch hesitated before answering. In a moment, he was old again, looking down on a shoreline that was pocked with domes,
while above him in the blue sky, flecks of light were rising out of sight. He was dying, and he didn’t care.
“Yeah.” He didn’t need to imagine what it would look like scaled up. He’d already seen it. “Let’s deal.”
He offered them straight cash, in return for a licensing deal, access to their plans and their suppliers. He offered them
enough that Young Krenz assumed that his father was going to take it, but Older Krenz had other ideas.
“I would make you a hundred-meter dome. I would that you show me the way to make it. I believe that, yes, we make playhouses
and greenhouses and swimming pool covers, but we can make them bigger? You show me how. You show me these coatings. We are
family business: small and reliable, but not…”
“Imaginative,” interrupted Young Krenz. He looked rueful, as if he’d had this conversation a hundred times before.
“Yes, yes, that. You tell us how to build bigger, and we will do it for you.”
“I won’t be asking for just one dome. I’ll want several to start with, then more. I want to be able to do this myself. With
help, sure, but something that a few people can put up in a day or so. Are you worried that I’m going to set up in competition
against you?”
Krenz nodded.
“Herr Krenz, in two weeks’ time, I’m going to need somewhere else to live. When the Metrozone Authority takes over, it’ll
be a matter of hours before I’m dragged in front of a judge on one extradition warrant or another. I’m not interested in Petrovitch
Industries, I’m interested in my own survival. So, how about this? I will give you everything I can think of. Every last technical
detail of every innovation I can come up with. In return, you do the same for me. Everything. No hiding anything to get a commercial advantage,
because there won’t be any. You’ll be the only one selling Krenz domes. Think you can do that?”
“A… what is the word?”
“Partnership. I think.”
The Krenzes looked at each other across the quayside, and at the smaller figure standing between them.
“Okay. Where do you want the first one built?”
Petrovitch started to laugh, and he laughed so hard that his lungs ached. “That, gentlemen, I can’t tell you.”
“But…”
“Because I don’t exactly know.”
“You do not know?”
“Not yet.”
“How can we then go forward?”
Petrovitch dug his hands in his pockets. “Go home. Order formers for a hundred-meter dome. A dozen of them. Get all the stuff
together that you’ll need—I’ll send instructions for the extra kit. Then you wait for my call. If it clicks past two weeks
and I’m all over the news chained up in an orange jumpsuit, you’ll have to assume the deal’s off.”
“We will be rich, or bankrupt.” Young Krenz digested the news, and Older Krenz scratched at his head. “This is not a choice
I wanted to have.”
“That’s fine. I’ll give you two million up front.” Petrovitch blin. . .
was turning again. His breath condensed in numinous clouds, breaking apart against his greatcoat and turning into sparkling
drops of dew that clung and shivered on the thick green cloth.
He had a route: he knew which of the fallen metal beams would support his weight, and which of them would pitch him into a
lake of broken glass; that concrete slab was unstable, but this seemingly inconsequential block rested on solid ground. He’d
programmed it in, and it showed as a series of waymarkers, of handholds and foot-fasts, but only to him. It had been dangerous,
winning that knowledge.
Dangerous to the extent that he was surprised to see another man making his way toward the summit from the other side. No
one else had ever tried it before, though he’d never indicated that no one could. It wasn’t like the remains of the Oshicora
Tower were his in any moral or legal way.
That he had company had to mean something, but he’d have to wait to find out what.
He wasn’t going to let this novelty get in the way of his ritual, performed as he had done every day at the same time for
the previous three hundred and forty-eight days. He carried on climbing, barely having to think about his muscles, letting
the weight and carry of his body fall into a series of familiar, learned movements.
He used the time to think about other things instead: on how his life had gone, how it was now and how, in the future that
he was trying to shape, it might change. His face twitched, one corner of his mouth twisting slightly: the ghost of a smile,
nothing more. He was haunted by a vision that held almost limitless promise, yet still stubbornly refused to come into being.
He was almost there, but not quite: figuratively and literally. The summit of the ruins of the Oshicora Tower was in sight,
turned by his successive visits into a hollow crown of arching, twisted steel. He stepped up and over, and was already searching
for something symbolic to throw.
He kicked at the surface detritus, at the pulverized dust and the shattered glass, the cracked ceiling tiles and strips of
carpet, the broken particleboard and bare wires—all the things the tower contained before it was collapsed by cruise missiles.
There was the edge of a plastic chair. He reached down and lifted it up, pulling it free. It was pink, and had become separated
from its wheeled base. It was cracked almost in half, but not quite. It would do.
He took it to the precipice, and held it up over his head. It had become street theater for the crowds below, but that wasn’t why he was doing it. When he’d started a year ago, it had been raining horizontally and he’d been soaked to the skin.
There had been just Lucy and Tabletop and Valentina as witnesses. He hadn’t even told them what he was doing: he’d have preferred
to be entirely alone on that first day, but they hadn’t let him. After that, it had taken on a life of its own, with thousands
now surrounding the wide ring of rubble to watch him ceremonially, futilely, try to dig out the AI buried underneath.
They came, he climbed, he picked something up from the top and threw it to the ground. He descended, and they went. Pretty
much it.
He flexed his arms. The pink seat flew through the crisp, still air, trailing dust. It bounced and tumbled, picking up speed
as it fell. It pitched into the crowd, who ducked and dodged as it whirled by. It disappeared behind a mass of bodies, and
he lost interest in it. Six weeks ago, he’d accidentally hit someone with the edge of a desk, but they’d come back the next
day with a bandaged head and a shine in their eyes.
He wasn’t sure what to make of that sort of… devotion.
Petrovitch was about to turn and head back down when he remembered one of them was coming up to meet him. Because it was the
first time it had happened, he wasn’t quite sure how to react. He wasn’t beholden to anyone, anyone at all. He could just
go, or he could stay.
He looked out over the crowd. Normally, they’d be dispersing by now: he’d thrown his thing, his image had been captured by
innumerable cameras and streamed for a global audience. They should go. They all had jobs to do, because that was why they
were in the Freezone.
But they were staying, watching the figure scrabble forward, slide back just as far. Petrovitch was uncertain whether the crowd were willing him on or trying to haul him down
with their thoughts.
He sat down, his legs dangling free over the edge of the rubble. It was risky, certainly. Part of him realized it and relished
it. It wasn’t as if the remains were in any way stabilized. They would, and did, occasionally shift.
The man making his way up was taking a yebani long time. The clock in the corner of his vision counted out the seconds and minutes, and a quick consultation with his diary
told him he needed to be somewhere on the other side of the Freezone in an hour.
“Are you going to get on with it, or should I come back tomorrow?” he called down.
The man’s face turned upward, and Petrovitch’s heart spun just a little faster.
“You could come and help me,” said the man.
“Why should I make it easy for you? You never made it easy for me.”
“You could have asked for someone else to officiate.” He stopped and straightened up, giving Petrovitch a good view of the
white clerical collar tucked around the neck of his black shirt.
“Madeleine wouldn’t have anyone else. And whether she was punishing you or me, I still haven’t worked out.”
“Both, probably.” The priest scrubbed at his face. He was sweating, despite the cold. “We need to talk.”
“It’s not like I’ve been hiding.”
“We need to talk, now.”
“I’m not shouting the rest of the conversation.”
“Then help me.”
Petrovitch considered matters. It’d be entirely reasonable to raise his middle finger and strand the priest on the side of an unstable rubble pile, leaving him the equally difficult
climb down.
“I should tell you to otvali.”
“But you won’t. You’re tired, Petrovitch. The things you want most in the world are just as much out of your reach as they
ever were.”
Perhaps it was true. Perhaps he’d grown weary of continual confrontation. Perhaps he had, despite himself, changed.
“Meh.” He jumped down and slithered the ten meters between them, closing the distance in bare seconds. He tucked his coat-tails
underneath him and sat down where he’d stopped. “Here’s good. Say what you have to say. Better still, say why you couldn’t
have said it anywhere else. Unless you crave a ready-made audience.” Petrovitch frowned and sent virtual agents scurrying
across the local network nodes. “You’re not wired, are you?”
“Priests, above everyone else, should be able to keep secrets.” Father John looked around him for a suitable perch, and Petrovitch
rolled his eyes: servos whirred, and tiny pumps squeezed some more moisture out to coat the hard surfaces of the implants.
“It’s not comfortable for me, and I don’t care if it is for you. I have somewhere else to be soon enough, so you haven’t got
me for long.”
The father crouched down on his haunches and tried to sit. He started to slip, and Petrovitch’s arm slammed, not gently, across
his chest. It forced him onto his backside.
“Plant your feet, you mudak. Be certain.” When he was sure the priest wasn’t going to start a landslide, he put his hand back in his lap. “It’s all about
confidence, misplaced or otherwise.”
“A metaphor for your life?” Father John rocked slightly from side to side, trying and failing to create a buttock-shaped depression
underneath him.
“Poydi’k chertu. It’s worked well enough so far.”
“So far,” said Father John, “but not any longer. You’re stuck, aren’t you?”
“Jebat moi lisiy cherep.”
“And if you’d stop swearing at me and listen, I might be able to help.” He risked falling to gesture at the people below.
“So might they.”
“I…” started Petrovitch. He looked at the crowd. He zoomed in and panned across their faces. He could have, if he’d wanted,
named every one of them from the Freezone database. “They come here, day after day, and they don’t say anything. None of them
ever say what they want.”
“You must have some idea.”
“I haven’t got a yebani clue.” Petrovitch shrugged. “I’ve never been too good at the human stuff.”
“That much is true. Did it never occur to you to speak to them? That that’s what they’re expecting?”
Petrovitch’s mouth twitched again, and he pushed his finger up the bridge of his nose to adjust his non-existent glasses.
“What?”
“For the love of God, man.” It was the priest’s turn to be exasperated. “You might be reviled by every politician from the
Urals westward, but they,” and he pointed downward again, “they love you. You saved them. Twice. The ones who actually think
about it know they owe their lives to you. Even those that don’t think you’re a living saint are indebted to you to a degree
that any leader, religious or secular, would give their eye teeth for.”
“I don’t ask for it or need it.”
“Yes, you do. You come up here every day and do this, this thing that you do. You know it’s futile, pointless even. You could
have spent your time lobbying the EU, the UN, but as far as I know, you haven’t talked to anyone about what’s trapped under
here.”
“Not what. Who. He has a name.” Petrovitch felt the old anger rise up, but he knew how to deal with it. Breathe slowly, control
the spin of his heart, play a brainwave pattern designed to mimic relaxation.
“Michael,” said the father. “That girl said…”
“She has a name too. Lucy.”
The priest looked troubled for a moment.
“We’re not talking about Lucy now. Or ever. So stick to the subject because the clock’s ticking.”
“How long is it going to take you to dig out Michael from under here, using your bare hands?”
Petrovitch leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “When you say the magic words over your bread and wine, is it
you who changes them to body and blood?” He knew he was on controversial territory, but he was doing more than enough to pay
for the right, just by sitting and listening.
“No. It’s by the power of the Holy Spirit—not that I expect you to believe that.”
“So why say the words at all?”
“Because the words are important.”
“And you have the answer to your question.” Petrovitch stroked his nose. “This is a symbol.”
“But it has no efficacy.”
“What?”
“This. This throwing something down off this mountain. You’ll be dead before you finish and the A… and Michael will still be trapped. The sacraments have the power to
save. This is nothing but an empty gesture.” Father John waved his hands in the air, to indicate just how great the nothingness
was.
“One man’s empty gesture is another’s meaningful ritual.” Petrovitch pursed his lips. “You don’t want to go down that road.
Not with me.”
The priest pulled a face. “Look, I’ve been sent here. Sent here to ask you a question, and this is the only time you’re ever
alone.”
“It’s not like my answer is going to change in company.” His interest was piqued, though. “Who sent you?”
“The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”
Petrovitch raised his eyebrows. “The Inquisition? That’s unexpected.”
“Give it a rest. They haven’t been called the Inquisition for over fifty years.”
“So what do they want?”
“They want to know whether Michael can be considered to be alive. And if he is, does he have a soul?”
“Really? He’s been trapped under this mound of rubble for almost a year and it’s only now they decide to take any notice.
Where have they been?” He snorted. “Up their own collective zhopu?”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” said the priest. “They’ve been doing nothing but debate this since the Long Night. What
if an AI shows signs of independent, creative thought? What if it can empathize? What if it has the capacity for generosity,
altruism, compassion?”
“I could have given them the answers eleven months ago.”
“That’s not the point. They needed to decide theoretically about all those what-ifs. If it could, what should we do about
it, if anything? They have,” and he hesitated, “a protocol they’ve drawn up. A sort of Turing test, except it doesn’t measure
intelligence. It measures animus.”
“So the Vatican wants to know if Michael is a spiritual being, or the equivalent of meat.” Petrovitch blinked. “Yobany stos. They want to know if it can be saved.”
“Something like that. The Holy Father ratified the protocol last night. The Congregation called me straightaway. They haven’t
been sitting on their hands; for the Church, this counts as indecent haste.”
Petrovitch considered matters, then made his decision.
“No,” he said.
“No? I haven’t even told you what the Congregation wants.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He got up and brushed the tails of his coat down. “The answer’s the same. I’m not playing.”
“If the Church declares Michael ensouled, then there’s a moral duty laid on every Catholic to help free it.” Father John tried
to stand too, but Petrovitch had moved far enough away to be out of reach. The priest’s feet started to slide again. “I thought
that’s what you wanted? You need us.”
“Yeah. So you say.” Petrovitch reached out and took hold of a broken iron beam. He knew it would take his weight, and he swung
up on it. From there, he could regain the summit.
“Petrovitch! I thought you’d be pleased.”
That stopped him. He looked back over his shoulder and shook his head slowly. “What the huy made you think that? Listen to me, because I’m only going to waste my breath saying this once. I don’t care what a bunch of old men—and they are all men, aren’t they?—I don’t care what they say
about Michael, whether they think he has a soul or not, whether he’s worthy enough to be freed or whether he’s going to be
left here to rot for as long as his batteries last, slowly going mad in the dark. He is my friend, and I will not let him
die. Vrubatsa?” He turned to leave, then realized he had one more thing to say.
“What?” said the priest.
“Stay away from Lucy. If I find you’ve so much as glanced in her direction, I’ll gut you from neck to navel with a rusty spoon.
You can tell Cardinal Ximenez that, too.”
“That’s not…” Father John gave up. “You can’t stop them. Your cooperation is not necessary.”
This time, Petrovitch did give the priest his middle finger. “You’re about to find out just how wrong you are.” He climbed
up, and out of sight.
The crowd shifted nervously. They were missing something, but couldn’t tell what. Most of them started to drift away. Others,
the hard-core watchers, decided that they’d wait for someone to tell them what had happened.
Petrovitch shook their hands: solid, Germanic greetings that went on for slightly longer than strictly necessary. The elder
Krenz was a bullet-headed Bavarian with a clear liking for potato dumplings. The younger had sandy hair and an athletic build,
but it was going to be a bruising fight with his genetic inheritance if he wanted to keep them.
“Guten tag, Herren.” Petrovitch looked at their suits, and decided that they were as uncomfortable with them as he was. “Welcome to the Freezone.”
“Thank you,” said the younger man. He looked around the empty dockside—empty but for the one container that had just been
lifted off a ship and onto the quay. “This is ours?”
“Yeah. Sorry for having to drag you all the way over here, but my immigration status is a bit up in the air at the moment.”
“Yes. So I understand.” He hesitated. “What do I call you?”
“Petrovitch will do fine, Herr Krenz. No matter what you’ve heard to the contrary.”
“Doctor Petrovitch, then.” He looked at his father. “We can demonstrate the system for you, mostly wherever you like. We have
included the formers for the five- and fifteen-meter structures, which is the largest we can go without prepared foundations.”
“How about here?” Petrovitch shrugged. “It’s as good a place as any.”
There followed a moment of confusion, while the two Germans conversed in their native tongue.
“We thought that we were going to have a, a larger audience. Sonja Oshicora perhaps. Someone else from the Freezone Authority.”
“Gentlemen. The Freezone Authority’s mandate runs out in a couple of weeks’ time. If this was a demonstration for them, they’d
be here. It’s not: it’s a demonstration for me.” He rubbed at his nose. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“I… nein. No, I mean.”
“I know what you mean. I have a massive online dictionary and grammar checker open, and I can translate pretty much everything
you say, whether it’s in Hochdeutsch, Mandarin or Navaho.” Petrovitch put his hand on the container’s long-levered handle.
“Shall we get on with it?”
Inside the container—very much the size of his old domik—were crates and bundles and, at the back, barrels of solvent and
bulging black bales of granulated polymer. The two Germans started to unroll a large plastic sheet out on the gritty surface
of the quay, while Petrovitch poked around.
He’d seen the company’s videos. He’d seen the pictures of the finished product. What he wanted, almost more than anything,
was to see one for himself.
He dragged the generator out on its sledge, and plugged the industrial fan in. Krenz the elder watched him.
“You have the knowledge, yes?”
“I know pretty much what to do. I could have probably done all this myself, got all the makings for it, but I would have ended
up making the mistakes that you’ve already fixed. I don’t have time to make mistakes, Herr Krenz.”
“You have fear?” He snorted like a bull. “You?”
“I know my reputation precedes me. But I’m not like that, really.” He looked up at Krenz. “I just have a lot on my plate at
the moment.”
“It is not for me to give you the questions.” Krenz checked the fuel gauge on the genny and thumbed the starter button. “I
have one only.”
The motor puttered into life, and he checked its performance by cocking his ear and listening to the quality of the sound
it made.
“The question is this: how will you pay? No Freezone, no EU, no UN. No Oshicora.” Krenz wiped at his bald head. “I meet Samuil
Petrovitch. That is enough for today, but I am not a…” He struggled for the word.
“Charity.” Petrovitch saw that the younger Krenz was attaching tubes to the top of the plastic sheet. Almost ready to inflate.
“Don’t worry, Herr Krenz. If you want money, I’ve got an extensive overdraft.”
“A wass?”
“Credit. Two and a half billion euros’ worth. Should be enough.”
Krenz carried on working, fastening the plastic former to the fan by way of a flexible hose. Then he stopped. “Billion?”
“Yeah. I won’t tell you the bank’s name in case you mention it to them and a human manager takes exception. But their computer
is fine with it.” Petrovitch reached past Krenz and flicked the fan’s switch. The blades cut the air with an audible chop, then it speeded up, sending a draft down
the thick hose and causing the plastic sheet to ripple. The structure started to swell.
“They must find out. Tomorrow. Next week.”
“The line of credit’s only temporary, to be paid back in full tomorrow. In the meantime, if they kick up a fuss, I have a
list of their other customers.” Petrovitch smiled. “It includes some really very unpleasant people, and I’m guessing that
unless they want half of Africa camped out on their doorstep demanding their stolen money back, they won’t want it made public.”
After twenty minutes, a shiny gray hemisphere quivered tautly on the dockside. In the meantime, the Krenzes had cooked up
a batch of filler, and now started to pump it down the tubing.
“How long?” asked Petrovitch over the noise.
Young Krenz answered him. “Half an hour to fill. Five minutes to cure with the ultraviolet light.”
“If I wanted one, I don’t know, a hundred meters across? How would you do that?”
“We do not, we cannot…”
Petrovitch brushed his excuses aside. “The science is sound. It’s just an engineering problem.”
“Why would you want one that big? The domes are connectable. You just build more.”
“I really want one bigger than that. Two hundred, maybe two fifty across. The solution for one hundred will be the same as
for two hundred.”
“But, Doctor. The air former would collapse under the weight of the uncured polymer.”
“Yeah. But you don’t cure as you go, do you? You fill completely, then set it solid with the UV. What if you fixed the bottom part of it even as you were pumping more on top? That’s
how Brunelleschi built his domes. Six hundred years ago.”
“Yes, I understand that. I can only say we have never been asked to build one as big before now.” Young Krenz frowned. “Why
would you want to?”
“Because,” said Petrovitch, “I saw it in a dream. Then when I had the time to look into it, I found your company. They’re
exactly the same. Just smaller.”
“But a two-hundred-meter dome? You could put a village under it.”
“Yeah. Something like that. Along with heat exchangers, a water reclamation system, hydroponics, air scrubbers. You do a passive
photochromic coating for when it gets sunny, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t do a translucent photovoltaic one instead.
It’s pretty much free off-grid power. Use it to make hydrogen and store it for a fuel-cell power plant.”
Older Krenz interrupted. “Herr Doktor. Why do you need us at all?”
“I could steal your tech. I could buy your company. Or I can behave like a decent human being for once and trade with you
rather than ripping you off or taking over. Why don’t we wait until we’re ready before we talk terms?”
The pump finished filling the space between the two skins of the former, and the UV tubes already underneath flashed darkly
into life. Petrovitch rested his hand on the gray outside and felt the warmth of the uncured resin. He pulled his hand away,
only to see the slight impression remain. It had gone hard already, and had preserved his palm-print for posterity.
He turned around. Older Krenz had an old-fashioned stopwatch which he turned face out toward him.
“You must wait. Three minutes.”
He reluctantly backed away and, at the end of three minutes, the Krenzes set to work on the former, disconnecting the pipes
and cutting through the thick plastic sheeting with short, curved knives. Petrovitch made a mental note that the formers he
was going to use ought to be reusable.
They disconnected the fan and turned off the generator. After the constant noise, the silence was profound. There were sounds
in the distance—the heavy, rhythmic thud of a pile-driver, the light chatter of a road-drill, and from across the river, traffic
and sirens—but nothing to distract him from the imminent unveiling.
Young Krenz took one side, his father the other, and together they peeled the outer covering off the dome. The internal former
had fallen away. All that was left was a trick of the light, an optical illusion.
The material was crystal clear: only the lensing effect made its presence visible. Petrovitch walked forward, the fingers
of one hand stretched out in front of him, stepping slowly until his fingertips brushed against a smooth, oily surface. He
left smears that seemed to hang in mid-air.
“Yobany stos.”
He paced around it, watching the way the images of the Krenzes warped and shifted through the plastic shell, until he arrived
back at the start.
“Is it what you wanted?” asked Young Krenz.
Petrovitch hesitated before answering. In a moment, he was old again, looking down on a shoreline that was pocked with domes,
while above him in the blue sky, flecks of light were rising out of sight. He was dying, and he didn’t care.
“Yeah.” He didn’t need to imagine what it would look like scaled up. He’d already seen it. “Let’s deal.”
He offered them straight cash, in return for a licensing deal, access to their plans and their suppliers. He offered them
enough that Young Krenz assumed that his father was going to take it, but Older Krenz had other ideas.
“I would make you a hundred-meter dome. I would that you show me the way to make it. I believe that, yes, we make playhouses
and greenhouses and swimming pool covers, but we can make them bigger? You show me how. You show me these coatings. We are
family business: small and reliable, but not…”
“Imaginative,” interrupted Young Krenz. He looked rueful, as if he’d had this conversation a hundred times before.
“Yes, yes, that. You tell us how to build bigger, and we will do it for you.”
“I won’t be asking for just one dome. I’ll want several to start with, then more. I want to be able to do this myself. With
help, sure, but something that a few people can put up in a day or so. Are you worried that I’m going to set up in competition
against you?”
Krenz nodded.
“Herr Krenz, in two weeks’ time, I’m going to need somewhere else to live. When the Metrozone Authority takes over, it’ll
be a matter of hours before I’m dragged in front of a judge on one extradition warrant or another. I’m not interested in Petrovitch
Industries, I’m interested in my own survival. So, how about this? I will give you everything I can think of. Every last technical
detail of every innovation I can come up with. In return, you do the same for me. Everything. No hiding anything to get a commercial advantage,
because there won’t be any. You’ll be the only one selling Krenz domes. Think you can do that?”
“A… what is the word?”
“Partnership. I think.”
The Krenzes looked at each other across the quayside, and at the smaller figure standing between them.
“Okay. Where do you want the first one built?”
Petrovitch started to laugh, and he laughed so hard that his lungs ached. “That, gentlemen, I can’t tell you.”
“But…”
“Because I don’t exactly know.”
“You do not know?”
“Not yet.”
“How can we then go forward?”
Petrovitch dug his hands in his pockets. “Go home. Order formers for a hundred-meter dome. A dozen of them. Get all the stuff
together that you’ll need—I’ll send instructions for the extra kit. Then you wait for my call. If it clicks past two weeks
and I’m all over the news chained up in an orange jumpsuit, you’ll have to assume the deal’s off.”
“We will be rich, or bankrupt.” Young Krenz digested the news, and Older Krenz scratched at his head. “This is not a choice
I wanted to have.”
“That’s fine. I’ll give you two million up front.” Petrovitch blin. . .
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