The Petrovitch Trilogy

Book 0: Samuil Petrovitch

by Simon Morden

Genres: Action & Adventure; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Hard Science Fiction

Synopsis

Welcome to the Metrozone -- post-apocalyptic London of the future. While the rest of Britain has devolved to anarchy, the M25 cordon protects a decaying city filled with homeless refugees, street gangs, exiled yakuza, crooked cops and mad cults. And something else; something new and dangerous. Enter Samuil Petrovitch: a Russian émigré with a smart mouth, a dodgy heart and a dodgier past. He's brilliant, friendless, cocky and -- armed only with a genius-level intellect, prototype cyberware and a prodigious vocabulary of Russian swear words -- might just be most unlikely champion a city has ever had. Welcome to the future. Mind the gap.

Release date: March 12, 2013

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 1088

Sample

Petrovitch wanted to be alone, to worry and to brood, but he was part of the Freezone collective and that meant never having to be alone again. Company was built in, through the links they wore. Except for him. He didn’t wear a link: he was so connected that, at times, it felt like it wore him.

So he’d taken himself off so he could pretend – not far, just to the top of the hill which overlooked the collection of different-sized domes below. The narrow strip of land before the sea looked like a collection of luminous pearls cradled in the darkness of a winter night.

He’d reached the summit, as determined by at least four satellites spinning overhead, and sat down on the wet, flowing grass to wait. He faced the ocean and felt the first tug of an Atlantic gale stiffen the cloak he’d thrown around him.

[Sasha?]

“Yobany stos.” He’d been there for what? A minute? Less. “When there’s news, vrubatsa? Otherwise past’ zabej.”

He hunched over and stared at the horizon. The last vestiges of twilight were fading into the south-west, but the moon was almost full behind the racing clouds. Enough light for him to see by, at least, even if the climb up would have been crazy for anyone else.

Somewhere over there, over the curve of the Earth, was his daughter, his Lucy, and she had been out of contact for fifty-eight hours and forty-five minutes.

These things happened. Once in a while, the link technology they all carried failed. It meant a break in what kept each individual bound together with the rest of the collective, and a quick trip to the stores for a replacement.

White plastic pressed against bare flesh. A connection restored, and the collective was complete once more.

Lucy was beyond the reach of any Freezone storeroom. She was on the other side of the world, and even he couldn’t just pop over and present her with another link. There were difficulties and complications, not entirely of his own making.

The clock in the corner of his vision ticked on, counting the seconds. Relying on other people still didn’t sit easily with him, though he’d had a decade to get used to the idea. Relying on the Americans and their ultra-conservative, hyper-patriotic, quasi-fascistic, crypto-theocratic Reconstructionist government?

His heart spun faster just thinking about it. They had a joint past, one that barely rose above mutual loathing, and he was certain there was something they weren’t telling him. There’d been – a what? At this distance it was difficult to tell. The Freezone had only just started the laborious process of gathering the raw data and trying to fashion meaning from it.

He pulled his cloak tighter around him, not for warmth but for comfort.

[Sasha?]

There was a figure standing next to him, dark-clothed, white-faced. It hadn’t been there a moment before, and it wasn’t really there now. It stared west with the same troubled hope that Petrovitch had.

[There’s,] and the voice hesitated. It hardly ever hesitated. The only times it ever hesitated were when it was dealing with meat-stuff. Important meat-stuff.

“What?”

[There’s been a development.]

“Tell me.”

[There is no sign of Lucy.]

“Yeah. That figures.” Petrovitch clenched his jaw and bared his teeth. “Where the huy is she?”

[The search-and-rescue team’s initial findings do not indicate the actions of any outside agency.]

“They wouldn’t, would they? I knew it. I knew it was a mistake to let her go. I should have—”

[Forbidden it?] said Michael, looking down on Petrovitch. [She is twenty-four years old and an autonomous citizen of the Freezone.]

“She’s still my responsibility.”

[Not by law or custom. Need I remind you what you were doing when you were twenty-four? Or when you were eighteen?]

Petrovitch fumed. “It’s not the same.”

[Sasha, we will find her.]

“Of course we will. Tell me what they’re saying.”

[That at eleven fifteen local time, a search-and-rescue team comprising USAF, Alaskan police and University of Alaska personnel, flying out of Eielson Air Force Base, conducted a preliminary search of the University of Alaska Fairbanks North Slope research station. The single known occupant of that research station, Dr Lucy Petrovitch, was not located despite a thorough search of all the solid structures. There was nothing to indicate that she had either left the station on an expedition, or been forced to leave against her will. A search of the immediate area has commenced, though it will be necessarily limited in scope.]

“What the huy does that mean?”

[It means they have four hours of daylight in any twenty-four-hour period, and the air force transport must return to base. An overland expedition is being arranged. They estimate it will arrive in a week,] and Michael paused again. [Which seems unnecessarily delayed. I will attempt to ascertain a reason for this.]

Petrovitch felt impotent rage rise like a spring tide. His skin pricked with sweat.

[Talk to me, Sasha,] said Michael. [Tell me what you’re thinking.]

Lucy’s link was standard Freezone issue. Satellite enabled, always on, not just reliable, but dependable: powered by the heat from her body.

“They don’t go wrong. They just don’t.” He looked up at Michael’s avatar, framed against the silver-lined clouds. “She took a spare. I made her, because I’m a good father. And neither of them are working.”

To prove the point, he pinged her machine – both of them. He got nothing, and there was so rarely nothing.

“Something’s happened. I want to know what. I want to know now.”

[How many of our protocols are we going to break this time?] asked Michael. “As a point of reference? More than the Baku incident?”

[More than Beirut. We’re going to break them all if we have to. Assemble an ad-hoc. They can decide.]

Michael polled the Freezone collective and selected five names with the required expertise and wisdom. There was no need to wait for them to assemble, exchange pleasantries, enquire about the kids; that wasn’t what an ad-hoc was about. He’d been in enough to know the score.

There were preliminaries, though: for the record.

[Welcome, Freezone ad-hoc committee number four thousand seven hundred and ninety-two, convened on February fifth, twenty thirty-four, at twenty forty-eight Universal Time to discuss the preliminary response of the Freezone to the disappearance of Lucy Petrovitch. Please state your names.]

The five people could be anywhere on the planet. They could be in the mother dome in Cork, or planting electric trees in the Sahara. It didn’t matter.

“Mohammed al-Ghazi.”

“Stephan Moltzman.”

“Jessica Levantine.”

“Gracious Mendelane.”

“Tabletop.”

Petrovitch blinked. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey, Sam.”

She shouldn’t have been on the ad-hoc. Though she was one of the few North Americans they had, it was a veritable United Nations as it was. The point being, it was personal for her. She was Lucy’s big sister in all but name. She wasn’t going to even pretend to be impartial.

He used a backchannel to talk to Michael. “Are you sure about this?”

[You don’t get to question the make-up of the ad-hoc, Sasha. That’s one protocol you don’t get to break.]

That was him told.

Addressing the committee, Michael gave them bald facts: shortly after midnight, three days ago, Lucy Petrovitch lost contact with the Freezone. That she had been conducting research on Alaska’s frozen, dark North Slope was a complicating factor, but not the primary concern.

The point was, she’d vanished. And no one seemed to be in any particular rush to find her.

[We need to decide what assets we dedicate to the search, and how they are best deployed.]

Human minds worked differently to Michael’s. There was a long gap before anyone spoke.

“I would say, we do everything, despite the Americans,” said Mendelane, “but it cannot be denied that we require – at the very least – the co-operation of the relevant authorities. We must tread carefully.”

“She is one of us,” said al-Ghazi. Where he was, he could see the same sky as Petrovitch, the same Moon illuminating the tops of the electric trees as they cooled and clicked in the Saharan night. “There is no question of us doing nothing. Would they permit Freezone personnel in Alaska? Or our proxies?”

[I will pass on a request to the US State Department,] said Michael. [You must decide whether we ask, or whether we insist. And if we insist, how forcefully we put our demands.]

“I would be cautious,” said Mendelane.

“I wouldn’t,” said Tabletop. “I’d threaten them with everything we can, and if that’s not enough, we make shit up until they give in. Look, Lucy’s not the sort of kid – not the sort of woman – to go wandering into the night in her slippers and dressing gown, especially when that night lasts for twenty-plus hours and it’s fifteen below. If they’re not interested in looking for her, we’ll do it instead. We could have a team on the ground by tomorrow morning.”

“The university said it would take them a week,” said Moltzman. Petrovitch didn’t know him personally, just his reputation score, which was a respectable eighty-something. “Why would they say that if, firstly, a military search-and-rescue could be deployed in hours, and secondly, they know we could do it faster, with most of our people half a world away?”

[That is a good question,] noted Michael, and Moltzman’s pregnant rep birthed another point. [I can suggest some possible answers, but assigning probabilities to them will take time if I am to be accurate.]

“It’s because she’s a Petrovitch,” said Tabletop. “This whole thing was a set-up from start to finish: the original invitation, which she should have refused, the fact that she was alone, in winter, in the dark, in an isolated location. I said she shouldn’t go.”

[An ad-hoc said she should accept.]

“They were wrong!”

[Samuil Petrovitch was on that ad-hoc,] Michael reminded her, reminded them all. [He agreed with the decision made then.]

“That’s come back to bite him on the arse, hasn’t it?” She lapsed into sullen silence, and the dead air that followed stretched uncomfortably.

There was another protocol surrounding the ad-hocs, that the petitioner wasn’t supposed to speak on their own initiative: they could answer questions, clarify positions, discuss motivations. But not be an advocate, and certainly not grandstand. The committee members weren’t a jury, and an ad-hoc wasn’t a court.

Petrovitch held his nerve, and his tongue.

[It may have been that the ad-hoc was not in possession of all necessary information, although I did my best at the time.] Having slapped him down once, Michael was now taking responsibility for Petrovitch’s piss-poor judgement. [That also may be the case here: however, this is the way we decided we would conduct our decision-making, and if you do not come to a consensus, I will dismiss you and convene another ad-hoc.]

“No,” said al-Ghazi quickly. “We will decide.” He had no way of knowing if he was in the first ad-hoc or the tenth: the Berber tribesman had embraced the nature of the Freezone’s ad-hocracy with all the fervour of a convert, and he’d been called on to play his part.

[We have not heard from one of the committee. If you please, Mrs Levantine.]

“Well now,” she said, and Petrovitch imagined her leaning back in her chair, knitting needles maintaining a steady click-clack rhythm. She didn’t knit out of utility, but out of respect for the craft. “Lucy’s the age of my eldest granddaughter, and I know she hasn’t got her birth mother or father to worry about her, but she has Sam and Madeleine, and all of us instead. She never struck me as a silly girl: a little too serious for her own good, if you ask me, so I agree with Tabletop. She wouldn’t walk out of a safe place for any reason except a very good reason. So either someone took her, or she was persuaded – by someone else or her own mind.”

“You think she is still alive,” said Mendelane, “despite what an extended break in linking usually means?”

“Oh, for certain. No one would take the trouble of going all that way just to, you know, hurt her.”

“Will whoever has her look after her? Until we find her?”

“Well now,” she said again. “We can hope, can’t we?”

Moltzman cleared his throat. “So, what do we need to do? Demand in the strongest possible terms that the authorities treat her disappearance as a crime, not as accidental or negligent. That they put all reasonable effort into finding her…”

“Strike ‘reasonable’,” said Tabletop. “They need to prove to us they’re doing everything they can. Missing persons is an FBI thing: we want nothing less than someone on the ground, up on the North Slope, directing local assets.”

“One of us or one of them?” asked Moltzman.

“Both,” said Tabletop emphatically. “We watch over their shoulder so we know it’s being done right.”

[Does everyone agree to this course of action?] Michael tabulated the votes, and reported back the result. [The committee is unanimous. The question remains, who do we send?]

“I will go,” offered al-Ghazi. “I would be honoured to accept the duty.”

Honoured he might be, but the Americans would eat him alive. Petrovitch jumped in, almost without thinking. That was a lie: he’d done nothing but think since Lucy had gone offline. When the moment presented itself, he was ready.

“No. That’s my job,” he said.

Tabletop was instantly furious. “Sam: they’ve got one Petrovitch already. We’re not giving them another.”

“Who else, then? You?”

“You know I can’t… anybody. Anyone else but you.”

“Fine. Name someone better equipped to survive Reconstruction America. Someone who’ll get Lucy, and bring her home.”

“This isn’t meant to happen, Sam. You’re not supposed to get involved again.”

“Yeah, well. I am involved.” A muscle in Petrovitch’s face twitched, and he started to notice the cold and the wind again. “I suppose I’d better tell Maddy.”

It was just him and Michael again, on the hillside, with the domes below and the sky above.

[Good luck with that,] said Michael.

“Yeah.” Petrovitch scrubbed at his face and thought about getting up. “Probably best done in person. Difficult to land a punch over a link.”

Michael’s avatar patted him on the shoulder. Petrovitch could feel the reassuring pressure, despite it all happening somewhere on a virtual interface buried deep in his brain.

“You’d better fuck off now. Certain you’ve got better things to do than nursemaid me.”

[You know where I am…] The avatar vanished, and Petrovitch levered himself up.

“You’re everywhere,” he said, and started back to the sea.

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