Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

Finally, when they’d reached a complete impasse and Ngumi’s lips had gone blue, he intervened.

“Can I make a suggestion?”

“You have no right to talk in this gathering,” said Yamamata sternly.

Sonja rolled her eyes. “The Chair recognizes Doctor Samuil Petrovitch.”

“Look,” he said, “none of you are career politicians. Most of you have no wish to become one. So why not stick with what you know?”

The major raised his eyebrows, and with a gesture indicated that he should elaborate.

“Become a company,” said Petrovitch. “A cooperative, or a limited company wholly owned by the workforce. Something like that. Take the money you’ve got and negotiate with individuals and other companies. Buy services on the open market like anyone else, use off-the-shelf solutions, hire and fire as you see fit. Most reconstruction projects never deliver because the money disappears down a black hole: it’s not the people who live there controlling the purse-strings. This time you do, so you have the opportunity to either screw up monumentally, or do something different.”

“So,” said the major, “if I want helicopters…”

“You phone up someone who has helicopters and buy them. You need mechanics? Hire them. Pilots? Hire them. On your own terms. Martin, what about you?”

Ngumi scratched under his hat. “I need someone who knows about sewerage systems.”

“Do we have anyone who does?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Then you need to make a database of the things we do know and the things we don’t. Ask Lucy to do it: she’ll be good at that. In the meantime, find a company in the Metrozone that specializes in that sort of thing and buy it. Put the workforce on your payroll. They’ll be pathetically grateful for the work. If you can make them believe in what they’re doing, they’ll work even harder.” He addressed them all. “You can afford this. What you can’t afford is to sit around scratching your collective zhopu. ”

Sonja held up her hand. “I’m putting it to a vote. All those in favor?” She kept her hand in the air.

“We have not had a proper debate,” objected Yamamata, even as he saw three other hands raised against him.

“It would be better if this was unanimous,” said Sonja, staring straight ahead and not looking at anyone in particular, “but I’ll take a majority decision.”

He reluctantly and half-heartedly agreed, and Petrovitch knew that, by the evening, someone else would be representing the nikkeijin. It wouldn’t even take any persuading from Sonja: the thought of meaningful work, a salary and part-ownership of the company that employed them would suffice. More than enough to turn them against a man who chose to stand in their way.

“Motion carried. I hereby dissolve the political entity previously known as NeoTokyo and transfer all assets and liabilities to the Freezone Corporation. I want your shopping lists by tomorrow morning.” She frowned at her own words. “No. That’s stupid. Tell me how much you think you need and you can spend it as you see fit. Keep records and don’t waste a cent. Any other business?”

Despite the abrupt rise and fall in NeoTokyo’s stock, there was apparently none.

“Then we’re done. Sam? Does that mean you all work for me now?”

“It means we all work for each other,” said Petrovitch. “It makes us all accountable to someone.”

The corner of her mouth twitched in a half-smile. “I knew there was a flaw in your plan somewhere. I just wasn’t smart enough to spot it.”

As Yamamata walked stiffly away to the safety of his chauffeur-driven car and the major to his tank, Ngumi stopped next to Petrovitch.

“Your friend, Doctor Ekanobi. I am praying for her release every day,” he said. The first fat flakes of snow drifted downward and settled on his thin shoulders. “I want to hear good news about her, soon.”

“Yeah. You and me both, Martin. If you need anything, just ask.” The man was quiet, serious, good at his job, and Petrovitch liked him: too much for them ever to be close, because all those that did seemed to end up dead, or orphaned like Lucy, or in prison like Pif.

Then it was just him, Madeleine and Sonja.

“This is not,” he said, looking up at the sky, “how I imagined it would be. Yamamata’s right, but for the wrong reasons. We gave up too much.”

He trained his cameras on where the Oshicora Tower had stood. It had been transformed into a twisted pile of steel and concrete, glittering with glass shards. Somewhere below it was a room: its maker had boasted that it was safe from any external threat, and perhaps it was. With a whole building collapsed on top of it, it was impossible to tell.

“I should never have told it to migrate to the tower. I should have realized I was being played. Pizdets. ” The loss of Michael grieved Petrovitch more than anything else, and there was no end to it in sight.

If it was down there, wondering why its world had suddenly gone from being so huge as to encompass everything in creation, to being so small it was trapped with only its own thoughts, it would need more than a couple of shovels to free it. It needed more than a political solution. It needed a revolution.

He knew he had to be the one to lead it, but he was tired and scared. Mostly tired.

“You still have the source code.” Sonja snuggled down deep into her collar. “You can make another when the time is right.”

“That’s like saying it’s okay that one of your kids has been killed, because you can always have another.” Petrovitch wished he could cry, but his tear ducts needed reconstructing. “My friend is buried under a megaton of rubble, but I’m afraid I’ll cause a war if I so much as pick a brick off the top of the pile.”

Madeleine slid her arm around him and tried to draw him away, but he wanted to rage for a moment longer.

“I was wrong to let you convince me to keep it a secret.”

Sonja drew herself up and stared him down. “You spawned another AI without telling me, Sam. You didn’t even tell Madeleine. You—not me—kept that a secret, so don’t you go blaming anyone else for something that was entirely your fault.”

He was punctured. He bowed his head and pressed his chin to his chest. The coldness of the topmost brass button burned against his skin.

“I’m supposed to be good at this. I’m supposed to have all the answers to all the questions anyone is ever going to ask. Turns out I’m a pidaras like everyone else.”

“Go and get some sleep, Sam,” she said. “We need you.”

He let himself be walked across the road toward the motorbike, while Sonja stole a glance at him huddled against Madeleine’s side before turning back to her own waiting car.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know you are,” said Madeleine. “I also know that nothing I could say or do would make you feel worse about yourself than you do now.”

“That’s not true though, is it?” They stopped by the bike. “When are you going to come home?”

“I am so angry with you,” she said, “that I want to break your skull. Then I remember who it was that saved me and how they saved me and how much that cost them and how much they must love me, and I want to mount you until we’re both dead from exhaustion. So I do neither. And it doesn’t help that home is being shacked up with three other women. In a suite at the Hilton.”

“It’s a bombed-out wreck, and it’s not like we have room service,” he complained. “Tabletop is there because she daren’t leave the building for fear of being lynched. Valentina? She keeps one eye on Tabletop and the other on me. And Lucy: she’s just a child. I think we should adopt her.”