Simon Morden - The Curve of The Earth

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.”