Simon Morden - The Curve of The Earth

“Valentine’s Day. It’s today, isn’t it?” Petrovitch leant his head back against the seat. “So that’s why you’re in such a hurry to get back to Christine. Apart from the obvious, of course.”

“What do you mean? Of course it’s today. Doesn’t your wife expect, I don’t know, something?”

“It’s not her saint’s day. Oh, you mean the other thing.”

“I’ll put up with almost any indignity you want, but don’t be crude about my fiancee. Okay?” Newcomen’s tone was guarded, but it wasn’t pleading.

“Yeah, okay. Got to protect the purity of young love.” Petrovitch looked at Artak as he navigated the streets with exaggerated care. “ Na mi kuys .”

“ Dzer kartsik’ov, aydpes? ”

“Yeah. Absolutely certain. I recognise the signs.”

They passed a police podium at the next intersection, raised above the level of the street to allow the two officers on top to spot and stop any trouble before it started. No one seemed to be doing anything illicit: the cops were watchful, though, because they knew they were being watched as well.

The taxi nosed left, on to Sixth Avenue, and started the trek down to where Tenth Street crossed, down towards the south end of Manhattan Island, past some of the two million people who lived there and the two million who travelled there every day to work.

It made the Clapham A domik pile where he’d lived previously seem like a wilderness by comparison. So many, crammed into such a small space. It was a wonder they didn’t all go mad and kill each other, just to have room to move their elbows.

It was Reconstruction that made it possible. Without it, it would never have even tried to grow so big. Petrovitch wondered what other surprises America had lined up for him.

Then they were there, outside the old Jefferson Market library. Made of municipal red brick, it looked like a church with its tall windows and arches, but the tower attached to it was more reminiscent of a Soviet-style rocket.

“ Inchkan? ”

“No charge,” said Artak.

“Yeah, you’re just being silly now.” Petrovitch pulled out a stack of cash cards and sorted through them until he found one in the right currency. “Unless you want paying in yuan.”

He grabbed the reader and peered at it for a moment, deciphering its idiosyncrasies, then slotted in the card and debited the amount on the glowing fare meter, adding a tip large enough that at least one of Artak’s kids could make it through college unburdened by debt.

The driver would find out later. Petrovitch felt no need to make a song and dance about it.

“ Merci ,” he said, springing the door. “ Shat hatcheli e’ .”

Newcomen scrambled out, and Artak dumped his case on the kerb.

“Thank you,” the agent remembered to say. Petrovitch was already diving through the flood of pedestrians on his way to the seven stone steps leading to the consulate’s wooden doors.

A little brass plate on the stonework stated the building’s purpose. Petrovitch looked up and down the street and at the blank-faced building opposite. The library was an island from the nineteenth century stranded in the twenty-first.

“You know how many cameras are trained on us at the moment?” he said to Newcomen. “The NSA, the FBI, INS, CIA, ATF, Homeland Security, Treasury. Pretty much every single one. It’s not like we don’t tell them what we’re up to.”

“You do?”

“Most of the time.” He smiled slyly.

The door opened, despite Petrovitch not having even knocked.

“Hey, Sam.”

“Hey, Marcus. Don’t touch the hired muscle: he’s broadcasting.”

A thin black man with puffball grey hair stood to one side and waited for Petrovitch and Newcomen, followed by his case, to come inside. He pushed the door shut behind them, and paused while some definitely un-Victorian-era locks whirred into place.

“So,” said Marcus, “you made it this far.”

“Relatively unscathed. If they left us alone, we’d get this done so much quicker.” Petrovitch held open the door to a metal cabinet in the corner of the foyer, revealing a space just large enough for a man to stand. “Get in. Stand perfectly still.”

“Uh, what is this?” Newcomen asked, even as he was drawn irresistibly towards it.

“It’s a bigger version of what Tabletop used at the airport. Rather than spend an hour picking each individual bug off you, we’ll just nuke the lot of them.” He jerked his head at the container. “You might see some bright flashes, smell something funny or convince yourself you’ve seen God. Just side effects — they don’t last.”

Newcomen squeezed in, still uncertain. There were no windows, or even a light. He hesitated, causing Petrovitch to sigh. “What now?”

“I might be claustrophobic.”

“Well, perhaps you should have worn your big girl pants when you got up this morning.” He slammed the door and pressed the button. As the capacitors charged up, he retreated across the foyer to stand with Marcus.

“How’s he shaping up?”

“I don’t think they could have sent anyone worse.” Petrovitch pursed his lips. “All I have to do is figure out whether that’s bad for us, or bad for them. He grew up on an automatic farm, so he’s only not quite a pampered city kid. He played college football, but gave it up after one bad accident. He was an English major, not a proper subject. He’s served his two years in the army, but no one ever shot at him. He got through the FBI selection in the middle of his class. He’s been a special agent for two and a half years, yet he’s never made an actual arrest. He seems to be a perfectly blank slate. If he has any identifiable skills, I’ve yet to see them: if he holds any opinions, apart from on my vocabulary, I’ve yet to hear them.”

Marcus stared at his shoes. “He is a Reconstructionist, though. To the core.”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m holding out some hope. If they’re passing over the candidates who’re actually qualified for this job in order to give it to party apparatchiks, the whole Bureau — hell, the whole system — might be staffed by incompetent ideologues we can have fun running rings around.” Petrovitch snorted. “How very Soviet of them.”

The capacitors were full. The energy they stored was dumped into a series of coils made of wire fat enough not to melt, and a high-intensity magnetic field briefly enveloped Newcomen.

Even outside the shielded box, Petrovitch felt the surge.

“If that wasn’t enough, they’ve been hardening their spyware.” He walked over and hauled on the door. “Okay. Out. Assume the position.”

Petrovitch produced a wand, which he ran slowly and care-fully over Newcomen, who stood, spreadeagled, with his palms on the now-warm cabinet.

“Clear,” he said eventually. “Marcus’ll dump your luggage in too, but right now? A decent cup of coffee, and I can show you why I think Lucy’s still alive.”

Inside the main reading room, it was warm and bright. Little light penetrated through the stained-glass windows except at midday, so most of the illumination came from elaborate chandeliers decorated with thousands of crystal prisms. Electroluminescent wall hangings supplemented the downward light with their blue-white glow.

The space was high, and a circular balcony had been built to take advantage of it, self-supporting so as not to damage the stonework.

People were working up there, if lying on couches with infoshades on counted as working.

“What are they doing?” asked Newcomen. He spoke in a whisper. Perhaps he thought they were sleeping.

“Data mining. Digging into raw statistics and turning them into something people can use. It’s our biggest export. Coffee?”