Simon Morden - The Curve of The Earth

“But you don’t think it is.”

“No. No, I don’t. I have to be certain, though. I don’t think you appreciate just how much your security services hate me. I tricked the National Security Council into giving me your nuclear launch codes and forced the resignation of President Mackensie. They’re never going to forgive me, and they’re certainly never going to forget.”

“I’m sorry,” said Newcomen. “You did what?”

“That’s the subject of chapter eighteen in Samuil Petrovitch: an unlife . I don’t think you’ve got to it yet, and what’s there is pretty much all wrong. What actually happened was that I faked an attack and stole the gold codes. Mackensie didn’t really have anywhere to go after that.”

“That’s not what I remember.”

“Of course it’s not: your news is little more than wholly transparent propaganda, and has been for over three decades — but you swallow up every last lie because the guy in the suit tells you to.”

Newcomen was breathing hard. “That is not true.”

“Yeah, it is. Your generation knows less about the world than even your parents did, and most of them knew jack. Ignorance offends me, Newcomen. As a nation you’ve bought into a massive consensual hallucination: that you’re the chosen people, that your country has a God-given right to stride the globe like a demented colossus, and anything, anything at all that you do is justifiable because it’s you doing it. When Mackensie was president, he authorised assassinations, drone strikes, blackmail, the wholesale slaughter of a civilian population and the use of a nuclear weapon in the middle of a city — all of that aimed against me and the world’s only artificial intelligence, who just happened to be my friend.” Petrovitch leaned closer and growled. “And he never even apologised. Why would he? He still doesn’t think he did anything wrong.”

He became aware that the rest of the cabin was listening, that they couldn’t help but listen, because he wasn’t exactly trying to keep it down.

He took a deep breath. The NSA men, one to his left, one behind, seemed to be resting their hands on their pistols, ready to fire aircraft-safe plastic rounds if necessary.

“You know what?” Petrovitch said, easing himself back into his seat. “I think I ought to stop there.” He raised his hand to attract the attention of one of the stewards — not difficult since they were all looking at him anyway.

“Sir?”

“Can we have a couple of Jack Daniel’s, please? I think they’ll settle the nerves.”

“Yessir. Coming right up, sir.” The steward almost fell over in his hurry to complete the order.

“Is that okay with you, Newcomen? I know it’s what you drink on the few occasions you do break your wholly unnecessary temperance.”

“I think, in the circumstances, that liquor might be justified.”

“It’s pretty much mandatory where I come from. I am right, though.”

“Are you? I don’t hear many of these good people agreeing with you.”

“I don’t need them to: my rightness is entirely independent of their opinion. Information wants to be free, to be known by as many minds as possible and achieve meaning. It’s a revolution — the emancipation of data.”

The steward brought them their whiskey in two tiny bottles, set on a tray with paper coasters and glasses pre-filled with ice. A bigger bottle of still water sat between the glasses. The man’s hands were shaking.

“ Yobany stos .” Petrovitch looked up at the terrified steward. “Just leave it with us. We’re big boys and we can sort ourselves out.”

Newcomen folded his table out and unscrewed the water bottle. When he tried to add some to Petrovitch’s glass, Petrovitch kicked him.

“Ow.”

“That’s not how I drink it.” He grabbed his whiskey to prevent any further attempt at adulteration. “It’s not how any decent human being should drink it, either.”

He twisted the lid off and sucked the contents out in one go. He held it in his mouth for a moment, then swallowed. Then he puffed out his cheeks and blew.

Newcomen blinked. He broke the seal on his own bottle and dribbled a little into the near-frozen water at the bottom of his glass.

“When did you become such a,” Petrovitch searched for the word, came up with several highly inappropriate ones in an online thesaurus, and finally selected, “such a milquetoast?”

“I am not,” said Newcomen, shuddering, “one of those.”

“I think I know. Your accident. I’ve seen it: it was enough to make the strongest man risk-averse. It was the last time you ever took a chance.” Petrovitch played it in his head, the banners, the roar of the crowd, the cheerleaders all so pretty in their black and gold. “The State University coach was on the touchline, and he was ready to hand you a scholarship. All you had to do was shine.”

“I did. I did shine.”

“For an hour and a half, under a hot autumn sun. Calling all those plays, throwing that pigskin. You were good, Newcomen. I can’t say for sure, as it’s always looked like a monumental waste of time and energy, but you were rated by those who cared.”

“Petrovitch. I don’t want you to mock me.”

“I know you don’t. I’m not. I’m trying to understand you: that’s important to me, important to Lucy too. Start of the third quarter, you’re well in the lead, and it’s mainly due to you. Maybe that’s when someone on the Xavier High team decides the only way they’re going to stand a chance is to put you out of the game.” He scratched at his nose. “A tackle like that? I can tell the moment your shoulder dislocates. And still you’re trying to get that loose ball back, still taking a chance.”

Newcomen poured the rest of his whiskey into his glass. His hand was trembling as he held it to his lips, the ice cubes chattering against each other to signal his discomfort.

“Do you know what it’s like to have everything you’ve ever worked for taken away from you in one single second?” the American asked.

Petrovitch nodded slowly. “Yeah. I know. I even know what it’s like to have my arm shattered like crazy paving. This,” and he held up his left arm, “the skin’s real. The blood pumping through it is real. The skeleton underneath? I could punch a hole in the fuselage with it and still have enough watts to rip the wing off.”

“I couldn’t go back. I just couldn’t.” Newcomen shrugged, his big shoulders slumping in defeat. “Even after they’d grown new bone and grafted it in, and I’d been told I’d be as strong as ever. So I took myself away. I went to Pennsylvania and hid.”

“I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you at all.” He waved the steward back over. “We’re good to go again, right?”

“Are you sure, sir?”

“I have a robotic liver. I can pretty much metabolise alcohol as fast as I pour it into myself.”

The steward recoiled. That cyborg thing again. “All the same, I like the taste of it, and I got put on to rye whiskey by the head of the Papal Inquisition, who just happened to be a Yank.” Petrovitch remembered. Cold stone steps, a bottle, two glasses. It’d been a while since he’d spoken to Carillo. “You haven’t got any Stagg, have you?”

“Get him the whiskey,” said Newcomen. “I’ll pass.”

“Sir.”

“Is that true?” asked Newcomen when the steward had hurried off again.

“Which one? The liver or the cardinal?”

“Either, I guess.”

“Both. Maddy always used to joke about my robotic spleen, since I vent it so often, but it turned out it was my liver that packed in first: too much cheap vodka destroying what was left of a radiation-damaged organ. And yeah, I get on well enough with Cardinal Carillo. He might even make pope one day. I don’t pretend to know how that works — I know smoke’s involved — but for a God-botherer he’s okay.”