Саймон Морден - Equations of Life

“No,” said Petrovitch slowly. “Not exactly.”

“Perhaps we should take tea while you explain.” Oshicora walked around the perimeter of the Zen garden and toward a small table set with a delicate white china tea service.

Petrovitch sat on the edge of his chair and gazed at Oshicora’s deft movements setting out crockery and pouring fragrant green tea.

“It’s like this,” he said, cradling the tea bowl in both hands, “Chain has warned Marchenkho and his associates off by all but convincing him I’m not in your pay. The contract’s been canceled, but it seems that Marchenkho isn’t too bothered about letting everyone know. The last thing I need is for him to see me with one of your men. Or women; I’m sure it’s all equal opportunities here. Even if they’re brilliant, I’ll still be marked for death and I’ll still have to explain to my tutor why I have an armed bodyguard following me around.”

Oshicora leaned over his bowl and bathed in the rising steam. “Most interesting analysis. Carry on.”

“So what I’d like you to do is trump the original contract. Anyone who kills me gets taken down for say, five hundred thousand. It’ll spread like wildfire to everyone who needs to know, and I can go to the corner shop again without worrying about snipers.”

“What if,” asked Oshicora, “Marchenkho has a change of heart, and bids higher?”

“You can always top him. That’s why I came to you.” Petrovitch blew across the surface of his tea, watching the patterns the steam made. “This is going to be a nine-day wonder. Next week, no one will care who I am. But for those few days I need the extra insurance.”

“Ingenious. I’m impressed by your grasp of the intricacies of such a dark subject. It is almost,” he mused, “as if you have some experience with the way these things are done.”

“I grew up in St. Petersburg during Armageddon. Everybody there has some relevant experience.”

“Ah yes. You’re not a native to these shores, much like me. You arrived here when?”

Petrovitch narrowed his eyes, squinting into the past. “Twenty twenty-one. I started at Imperial in twenty twenty-two.”

“When you were nineteen?” Oshicora demonstrated his recall of incidental facts. “That seems a little young to tackle so difficult a subject.”

“I’d passed the exams. Didn’t seem much point in waiting till my balls dropped.”

Oshicora laughed again, sending waves across his tea. “Good, good. Tell me; what’s the next big thing in the world of physics? Do we have fusion power yet, or is it still ten years away?”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” said Petrovitch. “But showing it can work on a computer and building a reactor are two different things.”

“And,” said Oshicora, looking across the table at him, “any closer to a Grand Unified Theory?”

Petrovitch almost dropped his bowl, which probably gave the game away there and then. Hot tea poured into the palm of his hand as he regained his grip, almost causing him to fumble his catch. He gritted his teeth and put the bowl on the table.

“Your colleague, Doctor Ekanobi, has an announcement to make?” Oshicora handed him a starched napkin.

“Not just yet.” Petrovitch took the cloth and held it inside his fist. “It might be nothing.”

“On the other hand, it might be everything. Do you know how close other research groups are?”

“No. I’m not even formally part of the Imperial GUT group.” The pain was fading now, and he inspected the damage. His hand was wetly pink, but there were no blisters or peeling skin. “More of a hanger-on. I help where I can.”

“Stanford believe they are, at most, two or three steps away.” Oshicora drank tea, and topped up Petrovitch’s cup before continuing. “I believe it vital to keep up with these matters. Others are too short-sighted. Their loss. So, has there been a breakthrough?”

“It’s not for me to say.” He looked away, across the garden. The lift shaft was invisible. He was on a floating island in a sea of concrete and steel. “To be honest, I feel a bit uncomfortable talking about it.”

“Of course. You have your professional confidences as I have mine. I apologize. But,” said Oshicora, “perhaps we can discuss the practical implications of such a discovery. Unlimited power from zero point energy. Transmutation of elements. Space travel that is not just affordable, but fast. Access to the solar system, to other stars. What else can you imagine for me?”

“The door to the universe is ajar,” said Petrovitch, then shook his head as if he’d been in a dream. “Maybe in a hundred, a thousand years. Just because we know something is possible doesn’t mean we can do it. Materials, equipment, gaps in our knowledge: anything might hold us up.” He gave a wry smile. “Don’t go to the bank just yet.”

“Petrovitch-san. Finish your tea. There is something I would like to show you.”

Nervously, Petrovitch finished the light green liquid in his refilled bowl and replaced it on the lacquered tray. Oshicora led him through the garden, over one of the bridges from where he could see the peaks of the central Metrozone skyscrapers around him and the slow, lazy motions of koi carp beneath his feet.

“Japanese companies have always looked ahead,” said Oshicora. “Not a year, not five years. Not ten. They have business plans that stretch decades, a century or more. Now that we have no homeland, we must look even further.”

A small shrine sat on a low mound in a dense grove of maple trees. The shrine was an ornate, curved roof resting on four carved pillars. Inside was a table, and at that table sat a man—a white man in a checkered shirt and fraying shorts. He was looking at a screen and typing on the tabletop, oblivious to their approach.

They walked up steps to the platform. The boards creaked, and the seated man’s eyes flickered to capture their image before turning their full attention back to the screen.

The screen was dense with code, which he was splicing together with reckless confidence.

“Petrovitch-san, may I introduce Martin Sorenson? He is helping me build the future.”

Sorenson unfolded himself from his chair. He extended a shovel-like hand and grasped Petrovitch’s in a knuckle-cracking hold.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said in an inflected Midwest accent.

“You’re…” Petrovitch bit his tongue and changed gear. Sorenson knew he was an American, and Petrovitch telling him so would only mark him out as socially inept. “Very busy.”

“Mr. Oshicora pays well for good work. You doing the project too?”

“Project?” He didn’t know what the project was. “No.”

Oshicora interrupted. “Petrovitch-san has been assisting me in another matter, where he has been most helpful. Sorenson is an expert in man–machine interfaces; his skills are most apposite.”

Now Petrovitch wondered what Oshicora needed a cyberneticist for. “I thought you Americans were into gene splicing and wetware.”

“I’m the exception to the rule, then, Mr. Petrovitch.” Sorenson scratched at his thinning sandy hair, looking more like a farmer worrying about his crop than a technologist. He reached into his back pocket and passed him a business card. “If you ever need a spare part, just call.”

Petrovitch glanced across to Oshicora, whose face remained utterly unreadable. “Yeah, thanks,” he said, sliding the card into his jacket. “If you ever need, I don’t know, someone to design some building-sized electromagnets, I’m your man. Though I doubt there’s much call for that sort of thing in your line of work.”

Sorenson laughed and clapped Petrovitch on the shoulder. “You never know.”