Саймон Морден - Equations of Life

Petrovitch was at the end of the line. It was time to get off and change trains, right now.

On Monday morning, everything had been fine. By Tuesday lunchtime, he was teetering on the brink of disaster, and might even be over the edge of the abyss.

The thought he struggled with was that he’d walked right into Oshicora’s private park and met with the man himself without getting the once-over for weapons or wires. Or maybe he had, and the security was so discreet that he hadn’t noticed. Perhaps the inside of each and every lift was a screen.

Sorenson hadn’t been pushed against a wall and shot—not yet. It was a good but confusing omen, adding another element of doubt to a critical choice: whether to ditch his current identity and sleeve up with a new one. He’d done it once before, to get out of St. Petersburg in one piece. He’d prepared for this moment for years. He always told himself that he’d do it if it looked like someone was close to discovering who he really was. It should have been as automatic as a reflex.

Petrovitch was twelve months away from becoming Dr. Petrovitch. Petrovitch had just written down a way to combine two fundamental forces of nature. Petrovitch was about to get a free ride to glory on the coattails of a future Nobel Prize winner. None of that would matter one iota if Petrovitch got locked up for twenty years.

The drumming of his fingers on the desk was the only outward sign that he was in an agony of indecision. He’d always assumed that it’d be his past catching up with him. Instead, he’d collided catastrophically with the future. Every time he returned to the question of whether any of this was worth imprisonment or worse, he looked down at his morning’s calculations.

There was no point in prevaricating. He knew if he stayed, Chain would get him, and if not Chain, Oshicora, and if not Oshicora, someone else. It was time to say goodbye to Samuil Petrovitch.

He grabbed his bag and headed for the door. Then he reversed himself and grabbed the piece of paper from his desk. He dropped it on Pif’s, and scrawled a big question mark at the bottom of the page. She’d know what he meant, even if she never saw him again.

Now he was ready.

He took the wheezing lift down to the ground floor and out onto Exhibition Road, from where he took the travelator to the Underground. He wouldn’t normally go by tube at this time of day; if it was crowded in the early morning, by lunchtime it was unspeakable.

Since this was going to be one of the last times he’d have to endure it, he suffered the crush gladly. Where next? Somewhere cold, somewhere clean—Canada, Scandinavia, New Zealand’s southern island.

If he’d had his rat, he’d be booking plane tickets under a different name, storing data before wiping it clean away, using the unparalleled power of his machine to hack the Metrozone Authority’s database and activate a sleeper personality he’d stored on there years ago.

If he’d had his rat, he could have done it now, all in the space of a single journey to the airport: Petrovitch would vanish, and another man would arrive luggageless at the airport to fly away to a new life. Even his failing heart could be spirited away. He didn’t need a Metrozone hospital for that. Any big city would do.

If, if, if.

It was why he’d bought the rat, to cover this very event. But he didn’t have it anymore. Plan B, then.

He’d have to disappear the old-fashioned way, and that gave him time to make one last appearance as Petrovitch.

He eventually emerged from the tube, breathless and bruised, at Edgware Road: not the Bell Street exit, because it was cordoned off and sealed, but the Harrow Road one, south of the Marylebone Road.

St. Joseph’s was opposite, the bullet-scarred doors open. He sat on the steps and waited. As he listened to the service going on inside, he could hear, over the growl of the traffic, distant but distinct pops of gunfire from Paradise. The natives were restless. A black speck against the gray sky, a police drone flew in lazy circles high above the towers, and it was likely that it was the flier that the militia were aiming for.

He watched their target practice until his name was shouted out behind him.

“What are you doing here?”

He looked over his shoulder. Father John was shaking the hand of an elderly parishioner; when he released his grip, the hand went on shaking. Parkinson’s, vCJD, something like that.

“I’m saying sorry, Father.” Petrovitch stood up and dusted his backside down.

“And what are you sorry for?” Half a dozen people, all of them bowed and gray-haired, trooped by, walked slowly down the steps and vanished into the crowd that streamed past.

“You mean, apart from your church getting shot up? I’ve met the bosses of both sides: neither of them seemed too bothered about carrying on a gun-battle on holy ground. I guess you could call them yourself if you want, see if you have any luck in screwing them for some compensation.”

“Blood money, Petrovitch.” Father John wiped one sweaty palm across the other. “You do understand the concept, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Petrovitch with a snort. “Yeah, I do.”

“You said, apart from.” A shadow fell across the priest from behind Petrovitch. “Why are you really here?”

He looked up at Sister Madeleine, and his heart did that thing that might have been a software glitch. “I lied to you,” said Petrovitch. “Or rather, I didn’t tell you the truth.”

The sister frowned down at him, trying to remember. “Which bit?”

“All of it. But that’s not important right now. Ask me again. Ask me again why I did what I did, and I’ll tell you.”

She glanced over at Father John, covered in confusion. “He’s the priest. If you want to confess…”

“No,” said Petrovitch. “I’m not confessing. I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done.”

“Then what the hell are you talking about?”

Her choice of language startled him, he who used the most obscene insults imaginable. He pushed his glasses back up his nose to buy him some time. “I just wanted you to know that sometimes the people you hate most can change for the better.”

“I don’t hate you,” she said, equally startled. “Why would I hate you? I…”

“You will do. Go on: ask me,” he dared her.

“Excuse me,” said the father, but Petrovitch and Madeleine were staring so intensely at each other that his presence was forgotten.

“Why did you help her?”

“Because I used to be part of a gang that kidnapped people for ransom, and I didn’t want to see it happen ever again.”

Sister Madeleine’s eyes were wide open. “You?”

“Thanks. I was hoping that it wouldn’t be too hard to believe.” He adjusted his bag. “Forget about me. You won’t see me again.”

He started off down the steps, quicker than he ought. She called after him.

“Petrovitch, where are you going?”

He almost stopped. His feet dragged on the pavement. Then he picked up speed again and vanished into the crowd.

Vast, anonymous and brooding, the Regent’s Park domiks grew closer as he walked down the Marylebone Road. Petrovitch put a determined smile on his face. Even without the rat, the plan he had was pretty damn good.

Before he could put it into operation, though, he had to make sure he was free of any other little surprises that Harry Chain might have adhered to him. He needed a back-street electronics chop shop that would take his money without asking questions. Fortunately, in the shadow of the huge domik pile, such establishments were two a cent.

He negotiated the purchase of a sweeper, and got the shopkeeper to throw in a battery and a demonstration of how the lipstick-sized device worked. He paid for it with the last of the money on his card, unwrapped the tiny black wand there and then, and swept himself in front of the counter.