“It would be better if this was unanimous,” said Sonja, staring straight ahead and not looking at anyone in particular, “but I’ll take a majority decision.”
He reluctantly and half-heartedly agreed, and Petrovitch knew that, by the evening, someone else would be representing the
“Motion carried. I hereby dissolve the political entity previously known as NeoTokyo and transfer all assets and liabilities to the Freezone Corporation. I want your shopping lists by tomorrow morning.” She frowned at her own words. “No. That’s stupid. Tell me how much you think you need and you can spend it as you see fit. Keep records and don’t waste a cent. Any other business?”
Despite the abrupt rise and fall in NeoTokyo’s stock, there was apparently none.
“Then we’re done. Sam? Does that mean you all work for me now?”
“It means we all work for each other,” said Petrovitch. “It makes us all accountable to someone.”
The corner of her mouth twitched in a half-smile. “I knew there was a flaw in your plan somewhere. I just wasn’t smart enough to spot it.”
As Yamamata walked stiffly away to the safety of his chauffeur-driven car and the major to his tank, Ngumi stopped next to Petrovitch.
“Your friend, Doctor Ekanobi. I am praying for her release every day,” he said. The first fat flakes of snow drifted downward and settled on his thin shoulders. “I want to hear good news about her, soon.”
“Yeah. You and me both, Martin. If you need anything, just ask.” The man was quiet, serious, good at his job, and Petrovitch liked him: too much for them ever to be close, because all those that did seemed to end up dead, or orphaned like Lucy, or in prison like Pif.
Then it was just him, Madeleine and Sonja.
“This is not,” he said, looking up at the sky, “how I imagined it would be. Yamamata’s right, but for the wrong reasons. We gave up too much.”
He trained his cameras on where the Oshicora Tower had stood. It had been transformed into a twisted pile of steel and concrete, glittering with glass shards. Somewhere below it was a room: its maker had boasted that it was safe from any external threat, and perhaps it was. With a whole building collapsed on top of it, it was impossible to tell.
“I should never have told it to migrate to the tower. I should have realized I was being played.
If it was down there, wondering why its world had suddenly gone from being so huge as to encompass everything in creation, to being so small it was trapped with only its own thoughts, it would need more than a couple of shovels to free it. It needed more than a political solution. It needed a revolution.
He knew he had to be the one to lead it, but he was tired and scared. Mostly tired.
“You still have the source code.” Sonja snuggled down deep into her collar. “You can make another when the time is right.”
“That’s like saying it’s okay that one of your kids has been killed, because you can always have another.” Petrovitch wished he could cry, but his tear ducts needed reconstructing. “My friend is buried under a megaton of rubble, but I’m afraid I’ll cause a war if I so much as pick a brick off the top of the pile.”
Madeleine slid her arm around him and tried to draw him away, but he wanted to rage for a moment longer.
“I was wrong to let you convince me to keep it a secret.”
Sonja drew herself up and stared him down. “You spawned another AI without telling me, Sam. You didn’t even tell Madeleine. You—not me—kept that a secret, so don’t you go blaming anyone else for something that was entirely your fault.”
He was punctured. He bowed his head and pressed his chin to his chest. The coldness of the topmost brass button burned against his skin.
“I’m supposed to be good at this. I’m supposed to have all the answers to all the questions anyone is ever going to ask. Turns out I’m a
“Go and get some sleep, Sam,” she said. “We need you.”
He let himself be walked across the road toward the motorbike, while Sonja stole a glance at him huddled against Madeleine’s side before turning back to her own waiting car.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I know you are,” said Madeleine. “I also know that nothing I could say or do would make you feel worse about yourself than you do now.”
“That’s not true though, is it?” They stopped by the bike. “When are you going to come home?”
“I am so angry with you,” she said, “that I want to break your skull. Then I remember who it was that saved me and how they saved me and how much that cost them and how much they must love me, and I want to mount you until we’re both dead from exhaustion. So I do neither. And it doesn’t help that home is being shacked up with three other women. In a suite at the Hilton.”
“It’s a bombed-out wreck, and it’s not like we have room service,” he complained. “Tabletop is there because she daren’t leave the building for fear of being lynched. Valentina? She keeps one eye on Tabletop and the other on me. And Lucy: she’s just a child. I think we should adopt her.”
Madeleine toyed with the strap on her helmet, and made no effort to put it on. “If, if you want, I’ll come by tonight. Just for a while.”
“Maddy, it’s where you live. You don’t need my permission.”
“It’ll be late.”
“I’m sure the doorman will let you in whatever time.”
“You have a doorman?”
“Of course I don’t. The place is deserted, but for us.” He rubbed the lines in the center of his forehead. “Just come when you’re ready.”
She nodded, and checked her phone for messages. There were a lot of them, and some of them needed to be dealt with. She put her helmet on. “Do you want a lift?”
“You’ve got more important things to do. I’m fine walking.”
She covered her disappointment by straddling her bike with a creak of leather. “I’ll see you later, then.”
“Yeah. I’ll be slumped in a corner somewhere, but don’t worry about waking me up. I won’t mind.”
Madeleine powered up the fuel cells. Lights came on, cutting a path through the falling snow. She folded the stand away and held the machine upright between her knees. She looked at him critically before she drove off. “You need some new eyes, Sam.”
“I haven’t had time to do anything about it.”
“I think you enjoy looking like that, and you won’t do anything about it until I make you.”
She was right.
He watched her tail-light recede into the distance, turning off at Piccadilly and heading out to the East End, before he started back toward Park Lane. He thought about everything that had happened and how he could put it all right again. It was overwhelming, as it always was: he could solve other people’s problems, but didn’t know where to start on his own.
He listened to the crunch of his footsteps for a while, and slowly a hint of a plan appeared at the edge of his mental fog.
It was something, so he seized at it. He chased down the telephone number he needed—an unlisted mobile—and made the call there and then as he turned Hyde Park Corner.
“Hello?” came a voice, lagged by satellite and bemused by sleep. “Who is this?”
The sun had just come up in California, and it was already looking like it was going to be another beautiful day.
“Good morning, Professor. This is Doctor Samuil Petrovitch, and I’m calling to apologize for that comment about your mother. All your mothers, in fact…”
