Degrees of Freedom

7

He dreamed. It was so perfect, so beautiful. The fat, yellow sun was slanting off the sea, sinking toward the west and the wide, uninterrupted ocean. The grass he stood on gave way to white sand across a sinuous, nibbled line, and on that sand were children, six of them, and some of them were his. They laughed and they ran and they played some complicated game that involved throwing seaweed and catching shells. He watched them, and when he’d watched them enough, he vaulted down onto the sand; with a great monster’s roar he set after them, scooping up a ribbon of green weed and waving it above his head as he sent them giggling and scattering down to the shore line.

So when consciousness returned, he struggled to remember where or when he was. His eyes slowly opened, and lit on Madeleine. She wasn’t wearing her Joan robes, so it wasn’t eighteen months ago and he hadn’t just suffered a massive heart attack.

Then there was Valentina with her favorite kalash across her knees, and Lucy standing next to her, and a redhead who used to be a blonde: Tabletop, in her info-rich stealth suit. And Sonja. Petrovitch ignored what she was wearing and considered the fact that she looked like she’d swallowed a wasp.

He’d just lost an atomic bomb. She probably had a right to be pissed with him.

“Pizdets,” he said. His arm—his left arm—was stuck out at a stupid angle. While he was asleep, some sadist had fitted him with an aerial array that made it easy to pick up radio signals but impossible for him to change the angle of his elbow. Four encircling titanium rings were spaced down the length of his arm, locked together with cross-struts.

He lifted his arm from his shoulder. The iodine-stained flesh moved around the metal wires that were anchored in his bone. There should have been pain, but morphine had seen to that.

He searched for the clock in the corner of his eye. It had gone. There was no connection to the outside. He frowned and glanced up at the clock on the wall, busy ticking away the seconds. He did the maths stupidly and slowly, and came up with a guess that three and a half hours had passed; hours he was never going to get back.

He tried to sit up. With only one hand and a soft mattress to push against, he struggled until Madeleine stepped forward. She held him while she rearranged his pillows, then let him down gently against them. A moment later, she would be embarrassed, but for now she was caught up in the act of caring.

“So,” he croaked. His throat burned like he’d downed half a litre of cheap vodka. “The bomb’s gone. You don’t know where it is, or who has it. You don’t know what they want with it or what they’ll accept for its return. About right?”

No one contradicted him.

“Except that’s not true, is it?” Petrovitch tried to adjust the surgical gown he was wearing, and found himself frustrated again by his lack of mobility. He’d been awake no more than a minute, and he was already wishing he’d insisted they’d amputated and grafted on a prosthetic.

“I don’t get it,” said Lucy. She looked from face to face. “One of us…”

“Yeah. One of you. Those men knew where I was, knew I was alone, knew how long they had, knew exactly how to disable me, knew there was a bomb there. They were prepared. They were ready. They weren’t armed, but they knew I didn’t have a pushka either: who, outside of this room, knows for certain I don’t carry? That I’ve been ordered not to carry? They put me in a head-lock and unplugged me: only you lot know what that’ll do to me.”

Valentina pursed her lips. “Your wire is no longer secret. Is common knowledge, da? Maybe they get lucky.”

“Lucky?”

She shrugged. “Unlikely. But I would look for reasons other than one of your friends has betrayed you. Start with those who cut Container Zero open.”

“They’ve disappeared,” said Madeleine. She leaned heavily against the wall, nudging the painting behind her out of true. “Vanished off the face of the earth, and I’m not going to be able to go and find them now.”

Petrovitch turned uncomfortably toward her. “Because…”

“Sonja’s sacked me,” said Madeleine through clenched teeth. “Apparently, my judgment is in question.”

“What the hell was I supposed to do?” Sonja’s face contorted into several unlikely expressions before she exploded. “You lost the bomb. You lost it. You had it, and you lost it. You’re head of security and you left one unarmed man alone with a nuclear bomb. It’s not your judgment I’m questioning. It’s your sanity.”

Madeleine levered herself upright, which in itself should have been scary. “Sonja,” she started.

But Sonja wasn’t intimidated. “That’s Madam fucking President to you. They could have killed him! That might not mean anything to a frigid bitch like you, but I actually care about him.”

She’d gone white, all except the tip of her nose, which remained stubbornly pink.

“I’m going now to try and clear up your mess. If I catch you within a hundred meters of me, I’ll make sure someone shoots you. Is that perfectly clear?”

The only thing that was perfectly clear was Madeleine’s desire to straight-arm Sonja through the wall. The effort to hold back was titanic, every muscle straining.

“Yeah, go on then,” said Petrovitch from the bed. “This makes it so much better, doesn’t it? If any of you were listening earlier, I said that you had no idea who took the bomb. Doesn’t mean I don’t. Up to the point where my mitigator was unplugged, I have a recording of what happened, including the six men who took the bomb. And in a couple of seconds I can tell you who they are and where they live. Lived. Three and a half hours ago.”

“They took your rat,” said Lucy. “It wasn’t on you when we found you.”

Petrovitch screwed his face up. “Chyort.”

“I’ll get you a new one,” she offered.

“Go and do it now. Something. Anything that’ll do.” He should have realized when he woke up. The drugs were making him dull. “I need to get out of this yebani place.”

Lucy edged around Sonja and slipped out. She left the door slightly open, and they could all hear her receding, running footsteps. Petrovitch also caught sight of an Oshicora guard through the crack of light.

“I can do better than she can,” said Sonja, though she didn’t take her eyes off Madeleine.

“You’ve got more important things to do. And I’m sorry.”

“Call me when you remember enough that’s useful. Okay?”

“Okay.”

With one last glare up at Madeleine, she flung the door aside and strode out. The guards fell in behind her, and by force of will, they swept the corridor clear ahead of them.

“I’m serious,” he said, trying to attract the others’ attention. “I need to get out of here right now. Someone tell me how long I’m supposed to wear this metalwork?”

“Six months.” Madeleine’s fists were still clenching and unclenching.

“You have got to be kidding.” He stared at his arm. “Call the surgeons. Get them to take it off. Take it all off, up to here.” He sawed with his free hand just below his left shoulder.

“Sam, no.”

“There’s a nuclear bomb loose in the Freezone. Someone close to me betrayed me. And I’ve lost my rat. Again. I cannot do anything about any of those things with Arecibo sticking out of my body.”

“Ari?” asked Valentina.

“Arecibo,” murmured Tabletop. “Radio telescope. Puerto Rico.”

“And you’ve been very quiet.” Petrovitch struggled with the sheets, grasping a handful of them and pulling, but the hospital corners proved hard to dislodge. He frowned at her stealth suit that he’d thought locked away for safe keeping. But there she was, wearing it like a second skin again. “Anything you’d like to say?”

“I’m not allowed to talk to anyone but Tina, Lucy and you, and I’m never alone. I know I’ve said nothing that can be used to hurt you. So I’m just waiting for you to tell me what you want me to do.” She tugged at the corner of her dyed hair. “The CIA would have killed you first, then mined the container before they left. It wasn’t them.”

Petrovitch had finally got the better of the bedclothes. “Anyone who doesn’t want to see my bare arse had better get out now.”

No one moved.

“Well, mne pohui.” He swung his legs out and tried to stand. He would have fallen had Valentina not caught him.

She dumped him back on the bed. “Where do you think you need to be?”

“Anywhere. Anywhere but here with this govno hanging off me.”

“You need to think.” She held him by the shoulders and gave him a shake. “You need a plan.”

“I can’t think. I feel like I’ve had half my brain ripped out through the back of my skull.”

“Valentina,” warned Madeleine, “put him down.”

“No. This is important. You do not need computer. You are smart anyway. You live before you get implant. You remember that.” She patted both his cheeks and stepped back.

“Right. You’re right.” Petrovitch glared at his arm. “Where’s the break?”

“Separated fracture of the humerus, midway along,” said Tabletop, still twirling her hair. “I read your notes. You had a chunk of bone three inches long floating free.”

“So the extension on my lower arm is just for show?”

“Stability. You cannot—must not—use that limb for weight-bearing activities. At all.”

“I still reckon I’d be better without it altogether.”

Madeleine growled. “No.”

“Tell me again why I should take your opinion into consideration?” He didn’t turn around, just sat with his back to her. “We’ve been apart longer than we were together.”

The temperature in the room dropped to below freezing.

“One of us has to say it,” he said. “I’ve spent too long hoping you’ll come back to me. Either you will or you won’t. Nothing I do or don’t do will affect that one way or the other. But the situation we’re now in means I’m going to have to make some decisions for myself.”

“We can save the arm.” Tabletop stepped out from the corner. “I’ll get you a wheelchair.”

Valentina picked up her rifle and slung it over her back. It was an automatic reaction; where one went, the other had to go. It was the law.

“Back soon.” She gave a meaningful glance at Madeleine.

“I’ll be fine.” He nodded, feeling the chill on his naked back. “Does this hotel come with a dressing gown?”

“We’ll find you one.” Tabletop held the door for Valentina, and like a pair of ghosts they disappeared.

Petrovitch tried the floor again. His eyes told him it was flat and still, but as he slowly rose, he felt like he was on a ship at sea. “If losing my arm gives me a chance to get to the bomb before it blows, I’m sawing it off with a rusty blade. Do you understand?”

“Oh, you’ve made it very clear, Sam.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“Nothing that’ll make you change your mind, I expect.”

He rested his head on his chest. “How about stop acting like a pizda staraya? Sonja was right, and we were wrong: we should have had Container Zero locked down tight. We’re supposed to be responsible adults, not a bunch of yebani kids hiding stuff from our parents and hoping they don’t find out.”

“You mean like you did?”

He slowly turned around, shuffling his feet. His arm refused to hang by his side, the series of rings forcing it away from his body, making him hold his shoulder awkwardly against the downward drag of the metal framework. He reached over and held the lowermost ring in his other hand.

“The two situations are completely different. People already knew about the bomb. It wasn’t a secret, and we should have realized what that meant.”

She gave a pained expression. “They were so quick.”

“Yeah. They knew before we did. They knew, I guess, long before Container Zero was opened. You don’t get to make yourself a nuclear power just because you haven’t got anything better to do that evening.” He tried to shrug, and found that impossible, too. “We were set up. By someone who knows both you and me very well.”

“Bet Harry would know who.”

“Maybe. He wouldn’t have done anything about it, though. Not until it was too late.”

“I do care,” she blurted. “It’s not true what Sonja said. I care so much about you.”

He thought she might cry. He thought he might cry. He took a deep breath. “Shame it doesn’t seem to be enough anymore.”

The door banged back to its fullest extent. Tabletop wheeled in a chair, cornering hard and scraping paint off the doorframe.

“Hop in.” She stopped suddenly, and Valentina ran into the back of her. “Did I interrupt something?”

“Yeah. No. Whatever. Dressing gown?”

“Got a blanket. Best we could do.” She brought the wheelchair closer and stamped on the brakes with the side of her foot. “I had to throw someone out of this thing.”

“Is true,” said Valentina. “Seat is still warm for your naked arse.”

“As if this couldn’t get any worse.” Petrovitch attempted to lower himself down one-handed into the chair, and dropped most of the way. “Chyort. That hurts.”

While Valentina artfully draped the blanket over his knees, Tabletop kicked the brakes off. “Okay. Next stop, physiotherapy.” She popped a wheelie to turn him around, and started at speed toward the door.

“And you could stop being so cheerful. I’m not used to it.”

She leaned in from behind him, so that her hair curtained his face. “I’m useful. At last. You don’t know how good this feels.”

Out in the corridor, he glanced behind him. Valentina was following at a jog. There was no sign of Madeleine.