Degrees of Freedom

8

The overhead lights flickered on as they entered the room. Each successive click and buzz revealed more of the modern torture chamber until it was laid bare in its full antiseptic glory.

Petrovitch shivered. The sign on the door had said physiotherapy, but now he wasn’t so sure. “Are these things supposed to help people?”

Tabletop stood on the back of the wheelchair and sized up the equipment. “I don’t know how I know what each one of these does, but I do. Sometimes I find myself thinking about something, and I suddenly find I’m an expert in it. And I never realize until I’m confronted by it.”

“If they can wipe your memory, maybe they have a way of putting new ones in.”

“So it seems. That device on your arm is called a Taylor-Hobashi bone fixator. One of these machines is designed to work with it.”

She put his brake on and wandered between the benches, chairs and tables, running her hands over the metal and plastic, remembering thoughts that were not her own. Valentina squatted down next to him.

“Hmm,” she said. It was her holding sound, what she did when she was trying to find the right words. “You are okay?”

“That’s loaded with subtext, even for you.”

“You have many problems. Too many.”

“Are you suggesting you remove one or more of those problems, permanently?”

“If you were, hmm…”—her expression became flinty—“in charge. Then perhaps you would be able to act more freely.”

“You want me to start a revolution against the Freezone.”

“Against Oshicora. Freezone is good idea run by wrong people.”

Petrovitch flexed the fingers of his left hand. He watched them curl and uncurl like thin white tube worms extending from their nest. “Yeah, well. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. It would, I guess, be quite easy for me. Rally the troops, depose the leader, seize power. Shame it’s not going to happen.”

“Nyet?”

“Definitely nyet. And of course the Freezone is a good idea. It was my idea. That’s why I’ve been a loyal servant of it, and why I’ll stay one for the next week and a bit.”

“What of future? Your future?” She looked pensive for the briefest of moments. “Mine?”

“Leave it with me. I don’t intend to disappoint either my friends or my enemies.”

She pursed her lips and nodded. “That is good.”

And that was it; the matter was concluded to her satisfaction. He’d deflected an attempted coup simply by saying no. He hoped that if Sonja ever found out, she’d be appropriately grateful.

Meanwhile, Tabletop was circling one machine that looked like a skeletal robot cut off at the waist. Her fingers were manipulating the two outriggers, bending them and twisting them, and feeling the way the joints moved in relationship with one another.

“This is it.” She beckoned Petrovitch over, and he allowed himself to be wheeled into position.

When he looked up, the thing towered over him. He had a flashback to the New Machine Jihad, of a construct of steel and hydraulics bending down to inspect him minutely.

“Nothing to be nervous of,” said Tabletop.

“You’re not sitting where I am.” He took a deep breath. “What do I have to do?”

“Just hold your arm out. I’ll do the rest.”

He raised his arm awkwardly, and she moved quickly and carefully, with unearned ease. She lowered the machine over him and clamped Petrovitch’s titanium rings to the metal skeleton until it provided all the support and he could just hang off it.

“Comfortable?”

It wasn’t, but he’d expected nothing else. “It’s fine.”

There was more: a harness that clicked into place around his shoulders and down his back. It was more than just like an exoskeleton: it was an exoskeleton, and he got the point of what she was trying to do.

“We’ll need to lose the right arm—not mine, the machine’s. And doesn’t this work off the mains?”

“The servos are twelve volts. You should be able to rig something up.” Tabletop opened several drawers in a nearby desk, searching for something. “Hex wrench. Five mil.”

“Madeleine should have mine.”

“I’ll keep looking,” she said, and spread her net wider.

“She doesn’t hate you, you know.”

“Uh huh.” Her voice was muffled by the cupboard she was in. “Did she tell you that?”

Petrovitch scratched his nose with his free hand. “Good point, well made.”

She looked over the top of the steel bench. “Her last act as head of security was to release this suit to me. She took the opportunity to make her opinion of me crystal clear.” Tabletop ducked back down again, eventually emerging with a flat plastic case. “Let’s get this done.”

With Valentina taking the weight of the spare machine arm, Tabletop unwound the bolts that held it in place, then disconnected the cables from the motors at the shoulders, elbow and wrist.

The door banged open. A man in a white coat stood framed in the doorway.

“What… are you doing?”

After months of being used to scanning a face, running it through his software, coming up with an identity, Petrovitch was lost. The personal touch, the calling someone by their own name, was his signature move. It was his only move. And no matter how hard he tried, nothing would come.

So he gave up. “Ah, chyort voz’mi. We’re taking hospital property apart and modifying it so I can regain some basic function in my shattered left arm, which should allow me to at least attempt to drag ourselves out of the pizdets we’re in before we all die horribly. If I can find the podonok who did this to me on the way, it’ll be a bonus.” He smiled unpleasantly. “Any questions?”

“Doctor Petrovitch?” asked the man.

“If that was your question, may whichever god you believe in help us all. Who the huy did you think I was?”

He could see the mental calculations whirr behind his eyes. If that was Petrovitch, that must mean the one in the black form-fitting all-in-one was the CIA assassin, and the other one in the brown jacket cinched in at the waist and with the Kalashnikov across her back was the Russian gangster, hero of Waterloo Bridge.

“I’ll be going,” he said.

“Good choice,” said Petrovitch, and waited for the door to close. “Mudak.”

“Right.” Tabletop tightened the straps and checked the retaining bolts. “Can you stand?”

“With help, probably.”

Valentina stopped playing with the spare mechanical arm long enough to grip the spine rod and neck harness. The women heaved him up. Petrovitch leaned to the left, overcorrected, and eventually found upright.

“Heavy. Unbalanced.” The straps bit into his pale skin.

“You’ll feel the difference when I turn it on.”

Tabletop took up the little hand controller and powered it up. Immediately, the servos whirred and strained, taking the effort out of holding his arm up. He moved his shoulder slowly, and the sensors felt his tentative efforts, translating it into a smooth, steady arc.

“Yobany stos.” He looked down at his arm. “This might actually work.”

“I’m just going to loosen the elbow joint. Tell me if it hurts.”

“Yeah. It’s going to hurt anyway, so just do it.”

She applied the wrench to the appropriate screws. “Okay. Bend your arm. Just a little.”

It moved. Almost gracefully. The supporting rings of his cast and the metal spars of the physio machine made it look both ungainly and unlikely, but there was both power and speed hiding behind its appearance.

“We’re going to need some hard-core battery packs. And lots of them. Rechargables.” Petrovitch turned his wrist one way, then the other. “A very long extension lead’s going to come in handy, too.”

Valentina drew out her phone. “I will tell Lucy. She will find something appropriate.”

“Tell her to meet us here, and we’ll go to the art college together.” He tutted. “We still need my tools, and Madeleine has most of them.”

“We’ll have to get them from her. You are not cutting your arm off just yet, so she should be grateful.” Valentina walked to the far side of the room to carry on her conversation, and Petrovitch looked down at the rest of his body.

“I’m going to need my trousers. And boots. And I’m not certain I can tie my own laces anymore.” He sighed, and motors whirred in sympathy. “We’re going to have to wreck my greatcoat too. No way I’m getting this thing down the sleeve. Transport. You’ve got transport, right?”

Tabletop transferred her weight to one hip and handed him the controller. “Just because you hadn’t thought of it until now doesn’t mean it hasn’t been thought of. Everything’s in hand, Sam.”

“I have issues. So sue me.” He tried to bring his left hand close enough to his face to scratch at the bridge of his nose. Not quite. He growled. “Why are we still here? We need to be doing something.”

“Then sit back down in the chair and I’ll unplug you. Clothes, tools, car, college. Something will not happen unless we do everything in order. Focus, clarity, purpose.”

“Is that what they taught you in the CIA?” Petrovitch eased himself into the wheelchair.

“It’s what I remember, so it must have been. Put your arm across your lap. When I turn off the power, it’ll become so much dead weight again.”

He did as he was told, and railed against being ordered around at the same time. Tabletop pulled the plug: his arm went stiff and tried to fall across his knees. He hauled it up and balanced it across the sides of the chair.

Tabletop wheeled him back out into the corridor, Valentina, phone still glued to her ear, following.

They ran into a crowd of men and women waiting for them just outside the door. The men were all old, some very old; they all wore black cassocks tied at the waist with a red sash, and red skull caps balanced on their mostly hairless heads. The women were younger, vested in habits and wimples; hidden underneath was impact armor and Vatican-approved handguns.

Petrovitch closed his eyes. There wasn’t enough morphine in the world to give him that sort of hallucination, so he supposed it had to be real.

“If,” he started, then changed his mind. “No, scratch that: I made it perfectly clear to Father John that I do not want to talk to you. I have no idea how you persuaded the hospital to let you in, or who you bullied into telling you where I was: when I find out, I’ll be kicking those responsible right up the zhopu.”

He opened his eyes again. They were still there, ten of them, six cardinals and four Joans. They didn’t look like they were going to go away just because he wanted them to.

“Can I introduce…” said the oldest man, his face lined and dark like a walnut. As he leaned forward, he met the barrel of Valentina’s rifle coming the other way.

The Joans did their job quickly. The cardinal was dragged back behind them and they presented a solid wall to the threat. One of them thought about reaching for her gun. In the subtle coded way of the order, the decision was made together that it wouldn’t be necessary.

“No, you cannot. You’re a distraction, all of you. I’m not going to give you a moment of my time. Not now, not ever. Do not ask again. I don’t need to know who you are, what you want, or how you think you can help me. You are simply irrelevant to me.” Petrovitch adjusted his arm pointedly. “I’m guessing we’re not going to have a firefight right here, though a hospital is as good a place as any—better in lots of respects—so if you’ll excuse us, I’m sure you can see yourselves out.”

The Joans didn’t move, mainly because Valentina was still aiming her kalash at the head of the man she thought might be the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They didn’t wear name badges, making it difficult to tell.

“Tina, knock it off and get me out of this freak show.”

Valentina managed to convey her reluctance by the slowness with which she lowered her gun, and Tabletop coughed politely to open up a way through.

“Watch your toes, your worships,” she said.

“It’s Eminences,” grunted Petrovitch as he sailed between the phalanxes of black, white and crimson. “For all I care.”

The corridor was necessarily long, and the lifts were at one end. All the way down he could feel eyes boring into the back of his head. And then they had to wait: unheard of, because a networked Petrovitch would have summoned the elevator cars beforehand and made certain that one would be ready with its doors open.

While they waited, one of the Joans came to speak to him—whether she was sent or a free choice, he didn’t know. He did notice that she was the prettiest, even though it was supposed to be impossible to tell beneath the uniform. She wasn’t the youngest, but she had smiling eyes and a French Canadian accent, and not being the youngest meant little as there were few old Joans. The attrition rate was alarming.

“You married Sister Madeleine, didn’t you?”

Petrovitch looked up at her looking down. “Yeah.”

“Is she around?”

“That depends. Look, your Vatican mind-tricks won’t work on me. The only reason I’m giving you the time of day is because you’re a Joan and I have grudging respect for the order. Say what you want to say and don’t piss me about.”

She raised a half-smile. “I was your wife’s sponsor.”

He had to trawl manually through his memory. Everything, even that, was quicker when linked up.

“Marie. Sister Marie Clemenceau.” He glanced around her to the dark cloud of priests still outside the physio room. “How come you’re with those clowns now?”

She didn’t rise to the insult. “They needed someone with experience of the Metrozone. They asked me.”

The elevator arrived with a ping. The doors opened and Valentina scanned the space inside almost at the same time as Sister Marie. They swapped a flicker of mutual recognition.

Tabletop pushed him forward, and Valentina placed her booted foot against the door jamb. Petrovitch was turned around in the confined space so he could see out, could see the nun framed against the pale green wall behind her.

“No excuses, then. You knew what you were getting into, Sister.”

She looked solemnly at him with her laser-corrected eyes. “Yes, but it seems nothing could quite prepare us for the shock of actually meeting you.”

Despite the broken arm, and the pain, and the worry, and the urgency, the doors slid shut to the sound of Petrovitch laughing like a madman.