The Curve of the Earth by Simon Morden

Author:Simon Morden [Morden, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

21

It was four hundred kilometres to Fairbanks, and Petrovitch flew them at zero altitude all the way. The terrain was a maze of valleys and hills, with the occasional mountain to worry about, and all of it, except for the snow-capped peaks, forest. In the dark.

He had to continually change either height or direction, and sometimes both at the same time. It was a technical challenge to keep between the high ground, so as not to expose the aircraft to radar, and still not crash. Newcomen went first white, then green, then ran to the cabin to find something to puke his guts up in.

They crossed the border into Alaska. They weren’t shot down.

Newcomen eventually came back to the co-pilot’s seat, pale and shaking.

“Can you talk?” he asked.

“As long as you don’t ask me anything that requires more than a moment’s thought. This isn’t a car, and it doesn’t fly itself.” The whole brief for the plane’s design was fast and straight. Petrovitch was making it do things it was never intended to.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Newcomen.

“Careful now.”

“Will you just listen?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“They don’t want you to find out what happened to Lucy, right?”

“Let’s just say they don’t want me to find Lucy, and leave it at that.”

“Sure. But they’re also gearing up for a fight. With the Chinese.”

“Maybe.”

“Can’t we just tell them what we know? That everything Lucy could have found out we’ve worked out for ourselves, so there’s no point in us not finding her. It’ll make no difference. We could even promise them we wouldn’t say anything in return for her.”

“I’m sure someone, somewhere, has already suggested that. I’ll check, but so could you. You’ve got a link. Use it. But look, you’ve already heard me cursing Chinese bureaucracy: your political mindset is such that you cover up first, then ask why later. By which time, too many important people have got too much to lose by coming clean. Some junior functionary on the ground orders evidence to be conveniently lost, he tells his boss, his boss makes up a story and tells his boss. So then he makes a couple of decisions based on layers of lies and misinformation, and when he finds out, he’s not going to go public with the fact he’s a mudak.” He stopped talking long enough to hurl the plane around one valley spur and through a col. “So tell me what happens when we let Washington know that we’ve spotted SkyShield is taking potshots at foreign satellites?”

Newcomen shifted uneasily in his seat as their acceleration surged. “They try to get rid of us too?”

“There reaches a point where even the most dedicated conspiracy theorist has to admit defeat. We are nowhere near that point. My life, your life, Lucy’s life are not as important as some guy’s career advancement in military intelligence. You remember that.”

“Oh.”

“Nice try, though.”

The plane’s tail swung around and the jets roared for a second, then dropped to idling speed. There were bright lights in the distance, and the ground they had to cover was more or less flat.

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