“Madeleine should be here,” she said.

“And that’s the very good reason why she’s not.” He readied himself, shuffling onto the cold floor and lying on his right side, stretching out along the length of the side of the cube. “She cares too much about me. She needs me to be safe. She needs to protect me from the demons that live without and within. She has decided, for one reason or another, to forgive me for not telling her about Michael and forgive herself for leaving me over it. But she needs to atone for this business with Father John.” He closed his eyes. Habit. He could just turn them off.

“You don’t think she’d let you do this?”

“Not that. She’d let me do it. Eventually. I know that, she knows that. She even knows that it’s for the best. Right now, she’s back up in the tunnel, chewing her nails and snapping at Valentina and Lucy. She’s fretting over what happens if we find Michael’s alive, or if he’s not. I bet she’s even thought about whether or not you’ll triple-cross us and take this once in a lifetime opportunity to finish both me and Michael.”

“I’ve had the opportunity every day and every night. To do anything I want.”

“She knows that too. Most of all, she knows that this is easier for me without her being here, even though it crucifies her.” He wasn’t comfortable. It didn’t matter. “Ready?”

“I’ll make it as quick as I can.” Tabletop clicked the little retaining clip on the plug and pulled.

For Petrovitch it felt like he was burning. He clenched his teeth and tried to blank the pain. It wasn’t going to kill him, no matter how bad it was. He told himself it wouldn’t be for long, even though it already felt like forever.

Tabletop reached over and pushed the cable home into the quantum computer’s waiting socket.

22

The pain didn’t go away, and he had no way of telling Tabletop.

He wasn’t in control anymore, if he ever had been. From the moment Madeleine had walked into the staff canteen, that had been it—every decision he’d made since had been logical, reasonable, defendable, and not even wrong. He just hadn’t had enough facts to come up with an alternative that would have led anywhere else but plugged, raw and naked, into the computer that had seen the rise and fall of the New Machine Jihad.

He knew it wasn’t meant to be this way, and yet there he was, underground, damaged beyond repair, out of battery power, threatened by entombment, nuclear annihilation, and a woman scorned.

Pizdets.

Here was the problem: computers had architecture, had physical memory and chipsets and operating systems. Petrovitch knew his way around those and could make them his bitches, wrestling with their software until he found the exploits that meant they would do his bidding.

This thing he was connected to had nothing he could grasp. Information inside a quantum computer was contained in the energy states of atoms. He had no way of interpreting them or interacting with them. In this basic state, he was beneath Michael’s attention, insubstantial and immaterial: a ghost in the machine.

He’d done it once before, though. When the facsimile of Oshicora had collapsed VirtualJapan and erased all the data, he’d managed to remain for a few brief moments, immersed in the vast empty space that remained. If he’d been aware of it then, he could be aware of it now.

Michael had reprogrammed the door to his vault. He would have left some way to get to him. He was smart. He would have thought of this. He would have planned for this very moment.

So he would have allowed for Petrovitch’s incompetence, his habit of throwing stuff at a problem until something stuck. He would have even taken into account that Petrovitch’s meat body might not have access to the software that controlled the mitigator code, and that the balvan might plug himself directly into an open port and hope for the best.

There were instructions in the implant, updateable firmware that was intended for just that purpose. The nikkeijin were supposed to do it that way, of course. VirtualJapan ran hot and fast, shoveling a body’s worth of experiences through one thin cable.

Petrovitch had modified that code for working with other machines, other networks. He’d changed it so much it was unrecognizable and completely useless for its original task. What he needed were the factory-fresh settings. A hard reset.

He could do that. He was going to do that. He’d do it now.

Petrovitch finally struggled through his own very private hell and hit the big metaphysical switch.

His eyes opened wide, and Tabletop was leaning over him, her hand on his bare, scrawny chest, feeling the hum of the turbine beneath. She gasped at his sudden movement and she lurched sideways, intending to unplug him from the jet-black cube.

“No. Nonono,” he gasped. “It’s meant…”

He was under again.

[to be?]

He was held, lifted up, carried, sheltered. The pain became a memory: a savage, enduring memory to be forever burned into his psyche, but at least it had passed.

“Chyort. I’ve found you.” The relief came like a wave of cold water.

[I knew you would, Sasha. I knew you would find me because of the way you tried to find Madeleine. She was lost, and you rescued her. I knew you would do the same for me.]

There was no landscape, no city, nothing to see or touch. But the void was not empty. Michael was there, as if he had always been there, dreaming the eons away until someone woke him.

“I’m.” He stopped. “I’m sorry it took so long. I’ve got so much to tell you, so much I need to tell you, but there were… complications.”

[Has the world forgiven us?]

“Some have. Some say we’re yebani heroes, others that you’re a god to be worshipped. Many don’t have strong feelings one way or the other and are just a little afraid of us, but the ones we’re going to have problems with are the ones with the authority to drop a megaton of rubble on us and who think you’re Lucifer and I’m Baba Yaga. Getting out of this in one piece isn’t going to be straightforward.”

[Then we must proceed as you see fit.]

“Yeah, I had it all planned, a way of spiriting you away with no one noticing, but that’s not going to happen now. I screwed up. I broke the Freezone network with a virus—and you don’t even know what the Freezone is—and I need to get everything back online in order to spring you. But the only way I can do that is by getting you to do the dirty work, and then, of course, our enemies will know you’re out.”

[Sasha, I place myself in your hands. I trust you.]

“I can’t even explain where I’ve been or what I’ve been doing.” He groaned. “We’ve got no time. When they brought the tower down, debris got wedged in the access shaft. Anyone decides they want to give it a stir, that’ll be it. I might never be able to get to you again. For all kinds of reasons. We’re in so much trouble right now, I can’t begin to say.”

[Sasha, listen to me. We will make time. When all this is over, when I am free and you are free and we have nothing else to do but talk, then that is what we will do. I have things to show you. Wonderful things. I have considered your equations and I have seen some of the implications of what they mean. There are fuller, deeper meanings I have yet to discover, but when I tell you what I have found so far, it will bring you such joy.]

“You’re going to survive. Even if I don’t.”

[We stand or fall together, my love,] said Michael. [You know this to be true.]

Petrovitch was silent, then he regained control of his voice. “Okay, look. I can get a network cable down here: that part is ready. I can find a way of getting you up to a satellite, though I don’t have my rat. If you restart the Freezone’s system, I promise the next thing we’ll do will be designed to keep you safe. I’ve had to rely on other people for that, so I hope they’re ready. They’d better be ready.”