Newcomen was looking alternately at the crash site and Petrovitch. “You’re ragging on me.”

“Ragging on you, Farm Boy? Does it look like we’re ragging on you?” Spinning around, Petrovitch held his arms out wide. “Didn’t your handlers explain this to you? This is what it’s all been about. From start to finish. My little girl found an alien spaceship in her back yard.” He pointed to Avaiq. “This man saw it. He was here when they opened it.”

Newcomen’s eyes were suddenly bright with fever. “Opened it?”

“Yeah. Opened it.” Petrovitch glanced at Avaiq. “You did open it, right?”

“Of course we opened it. What were we supposed to do? We thought there might be someone inside. Someone who needed our help.”

Now Newcomen was slithering backwards, pushing with his hands, trying to distance himself from Petrovitch and Avaiq. “Get away from me.” His voice started off normal and ended in a low moan. “Get away! You said it was the Chinese. You said!”

“I was wrong,” called Petrovitch. “It wasn’t the Chinese after all. I should have worked it out a long time ago, but your lot have known ever since the beginning. They’ve got what’s left of it after they hit it with a cloud of tungsten flechettes and forced it to break up in our atmosphere. They came here and took everything, hoping to make it look like nothing ever happened.”

“Nothing did happen here,” screamed Newcomen. “Nothing. Nothing at all. No aliens. No spaceships. Nothing.”

Avaiq, listening, called out: “That’s not true.” Petrovitch turned to stare, and he added quietly: “About them taking everything.”

The final piece of the jigsaw slotted home, and Petrovitch shivered with anticipation.

“What was it?”

Avaiq shrugged, his parka rising and falling. “I don’t know. A thing. She’s got it with her. She might have even figured out what it is by now.” He nodded at Newcomen. “Why is he acting like this?”

“I don’t think it’s an act,” said Petrovitch. “I think he’s genuinely lost it.”

“I want to take you to your daughter, and we’re just wasting time here.” The Inuit regarded the sky. “You need to do something about him – either leave him, or… whatever.”

“Tempting, but no.”

Petrovitch advanced on Newcomen, and the struggle was brief and to the point. Newcomen tried to keep the smaller man away, using the still-tethered pistol as a club. Petrovitch grabbed it, ripped it free, threw it away and slapped him on the side of his head with his left hand. It was like being hit with a bag of bolts.

“It could have been different. It should have been different. Yobany stos, I was actually starting to like you. I was even ashamed of lying to you.” Petrovitch went through Newcomen’s pockets for the snowmobile key. “It was Tabletop who suggested the bomb: the others agreed, and I fought it all the way. I beat them down to faking it. I still went along with it, though, so yeah. I was ashamed.”

He found the key, a silver bar with a plastic fob, and straightened up.

“We were meant,” Newcomen slurred, “we were meant to be alone.”

“I hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t look that way.”

“You’re wrong. They’re wrong. It’s all a mistake.”

“It’s too late for that, Newcomen. You can’t pretend. We’re going to get Lucy. Good luck with whatever it is you decide to do now. I’m sure someone will come for you at some point. Maybe even before you freeze to death.” As he limped away, he told Michael: “Terminate his link. He won’t be needing it again.”

36

The closer they drew to the coast, the foggier it grew, until they were driving in a bubble caused by their own existence. Beyond, there was nothing, and the rest of the world could have ceased to be. Almost.

[Sasha. What do you propose we do?]

“I don’t know. Someone must have come up with a good idea.” Petrovitch followed Avaiq down the frozen river towards the sea, behind but not directly so because of the snow that the tracks kicked up.

[There are plenty of suggestions. Some are mutually exclusive. Others could be joined together to form a more-or-less coherent strategy. But there is no unanimity. On a decision as momentous as this, we should reach a broad consensus rather than a simple majority.]

“So give me a rundown of the factions. Not the personalities, just the proposals.”

[The first faction is centred around the idea that we should keep this discovery secret.]

“We don’t keep secrets. In fact, we’re in this pizdets because the Yanks wanted to keep it secret.”

[A point that is not lost on the plan’s advocates. However, they suggest that the secrecy only lasts as long as you and Lucy are within the borders of the United States. Once you have been successfully extracted, along with whatever artefacts Lucy has been able to retrieve, we will make an announcement. By maintaining our silence, they believe the Americans will be fooled into thinking you have died.]

“That has its merits. Next.”

[Another faction believes we should use distraction to cover your escape, most likely by launching a massive information war on key US infrastructure targets, perhaps aided by the Chinese, in the hope that they will be too busy firefighting those to track you down. I have pointed out that not only is the result in doubt, but the methods used in the Jihad attack on SkyShield depended on careful planning, an unsuspecting target and the preplanting of code. Still, people remember the success while not appreciating the level of difficulty.]

“It also gives the game away that Lucy’s still around. We’re smarter than that. Who else?”

[The third faction supports full and total disclosure of all the data we have gathered so far, and the release of more as and when we are in a position to disseminate it. They believe that by neutralising the secrecy element, we disarm the Americans’ need to silence either you or Lucy – your deaths would become counterproductive to their cause.]

“That’s hardly a comfort to me if they do it out of spite. I die, Lucy dies, and all the evidence ends up locked in a crate in Area Fifty-One.” Petrovitch considered all the plans. Each one held out the promise of escape, but none of them were foolproof. The variables, the uncertainty involved: none of them were brilliant.

[So the Silence faction and the Open faction are in conflict. Each is attempting to enlist supporters of the Attack faction, but the Open faction hold the ultimate veto. While I can block their Freezone-based discussions from entering the infosphere at large, I cannot prevent any of them from simply talking to another human being. Not all of the Freezone is on the island of Ireland. It is only a matter of time before the news leaks, in a haphazard, partial, and uncontrolled way.]

Petrovitch drove on. He guessed where Avaiq was taking him: to the spot where the video had been made. There had been some sort of camp there. Which begged the question, why hadn’t it been found?

[Sasha?]

“I’m thinking. I’m cold, I’m hungry, bits of me are dropping off, I’ve been blown up and shot at, I’m pissed off and I have to help decide the fate of the planet and everyone on it. I’d like a few moments.”

He realised he was still totally at the mercy of the Americans. If they could find him, they could finish him. Newcomen was right: there’d be no evidence, just a lot of dismissible crazy talk.

So what was important was the evidence. Get that out, whatever it was, and they’d be over the worst. Yes, they could all still die, but that was the point of the Open faction’s argument. Death wouldn’t matter if the story lived on.

Petrovitch nearly fell off the snowmobile. He slowed down to stop his uncontrolled wobble, and ended up sideways to the river. Avaiq, swaddled up against the freezing wind and with the noise of the engine in his ears, failed to notice. He disappeared into the fog, though the sound of him was clear enough.