The Curve of The Earth by Simon Morden Page A

incompetent ideologues we can have fun running rings around.” Petrovitch snorted. “How very Soviet of them.”
    The capacitors were full. The energy they stored was dumped into a series of coils made of wire fat enough not to melt, and a high-intensity magnetic field briefly enveloped Newcomen.
    Even outside the shielded box, Petrovitch felt the surge.
    “If that wasn’t enough, they’ve been hardening their spyware.” He walked over and hauled on the door. “Okay. Out. Assume the position.”
    Petrovitch produced a wand, which he ran slowly and care-fully over Newcomen, who stood, spreadeagled, with his palms on the now-warm cabinet.
    “Clear,” he said eventually. “Marcus’ll dump your luggage in too, but right now? A decent cup of coffee, and I can show you why I think Lucy’s still alive.”

9
    Inside the main reading room, it was warm and bright. Little light penetrated through the stained-glass windows except at midday, so most of the illumination came from elaborate chandeliers decorated with thousands of crystal prisms. Electroluminescent wall hangings supplemented the downward light with their blue-white glow.
    The space was high, and a circular balcony had been built to take advantage of it, self-supporting so as not to damage the stonework.
    People were working up there, if lying on couches with infoshades on counted as working.
    “What are they doing?” asked Newcomen. He spoke in a whisper. Perhaps he thought they were sleeping.
    “Data mining. Digging into raw statistics and turning them into something people can use. It’s our biggest export. Coffee?”
    Petrovitch stopped by a wooden table and touched the back of his hand to a jug on a warming plate. He nodded withsatisfaction and took two mugs from the tray, filling them with a thick oil-black brew.
    While Newcomen stirred and added milk, Petrovitch took his mug down to the centre of the reading room, where there was a round table surrounded by chairs. Marcus was already there, dark glasses lying on the polished wood in front of him.
    When the city authorities had sold them the building, they’d left all the books inside. Maybe they thought they’d all be thrown out: not so. The Freezone had kept them exactly where they’d been shelved. The bookcases were arranged around them, the spines of the books facing outwards. Those and the coffee: it smelled right.
    When Newcomen joined them, Marcus slid the infoshades across to him.
    “Where do I sit?”
    “Wherever you want, son,” said Marcus.
    He dithered, and chose a seat two away from Petrovitch. He seemed thrown by the fact there was no subordinate position to take on a circular table.
    “Put them on,” said Petrovitch. “I’ll try and explain as I go. So that you understand, I’ll do my best to make it simple enough, even for you.”
    “Should I be grateful?” Newcomen unfolded the arms on the shades and slipped them over his ears.
    “I’d prefer to get technical. If you’d had any science in your background, I might have been able to spare you the baby version.” Petrovitch picked up his mug and blew steam off the top of it. “As it is, you’re going to have to rely on my ability to explain complex concepts to complete ignoramuses.”
    “I have a bachelor’s degree.”
    “In American literature. You may as well have done mediastudies for all the use it is. Now
past’ zebej
and concentrate. I’m not going to do this twice.”
    Petrovitch ran a solar system simulator and patched Newcomen into it.
    “Tell me you recognise this. Please.”
    “Uh, it’s the Sun.” Newcomen paused. “Isn’t it?”
    “Yeah, it is. Gold star for you.”
    The Sun burned bright and steady, but around its edges, the light flickered as if it were dancing to silent music. Petrovitch zoomed in on it until they could only see the corona.
    “The Sun spits out all sorts of junk. As well as visible light, it glows all the way from radar frequencies to X-rays. It also ejects charged particles,