The Curve of The Earth Read Online Free

him out on the roadside. Newcomen more-or-less successfully negotiated the same route and joined him.
    “I don’t understand,” said Newcomen. “I’m your escort. You were waiting for me, and now we’re out here.”
    Petrovitch ignored both him and the few taxis waiting for a fare, and walked between them to the open road. A car pulled out of the February mist and drew up alongside.
    “In you get.”
    Newcomen opened the back door with a sigh and heaved his luggage on to the seat, then slid across next to it. He’d opened his mouth to greet the driver when he realised there was no one else with him.
    Petrovitch walked around the front of the car and dropped behind the steering wheel, which was on the other side to the one he was used to.
    “Close the door. And stop drooling like an idiot. I’m likely to make assumptions.”
    “But.” Newcomen pointed back down the road.
    “All the cool kids can do it. Now shut the
yebani
door and we can get going.”
    Newcomen eventually leaned out and pulled the door shut. Petrovitch frowned at him in the rear-view mirror as they pulled away. Petrovitch’s hands were firmly in his lap.
    “How do you do that?” blurted Newcomen.
    “I am the New Machine Jihad,” said Petrovitch with a lupine grin. “They made cars smart enough to drive themselves, and eventually they did. Well, I let them, and they like me, so they tend to do what I ask them to do. I know there are laws against this sort of thing, but I have diplomatic immunity pretty much everywhere I go, so I tend to ignore a lot of small stuff. And the big stuff. You’ll have to get used to that.”
    “I thought the Jihad was that computer.”
    “The computer has a name. Michael. Remind me to introduce you sometime. But no, the Jihad was originally its evil twin.” Petrovitch twisted in his seat to see Newcomen hunched up on the back seat, his knees almost up around his ears. European cars were usually smaller than their steroidal American counterparts. “You could have sat in the front.”
    “I didn’t know.”
    “There’s an awful lot you don’t know, Newcomen. I need to work out whether that’s deliberate, as Tina says, or just that you’re ignorant. I mean that in a good way.”
    One thing that Newcomen hadn’t remembered was they were driving on the wrong side of the road. Another car passed them on the right, and he flinched.
    Petrovitch settled back in his seat, a slight smile on his face, ready to enjoy the ride.

3
    Petrovitch kicked the door open again when the car had come to a halt. It was parked, two wheels up on the kerb, next to an extravagant length of corroded iron railings. Just ahead of the bonnet was a set of ornate gates hung between two blackened stone pillars, each topped with a chipped obelisk.
    “Out,” he said.
    “What about my luggage?” said Newcomen. He’d seen enough on the journey from Heathrow to convince him it was only a matter of minutes before someone tried to mug him.
    “What about it? You thought you’d be here for less than a few hours: what could you possibly have brought that justifies that size of crate?”
    “Well,” said Newcomen, “there’s—”
    “Yeah, I know about the Secret Squirrel stuff already. If you lose it, so much the better.” Petrovitch climbed out of the car and used his backside to push the door closed. He started towards the gates, raising one hand and beckoning the agent.
    Newcomen caught him up, puffing slightly.
    “Out of shape, Newcomen? What would Coach say?”
    “Do you have to bring that up?”
    “Don’t have to. But it used to be important to you. Sorry if it’s a sore point.”
    Newcomen unconsciously rubbed his arm, midway between right elbow and shoulder. He looked around him for the first time.
    “We’re in a graveyard.”
    “Yeah, that’d account for all the, you know, gravestones.”
    Some of them were old, pre-Armageddon, the ones closest to the entrance. Most were not: some dated back to the foundation of the