Cicero did not attempt to debate with him. Bakunin seemed impervious to reasoned argumentation. His sense of logic was nil. Yet Cicero sensed something desperate and pure and childlike about this tortured and desperate man. Still, Cicero preferred to keep his own company. He began spending most of his time in the spacious upstairs apartment.
Bakunin took long walks in the woods at frequent intervals. When he returned he would throw himself on the couch and look out the window at the snow-covered birches.
Hanging on the wall facing the couch was a long mirror in an elaborate gilt frame. One day, as Bakunin lay on his couch, he saw the mirror turn cloudy. Then it became suffused with light, which faded and gave way to a black and white image of a man’s face.
“Well, Michael, how are you getting along?” Murchison asked.
“Fine, fine,” Bakunin said. “But isn’t it time we got to work?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve put things together. It’s obvious to me that you are from a future that has finally reached maturity and recognized the inevitability of my doctrine. Rest assured, I am ready to advise, though, true to my principles, I refuse to lead or participate in any government.”
“Is that what you think this is all about?” Bakunin’s eyes glowed. “I know that I am recognized at last! My great doctrine has come to fruition! Exonerated, justified, at last!”
“I’m afraid you have it all wrong,” Murchison said. “As a workable political doctrine, your anarchy is about as useful as a snowmaking machine at the North Pole. Anarchy is something our political science students study in school. This may seem harsh, telling it to you this way, but it’s better to get the position straight.”
“If my doctrine is unimportant, why did you bring me back?”
Murchison couldn’t tell Bakunin the real reason. The simulacra wouldn’t understand the strange mixture of government and business interests that governed their selection.
“You are of historic interest to some of our scholars,” Murchison said.
“I see. And what is it you want me to do?”
“It’s nothing much. Just talk to some people.” Bakunin laughed. “That’s all you people ever want. Just a little talk. Just tell us a few things. But the questions continue, and do not end until you have betrayed yourself, incriminated your friends, and violated all your principles. Yes, I know quite a lot about interrogations.”
“It’s not like that,” Murchison said. “I’m talking about some nice chats with pleasant scholarly men and women.”
“Of course they would use that type. You think I can’t see through it?”
“Who is this they you keep on referring to?”
“The Cheka, of course, the Czar’s secret police.” Murchison groaned. “Listen, Michael, you’ve got it all wrong. And anyhow, all that stuff is in the past.”
“So you say!”
“Damn it, Michael, you know that we brought you back to life. We could take any secrets we wanted directly from your head. You realize that, don’t you?”
Bakunin thought about it. “Yes, it seems likely.”
“Then why not cooperate with me?”
“No,” Bakunin said.
“Why not?”
“Because I am Bakunin. I lead, or die, but I do not cooperate.”
“Great,” Murchison muttered. “That’s just wonderful. Look, Michael, this is important to me. If you helped, I could do you a lot of good.”
“I realize that you are powerful. Apparently you can, in some fashion, call the dead back to life.”
“Yes.”
“Then I will cooperate with you,” Bakunin said. “Thank you, I knew you’d—”
“If you will bring back my Antonia.”
“Beg pardon?”
“My wife, Antonia. I don’t suppose you ever heard of her. She was only a girl from a small Siberian village. But she made my life bearable.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Martin said. “Meanwhile, get ready for your first interview.”
“Not until Antonia is here.”
Murchison was out of patience. “Michael, I could turn you off as easy as I turned you on. From your point of view it would be death.”
“You call this living?” the Russian said, with a sudden burst of hard laughter. “No, go back to the Czar or whoever you work for. Tell him that Michael Bakunin, a ghost lying on a couch in a place that doesn’t exist, defies him in this new life as he did in the old one.”
The President of the United States had appointed Murchison as director in charge of marketing for the simulacra program. Murchison was good at developing markets and new uses for some of the agricultural surpluses that America, despite its 3rd-world position in the present global economy, continued to produce. He was a man who got things done.
But working with electronic ghosts, if that’s what the simulacra were, was a different experience for him. Especially when one of the ghosts wanted him to deliver another ghost named Antonia. “Antonia who?” Simms asked.
“Hell, I don’t know,” Murchison said. “It’s gotta be in a book somewhere. Or a database.”
“I’ll check it out,” Simms said, “but don’t get your hopes up.”
Two hours later he had the answer. “No can do,” he said. “Insufficient data.”
The Russian sat on his sofa, arms folded, his face melancholy. “I have told you my conditions.”
“And I’ve told you they are impossible. Listen to me, Michael, it’s not such a big deal. We’ll try an easy one first. An interview with a kid. He won the high school history honors in Slavic studies.”
“I no longer care for the Slavs,” Michael Bakunin said. “I am one myself, but that makes no difference. They had their chance, in Poland, in Russia, in Germany. They betrayed themselves and mankind by not going beyond Marxism, to the ultimate revolution of anarchy!”
“Tell the kid that,” Murchison suggested. “Anyhow, he’s not a Slav. I just remembered, his name’s Peterson. Peter Peterson. He’s a nice kid, why not give him a break?”
“A Swede,” Bakunin remarked. “I spent a terrible time in Stockholm. I do not care to talk with Swedes.”
“He’s not a Swede! He’s an American!”
“I told you my conditions,” Bakunin said. “I want my wife here with me.”
“Michael, I’ve been trying to explain to you, we can’t do it. I’ve talked to our scientists, it simply can’t be done.”
“If you could bring me back,” Bakunin said, “I fail to see why you can’t bring back my Antonia.”
“It’s too technical for me to go into,” Murchison said. “But what it comes down to, we don’t have enough information on her.”
“She was a humble person,” Bakunin said. “One of the little people who you think do not count.”
“No, it’s nothing at all to do with that. To bring a person back, we need to have a lot of information. Otherwise there’s no chance.”
“The Cheka would have a dossier on her,” Bakunin said.
“But we can’t get it,” Murchison said. He didn’t tell Bakunin about the present-day partition of Russia. The Moslem portion did not have access to the old records. The part still called the USSR had lost most of its pre-20th century records during the riots at the time of partition.
“If you cannot bring back Antonia,” Bakunin said, “I will not cooperate.”
“I don’t wish to use threats,” Murchison said.
Bakunin smiled suddenly. “You think you can threaten me? Now? In this state, whatever it is? That, Martin, is very silly indeed.”
“You’re wrong about that, Michael,” Murchison said. And disappeared.
Simms was annoyed. Murchison had requested this meeting in the lab and he was already half an hour late. Simms hadn’t liked Murchison from the start. He had known all about his reputation, of course. Who didn’t? Feature stories in a dozen glossy magazines, the confidante of presidents, a man with a reputation for getting things done.
Just the man needed to make something out of this project, something that could show a profit and help get a moribund American economy back on its feet. A dynamo, the newspapers called him. Simms had a better word: the man was a monomaniac with psychopathic tendencies; an egotist who would stop at nothing to get his way.
Murchison came bustling into the lab with a book under his arm. “Sorry to be late. Take a look at this.” He opened the heavy history text and showed the full-page illustration to Simms.
“Very pretty,” Simms said.
“That’s unimportant. Can you simulate it?” Simms studied the illustration more closely. “Are there any plans available?”
“You don’t need them. What I want you to do is simulate this exterior view, and one interior room. I have a description of the interior. And I want you to set up one-way access only to the interior room. Make it a protected domain, I think that’s the terminology. Can you do it?”
“No problem,” Simms said. “We simulated the Russian house with interiors for Bakunin. You said he’d be more cooperative in a familiar environment. But this . . .”
“What’s the matter with it?”
“One-way access. It’s a prison, isn’t it? A prison for a simulacrum.”
“You got it,” Murchison said.
“Isn’t there some other way to get the results you’re after?”
“Sure,” Murchison said. “Bring back Antonia.”
“I’ve already explained to you why we can’t do that. With the data available to us, it would be like bringing back a monster. The Antonia we created would be filled with characterological lacunae. Even its appearance would be unacceptable.”
“All right. Build the new construct.”
“I don’t like it,” Simms said.
“Never mind. Do it anyway. It won’t take long to change Bakunin’s mind. And, as I keep on reminding you, we’re not dealing with a man, it’s a simulacrum, a creation of electrons and photons or whatever it is inside that computer of yours.”
Murchison was less sure of himself with Cicero. There was something endearing about Bakunin, something childlike and unthreatening. And after all, what had Bakunin been, historically? A wildeyed weirdo who travelled around the world, did time in prisons in Germany and Austria and Russia, never really got his stuff together. Whereas Cicero was a different story.
Murchison had looked through a printout on Cicero’s main states. He had been one of the most powerful men in Rome in its heyday around 65 B.C. And he hadn’t even been a patrician. He had come up from the bottom all on his own, getting to the top on sheer intelligence, merit, boldness, and his matchless oratory.
The man had been an equal with Caesar, Brutus, Marc Antony. He’d been a philosopher, playwright, and poet as well as First Consul of Rome.
He could be box office. In a scholarly way, of course, but still box office.
Murchison saw that the possibilities were endless—if only the Cicero simulacrum would cooperate.
But of course Cicero had been a great politician. He’d probably be easy enough to deal with.
Writing had always been Cicero’s consolation in times of difficulty. There were writing instruments in the house, and there was paper, much superior to parchment or wax tablets. Cicero wrote, trying to think, to consider his situation, to find out what to do.
“All right, come along now.”
Bakunin looked up and saw the German police guard, in his dove-gray uniform, standing over him. Was this a dream, or a vision? He got up, noting the other guards outside his cell door.
He had expected them to come for him, ever since the failure of the Dresden uprising . . .
But no, he remembered now, that had already happened, just yesterday, and they had taken him to the old fortress in Konigsberg. At least the room had been clean and warm, and he had been well-fed and they had allowed him all the cigars he’d wanted. The Saxons treated political prisoners decently, you could say that much for them. But against them—it was coming back to him now—was the judgement of the tribunal soon after his arrest. Under Saxon law he should have gotten no more than a year or two. But the court had discovered or invented various legal technicalities, as Bakunin could have foreseen if his mind had not been clouded by his incurable and baseless optimism. He could see the presiding judge, a fat bourgeois of the worst sort, smiling as he said, “Michael Bakunin, the court has examined the evidence and it is clear that you are a political agitator of the worst sort.” A pause. “However, there is another possibility, which you will learn about in due time.”
“Where are you taking me?” Bakunin asked. The sergeant twisted his long moustaches and said, his voice not unkind, “I am not permitted to talk to you, Bakunin. Just come along quietly.”
Where are we going?”
“Away from here.”
They were going to release him! Surely what lay ahead would be better than what was behind—the bodies of the Dresden workers, the screams of the women as the Prussian infantry with bayonetted rifles broke through the barricades, and then the senseless slaughter even after the feeble little protest had been snuffed out.
But where were they taking him?
There was a coach waiting outside the gates of the prison, and an armed escort of Prussian cavalry to escort it. Bakunin thought, they are going to send me back to France. To Paris, and freedom! Even these Prussian bastards don’t want my blood on their hands. Perhaps one or two of them on the tribunal understood my statement, my plea, my hopes and dreams for all mankind.
The sun was just coming up, a watery white smear in the featureless white German sky. Bakunin was permitted a seat by the window, with three armed guards sitting beside and opposite him. The curtains were pulled down, but not tied securely into place, and Bakunin could see they went through the Koenigsberg town square to the crossroads and turned to the southeast.
He had been so sure they would take him to Paris! But France lay in the opposite direction. Terror filled him. He muttered to the sergeant, “This is not the road to Paris.”
The sergeant was amused. “What gave you the idea they would send you there?”
“To get rid of me,” Bakunin said.
“They’re doing that, all right,” the sergeant said. “But where are we going?”
The sergeant didn’t answer at once. He was assessing his subordinate soldiers. Talk with the prisoner was discouraged. But none of these men would dare talk. And it was a long ride ahead. “You are an embarrassment to the Prussians, Herr Bakunin. But the authorities don’t want your blood on their hands.”
Searing hope flooded Bakunin’s big, fragile chest. And then a horrid fear.
“What are you thinking?” the sergeant asked, watching the play of emotion over the sad, tortured face.
“I foresee two possibilities,” Bakunin said. “First, and least likely, you will take me somewhere—Switzerland, perhaps—set me free, perhaps with orders never to return. That would be the best solution all around.”
“Ah, Bakunin,” the sergeant said, “you are a dreamer.”
“The second possibility, more likely I fear, is that you will find some place along the road, a clump of trees, perhaps, and there—”
“Yes?” the sergeant prompted.
Bakunin couldn’t bring himself to say it. He made the gesture of a finger across his throat.
“Here,” the sergeant said, taking a small leather case out of an inner pocket of his greatcoat. “Have a cigar.”
“The condemned man’s last smoke?” Bakunin asked, accepting the cigar, his hand trembling despite his resolve to show no fear.
“Not exactly,” the sergeant said. Suddenly he tired of the game he was playing with this wretched and ridiculous man. “We are en route to the Austrian frontier, where arrangements have been made to turn you over to the authorities.”
Bakunin said slowly, “Austria! But they will kill me!”
The sergeant shrugged. “It’s your own fault. You shouldn’t have published that inflammator
y pamphlet advocating the overthrow of the Austrian empire. Not even murder is as bad as inciting the masses to revolt against their legally constituted authorities.”
Bakunin slumped back. Now he knew. They were on the road to Prague. It was the worst, the worst.
Remembering it now, lying on a couch in the house that looked so much like Premukhino, he saw that he had been naïve even then. Austria was not to be the end. Ahead of him still lay the final horror, Russia, and the implacable hatred of Czar Nicholas I.
“I’ve heard you’ve been writing,” Murchison said.
Cicero didn’t bother asking who Martin had heard it from. Martin was being polite in his fashion. Cicero had surmised that if Martin, or the powers he represented, were able to do what they had done to him so far, spying on him and his writing would be both simple and natural to them.
“A few notes,” Cicero admitted.
“I’d really like to see them,” Martin said. “Any words by the famous Cicero would be welcome indeed.”
“I do have the natural vanity of an author,” Cicero said. “One always hopes one’s words will live beyond one’s lifetime. I suppose you have improved on our system of copyists in this new age of yours?”
“Indeed we have,” Martin said. “We have mechanical means of transcription and publication nowadays. We could publish you worldwide. This could bring you great fame.”
“As my previously written works have already done?” Cicero said affably.
Martin had nodded before he could stop himself. Simms and others had warned him about revealing too much to the simulacra. Still, you couldn’t prevent an intelligent man like Cicero from putting things together.
“Your works, those that have survived, are studied in our schools.”
“Which schools? In which countries? What century is this, Martin? Have you raised me from the dead? Perhaps not, since I seem to have a certain ineluctable corporeality. But you have resurrected something of me—my ghost, perhaps, or my spirit. Is that not so?”
“Something like that,” Murchison said, since denial was useless. “But I can’t go into all that at this time. Later, perhaps. Now, please show me what you have written.”
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