by Garth Nix
She pushed her face into the side of the tunnel, hard into the yielding surface of yellow light, until her nose was crushed flat and her mouth was buried in whatever mysterious material the tunnel was made from.
It shouldn’t have been possible to breathe, but she believed Vladimir and tried anyway, and cool air came whistling through her just-open mouth, even though it was pressed tight against what seemed to be a solid wall.
With her face and body pushed into the side, Aleksandra had just enough additional working room to squeeze around the three close right angles, with every segment of her backbone seeming to move independently to urge her forward, like a worm’s concentric rings.
She moved faster after the triple bend, remembering what was ahead from the Replica. The tunnel, at least in its current state and without the extra difficult turns, was easier than the cork and cold steel, and Aleksandra felt she was ahead of the deadline, moving well.
Then the light changed again, to green, and she paused, struck by the change. She could no longer press her face or any part of herself into the tunnel sides, which had become much more rigid. Worse than that, it felt like the walls were intruding into her flesh, a multitude of tiny little needles touching her skin, pressing against it without actually drawing blood.
Aleksandra grimaced and pushed on. She’d gone a metre or so when she realised she could feel the rasp of those needles everywhere, not just on her exposed skin, but also through her American diving suit.
Vladimir had not mentioned this. Aleksandra touched her forehead to the tunnel surface. The strange material looked completely smooth, but she felt the prickles. She pushed her head harder, but the sensation didn’t change and there were no other effects. If they were real needles, they would have gone into her, drawn blood.
“It doesn’t matter,” muttered Aleksandra to herself. “Not important. That’s why Vladimir didn’t speak of it. He had such little time.”
She didn’t notice that the many small scratches she’d sustained from the Replica slowly disappeared, the green light washing them away as if they had never been. The puckered scar from where the rival German sniper’s bullet had grazed her left arm also vanished. She felt the itch as it happened, but ignored it, and of course could not look to see what had caused it.
At Junction B, Aleksandra rested for two minutes, as measured by Shargei’s watch, while she clicked her joints back in and massaged her tendons and muscles. She figured she had time, since she only had to get to the exit and get out.
Not go back. She was never going back.
There was a bad moment when it was time to go forward. Her mental map from the Replica faded out of her mind as she looked at the three tunnels that continued on from the junction, only discernable because the green light was different in those places, less intense, indicating a tunnel opening. For several seconds she couldn’t recall which was the one she should take. Then it came back to her in a rush, and she stretched up and slithered into the correct tunnel, dropping one shoulder back, pushing off with her legs and feet and toes at maximum extension.
The light turned a light, sky-ish blue as she reached Junction G and slid out into the relatively open space, arms outstretched. She saw the bones of her hands through her flesh, like an x-ray, but her skeleton was limned in dark, fuzzy blue as if the bones had been sketched in crayon. Vladimir had told her about this part, to not be bothered, but she still could not help but stare at the second finger of her left hand, able now to see where it had been broken and though set straight, the bone had thickened in a knot, like a gall in a tree.
It was only a few seconds lost, she thought, as she tore her gaze away and looked for the next tunnel entrance. It was easier to find in the blue light, the edges seemed more defined. Aleksandra found the right one, then shut her eyes for a moment, remembering the Replica, to make absolutely sure she had identified it correctly.
When she opened her eyes again, she had the sensation that she had somehow lost time. She shook her head, and raised her ankle to look at Shargei’s Rolex, ignoring the view of the bones in her feet. But the watch didn’t make sense. The numerals had changed to symbols she didn’t know, the shorter hour hand had a bifurcated end like a snake’s tongue, and the smaller inset dial with the second hand had become a wheel of several dashes, all blue in the current light, which was turning slowly to create an illusion of continuous, wavy lines.
Aleksandra blinked again, and looked away. The watch was no use, but the light was still pale blue. Not yet the darker blue that Termin called indigo, so she had at least twenty minutes. She inserted herself into the correct tunnel, this one almost at floor level, and pushed on.
But she had somehow lost time. Slithering up the corkscrew turns that led to the small junction S, the light changed to indigo. Tilting her chin to her chest to look back along her body, Aleksandra could no longer see the bones in her hands where they trailed behind her at the end of her dislocated arms.
She remembered Vladimir’s warning about this last survivable stage of light.
“Indigo is the worst,” he’d whispered, with such difficulty. “It brings memories. You must not dwell on them. You must not stop.”
Even as she recalled those words, she saw him vividly. Not burned and reduced in his hospital bed, but in his prime, at the school, roaring encouragement to a group of children making a human pyramid.
“Higher, higher, come on! A pyramid doesn’t end with three on top, two more up, and then Aleksandra you go on top like the star on the New Year tree in the House of Unions!”
Aleksandra smiled, a smile that relaxed her whole face, till she felt she was that child again, clambering up to stretch high on the human pyramid and they were all so proud, all twenty-eight of them and Vladimir beaming—
“Do not stop!”
She blinked. She had stopped, lost in memory. For how long? She pushed on again, scraping her head against the tunnel, hard, using the pain to banish the memories that were rising up. Happy memories, ones she had long since let go, since it only weakened her to recall them. The past was gone.
The light was still indigo. Aleksandra wriggled hard, using up energy faster than she normally would. She had no idea how much time she had lost.
The tunnel ahead bifurcated into two passages. She slithered into the left one, sure this was correct. But it ended almost immediately and she had to back out and take the right side, and now she was panicking. The light was indigo, but for how long? Soon the searing heat would come and she would be cooked from the inside out …
The tunnel turned left and ended. Aleksandra cried out and began to back again, but stopped. This was what was supposed to be here, it was right, then left … and up.
She slid forward, rotated herself inside the tunnel, ignoring the pain of scraped sides and aching joints.
High above, the light was not the glowing indigo of the tunnel walls–there was a tiny patch of softer blue, four or five metres above.
The distant sky of some far-off world.
Memory pressed at her again. Another sky, the sky above the steppe, the week she was sent back to get a medal, far behind the front line. Riding in the back of a truck, the canopy down, looking up at that endless sky. Happy to still be alive, and the world so big, and herself so small beneath it—
Aleksandra screamed, using the sound to push the memories away. She tilted her head up and began to inch up the shaft, forcing one arm back into place so she could work the shoulder. Slowly, ever so slowly, she rose up, centimeter by centimeter.
* * *
Memories assaulted her. Flashes of childhood derring-do; the secret feast during recruit training; the meeting with Stalin that had seemed such an honour at first … vivid memories that were so distracting, so real she almost felt she could step into them, escape into her own mind—
“No, no, no,” growled Aleksandra. That was not escape. She had seen people do that so many times. Give up and retreat inside their own heads, abandoning their bodies, always dying
soon.
That was surrender.
She would not surrender.
Groaning, she kept squeezing herself up the shaft. The patch of blue sky grew closer and closer and then her working arm reached up, she got two fingers over the impossible edge of nothingness, made them into a hook, and pulled herself that fraction more to get a full handhold, all four fingers.
Sudden cold bit her hand.
Her fingers were outside.
Outside somewhere.
Using all her strength, she hauled herself up and out–and fell, like a cork popped from a bottle.
The exit she had climbed up opened down.
Instinct and training, all those years of circus school, took over. She rolled on impact, steadied herself, looked up.
For a moment, she saw the indigo tunnel, a strange contrast of different blue to the sky beyond it. Then it disappeared, as if it had never existed.
The Original, whatever the hell it was, only went one way.
Aleksandra looked back down from the sky. The memories no longer thronged in her mind, threatening to overwhelm her. She simply felt exhausted, and stupid, unable to take in what she was seeing.
Broken, splintered trees stretched as far as she could see in all directions.
A familiar landscape.
The dead forest of Tunguska.
It was not another world. It was the same terrible, old world.
She had not escaped.
* * *
A dog barked nearby. Aleksandra’s hand flashed to the knife behind her ear, but she did not lift it out. After a second, she let go, leaving the blade where it was.
Better to be killed by dogs than be taken back alive.
She dropped to her knees, and bent her head, shutting her eyes.
“I do not believe in you, God,” whispered Aleksandra. “Not in heaven, or hell, except the hells we have made ourselves. But maybe I am wrong. Perhaps I will see Vladimir again, and my parents, and Konstantin and Marie, and all the others…”
She heard the dog come closer, but it had stopped barking.
The world was quiet, save for the faint whistle of the wind in the splintered trees. Then footsteps. Heavy boots. One person.
“Kill me,” said Aleksandra loudly. “I am not going back.”
“Why would I do that?”
Aleksandra opened one eye.
“I saw you fall from the sky,” said an old woman. She spoke Russian, but with an accent unfamiliar to Aleksandra. She was dressed in reindeer hide, had a wolfskin hat on her head, and cradled a rifle in her arms as familiarly as she might a baby. An older Mosin-Nagant, from the first German war. Her dog was at her side. Not a German dog at all, but a Borzoi, a good Russian dog. The woman gestured, and the dog lay flat, disappointed it had not found a wolf.
“Are you a spirit?”
“No,” replied Aleksandra. “How close are we to the camp?”
“What camp?” asked the woman.
“The camp,” said Aleksandra. She repeated the words dully. “The camp.”
“Are you sure you are not a spirit? My children tell me not to hunt wolves here, because of spirits. But I have never seen a spirit before, and because no one else comes to hunt, there are many wolves.”
“I am not a spirit,” said Aleksandra. “I am a zek. Shoot me please, before the guards come. You might even get a reward.”
The old woman scratched her forehead, right in the middle, under the protruding snout of her wolf’s head hat.
“What is a zek? What guards? There is no one else here. I told you. No one comes here. Only me. It is a long walk from anywhere, many days. Maybe not for you, falling from the sky—”
“Days,” interrupted Aleksandra. “Years.”
She opened both eyes, wide, and stared about her. The forest looked the same, but that would be true of any time since the initial explosion, it would be true for decades to come, maybe longer …
“What year is this?”
The old woman shrugged.
“Forty-eight, forty-nine, I don’t know…”
Aleksandra’s brow furrowed. Not the future, or the past?
“Does Comrade Stalin still rule us all?”
“Who?”
“Comrade Stalin.”
“Who’s that?” asked the old woman. “And why do you keep saying ‘Comrade’? No one talks like that. I think you must be a spirit.”
Aleksandra stared at her, and then glanced at the sun. She felt its warmth, strong and beautiful, heat she had not felt for many months. The artificial heat in the Original did not count. It was not the same. This was the real warmth, but …
“It’s summer!”
“Yes. It’s summer.”
“There is no Stalin.”
“Never heard of him.”
“The Central Committee?”
“What is that?”
“Are there camps?”
“Hunting camps, you mean?”
“No, no, for prisoners.”
“Not since the Czar went away to England, oh, years ago now. All that stuff, the secret police, camps. None of that in the Republic. People wouldn’t stand for it. Not nowadays.”
“People wouldn’t stand for it,” repeated Aleksandra. Tears started in her eyes. It was so long since she had cried, the tears felt very strange. Drops of water sliding down her face, but not from rain. “People wouldn’t stand for it.”
She laughed, and cried, and stood on her hands and walked on them in a circle around the wolf hunter.
The old woman muttered something about a spirit again, but she smiled, a toothless smile.
“I’ve escaped!” cried Aleksandra. “I have escaped!”
She flipped upright, hugged the hunter and kissed her on both papery, sun-scorched cheeks.
“Escaped from what?” asked the old woman, looking up at the endless sky.
“Another world, grandmother,” said Aleksandra, wiping her eyes. “Another world.”
About the Author
Garth Nix has been a full-time writer since 2001. He has also worked as a literary agent, marketing consultant, book editor, book publicist, book sales representative, bookseller, and as a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve. Garth’s books include the award-winning fantasy novels Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen and the science fiction novels Shade’s Children and A Confusion of Princes. His fantasy novels for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of The Seventh Tower sequence; The Keys to the Kingdom series; and the Troubletwisters books (with Sean Williams). More than five million copies of Garth’s books have been sold around the world, his books have appeared on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, ‘Publishers Weekly’, The Guardian and The Australian, and his work has been translated into 40 languages. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 by Garth Nix
Art copyright © 2020 by Mark Smith