Exoteric

by Philip Hemplow

  That was stupid, of course, and not what should be occupying his thoughts. He was more concerned that Votyakov had information about the doctor’s past to which he himself had not been privy. It could only have come from Zolin, and Arkady wondered what else the Chief had seen fit to share with the Ogre, but not with him. It was vintage Zolin: forever playing his subordinates against one another, and making sure he was the only one in full possession of the facts.

  Sophia was still standing by the calorimeter window. As another barrage of thunder came rolling down the valley, Arkady returned to her. His nodding smiles and murmured words of encouragement eventually coaxed her from the clinic, to wait until the dark rituals of science and surgery were over.

  *

  Lightning made the restaurant windows flash. For a split second, the Zubgorai’s troika of caried fangs stood out against the boiling clouds. Then came the thunder’s boom, almost immediate, the storm cell scraping past them now as it turned south towards Mongolia.

  “The gods fart at us,” said Votyakov, with a chuckle. He was slouched over a table, toying with a box of matches, the hunch in his shoulder rising above the stubbled dome of his skull. Arkady ignored him and poured a cup of coffee.

  It was proving a long evening, the time already ticking towards two a.m., with surgery yet to commence. The doctors were in the medical clinic, Galina sequestered behind screens, working to implant a tiny, wireless defibrillator in the donated heart while her stepbrother checked and double-checked its network connection. Both seemed stressed, but confident. Arkady was just worried tiredness would take its toll before the operation was complete.

  You’ll fall asleep before they do.

  Ana’s voice again, in his head. He grunted an acknowledgement, which made Votyakov look up. Not if you were here. You never would sleep during a storm: always shrieking and acting scared.

  I pretended, came her answer. I just liked the way you held me when the thunder came.

  Another blast of lightning; another bark of thunder echoing around the mountain.

  “Perfect weather for a resurrection, eh?” said Votyakov, finally pocketing the matches and pushing himself to his feet. “We have our dead body, we have our mad scientist, we have lightning.”

  We even have a hunchback, thought Arkady, with a glance at the Ogre’s twisted shoulder, but he stopped short of saying it aloud.

  “How did you injure your back?” he asked instead. “Or were you born that way?”

  “My back? Ah, a drunk, driving a truck, collided with our car while we were on a stakeout. My partner was killed, and I was left in agony with a broken back. The surgeons botched their attempts and pinned it incorrectly, and they had no brace to fit a man of my height. The one they gave me left me with this…deviation. ‘Kyphosis,’ they call it. They say they could correct it now, with modern medicine, but…”

  Arkady felt a fleeting pang of sympathy for the old grotesque, but it vanished as he continued to talk.

  “The KGB didn’t know what to do with a crippled agent, so they sent me to Lefortovo, where I stayed the rest of my career. The driver who caused the accident was released from prison by then, but it was only weeks before he was arrested again. When that happened, I saw to it that he was transferred to Lefortovo. Would you like to know what I did to him then?”

  The Ogre smiled at Arkady, moistening his lips with the tip of his tongue.

  “I doubt it,” said Arkady, staring into his coffee, keeping his voice even and indifferent.

  “Nothing. I did nothing to him, and I saw to it no one else went near him, either. Does that surprise you?”

  “Should it?”

  “He had nothing to tell me I didn’t already know. There was no urgency to break him. You know, all one need do to drive a man mad is: nothing. Isolation, solitude—nothing more is needed. The thoughts and words of other people keep us sane. Take a man away from that, lock him away from the world, and his mind will feed on itself until he is entirely demented, eating his faeces and breaking his face against the ground. I have observed it many times.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you have. What time is it? I must return to the clinic.”

  “I can only suppose we are born insane. It is, perhaps, our natural state. We are taught to display some semblance of logic, a desire for order, a sense of proportion and consistency, but ‘sanity’ is just our straitjacket. Behind it all lies madness.”

  Lightning flashed again, and Arkady let the thunder stand as his answer, turning his back on the Ogre and walking to the door.

  In the clinic, preparations were all but complete. Zapad was performing a final, unnecessary inventory of the blood bags in the medical refrigerator. Galina was already seated in front of the surgical interface, adjusting the strap on her VR goggles.

  “Come on, Roman, have you forgotten how to count?” she chided as Arkady entered. “Get a move on. We don’t even need any blood tonight.”

  “Once we begin the operation, there’s no turning back. I need to be sure everything is in order.”

  “There’s no turning back anyway,” pointed out his stepsister. “It’s not as if you can just stick him back in the cryostat. We’re already committed.”

  “Get on with it, Doctor,” agreed Arkady. “Wait any longer and you’ll be too exhausted to work. Let’s make a start.”

  Zapad dithered and prevaricated a minute more, fussing over the things he could control, like a nervous, expectant father. A final check of the video equipment, and he declared himself ready to begin.

  “Just like before, please, Galina: quick and clean. I feel as though I should have prepared a speech. I’ve been waiting for this day my whole career; I’ve had plenty of opportunity.”

  “I’d wait until we know if it’s worked,” recommended Galina, beginning to manipulate the controls, “or if this is just a very expensive autopsy.”

  “It will work,” declared Zapad, staring at the video screens as the first blade sliced Molchanov’s ceraceous, chalk-white skin, now painted brown with iodine-povidone. The knife bisected the cryopreservation instructions tattooed across his chest, opening a fresh wound only inches from the ragged, black bullet hole which had ended his life. “I can already tell.”

  Arkady turned away from the monitors as vitrification medium seeped from the incision and ran down Molchanov’s sides. He hoped the doctor was right.

  *

  By four a.m. the storm had begun to blow itself out, or at least moved on, struggling through the mountains and swooping southwest, to expend the last of its fury on the flatlands beyond. The gale had dropped and the thunder subsided, but sleet still pelted the resort, driving against the windows in shivering waves, surging and ebbing with the wind.

  The surgery had gone much as it had in rehearsal. Extracting Molchanov’s bullet-shattered heart was less straightforward than taking out the dead junkie’s, but the donor organ proved easier to embed than the pig’s had been. Galina had engaged in some tricky vascular repair, swearing at the difficulty of manipulating and sealing the stiff, fragile tissue, and complaining that the antifreeze Zapad had added to her polymerising agents had reduced their effectiveness. She took extra time to ensure that the veins and aorta were properly sutured, any damage repaired with adhesive protein solders before the new organ was stitched firmly into place. Arkady watched her hands closely for any signs of unsteadiness, perhaps caused by alcohol, but saw none.

  To his untrained eye, the riotous blur on the zoomed-in video display was nothing but chaos: a butcher’s window display of slick, rubbery offal pushed this way and that; occasional flashes of surgical steel diving in and out of focus. On the adjacent screen, footage from the fixed, overhead camera showed Molchanov’s full body, head to toe. The worst of the carnage was obscured by the robot’s bulk as it hunched over the wound like a feeding hyaena, but it was Molchanov’s face which kept drawing Arkady’s attention. White, impassive, and devoid of expression, his eyelids were held closed by two strips of surgical tape, a precauti
on Arkady could only think was unnecessary. It made him look like a child’s drawing, or a crudely-stitched doll: crosses for eyes, slash of mouth, tee-shaped impression of a nose.

  Eventually, Molchanov’s sternum was allowed to fall closed once more, locking the bequeathed heart in a prison of bone and stainless-steel ligature wire. The robot’s sewing attachment drove stitches into his frozen skin to close the incision, and Galina pulled the goggles from her head in weary triumph.

  “There! It is done. One perfectly good donor heart transplanted into a ridiculous dead man’s chest. If you want to wheel out Walt Disney, I’ll do him, too!”

  Zapad clapped her on the shoulder. “Excellent work. Thank you, Galina. However, we are not quite done, yet. I need vascular access to begin the glycerol flush. Can you run lines into his jugular and femoral for me, please?”

  So saying, he crossed the room and killed the power to the refrigeration units. The roar of the fans had been so continual they had all stopped noticing it, and the abrupt quiet as they idled to a halt was disconcerting. The doctors’ voices as they discussed catheter placement and bore sizes suddenly seemed inappropriately loud. Zapad began pulling on his cold-weather gear, preparing to venture into the makeshift operating theatre.

  “We might as well start as soon as possible,” he explained to Arkady as he zipped himself into one of the quilted suits. “All the vitrification fluid must be purged from the body before we can reintroduce blood. The first stage is a hydrogen sulphide-glycerol flush. We will draw the fluid from his veins and replace it with a solution of H2S. This we warm and circulate by pumping until his internal temperature has reached four degrees above zero. Then that, too, will be replaced with specially treated blood as we enter the final stages.”

  “You make it sound simple,” said Arkady.

  “In theory, it is simple,” agreed Zapad. “In practice…well, we shall see. The machinery will do most of the work, but we must be careful not to go too quickly, and not to over pressurise his circulatory system. I will maintain careful control of the temperature. We will need to chill him periodically as he warms up, to allow annealing to occur and avoid stress fractures. Let him warm ten degrees, then cool him five, ten then five, ten then five—until we are ready to introduce the blood.”

  “I’m sure you know what you’re doing, Doctor. Just let me know if you need anything from me.”

  “Thank you. You may be sure I will,” said Zapad, flashing him a happy, puppyish grin.

  “If no one objects, I’m going to bed,” announced his stepsister. “Your catheters are in place, Roman; they just need taping. Call if you need me.”

  Arkady would have liked to turn-in, too, but he forced himself to wait by the observation window while Zapad was in the icebound calorimeter. He would make sure the anaesthetist made it safely out and that he got some sleep, before doing likewise.

  Zapad pushed the telesurgery equipment out of his way and wheeled a different machine into place: a beige box, studded with knobs and dials, with a rack of infusion bags above it and a large, plastic waste drum below.

  “This is our apheresis machine,” called out Zapad, gesturing to it, his voice crackling over the room’s intercom. “It was originally designed for automated cell processing, but I’m afraid the modifications I have made mean its warranty is no longer intact!”

  He connected a pair of plastic tubes to the catheters in Molchanov’s neck and groin. “The solution goes in here, and comes out…here. The vitrification medium ends up in this tank.” He gave the plastic drum a muffled slap with his glove. “The temperature, flow rate, and perfusion pressure can be set by these controls on top; then the machine takes care of everything else.”

  He turned the equipment on and stood back as fluids began to flow. Viscous, clear liquid, contaminated with salts, platelet fragments, and dark specks of haemoglobin, issued from the tap in the dead man’s leg, while fresh glycerol flowed in at his neck. A steady trickle of waste began splattering into the drainage drum.

  “It’s a little sluggish,” complained Zapad after watching for a minute. He began adjusting the machine’s settings. “It must be the temperature. Even at seventy percent glycerol, the solution is only a little above its freezing point. As things warm up in here, it will do better, I’m sure.”

  Arkady just nodded back through the window to show he was listening. Despite Zapad’s enthusiasm, he still couldn’t think of the thing on the table as anything other than a dead body—not even that:a piece of meat.

  This was your idea, whispered Ana. If you weren’t so afraid of disappointing Zolin, you’d have told him what he wants is impossible.

  Arkady’s brow furrowed, and he shook his head. I’m not afraid of Zolin! I’m afraid of Maslok disarming our country and making us puppets of the British and Americans.

  You’re too old to be afraid of things like that.

  Then you tell me: what should I be afraid of?

  There was no answer.

  *

  He made it to bed just before dawn, forcing Zapad to go as well. After endless fussing over his transfusion bags, he agreed, on condition that Arkady woke him after three hours so he could check on his ‘patient.’ Consequently, eight o’clock found Arkady looking out across the valley from the restaurant windows, coat draped round his shoulders, swaying slightly as he waited for the coffee to do its work. He had slept in his clothes, and woken feeling grubby and sluggish, more tired than when he went to bed. With grimy collar, unshaven face, and un-brushed teeth, he was not surprised when Ana’s disapproving ‘tut’ intruded on his thoughts.

  Beyond the glass and the patio in front of him, the world seemed to have undergone a spectacular inversion. The sky was a rich, cerulean blue, clear all the way up to the stratosphere, no trace left of the storm which had battered them throughout the night. The valley, though, was choked with cloud, its sides and floor screened by a drifting river of impenetrable mist. It meandered to the horizon, a vast, curling fog stirred by the feeble rays of the winter sun. It was like being on an island in the sky, thought Arkady: void above, clouds below, and with nothing of substance in sight.

  He heard the restaurant doors swing open and someone enter the room. He didn’t turn round, just carried on gazing out at the surreal scene in front of him, listening as soft footsteps crossed the room. Lighter than Zapad’s leaden tread, but not the stealthy creep of the Ogre either…dragging too much to be Galina…it could only be Sophia Molchanov.

  She joined him at the window, standing silent in the numbing cold radiating from the glass. Arkady stole a sidelong glance. Her lips were pursed and scowling, her eyes tired. With no make-up or nail varnish, she was experimenting with her appearance again. A white headscarf decorated with a pattern of red diamonds and crosses covered her hair, and she was wearing a black dress of some thick, felt-like material over her blouse and jeans. An attempt at peasant chic, Arkady decided. Perhaps she was exploring her feelings toward her homeland. He wondered how much of it was unconscious.

  She left it to him to break the silence, which he eventually did with a weary ‘good morning.’ The greeting was ignored, but she nodded at the surreal vista in front of them.

  “It’s like the view from an aeroplane.”

  “It is. Would you like some coffee?”

  “I’d like to know how my father is.” She turned to face him. “I’d like an update on his condition, please.”

  “He’s still—” Arkady stopped himself from saying ‘dead’, casting about instead for words that would be sensitive and reassuring. “He’s in the process of being returned to a normal temperature. Dr Zapad is giving him some kind of fluid that will warm him up before they put blood back into him and try to restart his heart. It’s all very scientific. I’m sure the doctor can do a better job of explaining it. Ah—the devil himself!”

  To his relief, Zapad had burst into the room, looking tired and unkempt, but still with the elated air of a child on Christmas morning. He started across the room tow
ards them, banging into a table with his hip as he came.

  “Ouch! Whoops! The devil, you say? I hope not; I hope not. I could make use of you, though, Colonel. I need to refresh our patient’s glycol reservoir and take some samples from his output. Might you be available to assist? I’d ask Galina, but I think she’s still asleep.”

  “I’ll help,” Sophia volunteered. “Let me do something. The inactivity is driving me out of my mind.”

  Zapad looked uncertain. “Well, if Colonel Andreyushkin does not object…”

  Arkady waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t object. Have at it. I’m sure you’ll look after her.”

  “Well, all right.” Zapad shrugged and smiled, then turned to usher the girl towards the door. “Might I ask where you bought that charming scarf? It’s appropriate, in a way: a solar design, you know—very ancient! It represents the generative, life-giving aspect of the sun’s warmth. Did you buy it locally, I wonder?”

  “No. I got it from Camden market.”

  “Did you really? Well, let me assure you, in centuries past the Russian people took their embroidery extremely seriously, and viewed such designs as something akin to magic…”

  The door closed behind them, cutting off his disquisition. Arkady turned back to the window and sipped his coffee.

  He stood and watched the fog simmer, stirred by convection. Lazy coils of it snaked upwards into the light, writhing and falling back like solar flares when they reached some invisible thermocline. Arkady had seen a similar phenomenon before, just once, more than four thousand kilometres east of the Zubgorai, amid the rainforests of the Ussuri taiga. Sent to investigate a rumoured build-up of forces along the Sino-Soviet border, he had hiked with a Vympel squad through deep river gorges cloaked in mist. Climbing to higher ground to use the radio had seen them emerge from a swirling, grey sea, through which protruded reefs of hilltop. They had found no Chinese tanks, but an entire division could have been hiding somewhere in the murk.