Exoteric

by Philip Hemplow

  His reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Votyakov, who loped onto the patio in front of him like a stray wolf. Upon seeing Arkady, he inclined his head and flashed that meaningless, toothsome grin. With his bald head, gaunt face, and black clothes, he reminded Arkady of Nosferatu. He crossed the patio, heading towards the door, and Arkady braced himself for another unwanted conversation with the man.

  “Seen the news?” growled Votyakov as he entered, accompanied by a gush of freezing air.

  “No,” said Arkady, doing his best to affect nonchalance. “I’ve been busy.”

  “I’ll bet you have,” sneered the Ogre, pulling out his smartphone. He tapped the screen a couple of times and passed it to Arkady. “Here. Seems they’ve been keeping a lid on it for a day and a half, but it’s out now.”

  Arkady eyed him for a few more seconds, trying to gauge his sincerity and intent, then gave up and took the device.

  It was displaying the top Russian stories from Reuters. They were in English, which he hadn’t realised Votyakov could read, and it took his brain a few moments to switch alphabets and decode the headline at the top of the list.

  DEFENCE MINISTER DETAINED AT MURMANSK NAVAL BASE.

  “It’s already spreading in the Western media and online,” said Votyakov. “Didn’t make the morning papers here, but it’ll be all over the place by lunchtime.”

  “What’s happened?” asked Arkady, expanding the story and starting to read.

  “A mutiny, it seems. The minister and a bunch of admirals were there for sea trials of the latest Borei-class sub—mainly for the benefit of the cameras, of course—and the base commander wouldn’t allow them to leave. He’s closed the perimeter and severed all communications. It’s not in there”—he nodded at the phone in Arkady’s hand—“but supposedly he phoned the ministry and ranted at them. Complained about his men not getting paid on time, told them he no longer recognises the legitimacy of the government…other such things. Now they cannot reach him at all.”

  Arkady kept reading, looking for the story behind the scant facts. It was a short piece, and seemed to rely heavily on social media posts made by personnel at the depots around Zapadnaya Litsa, the Northern Fleet’s westernmost port. Handwringing pronouncements from an anonymous source seemed intent on painting it as a political issue rather than one of military discipline. Arkady could guess who that was, or who they were working for.

  “This is how it starts,” said Votyakov. “The first shot always comes from the damned Navy. What the hell is it with Russian sailors? Why can’t they just do their job like the rest of us?”

  Arkady set his coat down on the nearest table, lowered himself into a chair, scrolled to the top of the article, and started reading it again. Assuming Maslok or one of his supporters was the source of the unattributed quotes, he wondered whether the Manchurian candidate had engineered the mutiny or was just taking advantage of it. He guessed the former. The timing was too perfect, with the president out of the country for a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union. Whatever he did now, leave the conference and hurry back to Moscow or stay away and try to ignore it, he would look weak.

  What was Maslok’s plan? To fly to Murmansk and play the statesmanlike saviour again, bringing everything to a peaceful conclusion as he had at the riot? Or to sit back and let the Kremlin become engulfed in a destabilising crisis? One small mutiny, left unaddressed and suitably manipulated, could quickly escalate into a coup. He doubted that was Maslok or his British handlers’ preferred method of transition, but they could only benefit from anything which harmed the current regime.

  “Your team had better get a move on, Colonel,” said Votyakov, holding out his hand for the phone. “I hear Miss Molchanov’s London friends have been demanding to know her whereabouts. She can be traced to Gorno-Altaysk easily enough, and one imagines there is camera footage of you meeting her there. The breadcrumb trail will lead someone here before long. Even Zolin cannot hide us forever.”

  Arkady kept reading, ignoring the outstretched hand. “Try not to worry, Mr Votyakov. I’m sure you and your men will do an excellent job of guarding our perimeter.”

  He was being provocative now, responding to Votyakov’s insinuations with some goading of his own.

  Provocative? More like childish. Give the man back his telephone!

  He relented, passing back the handset and rising slowly to his feet. “We must be patient. Moscow wasn’t built all at once. We cannot waste time, but we cannot rush. There are…biological considerations.”

  Is that better?

  He put the question to Ana, lurking somewhere in his conscience. She didn’t answer. He couldn’t call her up at will. Votyakov, though, could always be relied upon to try for the last word.

  “You should keep that ‘suicide special’ on you,” he said, nodding towards the coat folded at Arkady’s elbow, and the PSM nestling in its pocket. “It’s a better option for you than prison, if they come here.”

  *

  Throughout the rest of the day, Arkady kept one eye on the unfolding situation in Murmansk, downloading news updates every time he passed the satellite receiver in the lobby. It couldn’t tell him any of the things he most wanted to know, though—like how often Zolin was speaking to Votyakov instead of to him, or how Votyakov had known about the firearm in his coat.

  One rumour, reported by foreign media but assiduously ignored by the Moscow press, was that the defence minister had made a phone call tendering his resignation. Perhaps it was coincidence, but this was rapidly followed by an announcement that the president would be leaving the summit early and returning to the Kremlin. The nearest army and navy units were swarming towards Zapadnaya Litsa like converging antibodies. If Maslok wanted a crisis, it looked as though he was getting one.

  In the clinic, meanwhile, Molchanov was getting warmer. It was no longer necessary to wear a coat inside the calorimeter, and early that evening, when they assembled in the hub, Zapad triumphantly declared that the oligarch’s body had reached an almost-uniform temperature of four degrees centigrade.

  “We must work quickly now.” The anaesthetist finally tore his gaze away from the thermograph and turned to face the rest of them. “It is crucial we complete the resuscitation as soon as possible. He is no longer vitrified. Cellular damage will already have begun to accrue. It is time to restore his blood.”

  He sounded nervous. Arkady had seen the tension building in him as the experiment progressed. It was clearly fear of failure; fear of being proven wrong in the transition from theory to application.

  “Well done, Roman,” said Galina, patting his cheek as she brushed past him to open the refrigerator containing their stock of blood products. “A saline flush first, I assume?”

  She swung open the door to reveal shelves stacked with hundreds of bags of blood, glowing like rubies in the light.

  “Yes,” agreed her stepbrother. “Saline to help drain the glycerol, then the blood. I’ve calculated flow rates for the lidoflazine and cyclosporine, and for the Mitoxime. That’s a brand new and rather exotic mitochondrial permeability modulator,” he added as an aside, for the benefit of the laypersons in the room who still had no idea what he was talking about. “Very expensive and hard to get hold of, but important for us to have, I think. As soon as the last of the glycerol and saline have cleared his system, we will return the equipment to recirculation mode and apply ultrasound to open the blood-brain barrier. Once he has neared room temperature, the rest of the warming can take place in the hyperbaric chamber. Perhaps Colonel Andreyushkin and Mr Votyakov can arrange to have that brought into the calorimeter? I do not think the patient should be moved further than absolutely necessary now.”

  “So, how long now, Doctor?” asked Arkady, posing the question on everyone’s mind. Zapad cocked his head and considered it.

  “You might reasonably anticipate a first attempt to initiate cardiac function sometime after midnight tonight,” he replied, waving a finger as he added a caveat. “Assuming ther
e are no signs of haemorrhage, or other complications.”

  “You mean the pacemaker, right?” clarified Sophia. “You’re going to start his pacemaker tonight?”

  “I hope so, my child, but only if we do not tarry! Galina, if you’re ready?”

  His stepsister took a half-pace backwards, balancing a dozen pint-bags of blood in her arms, and kicking the refrigerator door closed with her heel. “Ready if you are. Let’s fill him up.”

  Zapad kept his finger on the button which opened the calorimeter door until she was safely through. “Please be patient,” he said to Sophia before following. “If it’s possible to revive your father, we will soon know.” The door slid shut behind him.

  “All okay?” asked Arkady, moving to stand at her shoulder as they watched the physicians string blood bags from the rack above the apheresis unit.

  She didn’t answer for a moment. “Yes,” she said at last, turning her back on the window. “Just nervous. I’ve already watched him die once. I don’t want to go through that again. I don’t want him to go through that again. He loved life, you know. That’s why he did this—had himself frozen. He was rich, but the things he enjoyed most had nothing to do with money. He was…a happy man.”

  She gave a small, miserable laugh. “Every time he finished a meal, he used to say it was the best thing he’d ever eaten. It was just a joke—a silly thing he kept saying because it made me laugh—but that’s how he was. The best thing was always the thing happening to him right then, and he could find the beauty or humour in any little thing. If you can do that, why wouldn’t you want to live forever?”

  Arkady hesitated, unsure what she wanted to hear. He’d never met Molchanov, but the man she was describing didn’t sound much like the cocky hypocrite he remembered from interviews and news broadcasts. There had been private jets and a super-yacht, a Formula One team, and a football club. There had also been accusations of money-laundering, violent strike-busting, bribery, blackmail, and more.

  She wants you to reassure her, you daft, old goat! Just open your mouth and say something nice.

  “So long as you remember him kindly, there’s a kind of immortality in that.”

  The girl smiled, acknowledging his attempt at consolation, but seemingly unmoved by it.

  “That’s the thing,” she said, forgetting her Russian for a moment and explaining in English. “I do remember him fondly now. I can barely remember the day he died. I just remember him laughing, and making silly jokes, and teasing me…telling me the cat had white paws because it used to paddle in its milk…but if we restart his heart tonight, how will I remember him tomorrow?”

  Arkady didn’t have an answer for her, and this time Ana didn’t prompt him.

  *

  “Mesenchymal stromal cells: they’re the key!” declared Zapad, inserting a temperature probe into the corpse’s ear. “The last few pints we transfused into him were dosed with induced-pluripotent MSCs. That should help repair any tissue damage resulting from the thaw. Don’t worry, this is all looking good, I would say. Very much what we expected to see at this stage.”

  Arkady found it easy to be skeptical. The hyperbaric tent had been disassembled now and returned to storage in the gymnasium. The body had lost its marble pallor and was the colour of boiled chicken instead. Veins stood out, prominent and dark beneath shrunken skin, and a craquelure of purple capillaries irrigated the bruises pooled around his kidneys, calves, and the surgical incision running down his torso. His left hand looked swollen and grey, and deader than the rest of him.

  “He looks like he’s been in an accident,” he pointed out. “Or a fight.” He tried to ignore Molchanov’s face in the corner of his vision. It had slackened now, the lower lip sagging to expose neat, white, television-presenter veneers. The eyes, mercifully, were still taped closed, but it was nevertheless easy to imagine that head turning to look at him.

  “But not as if he’s been dead for twelve years, eh?” countered Zapad. “Not as if he’s been shot. I think he looks remarkably well, under the circumstances. His blood sugar is too high just now, but that’s because of the glycerol. It will come down. It might even be a good thing, in the short term.” He withdrew the thermometer from Molchanov’s ear and checked its reading. “Thirty-one degrees: he’s warm enough now. I think we are ready for a first attempt at resuscitation. It will be necessary to intubate him—perhaps you could find Galina for me, and ask her to assist?” He threw a crinkling, silver space blanket over the body and its maze of swollen veins, leaving only the head uncovered.

  “You really think this will work?”

  “I think we have every chance of restoring cardiac function. Whether consciousness will then follow…well, that remains to be seen. Vitrified organs have been successfully transplanted before though, in animals, and the principles are well-established. We are now at the point of moving beyond principles to practicality—most exciting! Whatever the outcome, I think we must be grateful for this opportunity.”

  The doctor’s ecstatic enthusiasm still made Arkady uncomfortable. Life and work had taught him to keep idealists at arm’s length, no matter how innocent their intent.

  He went in search of Galina and found her in Sophia’s room, the two of them lying on the bed, staring at the television.

  “It’s time,” he said from the doorway. “Can you come to the clinic?”

  Sophia sat up and stared at him. Galina just turned her head and regarded him from beneath lowered lids.

  “Time?”

  “I think your stepbrother means to start the patient’s heart. He wants you there.”

  “I’m coming too!” said Sophia instantly, bounding to her feet. “I need to be there.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  Arkady kept his eyes on Galina until she, too, rose from the bed. Her movements were languorous and deliberate, but her hands seemed steady and there was no whiff of alcohol when she passed him. She led the way back towards the staircase while Sophia plied him with questions he couldn’t answer.

  “Is it going to work? Has Dr Zapad said anything? What if he rejects the new heart? What if he needs to go to hospital? How far is the nearest hospital?”

  “Try not to worry. We are better equipped here than most hospitals.”

  “Will he be the same when he comes back? How will he know who we are?”

  “I am sure if he recognises anyone, he will recognise you.”

  “But what if he doesn’t?”

  The questioning continued until they reached the clinic, when she rounded on Zapad instead, demanding explanations for the bruising to her father’s body, and the bloated, rugose state of his veins.

  “And what’s that smell?” she finished. “It stinks in here! Is that coming from him? It smells like sewage.”

  “Ah, yes,” admitted Zapad. “That is something which will probably get worse before it gets better. The contents of his bowels have, of course, also thawed, and the volatile components have vapourised in sequence. Do not worry: one good evacuation will take care of it. For now, however, I encourage you to concentrate on other things. Would you like to be the one to activate his defibrillator? It is as simple as clicking a button on this laptop.”

  Arkady watched conflicting emotions play across her face, like icons tumbling past the glass of a slot machine. At length, she nodded, stuck for words, and reached for the computer.

  “Wait—one moment, please,” said Zapad, laying a hand on her wrist. “I should like to say a few words before you push the button.” He coughed and cleared his throat, with a furtive, self-conscious half-glance at the numerous cameras recording the scene.

  “Tonight, amid these mountains, we address humanity’s Common Task, set by the great Nikolai Fedorov more than a century ago. Through science and reason, we question the necessity of death, and seek to change, forever, our definition of mortality. If we succeed in bringing this one man back to conscious life, let our accomplishment be measured not in heartbeats or reunions, but by the
extent to which it transforms our species. Let us, for the first time, refuse our destiny. Let us say ‘no! We choose to remain!’ Let us reject religious darkness and the fear of annihilation. Let us—”

  “Okay, come on, Roman,” interrupted his stepsister. “You’re not running for office.”

  “Please! Galina…this is important. Let us banish death, and reclaim those it has stolen away. We assert this as our right, our teleological duty, and our cause. Let the grave starve, and give up those it has swallowed. Let us redraw life’s boundary and return this man, this pioneer, from its farther side.”

  There was a pause while they waited to see if he had finished.

  “That’s good, Roman,” said his stepsister at last. “Save some material for the Nobel committee.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” asked Sophia, reaching for the laptop again. Her face was an expressionless mask now, but her voice still quavered.

  “I have run the connection test and the diagnostics,” Zapad told her, turning his back on the others to join her at the computer. “All that remains is to activate the implant. It will attempt to monitor his cardiac activity, and, finding it absent, will defibrillate. When you are ready, just click that grey box at the side of the screen. Everyone stay clear, please.

  Arkady realised he was clenching his fists, and forced himself to relax. Sophia was hesitating, her finger arched over the mouse’s left button, her expression tormented. “Come back to me, Daddy,” she whispered—and pressed it.

  There was an acknowledging click from the laptop’s speakers, but for a few seconds nothing else happened. Suddenly, the dead man’s torso bucked, making Arkady jump and drawing a small, horrified squeal from Sophia. A few seconds later, it happened again, and Molchanov’s left arm twitched into the air, jerking the silvered blanket aloft before falling back to the table with a thump.