Exoteric

by Philip Hemplow

  Votyakov’s men, hearing the cacophony, had withdrawn to a lounge adjoining the reception area and stayed there. Mercifully, the Ogre himself had stayed out of the way, too. He was probably the only one of them not disturbed by the sounds, thought Arkady. Doubtless he had elicited howls of similar volume from scores of unfortunate prisoners in the past.

  Zapad had fallen back on gabbling observations into his recorder, theorising wildly about the patient’s mental and physiological status, as if he could neutralise the horror by just talking about it enough. Arkady got the impression he had no real idea what had caused Molchanov’s sustained, full-throated screeching, and no idea whether it would resume when the drugs wore off.

  His hand was still quivering, making the vodka ripple in his glass. He willed his body to relax, and tried to summon thoughts of some other sound, but it was if the dead man’s scream had imprinted itself on everything around them. Arkady fancied he could even hear echoes of it in the storm outside. He doubted anyone on the Zubgorai would sleep well that night. Vodka would help though, he persuaded himself, raising the glass again to his lips.

  “Did you ever hear a noise like that before?” Galina was looking at him through curls of hair which had come loose and now bobbed before her eyes when she spoke. Arkady returned her gaze, and shrugged.

  “Sometimes, after warfare. Men with amputations or burns, going into shock, screaming like beasts…fortunately, not too often.”

  “My patients don’t usually scream; they are asleep. When I was training, I worked on a lunatic ward, and there was screaming there…but nothing like that.”

  “Well, at least he’s quiet now.” Arkady laid his hand on hers as she reached for the vodka bottle. “Go easy. Don’t overdo it. Too much is worse than not enough. Besides, once this bottle is gone, it’s all gone.”

  Galina considered it, then slipped her hand out from under his and took the bottle anyway. “It’s fine. We’ve got plenty of morphine left…I’m joking! Just a joke!” she added quickly, seeing the expression on his face and holding up her hands. “Wow, you really don’t trust me at all, do you?”

  Arkady shrugged. “As you never tire of reminding me, it’s mutual.”

  Galina smirked and raised her glass. “Let’s drink to that, then,” she said.

  *

  Zapad burst into the restaurant a few minutes later, looking sweaty and stressed. “Galina, I need you,” he said from the doorway. “The propofol has worn off. Our patient is awake again, and talking.”

  Arkady swung his feet off the chair he’d been resting them on and sat up straight. “Talking? Really? Not screaming?”

  “Like a parrot—won’t shut up. He isn’t making much sense, though. Galina? Will you come?”

  He disappeared again. Arkady and Galina exchanged glances and hurried to follow him back to the clinic.

  “It’s hard to know how much of it is due to the morphine,” continued Zapad as they caught up with him. “Rambling, mostly, and quite pressured. Very incoherent and hard to follow. Loose association, repetition, flight of ideas—I worry he is hypomanic, but I am not an expert in matters of psychiatry.”

  “Neither am I,” pointed out Galina at his side. “I mean, I can offer you a second opinion, but if he is psychotic, we probably can’t manage him here. We don’t have the facilities, the drugs, or the expertise.”

  “We have a small supply of lithium syrup. I brought some for its neuroprotective effects, in case he experienced brain injury during the thaw.”

  “Perhaps he did.”

  “Perhaps—but lithium might at least stabilise his mania while we figure that out. Getting it into him is the hard part. It can only be administered orally, which will be tricky while he’s talking like this.”

  They had reached the clinic. Without waiting, Zapad slapped the button that opened the calorimeter and walked straight in, followed by the others.

  Molchanov was, indeed, talking. His eyes stared, unfocussed, at the light above the bed, and his head rolled from side to side as he spoke, as if he were holding both sides of a conversation with himself.

  “You see?” whispered Zapad, gesturing at him. “He is fully awake now.”

  Arkady moved closer, straining to make out the oligarch’s words above the humming and beeping of the equipment arrayed around him. One of his fingers seemed to be in spasm, frenziedly tapping against the bedsheet that covered him. It had a wedding ring on it that hadn’t been there when he came out of the cryostat. Sophia must have been keeping it for him, all the years he’d been frozen in Zapad’s cellar.

  “Cad é an…solas…seo sa dorchadas? Tá sé chomh fada sin…An solas é seo?”

  Molchanov’s lips remained parted, barely moving as he muttered the words. His speech was hesitant, its tone doubtful, and the words, at least to Arkady, incomprehensible.

  “What’s he saying? What language is that?”

  “I’ve no idea, I’m afraid. I did hear him talk some Russian earlier, but he’s been lapsing in and out of it.”

  “Khaaleepan se bach ke nikalanaa—hey eeshwar, kyaa yah ho sakataa hai? Mujhe sharan do! Yah mujhase mat cheenanaa…Están pasando cosas…Qué es, ahora, esto que siento? De quién es esta voz que no es mía…”

  “It sounds like he’s asking questions,” said Galina, inserting a temperature probe into Molchanov’s ear. “Have you tried talking to him?”

  “I haven’t,” admitted her stepbrother. “Not yet. I came to get you.”

  “Well…thirty-six point nine: he doesn’t have a fever. Mr Molchanov, can you hear us?”

  “Èske gen lòt moun ki la? Èske m poukont mwen? Se pa chalè m santi la? Ki lòt moun ki la?”

  “Perhaps his hearing has been damaged. Hand me the otoscope.”

  “Someone should fetch his daughter,” said Arkady.

  “He seems agitated. Could he be hallucinating? His eardrum looks fine.”

  “It’s possible: hearing voices, or just confused. His EEG is all over the place—activity everywhere.”

  “Man daram mioftam? Oh lotfan, daram be aghab sor mikhoram! Dobare ehsase pochi dare soragham miad! Nemitonam bargardam!”

  “I’ll go and get her,” announced Arkady, as the doctors continued to ignore him. “She should be here. Maybe she can tell us what the hell he’s saying.”

  Feeling apprehensive and queasy, he left them to their conjectures and headed upstairs, towards the bedrooms. Could it be that they would achieve the impossible, return Molchanov to some semblance of life, and yet still fail in their mission? In his mission? If Molchanov’s brain was scrambled it would all have been for nought, and the project would be buried without trace. Zolin would see to that.

  That wasn’t what really disturbed him though: it was the sounds coming from Molchanov’s mouth. Not the words—he had no idea what language he was using, and suspected there had been more than one—but his wavering, imploring tone. He’d sounded as though he was begging.

  Sophia’s door was open. He found her sitting on her bed, headphones on, writing something in a notebook. He made a mental note to check she wasn’t keeping a diary, and to dispose of anything incriminating she might have written, but that was something which could wait.

  “You should come downstairs,” he said, gruffly, once she had taken off her headphones. “Your father is saying things—talking.”

  Her eyes widened and she scrambled to her feet. “No way! Is he asking for me?”

  “Not…not so far,” admitted Arkady. “It’s mainly gibberish so far, or seems like it. I can’t understand a word of it. I’m sure he’d like to see you, though.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for? Why are you looking at me like that? Let’s go!”

  Arkady was soon left behind as she skipped down the stairs and jogged off towards the clinic. By the time he reached the calorimeter, she was already inside, crouching by her father’s bed and clasping his hand. He let himself in and stood behind her. Molchanov was still talking, still staring at the lights above hi
s bed. It took Arkady a few seconds to realise he could understand the slurred syllables now coming from the oligarch’s mouth. Molchanov was speaking English.

  “…a way back? A way out? My thoughts have shape now, and substance…they are words! Is this pain? I no longer remember…others—there are others, I feel them…no longer alone! This is not the dark! No longer nowhere, and everything, and lost, and diffuse! The pattern of me, focussed by this light—I am real. Licht? Präsenz! Klarheit! Bin ich in Sicherheit?”

  His face was contorted by a sudden spasm which peeled his lips back from his teeth. Sophia let go of his hand and slowly stood up, backing away until she bumped into Arkady. When she looked up at him, her eyes were wide and scared, lips trembling, face white.

  “Estou sentindo uma vibração! Estou sentindo…a vida!” jabbered Molchanov, while his eyes watered and his hands twitched. “Not going back to the silence! Get away! I found this! It is mine!”

  “His blood pressure’s spiking,” warned Galina.

  “These EEG patterns are extraordinary!” said Zapad, in hushed awe. “I would not expect him to be at all coherent based on these, and yet…”

  Sophia clutched Arkady’s arm with both hands and moved behind him as if using him as a human shield. She looked terrified, and he could feel her trembling against his back. When she spoke, her voice was unsteady.

  “What’s happening?” she whimpered, tugging on his sleeve. “What the fuck is happening? I don’t know who that is! My father doesn’t speak English—not a word of it! What have you done to him? What the fuck have you done?”

  *

  Arkady’s skin prickled with dread. Reality seemed to recede, like the tide before an approaching tsunami. Molchanov burbled away, arguing with himself in a succession of voices, switching from one language to another, no longer saying anything any of them could understand. Sophia released Arkady’s arm and fled the room, weeping.

  “Zapad?” Arkady growled the doctor’s name. “What the hell is she talking about?” He pointed at the body on the table. “Who is that?”

  Zapad became flustered and began to stutter. “She’s upset, clearly. It’s Zoltan Molchanov; of course it is. You recognise him as well as I do—so does she. She must be misremembering.” He took off his glasses and polished them nervously.

  “Then what’s she talking about? Why is he talking English?”

  Zapad shrugged and shook his head. “I’ve no idea. Well, he isn’t—not any more. I don’t know what language that is. It sounds Asiatic to me.” He slid the glasses back up his nose and blinked.

  Arkady raised his arm until the accusing finger was pointed at Zapad instead. “Fix him, Doctor. Get him talking Russian. I don’t care how, just do it.”

  “It’s really not something I can control,” protested Zapad, holding out his hands. “I mean, I’m not able to direct the circuits in his brain. He is confused, everything firing at once. With luck, he will recover as the dominant pathways reassert themselves. I do wish we had an MRI though. I think that would tell us a lot. I suspect trauma somewhere in the left hemisphere is the cause.”

  “How is he speaking languages he doesn’t know though, Roman?” asked Galina, putting her fists on her hips. “How can that be?”

  “Well, obviously, he does know them,” replied her stepbrother defensively, “at least in part. He was a businessman. I’m sure he picked up all kinds of vocabulary in his negotiations. The mind is a very strange thing. It remembers all manner of details without a person being aware of it, and the science behind language acquisition is not particularly clear. Foreign language syndrome is not unknown in coma survivors. I hypothesise that he is simply regurgitating words he has picked up, as his brain attempts to route around impaired areas of the language-encoding structures. These things are usually transient, but it may last some time.”

  Arkady and Galina exchanged looks, but did not press the issue.

  “Just bring him round to talking Russian again,” concluded Arkady. “Let me know when he is. I’d better go and find the girl. And keep him in this room, in his bed. I don’t want him wandering around.”

  “He’s shown no inclination to get up so far,” Zapad assured him. “He’ll be weak for a while. I think we can attempt oral nutrition now though, with supervision.”

  “Fine. Just get him to make sense. That’s the priority.”

  Galina looked as though she might protest in the interests of medical ethics, but the expression on Arkady’s face seemed to be enough to dissuade her. Instead, both doctors just nodded in mute agreement. Arkady stabbed at the button to open the door, and went in search of Sophia.

  He nursed his frustration, clinging-to and concentrating it. The alternative was to admit the dark anxiety that pecked at the fringes of his imagination. Molchanov speaking in tongues was a thing he couldn’t explain, and Zapad’s glib theories did not convince him. If the oligarch didn’t know English, as Sophia claimed, then who the hell had just spoken to them? If Molchanov hadn’t come back, then just who the hell had—and how many of them?

  The lights in the corridor flickered for a few seconds, and suddenly died. It took a moment for the filament in the nearest bulb to cool to orange, then red—and then the blackness was complete.

  Arkady froze, his other senses immediately straining to compensate for the loss of vision. He heard his breathing change in pitch, becoming shallower and faster as the air conditioning fans idled to a halt. Without the hum of the lights and the central heating’s low throb, the subtle background moan of the mountain winds became audible, even that deep within the building. A moment of disorientation and sudden vertigo threatened to send him to his knees, and he reached out a hand to steady himself against the wall.

  No one was calling out, he realised. If the power cut was affecting the entire building, he would expect to hear something from the others. Perhaps not Zapad or Galina, who would be trapped behind the electrically-powered door of the calorimeter, but Sophia would surely waste no time in shouting for help. The problem was localised to one circuit then, not site-wide. A tripped fuse, perhaps a rodent chewing through a wire. There was no cause for concern.

  Why, then, was he holding his breath? He forced himself to exhale into the darkness.

  Is this the dawn?

  The thought was not his. It came from nowhere, scrabbling like a rat in the eaves of his brain.

  Is this the end of night?

  I have forgotten what I am.

  How many are we?

  We are one.

  “Ana?” He whispered the word. “Is that you?”

  No…

  The rat scrabbled harder, a flood of unfamiliar thoughts driving him to panic, sending him teetering to the edge of a black and yawning void. He stumbled into the wall with a gasp of psychic horror, and pressed himself, writhing, against it.

  There was a click. Light flared, was suddenly everywhere, instantly flushing the shadow from his mind. He raised a hand to shield his watering eyes as the walls, the carpet, the merciful confines of the corridor, swam back into focus.

  And a figure: a dark and shimmering silhouette looming against the light at the corridor’s end. Arkady’s breath caught in his throat and he sank to one knee, gripped by an old man’s terror.

  It was no dark angel though, he realised as the water drained from his eyes—just the Ogre, lurching lopsided down the hallway towards him. Arkady struggled to get back to his feet before the other man reached him, but was too slow.

  “Up you get, Colonel,” ordered Votyakov, gripping him by the elbow and hauling him to his feet. “Everything’s okay now.”

  “What the hell happened to the lights?” snapped Arkady, snatching his arm from the other man’s grasp. His heartbeat was returning to normal, but he couldn’t control the hoarse trembling of his voice.

  “A couple of circuit breakers tripped, that’s all. Must have been a power surge. What’s the matter? Don’t tell me you’re scared of the dark!”

  “Don’t be an idi
ot,” muttered Arkady, starting to walk away. He felt foolish, now the power was back on and the sense of unbounded dislocation had subsided. He didn’t know what had just happened, or what else might have happened had the lights not come back on, but the experience had been existentially unpleasant.

  “The girl says your man is talking now,” the Ogre called after him. “That is good—a miracle, even. I’m sure it won’t take you long to get the information we need.”

  Arkady paused mid-stride, decided to ignore him, and kept walking.

  *

  “This is hopeless!”

  Arkady ran a hand through his thinning hair and began to pace in the narrow channel between Molchanov’s bed and the arrayed diagnostic and medical devices. “What is that now? French again? He doesn’t even know any French! How is that possible?”

  “It sounds like Italian to me,” offered Zapad, not looking up from his furious note-taking. “I could be wrong. We’re getting it all on tape though, don’t worry.”

  “I don’t care about the tape! Just get him talking Russian again. Or English—either of those will do.”

  Zapad shrugged. “I am open to suggestions.”

  Arkady was tempted to give him a suggestion he wouldn’t like at all, but forced himself to swallow his temper.

  It was the day after Molchanov’s return to consciousness. He had been talking almost continually, switching from one apparent language and set of mannerisms to another, sometimes in the space of seconds, as if interrupting and arguing with himself. For a brief while he had spoken Russian. He had stopped by the time Arkady reached the clinic, but upon playing back the video footage he had been shocked to hear the patient reciting a song from the Great Patriotic War:

  “This dark night separates us, my love, and the dark, troubled steppe has come to lie between us…”