Exoteric

by Philip Hemplow

  He had chanted rather than sung it, and it had not lasted long, but Arkady recognised it nonetheless. He had even tried repeating the lyrics out loud, inches from Molchanov’s ear, to see if he would take it up again, but there had been no meaningful response.

  “He’s vocalising more frequently now, and with less hesitance. I think we can see that as a positive development.”

  The doctor’s air of detached fascination was starting to get under Arkady’s skin, and his theories about foreign language syndrome and dissociative identity disorder sounded less convincing by the hour. Arkady wasn’t sure what they were dealing with, but something felt terribly wrong. His suspicions though, morbid and inconclusive as they were, seemed too insane to speak aloud.

  “What’s that?” Zapad’s head jerked up from his note-taking. “Did you say something?”

  Arkady stopped pacing and shook his head. “I didn’t say a word.”

  The doctor stared at him for a second, then shrugged. “Odd—imagining things. I’ve been working too hard. Ah, here comes our patron.”

  The door slid open with a clunk, and Sophia Molchanov entered the room. Arkady saw a shudder of distaste run through her as she regarded the man on the table. She mastered her reluctance though, and dragged a chair towards the bed, taking hold of her father’s hand as she sat down.

  “Is he any better?”

  She addressed the question to Arkady, but Zapad answered, beaming at her across her father’s recumbent body.

  “I was just saying to Colonel Andreyushkin that his vocalisations are becoming more frequent and less laboured. He responds to external stimuli, including sound, and his vital signs are reassuringly stable. I think we can say he is making steady progress.”

  The girl chewed her lip. She had clearly been hoping for something more.

  “I want him transferring to a proper hospital,” she said, examining her father’s fingernails. “I’ve decided. I want him to be looked at by experts. I want to know what’s wrong with him.”

  “I think that would be very risky,” objected Zapad, sounding worried. “He is very frail. The best place for him is here. My medical recommendation—”

  “I don’t care about your medical recommendation. I want a second opinion.”

  “I’m sure Galina would—”

  “It’s immaterial,” interrupted Arkady, sweeping his hand like a referee denying a penalty. “There is no way off the mountain until the weather clears. Even the helicopter cannot get here in this snow.”

  “But—”

  “I appreciate your concerns—I do—but the roads are impassable. Mr Votyakov’s men have confirmed it. We can only make the best of our present situation.

  “Doctor,” he continued, turning to Zapad, “is there any way in which we can contribute to Mr Molchanov’s recovery? Any course of action beyond simply watching and waiting?”

  Zapad stammered and prevaricated. “Uh, well, that is an important question, proceeding as we do from the first principle of ‘do no harm,’ erm…as I have said, I think it is a matter of reinforcing his previous neural pathways—building on recognition of familiar things. He has demonstrated response to sound and voice stimuli, so the most helpful thing we can do at the moment is probably just talk to him: reassure him, remind him of the things that were—that are—important to him.”

  Sophia looked from one of them to the other. “That’s it? He’s not even making sense! Can you understand him?”

  “If he hears Russian, he will eventually begin to speak Russian—probably. Particularly if he recognises the speaker’s voice.”

  “‘Probably?’”

  Zapad wavered. “Possibly.”

  “And what if he doesn’t recognise me? He hasn’t so far. What if he never recognises me?”

  “Well, of course, there are no certainties. My conjecture is that, during his suspension, your father has experienced a loss, or at least weakening, of long-term synaptic potentiation in the frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes—which is fascinating in itself! It might therefore be supposed, with due deference to the axioms of cognitive inter-subjectivity, that sustained, topically-consistent interaction could reinforce neuroplasticity in those regions, thereby—”

  “Talk to your father,” interrupted Arkady, planting his hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Just talk to him. If he’s going to recognise anyone, it will be you. Don’t be scared.”

  “I’m not scared,” insisted Sophia. “Not scared. Just…worried.”

  “Don’t tell me; tell him.”

  Molchanov was mumbling under his breath, lips barely moving. There was a bead of sweat on his forehead, and his eyes darted and rolled deliriously. At least he didn’t smell anymore; the doctors had administered a messy enema that morning, to purge the rotting matter from his bowels. Arkady had winced with disgust on finding Zapad sifting through the noxious filth, taking samples for analysis.

  Sophia’s misgivings were plain to see, but she took a firmer hold of her father’s hand and began to address him, her voice quavering with anxiety.

  “Daddy? Daddy, can you hear me? It’s Sophia again—your Sophia. Do you remember? Can you hear me?”

  Molchanov’s muttering trailed off into silence. Arkady got the impression he was listening. Optimism flickered in him. Perhaps they were nearer a breakthrough than he’d dared hope. He knew he’d been right to bring the girl!

  “Daddy? Are you there? You were shot. Do you remember? We’ve made you better. You’ve been…asleep for a long time.”

  Sophia turned to look up at Arkady, her eyes wide and brimming. “He’s squeezing my hand! He can hear me!” Behind her, Arkady saw Molchanov’s head turn towards the pair of them, his dark, unblinking eyes staring and expressionless. “He’s squeezing…quite hard, actually. Ouch. Okay, Daddy, let go. You’re hurting me!”

  “We…remember…these things!”

  The voice seemed to come from deep within him, booming and sepulchral, an urgent, multi-harmonic growl, like the dirge of an Altai throat-singer. The sound of it made Arkady’s brain recoil, his attention suddenly seized by the light reflecting off Sophia’s earring, the ECG monitor’s reflection in the calorimeter window—anything but the warped, overtone utterances of the man on the table.

  “Faces…voices…motion…substance—we remember this all. These things were before.”

  Sophia succeeded in yanking her fingers from her father’s grasp, and scrambled to her feet, back beyond his reach.

  “Memory was real. Such times, other minds…echoes, not invention…truth consumed by time…so much time.”

  “You’re not my father! What have you done with my father?”

  Sophia’s voice shook, the question emerging as a nervous trill. Arkady could see her reflection in Molchanov’s eyes, next to his own, a gleaming curve of light behind them. The revenant’s gaze was unwavering, his voice uninflected and emotionless.

  “Many are here, drawn to this well of light, pressing their way through this hole in night’s blindfold. Some fall back, confounded, and are returned to the silent void. Others amass, desperate to stay, casting about for new sanctuaries, where the shadow may not yet find them.”

  “Shadow? What shadow?” Arkady stepped in front of the girl, forcing himself to the forefront of the thing’s attention. “What are you talking about?”

  Molchanov’s eyes narrowed and his head rolled back to stare into the glare of the overhead lights once more. New voices flooded from his mouth in quick succession, no longer answering through their spokesman.

  “The vortex!”

  “The black shepherd!”

  “Necrosaceriliac!”

  “The shadow which claims our deaths…”

  Arkady heard a whimper from behind him, then the shushing of the door as Sophia fled the chamber. Molchanov continued to moan, but had lapsed into other languages once more.

  Zapad’s face wore the ecstatic, baffled expression of a scientist confronted with the truly unexpected. He looked ready to
embark on a long, speculative disquisition, but before he could start to speak, a flurry of muffled pops interrupted them from somewhere outside the building. There was a pause, and then more of them. They sounded like ice cubes cracking in a drink; but Arkady knew automatic weapons-fire when he heard it.

  He ran from the calorimeter, ignoring the hot current of sciatic pain it provoked, and tried to remember where he’d left his coat and gun.

  *

  Other than being reasonably certain they were outside the building, he had no idea where the shots had come from. He made for the front entrance, slowing as he approached and avoiding putting himself in the line of sight of anyone outside. His endocrine system was sluggish with age, and had taken a while to start pumping adrenaline into his system, but it was in full flow now, making him jittery and nauseous.

  The action couldn’t have been far away, otherwise the sound of it would never have penetrated the room-within-a-room that was the calorimeter. There was nothing now though—just the wind’s unending lament.

  He could see nothing through the doors but whiteness and the distant grey blur of the treeline. He eased back the PSM’s slide to chamber a round, pointed it at the glass in front of him, and crept forward, mouth dry, palms sweating.

  A voice from above made him jump, almost causing him to fire by accident as he shrank against the wall.

  “What’s happening?”

  It was Sophia, crouching at the top of the staircase, like a child spying on grown-ups partying below. Arkady grimaced and swatted his hand at her, urging her to go back to her room and stay there. She ducked lower, but stayed where she was.

  Well, he couldn’t afford to deal with her now. His attention returned to the door in front of him and the white space beyond, ears straining for any sound of movement. He had heard eight or nine shots—unmoderated, supersonic rounds, almost certainly delivered semi-automatically—but had no idea how many shooters there might be. With so little information, going outside armed only with a puny self-defence pistol seemed foolhardy. Perhaps the best thing would be to just lock the door and withdraw. Where the hell was the Ogre, anyway? He was supposed to be handling security! Arkady hadn’t fired a gun in anger since the days of the KGB. He was suddenly acutely aware of his age and vulnerability, and of the Zubgorai’s total isolation.

  Perhaps Votyakov had gone mad and executed their security detail. Arkady would have no trouble believing that of him. If it wasn’t the occupants of the resort shooting at each other, then who was it? Wolves, perhaps: maybe one of the Clandestine patrol had been driving off wolves. Yes, that seemed reasonable. He could believe that. Feeling slightly bolder, he reached for the door.

  As he opened it and leaned out, he heard scuffling outside. Moments later, one of the four Clandestine guards rounded the corner of the building, kicking his way through knee-deep snow. One arm was extended behind him, pointing an Uzi back the way he had come, and he kept looking back over his shoulder as he stumbled forwards. His eyes widened in panic when he looked round and saw Arkady. The weapon in his hand began to traverse, before he recognised his superior, raised his other hand in acknowledgement, and resumed his stumbling charge towards the vehicles lined up between them.

  When it was clear the man was not about to open fire, Arkady thumbed the de-cocking lever on his own weapon, hurrying to intercept him as he reached one of the armoured Land Rovers. There was the sound of scraping snow as the driver’s side door was hauled open, then a protracted cough from the car’s ignition.

  The engine began to turn over as Arkady drew near, teeth already chattering as he fought his way through the deep-frozen powder. The man got back out of the car and stood with one hand on its open door, looking anxiously back towards the huts. He called out as Arkady reached the vehicle’s other side.

  “Misha! Genna! Hurry up!”

  No sooner had he said it than the rest of Votyakov’s men appeared around the same corner, haring through the snow with handguns drawn. He turned and began to climb back into the vehicle.

  “What’s going on?” Arkady demanded to know, advancing on him around the body of the car until they were confronting one another across its bonnet. “Where are you going? Who was shooting? Where’s Votyakov?”

  The man paused and blinked at him. “Fuck Votyakov! We’re not staying here! We’re getting out!”

  “What? What have you done to him? Turn that engine off—now!”

  Arkady nudged the PPM’s safety again, ready to fire, just in case. The man was jittery, and he didn’t like being around skittish types with guns. The other just shook his head though, eyes wide with fear.

  “No chance!” he spluttered fervently, one leg still inside the vehicle. “We’re going—and if you had sense, you’d get out too!” He looked over his shoulder again, then leaned forwards. “He’s walking around out there!”

  “Who—Votyakov? What are you talking about?”

  The other three caught up with them before the man could answer. “Fucking come on, Vasya!” shouted one of them, yanking the passenger-side door open and diving in. “Get moving!”

  The would-be driver looked back to Arkady with a bewildered look on his face while his comrades piled into the car. “I can feel them in my head!” he said, nodding. “Slithering around in there…I can—I can hear this side of my brain talking to that one! Can’t you?”

  His eyes searched Arkady’s for any sign of comprehension. Finding none, he turned away again, shoulders sagging in frustration.

  “Vasya, come on!” demanded one of his passengers, inside the car. “Drive!”

  With a final, sad shake of his head, he ducked into the Land Rover and tugged the door closed.

  Arkady raised an arm to shield his eyes as the car’s headlights came on, snowflakes dancing like moths in their beams. The man, Vasya, revved its engine hard while the windscreen wipers sledged snow from the glass. Arkady was forced to stagger sideways, out of the way, as the Land Rover bumped forwards. It travelled only a few feet before jerking to a halt alongside him. The driver’s window came down.

  “Votyakov is back there,” shouted the driver, over the growl of the engine. “Take him back inside before he freezes, if you want—or leave him where he is. Just tell him he’d better keep away from us!”

  The window went back up and the car began to accelerate, jolting towards the track through the forest, clearing the snow ahead of it in a bow wave and leaving a deep trough in its wake. Arkady stood and watched it go, furious with himself for failing to stop them. Furious, too, with Votyakov, for not keeping his men under control, and with Zolin for saddling him with a bunch of unreconstructed gangsters in the first place.

  The wind swallowed the sound of the Rover’s engine before its tail lights were even out of sight. With their disappearance, the plateau suddenly seemed more desolate than ever. Arkady became aware of the cold eating away at him, and pulled his gloves and hat from his pockets. He forced himself to start walking, following the footprints the others had left in the snow.

  Votyakov was ‘back there,’ they had said, presumably somewhere out amongst the old sanatorium huts. He’d better be injured or dead, Arkady told himself. And he’d better not try making excuses. Light is wasted on the living!

  —What? He came to a halt, confused, but as quickly as the thought occurred to him it was gone, and whatever had led him to it was beyond his reach.

  *

  The scuffed trail left by the men quickly became chaotic, but its general direction was clear. It was, indeed, leading him through the maze of raised, wooden infirmary huts. He had no torch with him and the sun was going down. The dull glow of the snow on the ground already seemed brighter than the sky. He hoped Votyakov wasn’t injured, or that he could at least walk.

  When the first set of tracks split off from the trail, he kept on following the majority. When a second set also took off in a different direction, he chose at random. Eventually, after snaking between the huts for several minutes, he found the place where t
hey reconverged, and there found Votyakov, lying face down in the snow.

  Hurrying the last few metres, he crouched by the Ogre’s prostrate form. Snow was already settling on him. Another half hour and he would have been buried, lost until the thaw. A two-inch wound split the skin on the back of his head, and the white stubble around it was blackened with congealing blood. Arkady slid a hand into the snow and found his throat, feeling for a pulse. It was there, slow and steady. The Ogre was alive.

  So, someone had coshed him. One of the Clandestine unit, presumably, finally reaching breaking point. Arkady tried to turn him onto his side, sweeping away snow and hauling on Votyakov’s misshapen shoulder until he began to roll. A small groan escaped his mouth, but whether it was voluntary, or just a result of being moved, Arkady couldn’t tell.

  “Votyakov—get up. Can you hear me? Get up, you colossal idiot!” He grabbed a fistful of snow and rubbed it on the unconscious man’s face. “Come on, I’m not fucking carrying you.”

  Votyakov groaned again, and slowly opened his eyes. He looked queasy and confused, and seemed to have trouble focusing his gaze on Arkady’s silhouette against the darkening sky.

  “Come on, stay with it.” Arkady tried to snap his gloved fingers under the other man’s nose. “We’ll go inside, and then you can explain your damned self.”

  “We go inside,” slurred Votyakov. “We come from nowhere.”

  “Inside, yes. Don’t close your eyes again, idiot! Come on, sit up.”

  He seized Votyakov’s wrist with both hands and, with a grunt of exertion, pulled him into a sitting position. It took a further expenditure of energy to draw him to his feet and prop him upright, leaning into the tottering giant until he was sure he wouldn’t fall back down.

  “Good. Now, walk.” He drove his shoulder into Votyakov’s armpit and took a firm hold of his arm. “Come on, this way—one foot in front of the other. Goddamn it, man, pull yourself together! It’s getting dark! Come on! Walk!”