‘You knew?’ he said. ‘But you didn’t…’
‘I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
He pushed the anger aside. That hurting was old business, to be dealt with another time, not now.
‘Still,’ he said, ‘you’re here. You came back.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t stay here. I can’t come back. It isn’t possible. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.’
‘But—’
‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘I need you to listen. I need you to understand. What I’m doing now, somewhere else, not here, is I’m holding the forest closed. The angel is shut in and the intermixing of the worlds is separating out. Time runs at different speeds. My time will become, in your world, small fragments of stillness, areas where there is no time at all. I can’t come back; I can’t come home.’ She stared at him, dark eyes wide and urgent in the twilight. They were made of the twilight and the air of the river breathing. ‘Can you understand that? Can you?’
‘How long?’ he said. ‘How long have we got?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘There’s no measure. How can I say—’
‘I mean today. Now. How much time have we got now?’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Today? I don’t know. I shouldn’t have come here at all. Even being here makes a hollowing, a gap for the angel to come through. If that starts to happen, I must go.’
‘I could come to where you are,’ said Lom. ‘You could show me how.’
‘No.’
‘I would come gladly. I would want that. There’s nothing here for me now.’
She looked away sadly in the gathering river darkness.
‘It’s not possible. The barrier mustn’t be broken.’ She paused. ‘I don’t have a choice. I didn’t choose this. But if I had a choice, I would choose it. You have to understand that. If I could choose this, I would.’
‘Then why come at all?’ he said. ‘Why are you here?’
‘You did something for me once, and I’ve come to ask you again. I’m sorry. You should be left in peace, but I’m not doing that.’
‘What do you need?’ said Lom. ‘I will do it if I can. Of course I will.’
‘This world is going too fast and too hard. The future here is… I see it, I see glimpses sometimes, and it’s too… The fracture is deeper and wider and harder… It was unexpected… It could bring everything down—’
Sealed inside endless forest, Archangel grinds slowly on. Look away from him now; he is nothing. He feels the desolation of despair and self-disgust. Cut off from history, his futures slow and fade. Time is failing him. He cannot breathe. He is weak. He is dying. Once he was Archangel, strongest of the strong, quickest of the quick, most powerful of soldiers, quintessence of generalissimos, Archangel nonpareil, but those memories burn and torture him. So does the encroaching of the slow grass.
Archangel probes the boundaries of his enclosure, but they are blank to him, utterly without information and closing in. Archangel hurls himself against the borders ceaselessly, searching for a chink, a crevice, the faintest possible thinning in the imperceptible wall, but all the time the roots of forest trees dig deeper, the grass grows back, and every tiny root-hair is a burning agony to him. He is succumbing to frost and the erosion of rain and wind. They will wear him away to insensate dust.
But then something happens.
It is only a beat of quietness in the roar of the storm, only the fall of a twig on the river. None but an archangel could hear it. None but an archangel could sense the flicker of a shadow in the face of the sun. The quick thinning of ice. The opening of a moment’s gap in the wall of his cage.
With a scream of desperate hope Archangel launches his mind towards the hollowing.
Maroussia flinched and looked over her shoulder as if she had heard a loud noise.
‘Not yet!’ she groaned. ‘Not so soon!’ She looked at Lom in alarm. ‘There’s no more time. I have to go now.’
‘Wait! Tell me what you need me to do.’
‘Stop Kantor,’ she said. ‘Stop him.’
‘You mean kill him?’
‘No! Not kill. Not that. If you only kill him, the idea of him will live, and others will come and it will be the same and worse. Don’t kill him; bring him down, destroy the idea of him. Ruin him in this world, using the tricks of this world. Ruin this world he has created.’
‘But… how? I’m just one person.’
‘You have to find a way. Who else can I ask, if not you? Who will listen to me if you don’t listen? There is no one else.’
‘And if I can do this,’ he said, ‘then afterwards…’
‘No,’ she said, ‘there’s no then. No afterwards. No consequence. No reward. I can’t see then. I can only see what will happen if this doesn’t. Do you understand?’
‘No,’ said Lom. ‘I don’t understand. But it doesn’t matter.’
She was looking at him across a widening distance, and he knew that she was leaving him.
‘I have to go now,’ she said. ‘I’ve already stayed too long. I wanted… Oh no…’
There was a ripple, a shadow-glimmer, and Maroussia was gone.
In the forest it takes Archangel time to react and time to move, and time in the forest is recalcitrant. Slow. Even as he gets close to the gap, it is closing. By the time he reaches it, the tear in the wall has snapped shut. He is too late.
This time.
But now for him there is hope.
And on the quiet River Yannis it was moonless dark and long after midnight and the stars were uncountably many, scattered like salt across darkness, bitter and eternal. She was gone, and Lom felt they hadn’t said anything at all, not really–nothing adequate, nothing enough. She’d come to him and spoken to him, but he didn’t know anything, he didn’t understand more; in fact he understood less than ever, and all the terrible loss and solitude of the last six years was open and fresh and raw once more: the bleak ruination, the need and the grief and the necessity of acting, of doing something, of finding her again. Perhaps that was the point of her coming. Perhaps that was what she had done.
Lom packed his bag and left the mailboat without waiting for Shenkov to return.
5
The Vlast Universal Vessel Proof of Concept circles the planet at tremendous speed, outpacing the planetary spin, passing by turn into clean sunlight and star-crisp shadow. The cabin’s interior days and nights come faster and last for less time even than the rapacious advancing days of Papa Rizhin’s New Vlast, but aboard the Proof of Concept there is no perceptible sense of forward motion.
Cosmonaut-Commodore Vera Mornova, tethered by long cables to her bench, drifting without weight and having nothing much to do, presses her face against the cabin window. The air she breathes smells of hot rubber, charcoal and sweat. The spectacle of the stars unsettles her: they burn clean and cold but seem no nearer now, and all she sees is the infinities of emptiness that lie between. It is her lost, unreachable home that captures her loving attention: the continent, striated yellow and grey by day, the glitter of rivers and lakes, the sparse scattered lamps in inky blackness that are cities by night, the dazzling reflection of the sun in the ocean, the green chain of the Archipelago, the huge ice fields spilling from the poles towards the equator and the edgeless forest glimpsed under cloud.
Misha Fissich drifts up alongside her, accidentally nudging her so she has to grab the edge of the window to stop herself spinning slowly away. He offers her a piece of cold chicken.
‘Hungry?’ he says. ‘The clock says lunchtime. You should eat.’
She shakes her head.
‘No, not now, Misha. I’m not hungry. Thanks.’
‘You should eat,’ he says again. ‘The others are watching you, Vera. If you don’t bother, neither will they.’
‘OK,’ she says. ‘Thanks.’ She smiles at him and takes the chicken and chews it slowly.
When she’s finished, it’s time for the radio interview: a journalist from the Telegraph Agency of t
he New Vlast, her voice on the loudspeaker sounding indistinct and far away.
Commodore Mornova, she says, the thoughts of all our citizens are with you. You and your crew are the foremost heroes of our time. Parents are naming their newborns after you. Will you tell us please what it’s like to leave the planet? What do you see? How does it feel? How do you and your comrades spend your time?
‘We feel proud and humble, both at once,’ says Vera Mornova. ‘It is humankind’s first step across the threshold: a small first step perhaps, but we are the pioneers of a great new beginning. History is watching us, and we are conscious of the honour. Space is very beautiful and welcoming. We test our equipment and make many observations.’
Such as? Please share your thoughts with us.
‘Well, from orbit one can clearly discern the spherical shape of the planet. The sight is quite unique. Between the sunlit surface of the planet and the deep black sky of stars the dividing line is thin, a narrow belt of delicate blue. While crossing the Vlast we see big squares below–our great collective farms! Ploughed land and grazing may be clearly distinguished. During the state of weightlessness we eat and drink. It is curious that handwriting does not change though the hand is weightless.’
And do you have a message for your loved ones left behind?
‘Tell them,’ says Vera Mornova, ‘tell them we love them and remember them in our hearts.’
Part II
Chapter Four
We have raised the sky-blue sky-flag–
the flag of dawn winds and sunrises,
slashed by red lightning. Over this planet
our banners fly! We present…
ourselves! The Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe!
Velemir Khlebnikov (1885–1922)
1
The sky above Mirgorod was a bowl of luminous powdery eggshell blue, cloudless and heroic. Enamel-bright coloured aircraft buzzed and twisted high in the air, leaving trails of brilliant vapour-white. The loudspeakers were broadcasting speeches and news and orchestral music at full distorted volume. The production of steel across the New Vlast exceeded pre-war output by 39 per cent. The cosmonaut-heroes continued to orbit through space.
Citizens! Today is Victory Day! Congratulate yourselves!
From all across the city hundreds of thousands of people were making their way towards Victory Square on buses and trams and trains for the celebration parade. Hundreds of thousands more were coming on foot. Already an inexhaustible river of people was moving up the wide avenue of Noviy Prospect (newly paved and freshly washed before dawn that morning). Half the population of Mirgorod must have been there, going in a slow tide between the towering raw new buildings of the city centre. Vissarion Lom, less than twenty-four hours back in Mirgorod, sat at a café table under a canopy on a terrace raised above the sidewalk, nursing a cooling birch-bark tea, and watched them pass: more people in one place than all the people he’d seen in the last six years put together. Sunlight glared off steel and glass and concrete fresh out of scaffolding; glared off the flags and banners that lined Noviy Prospect; glared off the huge portraits of Papa Rizhin and the lesser portraits of other faces Lom could not name.
Lom disliked crowds. Even sitting somewhat apart and watching them made him uneasy. Edgy. Even anxious. The noise. The faces. He couldn’t understand how it was that most people could merge into a throng so readily, so gladly even. To him it felt like submersion. Surrender. Drowning. He couldn’t have done it even if he’d wanted to. But he saw the woman with the heavy canvas bag on her shoulder.
He almost missed her. She was moving with the crowd, one small figure in the uncountable mass, going in the same direction as everyone else. Someone else might not have noticed her or, if they had seen her, wouldn’t have understood what it meant. It would have been a coincidence, nothing more. But because he was Lom, not someone else, he saw her, and recognised her, and knew what she was doing.
She was just another slight ageing woman in shabby sombre clothes: there were dozens like her, hundreds, shuffling along among the uniformed service personnel, the families, the classes shepherded by harassed teachers, the young women workers in blue overalls and sneakers, the salaried fellows in shirtsleeves and fedoras, the limping veterans, the veterans in wheelchairs and the tight little groups of short-haired and pony-tailed Young Explorers in their blue shorts, grey shirts, red neckerchiefs, knee-length woollen socks and canvas shoes. The women in dark clothes walked alone or in twos and threes. They had their special place that day: they were the widows, the childless mothers, come to watch and remember on bittersweet Victory Day. Lom’s gaze passed across the one with the canvas bag on her shoulder and moved on. But something about her caught his attention and he looked again.
People in a large slow crowd surrender themselves to it. They all have the same purpose, all heading for the same destination. Simply being part of the crowd is itself the occasion and the only reason for being there. There’s no rush. They have no need to do anything except move along at the crowd’s speed and take their cues from the crowd. So they look around and take in the sights and talk, or absorb themselves in their own thoughts. Some bring drink and food and eat as they go. They won’t miss anything. They’re already where they need to be.
But this one woman was different. There was a tension and separateness about her. Something about the way she held her head and looked around: an obsessive, exclusive watchfulness that snagged his attention, raw and jangled as his nerves were by the numbers of people everywhere. She was making her way through the crowd, not moving with it, and she was alert to her surroundings as those around her were not. She knew where the security cordons and the crowd watchers were, and kept away from them. She tracked her way forward, intent on some private purpose.
And then there was the bag. A drab and scruffy canvas bag, nothing remarkable except Lom could tell by the way she carried it that it was heavy, and the object inside was long and protruded from the top. The thing in the bag was wrapped in a bright childish fabric, which was clever because it attracted attention but also disarmed suspicion. It looked like something that belonged to a child, or used to. The kind of thing an older woman might carry for her grandchild. Or keep with her for ever and never lay down, to remember the dead by. Only this woman seemed a little too young and a little too strong, and it wasn’t easy to guess what sort of childish thing this long heavy object was. It scratched at Lom’s crowd-raw nerves.
As she passed near where Lom was sitting, the woman with the bag glanced sideways at something, and as she turned Lom glimpsed her face in profile. And recognised her. Six years had changed her. She was leaner, harsher, a stripped-back and sanded-down version of the woman who’d once given Maroussia and him shelter in the Raion Lezaryet, but still he knew instantly that this was Elena Cornelius: Elena, who used to have two girls and live in an apartment in Count Palffy’s house and make furniture to sell in the Apraksin Bazaar.
He watched her move on through the crowd. She was good but not that good. Intent on her work, she was just a little too interesting. Too noticeable. Too vivid. She made use of sightlines and available cover for protection. She made small changes of pace. She was moving instinctively as a hunter did. Or a sniper. But snipers move through empty streets, not crowds. In a crowd she was conspicuous. If he could spot her, so could others. Like for instance the security operatives, who were no doubt even now scanning Noviy Prospect from upper windows, though he could not see them.
Lom got up from the café table and followed. He moved up through the crowd to get closer to her, working slowly, cautiously, so as not to be noticed himself and above all not draw the attention of other watchers to her. He felt her vulnerability and her determination. He wanted to protect her, and he owed her his help, but he couldn’t let her do what she was going to do. She had to be stopped.
She made a sudden move to the right, picking up speed and making for the ragged edge of the moving crowd. Lom tried to follow, but his way was suddenly blocked b
y a knot of loud-voiced broad-backed men. They had just spilled out from a bar and stood swaying unsteadily and squinting in the glare of the sun. They smelled of aquavit. By the time Lom got past them, Elena Cornelius had disappeared from view.
2
The meeting room of the Central Committee of the New Vlast Presidium was painted green. The conference table was simple varnished ash wood. There were no insignia in the room, no banners, no portraits: only the smell of furniture polish and new carpet. There is no past; there is only the future. Each place at the table had a fresh notepad, a water jug, an ashtray and an inexpensive fountain pen. A single heavy lamp hung low above the table, a flat box of muted grey metal shedding from its under-surface a muted opalescent glow. The margins of the room where officials and stenographers sat were left in shadow.
On the morning of the Victory Day Parade the Committee gathered informally, no officials present, to congratulate their leader and President-Commander General Osip Rizhin, whose birthday by happy chance it also was that day. At least, according to the official biography it was his birthday, though of course the official biography was a tissue of fabrication from beginning to end.
All twenty-one committee members were present: twelve men and eight women, plus Rizhin. Sixteen were makeweights: bootlickers, honest toilers, useful idiots, take your pick–placeholders just passing through. Apart from Rizhin there were only four who really mattered, and they were Gribov, Secretary for War; Yashina, Finance; Ekel, Security and Justice; and Lukasz Kistler. Above all, Lukasz Kistler.
Kistler was a shaven-headed barrel of a man, boulder-shouldered, hard not fat, his torso straining at the seams of his shiny jacket. Kistler liked money, drank with workers and didn’t care about spilling his gravy. His shirt cuffs jutted six inches beyond his jacket sleeves. But the intelligence in his small creased eyes was sharp and dangerous as spikes. Kistler was never, ever tired and never, ever got sick and never, ever stopped working. His energy burned like a furnace. He had made huge amounts of money before he was thirty out of iron and oil and coal, anything big and dirty that came out of rock and was hard to get. He was a digger and a burrower and a hammerer. When Rizhin found Kistler he was turning out battle tanks from a factory that had no roof. It had been bombed so often Kistler had stopped rebuilding and left it a ruin in the hope the enemy would piss off and bomb something else. Within half an hour of their first meeting Rizhin put him in charge of producing battle tanks for the whole of the Vlast. Since the war ended, Kistler had expanded into oilfields, gasfields, hydro turbines, petroleum refineries, atomic power. Energy. Energy. Energy. Lukasz ‘Dynamo’ Kistler made Papa Rizhin’s Vlast burn brighter and run louder and faster every day.
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