“Were you doing drugs in my flat? Are you sick? Is that what all this is?” she said, lips snarled in disgust.
Uri shook his head.
“Before I shoot you, explain yourself.”
“This—” Uri picked the mask up from the floor. “—Is a side job for Al Fadah Madina. The contract is with some sheikh who wants to remain anonymous . . . for obvious reasons.”
Miriam regained her poise and crept closer, eyeing the mask’s menacing red stare. Curious, she reached out to touch one of its slick arms but stopped. “What is this monstrosity?”
“It’s a mask. You put it on.” He held it up to Miriam’s face. She pulled back, her large eyes wary. “It broadcasts experiences into your mind.”
“There is no such thing.”
“I used to think so, but this thing proved me wrong.”
“What kind of experiences?”
“Executions, death, awful stuff. This last one . . . I can’t even begin to describe it.” He motioned to the spot on the floor. “I’ll clean all this up. I apologize. It just got the best of me.”
Miriam’s temper cooled as quickly as it had flashed. As a scientist, she was capable of forgiving Uri his macabre research, however visceral and messy. The matter of Uri’s cigarillo had yet to be resolved, however.
Uri picked up the mask’s box and pointed out the symbols on it to Miriam. “It has some association with Kali, the Hindu goddess of annihilation. And I figure the Thuggees employed this device in their rituals. I don’t know if they used it on their victims or on themselves, probably both.” Uri set the mask into the box’s felted inset and counted the remaining tea bars: thirty-four, assorted into twelve different flavors.
“So, you know what it does now. You can report back to the sheikhs, and then what? You get paid?” Miriam asked, sitting down in her desk’s roller-lounge.
Uri shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I am certain they’re going to want to know who made it, and how it works.” Uri was far more curious than the sheikhs. The contract was just an added bonus. “It’s adapted Morosov technology, I think, similar to something I saw years before. But that technology was clumsier, outdated mind-reading gear, just pixilated fragments of memory and digital sound. The mask is perfection, the experiences pure.”
Miriam noticed his puffy eyes and ruddy cheeks but said nothing. They sat in silence. Outside, Constantinople’s bustle filled the awkward lull. Miriam brought Uri a towel and a bucket of hot water from her adjoining flat. He thanked her and cleaned up the congealed sick, scrubbing the Persian camel hair with a brush and soap.
Miriam’s loft hinted at a more complicated woman than her abrasive personality revealed. The study walls were lined with shelves of yellowing books, procured in the old city’s book bazaars. They were antiques, of course. Printed books were long extinct. Most were tattered texts on geology and meteorology, but a few hinted at another side of Miriam: One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, The Tale of Genjii, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Terminals and chemical analyzers filled the rest of the loft, some functioning, others in various states of repair. Miriam was a busy girl. Norsk-Statoil, in its frantic search for viable oil fields, funded the majority of her geological work, while Al Fadah Madina quietly paid for the rest. Uri appreciated the leather furniture and the smell of old wood and paper. With the narrow streets and hidden shops of the Beyoglu just downstairs, the overall ambiance hinted at a lost utopia.
“Are you comfortable sleeping on the floor?”
“It’s fine. Very restful.” It was the truth. Despite the thin carpet and hardwood underneath, he’d slept like the dead, dreamless and seamless.
“I was going to make some tea,” she offered.
“I’d like that.”
She left through the dormer hallway that connected her study to the rest of the flat. Uri was about to shut the mask’s case when he noticed the glint of the tea bar’s colored foil. He picked up one of the small blocks and inspected the Sanskrit—or maybe Hindi—inscription. Each bar had its own distinct calligraphy. A name, a flavor?
Miriam returned and poured Uri a cup of fragrant Riza. He noticed intricate scarring on the inside of her forearm, Farsi script from a branding iron. He tried not to look. She caught his wandering eye and pulled down her sleeve. He’d seen those scars before on the chattel of slavers.
“Do you have access to Nova Byzantium’s data hubs?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Yes, a limited account. I have a level two access.”
“And Rosetta capability?”
“What do you need to translate, archivist?”
“Uri, please.”
Miriam continued the formality, refusing to call him by his name.
“Sanskrit, Hindi, I’m not exactly sure.”
“Sanskrit? Lingua morta. The hubs can only cipher Byzantine and Arabic.” “Byzantine” was the catchall for the imperial languages: Latin, Turkish, Ukrainian, Caucasian. Pockets of literacy in other languages still existed, but none Nova Byzantium deemed worthy.
“Hafiz has a Punjabi friend who knows Hindi. He met him after he helped restore a Sikh temple near the Horn,” Miriam said, sipping her tea. “Maybe he can translate.”
Uri left the mask at the flat, not wanting to draw attention. After a round of shisha and chai, Miriam introduced him to the temple’s bearded guru and handed the wrappings from the two tea bars he had used and ten of the other bars. His name was Chamfra, a shirtless little man with a towering blue turban and a quiet voice.
Miriam translated the holy man’s utterances. Uri scribbled down the messages and soon realized each bar was labeled with a name, location, and date, but nothing more. Thanking the guru with a few shekels, they left his tiny temple and headed for one of the Beyoglu’s black markets. Fortunately the Russian refugees running the weapons bazaar spoke fluent Ukranian, saving Miriam from playing the annoyed interpreter. It was a good thing, considering. The Russian’s bartering cant was subtle and manipulative, a hypnotic skill acquired from Romany street swindlers. Uri was familiar with their tricks.
After a sweaty hour of haggling, he’d got what he wanted: a Zigana 9mm pistol with extra clips, a Persian Khyber rifle 7.62mm bullpup with bipod and scope, and a specialty bayonet thrown in to seal the deal. The knife was uniquely Caucasian, a Grozny beheading blade. Tucked inside its serrated edge were cyanide ducts joined to a reservoir in the handle. A strangely humane weapon, the poisoned blade was intended to deliver a quick death, saving the victim a torturous throat cutting.
Concealing the arsenal in a rolled carpet, Uri followed Miriam through the crowded streets back to her flat. He laid the firearms out on the loft’s rug and broke them down, checking the bore, bolt, and breech of each. His choice of rifle did not meet with Miriam’s approval, however; the Turkish MKEK would’ve been a better choice, it seemed, less prone to jamming. Miriam was adept at concealing her emotions, but her opinions were a different matter.
“A successful outing, no?”
“I would’ve rather paid those fences half the ingots, but these are better than Al Fadah Madina’s pop guns,” Uri said, parsing out the ammo packs into clip-sized piles.
“What about the Sanskrit? Our whole reason for visiting Galata and Chamfra?”
“Not right now, maybe later.”
“Why not now?”
“To be honest,” he paused to look Miriam in the eye, “I’m a bit gutless.”
“Gutless, why?”
“The two I’ve already tried . . . I was there for the executions, but not like you think. I was actually there.” He held up the foiled bar. “I’m personally mixed up in this Thuggee artifact—it’s not just dredging up my past; I know that now. The morbid curiosity’s addictive; the more you relive it, the more you think you’re going to grasp it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you do,” he said, nodding at her arm.
She tur
ned away.
“The experience before,” he continued. “A stoning in Dagestan, I saw myself through the eyes of a child. A platoon of Alkonost mercenaries—myself included—were stationed there. I remembered the spectacle outside the boy’s eyes. We didn’t know what was happening at first, so we crept through the crowd to watch.”
“And what about this last experience?”
“I was in the vicinity with Alkonost at the time, but don’t remember the lynching. I know the place, the oil slums of northern Baku. Alkonost tanks and helicopters were circling. Our contract had just come through from Tiraspol, the invasion of the Turkmen Balkans, Turkmenbashi; we were getting ready,” Uri looked over the translation notes.
“Let me see,” Miriam said, snatching away the notepad. “I spent my afternoon running your errands with you. I’m curious now; I want to take a look.”
She sat down at one of her terminals and accessed a holographic orbital map. “This is a hijacked feed from Al Fadah Madina. Nova Byzantium’s imperial maps are outdated.”
“Start with this one.” He read the coordinates and the date, scribbling a crude map of his own while glancing at the screen. She pointed to the eastern Caucasus. “That’s it, Tindi in Dagestan.” A feeling of relief, it wasn’t a hallucination. The execution was preprogrammed, but why the Alkonost connection? “Try this one, two years prior.” He read the longitude and latitude aloud.
She panned the map’s contours with a digitized crosshair. “Azerbaijan Province.”
“That’s it.”
“Who was it?”
“You mean who was executed?”
“Yes, who died?” Miriam asked, exasperated.
“Do you really want to know?”
She nodded impatiently.
“It was a witch burning, a young girl.”
Her dark eyes widened in horror. She turned back to the terminal and continued to pinpoint locations.
Uri pulled up a chair and drew a topological map of the twelve tea flavors with arrows connecting the timeline. He thought for a moment, trying to link the abstract data to memory fragments. Most were outliers, places he knew of but had never visited. Regardless, the locations ghosted Alkonost’s Caspian campaign, an uncanny coincidence.
“Here’s another one from Dagestan, but near the Caspian . . . Three here from the New Stalingrad siege . . . Grozny . . . ” He glanced at the beheading blade on the carpet. “I can only imagine what that one’s about.” Of the remaining tea bars, one stood out, Turkmenbashi. As vivid as if it was yesterday, the invasion had resulted in a miserable quagmire. He remembered the place with dread, its horror a turning point. He looked at the gilded bar and shuddered.
“Which one?” Miriam asked.
Uri stroked the bar’s shiny gold between his thumb and forefinger. “This . . . I was here for this one, after Baku—Turkmenbashi, Operation Alexander, a disaster if there ever was one.” Uri shook his head. “Someone in Alkonost was collecting these horrors along the way, probably for a commission, a side job.”
“Do you know who?”
He shook his head. “I’ve a few likely suspects, but I can’t confirm anything. It’s all circumstantial.”
“Who would want to relive an execution?”
“There’s a market for it, obviously. Someone was willing to pay. This one just happened to be custom-built for the Thuggees. There’re probably others, designed for other sinister reasons.”
“And you think Morosov’s involved?”
“I can’t prove it, but they’re my best guess. Or it could be someone selling their technology on the gray market.”
“I need to travel to Maslak the day after tomorrow to visit with Norsk-Statoil and try to arrange our flight to Jan Mayen. Morosov maintains a research building in the district. Maybe you can try to get some answers.”
“Maybe.”
Somewhere past the Beyoglu suburbs, halfway to the Maslak business district, the tramway broke down. Public transportation was always a gamble, Miriam had warned. The metro authority had difficulties supplying replacement dynamos for the EU-built motors. The factories that built them were no more, and engineers could only reweld so often before the metal turned to slag.
An advisory was issued. Oxygen levels were barely in the “acceptable” zone, and Miriam and Uri were outside the tents. Unbothered, they doubled back on the sunken tracks to the closest station and walked the remaining few kilometers. Panting, they navigated overgrown neighborhoods where slum dwellers eked out lives in the exposed ruin. They cut through an overgrown golf course to avoid the worst of it, the links now a menagerie of reptiles and birds. Rich and lush, the ferns and stumpy palms lent the place a Triassic quality.
They hopped up to the elevated highway and walked the shoulder into Maslak’s central downtown through the midday rush. The road was clogged with lorries and car traffic queuing to pass through the air seal. Uri felt uncomfortable and out of place in the district’s tented nest of skyscrapers and businessmen. Constantinople was a city fueled exclusively on borrowed time.
“This place . . . “ Uri said, shouldering past the suited crowds.
“What about it?” Miriam said.
“Nostalgic antiques. Who’re are they fooling?”
“This is ‘progress,’ archivist.” Miriam winked. “At least the way Nova Byzantium sees it. ‘The last of the world’s corporations trying to move the empire’s citizens forward,’ “ Miriam quoted some oft-repeated maxim.
“These kind of people were responsible for the Post-Industrial Shock. Like the snake Ouroboros, they consumed themselves and ruined it,” Uri ranted.
“You worked for Alkonost. They’re a corporation.”
“I did, but not any more. I’ve moved on.”
She looked at him but said nothing.
They continued into the central plaza, a massive geodesic dome of fabric and tubular struts. Surrounding the artificially blue fountain stood porticos of office towers. Though impressive, the polished sheen was mere facade. Uri noticed its age. Silicon epoxy bulged from marble cracks, granite panels filled with crumbling stucco. The sagging superstructure compacted the windows, spider-web fractures dulling the smoky panes. A few buildings were cocooned in scaffold, armies of workers restoring the ephemeral architecture in futility.
“Morosov is over there, just a street down,” Miriam pointed out. “I need to talk to my contacts here,” she said, thumbing at a nearby tower, black and ominous. “Tag my console when you’re done. Don’t get into trouble. If you do, don’t tell me about it, and I don’t know you. Understand?”
Uri nodded.
They parted ways. Dressed in a simple button-up, cotton trousers, and a duster, Uri didn’t look the part of the executive sophisticate, but he didn’t look like a barbarian either. Subtleties of formality left Uri uneasy. Regardless, people of all shades were apt to respond to the same toolkit of stimulus and response, motivated by self-interest.
He entered the sterile lobby of Morosov Labs Incorporated, taking in the polished floors, rows of unoccupied loungers, and the scent of citrus cleaner. The place was empty except for a thin receptionist sitting behind a C-shaped desk, mousy locks slipping out from a loose headscarf. Art, strange and ill-placed, hung from the cathedral ceilings. Organic sculptures sporting corpuscular flagella, fractal masses of engineered microbiology. The piece was an abstract display meant to mimic Morosov’s core technology, but the effect was lost on Uri.
“Hello,” he said, removing his sunglasses. “I’m a liaison from Alkonost, Lieutenant Uri Vitko. I have an appointment with a representative from Neurological Interface, one of the chief engineers.” Since Alkonost military was forbidden from Nova Byzantium proper, representatives of Tiraspol commonly wore plainclothes on travel.
“Your ARIN number please?” The receptionist barely looked up.
“ARIN number, right,” he paused to remember. “It’s 2112-313-1100, I believe.”
She keyed in the number, then shook her head. “Sorry, you�
��re not coming up on the access list.”
“Damn, and I’m late,” he said, gesturing to the clock on the wall.
“If there’s a contact name . . . maybe we can work it that way.”
He was getting nowhere. He didn’t have a name and couldn’t make up one. Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out his console and mimed scrolling through a contact list. Shaking his head, he stopped to think.
“They sent me down here last minute, so . . . ” he stalled.
The receptionist said nothing, eyes drifting back to her terminal. Moments later, an elevator door opened, a tall thin man stepped out and walked past them toward the door.
“Have a good day, Mr. Popov,” the girl said, smitten.
The man turned back and waved on the way through the automatic doors. Uri watched him walk out into the plaza. Narrow shoulders, wiry and preoccupied: Uri recognized him, years ago back from the Bicaz brig, the I-and-I’s mind-reading demonstration. Popov had grayed, but Uri was sure it was him.
“I think that’s who I’m supposed to meet.”
“Mr. Sergei Popov?”
Uri nodded.
“He’ll be back tonight. He tends to work late.”
“Thank you,” Uri turned to leave. “Thank you very much. I’ll catch him then.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
July 2156 C.E.
The park was quiet, just a few bird chirps carried by the wind. He came here to relax and have a smoke between language classes and chess games at the veterans local. He enjoyed chess and its structure. Enemies were black or white, no ambiguous shades of gray. The academic miniaturized battles avoided the messiness of actual warfare, the carnage reduced to sour grapes. His rating was rising in Tiraspol’s intramurals, and he’d managed a few stalemates against the local masters. Chess was therapy, a respite from inner chatter.
Cigarillos were impossible to get in Tiraspol, so Uri resorted to his old cherrywood pipe. It was less mercenary, more civilized, and suitable for the interim. His furlough was scheduled for five months, but it had stretched a month longer, some problem with the imperial contract. After Moldova, he was hungry for the next operation; downtime was hard time. Uri grabbed his satchel and put away his Latin text. Checking his watch, he had enough time to walk through the gardens before his appointment.
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