The Ocean of Time

by David Wingrove

  Lishka examines the cart in amazement, then turns to me again. ‘But how …?’

  Then he shrugs and, accepting it all in an instant, begins to laugh until his laughter fills the space between the trees.

  ‘Oo-oh,’ he says finally, wiping the tears from his eyes. ‘I would love to see their faces when they find it missing. I would dearly love to see their faces …’

  195

  ‘I like it,’ Katerina says, stroking the week’s growth on my chin. ‘It makes you look distinguished. And very Russian.’

  I grin. ‘That’s the idea.’

  But Lishka merely shrugs. We have been travelling ten days and seem to have made little progress. Tver’ is still some distance and the weather is getting worse by the day. Autumn has come with a vengeance and already half the trees are bare, such that we trudge through great drifts of golden-brown leaves, and when it rains they seem to coat themselves to everything, adhering with a layer of mud for good measure on whatever surface is free.

  Lishka, however, is happy with our progress. He’s used to travelling at this snail’s pace and chides me when I grow impatient. We will get there when we get there is his attitude.

  Katerina, by now, is speaking German fluently. That is, what German she knows. Daily her small stock of phrases grows, and even Lishka now and then chimes in with something – proof that, for all he pretends not to, he is listening to every word we say.

  ‘Danke,’ he says, in answer to almost everything. ‘Danke.’

  Not that it matters. I would trust Lishka with my life. Yes, even with Katerina, come to that. The only difficulty is the nights, for Katerina and I are noisy lovers, and poor Lishka has his own demons to contend with. But somehow we get through. Somehow it works.

  We are making our way down a long slope, a low range of hills to our left, a river to the right. And as we go, so we sing, a little song I’ve taught them both, one I first learned in the Garden, long years ago – a fragment of Hölderlin’s nature poem, ‘Autumn’, written some five hundred and thirty years in the future:

  Das Glänzen der Natur ist höheres Erscheinen,

  Wo sich der Tag mit vielen Freuden endet,

  Es ist das Jahr, das sich mit Pracht vollendet,

  Wo Fruchte sich mit frohem Glanz vereinen …

  Lishka stops suddenly, the song faltering on his lips, and we fall silent too, listening, trying to make out what he’s heard. And then we hear it too.

  The sound of an axe, somewhere ahead of us, in the forest.

  Lishka looks to me and after a moment I nod. It’s been some while since we slept under a roof.

  The village is typical of its kind, nestled in a large clearing amid the trees. The villagers move on every few years, using a method of farming known as slash and burn. They choose an area of the forest and cut deep into the bark of the trees and leave them to die, then – when they’re dry – they burn them. The ash adds the necessary nutrients for two or three years’ harvesting – and then they move on again, preparing a new site even as they farm out the old.

  Their huts are in the centre of that huge, cleared space – crude, single-room affairs on low stilts to keep them off the damp ground – the nearby storage pits lined with birch and pine bark. As for the ground itself, they tend it with crude rakes they call sokha, and sickles and scythes, letting their animals – pigs, sheep, goats and poultry – graze and scavenge. They are a clan, a miry, sharing common pasture land and meadows, using traditional skills to get the best out of the short growing seasons and the grey, infertile soil. A way of life that has lasted a thousand years and more.

  Lishka goes in first, arms raised, hands empty, hailing them heartily, a big smile on his face. They’re suspicious of us, naturally, but once they see Katerina, they greet us cheerily, and children are sent out to the fields and work suspended for the day, the villagers milling about us and touching our clothes, anxious for any news from the outside world.

  Lishka is happy to oblige, and, sat there by the cooking fire, a crude wooden cup of beer in one hand, he holds forth about the villainy of the world, and especially of townsfolk who, as these villagers know, are godless folk.

  Not that we are among Christians here. No, these people are pagans to the core. They might wear the cross about their necks – for who knows when the Grand Prince’s men might visit, demanding tribute – but they also wear other charms about their necks and wrists and ankles, tokens of the old gods.

  That night we feast on a great hog specially slaughtered for the occasion. They bring out a massive cauldron, the village treasure, the outside black and greasy from long decades of use. As it all cooks, the villagers produce drums and pipes and one-stringed lutes and set up a fast, insistent rhythm, the tune hauntingly Russian. The villagers, young and old, dance and clap and whirl about and, after a while, Katerina and I join in, our bare feet pounding the earth about the roaring fire, reminding me of the evening at Velikie Luki at the beginning of our journey. But what I most remember of this evening is the faces of the villagers – such open, honest faces, all of their hopes and fears expressed in the folds and lines, in the sparkle of their innocent eyes.

  Innocent, but not unknowing, for as the evening draws on and much wine and beer is drunk, so all inhibitions are discarded and, throwing off their clothes, the villagers rut indiscriminately, beyond God’s judgement, beyond caring who might watch.

  Katerina, tucked in to the hollow of my arm, looks on wide-eyed, and afterwards she asks if I wanted to join in with them, and I tell her no, that she is enough for me, that she is both all women and the only woman in my life, now and for ever. Not that there’s any harm in what they’re doing. Only, I am changed from what I was. She has changed me.

  Morning comes grey and hazy, the mist like smoke blowing in through the silver boles of the birch trees. I stand there in that silence, the huts behind me, the forest in front, and think of all the places I have been, all of the things I’ve done and seen.

  A bird calls and I turn, listening, feeling the faintest ripple down my spine. It’s a haunting, timeless sound, the very voice of the forest, and as the sun slowly climbs the sky, burning off the mist, so the village slowly wakes, the villagers sore of head yet smiling, men and women grinning and nodding at me as they emerge, blinking, into the sunlight.

  Good people. Russians. And it makes me ask myself: how can these people be my enemy? And yet they are. All my life they’ve been. To the death.

  Only …

  Only this morning I can’t see it like that. This morning I am filled with the beauty of this place. Filled with a sense that, for all that I am German, I am in love with this land of theirs.

  Katerina comes up behind me and puts her arms about me, and for a moment I close my eyes and surrender to the simple feel of her, there at my back, her hands on my chest. And, gently taking those hands, I turn and take her into my arms and kiss her.

  ‘We must go.’

  Her dark eyes meet mine. ‘Must we?’

  I nod. Oh, it’s tempting to stay a day or two among these folk, but we really need to get to Tver’. For, unlike Lishka, I know when the first snows will fall.

  When, after an hour, there’s no sign of our friend, I go inside the hut and try to shake him awake, and when that doesn’t work, fetch water in a bucket and throw it over him. He sits up, spluttering, ready to fight, then blearily sees it’s me and laughs. ‘Oh, it’s you, Otto. Why didn’t you wake me?’

  I go back outside, to where Katerina and I have fed Nepka and checked the cart. Not that we really needed to, for the headman ensured that no one touched a thing of ours. I smile thinking of that, for the honesty of these villagers impresses me. We have encountered so many bad, deceitful people on our travels, that to be among trustworthy men and women is refreshing. And it makes me think that here, out in the wilds – out in the forest – is the real Russia, hidden away, like a secret kept from the world.

  Finally, Lishka emerges and, watched by the whole village, strolls out
and pisses against a tree, looking round at them and grinning while they laugh and clap their hands in delight. And I realise that we have brought a sense of holiday into their dour, hard lives, and that they will talk of us and our visit for months to come.

  To live like this, to be so confined in time and space: again, I find it hard to fathom, hard to understand how curious, intelligent beings could survive this without going stark, raving mad. But so it is.

  Children follow us deep into the forest, then trail off, hallo-ing to us as they depart.

  And then we are alone again, the three of us and Nepka and the cart, making our way through the endless trees, trying to find a path, back-tracking when our way is blocked, and always – always – heading north.

  196

  The next four days are uneventful, one might almost say dull, except that being with Katerina is never dull. Nor Lishka, come to that. Lishka has a store of old tales, and needs little encouragement to tell them. Only sometimes the details seem, well, a touch exaggerated.

  ‘With your own hands?’ I ask, for a second time, and Lishka glances at me angrily, as if challenging his word were a request for a fight.

  ‘Didn’t I just say so?’

  ‘Yes, but you said he was a big man. A mountain of a man.’

  ‘So he was. But I was younger then. Quicker on my feet. And I had a few tricks.’

  ‘Ah …’ But I leave it there. Besides, it may be true. I’ve seen Lishka fight, and even at his age he’s quite adept, not to say brutal, in his methods.

  I’m about to ask him something else when we come out from under the branches and see, just ahead of us down a moss-covered slope, not a stream but a proper river, a broad, slow-flowing mass of grey-green water, almost up to the level of the grassy bank.

  I look to Lishka. ‘The Volga?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No, the Volga’s that direction …’ And he half turns and points back the way we’ve come. ‘This is the T’ma. It flows into the Volga just west of Tver’.’

  ‘Then we can follow it?’

  Lishka nods, but he seems disturbed by something.

  ‘Lishka?’

  He looks to me and laughs. ‘You know what? I was lost and didn’t know it. I thought, well, I thought we were further south than this.’

  ‘But we’re okay now? We can follow the river to Tver’?’

  ‘We can do that. Or we can get a boat. At Vysokoe. That is, if word hasn’t gone ahead of what we did at Rzhev.’

  But we don’t reach Vysokoe by nightfall, and we’re forced to make camp beneath the trees again, on a hill overlooking the river. Lishka has been unusually quiet all afternoon, as if deep in thought, but now, after a supper of baked pigeon and mushrooms, he finally says what’s been on his mind all day.

  ‘Otto, we should build a raft.’

  ‘A raft? But I thought …’

  He looks down.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think,’ he says, not looking at me, ‘that we may have gone past Vysokoe.’

  ‘You mean it’s back there somewhere? That we’re upriver from it?’

  He shrugs, which I take for a yes.

  I consider the idea, then nod. ‘Okay.’

  Lishka too gives a single nod, but he’s still not looking at me.

  ‘Lishka?’

  He glances up at me, then looks down again, agitated now. ‘It’s just …’ He lets out a great sigh, then, placing his hands firmly on his knees, meets my eyes. ‘I just thought, with your powers, that you might—’

  ‘Magic us there? To Tver’?’ And I laugh, and keep on laughing until the tears are streaming down. ‘Oh, Lishka, if only you knew …’

  ‘Then tell me,’ he says, and there’s a serious light in his eyes. ‘Tell me exactly who you are, Otto Behr. For you’re not from here, that I know.’

  Katerina looks to me, then back at Lishka.

  Lishka’s face in the firelight is suddenly different. And for a moment – just for the briefest moment – I am tempted to let him into my secret. Only it’s already enough that Katerina knows, and that kind of knowledge – that there’s a world outside his mundane world, framing it, if you like – would not help Lishka. It would not help him to know that all journeys are not as straightforward as the one we are taking together and that to get to a place one need not toil for weeks through the primeval forest. What use would it be for him to know of alternate timelines and future wars, of no-space and ten-dimensional physics? Only, I need to tell him something.

  And so I tell him a half-truth. I tell him that I am a servant of the World Tree, and then I tell him about Asgard and the gods, and of the great war in Heaven, and at the end of it Lishka, who has not stopped staring at me all the while, wide-eyed, simply nods, as if he finally understands.

  ‘And these gods,’ he asks. ‘Are you one of them, Otto?’

  Katerina, too, is watching me intently as I answer.

  ‘No … I’m a mere mortal. Kill me and I die.’

  Again, it’s not entirely true, but it’s not a lie. Not a total lie, anyway.

  We rise early the next morning and begin to make our raft. And as we work, so Lishka asks me question after question – about the gods, and Asgard, and how I see the world. And I try to answer him as honestly and completely as I can, only now – in the daylight – I’m beginning to think that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Not if Lishka is going to incorporate my stories into his own treasure-trove of tales. Then again, maybe that’s how these myths start – as tales told by time travellers to their time-constrained companions. Maybe that’s how everything works, every single innovation in the world. Maybe it’s all one great complex time paradox. Only that, I guess, would be taking it too far.

  It takes us the best part of the morning to make the raft, but by midday we’ve floated and tested it and, satisfied, have carefully loaded the cart, poor Nepka tethered securely to the raft. Water laps over the edges of the raft as we pole our way slowly down the river, keeping close to the left-hand bank, but we’re perfectly seaworthy, and it’s a good job, too, for about three or four miles downstream, the land closes in on either side, great slabs of rock forming a kind of canyon, while the river narrows and speeds up. For a while we cling on, struggling to keep the raft afloat as we rush down a series of small white-water falls, praying we don’t hit one of the massive rocks that are jutting from midstream, or lose Nepka or the cart as we judder and tumble our way down through the churning waters. For a time it’s touch and go; the waters buffet us cruelly, trying to tear at our hand-holds and smash the raft. There’s a great thud as we collide with something and the raft lurches to one side, the cart jolting round and then holding …

  And then, suddenly, it’s behind us. The landscape opens up ahead, the river spreading itself like a fist slowly opening, the current slowing, until we’ve almost drifted to a halt. But neither Lishka nor I make any attempt to push on apace. For a while we simply sit there, slumped with relief. And then Lishka laughs and lifts a hand to the sky. ‘Danke,’ he says. ‘Danke.’

  And I look at him and grin.

  197

  It’s two more days before we arrive at Tver’, the old town sitting on a hill overlooking a turn in the river. It’s much bigger than Rzhev, and far more important politically. Eight years from now, Sviatislav, Grand Prince of Vladimir, will place his nephew in the town as prince, but already it is an important military base. Major campaigns have been launched from here, and for the next two hundred years, its princes will vie with the princes of Muscovy – often in warfare – for control over northern Russia.

  Indeed, had history turned out otherwise it would be better known than its eastern neighbour Moscow, only the tide of history passed Tver’ by. Moscow – a mere trading post when Tver’ was a town of three thousand citizens – has already become the greater power. Nor has it anything to do with geographical location. It has to do with men and their ambitions.

  Let me explain.

  In the official record, the
first mention of Moscow is in 1147, some sixty-two years before there’s any mention of Tver’. Only Tver’ is a whole lot older than Moscow. Or was. You see, this is one of the big changes. As in BIG. Because Moscow wasn’t the capital of Russia when this whole shooting show began. Moscow was only a provincial, backwater town, famous for nothing.

  But Moscow was where the Russians built their command bunker, more than half a mile underground. Moscow was where the last remaining Russians were when it all went badly wrong. When the bombs fell. And Moscow was where they were when they first heard of Gehlen’s wonderful machine. A machine that could travel through time.

  Which is why they’ve defended it all these years, through Time and Space, and in doing so they have changed history, turned it into the history we know, with the Muscovite princes slowly taking over from their Kievan counterparts until, by the sixteenth century, they were unassailable. Tsars.

  But it didn’t begin that way. First time round it was Kiev that was the capital, and Tver’ the second-largest northern town. After Novgorod, of course.

  If you look at the old road maps from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Moscow looks like a giant spider, crouched at the centre of a web of great roads, every one of them leading in to the centre. Podol’sk, Odintsovo, Krasnogorsk, Himki, Mytisci, Noginsk, Balashiha, Elektrostal, Ljubertsy and Lytarino: these are the towns that circle Moscow like electrons at the heart of an atom, while a whole series of huge roads, thousands of kilometres long, spread out from the centre of that web like the spider’s silken strands, across to Kazan in the east, to Volgograd and Donets’k in the far south, and to Minsk and Riga in the west.

  So it is with BIG changes. They impose a whole new pattern on the map. They refocus everything and make it seem so normal, so natural, that it’s hard to believe it could have happened any other way. And yet it did.

  And there’s a lesson there. That there’s nothing natural when it comes to the works of men.