“Look, I have to go now –”
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You just want to be able to hang up on anybody and everybody the instant you start feeling uncomfortable.” Lisa looked incredulous. “Is that it? It is, isn’t it. You want to have your cake and eat it. So you found a place where you can hide from everybody, just poke your head out whenever you need someone to talk to. Well, I’m not a TV, you know. I’m not going to let you just turn me on and off when it suits you.
“Keep your empty town and your empty life, then. I’ll have none of it.”
She hung up.
“Bitch!” He yanked off the headset and kicked the wall. No neighbours to complain – he kicked it again. “What the hell do you want from me?” He’d put a hole in the plasterboard. Dust swirled up, and he heard the Geiger counter buzz louder for a second.
“Oh, God.” He slumped on the balcony, but when he raised his eyes all that met them was the vista of the sarcophagus, gleaming now like some giant larva on the banks of the river.
Unaccountably, Gennady found his eyes filling with tears.
How long has it been, he wondered in amazement, since you cried?
Years. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and blinked a few times. He needed to walk; yes, a long walk in the sun would bring him around . . .
He stopped at the door to the apartment. There was the plastic wrap he should use to cover his shoes. And the face mask. And beside that the Geiger counter.
A horrible feeling of being trapped stole over him. For a few minutes he stood there, biting his nails, staring at the peeling wallpaper. Then the anger returned, and he kicked the wall again.
“I’m right.” To prove it, he sat down, jacked in, and called up the interface for the RPV.
Gennady held his head high as he walked in the sun in a plaza where no human could set foot for the next six thousand years. He knelt and examined the gigantic wildflowers that grew in abundance here. They were his, in a way that nothing else had ever been nor could be outside this place. This must be how the old man felt, he marvelled – but Bogoliubov’s armour was a deliberate refusal to believe the danger he was in. With the RPV, Gennady had no need for such illusions.
He didn’t take every opportunity to explore. There would be plenty of time for that later, after he reported the accidental destruction of the RPV. For now, he just sauntered and enjoyed the day. His steel joints moved soundlessly, and he felt no fatigue or heat.
Beep. “Merrick here. Gennady, are you on-line?”
“Yes. I’m here.”
“Gennady, let me introduce Dentrane. You’ll hand the RPV off to him when you get in position, and he’ll take it from there. If we’re lucky, we’ll only need to do this once.”
“Hello, Gennady,” said Dentrane. He had a thick Estonian accent.
“Good to hear from you, Dentrane. Shall I walk us over to the sarcophagus and you can take a peek at what all the fuss is about?”
Dentrane laughed. “Delighted. Lead on.”
Time to be “all business” as Lisaveta would say. He jogged towards the river.
“It’s American law,” Lisa was saying to Merrick. They had met in a neutral room in cyberspace. Merrick’s avatar was bland as usual; Lisa had represented herself as a cyber-Medusa, with fibre-optic leads snaking from her hair to attach to a globe that floated before her. “When you’re dealing with the Net, you’ve got both international and local laws to worry about,” she explained. “We can’t guarantee our trace of the paths to the satellite signal. We can’t shut it down on the satellite end. And unless we have proof that it’s Jaffrey doing this, we can’t shut it down at his end.”
“So our hands are tied.” Merrick’s avatar was motionless, but she imagined him pacing. In a window next to him, the live feed from the RPV showed green foliage, then the looming concrete curve of the sarcophagus.
“You’re going to have to trust me. We’ll find a way to prove it’s Jaffrey.”
“I have sixteen military RPVs waiting in the river. The second I see a problem, Ms MacDonald, they’re going in. And if they go in, you have to shut down Jaffrey.”
“I can’t! And what if he’s got a dead-man switch?”
“I’m relying on Dentrane to tell us if he does. And I’m relying on you to cut Jaffrey off when I order it.”
She glared at the avatar. It must be ten times she’d told him she had no authority to do that. She knew how to, sure – but if they were wrong and Jaffrey wasn’t the extortionist, she would be criminally liable. But Merrick didn’t care about that.
He didn’t seem to care about Gennady, either. And why should he? Gennady had chosen to plant himself right next to the sarcophagus. If it blew up he would have no one to blame but himself.
And that would be absolutely no consolation when she had to fly out to watch him die of radiation poisoning in some Soviet-vintage hospital ward. She had woken herself up last night with that scenario, and had lain awake wondering why she should do that for a man whom she knew only through the Net. But maybe it was precisely because their association was incomplete. Lisa knew he was as real a person as she; in a way they were close. But they would not have really met until she touched his hand, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him before that happened.
Angrily she glanced at her ranks of numbers and documents, all of which pointed at Jaffrey, none conclusively. It all made her feel so helpless. She turned to watch the movement of the RPV instead.
The RPV had scaled the steep lower part of the sarcophagus, and now clambered hand over hand towards a red discoloration on one flank. With a start, Lisa realized there were some bulky objects sticking up there. The camera angle swerved and jittered, then the RPV paused long enough for her to get a good look. She heard Merrick swear just as she realized she was looking at tarpaulins, painted to resemble the concrete of the structure, that had been stretched over several green metal racks.
Then one of the tarps disappeared in a white cloud. The camera shook as everything vanished in a white haze. Then – static.
“What was that?”
“Holy mother of God,” said Merrick. “He launched.”
Gennady froze. He had stepped onto the balcony to let Dentrane get on with his work. From here he had a magnificent view of the sarcophagus, so the contrail of the rocket was clearly visible. It rose straight up, an orange cut in the sky, then levelled off and headed straight at him. He just had time to blink and think, I’m standing right next to the RPV signal repeater before the contrail leapt forward faster than the eye could follow, and all the windows of the surrounding buildings flashed sun-bright.
The concussion was a sudden hammer blow, nothing like the roaring explosions he heard in movies or VR. He was on his back on the balcony, ears ringing, when he heard the bang! echo back from the other buildings, and could almost follow its course through the abandoned city as the rings of shocked air hit one neighbourhood after the next, and reported back.
A cascade of dust and grit obscured the view. It all came from overhead somewhere. He realized as he sat up that the explosion had occurred on the roof. That was where he’d set up the big dish necessary for Dentrane’s data-feed.
The fear felt like cold spreading through his chest, down his arms. He leaned on the swaying balcony, watching for the second contrail that would signal the second rocket. The dish on the roof was the link to the Net, yes; but it fed its signal down here to the transmitter that sat a metre to Gennady’s left, and that transmitter was the control connection to the RPV. It was the only live beacon now.
Nothing happened. As the seconds passed, Gennady found himself paralyzed by indecision: in the time it took for him to rise to his feet and turn, and take three steps, the rocket might be on him – and he had to see it if it came.
It did not. Gradually he became aware that his mouth was open, his throat hurting from a yell that hadn’t made it from his lungs to his vocal cords. He fell back on his elbows, then shouted “Shit!” at a
tenth the volume he thought he needed, and scrambled back into the apartment.
He was halfway down the stairs when the cell phone rang. He barked a laugh at the prosaic echo, the only sound now in this empty building other than his chattering footsteps. He grabbed it from his belt. “What?”
“Gennady! Are you all right?”
“Yes, Lisa.”
“Oh, thank God! Listen, you’ve got to get out of there –”
“Just leaving.”
“I’m so glad.”
“Fuck you.” He hung up and jammed the phone back in his belt. It immediately rang again. Gennady stopped, cursed, grabbed it, almost pressed the receive button. Then he tossed it over the banister. After a second he heard it hit the landing below with a crack.
He ran past it into the lobby, and pulled out the bike. He started it, and paused to look around the sad, abandoned place he had almost lived in. His hand on the throttle was trembling.
The release could happen at any moment. There would be an explosion, who knew how big; he imagined chunks of concrete floating up in the air, exposing a deep red wound in the earth, the unhealing sore of Chernobyl. A cloud of dust would rise, he could watch it from outside. Quiet, subtle, it would turn its head toward Kiev, as it had years ago. Soon there would be more ghosts in the streets of the great city.
He would get away. Lisa would never speak to him, and he could never walk the avenues of Kiev again without picturing himself here. He could never look the survivors of The Release in the eye again. But he would have gotten away.
“Liar!”
The sound jolted him. Gennady looked up. Bogoliubov, the self-proclaimed custodian of Pripyat, stalked towards him across the courtyard, his black greatcoat flapping in the evening breeze.
“Liar,” said the old man again.
“I’m not staying,” Gennady shouted.
“You lied to me!”
Gennady took his hand off the throttle. “What?”
“You work for the Trust. Or is it the army! And to think I believed that story about you being a med student.” Bogoliubov stopped directly in Gennady’s path.
“Look, we haven’t got time for this. There might be another release. We have to get out of here. Hop on.”
Bogoliubov’s eyes widened. “So you betrayed him, too. I’m not surprised.” He spat in the dirt at Gennady’s feet and turned away. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Wait!” Gennady popped the kickstand on the bike and caught up to the old man. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I came here because of the dragon. How could I know you weren’t involved?”
Bogoliubov whirled, scowling. He seemed to be groping for words. Finally, “Trust was a mistake,” was all he said. As if the effort cost him greatly, he reached out and shoved Gennady hard in the chest. Then he walked rapidly away.
Gennady watched him go, then returned to the bike. His head was throbbing. He shut the bike down, and walked slowly back to the entrance of the apartment building. He stopped. He waited, staring at the sky. And then he went in.
“Lisaveta, I’m linking to the RPV now.”
“Gennady! What?” He smiled grimly at the transparent surprise in her voice. She who liked to Know had been startled by him. Gennady had linked the cell-phone signal to the RPV interface. She would get voice, but no video this way.
He adjusted the headset. “Connecting now.” He took a deep breath, and jabbed the enter key on his board.
Vision lurched. And then he was staring at a red tarpaulin, which was tangled up in the fallen spars of a green metal rack. Several long metal tubes stuck out of this, all aimed at the ground. A haze like exhaust from a bus hung over everything.
The missile rack shook. Gennady cautiously turned his head to see what might be causing the motion. Directly beside him was the black, rusted flank of a thing like a tank with legs. Several sets of arms dangled from its sloped front, and two of these were tearing the tough fabric of the tarp away from the collapsed rack.
“Gennady, talk to me!” He smiled to hear the concern in her voice. “Where are you?”
“Dentrane’s out of the loop, so I’ve taken over the RPV. I’ve got it on the side of the sarcophagus.”
“But where are you?”
“Lisa, listen. Someone else is here. Do you understand? There is another RPV, and it’s trying to fix the missile rack.”
“Jaffrey . . .”
“That his name? Whatever.” The black dragon had nearly unravelled the tarp. If it succeeded in realigning the missile tubes, it would have a clear shot at the balcony where Gennady now sat.
“It’s ignoring me. Thinks I’ve run away, I guess.” He looked around, trying not to turn his head. There was nothing obvious to use as a weapon – but then his own RPV was a weapon, he recalled. Nothing compared to the hulking, grumbling thing next to him, but more than a match for –
– the missile tubes he pounced on. Gennady felt the whole structure go down under him, metal rending. He flailed about, scattering the tubes with loud banging blows, winding up on his asbestos backside looking up at the two spotlight eyes of the black RPV.
He switched on the outside speaker. “This isn’t your private sandbox, you know.”
Two huge arms shot out. He rolled out of the way. Metal screamed.
A deep roaring shook the whole side of the sarcophagus. He could see small spires of dust rise from the triangular concrete slabs. The dragon had leaped, and utterly smashed the place where he had just been.
Just ahead under the flapping square of another grey tarp Gennady saw a deep black opening in the side of the sarcophagus. “This your home?” he shouted as he clambered up to it.
“Stay away!” The voice was deep and carrying, utterly artificial.
“What was that?” Lisa was still with him.
“That would be your Jaffrey. He’s pissed, as the Yankees would say.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Lisa, he’s going to make a release. We both know it. Only a fool wouldn’t realize there’s a backup plan to me being here. If I fail, the men in the choppers come in, am I wrong? You and I know it. This guy knows it. Now he’s got nothing to lose. He’ll blow the top off the place.”
“Merrick’s ready to send the others in now. You just get out of there and let them handle it.”
“No.” The monster was close behind him as Gennady made it to the dark opening. “I can’t avoid this one. You know it’s true.”
She might have said “Oh,” and he did imagine a tone of sad resignation to whatever she did say, but he was too busy bashing his way into the bottom of a pit to make it out. Gennady rolled to a stop in a haze of static; his cameras adjusted to the dark in time for him to see a huge black square block the opening above, and fall at him.
“Shit!” he couldn’t avoid it this time. Something heavy hit him as he staggered to his feet, flicking him into a wall as though he were made of balsa wood. He didn’t actually feel the blow, but it was an impossibly quick motion like a speeded-up movie; sensation vanished from his right arm.
He managed to cartwheel out of the way of another piston blow. Gennady backed up several paces, and looked around.
This was sort of an antechamber to the remnants of one of the reactor rooms. Circles of light from the headlamp eyes of the dragon swooped and dove through an amazing tangle of twisted metal and broken cement under the low red girders of the sarcophagus’ ceiling. Here were slabs of wall still painted institution green, next to charred metal pipes as thick as his body. The wreckage made a rough ring around a cleared area in the centre. And there, the thing he had never in his life expected to see, there was the open black mouth of the obscenity itself.
Jaffrey, if this was indeed he, had made a nest in the caldera of Reactor Four.
Gennady bounded across the space and up the rubble on the other side. He clutched at a cross-beam and pulled himself up on it while the dragon laboured to follow. When he reached with both arms, only one appear
ed and grasped the beam.
“Come down,” said the dragon in its deep bass that rattled the very beams. Its bright eyes were fixed on him, only metres below.
“What, are you crazy?” he said, instantly regretting his choice of words.
The dragon sat back with a seismic thud. It turned its big black head, eerily like a bear’s as it regarded him.
“I’ve been watching you,” it said after a long minute.
Gennady backed away along the girder.
“When I was a boy,” said the dragon of Pripyat, “I wrote a letter to God. And then I put the letter in a jar, and I buried it in the garden, as deep as I could reach. It never occurred to me that someone might dig it up one day. I thought, no one sees God. God is in the hidden places between the walls, behind us when we are looking the other way. But I have put this letter out of the world. Maybe God will pass by and read it.”
“Gennady,” said Lisa. “You have to find out who this is. We can’t cut Jaffrey’s signal until we have proof that it’s him. Can you hear me?”
“I watched you walking in the evenings,” said the dragon. “You stared up at the windows the same way I do. You put your hands behind your back, head down, and traced the cracks in the pavement like a boy. You moved as one liberated from a curse.”
“Shut up,” said Gennady.
“Do you remember the first photos from the accident? Remember the image of this place’s roof? Just a roof, obviously trashed by an explosion of some kind. But still, a roof, where you could stand and look out. Except you couldn’t. No one could. That roof was the first place I had ever actually seen that had been removed from the world. A place no one could go or ever would go. To stand there for even a moment was death. Remember?”
“I was too young,” said Gennady.
“Good,” said Lisa. “We know he’s old enough to remember 1986. Keep him talking.”
Gennady scowled, wishing the RPV could convey the expression.
“Later I remembered that,” said the dragon. “When I could no longer live as a person in the world of people. Remember the three men in the Bible who were cast in the belly of the furnace, and survived? Oh, I needed to do that. To live in the belly of the furnace. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
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