by Gary Gibson
‘Well, now we’re here,’ I said, doing my best to play the part of an eager Soviet scientist, ‘hopefully that will change.’
He shrugged, as if this were the least of his concerns. ‘Sure. I guess that would be good.’
‘You don’t care?’ I asked, unable to hide my genuine surprise.
‘I didn’t say that. Sure, I think with your help we’ll figure out how to find a safe alternate eventually. But the thing is,’ he continued, nodding around the bar, ‘this is home to me now.’
‘But they said the rest of this alternate is uninhabitable . . . ?’
‘Sure.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe what I really mean is that even if – when – you and all those other scientists manage to find some nice safe alternate to colonize, I’m not sure I’d be happy there.’ His face cracked in a grin. ‘I know it sounds crazy, but I hate the idea of always being stuck in just the one universe. I’d rather keep exploring, but on my own terms.’
‘Do any of the other Pathfinders feel the same way?’
‘Sure. Most of them, anyway.’
I realized that I had been standing talking with him for several minutes without taking advantage of it. ‘I was wondering,’ I asked him, ‘how much freedom you have when it comes to visiting all these different alternates? Are you only allowed to use the transfer stages as part of your duties, or are you able to visit other alternates whenever you choose?’
‘You mean . . . just for the hell of it?’
‘I ask because we saw so much today, there was hardly a chance to take most of it in. I would jump at the chance to return to some of those alternates. Particularly,’ I added, ‘the last one, Delta Twenty-Five.’
‘It was kind of a whirlwind tour,’ he conceded.
I pushed away a mental image of Tomas lying dead on the floor of Borodin’s office and made myself step a little closer to the Pathfinder. ‘Then perhaps some time soon I could arrange to return there?’
‘You could,’ he said. ‘But not without a guide. Those are the rules. Officially, there’s a waiting list. A long one.’
I licked my lips. ‘But unofficially . . . ?’
His grin grew wider. ‘You’re asking me if I could take you there and skip the queue, is that what you mean?’ He shook his head. ‘I’d really love to, but I don’t see how it’d be possible.’
‘Ah well,’ I said with a forced smile – although in truth, I found him easier to talk to than any of the Soviets. Perhaps, under different circumstances, I might have been interested in him . . .
I pushed the thought away immediately. Damn Borodin! The thought of seducing the Pathfinder merely because Borodin wanted me to made me feel physically sick. It was a vile, repugnant notion.
The conversation moved on, and my glass was refreshed, and I told him stories of my youth, carefully edited to avoid mentioning anything that might lead him to suspect I was anything other than the Soviet scientist he believed me to be. I tried again to see if there were some way to persuade him to take me back to Delta Twenty-Five, but I got the same polite decline. I drank more – too much, in truth. I asked him about his notebook, and he told me he had left it at home. I asked if I might see it, and he evaded me, making a joke and changing the subject.
I noticed then that Borodin was watching me from across the room with narrowed eyes. I was drinking too much, I knew; I was in no state to seduce anyone, let alone act like the spy he wanted me to be. When I next looked around for him, I saw he had left.
Much later, I weaved back through the empty streets along with several of the Soviets, singing some terrible pop song beloved of the Pathfinders. The rest had gone home, although when I got back to my room I found no sign of Nina.
Wherever she might be, I neither knew nor cared. I threw myself onto the bed and watched the room spin around me until, finally, I drifted into some semblance of sleep.
I did not hear Nina when she slipped back into the room an indeterminate amount of time later. I was too busy dreaming of the day they came for me and my father when I was still a little girl, hearing again the shouts of the Tsar’s secret police as they beat down our door one winter’s night.
And then I woke up and realized it wasn’t a dream.
SEVEN
I could hear shouting, and the stamp of heavy boots on floorboards, and Elena demanding in both Russian and English to know what the hell was going on.
I sat up straight and saw Nina was already awake beside me. Rain pattered against the window. She pressed the heel of one hand to her head before turning to me.
‘Yekaterina?’ she mumbled. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know.’ I got out of bed and hurriedly pulled on some clothes. I opened the bedroom door in time to see two Authority troopers coming up the stairs to the landing, their carbines gripped in their hands.
‘Get downstairs, now!’ one of them barked at us. ‘Boris Yedov and Vissarion Chakviani. Where are they?’
I shook my head, still blurry from too much drink. Nina came to stand by my side, wearing shorts and a T-shirt.
‘Their room is next to ours,’ I said, my tongue feeling thick and furry.
‘Both of you go downstairs and wait there,’ the soldier ordered. His companion stepped towards Boris and Vissarion’s door and hammered on it. I watched him, too shell-shocked to move.
‘Now,’ the soldier bellowed.
His voice awoke some primal terror in me, as if I were once again being hauled into a black van together with my father. I took Nina’s arm and led her downstairs. Elena stood by the open front door in her night smock, looking as confused and tired as I felt. I saw a couple of jeeps parked outside by the gate, where Major Howes stood talking to several of his men.
I turned as Vissarion and Boris came clumping down the stairs in their bare feet, followed by the two soldiers who had roused us.
‘Elena,’ asked Vissarion, ‘what the fuck is going on?’
‘They think one of us is a spy,’ Elena replied, looking around us all.
Her gaze landed on me, and I felt my heart clench, sure in that moment that Borodin and I had been discovered.
Boris and Vissarion muttered angrily. Vissarion’s eyes were red and watery, while Boris stood with his head hunched low between his shoulders, squinting at the pale morning sky with sour distaste. To my surprise, Nina appeared relatively unruffled.
Major Howes came over, his face as joyful as a declaration of war. ‘Miss Kovitch,’ he said to Elena, ‘we’ve already roused the engineers. Take your people over to their house and wait there with them until further notice. I need to speak to all of you together.’
It was very clearly an order rather than a request. We were led barefoot through the rain by two soldiers and into the house next door, where we found the rest of the Soviets waiting in the kitchen.
Borodin gave me a small nod from where he sat at a table, his grey eyes barely lifting from the coffee cup he gripped in both hands. Illyenna and Aleksi spoke to each other in low voices until Damian snapped at them to be quiet.
‘Well?’ Damian demanded in Russian, staring around at all of us. ‘Which one of you fuckers is spying on the Americans?’
‘This is just some bullshit attempt to—’ Boris began to say.
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ Damian shouted. ‘I thought it was you all along, you miserable fucking toad.’
Boris stared back at him with a furious expression. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Elena told me all about how you’ve been winding the Americans up from the moment you got here,’ Damian yelled back, ‘starting with all that crap about whoever started the fucking war—’
‘But they did!’ Boris shouted back, with childlike petulance.
‘Damian—’ Elena stepped between the two of them, seeing they were about to come to blows, but it was too late. Damian pushed past her and took a swing at Boris, but Boris stepped quickly out of his reach.
‘A fucking spy,’ shouted Damian, pushing past Elena a
nd following the other man around the kitchen. ‘Which Kremlin shithead decided we should spy on these people – will you tell me that, Boris? Or should I—’
The kitchen door slammed open and Howes came in, followed by another two soldiers, their carbines levelled at us. ‘I don’t speak Russian,’ he said, ‘so you’d better all shut the hell up or talk in English.’
We shut up.
‘Now listen,’ said Howes, looking around us all, ‘the whole point of you people being here is we’re all in the same boat, and that boat is sinking. The key to survival, as you damn well ought to know by now, is cooperation.’
‘Major,’ said Elena, ‘I want to reassure you that—’
‘Shut the hell up,’ Howes barked. Elena let out a gasp as if she had been slapped.
I felt numb, and feared I might collapse to the floor. Any moment now Howes would point me and Borodin out. His soldiers would come forward and take us prisoner. I would never see my father Josef or any part of the Novaya Empire again. Perhaps Borodin’s spies within the Authority and also amongst their Soviet counterparts had been compromised; or perhaps they simply hadn’t done a good enough job with our manufactured pasts.
Somehow, I could not imagine Borodin going quietly. I tensed, wondering what he would do.
Howes looked around us all before his gaze finally settled on me. ‘We’ve been tracking someone amongst you since before you even left Russia,’ he grated. ‘The fact is, at least one of you has a story that just doesn’t add up.’
‘You mean you used your own spies to uncover one of ours?’ asked Vissarion. ‘How ironic.’
Howes shot him a look that would have melted steel. ‘The next one of you who says a damn word goes straight the hell back where they came from,’ he said quietly, then looked around us all. ‘Got that?’
No one spoke. Not even Boris.
Major Howes’ gaze returned to me, and he raised his hand and pointed. ‘You.’
I felt my gorge rise. My heart pounded in my chest with such force I wondered if I might be about to suffer cardiac arrest. I covered my mouth with one hand, afraid I might be about to vomit.
Only then did I realize Howes was not pointing at me: he was pointing at little Nina Gregoryeva, standing behind me.
Howes looked down at a crumpled piece of paper that had appeared in his other hand. ‘Nina Gregoryeva,’ he said, looking back up. ‘You are under arrest on charges of spying on the Provisional Civil Authority of the United States on behalf of a hostile enemy power.’
I turned to stare at her. Nina glared back at Howes with a look of contempt. Gone was the gossipy little woman I had been forced to share a room with: she had been replaced by some stranger – a person whom I no longer recognized.
The soldiers brushed past me and grabbed hold of Nina by either arm. They dragged her past us and out through the kitchen door, Howes following in their wake. The rest of us listened in stunned silence as the jeeps started up, then roared off into the distance.
Damian muttered something under his breath, his face ashen as he sank onto a stool.
‘So,’ said Elena, haltingly. ‘Did anyone suspect?’
‘I did,’ said Damian, nodding slowly. ‘Just not her.’
Boris barked out a laugh. ‘Is that the only apology I’m going to get for you trying to kill me, Kuzakov?’
‘So what?’ Damian snapped. ‘You might not have been a spy, but you’re still an asshole.’
Boris stepped towards him, his hands trembling at his sides.
‘Damian.’ Elena stared hard at the expedition commander. ‘I think perhaps you should apologize to Boris, don’t you?’
The muscles in Damian’s jaw and hands flexed and moved as Elena stared him down. Finally his mouth curled up in a sour grimace and he looked over at Boris. ‘I apologize for my actions,’ he said, chewing the words as if they were rotten fruit. ‘But I suppose it’s not really any surprise one of us turned out to be . . . dually employed.’
‘So what now?’ asked Vissarion miserably. ‘Will they send us all home?’
Aleksi shook his head. ‘Unlikely. They genuinely need us, or we would never have been here in the first place.’
‘As long as there aren’t any more spies amongst us,’ said Damian. The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘Unless we’re all spies.’
This got a few chuckles, even from me, though by that point it might well have been incipient hysteria.
‘Fuck this,’ said Boris, walking stiff-legged towards the kitchen door. ‘What time is it – five in the fucking morning? I’m going back to bed.’
‘We have work to do,’ said Elena. ‘It’s not that long before we’d be getting up anyway.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Boris replied testily. ‘But if those . . . bastards are going to drag me out of my bed at an hour like this, they can go fuck themselves before I lose my sleep.’
‘Boris—’
‘Not this time, Elena.’ He stood with one hand on the door. ‘I don’t really care any more what you do. I’ll see the rest of you whenever I manage to wake up.’
He left, and after a moment the rest moved to follow him, Elena vainly reminding them of their responsibilities as they trudged out into the dawn.
I turned to Borodin, still sitting at the kitchen table. He gave me the faintest of shrugs, then got up and walked out of the kitchen without a word.
Then it was just me and Elena. She gave me a look of contempt, then pushed past me and through the door, something in her look suggesting this had all, somehow, been my fault.
EIGHT
Despite his defiance, Boris managed to rise after a few hours for a late breakfast. We were driven to the military compound where the transfer hangar was located before being taken on a tour of various meeting rooms, computer facilities, labs and storerooms filled with both artefacts and biological samples from more unusual environments such as Delta Twenty-Five. Then we spent the afternoon in a wooden hut while a series of Authority scientists took turns explaining some of the more esoteric aspects of the transfer stages.
Even through my hangover, it was again obvious to me how pitifully limited their understanding of the stages was. Their theories amounted to little more than wild conjecture, almost entirely unsupported by anything in the way of experimental proof. All I could do was grit my teeth at their ignorance and keep quiet.
Borodin, while not exactly avoiding me, was rarely around. His official duties were political rather than scientific, after all, and while it was frustrating that I had still not been able to speak to him further regarding the memory beads, it was nonetheless a relief not to feel as if I were under his constant gaze.
Somehow, I managed to survive the rest of that first week with my sanity intact – but only just. I had to pay just enough attention to be able to take part in discussions and workgroups, and talk about their theories as if they weren’t laughable in the extreme. I fantasized about how the Soviets and their Authority counterparts might react were I to tell them even a fraction of what I knew: to do so would no doubt revolutionize their understanding of both classical and quantum physics – as well as being very dangerous and extremely foolhardy.
Perhaps that is why towards the end of that first week, while taking part in a discussion of the role of exotic forms of matter in the transfer process, I made certain alterations to an equation while my thoughts were somewhere else entirely.
‘That’s interesting,’ said Ivor Tilley. Tilley was a high-energy physicist, drafted into leading our discussion that afternoon. Rain drummed down on the tin roof of the shed in which we were gathered. ‘What gave you the idea for that particular solution, Katya?’
I had sat back down with a yawn, a little girl running in circles through my thoughts. ‘Excuse me?’ I asked, looking back up.
‘Your solution,’ said Tilley, nodding at the whiteboard with a puzzled expression. ‘I mean, that’s a pretty radical way of solving the problem. How on Earth did you come up with it?’
I blinked at h
im, befuddled, then turned my attention back to the whiteboard on which I had scrawled my corrections. ‘It’s merely a standard deviation with respect to basic Heim theory. I thought everyone . . .’
I trailed off, suddenly much more awake than I had been a moment before. I noticed for the first time the strange way Tilley was looking at me.
‘“Heim theory”?’ Tilley repeated, then looked around the rest of the Soviets. ‘I’m not familiar with that one. Anyone else?’
A thin sheen of sweat formed on my brow. Of course Tilley wasn’t familiar with Heim theory: Gerhard Heim had been a citizen of the Novo-Rossiyskaya Imperiya.
And the solution I had just written in front of them all was key to replicating the transfer process.
I forced a laugh. ‘You’re right. I made a silly mistake. I do apologize.’ I got up quickly and snatched up an eraser, hurriedly wiping away my changes.
I could feel their eyes burrowing into me as I sat back down. Had any of them understood the implications of what I had written? They were, after all, each quite brilliant in their respective fields; it was why they had been chosen to come here.
Tilley gave me a searching look, then moved the conversation on to another subject. Even so, every now and then, I saw him glance my way and pause before continuing.
No one said anything to me afterwards, and I managed to convince myself I had got away with it.
As for the events stemming from that brief unfortunate moment of distraction, I have only myself to blame.
A little after midnight that evening, something struck my bedroom window hard enough to wake me up. I got up in time to see a second pebble bounce from the glass. I peered down into a garden half-reverted to jungle, then saw a tiny point of orange light move in the darkness. I squinted, then saw it was Borodin, smoking a cigarette.
I grabbed up the carved box with its memory beads and made my way downstairs to meet him.
‘Is anyone else in your house?’ he asked when I got there. ‘The engineers have all disappeared from mine.’