Fantasy: The Best of 2001

by Robert Silverberg

  “You’ve met him?”

  Nicolai coughed, grimaced, butted his cigarette. “You don’t meet Yuri. You experience him.”

  “You experience him.” Chemayev gave a sarcastic laugh. “So you’re saying he’s like a sunset or something.”

  “A sunset . . . .” Nicolai looked as if he was mulling it over. “It’s not a totally inappropriate analogy. But for sure he’s not a guy you sit down and have a chat with. The fact is, I don’t think he’s a guy at all. Not anymore. The things he got into when he was building the club, it transformed him. The club, Yuri, the party . . . they’re all the same somehow.” Nicolai smiled crookedly. “That’s pretty weak, isn’t it? Maybe the best I can do is tell you what it’s like being here all the time.” He ges­tured at one of the walls. “Take a look around.”

  Chemayev had not paid much attention to the room when he had entered, but he was fairly certain the walls had not been covered, as they were now, with a faded earth-toned mural like those found on the walls of fac­tories during the Communist era: determined-looking, square-jawed men and broad-shouldered women with motherly bosoms engaged in the noble state-approved pursuit of dump-truck-assembly, faces aglow with the joy of communal effort, their sinewy arms seemingly imbued with the same iron strength as the mighty gird­ers and grimly functional machinery that framed them. Other than their two chairs, the room was empty of fur­niture. The krushova dwellers and Beria were gone, and the noise of the party had abated, replaced by a faint roaring, like the sound of blood heard when you put a seashell close to your ear. Chemayev thought he had become inured to apparitions, but a chill spiked in his chest.

  “Shit changes all the time,” said Nicolai. “Empty rooms fill up with people. You’ll be having a talk with someone and it’ll just end—like the rest of the scene was cut out of the movie. Snip! You’re in another room, do­ing something else. You’ll be sleeping in a bed, the next second you’re dancing with somebody. There’s no logic to it, it’s all done on a whim. Yuri’s whim. The physical laws of the place are his laws. Not God’s, not nature’s. It’s like everyone here is inside him. Part of him. He’s become a universe unto himself. One that contains the club and the party . . . . For all I know he’s taken over the fucking world. But the difference between the places I’m familiar with—the club and the party—most people in the club are still alive.” He started to take out another cig­arette, then thought better of it. “We get visitors like you from the real world now and again. And various among us are privileged to visit the club. But . . . .” His mood veered toward exasperation, and Chemayev wondered, with only a touch of cynicism, if Yuri might not be ed­iting his emotions as well as his scenes. “Don’t you un­derstand?” Nicolai asked. “Yuri’s in control of everything that happens here. We’re fucking figments of his imagination. Once you step inside Eternity you’re subject to his whims the same as us. I don’t know what kind of deal you’re hoping to do with him, but take my word, it’s not going to be what you expected. You should get the hell out. Right now.” He chuckled. “Here I am trying to save your ass. Old habits. Of course”—he kept his face neutral—“I’m probably too late.”

  “If what you say is true,” Chemayev said, “then logic would dictate that you’re the subject of Yuri’s whim at present. That’s the reason for this . . . this confrontation. You must have something to tell me. The lecture on Yuri’s power, I assume.”

  Nicolai jumped up and went to stand facing one of the muralled walls, as if compelled by the heroic figure of a muscular redheaded man holding up an ingot in a pair of tongs, staring at it with such unalloyed devotion, it might have been the sacred light of Mother Russia soon to become an axle joint. “That’s what I’ve been waiting to hear,” he said. “The voice of the heartless motherfucker who shot me. I knew it was in you somewhere.” He wheeled about, his clever features cinched in fury. “You think this is a confrontation? My dear friend Viktor! My cherished boyhood companion! Don’t you worry. You’ll be back here one day . . . and maybe not just for a visit. Then we’ll have a fucking confrontation!” He paced toward Chemayev and stood with his feet apart as if preparing to attack. “I do have something to tell you, but it’s got nothing to do with what I said about Yuri. That was for old time’s sake. For a while it was like we were friends again, you know. A couple of guys sitting around bullshitting. I can’t figure why it hap­pened, but that’s how it felt.”

  Chemayev could relate to Nicolai’s confusion. His own feelings, compounded of love, fear, guilt, and much more, were too complex to analyze, like a stew that had been simmering for three and a half years, new ingre­dients constantly being added, fragrant, rich, and sa­vory, but ultimately indigestible. Nothing could be salvaged here, he realized. “What do you have to tell me?”

  Nicolai plucked out his Marlboros, tapped the pack on the back of his hand. “Russian women. Ever think about how tough they are, Viktor? They get the crap beat out of them, they take the best abuse of drunks and addicts. Their fathers fuck them, their boyfriends pimp them. By the time they’re sixteen they’re world-class ballbusters. They’re still sweet, still capable of love. But they’ve learned to do what’s necessary. Most men don’t see this. They don’t understand that no matter what the woman feels for them, she’s going to do what’s in her own best interests. She’s become just like a Russian man. Sentimental on the outside. Soft. But on the inside they’re steel.”

  “Is this leading somewhere?” asked Chemayev.

  “I fucked your woman tonight,” Nicolai said. “Your beautiful Larissa. I did her twice. The second time I had her up the ass. She loved it, she went absolutely crazy. I’ve never considered myself a petty sort, but I must ad­mit it gave me a great deal of satisfaction.” He studied the pack of cigarettes, as if using it to focus his thoughts. “You know how it is with some women—when you make love to them their faces get twisted, distorted. Sex strips away their beauty, revealing the beast. But Larissa, man . . . . She’s amazing. No matter how depraved the act, how degrading your intent, she just gets more beautiful. She had this entranced look. Radiant. Like a saint. Like the more I defiled her, the closer she grew to God.” His soft laugh expressed a touch of incredulity. “But none of that’s important, is it? She’s a whore, after all. So she fucks a guy—even a dead guy—what’s the big deal? She’s doing her job. If she enjoys it a little, all that means is she’s a professional.” He came closer and perched on the arm of his chair. “After the first fuck we talked a while. She told me this was her last night, she was going away with the man she loved. She told me all about you. What a great guy you were. How much you loved her. All your virtues. I didn’t try to illuminate her. I didn’t have to. She realizes you’re a cal­culating son-of-a-bitch at heart. She didn’t say it, but it was implicit in what she said. She knows you. She loves you. How could she not? She’s exactly the same as you. She’ll do whatever she has to and there won’t be a stain on her conscience.” He repocketed the Marlboros without removing one. He stood, adjusted the hang of his jacket. “Okay. That’s it. My duty’s done.”

  He seemed to be waiting for a response.

  In standing Chemayev was unsteady as an old man, he had to put a hand out to balance himself. He should be angry, he thought; but he only felt out of his depth. There was a gap between himself and his emotions too wide for any spark to cross. But because he believed he should react in some way, because not to react smacked of inadequacy, he pointed the pistol at Nicolai’s chest.

  “Give it a try,” said Nicolai, he held both arms straight out from his sides, turning himself into a blond, expensively tailored Jesus on the Cross. “It worked the first time. I’m interested in what’ll happen myself.” He rested his head on his shoulder. “Wonder what Yuri will have to say?”

  After pondering his options Chemayev decided it would be best to hurry past this part of things. “Where’s Yuri now?”

  As if in response the air between them began to rip­ple, a sluggish disturbance that spread throughout
the room, infecting floor and ceiling and walls, and as it spread the dimensions of the room underwent a slow, undulant elongation, an evolution that seemed organic, like the stretching of a python’s gullet when it prepares to swallow an exceptionally large object. Once the rip­pling ceased Chemayev found that he was standing at a remove of some forty feet from Nicolai.

  “Haven’t you heard a thing I’ve been telling you?” Nicolai’s voice carried a slight echo. “In this place you can’t get away from Yuri.”

  Before Chemayev could react, the rippling started up once again, accompanied by a dimming of the lights. Moved by an old reflex of mutual reliance he sprinted toward Nicolai, but the process of elongation was on this occasion so rapid, like the reduction in view achieved by narrowing the aperture of a telescopic lens, by the time he had gone only a couple of steps, Nicolai had dwindled to a tiny black figure at the far end of a long corridor. A foul-smelling corridor with stained, pitted concrete walls, littered with trash, ranged by warped wooden doors and buckets of sand. Hills of cans and bottles, stratified canyons of paper and plastic waste, dried-up riverbeds of urine and spilled vodka, altogether effecting a post-apocalyptic terrain laid out beneath a dirty white sky in which hung a jaundiced light bulb sun. It was the same corridor he and Nataliya had walked down earlier that evening.

  The elevator door, battered, defaced by graffiti, stood about twenty feet away. Chemayev had the impulse to run to it, to seek shelter in the relative sanity of the night club. But he was fed up with being given the runaround; he’d entered into a straightforward business arrange­ment and he intended to see it through to a contract, no matter what games Yuri wanted to play. As for Larissa, if she’d lied . . .he could handle it. Their problems were every one associated with this psychotic country popu­lated entirely by lunatics and their victims. By tomorrow night they’d be clear of all that.

  He turned back, intending to frame a few last words that would convey to Nicolai both a more rational, more dignified portion of apology, and his acknowledgment of how things stood between them; but his former friend was nowhere to be seen. Looking at Chemayev from an arm’s-length away was the swarthy old derelict who had been sweeping up the corridor. He had barely noticed him on first meeting, but now he marveled at the man’s ugliness. With his stubby arms and legs, his swollen belly and narrow sloping shoulders, his smallish head, he might have been a toad that had undergone a transformation, only partially successful, into the human. He had about him a bitter reek reminiscent of the smell of the vegetation in the garden. The chest of his grimy T-shirt was mapped by a large, vaguely rectangular brown stain like the image of a spectacularly undistinguished continent whose most prominent features were bits of dried food stuck to the fabric along the south coast and central plain. His wool trousers were shapeless as those of a clown, supported by frayed suspenders. Filthy twists of gray hair hung from his mottled scalp, half-curtaining his eyes, and his face, sagging, pouchy, cheeks and nose sporting graffiti of broken capillaries, thick-lipped and dull . . . . It reminded Chemayev of dilapidated hovels in the villages of his childhood, habitations humbled by weather and hard times into something lumpish, barely distinguishable from a mound of earth, a played-out vegetable plot in the back, rusted garden tools leaning against bowed steps, its thatched roof molting, sided with unpainted boards worn to a shit brown, and something ancient, howlingly mad with age and failure, peer­ing out through two dark windows with cracked panes. It was fascinating in its lack of human vitality. More than fascinating. Compelling. It seemed to hold Che­mayev’s eyes, to exert a pull that intensified with every passing second, as if the mad absence within had the virtue of a collapsed star, a generating fire grown so cold and inert it had become fire’s opposite, a negative en­gine wherein chaos became comprehensible and physi­cal laws were reworked according to some implausible design. He could not look away from it, and when at last he did, not due to his own efforts, but because the old man moved, extending a hand to him, palm upward like a beggar, thus shattering the connection, he felt lightheaded and confused and frail, as if he had been winnowing away, unraveling in the depths of that bleak stare.

  In his frail lightheaded confusion there were a few things Chemayev thought he understood. This liver-spotted troll, this mud man with a black hole inside him, was Yuri—he was fairly certain of that. He was also fairly certain that the old bastard had his hand out for money. For the gold certificates contained inside his, Chemayev’s, money belt. What was he supposed to do? Just fork it all over? Fuck that! Where were the papers to sign? What guarantees did he have—could he have—with a creature like this. He wanted to establish some sort of security for himself and Larissa, but couldn’t summon the words, and he realized with complete surety that fear had nothing to do with his inability to speak, words simply weren’t part of Yuri’s program—no more talk was needed, everything had been said, and now it was Chemayev’s choice to give over the money and see what that bought him . . .or to exercise caution for the time being.

  That he accepted this proscription, that he believed Yuri had so much control over the situation, implied that he accepted Nicolai’s assessment of the man. He would have liked to deny this, but it seemed undeniable. He should tell someone, he thought. Before leaving Moscow he should tip the media, get a TV truck out to Eternity, expose the fact that the great Yuri Lebedev was running more than a night club, the old geezer had become a minor fucking deity in charge of a franchise in the af­terlife catering to murderers, hookers, and various relics of the Cold War . . . . This trickle of whimsy, edged with more than a little hysteria, dried up when Chemayev noticed that the walls and ceiling and floor of the cor­ridor around and behind Yuri were billowing in and out with same rhythm as the rise and fall of his chest, as if the old man were the central image of a painting, a portrait of squalor floating on the surface of some ge­latinous substance in a state of mild perturbation. He backed farther away, but the distance between himself and Yuri did not lengthen, and he saw that his body, too, was billowing, rippling, ruled by the tidal flux of Yuri’s sluggish breath—it appeared they were both ele­ments of the same semi-liquid medium. Horrified, he flailed and kicked, trying to swim away, but none of his exertions had the least effect . . . unless they played a role in the steady expansion of Yuri’s face. It was wid­ening, distending, losing its cohesion like a shape made of colored oil, spreading to cover more and more of the fluid atop which it was suspended, resembling a face distorted by a funhouse mirror, and Chemayev felt that his own body was suffering a similar distortion, his legs elongating, his torso becoming bulbous, his head lop-sided and pumpkin-sized, and that he and Yuri were flowing together.

  Yuri’s mouth stretched wider and wider, becoming a dark, gaping concavity that reduced his other features to tiny irrelevancies, like the glowing lures above the enormous mouth of an angler fish. It was curving to surround Chemayev, preparing less to swallow him than to incorporate him into its emptiness, and he thought briefly of the garden, the dark oval through which he had passed to reach it. If he could have screamed he would have made a cry that reached to heaven, but he was as voiceless as a strand of seaweed floating on an off-shore billow, going out on the tide toward the great hollow places of the sea, and as he passed into the darkness, Yuri’s darkness, as it closed over him, his fear—like his voice—was subsumed by the myriad impressions that came to him from the place into which he was being absorbed.

  He had a sense of the man Yuri had been, a quick mental rumor that left flavors of crudity, brutality, lust­fulness, intelligence . . .an intellect that had aspired too high, that had sought a godlike invulnerability and cre­ated the means necessary to achieve it, but had lost everything of consequence in gaining it, for Yuri’s char­acter was merely a component of the thing, the place, he had become. Through a mingling of magic and sci­ence and will he had triggered a sort of spiritual fission, all the particulars of his flesh and mind exploding into an immense, radiant cloud that did not dissipate in the way of a mushr
oom cloud, but maintained its integrity at the moment of peak fury, sustained by a surface ten­sion that might have been the residue of the spell he had caused to be pronounced. Not a god so much as an em­bryonic entity of unguessable nature, striving to reach its maturity, extending its influence through various hu­man (and perhaps inhuman—who could say?) agencies, populating its vacancy with dead souls, partly just for company, to ease its aching emptiness, but also utilizing their knowledge to engineer plots designed to increase its power, always feeding, growing, becoming . . . . This was among the last thoughts Chemayev recalled before he was utterly subsumed, drowned in Yuri’s black es­sence—that all Yuri’s energies were being desperately di­rected toward the process of growth, of fulfilling whatever evolutionary destiny was now his—though perhaps he had no real destiny. That had come to be Yuri’s torment, the one feeling of which he was capable: the fear that he had trapped himself inside the prison of his own power, that he could only grow larger, that no matter how much power he gained, the dissolution and chaos of his new condition would never change, and he could impose no order, no equilibrium that would satisfy his original wish to be both man and god, he could merely unify his environment—whether this consisted of a night club, Moscow, Russia, or entire planet—under the disordered banner of Eternity. His circumstance posed an intriguing intellectual and philosophical puzzle. Through his machinations, his alliances with generals and politicians and the mafiyas, might not Yuri be re­sponsible for the chaos overwhelming the old Soviet states, or were the two forces feeding into one another? And if Yuri came to dominate the world or a substantial portion thereof, if he could avoid being absorbed by a creature like himself, but vaster and more cruel, would anyone notice? Was not the current chaos of the world all-pervasive, were not genocides and serial killings and natural disasters and the unending disregard of one soul for another sufficient evidence of this? And that being so, could it be possible that this chaos had always been the product of sad invisible monsters such as Yuri, a ruling class gone unnoticed by everyone except for saints and madmen . . .? Chemayev was amused by the formulation of these questions. He thought if he could sustain his awareness a while longer he might learn the answers, and they in turn would lead to subtler questions, the ones Yuri himself had asked, and if he could learn those answers, benefiting from Yuri’s experience, he might be able to avoid Yuri’s mistakes. But at the moment it didn’t seem worth the effort. Blind now, all his senses occluded, uncertain of his location, even as to which plane of existence he occupied, by all rights he should have been more afraid; but having practiced death once before, and having since witnessed a con­dition worse than death, he felt prepared for anything.