Truth and Fear

by Peter Higgins

In panic, reflexively, Lom slammed up a wall against the mudjhik. It was like holding up his hand. Stop!

  The mudjhik stumbled and fell to its knees.

  Lom was stronger now, much stronger. He felt the current flowing between him and the charging alien weight, the mudjhik’s alien substance connecting with something tense and fizzing in his own bones and flesh. Lom felt wired and burning. The link between the mudjhik and its handler was a feeble shadowy thing by comparison, a tenuous thread. Lom knew what to do. He broke the handler’s cord. Squeezed it closed and ripped it out at its root. Felt for a second the handler’s surprise as he lost connection.

  The mudjhik was on its feet again, confused and clumsy, rumbling and roaring silently, lashing out at tree trunks with its fists. It was at a loss. Lom pushed himself deeper inside it, feeling for the animal part of it, the inserted mammalian brain. He found it and crushed its awful half-existence out. The mudjhik’s mind clouded. Sensation without motion. Without desire. A lump of sentient rock.

  Late in the afternoon Lom and Florian crested a rise and found themselves on a low hilltop looking out across a wide shallow valley. The railway plunged out across a viaduct above the grey-brown leafless canopy of trees. Five or ten miles away, on the far side of the valley, the mountain was a wall across the sky. And in the plain of the valley floor between them and the foot of the mountain lay the closed township of Novaya Zima.

  80

  From a distance Novaya Zima looked like a complex device with its back removed–a radio, a telekrypt machine–laid bare amid birch trees and snow. The township hummed and rumbled quietly. No smoke. No chimneys. It was a rectangular grid about three miles square, a compound in the wilderness surrounded by a double fence and a perimeter road. The streets formed blocks, and the blocks were buildings, orderly and rectangular, mostly concrete, ten or fifteen storeys high. Every part of the town was wired to every other part by a network of cables slung between roofs and from tall wooden poles. In the centre of the town, wider streets–avenues, prospects–converged on a spectacular cluster of taller buildings, slender constructions of steel and glass, reflecting the lead-grey sky. Motor vehicles moved with orderly precision along arterial boulevards. Pedestrians, rendered tiny by distance, anonymous and without characteristics, moved along pavements and crossed open expanses of concrete. Raised above the streets on piers of iron, an overhead railway carried snub-nosed carriages. And on the far side, beyond the town and a couple of miles of scrubby trees, the mountain climbed sheer and almost vertical into low cloud. Dark grey rock and scree and streaks of snow. It was like a wall across the world, diminishing east and west into misted distance and further mountains.

  Lom and Florian watched from the cover of the trees. It was a town for thousands of people, tens of thousands, freighted in piece by piece across the continent, secretly, and assembled by dying slaves.

  ‘And the labour is still coming,’ said Lom. ‘There were half a dozen trains yesterday, at least. So where are they? The town’s not for them. That’s not housing for penal labour. I don’t see camps. I don’t see factories. I don’t see cranes and holes in the ground. So where do they go?’

  The rail track crossed the valley floor on viaducts and embankments, bisected the township, cut though an expanse of marshalling yards to the north, and plunged on into a low dark mouth in the mountainside.

  ‘The mountain,’ said Florian. ‘They go into the mountain.’

  There was a gate where the railway entered the township. An asphalt road came out and looped away into the trees to circle the town. The gate stood open, the guard post deserted. It was the middle of the afternoon.

  ‘No security,’ said Lom. ‘Lazy.’

  ‘Isolation,’ said Florian. ‘Who could find their way here? And who could leave? Where would they go?’

  ‘We got here,’ said Lom.

  There was a sign at the gate. A huge billboard meant to be read from incoming trains.

  NOVAYA ZIMA

  VLAST FOUNDATION FOR PHYSICO-TECHNICAL MACHINES

  REFORGING HUMANKIND.

  YESTERDAY ENVIES US. TODAY IS OUR DOORWAY. THE FUTURE BEGINS.

  THE VLAST SPREADING OUT ACROSS THE STARS.

  They walked into the town unchallenged. It seemed colder in the streets than it had been under the trees. Colder than Mirgorod, but not the same cold. Mirgorod cold had an edge of ocean dampness, but the air in Novaya Zima was dry. Lom felt its bitterness desiccating his face, as if his lips would crack. His breath wisped drably away. The snow on the pavement crunched underfoot. Dusty snow, like crystallised ash.

  For the first ten blocks or so the streets were given over to huge communal barracks for collective living. Kommunalki. Lom had read about such new-style buildings–embodiments of a new, less individualistic mode of life, the basis for modern developments in the industrial belt to the south–but he hadn’t seen any, not till now. The buildings were new but already stained and shabby: hastily thrown up to a uniform pattern, the concrete blistered and bled rust where the steel reinforcing rods were too near the surface. Street-level heating vents breathed steam clouds across the pavements. On the ground floors there were public dining halls, public laundries, public baths. They walked past a school with street-level windows. NOVAYA ZIMA JUNIOR LYCEUM FOR THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF WORKERS.

  Workers? Lom studied the people in the streets. They had neat sombre clothes and smooth white hands. They were clerks, administrators, secretaries, teachers, junior white-collar engineers: more than half were young women. They looked efficient. Nobody was poor and nobody was old and everybody was moving along, eyes down, unspeaking, each in their own small sphere of inwardness and temporary privacy. The rail transit rumbled overhead on its single track.

  Nearer the centre of town the buildings were taller and better built. Polygons of steel and glass, each set back in its own apron of concrete and paving. Benches. Kiosks. Cafés. Parks behind railings, leafless and wintry. A deserted outdoor skating rink. An open-air swimming pool with a green and white tiled façade under a low curved roof. Scarves of steam drifted across the surface of the water. Swimmers in bathing caps ploughed steadily up and down the lanes. RESTORE YOURSELVES, CITIZENS! LEISURE REBUILDS! HEALTH IS A PLEASURABLE DUTY!

  Florian stopped outside a restaurant with a wide glossy vitrine. the magnetic bakery. Shining tables of polished yellow deal on legs of tubular chrome. It was almost empty.

  ‘We should split up,’ he said. ‘We need to know when Chazia is coming. It’ll be easier if I go alone.’

  ‘Why?’ said Lom.

  ‘Because one person is better,’ said Florian.

  ‘So why you not me?’

  ‘Because they will tell me what we need to know.’

  ‘You’re just going to walk into a VKBD station and ask them?’

  ‘No,’ said Florian. ‘Captain Vorush Iliodor will ask them. Captain Iliodor is Commander Chazia’s aide-de-camp. I carry his identification and warrant cards.’

  ‘Out of uniform and without Chazia? They’ll want to know what you’re doing here. They’ll want to know why you don’t already know her plans better than they do.’

  ‘They may wonder,’ said Florian. ‘In my experience they will not ask.’

  ‘Do you even look like this Iliodor? What if somebody there knows him?’

  Florian raised an eyebrow quizzically.

  ‘Oh,’ said Lom. ‘Of course. Sorry.’

  ‘We’ll meet back here,’ said Florian. ‘Give me a couple of hours. Three at most.’ He gave Lom his knapsack. ‘You’d better keep this. It’s out of character for Iliodor. There’s money in the side pocket.’

  81

  Lom wandered the streets aimlessly, angry and frustrated. For days he had been a passenger, a tagger-along, abandoned now to his own devices. He saw the force of Florian’s logic but he didn’t like it. He’d left Mirgorod thousands of miles to the south and west, burning on the edge of war, and he felt Maroussia’s loss as an emptiness next to him. I’ve just been pi
ssing about, he thought. And I’m still just pissing about.

  He found himself in a shopping street. Modistes sold suits and gowns and patent shoes at impossible prices. Bright-lit displays offered cameras, radios, gramophones, perfumes, chocolate, southern sparkling wines, but it was all garish, ersatz and shoddy, and nobody was buying. He walked on up Dukhonin Prospect–six lanes wide, almost empty of traffic–and into the blustery immenseness of Dukhonin Square. The square was lined with gleaming new buildings. The Polytechnical College. The Institute of Metallurgy. The Faculty of Mathematical Design. The Engineers’ Euharmonia was giving a concert that night at the House of Culture: a poster next to the entrance promised Zoffany’s PSYCHO-INDUSTRIAL SYMPHONY FOR VOICE AND NEW-STYLE ORCHESTRA, WITH THEATRE OF PUPPETS.

  Absences worried at Lom. Absences frayed his patience. They made him edgy. The absence of Maroussia. The absence of Chazia. The absence of trainload after trainload of conscript workers. Stolen persons. Thousands of them. They went on north, through the town and into the mountain and disappeared.

  Lom wanted a closer look at the mountain.

  There was a station on Dukhonin Square. The ticket hall was a brightly lit lofty palace. Stainless-steel arches. Walls of marble and malachite. Chrome fittings. Electric chandeliers. The size and solidity of the place dwarfed the few travellers passing through. Bronze bas reliefs on the walls represented the achievements of science and industry: dynamos and hydroelectric dams; Magnitograd; the Novozhd Factory; mining engineers drilling and excavating the torso of a huge fallen angel. Slogans carved in marble shouted: THOUGHT IS LABOUR! PRIVILEGE IS SACRIFICE! CONTRIBUTION IS FULFILMENT! CADRES DECIDE EVERYTHING! CITIZEN, YOU ARE THE CONDUIT TO THE FUTURE!

  With money from Florian’s bag, Lom bought the most expensive ticket. Two roubles for all day and all stops. There was a sign that said FOUNDATION LINE NORTH. He bought a coffee in a paper cup and took it up the granite staircase to the platform overhead. A transit car was waiting. It was like a tramcar, but low and round-shouldered, and there was no overhead electric cable. Power came from the single steel rail itself.

  KEEP OFF THE RAIL, CITIZEN! DANGER OF DEATH!

  Lom took a corner seat. The coffee was good, not so good as Count Palffy’s, but sweet and bitter and hot. He took slow sips, making it last, as the train carried him slowly north. Beyond the carriage window the office blocks, parks and squares of the town centre gave way first to a few streets of elite housing–individual homes with yards and gardens–and then more communal blocks. Through the lighted and uncurtained upper-floor windows Lom could see cramped apartments separated by paper-thin partitions, shared bathrooms and shared kitchens. A new world had begun here, a world yet unseen in Mirgorod or Podchornok. Collective endeavour in a place without a past.

  Novaya Zima, deposited ready-made in the middle of a wintry wilderness, drained the past. It soaked the life of memory away. There was only now, and an avid, echoing, hungry future. Lom found it drab and ugly and brutal.

  The overheated car carried on trundling slowly northwards, stopping every minute or so. The route zigzagged across the town, making the most of its unnecessary existence. The overhead transit was a superfluous municipal showpiece–you could have walked the breadth of Novaya Zima in an hour–but people seemed to use it. Passengers came and went. Without exception they wore thin coats and carried briefcases. The men had knitted ties, the women wore blouses buttoned to the neck.

  Lom finished his coffee and propped the empty paper cup on the seat next to him. A young woman, hair tied severely back, was watching him from across the aisle, her face a mixture of disapproval and curiosity. Lom realised how out of place he looked. He grinned at the woman cheerfully and she looked away. She had a pale thin face.

  Lom got up and went across to sit beside her. She glanced at him in surprise and looked away. Shifted herself as far as she could along the bench away from him.

  ‘Does this train go all the way to the mountain?’ he said.

  ‘Foundation Mountain?’

  ‘Is there another one?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘of course not.’ She was staring straight ahead. ‘This train doesn’t go there,’ she added.

  ‘So, if I wanted to get to the mountain, how would I do that?’

  ‘Why? Why would you want to?’

  Lom shrugged.

  ‘To have a look. Curiosity.’

  ‘Are you assigned to work in the mountain? This is the wrong train. You should have been told… Why are you asking me this? What is your work?’

  ‘I’m new,’ said Lom. ‘I don’t have any work. Not yet.’

  ‘Nobody comes here without an assignment. How could you even get here?’

  ‘I flew,’ said Lom. ‘And I walked.’

  The woman’s cheeks burned. She glanced around the carriage, looking for help, but no one was sitting near. She didn’t want to make a scene. She turned and glared into Lom’s face.

  ‘Are you drunk or something? If this is some crude attempt at seduction, citizen, then I should tell you—’

  The car pulled into a station. The woman stood up. She was trembling.

  ‘This is my stop,’ she said. ‘Get out of my way, please.’

  Lom twisted round to make room for her. She pushed past, holding her briefcase tight against her chest, not looking at him. Her legs brushed against his awkwardly.

  ‘I only want—’ he began.

  ‘Piss off,’ she hissed over her shoulder. ‘Don’t follow me. I’ll call the police.’

  82

  When the train reached the end of the line, Lom stayed aboard and came all the way back, continuing on south past Dukhonin Square till he was near the place where he was to meet Florian. Back on the emptying streets the freezing air smelled of engine fumes. Lighted windows shone with a bleak electrical brilliance. From everywhere Foundation Mountain was visible, a darkened wall against the northern sky. Lom thought he could hear a long freight train rumbling through the town, making the pavement tremble. But he wasn’t sure.

  The Magnetic Bakery was still open but there was no sign of Florian. Office workers were drinking tea and reading newspapers. The radio played band music. Lom ordered an aquavit and grabbed an abandoned paper from the next table. The Vlast True Reporter. It was yesterday’s edition. He started to read it, just to pass the time till Florian came.

  The man called Fohn, whose name he’d seen on various announcements in Mirgorod and who was now apparently the president of the Vlast, had made a speech in the new capital, Kholvatogorsk. So Mirgorod wasn’t the capital any more? And where the fuck is Kholvatogorsk? Lom had a dizzy feeling that the whole world had changed and shifted while he’d been flying across the landscape in Gretskaya’s Kotik.

  Fohn’s speech was full of dull good news: industrial targets would be exceeded in the coming quarter, despite the recent upheaval of relocation, and steel production was heading for an all-time high. Shock workers had risen to the challenge. Lom skimmed the rest of the paper. Working hours were to be increased again. About the war there was almost nothing: inconclusive skirmishes on the southern front; Seva recaptured from the Archipelago yet again. There was a small inside paragraph about the stalwart resistance of encircled Mirgorod, with extracts from a fierce speech of defiance from a General Rizhin, who was Commissar for City Defence. Reading between the lines, it seemed that Mirgorod was doomed and the Vlast had decided it didn’t care. The piece was accompanied by a smudgy photograph of Rizhin. Lom almost ignored it, but something about the long narrow face caught his attention. His heart missed a beat.

  It was Kantor. General Rizhin, Commissar for Mirgorod City Defence, was Josef Kantor.

  When Florian came, Lom was nursing his untouched aquavit and watching his own reflection in the darkened window. Florian sat opposite Lom and put his astrakhan hat on the table between them. He looked worried. A waitress bustled over but he waved her away.

  ‘Chazia is here already,’ he said. ‘The train arrived last night. Late. We must h
ave heard it pass. It didn’t stop in the town. They went straight through and into the mountain. Travelling at speed.’

  For the second time in an hour Lom felt the bottom drop out of his world.

  ‘Maroussia?’ he said. ‘What about Maroussia?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somebody said there was a woman travelling with Chazia. It could be her.’

  ‘We have to get into the mountain,’ said Lom. ‘We have to do that now. Tonight.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘We haven’t got time to figure this out for ourselves,’ Lom continued. ‘We need some assistance here.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Florian.

  ‘Someone who can get us past whatever security they have out there. Someone who can take us right to Chazia.’

  ‘The name of such a person,’ said Florian, ‘is Yakov Khyrbysk. Professor Yakov Khyrbysk, director of the Foundation for Physico-Technical Machines. Professor Khyrbysk spends his days working inside Foundation Mountain but he has an apartment in the Sharashka district, in a building called the Foundation Hall. It’s not more than a mile from here. By this time of the evening he will be at home. He is not married and lives alone. I have his address. He is not expecting us. I do not suggest we telephone ahead.’

  83

  The Foundation Hall where Khyrbysk had his apartment was the tallest building in Novaya Zima: a tall slender blade of steel and glass, a triangular sliver of black ice speckled with bright-burning windows. In the snow-crusted square in front of the Hall stood a floodlit construction of crimson-painted steel: a single swooshing curve reaching hundreds of feet high, a steeply climbing arc of power and ambition and freedom and speed, hurtling up. It looked like nothing so much as the track of a rocket launching into the dark sky, and at the point of the curve, where the rocket might have been, was a squat, massive snub-nosed bullet-shape. It was speeding away from the planet. Escaping the gravity well. Lom remembered the hoarding at the gate into the town: THE VLAST SPREADING OUT ACROSS THE STARS.