Nine Layers of Sky

by Liz Williams

  “But can anyone use it?”

  “Certain folk can activate it by their thoughts alone. Otherwise it requires complex equipment and, as Tsilibayev discovered, that is not always stable. But don’t worry—I’m here, and I’m on your side.”

  Ilya wondered whether the stranger could hear the slyness in Manas’ voice. Certain folk. Did Manas mean all the bogatyri, or something else? It made him wonder anew about the coil, about his own relationship to it, and the still small voice in his head.

  “Can you activate it?” the stranger asked. “Do you possess that ability?”

  “I can do many things,” Manas said, and laughed.

  He isn’t going to tell him, Ilya thought. But did that mean that Manas had the power, or not?

  “What happened to the colony?”

  “It survived, and grew. People had families, married some of the descendants of the folk who had drifted in over the years. They established their own state. Ideas from the outside world—what we are pleased to call the real world—slipped through the barrier, affecting what happens in Byelovodye and vice versa. I am talking about all ideas, by the way—all dreams—Central Asian as well as Russian, Islamic as well as Christian. This is not some fantasy land, some bucolic Russian idyll. Dreams of technology and the future are as powerful as any fairy story ever was. Byelovodye is now a modern socialist state. Over time, the colonists decided that they wanted nothing more to do with the ‘real’ Russia. They are as insular and introspective, as repressive and repressed, as the Soviet Union ever was.” Manas’ voice was thick with hate.

  To whom was Manas lying? Ilya wondered. The Kyrgyz hero seemed to know much more than he had told Ilya, which was hardly a surprise.

  The stranger said, “And it is the key to the gates between these worlds that Kovalin and his kind are now seeking?”

  “It is a key, yes. One of the few remaining pieces of the old technology.”

  “And the gates themselves? Where are they?”

  “Here, too, there are few that remain. One lies in Samarkand itself and is very old. It’s been lost for centuries—my allies have only recently discovered it. But there is another, not far from here—a newer opening. It lies at the far end of Lake Issy Kul, in an abandoned military facility. I have arranged to meet the akyn there, my poet, tomorrow at sunset. He says he has valuable information for me.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “I do not know.” Manas rose. “I will keep you informed.”

  “Do so. If an advantage can be gained for Kyrgyzia, you know I will want to hear of it.”

  “Of course. You are a politician, after all.”

  Ilya waited until they left, straining to hear their conversation as they went out onto the street. But Manas and the stranger remained silent, with only their footsteps echoing along the wet road. Ilya threaded his way through the bar, ignoring the impulse to stay, to drink, to score. Elena was waiting for him.

  Four

  KYRGYZSTAN, 21ST CENTURY

  To Elena’s great relief, it was not long before Ilya returned.

  “Ilya? Something’s happened.”

  He sat down on the bed beside her and listened with attention as she described the garden, and the woman within it.

  “She spoke of a breach?” Ilya said. “Do you know what she meant?”

  “I don’t know, but I can guess. A breach between their world and ours?”

  “Perhaps. But what could have caused it?” There was a new unease in his face. He went on, “What else did she say?”

  “She asked me if I was using a distorter coil.”

  “A what?” But they both looked toward Elena’s handbag.

  “She said something about the Pergama military. Have you ever heard of a place called Pergama?”

  “It sounds Greek.”

  “She’d heard of Russia and Kyrgyzstan. She knew

  where they were. It must be a parallel world, Ilya. An alternative.”

  Briefly, Ilya told her of what he had overheard.

  “So I was right. What a wonderful thing, Ilya!”

  He nodded, slowly. He did not seem as excited as she was by the news.

  “Don’t you agree?” She touched his hand. “Ilya, this is what I’ve been looking for all these years. Another chance for us, for Russia. A different future.”

  He grimaced. “From what the stranger said, they seem to be making the same old mistakes.”

  “We don’t know that. We’ve seen some of it for ourselves. Did it look all that bad to you?”

  “No,” Ilya said slowly. “But if you stepped into the middle of the Russian countryside on a spring day, it might look good to you, too. You’re the scientist. What do you think?”

  She sighed, not wanting to admit it. “You’re right. We haven’t seen enough to judge.”

  “Elena, you want so much to believe and so do I, but we have so little real understanding.”

  “This world that Manas spoke of. It’s called Byelovodye?” she asked.

  “So he said.”

  “Strange,” Elena said. The name brought memories flooding back. “My father used to tell me stories of Byelovodye, the land of white waters, when I was a kid. When he wasn’t too drunk. They were so real—almost as though he had been there. He used to say that the entrance was up in the Altai. There was even an expedition to look for it, he said, but they didn’t find anything.”

  “I remember stories, too. The shamans used to talk about it in Siberia. They spoke of it as a kind of first place, an origin. But I wonder if it really existed, or if their belief brought it into being.”

  “But the place we saw was so real. So solid.”

  “Elena, I don’t think we should separate from now on if these rifts between the worlds are going to happen.” Ilya paused, adding, “I don’t want to lose you.”

  Elena glanced at him. He was staring at the wall.

  “No,” she said carefully. There were nuances in that last remark that she was not sure she had interpreted correctly. “We should stick together. It’ll be safer.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. She was very conscious of his presence next to her, of the scarred, bony hand resting on the coverlet between them. The prospect of launching into an awkward discussion, with room for so many misunderstandings, was a dismal one. Instead she said, “I’m glad you came back.” Then, not giving herself time to think, she leaned over and kissed his cheek. Ilya turned toward her like a drowning man and they fell back onto the bed.

  With Yuri Golynski, her last lover, there had always been the sense that he was doing her a favor. He would glance up with a kind of abstracted arrogance in the middle of sex, suggesting how fortunate she was that he—cosmonaut, Soviet hero—had selected her. It had almost certainly been unintentional, but this trace of smugness had done nothing to enhance the experience. Ilya, however, seemed to have trouble accepting that it was really happening. She could see the disbelief in his face. He kissed her over and over again, burying his face in her neck, then her breasts. When she put her arms around him, she found that he was shaking.

  “Ilya, when did you last …”

  His voice was hoarse. “A very long time.” She slid her hand between them and found how hard he was. He cried out as she touched him. She rolled on top and kissed him again, surprised by the extent to which she was taking the initiative. Usually she was more passive; men were said to prefer it, as it demonstrated a becoming modesty, but she could not hold back.

  Ilya did not seem to have any complaints.

  “Elena, my darling …” His voice was strained and hoarse. “Very soon I’m not going to be able to stop.”

  She sat up, straddling him. “Oh, God, we don’t have any condoms.”

  There was a familiar, mute male plea in his eyes: Can’t we do it anyway? And she nearly gave him what he so clearly wanted, but the old fear of pregnancy was too ingrained, and the needle tracks on his arms were a grim reminder of more recent dangers.

  “Li
e still,” she told him. She unbuttoned his shirt, sliding it over his shoulders. The muscles were tense beneath his skin; she kneaded them until he relaxed. Then, reaching down, she undid his fly and took him in her hand. Ilya writhed, hands moving back to grip the bars of the bed. It was only then that she realized he was afraid of hurting her. She stroked him, running her free hand up and down his chest with an exhilarating sense of ownership. But she could have counted his ribs, and one of the scars looked red and recent. His hand returned, to press her palm against the damaged flesh. Seconds later he came, quickly and hard, shouting out and causing a vicarious pang deep within her. Elena hoped there was no one in the room next door. Especially since they were supposed to be brother and sister.

  Ilya’s eyes fluttered open. “Elena …”

  If she could not have him inside her, there was the next best thing. She climbed down from the bed, took off her clothes as he watched with exhausted contentment, and slid in beside him. He held her carefully: too thin for his build, but with an unnatural power in muscle and sinew. She tensed for a moment, then relaxed. Human enough where it counts, she thought, smiling to herself.

  His hand drifted between her legs.

  “Ilya?”

  “Your turn,” he murmured. “I’ve learned a few things in eight hundred years.”

  He was very gentle and she was surprised at how little time it took. She fell asleep almost immediately, without even reaching for her cigarettes.

  Interlude

  BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

  Shadia Anikova drove her sister back to First City late on Sunday afternoon. She thought they were never going to get out of the dacha; Natasha kept forgetting one thing or another and running back indoors. Anikova sat impatiently in the driver’s seat, trying to appear unconcerned. She was watching the light, still a pale brightness in the west, but soon evening would fall and Anikova would not have confessed to any member of her family that she was afraid of driving back in the dark. She kept remembering the second breach, that unnatural hollow in the air and the shadowy room beyond.

  As soon as she had realized what was happening, Anikova had to fight the urge to step through the gap and see what lay on the other side. She once again recalled what she had been told by Central Command about the Mother Country: that it was degenerate, falling apart, finished. That its influence could no longer be tolerated upon her own world, that all gates between them must be sealed, except one, and that the means to control that gate—the stolen distorter coil— must be retrieved so that Russia’s dreams could be bled through it. A pity for the government’s sake, she thought, that Tsilibayev’s duplicate coils had not been more stable. If they had functioned more successfully, Central Command could have relied upon one of them to power a gate, rather than chasing down this old, lost piece of technology. But Central Command would still have wanted the original coil retrieved, in case it fell into the wrong hands.

  Their agents were working on that retrieval even now, dispatched into what was fast becoming hostile terrain. She had seen the latest report this morning: that they had hired locals to help them in their search for the coil, but also that they believed Byelovodyean insurgents had slipped through the gap and were working against them. Anikova’s sympathies slipped and slid; she concentrated grimly on the road ahead.

  The road to the city took the vehicle past the long lakeshore and back through the forest. Though they were well within the boundaries of Pergama here, Anikova could not suppress an atavistic shiver. The rusalki kept to the deep woods, along with the northern predators—zhuren and packwolves. Pergama was supposed to be a safe and gentle province, but Anikova did not like the way that the trees bowed close to the sweep of the road, fading away into the darkness that covered half the world.

  Finally, the glow of First City and its ring of refineries appeared through the falling darkness, familiar and comforting. Anikova pulled up outside the compartment, and the doors of the siydna whispered open.

  “There you go,” she said to her sister.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” Natasha asked.

  “No, I ought to get back. I’ve got work tomorrow.” More sessions with Kitai, a dismaying prospect.

  “Well, thanks,” Natasha said, leaning in through the car door to kiss her sister. “It’s been good to see you.” In the heights of the compartment block, a blind twitched. Anikova pulled away in a whirl of dust. On the wall of the compartment building, a word had appeared in fluorescent paint: Pamyat. It gleamed wanly through the twilight, the name of a dissident group. Anikova supposed that she should report it, but they usually used fadepaint and in the morning, she knew, it would be gone with all the rest of the dreams.

  Part Seven

  One

  KYRGYZSTAN, 21ST CENTURY

  Elena awoke and lay blinking at the ceiling. A pale dawn light illuminated the room. Beside her, she could hear Ilya’s quiet breathing. She rolled over and raised herself up on one elbow. In sleep, his face seemed untroubled, younger. She regarded him with desire and tenderness and dismay. She knew what her mother would think: to sleep with a derelict off the streets, a madman. But if you could walk between one world and another, who was to say what was or was not possible? She believed Ilya’s story, and that was the disturbing thing. Love will make you do this, believe all manner of lies… . Perhaps madness was infectious.

  Ilya twitched like a dog, dreaming. Elena thought: eight hundred years. That’s a lot of ex-girlfriends. Or wives, even? The thought that there might be some babushka somewhere, still remembering the lunatic she had loved as a girl, was somehow a terrible one. She had seen a Hollywood film once, which also featured immortal men. Their relationships had, of necessity, become very complicated. All men had history, but surely never so much. It would take getting used to. Best to live in the present as much as possible.

  Ilya, stirring, smiled when he saw her. It was the smile of someone who has woken up to find that he has won the lottery, and all at once Elena knew how much she had fallen in love.

  She leaned across and murmured into his ear, “We’ll have to buy some condoms today.” He looked at her oddly and it took her a moment to interpret his expression. She sat up. “Did you think this was only for last night?” Or maybe that had been his intention after all, and she had been wrong. Like so many men, perhaps once was enough to move him on. She felt cold, but he said, “To be honest, Elena, I wasn’t sure if it was just out of pity.”

  She lay down once more, her head on his shoulder. “No. No, it wasn’t.”

  Don’t tell him how you feel, her inner caution counseled. Early morning declarations of love were the one thing designed to bring masculine walls back up again. She had made that mistake with Yuri. The moment you let your guard down with a man, they began moving smoothly away. She slid an arm around him, trying to sound matter-of-fact and sincere at the same time. “I really wanted to. I still do.”

  He made love to her again, with a new assurance in his touch: the gradual return of sexual confidence, and a kind of gratitude that ended in release for them both. When it was over, Elena lay thinking. She had heard that heroin could induce impotence as well as all the other losses it brought in its wake. She wondered whether that might have contributed to the sense of defeat in him. And she was as prone as anyone else to thinking that she could be the one to make it better. All he needs is the love of a good woman… . But it wasn’t as easy as that and she knew it; she had fallen into that particular trap before now, and it always ended badly. Because it always brings resentment, and if you need them to need you, what happens when they stop?

  “Elena? You’re frowning.” His voice was half-worried, half-amused.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Well, then.” He kissed her, lingeringly, and reached for his clothes. “Let’s find some breakfast.”

  Downstairs, they ate bread and jam in silence. Elena found that, despite her best efforts, her gaze kept straying to Ilya’s face, studying the sharpness of its planes and angles. When s
he discovered that she was becoming obsessed with the way he chewed, she told herself to snap out of it and looked out of the window instead, watching families heading to church. She could hear the bell ringing out over the town and wondered how many people would have attended the Friday service at the mosque as well. She knew a number of folk who went to both, hedging their bets. Not for the first time, she wished that she could believe in God; if ever she needed prayer, it was now. Her thoughts returned to the magnet sitting opposite her.

  Men were supposed to have greater visual acumen, but if that was the case, why weren’t they the ones who sat staring like sheep at the women they’d just slept with? She turned abruptly back to the table and found that he was. It was his turn to flush and look away. He said carefully, “I need to know what you want to do.”

  “About what? About us?” Her voice was too sharp.

  “About us, and about the thing in your handbag. Do you have a pen?”

  “Here.”

  On the back of a paper napkin, he wrote: I don’t know who’s listening, following.

  Do you think we should go to the lake? She wrote in reply. When Ilya had spoken of it, she had realized that she knew where Manas might mean. It had been a military base, the kind of secret that everyone knew about. It had been said to test torpedoes for the Soviet Navy, and she remembered her father joking about how the Navy couldn’t afford an ocean, only a lake. She looked at Ilya.

  He said aloud, “Elena—you have money now. That’s originally why you wanted to do this. You could go on to Moscow, take your family.” She could tell that it cost him to say this.

  “I gave them most of the money. I can always follow on.” A tangle of feelings: responsibility; duty to her mother and Anna warring with this new, fragile love; a consuming sexual need; sheer curiosity and the allure of something glimpsed on the other side of life. It was unlikely that she would ever work on a space program again, and yet now there was this improbable chance of a new world just around the corner. Unless she had simply gone mad.

  “Well, we can be mad together,” Ilya murmured, and she realized that she had spoken aloud. She took his hand, weighed it in her own.