“They shot her,” I said with a sudden realization. “She died in my…”
My brow suddenly furrowed and I began to mumble anxiously.
“No, no, that can’t be right. She was just here. Wasn’t she? I’m sorry, I get a little confused sometimes.…”
He sat down again and laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder.
“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “What happened after, Nikolai? Do you remember?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “They shot me. I remember that. And I fell. I could feel my lungs filling with blood. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t. It felt like I was…”
“Drowning,” he said.
I looked at him.
“And all you could think was,” he continued as if under a great weight.
“This is what she felt.”
We had said it both together. In unison.
I said nothing for a long time, but now I stared at him with a new suspicion.
“What is your name, sir?” I asked at last.
He took a deep breath.
“My name is Nikolai Andreivich South,” he said at last.
“I woke up in … warmth. And darkness. And I had no body. I was … a thought. A sensation. I didn’t feel real. But Lily was there. She was there with me. I couldn’t touch her, I couldn’t see her, but I knew she was there. I knew what she was saying to me. I can’t really describe what it’s like to you. But it was wonderful. I felt like I had always been born for this. Like my soul had finally broken out of its chrysalis. It was Sally Coe. She copied you while you slept. Made two of us. Left you to rot in jail and set me free. I don’t know why. I suppose she felt that, it didn’t matter if one Nikolai South had to die alone in a cell if another was out there, living a life more wonderful than he could ever have hoped for. I can only imagine how much you hate me. And I am so sorry for everything that has been taken from you.”
I said nothing for so long that he wondered if I had died from shock.
“You said your name is Nikolai?” I said after some time.
He closed his eyes and sighed sadly.
“Yes,” he said, quietly.
“That’s my name. Are you a friend of Olesya’s?” I said.
He didn’t know what to say. He wished to God there was something he could say. Something that could make it right.
“I’m your friend. Nikolai,” he said quietly. “And I want to do whatever I can to help you.”
“Could you please ask somebody to take me back to my room?” I said. “I feel quite tired.”
Later that night, in a hotel room in Ellulgrad, I lay sleeping peacefully while Nikolai and Lily sat drinking wine in the front room and tried to map the future.
I could not come with them to their home on the Whole Life Net. What Sally Coe had done, duplicating me and smuggling me to the Machine world while my original self remained in Caspian, was an unforgivable crime. If I returned with them, either Nikolai or myself would be summarily deleted.
Nikolai sat on the couch, hunched forward, anxiously swirling his glass while trying to figure out how to ask the impossible of his wife.
“We’ll just have to stay here,” Lily said, as if suggesting that they order in instead of cooking.
He looked up at her in astonishment.
“For how long?” he asked.
“Until he … doesn’t need us anymore,” she said gently.
“That could take years,” he said.
“We owe him thirty-four,” she said with a sad smile. “I doubt he’ll collect the entire debt.”
“Where will we live?” he asked.
“We’ll find somewhere in the city,” she said. “We’ll figure it out.”
Not for the first time, he wondered what he had done to deserve her.
He kissed her and she kissed him back and it was agreed that, since they would be making use of these bodies for the foreseeable future, it was only sensible for them to test them out to ensure that there were no issues.
After a most satisfactory test run, they lay side by side in bed and Nikolai whispered in his wife’s ear.
“How are you going to put up with two of me?”
“You’re not as bad as you think you are,” she replied.
Outside, the Ellulgrad night was humming with traffic and loud voices and a drunk was singing love songs in Russian.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” he insisted. “After everything that happened?”
“That was a long time ago,” she murmured. “Everything’s been torn down. It’s a new country.”
“It’s a wreck,” her husband said uncertainly. “It’s a wreck run by children.”
“Yes.” Lily smiled as she drifted off to sleep. “Let’s see what they build.”
40
“My father, Casper Niemann, was a violent criminal. He immigrated to the Caspian Republic the way painters immigrate to Paris: hoping to find recognition for his genius in his chosen art form.”
—From the Autobiography of Augusta Niemann
The first six months were the hardest. Nikolai and Lily were quite unprepared for just how expensive life in the physical world could be.
We settled in a small, damp, two-bedroom flat so similar to the one I was raised in that some mornings I would wander around looking for my mother, expecting to see her seated at the kitchen table reading the newspaper with a mug of strong black coffee.
Nikolai hated the flat. He felt like he was living in a bad dream. To have to leave the ease and comfort and infinite luxuries of the digital world and come back here, to Ellulgrad, it was unbearable.
And he hated me. He tried to hide it, but his hatred for me hung about him like a snake on his shoulders.
He felt a deep revulsion for this pathetic old man, pottering around the house like a windup toy. He understood now why the machines so ruthlessly enforced their taboo against duplication. Every time he looked at me, he saw a violation.
I am me. No one else can be me.
Lily, for her part, was working on a new novel. She hoped that once she was paid her delivery fee for the first draft, she would be able to move all three of us to somewhere a little less cramped, though that was no sure thing.
Ellulgrad had become far more expensive than a recent war zone had any right to be, and the term “gentrification” was now spoken in the city with the same hatred that had once been reserved for the word “ParSec.”
While Lily worked, Nikolai took whatever jobs he could find. He was hired as a consultant for a drama series set in the Caspian Republic, which paid well enough for a few weeks. After that he was asked to contribute articles to (of all publications) The Caspian Truth recounting his rather unique story. Nikolai had been very surprised at the offer, and Lily joked that she had an agreement with the paper that they had to hire anyone who she had married.
These articles, naturally, had to be written under a pseudonym. If word reached the Machine world that Nikolai South had a double, he might never be able to go online again.
He felt trapped. And he felt resentful. And he felt ashamed for feeling trapped and resentful.
He loved his wife, more than he had ever loved anyone. More even than Olesya.
He could not imagine leaving her. And yet, when he looked into the future and saw years of poverty and damp and black mold, when he faced the promise of more years trapped in the city that had consumed so much of his life, caring for the broken, detested husk of his former self …
He could not imagine enduring that.
Salvation came from the most unlikely of sources.
Niemann had made two predictions when Lily and Maryam had visited her; that there would be no trial, and that she would soon be dead.
On both counts, she was correct.
Former Director of State Security Augusta Niemann was found dead on June 3, 2245, and the young nation of Atropatene immediately dropped everything else it was doing in order that it might work out just how it felt about that. If you went by the
Ellulgrad newspapers, nothing of note happened on planet Earth in the first half of June 2245 other than the death of this one eighty-six-year-old woman.
Everyone had an opinion.
In the bars and kitchens of Atropatene, drinking buddies and spouses would passionately (and sometimes angrily) debate whether Augusta Niemann had deserved to stand in Liberty Square as a statue, or hang there as a corpse.
Judging Niemann, Nadia Evershan would later write, felt like judging God. The crimes of StaSec were uncountable, the lives saved by Yozhik incredible. There was simply too much good, and too much evil. One felt entirely inadequate when faced with the scale of both of her crimes and her heroics. Especially when the degree to which she had been involved in the revolution came to light. Her defenders argued that without Augusta Niemann there would be no Republic of Atropatene to sit in judgment upon her.
Those of us who had suffered at her hands found that argument less than compelling.
For me, Gussie Niemann had died a long time ago. She was one of thousands of names and faces I had known over the years who had silently slipped away from my memory. When spoken to me, her name did not even kindle the faint warmth of distant recognition that might prompt me to mumble “oh yes, of course.”
For Nikolai, she lived on in his mind, a solid and full-blooded ghost that could be neither forgiven nor exorcised.
When told of her death, Nikolai simply shuddered and sat down on one end of the tiny kitchen table, staring into space.
“The funeral is tomorrow,” Lily had told him. “Do you want to…”
He shuddered again, and shook his head.
And so, Lily attended the funeral of Augusta Niemann alone.
At the afters, Lily (never one for crowds) found a corner of the room to nurse a glass of wine in and study the mourners.
It was, she realized, a funeral for only one of Niemann’s two halves. There were no former StaSec people here that she could see, no remnants of her life as the head of State Security. These people were here to celebrate Yozhik. The guests were mostly foreign, and mostly machine, with young, impossibly beautiful clone bodies. There were also Azerbaijanis, though fewer than she might have expected.
She recognized Nadia Evershan, chatting in a corner with two Persian women who were wearing identical clonesuits. But apart from her, the government did not seem to have sent a representative to Niemann’s funeral. Probably for the best.
“Not a bad turnout, eh?” said a voice beside her.
Lily turned to the old woman.
“How are you, Sally?” Lily asked gently.
“Oh. You know,” said Sally airily. The charade lasted less than five seconds.
Lily hugged her until the sobbing had stopped.
“Sorry,” Sally whispered into her shoulder. “Keeps happening. No idea why. Need to see a doctor about it.”
“Because you loved her,” said Lily.
“Ridiculous,” said Sally with a sad smile. “Really, the mawkish rubbish one hears at funerals.”
They went for a walk together in the garden. It was a beautiful balmy evening, with the faintest cool breeze coming in from the Caspian Sea. The sun was setting behind Niemann’s dacha, and Venus and a few stars were already visible in the indigo.
Sally unconsciously reached for a cigarette, and then put it back.
“I will miss this place,” she said quietly.
“You’re leaving?” Lily asked.
“Yes. Yes I think so.” Sally nodded. “I’m not ready to die yet. And this withered husk you see before you is probably about to be recalled by the manufacturer. Now that she’s … it’s time. Time to move on. See if the online world is everything it’s cracked up to be.”
“I could contact some people,” Lily offered. “To help you make the transition…”
“You’re a dear,” Sally said. “But I’d prefer if as few people know as possible. Want to try and make a clean break.”
“I understand,” Lily said.
They stood in silence for a few moments, looking out over the Caspian Sea. The lapping of the water could just about be heard over the low murmur of the mourners.
“I will miss this, though,” Sally sighed.
“It’s beautiful,” Lily agreed.
“You think so?” Sally asked.
“Oh yes,” said Lily.
“Good,” said Sally. “That could have been very awkward.”
She pressed something into Lily’s hand.
Lilly’s face widened with shock. It was a set of house keys.
Sally gestured to the dacha, which was suddenly looking even larger and more opulent than it had before.
“Technically I suppose I should wait until the will is read. But it’s all yours. Well, Nicky’s really. But you can move in immediately.”
“You’re not serious,” Lily stammered.
“It’s wheelchair accessible, too. Should make life a bit easier for you.”
“Sally, we can’t…”
“Lily.” Sally took her hands and suddenly she was very serious. “Stop. Stop acting like I’m being kind. What Gussie and I did to Nicky … this doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t undo it. It doesn’t make us even. It doesn’t come close. It can’t. It couldn’t. All three of you deserve so much more than this. But this is all I can give you. So take it. Please. With all our love. Gussie’s and mine. She wants you to have it.”
It was not the words themselves. After all, the dead are always present at their own funerals, aren’t they? It was rather, something in Sally’s eyes that tipped her hand.
Lily thanked Sally graciously and they began to slowly walk back to the dacha.
As they were about to part ways, Lily couldn’t help herself.
“Sally?” she asked. “You know the Sontang scanner you used to copy Nicky?”
“Hm?” Sally asked, as if only half listening.
“Whatever happened to it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, darling,” Sally drawled. “Probably scrapped years ago.”
“Maybe Gussie knows?” Lily asked.
“Maybe,” said Sally, unreadable.
“Wherever she is,” Lily added.
“Oh Lily,” said Sally with a smile. “Gussie is where she’s always been.”
She placed a hand on her left breast and turned and walked away.
“Do you mean your heart or your pocket?” Lily called after her.
“Good night, Lily,” Sally called back, and vanished into the crowd of happy mourners.
The move to Niemann’s dacha made things a lot easier for all three of us, and those were our happiest times. Without having to worry about rent, the three of us were able to live comfortably together, and even more so when my state pension was finally released by the government, around half a year after we had been in most desperate need of it.
We lived slow lives, never doing too much in any one day. Nikolai spent most of his time in the city, covering the mishaps and triumphs and occasional scandals of the new government for The Caspian Truth. Lily and I would have a late breakfast together and then she would leave me to listen to the radio while she wrote until around one o’clock. Then she would wheel me around the garden and tell me about her novel and ask my opinion about this character or that. I offered little advice, only to say that I hoped they all ended happily, even the villains. Life was too short for sad endings, after all.
Lily never truly overcame her fear of cars, but she did learn to drive at last. She bought a small but reliable little vessel secondhand from a neighbor, and that gave us a good deal more freedom. One morning, on a beautiful sunny day, she packed me into the car and we drove down to the local shop for ice cream.
She wheeled me down to the beach and pulled out a deck chair and we sat side by side, watching the tide roll in gently.
“I think I’ve been here before,” I said.
“Oh?” she asked. “When was that?”
I couldn’t remember. It didn’t seem to matter.
A breeze rolled in off the sea and Lily gently arranged a scarf around me to keep me warm.
I closed my eyes, and let the gentle murmur of the waves lull me to sleep.
And there on the banks of the Caspian Sea, I passed on.
epilogue
Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.
—Matthew 10:31
As I write this it has been three years since I, or he, was laid to rest. Lily and I had not intended to stay in Atropatene past the death of my Unfortunate Twin. In fact, the idea of making a home on the Caspian Sea would never have entered our minds.
But, as is often the case, the place made a better second impression than its first. Lily and I have both found ourselves rather settled and comfortable. We have made friends here, we both work. We follow the political back-and-forth of this new infant state with interest, frustration and occasional pride. We are under no illusions that Atropatene is a particularly wonderful place to live. But we love it anyway.
I think that means it’s home.
I wrote this because it felt important to remember him. My Unfortunate Twin. My forgotten brother. And I wrote this in his voice because it felt wrong to tell the story any other way. For those events where neither he (nor I) were personally present I relied on the records of Augusta Niemann and on my wife’s memory (by far the more reliable of the two sources). But wherever possible, I tried to let him speak for himself.
He was silent for so long. Hidden for so long.
Even before being sent to Kobustan, he was silent and hidden.
That was how he lived. That was how we all lived.
He had so much taken from him that I couldn’t bring myself to take his voice. I felt that he must at last speak for himself, and so I speak for him.
I did little for him, far too little. But I was able, at least, to do that.
I’ve taken up swimming.
Every Saturday morning I drive down to that beach. I immerse myself in the warm, gentle waters of the Caspian Sea and swim until the only sound I can hear is my own breath and the soft lap of the water against me.
I lie on my back and remember all those that have been lost.
When the Sparrow Falls Page 28