Kolymsky Heights

by Lionel Davidson

  The timbers had stood up well to this and the house would not now lurch any more. His daughter Tatiana had seen to that. Her first act had been to drive piles into the permafrost, pinning the structure in its present position, and then to isolate the cellar with half a metre of insulating material – floor, walls and roof. A trapdoor enabled it still to be used as a storeroom, and it provided quite a capacious one. Here Porter found the kerosene stove and the generator – the latter a neat job from Japan, not much needed in the past few years as Tchersky’s power supply had improved.

  He tried them both. The stove needed a new wick but was otherwise quite serviceable, and the generator started at once.

  For the time being he left them there.

  In the next three days he ran parts down to the cave. With Vassili’s agreement he picked them up at eight in the morning, using the back door of the storeroom to avoid going through the garage, and returned at lunch time for the second load. He went back to the house right away then, for Komarova had told him not to absent himself for long. The plan for getting him to the herds depended on the weather, and for this he had to be ready at short notice.

  Now he knew far more about her.

  She had been divorced six years and had not looked for other relationships. Had there been any? Of course – brief ones, she was human, what did he think? But just hospital people: doctors who came on two-or three-year contracts and then left, for Moscow, Petersburg, God knew where. She couldn’t leave, at least not yet. Her mother was a trial, but still her mother. Later maybe. But where else would she find such wide responsibilities and such work?

  She loved the work, and she loved the country – the native people better than the Europeans. So she kept her distance, and was considered aloof; yes, she knew it. But better that than join a white elite and patronise the natives. Her father had never patronised them, and neither had Rogachev, and she had loved them for it. They were not treated equally – he must have seen it for himself. Plenty of extras for Europeans in these northern parts, but natives excluded, even in such matters as drink. She got them drink, and why not? It was a hard country. Yes, she was in some ways detached here, in some ways out of place. But she would be out of place in a town.

  So what would do for her?

  She didn’t know what would do. Her work would do!

  She had scrupulously avoided asking him anything further about himself; so on the second night, trusting her suddenly, he told her.

  She sat up in bed and looked at him.

  ‘An American Indian!’

  ‘Canadian.’

  ‘Not the Porter – Dr Johnny Porter?’

  ‘Well, that’s my name.’

  She stared at him in amazement. Then she got out of bed and ran into the next room and returned with his Comparisons in a Russian translation.

  ‘This is yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mean, you’re not a – not just an agent? So what are you doing here?’

  ‘Well.’ He hesitated. But then he told the lot. The meeting with Rogachev in Oxford. The strangeness of his own life at the time – a widower, at twenty-three.

  ‘She’d only been nineteen herself – a little thing, very pretty – long black hair, pony tail down to here.’

  ‘An Indian girl?’

  ‘Oh, sure. Minnehaha, Laughing Water – doe-eyed Bride of Hiawatha. Name was Trisha, actually. She didn’t have doe eyes.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She skipped out to catch a bus at lunch time. The bus caught her. Somebody said she probably hadn’t heard it.’

  ‘She hadn’t seen it?’

  ‘Being blind, no.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She could hear a pin drop – in the next room!’

  ‘You mean-’

  ‘Ah, hell, who knows what I mean? I was seeing plots everywhere. Politics. All a long time ago … I guess she missed the kerb and slipped. Anyway, Rogachev told me to quit brooding. An amazing guy – I’d never met anyone like him. A polymath, interested in everything. In blindness too … We were discussing congenital things – turned out his wife had molecular degeneration, both eyes. He was depressed as hell really, under all the cheerfulness. But he said brooding was no good for me. There was something for me to do in this world, and he’d help me any way he could. Which he did actually.’

  He was silent a moment.

  ‘See, earlier on I’d been trying to get to Chukotka, a security part you couldn’t get to. It was to research the Inuit there, Eskimos. And he got me permission, and I went. I didn’t use the stuff at the time, and I heard nothing from him directly. And later on I discovered why. He’d been in an accident, lost his wife, was in all sorts of trouble. Yet he’d done that for me – he’d meant what he said. So when they showed up with these messages … ’

  ‘But to disrupt your life in this way! To take on such dangers –’

  ‘I’ve disrupted it before, and lived rough before – he knew that. He knew I could do it – that I was the only one with any chance of doing it. And that I would if only I saw what he’d −’

  He decided to skip what Rogachev had written.

  No more sit in darkness nor like the blind stumble at …

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I did.’

  ‘Good God!’ She was still clutching the book she’d brought in. ‘Well, you’d do,’ she said. She lay on top of him. ‘My God, you’d do!’

  On the Thursday he took the engine.

  There were now only three days left of his week off. It meant taking the block and tackle, too, and also the lighting.

  ‘Lighting wire? What do you want with lighting wire? Vassili asked.

  ‘I might need some. Give me twenty metres. Also eight sockets and light bulbs.’

  ‘This is a lot of favours,’ Vassili said. He measured off the flex. ‘When are you going to do some for me?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘She is talking stroganina again.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll get a run to Ambarchik next week.’

  Vassili took a careful look out of the back door of the storeroom, and together they manhandled the engine in its harness out to the bobik. ‘You’re coming back lunch time?’

  ‘No. This is a lot of engine,’ he said, rubbing his back; he had carried the greater part of it.

  ‘I told you. See the block is secure before you lift it. Don’t skip any screws. There’ll be no other engine.’

  ‘I’ll be careful.’

  He went back to the house and picked up the generator and set off on the river to Anyuysk. By half past ten he was at the cave and he drove straight in, with his headlights on. He had already had a trial on the roof of the bobik and the position gave him enough room. Now he knelt on it and got to work.

  There were eight holes in the securing bracket. He held it against the roof and lightly bored the eight placer marks with the battery drill. Then he laid the bracket aside and drilled the full depth. He went seven centimetres into the granite, and got through three drills and two sets of batteries. Then he plugged the holes and screwed the bracket home and swung hard on the tackle. All secure.

  He took a rest then, and had some coffee, while figuring out the lighting. This was a finicky job, but child’s play after the heavy overhead boring. Only shallow holes needed, and short plugs for the hooks. He spaced out two on the roof and two along each of the three walls. Then he paid out the wire and draped it loosely from the hooks. The twenty metres didn’t give anything to spare, and he still had to cut it to connect the light sockets.

  His fingers were numb and he fiddled with this job in the bobik with the heater on. He spliced in the sockets, attached the terminal plugs for the generator, and got out and hung the circuit. Then he went round screwing in the bulbs, got back in the bobik and gave himself a vodka. It was after two o’clock and he was very tired. He was tiring too easily, too much running about. He lit a cigarette and read through the scrappy leaflet that came with the generator. It had
worked in the house but here, only twelve volts needed, he could blow the whole damn array.

  He got out and checked the controls again. Then he made sure the output switch was off, and started up. The thing coughed into life and chugged solidly away. He let it run for a minute, then switched the output on. The bulbs lit up like a Christmas tree, and stayed lit. Okay. The engine now.

  He switched the bobik’s lights off, reversed out, turned on the frozen river and backed in again. The light was well spread. He opened the rear of the car and hooked up the engine. They had bedded it on a felt pad in its lifting harness, and he hauled on the tackle chains and saw the pad begin to shift as the engine moved. The pad slid out and fell to the ground and the engine swung loose. He kept it hanging and guided it clear of the car and lowered it slowly to the ground.

  Done.

  He took the bobik outside and went back in for a final look. There was a lot of stuff now; almost everything. Tomorrow he’d pick up the remainder, take it to the house, sleep all day. At night back to the cave and start the assembly. He would work the whole night through.

  He switched the generator off and drove back. He felt unsure of himself suddenly.

  Something had changed. He didn’t know what. But all his life he had respected these feelings. He went over in his mind what it might be. Nothing. Yet something had changed.

  He drove slowly, and it was six o’clock before he reached the house. There he learned something had changed. Tomorrow there would be no cave, but the herds. For now the time had come. Tomorrow night, if everything worked, he would be with Innokenty, the man who sent people to the research station.

  He was unsure about this, too. The story they had concocted seemed now utterly childish. Earlier it had not seemed childish. Now it seemed childish. It was too late to think of another though, so they worked over it, far into the night; all the time his lowering feeling persisting.

  He had no idea, still, what was expected of him at Tcherny Vodi, what activities went on there.

  In China at this time they had no idea even of Tcherny Vodi’s existence. But they were aware of some activities. A very strange one had come to light.

  36

  The military commission met in Beijing: before them the reports on the test missiles – the missiles of October and of November.

  The October missile had gone off course six minutes into its flight, so that the new guidance system had not operated. This system switched on only in the last kilometres of flight. A visual device then compared what it read below with a pre-stored computer image, correcting course and trajectory until the two images matched exactly. But so far off course, nothing had matched. A fault of the missile, not its terminal vision.

  The second vehicle was of an older type, but with a totally reliable flight record. And it had been reliable. It had flown to Lop Nor, anyway, and hit it, but so wide of the mark that, again, the visual system had obviously not switched on.

  However, it had switched on. It had reported itself switched on. And then it had switched off.

  Between these two missiles, mere was an important difference. The one arriving at Lop Nor had been conventionally wired, all its networks connected by electrical cable. The other was optically wired; with fibre. The commission knew the reason for this, so their experts wasted no time – going immediately to the main problem.

  Both missiles had been interfered with in flight.

  The first had suffered interference after six minutes, when its signals had ceased. It had then been executing a fractional turn to the west; and it had stuck in this turn which by burn-out had taken it due south to Lanchow.

  The second missile had reported an unidentifiable buzz, but it had reached Lop Nor. It had reached it with its video switched

  off. Shortly before it had reported the video switched on.

  The experts pointed to an obvious conclusion.

  The missile diverted from its course was optically wired.

  The missile not diverted was not optically wired, but its optical system had switched off. The interference was optical.

  On this they offered two further comments.

  The first was that they knew of no scientific explanation for such interference; and the second that it could only have come from an altitude much higher than the missiles.

  At an altitude a quarter of the way to the moon, two satellites were at present in stationary orbit over China. They were electronic intelligence (ELINT) stations, one of them American and the other Russian. The American had been launched from Vandenberg Air Force base in California, and the Russian from Tyuratam in central Asia.

  The experts’ recommendation was that Vandenberg and Tyuratam be targeted, urgently, for anything that could shed light on this development. This was possible for agents were available at both centres, and already much was known of events in these important vicinities.

  Of events in the unimportant vicinity of Tchersky nothing was known.

  37

  Tchersky airport, so late in the season, had extended itself on to the river ice. A dozen or so fixed-wing planes of Polar Aviation were parked there, and also a huddle of helicopters, large and small.

  Medical Officer Komarova and her Chukchee assistant boarded a small one, already warming up for them, and took off at once, heading south-east. The day was dark and grey, ominous with gusts and waiting snow. A blizzard was expected within hours.

  The pilot chided Komarova on the fact as they rose above the town. ‘Couldn’t you have made it earlier? I still have to get you back.’

  ‘A rush of work all morning. I won’t stay long.’

  ‘You say that, but always you stay hours. What is it with those natives there? … Who’s this one?’

  ‘An employee of the transport company.’ They had taken care to let the pilot see the Chukchee driving the bobik and carrying the two heavy bags from it to the helicopter; Komarova herself was hobbling on a stick. ‘Pay attention to your own duties,’ she added coldly. ‘Just fly.’

  The pilot grunted and flew, and Porter marvelled at the sternness of this creature who had last night so riotously straddled and caressed him.

  They didn’t have to fly long, barely fifty minutes. But darkness was gathering fast as they spotted the weird cloud on the ground. The spectral shape rolled and tumbled there, shot through with silver – the breath of reindeer, an immense herd, crystallised in the air. They came down low over it, the pilot peering in all directions before he found the group of tents that housed the Evenk herders. He had to hover almost on top of them before deerskin-clad figures came peering out, running and waving. Then he put the helicopter down, and kept the rotors turning.

  ‘Aren’t you coming out?’ Komarova called, at the door.

  ‘No, I’ll keep her running. It’s cold out there and the wind is high – they couldn’t hear me.’ He was having to shout, listening to a weather report on his radio. ‘Remember – I don’t spend nights with a tribe of Evenks!’

  ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  Outside several women were among the huddle of Evenks, and they bear-hugged the medical officer, gazing curiously at her Chukchee assistant. The wind was indeed high and howling, all the ground below knee level shirting with flying snow and ice. They were hustled into a tent – a leather one, Porter saw, and double-skinned. Its entrance flaps opened into a heat-lock vestibule, and beyond it more flaps led to the circular living space, a big room, six or seven metres across, entirely carpeted with bushy reindeer robes. A sheet-metal stove roared in the middle of it, standing in a large tray piled with logs and cooking pots.

  The heavy canvas bags were speedily taken off him and their contents greeted with approval. The bottles had been wrapped in cloth to prevent clinking, and one of vodka was opened immediately.

  ‘No – no time for that!’ Komarova said. ‘The pilot has to get off. What complaints are here? How’s everybody?’

  The complaints were the normal ones: sprains, sores, inflamed eyes. But one of the wome
n was pregnant, and Komarova took time examining her behind a screen. She examined others there too, and he kept careful check of the time, calling it out to her. It was after three o’clock, now totally dark and less than two hours before the predicted blizzard. The plan needed the pilot to be able to take off, and his radio could still ground him.

  ‘All right, I’m coming,’ she called back, and presently was hurrying out. ‘But Evdokia, you’re coming with me. I want you checked in hospital. And Igor, too. That back looks a disc problem. And more vitamins are needed here – too many sores. I’ll send supplies tomorrow. And the instructions with them. There’s no time now, no time!’ And out they went, struggling against the wind to the helicopter: the pregnant woman, the man with the bad back, Medical Officer Komarova, and her assistant from the transport company.

  ‘What’s this?’ the pilot shouted, as they clambered aboard. ‘How many of you?’

  ‘Just two patients and us.’

  ‘What, two patients and you? Two patients and you two make four. With me five. The machine carries four!’

  ‘You’ve carried five before.’

  ‘In high winds, with a blizzard coming? No way. One of them stays.’

  ‘These patients have to be in hospital!’

  ‘Then let him stay!’

  Which he did, after some angry words.

  So far, so good.

  The childish story, still to come, was another matter.

  Innokenty he had spotted immediately. The headman had sat smoking his pipe on the carpet while the medical examinations were carried out.

  ‘I never heard anyone speak the Evenk tongue so,’ the old man said, ‘not any stranger. How does it come about?’

  Porter told him, and he told them all, over a venison dinner and ample drink, how it came about. He told of his childhood in Chukotka, of the schoolteacher father, of Novosibirsk and the Evenk friends he had met. How in the big town he had almost forgotten his own tongue, but his Evenk friends, true souls, had not forgotten theirs, and of how it had almost become his. Of his hankering for the north, and his driving experiences ever since. They were charmed by him, and charmed also at his interest in their own lives. Every aspect interested him, and they gladly answered all questions.