Kolymsky Heights

by Lionel Davidson

  ‘Now I’ll get Stepanka. Remember, you have not met me.’

  His chair whined out of the room, and presently Porter heard the sound of a key turning. Then silence for several minutes, and a shuffling sound and Stepanka came in, very rumpled. He had a big watch in his hand.

  ‘By God! Almost three o’clock.’ He was dazed. ‘You were with him half the night. You’ve got the letter?’

  ‘No.’ Kolya was very serious. ‘He’s rewriting the letter. He says I have to come again.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Stepanka – this man isn’t normal! He wanted every detail, all the years between. Every kind of thing that happened to the girl. Then he would break down and question me again. He doesn’t seem able to accept it – which doctors, which tests, have we done this, that.’ He shook his head. ‘He says he will bring me a ring – the mother’s wedding ring. I am to take it back, it’s to go to the grave. Tell me, is he mad?’

  Stepanka’s mouth had fallen open.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never met him,’ he said. He licked his lips. ‘The Chief will have to arrange it again, then. And he isn’t well himself. He said nothing about the Chief?’

  ‘Nothing. Only about the girl.’

  ‘Well. I don’t know.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘But come – we’ll just catch the guards. Or we can stand and freeze there for half an hour.’

  He produced the torch and the piece of paper from his pocket and attended to the lock in the grille. Then they were out in the cement passage again and going up the stairs. ‘It’s a part of the building they never used. I knew nothing of it.’

  In the tiny room above, Stepanka looked through the periscope, and he motioned Kolya to look.

  Through the periscope the brightly lit corridor was quite empty. ‘In one minute they’ll come,’ Stepanka whispered. ‘Don’t make a sound. You can hear through the wall. The moment they’ve gone is the safest. It’s what I did before.’

  Kolya remained looking through the periscope, and in a minute the two figures appeared. They materialised suddenly, from the far end of the corridor, one behind the other, a few paces apart. The leading guard peered through each spy hole, and then checked each bolt; and the second made a mark on a clipboard. As they approached he could hear their footsteps and their voices repeating the name of each room checked.

  They checked the dormitory, and they checked the washroom. Then they tried the laundry, and that was the last. Now they were only a few feet away, and through the periscope Kolya watched them; and as their backs retreated he gave place to Stepanka at the periscope.

  Stepanka remained peering intently through it, and then he nodded and manipulated the lock, and switched the torch off and opened the wall.

  Like a mouse he scurried to the washroom and drew the bolts, and Porter swiftly entered and closed the door, and heard the faintest scrape as the bolts went home again. He stood for some minutes with his ear to the door but heard nothing more; neither the shuffle of footsteps nor any other sound.

  He went quietly into the dormitory.

  A little snoring there; the Evenks all asleep. In the blue lighting he undressed and returned to his bunk, and for some moments, drifting off, thought of the girl in the tunnel, and of a night with Stalin, and prison camps and the exploration of space. Then he thought what he could say to an ape and what the ape would say to him.

  43

  ‘Ludmilla – Ludmilla, my dear, how are you?’

  ‘Thank you, I am well.’

  ‘I have brought a visitor. You don’t mind seeing a visitor, Ludmilla?’

  ‘No, I don’t mind,’ the ape said, and put her glasses on.

  She smiled at them from the bed. She had a sweet face, although her eyes were bandaged. She was wearing a nightie; and also, Porter saw, a number of other bandages. Like Rogachev she seemed to have lost much hair and skin. It took him a moment to realise that the glasses had gone on over the bandaged eyes and that she was now shielding them slightly with her hand.

  ‘Is the light too strong for you?’

  ‘Only for a moment, when it came on.’

  ‘They don’t hurt – your eyes?’

  ‘No, they don’t hurt, Uncle.’

  ‘She has no eyes,’ Rogachev said, in English. ‘A result of the explosion. We could have restored them but I wouldn’t put her through the operation. She hasn’t long to live. You are seeing well, my dear?’ he asked in Russian.

  ‘Yes, I am seeing well, Uncle.’

  ‘This visitor is Raven. Are you pleased to meet him?’

  ‘I am pleased to meet you,’ Ludmilla said, and extended her hand.

  ‘Ludmilla. I am very pleased to meet you,’ Porter said, and shook the hand. The palm was brown, the back of it a blotchy pink, tufted with down. The face was similarly blotched and tufted. It was finely boned and there was a sweet docility about it, a thoughtful docility as she gazed through her spectacles. But she was certainly an ape.

  ‘You were hurt, I hear,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I was hurt.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘In the fire. Uncle made me better.’

  ‘Was it a long time ago, the fire?’

  ‘She hasn’t much idea of time,’ Rogachev said in English. ‘It was a long time, Ludmilla – days and days. But it didn’t hurt for long. Tell Raven how nicely you see now.’

  ‘I see nicely now,’ Ludmilla said, smiling.

  ‘Take your glasses off, my pet.’

  Ludmilla took them off, and Rogachev shone a torch at the bandages. ‘Now we’ll play a game again,’ he said. ‘Have I put the light on?’

  ‘No, of course you haven’t.’ Ludmilla was smiling.

  ‘All right. Now,’ Rogachev said, and switched the torch off. ‘Now what have I done?’

  ‘Silly! You haven’t done anything,’ Ludmilla said, giggling. She felt for his hand, and he moved it, and she groped in the air until he gave her it. She squeezed the hand and kissed it, and he bent and kissed hers and then her blue lips.

  ‘My little sweetheart – you’re so clever! Stay in the dark a moment. I want Raven to examine you. It won’t hurt.’ He parted the sparse hair behind Ludmilla’s ears. ‘The glasses are her eyes,’ he said in English. ‘And these are the terminals.’

  A small metallic strip was set behind each ear.

  ‘It’s a very small implant, smaller than a pacemaker. The trick is to make the right junction. She has practically 20–20 vision now – the lenses self-focus, like the quite cheap video cameras. These are set in a plasma. Take a look at them.’

  Porter picked up the glasses. There was a vague flutter of movement in the lenses as he raised them, and at the end of each arm he saw the metal connecting strip.

  ‘Of course with the same principle you can fabricate an eye in its natural socket – much more complex. Put the glasses on again, my dear,’ Rogachev said, and put them in her hand, and Ludmilla slipped the glasses on, smiling at him.

  ‘Will you show Raven how well you read?’

  ‘Yes, I will show him,’ Ludmilla said, slowly.

  ‘Ah, my little sweetheart, you’re tired. Is it this room? Don’t you like this room?’

  ‘It’s … a nice room,’ Ludmilla said, gently.

  ‘It’s only for tonight, so that Raven can see you. We won’t read, then. She reads,’ he told Porter. ‘Just simple sentences. We won’t read. We’ll look at pictures. You like pictures. Raven hasn’t seen this book. Show him the pictures.’

  He handed Porter a book from the bedside table.

  ‘Well, this looks a nice book,’ Porter said.

  ‘Oh, it’s a nice book,’ Ludmilla said.

  ‘I wonder − what’s this?’ He had stopped at a page. There was a big picture on every page.

  ‘This is a sledge,’ Ludmilla told him.

  ‘Oh, of course! Is it – a blue sledge?’ he said, peering.

  ‘No! A red sledge,’ Ludmilla said.

  ‘I was only playing games.’r />
  ‘I know you were,’ Ludmilla said, and laughed at him.

  ‘Well, this one I know. A water tap! I can wash myself.’

  ‘No – silly!’ Ludmillia said and giggled again, covering her mouth. ‘It’s a samovar! With a samovar you make tea.’

  ‘She’s so clever. You’re so clever, my pretty,’ Rogachev said. ‘But now you must sleep. Raven wanted to see you so much, so I brought him. Do you like Raven?’

  ‘Yes, I like him,’ Ludmilla said.

  ‘I like you,’ Porter told her.

  ‘You can kiss her. She likes being kissed,’ Rogachev said. ‘But no pressure on her body, she is very fragile.’

  Porter kissed Ludmilla’s hand and then her face, and Ludmilla smiled and kissed him back.

  ‘Now it’s late for you, my precious. I’m sorry it’s so late. Raven couldn’t come any earlier. Tomorrow you can go back to your room. Say good night to him now.’

  ‘Good night, Raven,’ Ludmilla said.

  ‘Good night, Ludmilla.’

  ‘And take your glasses off. It’s time for sleep. Good night, my little sweetheart.’

  ‘Good night, Uncle.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Rogachev said, as they left the room, ‘so now tell me what I have made. And this is only the half of it.’

  But Porter remained silent, watching him relock the door.

  He had had a long day. A bitter wind had blown on the mountain top, the snow flurries whirling like devils over the compound. But the Evenks had remained cheerful and understanding of his lost sleep, seeing to it that he was allotted only indoor tasks in the morning.

  He had told his news – of the distraught father, the letter to be rewritten, the ring that had to go to the grave – and they were certain that Stepanka would soon be up with new instructions.

  But by afternoon Stepanka had still not come, and at two o’clock all of them had been ordered outside. A freighter plane was coming in, and urgent unloading had been requested before the weather worsened. For this the storage sheds had to be reorganised.

  By three o’clock the plane had come and gone; and by four, though not all the cargo was yet inside, a cheery Major Militsky had called the men in from the wind and the snow.

  A name had been chosen for the baby! Stepan Maximovich had an announcement to make.

  ‘Ten o’clock,’ was Stepanka’s whispered announcement to him. ‘One hour earlier than before.’ He didn’t know why. But by 9.55 Kolya was to be in position.

  And by 9.55 Kolya was: in the washroom. And by ten was going through the wall again.

  ‘And this is only the half of it,’ Rogachev said. They were now in his study. The study adjoined the library and was part of a suite that included an apartment for Stepanka and his wife and also two bedrooms. The second bedroom was for a security official who visited regularly; and Ludmilla was now in it.

  ‘It’s not even a half of it! There’s more – far more. And yet we had set out to do something totally different … ’

  44

  We had set out to copy parts of a foetus: of Sibir’s foetus.

  The father of the foetus had been a Neanderthaloid – not Neanderthal of Europe, which was in many ways a regression, but the earlier stock, not yet specialised, with higher vaulting to its skull. Of this there was no doubt. Sibir was typically ‘Cro-Magnon’; her child, broadly Neanderthaloid. And the differences between them were very remarkable.

  Sibir was 1.89 metres in height, and her brain capacity 1300 ccs. Her child would have grown much shorter, but with a brain much larger – 1500 ccs, our calculations showed. Since a modern brain is roughly 1350 ccs, Neanderthaloid had 11 per cent more. This curious fact, already speculated on from earlier skull finds, was in itself exciting. But here we had an actual brain – unborn but whole, easily projectible from standard scales.

  From hundreds of computer studies, we observed many differences in this brain. Zhelikov in his work had accumulated a large stock of brains (the heads of executed criminals) and these we used for comparison.

  An immediate difference was in the visual-receptor areas – here very large. This was expected, for the foetus’s eye sockets were also large. Neanderthaloid was a nocturnal creature: he came out in the dark and had to see in the dark. For us this had important implications. Half the year we are in the dark here and Zhelikov had sought with his ‘worker’ apes to improve their darkness vision, but without success.

  So, an extraordinary opportunity had opened up: to copy what we could of this new/old visual system.

  Our own system is barely understood to this day. We know that the brain receives its signals in symbolic form − the optical cells sending thousands of digits of information that the receptors can decode and assemble. But the method of transmission, the network of transmission, the receptor areas themselves, were by no means clear.

  These receptor areas (set beside our criminals’) were altogether clearer; as were the visual channels, making the network as a whole more comprehensible.

  The network; although not its functioning.

  Bodies function, as you know, largely by electro-chemical reaction – the optical system primarily by photo-chemical reaction. But its further circuits were little understood.

  With the foetus’s brain we had so well-defined a circuit (and of a night-sighted primate!) that we were almost beside ourselves. The aim of course was to improve our apes: by providing more channels and larger receptors in the brain. This was certainly possible – for here nature had done it – and plenty of capacity still exists in the brain.

  We set about it in this way.

  (All our genetic work is this way.)

  First, trials are conducted on the lower animals, rats, mice, etc. Required portions are excised and later replaced, to establish the surgery and its effect. The effect of removed visual ganglia is blindness, and it took many animals before we learned the technique of reinsertion. Then we moved on to the brain; the receptor areas here yet more complex.

  It took us seven years, until 1985, to get a result. But in that year we got a good one – a 20 per cent visual improvement with test rats. Then we moved to the apes.

  This was an altogether more critical undertaking.

  The trained animals were valuable, their brains larger, the visual ganglia more complex. Also they were semi-human, able to express themselves. Even for the first stage – the trial removals and reinsertions – two full-scale operations were necessary; with recuperation after each one, and eyes kept bandaged until after the boost to restore vision.

  The technique of boosting we had perfected with the rats; and vision will not resume without it. The visual chain is in fact a chemical chain. Some of its reactions code the signal, others open gateways for it, others transmit it. But whatever they do (and they all do it at once) they do electro-chemically. The strip we excise is therefore a chemical strip. And this strip will not on reinsertion resume function by itself.

  It needs a boost, from a crystal-regulated frequency (as quartz in a watch or silicon in a computer.) Light will not do the job and can produce permanent blindness, for the network must be intact and operational before the eyes are allowed to work.

  The boost is delivered by terminal to the skull, the animals’ eyes remaining sealed; and by means of instruments we observe the effects on a screen.

  The frequency we use is a ‘harmonic’ (the so-called doppelganger or ghost echo of a frequency); and to get this echo we vibrate two crystals simultaneously.

  With the rats this method had won us a straight run of twenty successes, and in every case the screen view had been the same. Initially the network greys out, although with continued seething (the molecular activity you see through an electron microscope), and after an interval of ten to fifteen minutes its outline returns, the activity of the network now at ‘dream level’ – the animal not seeing, for its eyes are closed, but with the inserted material accepted and the system restored.

  With our first ape a very different story – in
fact a disaster, and the reason you are here.

  No grey-out but a white-out. An instant flash, spreading like lightning through the network. Followed by black-out, and from the animal a cry of pain. The pain was momentary, and he told us so. But the network was now blank, neither greying nor seething, the whole circuit dead.

  This was catastrophic. We had no idea what to do. The harmonic was a safe one – our specialist had selected a band of ten – and this band we had used on the rats.

  We watched the screen for one hour, two. We tested the crystals, remeasured the harmonic, checked all the instruments. Nothing was wrong. But something was wrong. We returned to our records, and there found what was wrong.

  The selected band had been used on the rats, but not this harmonic. (The harmonics that we generate, I should explain, do not exist in nature. They are modulations, calculated mathematically.)

  Our specialist had selected from the lower end of the band; these harmonics were the ghosts of ghosts. And the one just used was the lowest, the most remote from its original frequency. With the rats we had started from the top; it had been unnecessary to try so far down the scale.

  Needless to say we tried then. We tried twelve rats – normal rats, with normal vision – and blinded each one. Then we tried the other harmonics in the band. No ill effects. Just this one, a freak, we had used on the ape, and had blinded it.

  Blinded rats, of course, are destroyed. But we could not destroy an ape; the trained animals are still of use. In this case, after a few days, we simply removed the bandages and put the animal (his name was Anton) on an instructional course. He was in no discomfort but needed eye patches, for the muscles controlling blinking had also been damaged.

  And now a very strange incident occurred.

  At that time the animals were engaged in a simulated post-nuclear exercise. They were required to enter a maze, perform a number of actions, return by a different route and then report what they had done. Anton was participating in this (for blind animals could be useful after such accidents). He emerged from the maze and reported, and it took his trainer some moments to observe that he had taken off his eye patches. He asked why he had done this and Anton replied that he saw better without.