by Ian Watson
“But we all died! I’m sure I died,” said Anna Aksakova.
“Oh, we did die—make no mistake. But then history altered; and we hadn’t died, after all. What happens now is that we’re going to explode in 1888.”
“But this is mad! What about Tunguska in 1908?”
“Nothing will happen in 1908, Anna—not now. For a while it was reality, then the storm overtook us. The wave caught up. It thrust us further back.”
“Are you saying we’ve changed history?” asked Sasha indignantly.
“Maybe there are a million streams of time? Each one with its own unique history? Some similar, some wildly different. A wave built up behind us, surging against the current. It was a wave of our own causing. Yes, I see it now! The wave burst the banks, and washed us into a different stream—so it could dissipate its energy. Now the streams are settling down again. Soon everything will be flowing the right way. Just as soon as we hit the 1880s.”
Yuri cackled. “What does it matter when we explode? Nobody paid much attention in 1908. You can bet on even less attention in the 1880s.”
“So we won’t kill anybody’s grandmother,” Anton said. “Hitler and Stalin will still be born. The October Revolution will happen on time. And we’ll all be born, too, in time—and we’ll fly backwards through time.”
“We will?” Sasha struggled to express herself. “But we know that Tunguska happened in 1908!”
With an effort Yuri Valentin pulled himself together. “Maybe you’re right about there being more than one stream of time,” he said to Anton. “But I don’t see how there can be millions of streams, like you just said. Maybe there are just two—with one main difference between them: the date when we crash. And that’s because … it’s us who split time. So in this present stream the wave catches up with us and bounces us back to 1888, cancelling Tunguska-1908. Time rolls by. We all grow up in a Tunguska-1888 framework—and that won’t make a scrap of difference to the world! The Tsiolkovsky sets off again, and the same thing goes wrong—but this time we’re heading for a crash in ’88. Just as we explode, the wave catches up—and bounces us forward into a 1908 framework. Which doesn’t make a scrap of difference to the world …”
“So we set off again?” said Anna. “And travel round the same loop for ever and ever? I can’t bear it.” She began to gasp for breath, as though she wanted to weep but was empty inside.
Yuri tried to reassure her. “It won’t affect us like that, Anna. We die once, then twice—and that’s the end of it, I’m sure.”
“But these two streams must alternate,” said Sasha. “For ever and for ever. Over and over again. Or else the pattern wouldn’t work. The streams are mutual—they’re braided together. Your 1888-explosion world has to be followed by a 1908-explosion world. That one has to be followed by an 1888-world. Ad infinitum.”
“Yes, but don’t you see, these two possible sequences will always be exactly the same, no matter how often each is repeated? They’ll each of them be identical in themselves. It’s impossible to distinguish between identical events that occupy the same patch of space-time—so we can’t be conscious of any repetition. Look, our successors—that’s the best way to think of them—our successors will live out their 1888-framework lives, and they’ll die in 1908. Then their successors, who’ll be identical to us, will live out their own lives—and they’ll be us. I’ll be saying exactly what I’m saying now. It will be me. It is, present tense. They aren’t really our successors—they’re us.”
Anton had been fiddling with his moustache. He chuckled. “Okay, this can’t be the first time round, can it? It must be happening an infinite number of identical times—and it’s never caused me grief before! You could even say we’ve become immortal, in a funny sort of way. Not that I ever noticed it before … Well done, Yuri, lad. What year is it, by the way?”
“1895. You aren’t surely going to tell the crew, again!”
“Doubt if I could explain in time! If they’re immortal, they’re immortal. And right now they must think they’ve been reprieved. It’s like Dostoevsky in front of the firing squad. It would be too cruel to set them up again. Anyway …” He hesitated.
“Anyway,” said Sasha—and she was shivering, with goose bumps on her skin, “we’ve no guarantee that we’ll die, and an end of it, this time either. Maybe there’s a closed loop between 1908 and 1888. Maybe this is the first time, and we just bounce back and forth from now on, altering reality and altering it back again—because the Cosmic Censorship won’t allow reality to be altered. Maybe we’ll die and die and die forever!”
Anton leaned over to dig her in the ribs. “Look on the bright side, darling! We’d really be immortal then, and know all about it. So we’d get very very wise—apart from the slight distraction of being killed every ten minutes or so. They say you can get used to anything.”
“No, it can’t be that way,” said Yuri. “The whole of history from the 1880s on has to be involved. I’ll tell you why: just before I died I saw images of events and personalities streaming past me.”
“Ah, you as well?”
“Those images were from the whole period right up to our own day. That’s how far the braid extends.”
“I saw that too,” said Sasha. “And I saw a face, as well—just at the very end, before I found myself alive again.”
“Yes, the face,” agreed Yuri. “I saw the face.”
“I didn’t,” said Anna sharply. “I didn’t see any history either!”
“That’s because you broke your neck before we exploded,” said Anton. “Can’t expect to see things when you break your neck. So you saw your own face, Yuri, did you?”
“No! Of course not. I saw yours.”
“So did I,” said Sasha. “But it wasn’t quite your face—there was something different about it, as if it was your twin brother’s face.”
“Only, I don’t have a twin brother… Or do I? Maybe that was Anton Astrov, Mark 2, in the Tunguska-’88 framework—waiting in the wings?”
Ionisation effects suddenly enflamed all the viewscreens, like jets of gas in burning ovens …
“And there was another face behind that face. It was wearing old-fashioned spectacles—what did they call them?” Sasha mimed.
“Pince-nez,” said Yuri. “That’s right: there was one face wearing another face that was almost the same!”
“Flux-field off!” This time Anna hunched, to protect her neck …
Thirty-two
BY NOON NEXT day they had crossed the headwaters of the Makirta only fifteen or so versts from its source. Here the stream was shallow enough to ford without a soaking, though the waters were still sufficiently angry to stop ice from crusting them over. The bitter wind of yesterday had slackened to a chilly breeze.
As they toiled up the slope of Khladni Ridge six versts beyond the Makirta, hacking a path through the snow-thatched tangle of tree bones, it became evident that the upper heights of the felled larches had not simply been stripped bare—they had been scorched into the bargain.
Not even a cosmetic covering of snow could conceal this fact. The fist of wind which had felled these giants had been intensely hot. It might well have come from a limb of the sun itself. Many of the trees looked as though their tops had been thrust into a white-hot furnace.
Yet strangely, in the aftermath of this incandescent blow, no forest fire had raged across the wrecked taiga; otherwise all the fallen timber would have been reduced to ash. Maybe the very air had been torn away from the ruined forest, suffocating the flames even as they were lit …
A few times they stopped to sweep snow free from the corpses of these trees so that Lydia could photograph the charring of the wood. Tsiolkovsky would fumble with a pencil in his glove, scribbling hasty calculations of units of heat and energy.
At the top of Khladni Ridge the party halted, in awe at the view from this high point.
They could see tens of versts northward over the hilly terrain, as far as the snow-shrouded hills along
the distant Khushmo River. And all across this huge expanse everything had been burned and blasted to the ground. Eastwards, far away in the lee of some craggy hills, a few patches of forest still survived intact where they had been sheltered from the Shockwave. In the ultimate distance right on the eastern horizon they could make out where the living taiga resumed its march across the land …
With theodolite and binoculars, Mirek and Vershinin took the measure of this terrain of hell; while Lydia used up two whole rolls of her German film.
Presently Ilya Sidorov fell to his knees in the snow as if to pray. He was overwhelmed. “Oh God,” he wailed. “We’re such insignificant creatures! What can a human being ever hope to achieve—in view of this?”
“Get a grip on yourself!” growled Vershinin. “Damn it, you ought to be feeling vindicated. Here it is, and it’s all true.”
Tolya regarded the stooped man with glee. “Place cursed. So is you.”
“Shut your face!” shouted the Baron.
Mirek glanced round from his theodolite. “Do you realize, we aren’t even near the centre yet?” He pointed. “See how all the trees are still lying pretty well parallel, pointing back the way we came? The meteorite must have struck the ground at least another twenty versts north of here. That’s why we can’t see any crater. When we do, it’ll be enormous! The Arizona one won’t be a patch on it. Frankly, I’m surprised the ground isn’t riven into fissures and strewn with fallen boulders even this far away.”
Tsiolkovsky banged his hands together to restore his life-blood to them. “That’s because the spaceship exploded in the sky.” He gestured upwards, “It must have become a little sun for a few seconds. Imagine the power locked in it! Actually, there’s no need to imagine—it can all be calculated.”
“Power?” Sidorov parroted the word. “We’re powerless, and no denying it …”
Tsiolkovsky moved over to comfort him. “Ilya Alexandrovich, we too will learn to unlock the power of the sun!”
Vershinin, the professional soldier, eyed the scientist thoughtfully. “Is that wise? Just look over there: suppose this was Moscow, and your ship had been exploded over it by design—as a weapon. Why, there wouldn’t be a building left standing. And as for people: noble and peasant, merchant and priest alike—all dead in a flash. I tell you, as a military man the very prospect appals me. Where’s the point in valour or discipline in such circumstances? It would mean the end of war as a heroic activity. Your sort of people would be ruling the roost, not officers and nobles.”
“Nobles, indeed!” Anton spoke bitterly. “When every noble spawns a dozen other nobles, sometimes nobility runs quite thin …”
“This is hardly the place for us to fight a duel, Anton Pavlovich! This is the aftermath of battle—waged between the Present and the Future. If Tsiolkovsky has his way, we’ll all be the losers.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be offensive … In many respects I agree with you. I mean, it would be pointless for a chap to do anything for his country—if a Napoleon of the future can simply send one ship to explode over Moscow, and destroy it all in five seconds …”
Sidorov struggled to his feet. “A world without meaning … isn’t the world absurd enough already?”
“Some of the fellows in it are!” snapped Vershinin. “Tell me something, Anton Pavlovich: supposing the world did become as absurd as this, how would you artist chappies go about ennobling the human race, then?”
It appeared to be a serious question, so Anton tried to answer it. “Possibly … artists would invent other worlds—where such things didn’t happen? Possibly they’d even try to live entirely in those worlds, in their imaginations? I don’t know, really … Maybe they might invent worlds which were even worse and more absurd—so that the real world seemed sane by contrast?”
Tsiolkovsky butted in. “Obviously the artists of the future will imagine other worlds! Worlds out in space—beyond the prison of the planet Earth! But you needn’t worry about scientists destroying the world—they’ll only use such power to liberate us.”
Anton nodded. “Science is our best hope.”
“True,” said Vershinin. “It’s just that I look at all this, and wonder …”
“Well, let’s get on with some science!” said Mirek testily. “Take a look at those clouds—I’d say we’re in for another spot of foul weather.”
Tolya began to ramble. “Me, coward. Grandad could climb the sky. Now all knocked flat. Giants are dwarfs. You think it needs brave man to come here? Needs creature. Creature on string.”
They ignored him.
Mirek was perfectly right about another turn in the weather. They encamped below Khladni Ridge that evening in a bitter blizzard, and the whole party crammed into a single tent. To leave the wretched horses exposed out in the open seemed the height of cruelty and insanity—the wind flayed you alive, the moment you set foot outside …
“Is anyone else alive in the whole world?” asked Lydia as they lay jumbled together in the darkness after eating, still too cold to sleep.
“It gets to you, doesn’t it?” murmured Vershinin softly. “You have to be brave—you have to believe in yourself.”
“Your photos will amaze people,” Tsiolkovsky assured her. “They’ll set the world on fire. So will my calculations, for that matter. This place will become a Mecca of science.”
“Mecca, eh?” Anton sighed. “I once thought that Sakhalin ought to be a Russian Mecca—where people made pilgrimages for the good of their souls …”
Sidorov began to whine. “We’ll probably all die out here—”
“We damn well won’t!” thundered Vershinin. “You’ll get back, you wretch, if I have to drag you personally.”
But the wind howled its wolf-pack cry for their deaths, outside. It howled with huge, mindless indifference.
They weren’t able to move during the whole of the next day. Even brief forays outside the tent to perform bodily functions or to try to tend to the horses, proved agonizing. Idiotically, they spent much of their time playing lotto for ten kopeck stakes.
“Eighty-one!” they called out; and “Trente-quatre!” and “Twenty-two!” Lotto wasn’t really such a bad game, once you got used to it. Or perhaps their brains had simply frozen up …
The following day was worse still: a glacier of boredom and immobility and petty quarrelling. They had drunk the last of their vodka, and food stocks were beginning to look very scanty, given the slim hope of shooting any game en route. Some time during the next night one of the horses perished. When they roused themselves to the new day they found the beast lying frozen stiff under a fresh fall of snow.
However, the weather had calmed again: only a few flurries were blowing down from the grey clouds which hung low everywhere. They agreed that it would be madness to climb Khladni Ridge again and strike off northwards in an attempt to reach the centre of the explosion. Another forty versts added to the round trip could well prove suicidal.
So they loaded the two surviving horses—one of which seemed to be on its last legs, in any case—and they started the long trek southwards. Only Mirek really regretted the decision, since he still had to see his great crater; while Tsiolkovsky pointed out fastidiously, citing factors x, y and z, that there couldn’t possibly be one …
Their return of Tolya to the bosom of the Tungusi provided a little respite on the vilest journey ever. Thereafter, it only got worse.
Before they were to struggle into Kezhma thirteen days later, they would have shot first one horse, then the second. The first, because the nag couldn’t go any further—and with it, went one sledge. The second, simply for the sake of food; they had exhausted the small stock of frozen horsemeat from the first. With this second loss, they were forced to abandon the other sledge as well, along with most of their equipment, retaining only one tent, guns, notebooks and Lydia’s camera. And a hunk of horse.
When they did arrive at Kezhma, the Angara River was by now a mass of swiftly moving ice-floes. But because the w
ater hadn’t yet locked solid, they bought a raft. On this they proceeded downstream, in constant danger of overturning.
Three days later they arrived at the trading station of Strelka, near where the Angara flowed out into the Yenisey; and here they rested for a while in exhaustion.
Within a week the Yenisey had frozen through thickly enough to support sleighs. So they bought two sleighs and more horses, and with a bitter wind at their backs, which presently became an Arctic blizzard, they returned to Krasnoyarsk at last down the snowy river, worn out and sick.
Ilya Sidorov was to lose his little fingers and two toes of his right foot to frostbite; while Anton was to lie ill all winter long in Countess Lydia’s house, suffering from haemorrhages and vile gastric upsets due to eating half-cooked horseflesh.
However, in the Spring of 1891 Nikolai Vershinin and Lydia Zelenina would be married; and the Baron would bear her off—with her two daughters and even with the governess—to his new posting at Blagoveschensk on the River Amur just across the water from China. Here he was to command a company of Cossacks—with whom he would be transferred eight years later to Peking to garrison the foreign concession there, just in time for the Boxer Uprising, of which Lydia took some remarkable and heroic photographs during the siege …
And in the Spring of ’91, too, after being best man at their wedding, Anton would return through the mud and floods of the Siberian plain, in the same springless rattletrap in which he had arrived in Krasnoyarsk almost a year earlier. At Perm, before boarding a steamer down the Kama to the Volga, he would manage to sell the carriage—though for a mere sixty roubles, an iniquitous loss …
Thirty-three
BEYOND THE WINDOWS of the Retreat, the sky was clear. Only wispy scarves of cloud still clung to the necks of the mountains. The snowy valley, with its blue blobs of dachas wearing white hats, was sharp and bright again. A snow plough sped along the twisting highway, whisking billows aside. For the fog had quite suddenly evaporated. It was Monday morning.