“A keepsake,” I said, wondering aloud. “Something he was allowed to bring with him from the future. Something as ancient as the world he was aiming for. Something that must have been centuries old when he began his journey.”
“Maybe,” Galenka said.
I closed my own fist around the musical box. It was a simple human trinket, the most innocent of machines. I wanted to take my gloves off, to find out what it played. But I wondered if I already knew.
A little later the chrome tide came to wash us away again.
THE MEN ARE waiting next to Nesha’s apartment when we return with her bread. I never saw their Zil, if that was how they arrived. There are three of them. They all have heavy black coats on, with black leather gloves. The two burlier men—whose faces mean nothing to me—have hats on, the brims dusted with snow. The third man isn’t wearing a hat, although he has a pale blue scarf around his throat. He’s thinner than the others, with a shaven, bullet-shaped head and small round glasses that bestow a look somewhere between professorial and ascetic. Something about his face is familiar: I feel that we’ve known each other somewhere before. He’s taking a cigarette out of a packet when our eyes lock. It’s the same contraband variety I used to buy my ride into town.
“This is my fault,” I say to Nesha. “I didn’t mean to bring these men here.”
“We’ve come to take you back to the facility,” the bald man says, pausing to ignite the cigarette from a miniature lighter. “Quite frankly, I didn’t expect to find you alive. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to find you.”
“Do I know you?”
“Of course you know me. I’m Doctor Grechko. We’ve spent a lot of time together at the facility.”
“I’m not going back. You know that by now.”
“I beg to differ.” He takes a long drag on the cigarette. “You’re coming with us. You’ll thank me for it eventually.” He nods at one of the hatted men, who reaches into his coat pocket and extracts a syringe with a plastic cap on the needle. The man pinches the cap between his gloved fingers and removes it. He holds the syringe to eye level, taps away bubbles and presses the plunger to squirt out a few drops of whatever’s inside.
The railing along the balcony is very low. There’s snow on the ground nine floors below, but it won’t do much to cushion my fall. I’ve done what I came to do, so what’s to prevent me from taking my own life, in preference to being taken back to the facility?
“I’m sorry I brought this on you,” I tell Nesha, and make to lift myself over the railing. My resolve at that moment is total. I’m surrendered to the fall, ready for white annihilation. I want the music in my head to end. Death and silence, for eternity.
But I’m not fast enough, or my resolve isn’t as absolute as I imagine. The other hatted man rushes to me and locks his massive hand around my arm. The other one moves closer with the syringe.
“Not just yet,” Doctor Grechko—if that was his name—says. “He’s safe now, but keep a good grip on him.”
“What happens to Nesha?” I ask.
Grechko looks at her, then shakes his head. “There’s no harm in talking to a madwoman, Georgi. Whatever you may have told her, she’ll confuse it with all that rubbish she already believes. No worse than telling secrets to a dog. And even if she didn’t, no one would listen to her. Really, she isn’t worth our inconvenience. You, on the other hand, are extraordinarily valuable to us.”
Something’s wrong. I feel an icebreaker cutting through my brain.
“My name isn’t Georgi.”
Doctor Grechko nods solemnly. “I’m afraid it is. No matter what you may currently believe, you are Doctor Georgi Kizim. You’re even wearing his coat. Look in the pocket if you doubt me—there’s a good chance you still have his security pass.”
“No,” I insist. “I am not Georgi Kizim. I know that man, but I’m not him. I just took his coat, so that I could escape. I am the cosmonaut, Dimitri Ivanov. I was on the Tereshkova. I went into the Matryoshka.”
“No,” Doctor Grechko corrects patiently. “You are not the cosmonaut. He was—is, to a degree—your patient. You were assigned to treat him, to learn what you could. Unfortunately, the protocol was flawed. We thought we could prevent a repeat of what happened with Yakov, the bleed-over of personality and memory, but we were wrong. You began to identify too strongly with your patient, just as Doctor Malyshev began to identify with Yakov. We still don’t understand the mechanism, but after the business with Malyshev we thought we’d put in enough safeguards to stop it happening twice. Clearly, we were wrong about that. Even with Ivanov in his vegetative state…”
“I am Ivanov,” I say, but with a chink of doubt opening inside me.
“Maybe you should look in the coat,” Nesha says.
My fingers numb with cold, I dig into the pocket until I touch the hard edge of his security pass. The hatted man’s still keeping a good hold on my arm. I pass the white plastic rectangle to Nesha. She squints, holding it at arm’s length, studying the little hologram.
“It’s you,” she says. “There’s no doubt.”
I shake my head. “There’s been a mistake. Our files mixed up. I’m not Doctor Kizim. I remember being on that ship, everything that happened.”
“Only because you spent so much time in his presence,” Grechko says, not without compassion. “After Dimitri fell into the intermittent vegetative state, we considered the risks of contamination to be significantly reduced. We relaxed the safeguards.”
“I am not Doctor Kizim.”
“You’ll come out of it, Georgi—trust me. We got Malyshev back in the end. It was traumatic, but eventually his old personality resurfaced. Now he remembers being Yakov, but he’s in no doubt as to his core identity. We can do the same for you, I promise. Just come back with us, and all will be well.”
“Look at the picture,” Nesha says, handing the pass back to me.
I do. My eyes take a moment to focus—the snow and the cold are making them water—but when they do there’s no real doubt. I’m looking at the same face that I’d seen in the mirror in Nesha’s apartment. Cleaned and tidied, but still me.
“I’m scared.”
“Of course you’re scared. Who wouldn’t be?” Grechko stubs out the cigarette and extends a gloved hand. “Will you come with us now, Georgi? So that we can start helping you?”
“I have no choice, do I?”
“It’s for the best.”
Seeing that I’m going to come without a struggle, Grechko nods at the man with the syringe to put it back in his pocket. The other hatted man gives me an encouraging shove, urging me to start walking along the landing to the waiting elevator. I resist for a moment, looking back at Nesha.
I crave some last moment of connection with the woman I’ve risked my life to visit.
She nods once.
I don’t think Grechko or the other men see her do it. Then she pulls her hand from her pocket and shows me the musical box, before closing her fist on it as if it’s the most secret and precious thing in the universe. As if recalling something from a dream, I remember another hand placing that musical box in mine. It’s the hand of a cosmonaut, urging me to do something before he slips into coma.
I have no idea what’s going to happen to either of us now. Nesha’s old, but she could easily have decades of life ahead of her. If she’s ever doubted that she was right, she now has concrete proof. A life redeemed, if it needed redeeming. They’ll still find every excuse to humiliate her at every turn, given the chance.
But she’ll know with an iron certainty they’re wrong, and she’ll also know that everything they stand for will one day turn to dust.
Small consolation, but you take what you can get.
“Am I really Doctor Kizim?” I ask Grechko, as the elevator takes us down.
“You know it in your heart.”
I stroke my face, measuring it against the memories I feel to be real. “I was so sure.”
“That’s the way it happe
ns. But it’s a good sign that you’re already questioning these fundamental certainties.”
“The cosmonaut?” I ask, suddenly unable to mention him by name.
“Yes?”
“You mentioned him being in an intermittent vegetative state.”
“He’s been like that for a while. I’m surprised you don’t remember. He just lies there and watches us. Watches us and hums, making the same tune over and over again. One of us recognised it eventually.” With only mild interest Grechko adds: “That piece by Prokofiev, the famous one?”
“Troika,” I say, as the door opens. “Yes, I know it well.”
They take me out into the snow, to the Zil that must have been waiting out of sight. The man with the syringe walks ahead and opens the rear passenger door, beckoning me into it as if I’m some high-ranking party official. I get in without causing a scene. The Zil’s warm and plush and silent.
As we speed away from Star City, I press my face against the glass and watch the white world rush by as if in a sleigh-ride.
SLEEPOVER
THEY BROUGHT Gaunt out of hibernation on a blustery day in early spring. He came to consciousness in a steel-framed bed in a grey-walled room that had the economical look of something assembled in a hurry from prefabricated parts. Two people were standing at the foot of the bed, looking only moderately interested in his plight. One of them was a man, cradling a bowl of something and spooning quantities of it into his mouth, as if he was eating his breakfast on the run. He had cropped white hair and the leathery complexion of someone who spent a lot of time outside. Next to him was a woman with longer hair, greying rather than white, and with much darker skin. Like the man she was wiry of build and dressed in crumpled grey overalls, with a heavy equipment belt dangling from her hips.
“You in one piece, Gaunt?” she asked, while her companion spooned in another mouthful of his breakfast. “You compos mentis?”
Gaunt squinted against the brightness of the room’s lighting, momentarily adrift from his memories.
“Where am I?” he asked. His voice came out raw, as if he had been in a loud bar the night before.
“In a room, being woken up,” the woman said. “You remember going under, right?”
He grasped for memories, something specific to hold onto. Green-gowned doctors in a clean surgical theatre, his hand signing the last of the release forms before they plumbed him into the machines. The drugs flooding his system, the utter absence of sadness or longing as he bid farewell to the old world, with all its vague disappointments.
“I think so.”
“What’s your name?” the man asked.
“Gaunt.” He had to wait a moment for the rest of it to come. “Marcus Gaunt.”
“Good,” he said, smearing a hand across his lips. “That’s a positive sign.”
“I’m Clausen,” the woman said. “This is Da Silva. We’re your wake-up team. You remember Sleepover?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Think hard, Gaunt,” she said. “It won’t cost us anything to put you back under, if you don’t think you’re going to work out for us.”
Something in Clausen’s tone convinced him to work hard at retrieving the memory. “The company,” he said. “Sleepover was the company. The one that put me under. The one that put everyone under.”
“Brain cells haven’t mushed on us,” Da Silva said.
Clausen nodded, but showed nothing in the way of jubilation in him having got the answer right. It was more that he’d spared the two of them a minor chore, that was all. “I like the way he says ‘everyone’. Like it was universal.”
“Wasn’t it?” Da Silva asked.
“Not for him. Gaunt was one of the first under. Didn’t you read his file?”
Da Silva grimaced. “Sorry. Got sidetracked.”
“He was one of the first two hundred thousand,” Clausen said. “The ultimate exclusive club. What did you call yourselves, Gaunt?”
“The Few,” he said. “It was an accurate description. What else were we going to call ourselves?”
“Lucky sons of bitches,” Clausen said.
“Do you remember the year you went under?” Da Silva asked. “You were one of the early ones, it must’ve been sometime near the middle of the century.”
“Twenty fifty-eight. I can tell you the exact month and day if you wish. Maybe not the time of day.”
“You remember why you went under, of course,” Clausen said.
“Because I could,” Gaunt said. “Because anyone in my position would have done the same. The world was getting better, it was coming out of the trough. But it wasn’t there yet. And the doctors kept telling us that the immortality breakthrough was just around the corner, year after the year. Always just out of reach. Just hang on in there, they said. But we were all getting older. Then the doctors said that while they couldn’t give us eternal life just yet, they could give us the means to skip over the years until it happened.” Gaunt forced himself to sit up in the bed, strength returning to his limbs even as he grew angrier at the sense that he was not being treated with sufficient deference, that—worse—he was being judged. “There was nothing evil in what we did. We didn’t hurt anyone or take anything away from anyone else. We just used the means at our disposal to access what was coming to us anyway.”
“Who’s going to break it to him?” Clausen asked, looking at Da Silva.
“You’ve been sleeping for nearly a hundred and sixty years,” the man said. “It’s April, twenty-two seventeen. You’ve reached the twenty-third century.”
Gaunt took in the drab mundanity of his surroundings again. He had always had some nebulous idea of the form his wake-up would take and it was not at all like this.
“Are you lying to me?”
“What do you think?” asked Clausen.
He held up his hand. It looked, as near as he could remember, exactly the way it had been before. The same age-spots, the same prominent veins, the same hairy knuckles, the same scars and loose, lizardy skin.
“Bring me a mirror,” he said, with an ominous foreboding.
“I’ll save you the bother,” Clausen said. “The face you’ll see is the one you went under with, give or take. We’ve done nothing to you except treat superficial damage caused by the early freezing protocols. Physiologically, you’re still a sixty-year-old man, with about twenty or thirty years ahead of you.”
“Then why have you woken me, if the process isn’t ready?”
“There isn’t one,” Da Silva said. “And there won’t be, at least not for a long, long time. Afraid we’ve got other things to worry about now. Immortality’s the least of our problems.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will, Gaunt,” Clausen said. “Everyone does in the end. You’ve been preselected for aptitude, anyway. Made your fortune in computing, didn’t you?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “You worked with artificial intelligence, trying to make thinking machines.”
One of the vague disappointments hardened into a specific, life-souring defeat. All the energy he had put into one ambition, all the friends and lovers he had burned up along the way, shutting them out of his life while he focused on that one white whale.
“It never worked out.”
“Still made you a rich man along the way,” she said.
“Just a means of raising money. What does it have to do with my revival?”
Clausen seemed on the verge of answering his question before something made her change her mind. “Clothes in the bedside locker: they should fit you. You want breakfast?”
“I don’t feel hungry.”
“Your stomach will take some time to settle down. Meantime, if you feel like puking, do it now rather than later. I don’t want you messing up my ship.”
He had a sudden lurch of adjusting preconceptions. The prefabricated surroundings, the background hum of distant machines, the utilitarian clothing of his wake-up team: perhaps he was aboard some kind of spacecraft, sailing
between the worlds. The twenty-third century, he thought. Time enough to establish an interplanetary civilisation, even if it only extended as far as the solar system.
“Are we in a ship now?”
“Fuck, no,” Clausen said, sneering at his question. “We’re in Patagonia.”
HE GOT DRESSED, putting on underwear, a white t-shirt and over that the same kind of grey overalls as his hosts had been wearing. The room was cool and damp and he was glad of the clothes once he had them on. There were lace-up boots that were tight around the toes, but otherwise serviceable. The materials all felt perfectly mundane and commonplace, even a little frayed and worn in places. At least he was clean and groomed, his hair clipped short and his beard shaved. They must have freshened him up before bringing him to consciousness.
Clausen and Da Silva were waiting in the windowless corridor outside the room. “Spect you’ve got a ton of questions,” Clausen said. “Along the lines of, why am I being treated like shit rather than royalty? What happened to the rest of the Few, what is this fucked up, miserable place, and so on.”
“I presume you’re going to get round to some answers soon enough.”
“Maybe you should tell him the deal now, up front,” Da Silva said. He was wearing an outdoor coat now and had a zip-up bag slung over his shoulder.
“What deal?” Gaunt asked.
“To begin with,” Clausen said, “you don’t mean anything special to us. We’re not impressed by the fact that you just slept a hundred and sixty years. It’s old news. But you’re still useful.”
“In what way?”
“We’re down a man. We run a tight operation here and we can’t afford to lose even one member of the team.” It was Da Silva speaking now; although there wasn’t much between them, Clausen had the sense that he was the slightly more reasonable one of the duo, the one who wasn’t radiating quite so much naked antipathy. “Deal is, we train you up and give you work. In return, of course, you’re looked after pretty well. Food, clothing, somewhere to sleep, whatever medicine we can provide.” He shrugged. “It’s the deal we all took. Not so bad when you get used to it.”
Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds Page 65