Wolfhound Century: Radiant State Part 22

'Special handling, Gholl,' said Khyrbysk. 'In the circ.u.mstances? Don't you think?'

Gholl accepted the Director's judgement was sound, as ever.

Special handling. Seven grams of lead in the back of the head and the body dumped in the Cleansing Lake to dissolve.

'But retain a sample of body tissue, Gholl,' said Khyrbysk. 'Mikkala Avril had promising qualities. Death is temporary and she will be recalled, not once but millions of times, to walk for ever in perfected forms under countless distant suns.'

It was a comforting thought. The Director was not a harsh man. He looked to the radiance of humankind to come, and in dark days he lived by that.

'You understand, Director, I will have to report back to Colonel Rond?' said Gholl. 'I must do that.'

'Naturally.'

'You need not be concerned; the colonel is always discreet.'

7.

The 28th Division (Engineers), guided by Lieutenant Arkady Rett, arrives at the edge of the living angel's cold-burning anti-life skirt where the trees are dying. They build walkways across the cold smouldering embers, the flimsy crusts of ground. The red hill advances and they retreat before it. Observations suggest it is picking up speed.

The commanding officer wrestles with many practical problems. Prolonged contact with the hill's margin is troublesome. The metal of his machines grows weak and brittle, and his people fall sick. Their limbs and faces and bodies acquire strange patches of smooth darkness. Their extremities grow numb, whiten and begin to crumble. An hour a day is the safe limit, all they can stand. But the commanding officer makes progress. Now he has lines of supply, he puts the sappers on rotation. The excavation gear arrives. They reach the lower slopes and begin to dig.

Corporal Fallun, who refused an order and abandoned his comrades, was never seen again. Rett didn't find him on his way back, and Fallun is a.s.sumed to be lost in the woods. The commanding officer cla.s.sifies him a deserter and thinks of him no more. Fallun's comrade, Private Soldier Senkov, who returned with Rett but never regained his senses and babbles relentlessly, never sleeping, is sent back out of the forest on a returning barge. He did his duty and the commanding officer recommends a sanatorium cure.

A piece of Archangel rides Senkov's mind down the river and out of the trees. Quiet and surrept.i.tious, all hugger-mugger, he slips the green wall and squeezes a tenuous blurt of himself through the gap into Rizhin world.

It is the merest thread of Archangel. A wisp of sentience. But he is through. He inhales deeply and shouts defiance at the sky.

Thisthis!this is what he needs!

The impossible slow forest behind the green wall was killing him. There was no time there. There was no history.

But he finds Rizhin world different now. Hard. Quick. Lonely. There is no place for living angels here: the whole world stinks of barrenness and death.

Desperately he scrabbles for purchase and purpose.

Archangel! Archangel! I am beautiful and I am here!

And a tiny distant voice answers from the west. A shred of s.h.i.+ning darkness from the s.p.a.ce between the stars.

Chapter Nine.

My age, my predatory beast who will look you in the eye and with their own blood mend the centuries' smashed-up vertebrae?

Osip Mandelstam (18911938)

1.

Vasilisk the bodyguard, six foot three and deeply tanned and sleek with sun oil, naked but for sky-blue trunks, runs five springing steps on his toes, takes to the air and executes a long perfect dive. Enters the pool with barely a splash, swims twelve easy lengths, hauls out in a single smooth movement and lies stretched out on a towelblue towel laid on perfect white poolside tilesin the warmth of the morning sun.

He lies on his back with eyes half closed, arms spread wide to embrace the sun, the beautiful killer at rest, empty of thought, breathing the scent of almonds. His slicked yellow hair glistens, his firm honey-brown stomach is beaded with water jewels. Through damp eyelashes he watches blue s.h.i.+mmer.

The pool is filled with water and sunlight. The surface glitters.

A warm breeze stirs the fine pale hairs on his chest.

A dragonfly, lapis lazuli, fat as his little finger, flashes out of the rose bushes, disturbed by a quiet footfall in the garden. The c.h.i.n.k of gla.s.s against gla.s.s.

A housemaid with a tray of iced tea.

Vasilisk the bodyguard, blond and beautiful, half asleep, listens without intent to the bees among the mulberries, the shriek and laughter from the tennis court, the pock pock pock of the ball, the sway of trees on the hillside that sounds like the sea.

The sky overhead is a bowl of blue. Brushstroke cloud-wisps. Vasilisk closes his eyes and watches the drift of warm orange light across translucent skin.

Far away down the mountain a car drops a gear, engine racing to attack a steep climb. The sound is tiny with distance.

2.

Lukasz Kistler's sleek ZorKi Zavod limousine took the corniche along the Karima coast, purring effortlessly, a steady sixty-five, glinting under the southern sun. Two and a half tons of engine power, bulging wheel arches, running boards, mirrors and fins.

The road was a dynamited ledge, hairpins and sudden precarious fallings-away. The mountains of the Silion Ma.s.sif plunged to the edge of the sea: bare cliffs and steep slopes of black cypress; sun-sharpened jagged ridges and crisp high peaks, snow-capped even in summer. And always to the right and hundreds of feet below, the white strip of sand and the sea itself, discovered by glittering light, a tranquil and brilliant horizonless blue.

This was the favoured country: sun-warmed Karima rich in climate and soil, with its own little private ocean. Karima of the islands and the hidden valleys. Karima of the flowering trees, hibiscus, tea plantations, vineyards and orange groves. Karima of the white-columned sanatoriums in the wooded hills and on the curving quiet of the bays. Rest-cure Karima. Union-funded convalescent homes for the paragons of sacrificial labour in olive and lemon and watermelon country: the bed-ridden propped under rugs in their windows to watch the sea, the ambulatory at backgammon and skat under striped awnings. Secluded private hotels with balcony restaurants (LIST ROUBLES ONLY ACCEPTED). Resort Karima. Twenty-mile coastal ribbons of pastel-blue concrete dormitories for the ten-day family vacations of seven-day-week leading workers. War never touched Karima. The Archipelago never got there, neither bombers nor troops nor cruisers nor submarines. Civil war was fought elsewhere. Karima was never hurt at all.

The munic.i.p.al authorities of Karima made the most of the annual Dacha Summer of the Central Committee. The road to Rizhin's Krasnaya Polyana, Dacha Number Nine at Zusovo, was remade fresh each year: the velvet s.h.i.+mmer of asphalt, the gleam of undented steel crash barriers.

The limousine tyres hissed quietly. The driver dropped a gear and slowed into a hairpin switchback, and the turn brought Kistler suddenly face to face with the biggest portrait of Papa Rizhin he'd ever seen: two hundred feet high, surely, and the benevolent smiling countenance outlined with scarlet neon tubes, burning bright against the cliff face even in the noonday light.

ALL KARIMA LOYALLY WELCOMES OUR GENERALISSIMUS!.

Lukasz Kistler had his own dacha, a white-gabled lodge in the Koromantine style tucked in among black cypresses a mile or so from Krasnaya Polyana. They all didGribov, Yas.h.i.+na and the restall except Rond, who travelled with his staff and had rooms in Rizhin's place. No vacation for the a.s.siduous Colonel Hunder Rond.

Studded timber gates opened at Kistler's approach. The car entered a rough-walled unlit tunnel cut through solid mountain and ten minutes later emerged into sunlight and the courtyard of Krasnaya Polyana, a sprawling low green mansion on the brink of a sheer cliff.

The sun-roofed verandas of Dacha Number Nine looked out across the sea. Some previous occupant had planted the gardens with mulberry, cherry, almonds and acacia. Tame flightless cranes and ornamental ducks for the boating lake. Rizhin had added tennis courts, skittles, a shooting range. Papa Rizhin holidayed seriously.

Kistler found Rizhin himself in expansive mood, rigged out in gleaming white belted tunic and knee-length soft boots, Karima-fas.h.i.+on, paunch neat and round, hair brushed back thick and l.u.s.trous in the suns.h.i.+ne. He seemed taller. Mountain air suited him. The bullet scar on his cheek, still puckered and raw, gave his long pockmarked face a permanent lopsided grin. A show of white ivory teeth.

'Lukasz! You came!' Rizhin clapped him on the shoulder. 'So we haven't arrested you yet? Still not shot? Good. Come and see Gribov playing tennis in his jacket and boots, it's the most comical thingeveryone is laughing. But he wins, Lukasz! He plays like a firebrand. What a man this Gribov is.'

They linked arms like brothers and walked around the edge of the lake.

'Zorgenfrey came up yesterday from Anaklion,' said Rizhin, 'and completely fixed my teeth. No pain at all. Why can't we have such dentists in Mirgorod? The Karima sanatoriums get the best of everything. Yet he tells me he can't get his daughter into Rudnev-Possochin. He wants her to study medicine but the university puts up no end of obstructions. We must do something there. Talk to them for me, Lukasz. Iron the wrinkles out.'

'Leave it with me, Osip,' said Kistler. 'I'll take care of it.'

There were twenty-four at dinner: the Central Committee, Rizhin's bodyguards Bauker and Vasilisk, uncomfortable and self-conscious ('Come,' said Rizhin. 'We're all family here.') and silent, watchful Hunder Rond. They ate roasted lamb in a thick citrus sauce. Sliced tomatoes, cherries and pears. Red wine and grappa. Rizhin kept the gla.s.ses filled, and after dinner there was singing and dancing.

Bauker and Vasilisk pushed the table to the side of the room and rolled back the carpet. Rizhin presided over the gramophone, playing arias from light operas and ribald comic songs. He led the singing with his fine tenor voice. The bodyguards circulated, refilling gla.s.ses.

'Dance!' said Rizhin. 'Dance!' He put on 'Waltz of the Southern Lakes' three times in a row, loud as the machine would go. The men danced with other men or jigged on the spot alone. Yas.h.i.+na, tall and gaunt, twirled on her spiky heels, arms upraised, face a mask of serious concentration. Gribov went to take her in his arms, and when she ignored him he pulled out a handkerchief and danced with it the country way, stamping and shouting like the peasant he used to be. He lunged at Kistler, breathing grappa fumes. Kistler ducked out of his way.

'Osip!' shouted Gribov. 'Osip! Put on the one with dogs!'

'What's this about dogs?' said Marina Trakl, the new Secretary for Agriculture, red-faced. She was very drunk. 'Are there dogs? I adore dogs!'

'These are dogs that sing,' said Gribov. He started to dance with her.

'Then let us have singing dogs!' Marina Trakl grinned, s.n.a.t.c.hing Gribov's handkerchief and waving it in the air.

'Of course,' said Rizhin. 'Whatever you say.' He changed the record to Bertil Hofgarten's 'Ball of the Six Merry Dogs'. When the dogs came in on the second chorus Rizhin started hopping and yelping himself, face twisted in a lopsided beatific smile. Kistler hadn't seen Rizhin so full of drink. Normally he left the aquavit and the grappa to the others and watched.

'Come on, you fellows!' called Rizhin, dancing. 'Bark with me! Bark!'

One by one, led by Gribov, the members of the Central Committee pumped their elbows and put back their heads and howled like hounds and b.i.t.c.hes at the broken moons.

'Yip! Yip! Yip! A-ruff ruff ruff! Wah-hoo!'

'Come on, Rond!' yelled Rizhin. 'You too!'

Peller, the Secretary for Nationalities, slipped on spilled food and fell flat on his back, legs stuck out, laughing. He wriggled on his back in the mess.

'Yap! Yap! Yap!'

When the music stopped Gribov slumped exhausted and sweaty on a couch next to Kistler, undid his jacket, put back his head and began to snore. Kistler jabbed him when Rizhin, face flushed, eyes suddenly on fire, drained his gla.s.s and banged the table. It was time for Rizhin's speech.

'Look at ourselves, my friends,' he began. 'What are we?'

He paused for an answer. Somebody made a m.u.f.fled joke. A few people laughed.

'What was that? I didn't hear,' said Rizhin, but no one spoke. The atmosphere was suddenly tense.

'I'll tell you what we are,' Rizhin continued. 'Nothing. We are nothing. Look at this planet of ours: a transitory little speck in a universe filled with millions upon millions of far greater bodies.' He gestured towards the ceiling. 'Out there, above us, there are countless suns in countless galaxies, and each sun has its own planets. What is any one of us? What is a man or a woman? We are, in actual and literal truth, nothing. Our bodies are collections of vibrating particles separated by emptiness. The very stuff and substance of our world is nothing but light and energy held in precarious patterns of balance, and mostly it is nothing at all. We are accidental temporary a.s.semblages in the middle of a wider emptiness that is pa.s.sing through us even now, at this very moment, even as we pa.s.s through it. Emptiness pa.s.sing through emptiness, each utterly unaffected by the other. The energies of the universe pa.s.s through us like Kharulin rays, as if we are not here at all. We are our own graves walking. We are handfuls of dust.'

Several faces were staring at Rizhin with open dismay. Gribov leaned over in a fug of grappa to whisper in Kistler's ear, 'What the f.u.c.k's the man talking about? What's all this crazy s.h.i.+t?'

Kistler winced. 'You're too loud,' he hissed. 'For f.u.c.k's sake, keep it down.'

Every time Kistler glanced at Hunder Rond the man was watching him. Their eyes locked for a second, then Rond turned away.

One day, little prince, thought Kistler. One day I'll snap your f.u.c.king thumbs.

'But what a gift this nothingness is, my friends!' Rizhin was saying. 'It is the gift of immensity! Once we see that this world, this planet, is nothing, we realise what our future truly holds. Not one world, but all the worlds. The universe. The stars like sand on the beach. The stars like water, the oceans we sail. Our present world is trivial: it is merely the first intake of breath at the commencement of the endless sentence of futurity.'

Rizhin poured himself another gla.s.s, the clink of bottle against tumbler the only sound in the room. He fixed them with burning eyes. It was Rizhin the poet, Rizhin the artist of history, speaking now.

'I have seen this future! Red rockets, curvaceous, climbing on parabolas of steam and fire. making the sky seem small and wintry-blue. Because the sky is small. We can take it in our fists! I have seen these rockets of the future rising into s.p.a.ce, carrying a new human type to their chosen grounds. Individuals whose moral daring makes them vibrate at a speed that turns motion invisible. There are new forms in the future, my friends, and they need to be filled with blood. We are the first of a new humankind. Where death is temporary a million deaths mean nothing.'

After the dinner and the dancing, Rizhin led the way to his cinema. Blue armchairs in pairs, a table between each pair: mineral water, more grappa, chocolate and cigarettes. Rugs on the grey carpet. They watched an illicit gangster film, imported from the Archipelago: men in baggy suits with wide lapels fought over a stolen treasure and a dancing girl with silver hair. Then came a Mirgorod Studios production, Courageous Battles.h.i.+p! Torpedoed in the Yarmskoye Sea, a hundred s.h.i.+pwrecked sailors line an iceberg to sing a song of sadness, a requiem for their lost s.h.i.+p.

Halfway through the film, Rizhin leaned across and gripped the elbow of Selenacharsky, secretary for culture.

'Why are the movies of the Archipelago better than ours?'

Selenacharsky turned pale in the semi-darkness and scribbled something in his notebook.

Dawn was coming up when they filed out of the cinema into the scented courtyard. Kistler was going to his car when Rizhin appeared at his elbow.

'I shoot in the mornings at the pistol range. Join me, eh, Lukasz? We'll have a chat, just you and me. Man to man.'

Kistler groaned inwardly. His head hurt.

'Of course, Osip.'

'Good. Nine thirty sharp.'