Survival Game

by Gary Gibson

  I saw the roofs of buildings just a mile or two ahead. There was no sign of any of the moai, the megalithic structures unique to Easter Island: only bare scrubby land segmented here and there by low stone dykes.

  We soon arrived at the outskirts of a settlement that appeared to be long abandoned, judging by the number of shattered windows and collapsed roofs. But as we drove down a long avenue, I saw that some had been repaired and refurbished and showed signs of being occupied. We came to a stop outside a two-storey wood-and-brick house, its garden as overgrown as those of the neighbouring properties, although all its windows and those of the house next door were intact. Two more men in dark suits were waiting by the gate, and Elena muttered something to the effect that they were probably members of the Authority’s intelligence agency.

  We were led inside. The house smelled faintly of mildew and rot, but it was obvious a lot of repair work had been recently undertaken. I could see where rotted floorboards had been replaced, but even though most of the rooms looked to have been replastered, dark stains still showed through the wallpaper here and there. In the kitchen, several bags of groceries – mostly tinned fruit and other non-perishables – had been left along with a stack of what one of the Americans described as ‘orientation manuals’ written in both Russian and English. There were also laptops for each of us to work on for the duration of our stay.

  Kip Mayer, we were told, would arrive that afternoon to carry out our first briefing.

  I flicked through one of the manuals, which appeared to summarize everything the Authority had so far learned regarding the Syllogikos – or the Stage-Builders, as they called them. They had done well enough at deciphering the Syllogikos language, which shared many of the same roots as Greek and other Hellenic tongues. Beyond that, however, nearly all of their conclusions concerning the Syllogikos seemed to be almost wilfully wrong. That was hardly surprising, given that they lacked access to the comparative wealth of data that had long been available to the Crag’s exiled scientists.

  Elena went upstairs to take a look at the three bedrooms, while the rest of us explored the downstairs, followed by the agents. ‘I’ll take the last room on the right for myself,’ Elena announced crisply on her return. ‘Vissarion, Boris, you can share the middle bedroom. Nina, you and Katya can share the remaining room.’

  Nina looked delighted by this news and went upstairs immediately to take a look at our room. I gazed sourly at Elena, who smiled humourlessly back. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who found Nina deeply irritating.

  I went upstairs, to find Nina peering out of the corner window of our room. ‘Isn’t this going to be fun?’ she said, grinning merrily as I entered. ‘And what a lovely house!’

  I stared at her, struggling to believe she could find a half-derelict ruin ‘lovely’. I watched as she bounced around the room, pulling out drawers and talking to herself, with all the apparent joy of a child presented with a doll’s house.

  ‘There’s only one bed,’ I noted.

  ‘But it’s huge!’ Nina exclaimed. ‘Plenty of room for both of us.’

  I mentally cursed Elena. To add insult to injury, Boris and Vissarion’s room, which I had passed at the top of the stairs, contained two large and entirely separate beds.

  There was little I could do, so I dropped my rucksack next to a dust-laden dresser and filled a drawer with my meagre luggage: a book of nineteenth-century Georgian poetry by Soselo, some underwear and a few changes of clothes. Nina wittered on about her life in Sebastopol (her Sebastopol, I had to remind myself), while she pulled drawers open and shut, wrinkling her nose at the bedsheets before finally flinging a window open to let in the light.

  Later that morning we congregated in the kitchen to eat and talk about the contents of the orientation manuals. Everyone had changed out of the ridiculous jumpsuits.

  While little in the manuals constituted a revelation for me, this was certainly not the case for the Soviets. Vissarion would occasionally snort with derision as he flicked through his copy, as if suddenly remembering afresh that he was now in an alternate universe, while Boris gazed unblinking out of the window at the perfectly clear sky, his meal half-forgotten.

  Then, at Elena’s instruction, we gathered for our first full briefing in the dining room, which contained only half a dozen plastic chairs and a table. Five of the chairs were arranged on one side, the sixth on the other. Kip Mayer arrived shortly afterwards, in the company of the two agents.

  ‘Isn’t Director Blodel joining us?’ asked Vissarion.

  ‘He’s otherwise engaged,’ said Mayer, smiling stiffly. He took a seat in the chair across from the rest of us. ‘Can I assume you’ve all read the orientation manuals?’

  We all nodded.

  ‘Good. But let’s go over the basic details again to make sure we’re all on the same page.’ He clasped his hands before him on the table. ‘It’s been twenty years since the Third World War, and we all know what came after: nuclear winter, radioactive dust in the atmosphere and a global mean temperature drop that we know now for certain has triggered the start of a new Ice Age. That’s more than enough to make civilization unsustainable in the long term on our own alternate.’

  During my training and embedding in the Soviet team I had learned that, in the alternate from which the Authority and the Soviets came, America and Russia had been locked in a mutual stand-off for decades that finally resolved into nuclear conflict; whereas back in my home alternate of the Novaya Empire’s First Republic, America had never been more than a land of farmers and small impoverished settlements.

  ‘That means,’ he continued, ‘we need to find a viable, safe alternate suitable for a mass evacuation for all our people. It’s going to require a unified, global effort lasting years, if not decades. Helping us figure out how to find the right alternate is the problem you’re all here to help us solve. And that’s going to mean putting all our past differences behind us, regardless of which side of the war we were on.’

  Boris cleared his throat and tapped one finger on the table. ‘For the record, Mr Mayer, the manual contains statements regarding the effects of nuclear winter that are not the considered opinion of the Soviet Union. There are many papers published within the Soviet Union that show this process is most likely far from irreversible.’

  I glanced at Elena and saw the muscles of her jaw grow rigid. ‘I’m not aware of that research,’ Mayer said lightly. ‘But that is not, I assure you, the private opinion of the Soviet leadership, based on my direct personal knowledge. Their views are in line with our own.’

  Boris leaned forward, eyes bulging and jaw thrust out. ‘If not for an act of American aggression that triggered the war in the first place, none of this would ever have been—’

  ‘Boris.’ Elena spoke softly, but with sufficient steel in her voice that even I felt a flash of tension, as if I were the subject of her ire. Boris glared at her reproachfully, but nonetheless fell immediately silent.

  ‘Okay.’ Mayer nodded. His smile had not faltered once. ‘Now, the transfer stages are clearly the product of a much more advanced civilization than our own. We believe these Stage-Builders visited literally thousands of parallel universes, including this one. But as to who they were or why they disappeared so suddenly, we have no idea.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Nina raised a faltering hand. ‘Please, I was wondering – why can we not colonize this parallel universe?’

  ‘Apart from this island, the whole of this alternate is uninhabitable,’ Mayer explained. ‘We’re just very lucky that this island escaped the worst effects, because out of all the alternates we’ve found so far, this is the only one that’s remotely hospitable.’

  ‘About these transfer stages,’ asked Boris, ‘these miraculous devices that allow you to travel between one universe and another. It is my understanding that you first learned of their existence after your army found one abandoned in a jungle in Bolivia.’

  ‘That’s right. It was discovered by a routine military patrol during t
he war. We—’

  ‘That transfer stage,’ interrupted Boris, growing red-faced, ‘by rights belongs to the people of Bolivia, who were allies of the Soviet Union at the time you wilfully invaded their—’

  ‘Boris!’ Elena’s voice cut him off. She twisted in her chair to glare at him, gripping the back of her seat with one hand, and I pictured her wielding it like a club and bringing it down on his head. ‘One more act of deliberate provocation and I will arrange for you to be returned home immediately. Do you understand?’

  Behind Mayer, the two agents watched Boris with unwavering focus.

  Boris, seemingly oblivious to their attention, gazed sullenly back at Elena. After a moment, his eyes dipped down towards the table. ‘Yes, I understand,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Mr Mayer,’ said Elena, a look of deep weariness in her gaze, ‘I apologize for the interruption. Please continue.’

  Mayer blinked, then smiled again, albeit somewhat fixedly. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Well, just like this alternate we’re on right now, every single universe we’ve so far visited has undergone some form of apocalyptic event that renders it uninhabitable either in the short or long term. That’s unfortunate, to say the least, and I’m going to be frank with you – we’ve made very little progress in understanding how the stages even work. It should be possible to program them to find alternates that are safe to inhabit, but we still don’t know how.’

  ‘But you did say you visit other alternates,’ Vissarion pointed out. ‘How can you do that, if you don’t know how to operate the stages?’

  ‘They found a list of pre-programmable destinations here on this island,’ said Elena. ‘It was in the orientation manual, Vissarion.’

  ‘We can travel to alternates that are on that list,’ added Mayer. ‘Travelling to alternates for which we don’t already have the coordinates is what we’re trying to work out.’

  ‘How could these Stage-Builders simply disappear?’ asked Boris.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Mayer. ‘The Bolivia transfer stage brought us to this alternate, and it was obvious they’d abandoned the place in a hurry.’

  ‘Then . . . are we safe here?’ asked Boris.

  ‘It’s the same wherever we find one of their bases,’ Mayer explained with a shrug, ‘on alternate after alternate. They were all abandoned more or less overnight.’

  Nina shivered. ‘It’s almost like a ghost story.’

  ‘Mr Mayer,’ asked Elena, ‘is there a chance these Stage-Builders might . . . come back?’

  ‘The only certainty we have,’ said Mayer, ‘is that if we don’t manage to make some kind of breakthrough in the next couple of years, we are in deep shit.’

  There was silence after that.

  ‘But there’s always hope,’ said Mayer, after letting that sink in. ‘We sometimes find artefacts – machines – that might turn out to be useful, assuming we can work out what they’re for. We’re hoping some of you geniuses can figure out if they can do anything useful for us, particularly if it proves relevant to our mission. For all we know, some of them are futuristic juicers, but others could help us find out how to program the stages – or even build our own stages. In fact, your engineers have already had a chance to take a look at some of these artefacts.’

  ‘Where are the engineers just now?’ asked Nina.

  ‘They just got back after spending the day with our own science staff,’ Mayer replied. ‘They’re waiting for you next door. Soon as we’re finished here, you can all go and say hello.’ He glanced around us, then stood. ‘I want to wish you luck while you’re here with us.’

  I watched him leave and Vissarion looked around the rest of us. ‘Well, what do we do now?’

  ‘Just what he suggested,’ said Elena, standing and moving towards the door. ‘Go and say hello to our fellow scientists.’

  Boris stood, brushing invisible dust from his shirt. ‘I hope to hell they’ve got something to drink, because I’m going to need it.’

  Damian Kuzakov, who built containment systems for high-energy particle experiments as well as being the overall leader of the expedition, greeted us heartily when we arrived next door. A glass of champagne was pushed into my hand as I entered the vestibule of the house. Illyenna Iremashvilli and Aleksi Chulkov appeared from out of what I assumed was the living room, welcoming us with smiles and handshakes and questions. I could hear music coming through the door behind them, and wondered where Wasikowska’s replacement had got to.

  Damian led us all back into the living room, which turned out to be contiguous with the kitchen, and big enough to take up most of the ground floor. There he clapped his hand on the shoulder of Wasikowska’s replacement, who had been playing with the settings on a portable stereo.

  That was when I realized that Wasikowska’s replacement was Mikhail Borodin himself.

  That Mikhail Borodin, the man who had brutally murdered Tomas in cold blood before me, could be here seemed impossible. Yet there he was, grinning and chatting and shaking the hands of my fellow scientists and introducing himself.

  The shock of seeing him felt like a physical blow, driving the breath out of my lungs. My discomfort was evident enough to draw one or two curious glances from the Soviets around me. But after a few moments I managed to recover sufficiently that I could gulp down the fizzy wine in my hand, then force myself to breathe evenly and slowly until I felt more in control. I forced a smile onto my face, and greeted each of the engineers in turn – all except Borodin himself.

  For the moment, Borodin was happy to ignore me in his own turn, not even looking in my direction after that first glance. All of the Soviets were busy availing themselves of the Authority’s generous hospitality, which came in the form of numerous bottles of Scotch, vodka and orange juice – incredible luxuries on their home alternate. I made small talk with Illyenna about my impressions of the island and the people we had so far met, while my heart thudded and my head pounded and my whole body screamed to run, to hide . . . to be anywhere but there.

  I saw Elena lead Damian into a corner, leaning into him as she spoke. Someone turned the music up. Borodin, when I allowed myself a quick glance, appeared utterly at ease, as if unaware how much his presence had affected me.

  He saw me looking and stepped towards me. ‘You must be Yekaterina Iosifovna,’ he said loudly, making a small bow. Play along, his expression said.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ I stammered for the sake of the others around me. ‘I-I . . .’

  The words died in my throat. He touched my elbow, guiding me away from the others. Another glass of wine materialized in my hand without my being quite aware how it got there.

  ‘They should have trained you better,’ he hissed under his breath. ‘Drink up. You look like you need it.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I whispered all too loudly. ‘I mean . . . how?’

  ‘The same way as you,’ he said quietly. ‘By assuming a false identity that would allow me to live incognito amongst the Soviets. I had been waiting for an opportunity to insert myself into this research team, and one came up. Or did you think I was above getting my hands dirty?’

  ‘I thought it would be someone else,’ I said faintly.

  ‘No,’ he corrected me, his voice cold. ‘You assumed it would be.’

  I felt his hand brush mine, pushing something against my fingers. I glanced down, seeing a small black object, shaped like a comma, in the palm of my hand. A headset originally designed to interface with the Crag’s captive Hypersphere.

  I quickly palmed it, sliding it inside a pocket. ‘How did you manage to smuggle it here?’ I whispered.

  ‘I hid the separate parts inside a watch casing.’ He glanced casually across the room: no one was looking our way. ‘It might help us to find the exact location of the undamaged Hypersphere.’

  I had my doubts, but said nothing. ‘So it’s here on the island?’

  He shook his head. ‘They’re taking us on a tour of some alternates tomorrow morning – including, I believe, the
one where they found the Hypersphere.’

  ‘How did you manage to work that out?’

  He gave me a sharp look that said Don’t ask questions. ‘From the same source as the photograph,’ he snapped, taking a quick glance around to make sure no one was listening. ‘Now, the photograph itself shows the Hypersphere is stored along with other artefacts in some kind of central repository. Since they apparently want us to carry out assessments of these artefacts, it’s possible they’ll take us directly there. In which case . . .’

  He paused, looking past me with a smile. I turned to see Elena Kovitch approach us from across the room.

  ‘Why, you must be Mikhail,’ said Elena with a smile. ‘Wasikowska’s replacement. I heard about his accident. Any word on how he’s doing?’

  ‘Recovering well, I hear,’ Borodin replied. ‘A hit and run, I believe. Most likely they will never find the culprit.’

  ‘Well, I can promise that you won’t have any trouble with us theorists,’ said Elena. She smiled at me in a way that showed too many teeth. ‘Have you two already met? I swear, as soon as you set eyes on each other it was like you didn’t know the rest of us were even here.’

  I forced a smile. ‘I’m afraid we’ve only just made each other’s acquaintance.’

  ‘Well,’ said Elena, ‘it’s good to meet our new zampolit, Mikhail. I have many questions to ask you – if you would excuse us, Katya?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘Miss Orlova,’ said Borodin with a tight nod. ‘I’m sure we’ll have the opportunity to speak again soon.’

  My breath constricted in my lungs. ‘I should mingle,’ I said. ‘Talk to the rest of the engineering team.’

  ‘Indeed you should,’ said Elena. ‘Keeping Mikhail all to yourself – what would people think?’

  I blinked at her like a fish, then turned away, wondering what it was about the woman’s gaze that I found so unsettling.

  FOUR

  ‘First of all, welcome to Alternate Sigma Seventy-Three. I want everyone to stay together at all times. If you see something interesting or something you think we need to know about, tell us – don’t go wandering off on your own to investigate. And if it turns out to be important, or even better if you’ve discovered something new, well . . . we’ll make sure you get full credit. You all got that?’