Truth and Fear

by Peter Higgins

  ‘The Novozhd…’ said Strughkov. ‘He would not… I asked, of course. I pressed the case for strengthening the defences of the city a hundred times. He refused to allow it. He would not admit the possibility of the enemy getting this far. He would not countenance the alarm and dismay that defensive preparations might cause among the population. He would not listen to me. And then, when he was killed and Commissioner Dukhonin was appointed, I hoped for a better response, but it was no different. Nobody would listen. They would not act. The orders to defend the city never came.’

  ‘And now Dukhonin is dead and I am here. And you, General Strughkov, were charged with the defence of Mirgorod. What other orders did you need?’

  ‘I am a soldier,’ Strughkov shouted. ‘I know my duty. I don’t need a man like you—’

  ‘What kind of man am I?’ said Rizhin. ‘Do you think?’

  Strughkov glared at him, his face purple, his eyes full of hurt. A man who had done his best. He took a deep breath and puffed out his chest.

  ‘Why don’t you tell us, General Rizhin?’ he said. ‘None of us knows who the fuck you are.’

  ‘Speculate,’ said Rizhin.

  ‘A uniform,’ said Strughkov viciously, ‘doesn’t make you a soldier.’

  Rizhin smiled thinly and looked around the room. One by one, he stared every officer present in the eye. Strughkov was still glaring at him–angry, but with the beginning of a gleam of triumph. None of the others met his gaze.

  ‘There is a foul stink in this room,’ said Rizhin quietly. ‘I smell it, gentlemen. It is ripe and rank. I smell deviation. I smell revisionism. I smell conspiracy. I smell you, Strughkov. You are an enemy of the Vlast. A class enemy of all citizens. A traitor and a spy. Your treacherous failure to defend the city is an act of sabotage.’

  Strughkov roared with anger and indignation.

  ‘You say this to me!’ he screamed. ‘You… how dare you! You know nothing about—’

  Bored, Rizhin drew his Ghovt-Alenka and shot him in the groin.

  Strughkov collapsed, clutching the spurting wreckage between his legs, squealing in horror like a hurt, indignant child. Moving his legs slowly like a swimmer in a spreading pool of blood. Rizhin had to shoot him twice more to shut him up.

  The five remaining officers were staring at him. None of them moved. None of them spoke. They were waiting to see what he would do. He swept all Strughkov’s plans and charts to the floor, went over to the wall, tore down the large-scale map of the city and spread it out on the table.

  ‘You need to start again, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘From the beginning. Battles are won by killing the enemy. Anyone with a gun is a soldier. And we will not surrender Mirgorod to the enemy.’

  ‘But—’ a major of cavalry began.

  ‘Yes?’ said Rizhin mildly.

  ‘The Archipelago is only fifty miles away. We can hear their guns.’

  ‘You need to understand something, my friends,’ said Rizhin. ‘We are at war. War is not a conflict between soldiers, it is a conflict between ideas. Conflict is not an accident or an aberration, conflict is essential and fundamental. War is not a sign of failure but of success. The Vlast is conflict. The Vlast is war. War is the engine, the locomotive of history. There can be compromise and armistice between armies, but not between truths. In the realm of ideas there is only win or lose, existence or annihilation.’ He paused. ‘Here is the essential point. Live by it and die by it. Mirgorod must be saved. Not the soldiers, not the people, the city. The death of citizens and soldiers does not matter. The loss of the city does. The city is a symbol. Tell me, what is this city of ours? The people? No. The buildings? No. Mirgorod is an idea. It is a thing the enemy does not have. The idea is to prevent them from winning. We must have a victory. The fact of victory is all that matters.’

  ‘But the government is leaving,’ the major said. ‘Commander Chazia has already given the order to evacuate.’

  Rizhin waved his hand dismissively.

  ‘Let her go. Mirgorod is mine. I intend to keep it.’

  Back in his office Rizhin picked up the telephone. Dialled a long number. Transcontinental.

  ‘Get me Khyrbysk,’ he said when it was answered. ‘Professor Yakov Khyrbysk. Now.’

  45

  Bez Nichevoi stood in the centre of the empty office of Assistant Commander of Police Iliodor Voroushin. The items he needed were there, the room was in order. But he didn’t move. He was breathing. Listening. Opening himself to the place around him. Paying attention. A hunter’s attention. The trace of recent violent death brushed against him, exciting, prickling across his skin, making his jaw tense, his hungry belly stir. And there was something else. Dark animal pheromones on the air.

  The scent of wolf.

  There was a cardboard box on the table and a file of papers. Shaumian. He read the file quickly then turned to the box. Opened the lid and sorted through the things inside. Personal items from the Shaumian apartment. It was poor stuff: thin and much-worn undergarments, torn stockings and flimsy shoes marked with dried blood. Knotted balls of twigs and wax and animal bones that stank of the forest. They turned his stomach when he sniffed at them. It was enough. He fingered them idly for a moment or two, then put them back in the box, went across to the window, opened it and climbed out onto the sill.

  He was only six floors above ground level: above him the huge flank of the Lodka rose into the night, spilling tiny splashes of lamplight from the occasional window where some official was working late. And below him was the slow breadth of the River Mir. The edges of the river were shut away under a crust of ice, but in the centre an open current still flowed darkly. Even above the stench of the city burning, the water smelled cold and earthy, like the mouth of a deep well. Bez heard the mutter and slap of little wavelets against the ice. He turned away from the river in disgust and scuttered rapidly up the outside of the building, climbing with wild easy leaps and swings until he reached the snow-covered roofs.

  This was his world, a wide lonely landscape of ridges and slopes, slates and lead. Seen from up among the rooftops, it was obvious that the Lodka was many buildings jammed together and twisted. Where they collided, buildings rose out of buildings, extruding new turrets and towers, oriels, gables, corbels, parapets, catwalks, cornices and flagpoles; and where they pulled apart flagstoned quadrangles and courtyards stretched out, and ravines and canyons split open. Windows looked out across the Lodka’s roofworld, but the rooms to which the windows belonged could not be reached from inside at all. No staircases climbed to them. No doorways opened into them. The rooms had been built, then closed up and left. Bez knew this, because he had entered them all.

  The tallest turret on the roof did have an iron staircase spiralling up inside it, though it wasn’t climbed any more. The observatory, a cupola of latticed iron and glass, still held the Brodsky telescope, built to watch the sky for dying angels. Occupied nightly for three centuries, abandoned a human lifetime ago. Bez climbed lazily onto the top of the rusting, snow-dusted dome and sat cross-legged to savour the night. He took off his shirt. The dark chill air fingered his ribs and his back. Kissed his small belly. He closed his eyes and held his arms wide, loosening the drapes of chalk-white skin that hung from forearm to waist, letting them hang relaxed and easy, windless sails unfurled, absorbing the cool of nightside.

  Far below him lay the city by night. It was a good night. One of the best. A lid of thick low cloud shut out the moons and the stars and closed in the scent of fallen snow. The street lamps were extinguished. Fires started by the bombing raid still smouldered: the air was freighted with their fragrance. Reddening coals. Broken houses and apartment buildings spilled their intimate human smells. Under heaps of rubble unfound corpses were ripening.

  The older city was wide awake. Doors that were often closed stood open: small, unnoticed doors. The things in the tunnels were moving and some of them were coming out. The wide cold waters of the Mir were alert and watchful. The rusalkas swam restlessly, nosing alo
ng the canals beneath the ice and sometimes breaking through. Hauling up onto river mudbanks and the ledges under bridges. Bez Nichevoi could hear their uneasy cries. There were quarters of Mirgorod that would be dangerous for Vlast patrols that night. Dangerous even for him.

  Bez considered his choices. The last report of the Shaumian woman placed her north and east, in the Raion Lezaryet. But then there was wolf. Wolf had been in Iliodor’s office and killed someone there. Iliodor? Bez thought probably yes. And wolf had lingered. Read the papers. Sifted through the box. Wolf knew. Wolf interested him. Wolf would be a good kill. Bez held that thought for a moment. Considered it. Tested the air, the night and the city. Yes, he thought, yes. Wolf had left the Lodka and wolf had gone north. North and then west.

  The choice was woman or wolf. And wolf was an enemy and wolf would be good killing. So. There was plenty of time. Connect purpose with desire. First, let it be wolf.

  He bent to pick up his shirt, tied it round his waist and slipped from the roof of the observatory cupola, spreading his moth-pale wingfolds, letting the cold night air take him in a long and dream-slow fall across the river. One time in three he could land on his feet, but not this time. He stumbled when he hit the cobbles, fell and rolled lightly in the snow, picked himself up and began to run north, following wolf spoor.

  Wolf was easy hunting. There was a strong taint of wolf threading north, a clear track easy to follow. Bez loped after him. Mostly, wolf had kept to the streets and alleyways. Bez found places where he had lingered. Quiet places where he had rested, perhaps. Not hurrying. The wolfpath took him away from familiar territories, the avenues and parks and prospects, and out into the shabbier quarters, deep into the cramped tenements and estaminets of Marosch and the Estergam. Following wolf, he passed along twisting streets, so narrow the opposing buildings almost touched, and crossed nameless insignificant canals by iron walkways. Always wolf headed north. Bez had expected the track to turn eastward at some point and head for the raion but it did not.

  He came to a place where a stick of bombs had gouged wide shallow craters in the street. The scent of upturned earth and exposed roots. A broken watermain welled up and made the street a shallow, muddy river flowing between houses with shattered roofs and fallen walls. A dead horse lay on the churn of earth and snow in the cooled spillage of its own entrails. Bez sensed a life nearby. A human sound. Spidering up the slope of a collapsed brick wall, he looked over the edge into an open cellar. A mother was crouched in the rubble over her dead children. Bez called to her. The face she lifted towards him was smeared with grey dust. It was too dark for her human eyes to find him. He could see them, wide and staring in the darkness. He dropped down into the cellar and stroked her dust-caked hair as he pulled out her throat.

  Wolftaint was stronger now. Close by. Bez climbed to the roofs to make a cautious, circular approach. The human death, his first kill of the night, had calmed him, as it always did. Taken the edge off his need. He had abandoned the idea that wolf was leading him to the Shaumian woman. Wolf was stupider than he had thought and now he was simply prey. Take him quickly, then go to the Apraksin and pick up a trace from there. It was only a few minutes after midnight–hours yet till the sun.

  Bez crested the ridge of a tenement roof and saw him. He was standing in the middle of a cobbled square in the form of a man, his back turned to where Bez was. Wolf seemed at a loss. Waiting. Wolf spoor streamed from him onto the air, bright unmistakable scented clouds. Bez settled in the lee of a chimney to watch. Wolf was doing nothing. Just standing out in the middle of the square. And then Bez realised his mistake. He’d been careless. Overconfident. This night he wasn’t hunter, he was hunted. Wolf had led him out here into the waste places of the city, away from the Shaumian woman, and was calling him, baiting him with the trap of himself. Come down. Come down.

  Bez grinned in the darkness as he slipped away.

  46

  Maroussia was awake in the night. She lay still, breathing slowly. Listening. The attic window framed a flickering sky: gunfire on the distant horizon, flashing against low-hanging cloud. A new kind of weather.

  Lom lay next to her, warm and heavy under the quilt, eyes clenched fiercely in sleep.

  There were trees in the room. The room was full of trees.

  Count Palffy’s house was full of trees.

  The streets of the raion were full of trees.

  Watchful trees, waiting for her.

  Maroussia turned back the quilt and crawled out of the bed. Her dress was draped over a chair. From the pocket she brought out the bag, stained with her mother’s blood, that held the thing of twigs and tiny bones. She opened the bag and took it out. It stirred in the cup of her palm restlessly, as if a small animal was in there, moving. There were tiny berries inside it, fresh and purple-bright. She leaned forward and brought it up to her face. Listening. Quiet voices whispered. Calling her.

  Come out. Come out under the trees.

  She pulled her coat on over her night shirt and, holding the knot of twigs and forest breath cupped gingerly in her palm, went down into the house and made her way through tree-crowded landings and passage ways out into the street. Bare feet in the snow. The moons spilled white luminance through gaps in the cloud. The vapour ghosts of her breath glittered. It was so cold. Bitter cold.

  There wasn’t much left of the streets; it was mostly trees. She walked among them, her feet freezing, pushing onwards, deeper and deeper into the trees. Eventually she remembered the bag in her hand and stopped. Undid the string at the bag’s tight mouth and pulled it open.

  Between step and step she passed through into difference. Forest. Change.

  Maroussia was in a beautiful, simple place under the trees. Everything rang with a true, clear note, and everything shone out from within itself with its own radiance, fresh and cool. Nothing was anything except what it was. The distances between things were airier and more obvious. The night air–luminous velvet and purple-blue–streamed with perfume. Corn-gold swollen stars spilled flakes of light that brushed her face and settled on her shoulders.

  Walking, she left a trail of dark impressions across dew-webbed grass. She came to a wide clump of thorn. Tiny droplets of mist-water, star-glittering, hung from every tip and nestled in the crooks and elbows of every twig. The water made her thirsty. She crouched in the long wet grass and licked at the branches, making slow careful movements with her tongue. She took hawthorn twigs into her mouth carefully. The water was cold and good. The wood tasted… complex. Thorns pricked the inside of her mouth, mingling the iron taste of her blood with the wood and the water.

  She looked at her own hands. They were made of leaves.

  The world cracked open as if gods were walking through it. It was a breaking of tension, like a shattering downpour of rain. Everything was alive with wildness. Maroussia herself was spilling streams of perfume and darkshine from her mouth and skin and hair: bright stain-clouds on the air, carrying far and broadcasting promises of plenty.

  Bez Nichevoi watched the Shaumian woman from his place on the roof of the house. She was walking slowly, barefoot in the snow, bare-headed, straight-backed and thin. Her dark woollen coat hung open, unbuttoned over a white cotton nightdress, spilling the smell of her body still warm from her bed. Between the collar of her coat and the tangle of her short black hair, the nape of her neck showed slender and pale. Bez groaned quietly. Desire was a constriction in his throat, a dark knot in his belly, a rigid knife rising from his groin. He wanted to feed on her slowly, and… do… such pleasurable things…

  He followed her for a while. Unhurried. Letting the moment last. Taking pleasure in anticipation and delay. He worked his way round in front of her and came down into the street.

  Her eyes passed over him and did not see. Her gaze was turned inward. He stood and let her come to him. The dark buildings of the raion faded for him too. It was as if he was standing under trees: shadows, the wind among branches, the slip of tiny snowfalls from twigs and needles, the smell
of ice and resin and cold earth.

  And then she knew he was there.

  Her dark eyes widened and stared into his. She opened her mouth: a ragged indrawn breath. He saw the gleam of her teeth. The moistened heat of her tongue.

  He immobilised her quickly and slung her across his shoulders. She was surprisingly heavy. He began to run.

  47

  A thousand miles north and east of Mirgorod, at six in the morning Vayarmalond Eastern Time, Professor Yakov Khyrbysk hurried across the floor of an underground cavern deep inside a mountain. The cavern was as wide as a football field and bright as day: a hundred brilliant fluorescent tubes burned overhead in the ceiling of raw black rock. Their light splashed off the concrete floor, a grey-white dazzle. The cavern was empty except for one flat-roofed building, little more than a large shed, sitting right out in the centre of the echoing space: a crude temporary construction of boards screwed to a steel frame, a cubic carton with sixty-foot edges. Thick rubber-sleeved cables trailed hundreds of feet across the ground towards it. Around the shed the concrete floor was smudged and dirtied with feathered spills of black, as if dark ashes had been scattered there.

  Khyrbysk pushed open the door and entered. A dozen men and women were working inside, standing at workbenches. Control panel arrays. Dials and gauges. They all looked up when he came in. They had the pale drawn faces of people who have been working all night. Spotlights on tripods cast harsh shadows.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Khyrbysk. ‘Please. Carry on.’

  Every surface in the room was covered with a layer of fine graphite dust: the technicians’ white coats were smeared graphite grey; permanent graphite shadows collected in every crease and fold. Khyrbysk could taste the graphite in the air on his tongue. It made his skin dry and silk-smooth. The interior of the shed was covered with a skin of slate, ceiling, walls and floor. Khyrbysk picked his way with care: graphite dust made the floor treacherously slippery.