by James Axler
Rick's seizure lasted nearly ten minutes and left him drained of energy. It was obvious to both Ryan and Krysty that he wasn't going to be able to keep moving for very much longer. Already Ryan had decided that they would have to steal a wag to transport the freezie and any tools to their hiding place out in the wastelands.
"Better leave me here, Ryan. You and Krysty go look for what we want."
"It's no go, Rick," she replied. "Once we got the stuff we can high-gear it out of the ville back to the others. Until then we have to keep you with us. One question from a sec man and we could all be on the first wag to prison. You have to really try, Rick."
"Sound like my gran. Best foot forward. Shoulder to the wheel. Chest out. Feet together. Take it on the chin. Pick up the beat. And don't forget your fog, your amphetamines and your pearls!" He started to cry. "Oh, this is such bullshit, isn't it? I didn't want to… I'm sorry, guys. Real sorry. I'll be fine when I get…"
Ryan laid a hand on the sobbing man's shoulder. "Let it out, Rick. You have to keep on. That's what makes the difference. It's going on when you don't reckon you can. Come on. Let's go."
Once they got outside, huddling into their furs against the dreadful weather, Rick had another brief crisis when he couldn't recall the woman's instructions to find the places selling tools. He took several deep breaths, turned away from the others then faced them again with a broad smile. "It's okay," he said. "I remember now. Past the ruins of the sports stadium, then hang a right past a gas depot. On by a market and there's a line of white buildings."
"Right. Keep together. Rick, keep watching for any sec men. Don't forget. We're outlanders and me and Krysty can't talk or hear."
"Sure. The woman also said something about looking out for some sort of a… I don't know. She used a word, pamyatnik. Means a memorial of some kind. She said it was good for outlanders to see and remember the struggle and the fight for eternal vigilance." He smiled and shook his head. "At least I think that's what she said. You gotta remember it's around a hundred years since I learned Russian and it's gotten a bit rusty since then."
They soon came across another compulsory work gang, but Krysty spotted the sec men early enough for them to duck back up a side alley and loop around the detail. The tumbled wreckage of what had once been a massive sports arena told them that they were moving in the right direction. At last, in the distance, they could see the line of white buildings that the woman had described to Rick.
"That's it," Ryan said. "All we got to do now is to go on in and pick out whatever it is that we need."
"What's that?" Krysty asked, pointing to where a long line of people seemed to be waiting patiently around one side of an ancient, yellow-stone building, dotted with ornate windows and a carved portico.
"There's a sign," Ryan said.
"Where?" Rick blinked. "Got this goddamned sleet all over my glasses."
"Above the main door. It's in that Russkie writing. Can't make it at all."
"Wait." Rick fumbled under his fur coat for something to wipe the smeared lenses, finding a length of stained cotton waste. He bent over and sheltered the glasses from the wind, putting them back on his beaky nose when they were clear. "Oh," he finally said. "I see."
"What?"
"Pamyatnik."
Krysty gripped him by the arm, making him wince. "Just tell us, Rick. That was the word you said before, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Now I know what it means. I was nearly right before. Memorial. I was real close to it."
"And?"
"Amazing. It's a sort of museum about the struggle of the Russian people against the warmongering United States."
Ryan looked at the freezie, wondering if he was joking. He saw by the expression on his pale face that he wasn't. "Kind of museum of the last war, you mean?" Ryan was unable to conceal his own utter disbelief. "Let's all go and take a look." Ryan glanced at Krysty, seeing his own interest reflected in her face.
She shrugged. "Hell, why not? Let's tag on the end of the line."
THE TALL FLANK of the old building sheltered the queue from the worst of the wind. As they all shuffled slowly onward, various street traders came along the line offering various kinds of food and drink. All three of the friends were tempted by the delicious smells that came from the little carts.
It took the companions the better part of an hour to get close to the front of the line. Every now and again a bored female sec guard marched slowly along the line. Ryan noticed that nobody would meet her eye, so he did the same, staring at his feet, hoping that she wouldn't notice the steel-toed combat boots that peeked from under the trailing hem of the stolen fur coat.
"What'll be inside?" Rick whispered. "Pictures of captured nukes?"
Ryan shook his head. "Wait and see. I just wonder why so many folks are lined up in shit weather like this."
Rick tapped the young man in front of them on the shoulder and asked him a question. The Russian looked puzzled and Rick spoke quickly, gesturing with his hands. The young man nodded and smiled, speaking quickly to Rick, who smiled in return, showing his understanding of what was being said.
Once the Russian had turned away again, Rick gave them a hasty translation. "First off, he was kind of curious how come we didn't know why so many were standing in line. Like everyone knew that, dummy! I said we were outlanders. That was okay. Seems you get no choice. Everyone in the ville has to come here every three months to get the date stamped on a card. They have to turn up."
"Card?" Ryan asked worriedly.
"Yeah, but relax. You don't have to show it. Guy said, what was the point? Nobody came unless it was their day."
Ryan pulled the freezie nearer to him. "Listen, Rick and listen hard. You don't ask that kind of question unless I tell you."
"Sure. But it's all right."
"Mebbe. Mebbe not. We keep as quiet as we can. Don't draw attention. Right?"
Rick nodded. "Sure. Read you loud and clear, boss. From now on it's low-profile city."
MAJOR-COMMISSAR ZIMYANIN had been allocated one of the better wags run by Internal Security. It had once been a Mercedes saloon, but the rear end had been crushed in an accident. The rebuilding had been done by various hands at various times and now little remained of the original auto. But it ran well and the heater worked.
Zimyanin was on his way to talk personally to one or two of the witnesses who'd seen the trio of strangers. The letter to the marshal had worked even more dramatically than he'd hoped.
The call had come through direct on Zimyanin's personal sec line. He'd picked up the cracked Bakelite receiver and held it to his ear without saying anything, guessing who his caller might be.
"Are you there?"
"Yes, Comrade Marshal?"
"Your letter! Have you lost your mind, Major?"
Zimyanin didn't reply for several seconds. Then, "No."
"No! Is that all you have to say?"
Again a careful pause. "Yes."
"But, but… You can't… Do you realize what a letter like this means?"
"It means I believe we may have a full condition red."
"Americans! There hasn't been any proved evidenced of Americans within our country for more years than I can recall."
"I think they are here now."
"Proof?"
Zimyanin smiled. It was the concession, the sign of weakening that he had guessed would eventually appear. Siraksi couldn't take the chance, however remote, that the suspicion might prove correct.
"Once I take them, you will have the proof, Comrade Marshal."
"If you do not take them?" The senior officer was slowly recovering his control. "Then what?"
"Then you'll be correct and I will not, Comrade Marshal."
There was a long, hanging silence. "You think you know them?"
For the first time, Zimyanin hesitated for a moment before replying. "I think it is possible that I have once met that one-eyed man and the woman."
"Your adventure in the Kamcha
tka? The same man, Comrade Major-Commissar? Could they have invaded us from the far northeast and trekked all the way to Moscow?" The voice was considering its own question. "Yes, yes, it is possible. You have my authority to go to condition orange and put any sec forces you need on red standby. Where are you going to search for them?"
Zimyanin was going to play a hunch. "Their trail leads directly to the heart of the ville, Comrade Marshal. Through Govorovo and Nikulino, into Ramenki and up to the river. I suddenly thought what lay in their path, what they might not be able to resist. You know?"
"What?"
"Pamyatnik," Zimyanin told him,
"Of course. Yes, of course. Brilliant, my dear boy. Brilliant! The Museum of the Peoples' Struggle Against the Oppressors of the United States! Yes, I'm sure you're right."
"I'm going there myself."
RYAN, KRYSTY AND RICK had finally reached the front of the seemingly endless lineup, enduring the biting cold and the flurries of fresh snow, as well as the hectoring and bullying of the patrolling female sec guards.
Just as he passed under the portico of the building, Ryan glanced out into the wide street. A maroon passenger wag drove by and slowed down. The passenger was speaking to the driver, a uniformed man, bareheaded, totally bald, with a long drooping mustache.
Ryan was struck by the man's close resemblance to the Russian they'd met in Alaska, though the name eluded him.
"Zimyanin," Ryan finally whispered.
Chapter Twenty
IT WAS one of the most amazing buildings that Ryan Cawdor had ever seen.
Over the years he'd watched a number of scratched old vids, and some of them had been set in big churches and huge, stately edifices, the like of which no longer existed in the Deathlands. The anti-American memorial was that kind of building. Though it did show some evidence of the sky-blackening nuking the ville had suffered, it was still in incredibly good shape.
The entrance hall soared several stories high, with a vaulted roof, one corner patched and marred with a tangle of metal scaffolding. Several of the windows on the northern flank had been destroyed, but some of the others remained intact. Panes of colored glass were bound about with lead strips. Despite the dull weather outside, the stained glass glowed with the richness of the hues—azures and scarlets, deep cobalts and pale greens.
The pictures were what Ryan recognized as being religious subjects, though he'd always believed that the Russians had been a godless people. Here were old men with snowy beards and circles of golden light around their heads, little babies in white robes, tiny silver wings sprouting from between their shoulders.
The sound of the villagers' shuffling feet echoed through the hollow mausoleum, like the faint clapping of an immeasurably distant host. Once they were inside, the pressure from the sec forces eased. The maroon uniforms were replaced by a dull green, worn by a number of elderly men and women who seemed to function as both ushers and guides. They shepherded the throng along the winding corridor, following the route marked out by a sequence of black arrows.
Overhead was a booming, crackling voice, so distorted by the echo that it was barely possible to make out any words. Ryan looked inquiringly at Rick, who shrugged his shoulders. He put his head to one side and tried to concentrate, listening to the message repeating itself several times before he moved in close to Ryan and whispered in his ear.
"Yeah. It just welcomes us to the Memorial Exhibition, tells us to keep to the left and keep moving, not block corridors, where toilets are and… all that kind of stuff."
Krysty had been listening to Rick. "Where are they?" she asked.
"What?"
"The toilets, you stupe!"
"Oh. I think he said they were on this level, at the bottom of the main flight of stairs up into the first exhibition hall. Yeah. Look, there they are. See the signs?"
That was something that hadn't changed at all since before the long grayness.
Ryan and Rick waited together in the main hall while Krysty picked her way between the lines of people, vanishing into the doorway marked with a childlike drawing of a female figure.
"What kind of stuff's going to be in here?" Rick asked.
It was Ryan's turn to shrug. "Who knows? I guess there would have been a kind of American… what's the word I want?"
"Embassy?"
"Yeah. That's it. There'd have been one of them in the ville. Russkies could've raided things from there."
Rick nodded. "Guess so. Mebbe some propaganda movies and posters as well. It seems to me as if this place is almost like a shrine. There's sort of a religious feel to it."
"Like a church, you mean?"
"Yeah. But instead of being dedicated to love and humanity, this looks like it's probably devoted to keeping the flame of hatred still burning bright and hot."
They were talking quietly, trying to keep out of people's way. But one of the old men came up to them and said something sharply, pointing to the flight of stairs and the first of the arrows.
Rick nodded and pointed to the sign for the ladies' rest room, grinning at the usher and making a, "Women! What can you do about them?" sort of gesture with his hands. The Russian's face cracked into an understanding smile and he walked away, leaving them alone.
At the top of the stairs Ryan could just make out some huge black-and-white portraits, at least thirty feet high. They'd been daubed with great smears of bright vermilion paint, looking like fresh blood.
"Who're they? I recognize that one in the middle. Kennedy, isn't it?"
The freezie peered up. "My eyes aren't so good today, Ryan. Yeah, that's Jack. And there's Teddy, Harry, Dwight, Richard and… and all of 'em."
"Who's that fat, ugly one at the end? With the kind of scar on his cheek?"
"You're kidding me, Ryan."
"No. So much red paint I can't recognize it at all."
Rick shook his head. "Him of all men! So soon you forget! After the nineties and all the political in-fighting…
You know who suddenly came popping out of the closet like the old wooden nickel, don't you?"
Ryan looked again at the seamed face, the hanging jowls and the hunted, darting eyes. "You don't mean that…!"
"Yeah, who else?"
"But I thought there was some kind of—"
"Scandal?" The freezie grinned like a hungry wolf.
"Sure. Didn't he…?"
One of the elderly men in green uniforms was wandering toward them again and Ryan closed his mouth, pretending a sudden interest in the vaulted stucco of the high ceiling.
Krysty chose that moment to reappear, flashing a smile at him. "Hi, lover," she whispered. "Ready to go check out the show?" Arm in arm they moved slowly up the massive staircase, Rick panting at their heels, hanging on to the wide brass balustrade.
The arrows led them along the corridors, a part of the silent, shuffling throng of patient Russians. When they reached an exhibit, Rick would pause and gather his breath, translating what the captions and slogans said in a low voice.
It was a confusing blur of fact and fantasy. Ryan's own knowledge of the years immediately preceding sky-dark was limited to some old vids and a few crumbling tabloids that he'd seen among the ruins. Krysty was a little better informed, but Rick had lived it all and he was able to distinguish for them what was true and what was not.
Much of the exhibit was in the form of posters, some of them running all the way from floor to ceiling. And there were whole rooms covered in painted slogans. Rick read them silently, occasionally reciting some part to the other two.
Once he shook his head and sighed. "Something's happening here, but I don't know what it is, do you?"
In the center of the building was a huge atrium, with patched and broken skylights, and balconies ringing it at every level. Here they had a chance to snatch a breath and relax a moment. Most of the locals around them took the opportunity to smoke roll-ups, plucking them from pockets in their ragged furs and cupping them in
their hands, like children breaking school rules.
"It's amazing," Rick said, glancing around to make sure nobody was close enough to overhear their conversation.
"Yeah. Figure we should be out and looking for the tools we want."
"Patience is the greatest of all virtues, Ryan, my friend. This is a once in a lifetime chance for me." He paused, continuing ruefully, "And you gotta remember I don't have all that much lifetime left."
"Is it just a way of keeping the old fires of hatred glowing?" Krysty asked. Ryan noticed that her sentient hair had curled in, tight and defensive, against her nape.
Rick sniffed. His face was pallid and there were dark rings around his eyes. "Yeah. The way they tell it, it was us that started the nuking. Sneak attack, like Pearl Harbor. Posters say that the whole of the North American continent was vaporized and sank without a trace, no survivors, hundred percent chill. Zero. Zilch. All gone."
"But if their barons claim that everyone got chilled, why bother with all this shit?" Ryan waved his hand around the echoing hall. "What's the point of it, Rick?"
"The Party says remember. Says to remember is never to make the same mistakes again."
"What mistakes?" Krysty asked.
"Posters say that they tried for friendship in the eighties and into the nineties."
"True?" Ryan asked.
"Sure. Called glasnost. But peace is a two-way street. We went along it, then the guys running the store on Mockba Boulevard
began to get cold feet. Folks in equivalent positions in the Pentagon got to feeling the same way. All downhill from there. Wrongs on both sides. Men with the guns had the loudest voices. I marched and demonstrated and all that stuff. It didn't make a hoot or a holler of difference. Cold got colder. Shutters fell and frontiers closed. Hell, you guys know the story. I guess we could open a place like this in the ruins of Washington and tell the same twisted truths and torn lies."
