Ascendancies

by Bruce Sterling

  Starlitz parked the ZIL atop a fragrant row of oleander bushes.

  “What’s going on here?” Khoklov said, staring in disbelief. “Some kind of festival?”

  “Yeah.” Starlitz looked at Khoklov critically. “Straighten up that tie you’re wearing, or whatever it is.” Starlitz leaned from the window to peer into the ZIL’s rearview mirror. He scrubbed grease from his face with his sleeve, then licked his hand and smeared at his hair. “We gotta pass for Beautiful People, okay?” he said. “Smoke those Marlboros like you get ’em every day, and make sure everybody sees you’ve got a Walkman.”

  The double doors of the palace were propped wide open. Starlitz and Khoklov swaggered in boldly. They followed music to a ground-floor workers’ gymnasium, refitted to mimic a ballroom. A homemade mirror-ball wobbled on the ceiling before a lighted stage with heavy canvas draperies. Small tables lined the walls under chintzy fake gas lamps with forty-watt reddish bulbs.

  The band had played its final set; they were packing up their bazoukis and a brace of slotted microphones the size of bread loaves. The velvet sound of a smuggled Mel Torme tape came from the speakers. Most of the Party bigwigs were already gone; there were a dozen tired teenage Armenian hookers, dance girls, sitting in a line of folding chairs. At the sight of Khoklov’s air force jacket, and Starlitz’s bogus Red Army get-up, they started chattering and elbowing each other.

  A sinuous woman with dark, high-piled hair approached them across the dance floor. She wore sequined velvet trousers, high-heeled pumps, and a fancy embroidered jacket. Starlitz straightened warily.

  “Oh,” the woman said, smiling with a flash of pointed teeth. “So it’s you. What a pleasant surprise.”

  Starlitz tried an ingratiating grin. “Good evening, Tamara Akhmedovna.”

  “I thought you two were soldiers,” Tamara said. She fingered the lapel of Starlitz’s secondhand Red Army jacket. “You shouldn’t wear clothes like this into town. People will talk.”

  “Who is this charming lady?” Khoklov said.

  “This is the Boss’s wife, ace,” Starlitz muttered. “‘The Sultana.’”

  “Please!” Tamara said, dimpling. “No friend of mine calls me that. A simple ‘Madame Party Chairman’ will do…” Tamara’s kohl-lined, liquid eyes studied Khoklov with languorous attention. “Who is this mysterious young man, and why is he dressed like an airman?”

  “Uh, we had a little trouble down by the airstrip, Tamara…Could we have a word outside, or something?”

  Tamara’s face went flinty for a moment. “Very well,” she said. “Wait here, while I see that the artistes are properly compensated…” She drifted away.

  “Good God!” Khoklov whispered, grabbing Starlitz’s elbow. “She’s beautiful! What’s she doing married to that old ogre?”

  “Tamara’s the biggest black-market hustler in Azerbaijan,” Starlitz said, brushing Khoklov’s hand away. “Her husband does everything illegal in Tamara’s name. She’s got a million Moslem relatives; they’re all on the take. They smuggle everything, from diamonds to bananas. They carry big, sharp knives, too. So keep your pants on.”

  Tamara returned, having fee’d off the musicians and hookers. “May I suggest a stroll in the garden?” she said, arching her brows. “The Bukhara roses are in bloom.”

  “That’s swell,” Starlitz said. They went outside, away from the palace’s lavish inner network of listening devices. Starlitz made introductions.

  “So you’re our brave pilot?” Tamara said. “How nice to meet you. If it weren’t for you, Captain, I wouldn’t have this Final Net hair spray.” She touched her coiffure. “It holds up even when I no longer can.”

  “Your hair does look lovely,” Khoklov said. “And you speak such excellent Russian, too. It’s a delight to the ear.”

  “Listen, Tamara,” Starlitz broke in. “We need five hundred liters of aviation kerosene. Old Cross-Eyes, back at the farm, said the Boss might have some.”

  “My husband is sleeping,” Tamara said. “He’s had a very trying day. All this political turmoil. He deserves his rest, poor dear.”

  “I must get fuel somehow, and fly back to Kabul tonight,” Khoklov said. “If I don’t, the sacrifice of my career is perhaps a small matter. But I’m afraid it might cause you some inconvenience.”

  “I’m sure I understand,” Tamara nodded. “You were right to come to me, Captain Khoklov. We can’t have our Kabul shipments disrupted. We’ll need proper lavish gifts, to curry favor with the generals, now that the army’s coming.”

  “The army, huh?” Starlitz said.

  “They’re invading tomorrow, to beat some sense into these ungrateful Christians,” Tamara said. “My husband just announced the news to the Azerbaijan Party regulars, at our little business meeting here tonight. Everyone’s delighted about the military crackdown. I think our troubles are over!”

  “Hey, that’s exciting news,” Starlitz said. “We still need the fuel, though.”

  “Let me think,” Tamara said. She touched her chin with one lacquered forefinger. “Aha! The military supply train. It’s already here in town, prepared for the troops’ arrival. I’m sure they wouldn’t miss a few liters from their tank cars.”

  “That’s great,” Starlitz said. “I know the way to the railhead. We’ll take the truck.”

  “You didn’t bring the ZIL, did you?” Tamara gazed at the olive-drab bulk atop the crushed oleander bushes. “Oh dear, you did, didn’t you?”

  “Had to improvise,” Starlitz said.

  “We borrowed that Red Army truck from nice old General Akbarov, you know. We promised him that we wouldn’t flaunt it around carelessly. People might talk.”

  “It’s a problem,” Starlitz admitted. “It’s full of goodies, too. Coupla tons.”

  “Three tons!” Khoklov declared. “The choicest wares and viands of the Khyber caravans, fit for a czarina!”

  “Now, now,” said Tamara, favoring him with a smile. “We’re simple servants of the People, Captain, doing what we can to keep our homeland prosperous, under very trying conditions…It’s a pity you didn’t come earlier. Your cargo would have made nice Party favors.” Tamara made a quick decision. “I’ll have the servants—I mean the service personnel—unload the truck, here at our City Palace. There’s plenty of storage room in our basement. And we’ll take one of my husband’s buses down to the train station, to get your fuel. I’m sure it won’t take long.”

  Starlitz widened his eyes. “Great! I always wanted to drive one of those special buses.”

  Starlitz and Khoklov stacked the empty jerry cans into the back of the bus, while Tamara made arrangements. Soon they were in the bus together, behind a vast windshield expanse of smoked glass. Starlitz seized the driver’s seat and gleefully fired the engine. Khoklov sat in the passenger’s side, behind a bulky radiotelephone set. Tamara sat cross-legged between them, on a flat vinyl couch, which led, behind her, to a vast plush-padded nest with cozy bunk beds, brocade curtains, and a kitchenette. The bus reeked pleasantly of hashish and shish-kebab.

  Starlitz rolled it smoothly out of the compound. “Now, don’t show off,” Tamara chided. “I know you’re a very good driver, but don’t scratch my husband’s nice machine, or he’ll shout at me.”

  “Can’t have that,” Starlitz said, spinning the wheel one-handed. He grinned. “This is living, though, isn’t it, ace? We can drive anywhere in the province, at any speed we like, and no one will dare to touch us! Everybody knows this bus belongs to the Party Chairman. What a great setup!”

  “You’re a rascal,” Tamara said. “You shouldn’t talk like that; people listen, you know. You’ll have to forgive him, Comrade Captain.”

  “Please,” Khoklov said. “Call me Pulat Romanevich.”

  Tamara gazed limpidly out the windshield as they rolled past a long concrete-block wall splattered with angry Armenian graffiti. “Come now,” she said softly. “We scarcely know each other, Captain.”

  “I’m a lonely warrior far
from home,” Khoklov told her. “If I seem too bold, forgive me. Friendship comes quickly in wartime. It’s how we pilots live, you see. A flyer never knows if he will greet the dawn.”

  “Oh yes,” Tamara mused. “There is a war on, isn’t there?”

  “My next assignment will be bombing bandit camps over the Pakistani border,” Khoklov said. “‘Unofficially,’ of course.”

  “That’s a tough one,” Starlitz nodded. “Some of those refugees have guns.”

  “It’s nothing,” Khoklov scoffed. “In the Panjgur Valley, they fire down onto the planes, from high on their mountainsides. And you must fly low, because the bandits hide their huts in little crevices.”

  Khoklov showed Tamara a gold-rimmed mission patch. “I got this one for the Panjgur campaign. The bandits there stopped nine different ground assaults: tanks, artillery, infantry columns…Finally we air boys stepped in. Just flattened the place, you see; there was nothing left, so resistance stopped.”

  “What about this patch?” Tamara said, touching his sleeve.

  “That was the siege of Herat,” Khoklov said. “The bandits there were total fanatics! We had to carpet-bomb half the city before we could save it.”

  “I can see that you love to flirt with danger,” Tamara said.

  Slowly, Khoklov smiled. “I’m a career officer, with close ties to the KGB. I’m a political liaison with the Afghan Air Force. It’s a very…special kind of game.”

  Tamara’s eyes sparkled. “What was the most dangerous thing that ever happened to you?”

  “Ah,” Khoklov said, “that would be the time a Chinese heat-seeker hit my aft engine in the Wakhan Corridor…I almost nursed my bird back to Bagram Air Base, but I had to hit the silk in bandit territory. After three days in the wilderness, a Spetsnaz ranger team picked me up with their helicopter gunship…” Khoklov suavely lit a Marlboro and gazed dramatically out the window. “I wouldn’t want you to think it’s something special, Tamara. For us, it’s a job, that’s all; our socialist duty. Those Spetsnaz rangers, the elite black berets…now, those sons of bitches are what I call brave men! I owe them my life, you know.”

  Khoklov felt inside his pocket. “They were good friends. One of them gave me this souvenir…oh hell, you’ve got it now.”

  “Yeah,” Starlitz said. “And I’ve been meaning to ask you about that jacket you’re wearing, Tamara Akhmedovna. It’s really beautiful.”

  “This?” Tamara said, spreading her arms. “Just a little homemade nothing.”

  “That’s actually a black Levi’s jean jacket, imported from the West, right?” Starlitz said. “Only, it’s been lined with virgin wool, it’s got a tanned sheepskin collar, and somebody—somebody really good with a needle—has blind-stitched an embroidery picture of a combine harvester across the back.”

  “That’s right,” Tamara said, surprised. “Plus a little group of cheerful peasants with their sickles. It was a socialist-realist poster, you see, from one of the collectivization campaigns…My husband came up through the Agriculture Bureau. It was a little gift to us from some grateful villagers.”

  “Wow,” Starlitz said, reaching into his pocket. “I’d really like to have that. Can we do business?”

  “I do business,” Tamara said with dignity. “But I’m also the wife of the Party Chairman. I don’t have to sell the clothes off my back!”

  “Yeah, I know that, but…” Starlitz began. “How about if—”

  “Turn here,” Tamara commanded.

  They had reached the railway. The place was black as pitch. “Oh dear,” Tamara said. “I wish they’d do something about these power failures. I can’t go walking out there in these heels.”

  “And I don’t know the territory,” Khoklov said quickly.

  “Yeah, yeah, I get the point,” Starlitz said. He opened the door reluctantly, saddened to leave the driver’s seat. “Well, there’s bound to be somebody out there I can hustle. I’ll be back later for the jerry cans.”

  “Maybe there’s a flashlight,” Tamara said, sliding lithely into the back of the bus. “If I can find it, we’ll come after you.”

  “I’ll help her look,” Khoklov said.

  “Sure, sure,” Starlitz said.

  He walked off into darkness, pebbles crunching under his sneakers. The smells were promising: hot brake oil, raw whiffs of petrochemical stench. Starlitz pulled his Cricket lighter, twisted it, and flicked the switch. A six-inch butane jet flared up. Starlitz lit a Marlboro at arm’s length, and found his way up a concrete ramp to the loading docks.

  A series of yellow-stencilled tank cars had been parked on a siding. Quick flashes of the lighter guided him.

  Starlitz felt his way to the tank car’s gigantic manual faucet. It wouldn’t budge. Starlitz took a few deep breaths, then crouched down and wrenched a railroad spike from a tie with his bare fingers. He whacked enthusiastically at the tap, with earsplitting clanks and thuds. No dice.

  A red railroad lantern came swaying down the line. Starlitz ducked under a freight car, clutching his spike. As the guard crept past, Starlitz recognized him. He crept out and tapped the man’s shoulder.

  The guard whirled with a yelp. “Be cool,” Starlitz said. “It’s me, man.”

  “Comrade Starlits!” the guard said.

  “I thought you were on strike, Vartan,” Starlitz said, tossing his spike.

  “I’m on strike from my illegal job, unloading the Boss’s black-market airplanes,” the Armenian said. He was still jittery; his eyes rolled a little under their corduroy cap brim. “But my legal job here, as a railroad guard, is too vital to neglect!”

  “You mean you can’t give up stealing from freight cars,” Starlitz said.

  “Well, yes,” Vartan admitted. “But if I didn’t steal freight, I couldn’t stay in the black market.” He shrugged unhappily.

  “Get real,” Starlitz said, dusting his hands. “Everyone’s in the black market. That’s the beauty of the system.”

  Vartan cleared his throat uneasily. “It wasn’t my idea to strike, you know,” he said. “It was Hovanessian’s.”

  “He’s the skinny kid in the crew, with the glasses, right? The smart one?”

  “The stupid one,” Vartan said. “Always talking ‘openness’ and ‘restructuring.’ Calls himself a ‘dissident’ and leads protests in the street. He’s a big pain in the ass.”

  “Lemme guess,” Starlitz said. “He’s the one who had the bright idea to steal our kerosene from the hangar.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And it’s all in empty vodka bottles now, with rags stuffed on top of it. Hidden in basements and attics. Belonging to Hovanessian and his radical nationalist pals.”

  “It’s no use hiding anything from you, Comrade Starlits,” Vartan said. “Yes, Hovanessian wants to fight. Any weapon is useful, he said. Even the famous flaming cocktails of former Minister Molotov.”

  “Yeah?” Starlitz said. “He’s gonna match his little busted bottles against these big Red Army tank cars?”

  Vartan smirked. “None of us want to fight soldiers. We’re all good Soviets; ask anybody! The son-of-a-bitch Moslem ragheads are the real problem.”

  “Think so, huh?”

  “They breed like rats. They’re taking over everything! A whole swarm of them moved into the house next door, right into a Christian neighborhood. It’s intolerable!” Vartan glowed with righteous determination. “Besides, the Red Army won’t hurt us. They’re used to killing Moslems. They’re on our side, really.”

  “There’s gonna be a crackdown,” Starlitz told him. “Or a big crack-up… I’m not sure yet, but I can smell it coming. The system here is gonna blow.” His words hung on the empty air. Starlitz scratched his bristled head and smirked, with a scary parody of candor. “I know what I’m talking about,” he muttered. “I got a definite feel for this kind of situation.”

  Vartan shuffled his feet, which were clad in boots soled with folded newspapers. “I’m sure you do, Comrade Starlits! Althoug
h your role in the Boss’s operation is humble, all your Armenian subordinates greatly respect your insight and political perspicacity.”

  “Knock it off with that crap!” Starlitz said. He frowned. “Listen to me. When your real trouble comes, it’s gonna be serious news, pal. Not at all like you think.”

  Vartan blinked unhappily. “Life is hard,” he said at last. “I’m not asking for miracles, comrade. All I really want, is to see my neighbor’s house burn down.” Vartan spread his hands modestly. “It wouldn’t take very much, would it? Just lob in a few flaming bottles, some dark night…It’s worth a try.”

  “You ever try to burn a house down before?” Starlitz said. “You’ll burn down your own house, man.”

  “I thought my Russian was bad,” Vartan scoffed. “I didn’t say my house; I said his house.” Vartan drew a breath. “We Armenians have had it, that’s all. I’m a regular guy; I’m no egghead dissident. But we’re gonna settle some scores here, once and for all. The old-fashioned way.”

  Vartan kicked the tank car viciously. “So just forget about our little theft from the Boss’s air strip. Here’s all the fuel you need, right here. I’ll steal it for you; you can take all you want. Just take it away, and forget you saw me here.”

  “Better think it over,” Starlitz said.

  Vartan narrowed his eyes. “Look, you’re no red-blooded Armenian either, Comrade Straw Boss. You’re a Tadjik, right? Or an Uzbek or something…”

  Vartan stopped suddenly, surprised. An odd subliminal chill had entered the air. There was a faint, sullen, almost inaudible rumble. The railway cars rocked and squeaked on their axles.

  Starlitz, his eyes alert, was balanced on the balls of his feet. He rolled a little from side to side, his knees bent, his hands hanging loose and open. “D’you feel that, man?”

  Vartan shook his head. “It was nothing…just the rail settling. Some of the ties are rotten.”

  Starlitz looked at him. “Have it your way,” he said at last. “I’ll be back soon with some jerry cans.”