Nine Layers of Sky

by Liz Williams

  “It’s possible.”

  They made their way along the shore of the lake, their shadows thickening in the last of the light. Elena could hear water running and bubbling over the rocks. She crouched for a moment and dipped her hand into the lake. It was tepid, heated by deep thermal springs. She knew that the lake never froze, but it gave her hope, somehow, that winter was really over. Something cried high in the heavens and she looked up to see an arrowhead of wild geese arcing toward Karakol. The sound made her shiver, but Ilya was striding ahead toward the ruin of the fort.

  When he reached the little grove of firs that lay just below the fort, he stopped.

  “Can you see anyone?” Elena whispered.

  “No. I can’t hear anything, either.” There was the gleam of metal in the twilight. She had not seen him draw the sword.

  “Elena,” he began.

  “Don’t tell me to wait here. I’m going with you.” Even in the growing dark, she saw him smile. “I was about to say, watch your footing, that’s all.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  The fort was no more than a jumble of stones. Elena tried to imagine it as it must have been in its heyday: a round tower, perhaps with a scarlet banner snapping from its turrets, surrounded by harebells and the brittle grass. And below, the long line of the lake, a wound in the mountains, as deep and silent as a captured sea. She looked back. The sun had long since fallen behind the western peaks, but the lake still shone, reflecting the sky. Lights were scattered along the shore: sanatoria or local dachas. They seemed a world away from the old stones of the fort. We should never have come here, we Russians. We should have left this place to the ghosts and the geese and the silence. Yet she had always believed in the dream of Soviet progress, the steady march of civilization. It seemed that the tide was drawing back, and taking her heart with it.

  There was no sign of movement around the fort, and a person would have found it difficult to hide among the scattered rocks. Elena followed Ilya up under the ridge. Far to the east, the summit of Khan Tengri, Lord of Spirits, glowed rose-red, catching the last of the sun. But the rest of the world lay in shadow as far as the Chinese border.

  Something rustled in the grass. Ilya swung around.

  A man was standing at the edge of the fort, among the stones.

  “Where did he come from?” Elena whispered. It was as though the figure had sprung out of the ground.

  The man held out empty hands, calling, “Come down. I’m not armed. I just want to talk to you.” It was not Manas.

  “Who are you?” Ilya called.

  The man stepped forward. Elena discerned a thin, humorous face with a wisp of beard.

  “I am an akyn. And you must be Elena Irinovna and Ilya Muromyets, bogatyr.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We’ve been keeping track of you,” the akyn said. He reached out and touched Ilya’s arm, as if reassuring himself that Ilya was real. With the flat of the sword, Ilya moved the akyn’s arm aside. “It’s only been in the last couple of days that we found you. What a wonder. I thought this when I first learned of Manas. The greatest legend of the Kyrgyz people, alive and strolling about in the modern day. Who would ever have thought such a thing? And yourself, too—though you’re a Russian myth, of course, and therefore not quite so interesting.”

  “Thank you,” Ilya said dryly. “You don’t seem surprised to see us.”

  “I am aware of your remarkable powers of hearing. If I had been in your shoes, I would have followed Manas, listened to what he had to say. I know about the meeting with the politician, you see. I was the one who set it up. I know you and Manas have been foes in the past; if he had simply asked you to come here, would you have done?”

  “I do not know. Probably not.”

  “It was partly a setup. But you can trust him, you know. He fights for a just cause.” The akyn pointed toward the ruined installation. “Do you know why Manas has such an interest in this place? Do you know what that used to be?”

  “Some kind of military base,” Elena said.

  “And do you know why someone would put such a base there, in this remote spot?”

  “Strategic considerations,” Elena said. “We’re close to the borders of China and Tajikistan, and that means anyone who’s interested in Afghanistan has an interest in this region, too.” She steeled herself for the usual response: the jocular put-down of the Soviet male, about how she was clearly more than just a pretty face.

  But the akyn said only, “Like so much of our history, this place, too, is a combination of reality and illusion. It was a guard post, true, but not only of the obvious borders.”

  Turning, he began to walk down the slope toward the installation. Elena, with a doubtful glance at Ilya, followed. He had shifted the sword; she could see the faint gleam of its hilt above his shoulder.

  “You’re talking of Byelovodye?” Ilya said.

  “You’ve had at least a glimpse of this other land, haven’t you? You’ve both seen it?”

  “Yes.” Elena was cautious.

  “What do you think it is? Where do you think it lies?”

  “I do not know. But I know that it is Russia. The air smells of home.”

  The akyn snorted. “A typically Russian thing to say. It belongs to all of us. The Russians have tried to claim it, as they have claimed everywhere else. I should have met you in Manas Park, not Gorky Park as they call it now.”

  “Maxim Gorky was a great writer,” Ilya said, stung into national defense.

  “And Manas is a great man. What I am trying to tell you, my fine Soviet hero, is that there are many dreams and visions, not just Russian ones. And that other world, of which we receive such tantalizing glimpses, is where all those dreams lie.”

  “Dreams? Like the rusalki?” Ilya asked.

  “The rusalki are its guardians. Your volkh and his colleagues, on the other hand, want to control the gates between the worlds, bleed off our dreams drop by drop. Typical of the secret police everywhere. You look skeptical,” the akyn added, turning to Elena.

  “I am skeptical. I’m a scientist, after all. And I don’t know who to believe.”

  “I suppose that is natural,” the akyn remarked, blandly. “Why should you believe a know-nothing, goat-herding Kyrgyz poet?”

  “What’s your agenda, then?” Elena asked.

  “Byelovodye needs rescuing; it’s beginning to atrophy. And this world needs rescuing, too. We need to get our dreams back.”

  “And that?” Ilya pointed to the installation.

  “I have something to show you.”

  “A gate?”

  The akyn turned to face him. “I don’t expect you to tell me immediately whether or not you have a key. I know I must earn your trust. See what I have to show you and then you can decide.”

  The remains of the installation huddled in the valley below, dimly visible as a collection of domes and cubes behind bare branches, surrounding the central polygon. They made their way slowly down, skirting the perimeter and keeping to the trees. Finally, they came to a line of bushes and then barbed wire, rusting and ancient, decorated with warning signs.

  “We’ll have to go under,” the akyn murmured.

  It’s a trap. I don’t want to go in there, Elena thought. But the akyn was already ducking under the wire and she did not want to stay out here in the darkness. Besides, she was curious. Cautiously, she followed. The wire snagged on her coat and she pulled free, expecting the sudden shrill of alarms, but the installation was quiet and dead, almost as much a ruin as the fort had been. Graveyards, she thought, monuments to dead dreams. The polygon looked like the dome of a cathedral: new faith replacing the old. She waited as the akyn peered through the broken window of one of the perimeter buildings.

  “Can you see anything?” she asked.

  Ilya tried the door, but it had rusted shut.

  “We can get through the other side of the dome,” the akyn said.

  The second entrance of the polygon h
ad once been padlocked, but now the lock had been twisted off and the door swung open on its hinges. The akyn paused for a moment, then stepped through. A torch flickered into life. Elena and Ilya followed.

  The dome was huge, an expanse the size of an aircraft hangar, but little remained inside. Either the installation had been cleaned out when the military left or locals had looted the place, for the only things remaining were a set of iron girders stacked against the wall.

  “What are we looking for?” Elena hissed.

  The akyn led them to a metal plate in the concrete. A ring was set into it. Ilya reached down and tugged with both hands. The plate shifted, but did not rise.

  “It’s rusted shut.” Delicately, with the point of the sword, Ilya freed the plate. It came up with a teeth-aching scrape, revealing a dark hole below. “Hand me the light.”

  “What can you see?” Elena said, craning over his shoulder.

  “Nothing much. Wait.” He sank to his knees.

  “Don’t go down there.”

  Visions of a descent into the earth and the plate slamming shut above them were haunting her, but he said, “I can’t see anything if I don’t.”

  “It’s at the end of the room,” the akyn said. “I’ll go first, if that would make it easier to trust me.”

  “I’m staying here,” Elena told them. She wished they had managed to get hold of a gun. The akyn lowered himself into the opening. Ilya turned to Elena and pressed the fishing-rod case into her hands.

  “What if you need this?” she whispered.

  “I may not be the hero I used to be, but I think I can tackle a frail old man if he tries anything. Keep a watch on the door.”

  Ilya swung down into the hole. There was the gleam of torchlight on metal walls. She heard him whisper, “My God.”

  “Do you see it?” the akyn asked.

  “Ilya? What is it?” Elena called down.

  “I haven’t seen anything like it for eighty years, but it looks like Tsilibayev’s machine.”

  “It’s based on that device, which was a copy of something much older.” The akyn’s voice, reverberating from the underground room, sounded pleased, as if presented with a particularly promising pupil. “We didn’t discover it until recently, when the installation was closed down. I want Elena to take a look at it.”

  “Why me? I was in astrophysics. I know nothing about machines like this, whatever it is,” Elena said. She had no intention of going down into the chamber.

  “You’re a scientist. You have a better chance of understanding it than either Ilya or myself.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t destroy it when they closed the facility.”

  “A lot of places like this were simply abandoned.

  Lack of funds, the Soviet withdrawal. There’s a bio-weaponry plant in Kazakhstan that was just left—they took the samples, but not the equipment. And the number of nuclear installations that remain are notorious. Remember that submarine base in Archangelsk, where the electricity company cut the power off because the Navy couldn’t pay the bills? The subs were just about to go critical when some admiral came up with the cash… .”

  “If it is a gate,” Elena asked, “can it be opened?”

  “If you have the means,” she heard the akyn say softly. But Elena was listening to another sound. Someone was walking around the wall of the polygon.

  The footsteps were soft and deliberate.

  “Someone’s coming,” she hissed. The torch was abruptly extinguished. Elena pressed herself back against the wall. She could see the door between the thick lattice of the girders. It was opening. A whistling sound began: a single sustained note, singing along the girders until they began to vibrate. Elena’s ears hummed and rang, and through the sound-filled air she heard Ilya make a small noise of pain and protest in the chamber below. Someone stepped through the door. She saw a dark figure dressed in military fatigues, a gun in one hand. The akyn scrambled from the hole. The man was striding swiftly forward, heading for the metal plate.

  Elena’s head rang; she felt as though someone had stabbed a needle in each ear. She cried out from the shadows. The man raised the gun and it was aimed directly at her, but Elena was already throwing herself flat, still clutching the sword, rolling over and over as the muffled whine of a bullet sang past her ear. The light of the torch swung upward and she recognized Manas.

  She had no time for thought. She struck out with the sword, aiming at Manas’ knees. She felt the blade cut through flesh and strike bone. There was a sudden smell of blood. Nausea rose sharp in Elena’s throat. Manas fell backward, toppling in silence. Two figures swarmed up from the ground: Ilya, followed by the akyn. But the whistling was growing louder and louder. The polygon began to shake, entering destructive resonance. Some kind of sonic weapon, she thought with distant analysis. Sounds like it’s going out of control. Above them, a girder twisted and fell, pinning Manas to the floor.

  Elena, clutching the sword, scrambled to her feet and slipped on slick wetness. Ilya was flat against the wall, hands pressed to his ears. The akyn was bent double at his side. Manas was writhing like a fish beneath the girder; she saw a white flash of bone as he moved. Elena fought back another wave of sickness. Grasping Ilya’s arm, she hauled him up, and dragged him toward the door, with the akyn close behind. As they reached it, the roof tore open and crashed down, bringing the walls of the polygon with it and enveloping them in dust. Elena, looking back, saw the floor cave in, burying the machine. She heard the crunch of metal as it gave way. They stumbled out beneath a cold, moonlit sky.

  There was a dark trickle of blood down each side of Ilya’s face and Elena’s hand was wet, too. She looked at it, puzzled, until she saw that it was Ilya’s blood. His sleeve was torn open and there was a gouge in the flesh beneath where the bullet had grazed him.

  “You’re hurt!”

  He frowned at her. Through the ringing in her ears, she heard him say, “What?”

  “Out,” she mouthed and pointed to the perimeter fence. He nodded, grim-faced. They were halfway there when the akyn stumbled and fell. Elena dropped to her knees beside him. “We have to get him to a hospital.”

  “Joq,” the akyn murmured. No. His hands went to his chest and she thought he was exploring the wound, then realized it was the old Kyrgyz gesture of apology. “Esseq.”

  She thought that meant: I’m hot, but the night was bitter.

  Then the akyn said more clearly, “I’m dying. Give me my rosary—in my pocket.”

  Elena reached into blood-wet cloth and found the beads. She pressed them into his hand and his fingers closed around them.

  “What happened? I thought Manas was on your side?”

  “Manas has betrayed me. I don’t know why.” The akyn’s voice was bewildered. “But it’s not the only one, the only gate between this world and the next one. The other—the oldest one—it’s in Samarkand, in his tomb.” The akyn was gasping now, barely intelligible.

  “In whose tomb?”

  “The marauder’s. Go to Samarkand, protect the gate, stop Kovalin.” He seized her hand, pressing the bloody rosary into her skin. “Keep dreaming,” she thought she heard him say, and then he died. But she kept hold of his hand until she was quite certain that he had gone.

  Ilya picked up the akyn’s skullcap and put it over the quiet face, hesitated, then made the sign of the cross. They headed for the perimeter fence and clambered up the hillside. When Elena looked back, there was no movement from within the compound. The polygon lay in ruins, like a broken shell. She reached for Ilya’s hand and did not speak again until they reached the shore of the lake.

  Interlude

  BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

  From where Anikova stood, the white dome of the mosque seemed curiously out of perspective, foreshortened into a squat mushroom. It had been one of the first buildings in Azhutsk, assembled in the early, heady days of the colony. The current imam had showed Anikova the photographs, and so she knew that beneath the crystalline nanoplastic til
es and ribbing of the dome lay the nose of an ordinary C-21 transport zeppelin. It seemed that the mosque had remained in this sketched stage for a decade or so: the muezzin ringing out each day from a minaret made from a geological testing shaft. Now, the dome rose like a pearl among the drab compartment blocks and refineries, and below it lay the little garden in which Anikova now stood, waiting to question the imam.

  She did not relish the task, but she had been afraid that Kitai might volunteer in her place. The news of the imam’s possible involvement in the insurrectionist movement had come only a few days before, and there were very personal reasons why Anikova did not want the Mechvor to set her mind on the man. The imam was the grandfather of Natasha’s boyfriend, and though she did not particularly like Nursultan, he was still associated with her family and any disgrace he suffered, could affect her. It was all creeping too close to home.

  Imam Socdian came from Earth itself, from Samarkand. He was well past ninety, but in his youth, it was rumored among those of the apparatch who were aware of the colony’s true origins, he had made a pilgrimage to Mecca. An observant and reflective man, he had taken copious notes, and when he had crossed the dimensional boundary to Byelovodye he had spoken at length with the rector of the Architectural Institute of Pergama and commissioned the garden.

  It was shaded by genetically enhanced trees: a persimmon-apricot cross with small red flowers. The walls were plastered in white stucco, but at the end of the wall that abutted the mosque lay a covered portico divided by three arches, with a fountain at the center. Each arch had been decorated with the azure faience tiles that Imam Socdian had seen and admired on his travels, so that on stepping into the building one felt as though one had plunged into a well. The cool blueness reached the pinnacle of the dome and across the watery expanse raced gilded inscriptions taken from the Koran.

  Imam Socdian had mostly complied with the old dictat against representation, but at some point he must have rebelled, for at the back of the portico lay three panels: a phoenix rising from a fiery city; a tiger nose to nose with a deer; and a curvaceous, cavorting horse.

  Anikova waited for the imam beneath the tawny flowers of the persimmons and wrestled with her conscience. She did not know where it would end, this hunting down and interrogation of suspects, this theft of dreams. The garden was a representation of a paradise in which Anikova did not believe. But paradise was what the first colonists had tried so hard to create, in a dangerously imperfect world. Byelovodye was not heaven, but it could still be a dream made real, and places like this were a part of that. If she handed over the imam to the Mechvor, would he ever create such a garden again? She looked down at her dark uniform, with its crisp creases, a black scorpion among the thorns of a rose.