Empire V

by Victor Pelevin

Suddenly I became aware that they were not my hands. Where they had been I saw something like black rags covered in short, shiny fur like a mole’s. My fingers were bunched together in dark, stumpy, calloused fists with disproportionately large, horny knuckles such as might belong to a fanatical karate freak. I tried to unclench them but failed, because something was preventing them from opening; it was as if the fingers were bound together with surgical tape. I redoubled my efforts, and suddenly my wrists did unfurl, but not into ordinary human palms with five fingers. They were now like two black umbrellas. I looked at my fingers and realised I no longer had any.

  In their place were long bony extensions joined by a membrane of skin. The only recognisable remnant was the thumb, which now stuck out from the wing like the barrel of a gun on an aeroplane. It ended in a sharp, curved nail about the thickness of a bayonet. I turned towards the mirror, already knowing what I would see there.

  My face had turned into a wrinkled muzzle, a fantastic amalgam of hog and bulldog with a split lower lip and nose, resembling a concertinae’d snout. I now possessed huge cone-shaped ears with a multitude of complicated folds and partitions inside them, and a low forehead overgrown with black fur. A long horn, sharply bent backwards, towered above my head. I was quite low in stature, with a shaggy, barrel-shaped torso and short, bowed legs. Most repellent of all were my eyes, which were small, cunning, pitiless and radiated a kind of knowing cynicism – like those of a corrupt cop from a Moscow market.

  This snout I had seen before, in the photograph of the vampire bat Desmodus rotundus, except that the bat lacked the horn proboscis. All the same, I had definitely become a bat, albeit a very large one.

  To be frank, I now bore a strong resemblance to a devil. But no sooner had the idea entered my head than I realised that I must have stopped short of full devildom because I was deriving no pleasure in the transformation. And then again, I thought, this too was probably irrelevant: it was quite possible that devils did not like being devils at all.

  My outspread wings were getting caught up in the furniture, and I folded them. To accomplish this I had to make a considerable effort to clench what had formerly been my fingers. The wings, like two umbrellas, closed themselves up into black cylinders culminating in hard fist-like ferrules.

  I tried to take a step forward, but found I was unable to. Walking was obviously a specialised form of motion. To shift my position I now had to support myself with my ferrule-fists on the floor and advance my soft rear paws to a new vantage point. I supposed this must be approximately how a gorilla moves.

  I became aware that I had stopped thinking. My mind no longer generated random thoughts: it was as though the internal space where they had previously congregated had been vacuumed clean. All that remained was an acute, penetrating knowledge of what was taking place around me.

  In addition to this extra-sensitive feeling of presence, I was aware of something I had never previously experienced. I existed in more than just the present. Immediate reality was also permeated with flashing images of possible futures, which modified and renewed themselves with every breath I took. I could choose between different versions of events that were about to happen. I cannot think of a good analogy to explain the process except perhaps the liquid crystal gunsight through which a fighter pilot sees the world outside his aircraft, able simultaneously to assess the different sources of information he requires. This gunsight was my own consciousness.

  I sensed the presence of other people. There were two in the flat above mine. Three more were on my floor, and two on the floor below. Physically I could have approached any of them with a few leaps and flaps of my wings, but I had no desire to do so. I wanted to get out to the fresh air, which I could easily do by leaving the flat through the window, or the door, or …

  I could not believe that this was really possible, but instinct persuaded me it was. My mind plotted out for me something like a green dotted line disappearing into the depths of the fireplace and then turning upwards, away out into the future. I aligned myself with this dotted line; in front of my eyes flashed the bars of the grate, then the bricks, then the soot inside the chimney and some kind of metal clamp. Then I saw the lead flashing of the roof, and the evening sky.

  Only in a dream would it be possible to move with such airy fluidity. I knew I should fly westwards, where I would be met. It was easy to change direction: all I had to do was bank my body in the air and head off accordingly.

  I could feel birds and insects hanging in the ether. They appeared after the whistling breaths my lungs automatically expelled after each flap of my wings. Each out-breath refreshed my view of the world, much as a windscreen-wiper clears the smeary haze left by wind and rain. Beneath me were houses, cars, people, but I knew no one could see me. No longer was I afraid that I had died; my earlier fear now appeared to me absurd. On the other hand, in the real world I would never have been able to exit my house through the chimney. Ergo, I was dreaming.

  But in the world where I now found myself there was at least one other being who was sharing my dream with me. I realised this because of a distant cry, which exactly matched my own. It immediately rendered the world clearer and brighter, as if another sun had appeared to illuminate it. Someone similar to myself was approaching. I flew towards him, and was soon flying alongside.

  What the vampire in flight most reminded me of was a pig with webbed wings. They did not sprout from the back, as images in churches depict devils and angels, but were stretched between the front paws and the rear paws. Where they joined the body they were covered with short black hair. The front paws were very long and their enormous fingers, webbed with skin, spread out to make the fan that formed a large section of the wing.

  ‘Welcome,’ said the creature.

  ‘Good evening,’ I responded.

  ‘Don’t you recognise me?’ asked the creature. ‘I’m Mithra.’

  We conversed not with voices but in another medium. It was not telepathy, because I had no idea what Mithra was thinking. We exchanged phrases made up of words, but without uttering sounds. It was more like subtitles being transmitted directly into the mind.

  ‘How was your flight?’ enquired Mithra, casting a sidelong glance from olive-like eyes set deep in their sockets behind thickets of fur.

  ‘Fine. Can we be seen from people’s windows?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Watch out!’ Mithra swerved to the right to avoid the corner of a Gazprom tower. I barely managed to replicate his manoeuvre. Once I was sure there were no further obstacles ahead, I repeated my question.

  ‘How is it we can’t be seen?’

  ‘Ask Enlil,’ replied Mithra. ‘He’ll explain it to you.’

  That told me where we were going.

  It was already getting dark. Soon we left the city behind; below us appeared and disappeared dark patches of forest, then we lost height and plunged into a thick mist. Before long I could no longer see anything with my eyes, not even Mithra who was flying just a few metres in front of me. However, I had no difficulty in orientating myself.

  After leaving behind us a road with cars passing along it, for a long time nothing was below us except trees, mostly pines. Then there were fences and country houses of various different shapes and sizes. I was not apprehending them by vision, but was in a way touching them, except that the tactile sensation came not from my limbs or my fingers but, strangely, from the cries I was uttering. Similar sounds were coming from Mithra flying beside me, and they reinforced my spatial perception with stereoscopic confidence. I could ‘see’ every tile on a roof, every pine needle, every pebble on the ground. But I had no sense of colour, nor any visual information reaching me through my eyes, as a result of which the world appeared to me as a uniformly grey computer model, a three-dimensional simulacrum of itself.

  ‘Where are we?’ I asked Mithra.

  ‘Round about
Rublevka.’

  ‘Of course. That’s where the responsible elites live … Where else? … And what’s this thick fog we seem to be in? I’ve never experienced anything like it.’

  Mithra didn’t answer. And suddenly, for the second time that day, I was seized by the icy grip of terror.

  I could sense a hole in the ground. It was directly on our flight path.

  Had I been looking at the ground with my normal human eyes I would probably not have noticed anything amiss. The area was entirely surrounded by trees while around the hole itself was a fence, which supported a camouflage netting with a thick layer of plastic leaves (I knew they were artificial because they were all of identical shape and size). Even had I looked at the sloping ground beneath the masking net, I would probably have taken it for a ravine and thought nothing of it. There are probably any number of ravines dotted about the countryside near Moscow, covered over with camouflage netting.

  However, I was seeing it not with my eyes but with my echolocation apparatus, and to me it appeared as a tear in the very fabric of the earth. My cries went into it but did not return. It seemed that below its mouth the abyss widened out, although I could not be sure of this – the chasm was too deep; so deep that it filled me with dread. Perhaps it was not purely a matter of fathomless depth, but something else? At all events it was the last place on earth I wanted to go anywhere near, but Mithra was heading straight for it.

  Entirely hidden by the netting, the pit resembled a flattened human heart – the outline one sees in comics. Or perhaps, I realised with a sinking feeling, the fan made of palm leaves on the wall above my childhood bed … All the way round the pit was the high, blank wall I had noticed from far off. But now it was clear that it comprised three different sections of fencing around three separate plots of private land. Together they formed a complete barrier without the smallest chink anywhere. There was no way the pit could be approached from the ground.

  ‘Be careful now,’ commanded Mithra. ‘Do exactly as I do.’

  Bending his wings back, he descended to the edge of the net, slowed his speed almost to a standstill, skilfully regrouped while hovering in the air, then dived under the edge of the net. I followed him and, just shaving the grass that grew round the edge of the pit, fell into the void.

  Inside it was chilly. Here and there, growing out of the rock walls, were bushes and clumps of grass. The air smelled of the smoke from a fire of juniper wood, or something like it. I sensed many openings and cracks in the rock face. All I could see was a single light down below in the sheer wall of the precipice.

  ‘Do you see the lamp?’ asked Mithra. ‘Head for it.’

  ‘Will I be able to find it on my own?’

  ‘You can’t really get lost in here. Anyhow, you’re not alone now …’

  I was about to ask him what he meant, but he was already flying back up, away from me. At this point I noticed that another vampire had appeared in the shaft. He passed Mithra at the opening into the chasm and was now descending.

  I realised that I would have to alight somewhere, and fast, because the shaft was too narrow for two bodies to fly safely side by side. Even for one it was awkward. I circled about like a swimmer in a pool, first to one side then to the other, losing height all the time.

  Before long I had got down to the source of the light. It was shaded by a semi-circular arch, and in front of it was a small platform over the abyss, on which shone the yellow electric lamp. Here, evidently, was where I should land.

  I had to fly several times backwards and forwards over the fissure, working out how I would be able to do this. The other vampire’s wings were swishing only a few metres above me, and I was seriously concerned lest we crash into one another. There was no time to waste, and I decided I must trust my instincts.

  Positioning myself directly above the platform, I slowed until I came to a complete stop in the air, furled my wings into fists and collapsed on to their bony knuckles. The manoeuvre was quite skilfully executed, but the resultant pose was somewhat melodramatic, as if I was praying on my knees before an altar. Almost at once the second vampire, with a rustle of wings, landed alongside. I turned my head but could see no more than his black silhouette.

  All around was dark, damp and silent. Before us was the arch cut into the rock, and within it the feeble light of the electric bulb shining through a yellow glass shade in the form of an orange cut into quarters. Rather than dispelling the gloom it accentuated it. Beneath the lamp was a door, coloured so as to blend with the rock, so that I only noticed it when it began slowly to open inwards.

  No one, however, was to be seen in the small rectangular entranceway. For a few seconds I hesitated, unsure whether to wait for an invitation or to proceed. Then I remembered the salutation I had been bidden to pronounce. Evidently this was the time to say it. I said it over to myself once or twice in order not to make any mistake, and then said loudly:

  ‘Rama the Second reporting to Heartland!’

  As soon as I had spoken the phrase I realised I had done so in my normal human voice. I looked at my hands and saw regular human fists pressing against the stone floor. My best jacket was all torn at the sleeve, the elbows spattered with soot. Not only that, there was a fresh scratch on my left wrist. I straightened my legs and stood upright.

  ‘Hera the Eighth reporting to Heartland!’

  I turned my head. Beside me stood the girl who had sent me her photograph. She was taller than I had thought, slim, wearing dark trousers and an equally muted t-shirt. I recognised her flamboyantly piled up shock of hair.

  ‘Well now, my young friends,’ came the voice of Enlil Maratovich out of the darkness, ‘since you have arrived, welcome to my humble hamlet.’

  And the lights came on in the room before us.

  MIND ‘B’

  There was not a stick of furniture in Enlil Maratovich’s hamlet, except for a stepladder. The setting was extremely ascetic: cushions of an indeterminate grey colour on the floor and a circular fresco in similarly depressing muted tones, depicting the funeral of an unknown knight accompanied on his final journey by a multitude of worthy gentlemen in lace collars, the deceased himself encased in a suit of black armour with a cleft breastplate, above which hovered a brilliant blue mosquito as big as a well-fed crow.

  At approximately the height of my shoulders was a wide copper hoop attached to the ceiling by three rods. It took up almost all of the room. My first impression of this metal ring was that it was a very, very old object.

  Enlil Maratovich was hanging head downwards, his legs hooked over the hoop and his arms crossed over his breast. He had on a tracksuit of thick black jersey. The black hood hung down and looked absurdly like the sort of fantastic stand-up collar ruff the Mosfilm costume department might pick out for a vampire.

  ‘You look like one of the mobile vampires,’ said Hera.

  ‘What?’ said Enlil Maratovich in some surprise.

  ‘There was an advertisement on television a little while ago, about vampires who only use their mobiles at night so as to economise on the daytime tariff. During the day they sleep with their heads pointing down, like bats.’

  Enlil Maratovich gave a snort of derision.

  ‘As far as I know,’ he said, ‘vampires don’t economise on tariffs. Vampires economise on advertising.’

  ‘Allow me to disagree with you, Enlil Maratovich,’ said Hera. ‘I think … that is to say, I am sure, that a PR campaign has been running now for some years aimed at rehabilitating the image of vampires. Those mobile vampires I mentioned are just one example. Any fool could see that it was really advertising vampires, not mobile phone tariffs … to say nothing of the treatment vampires get from Hollywood.’

  I could see exactly what she meant, and she was right. All sorts of instances came to my mind to confirm what she had said. For some unknown reason people seem anxious to idealise us vampires. We are
portrayed as exquisite connoisseurs, melancholy romantics, pensive dreamers – but always with a marked undercurrent of sympathy. Vampire roles are taken by good-looking actors, popstars are happy to appear as vampires in their music videos. Celebrities in the West and in the East see nothing shameful in appearing as vampires. It is most odd: sexual abusers of minors and gravestone vandals are much closer to the man in the street than we are, but in the world of human culture generally you will not find a shred of sympathy for them, while vampires are drenched by a positive outpouring of understanding and love … Only now did I see what it all meant. It was incredible that I had not worked it out for myself.

  ‘Yes, that is indeed how things are,’ said Enlil Maratovich. ‘Vampires all over the world regularly chip in to support yet another vampire movie, the idea being to put people off the scent of who is actually drinking their red liquid, or how it is done. But of course this cannot go on for ever. The day will come when the symphony of man and vampire can no longer be kept secret. And against that day we need to groom public opinion.’

  I decided the moment was right for me to put the question that had been bothering me.

  ‘Tell me please, Enlil Maratovich, our flight here … was that the Great Fall?’

  ‘No.’

  It was not the answer I had been expecting.

  Enlil Maratovich smiled.

  ‘The Great Fall is when you learn what I am about to explain to you today. For this reason it would be desirable for your heads to be functioning at their best, so I suggest you get yourselves into position.’

  He indicated the hoop.

  The copper ring had a soft padded cover of clear plastic, similar to a chin-up bar in a gym. I waited until Hera had got off the ladder (I had wanted to give her a hand but she managed it very adroitly on her own), then climbed up and hung on the ring myself with my head downwards. The blood rushed to my head, but I found the sensation pleasant and calming.

  Hera was hanging directly opposite me, her eyes closed, the yellow light from the lamp falling on her. Her t-shirt hung down, exposing her belly button.