Somewhere East of Life

by Brian W Aldiss

  Tuning in to Radio Tbilisi, Khachi had caught a news flash concerning the old Bulgarian nuclear power station at Kuzloduy. Kuzloduy had been taken off-line some while ago and was being closed down. A caretaker technician had noticed something wrong. He had tapped a dial and wandered off to his bunk. By morning, nothing could be done to stop the reactor going critical. The alarmist newsreader stated that the first unit was now burning its way down toward the Earth’s core. However, a government spokesman had said there was no cause for alarm.

  The priest shook his head at the folly of mankind. “We are happy and safe here,” he said dismally. “Why should we be, when our brothers elsewhere are dying?”

  “Even in the Nazi ghettos, men composed and played music—quartets, even an opera,” Burnell said cheerfully. “Thank your God that human perceptions are at least in part blind…”

  The sun as it set surrounded itself with a brutal iron halo the color of liver. The celestial ember died, leaving a darkling sky in its wake.

  “Don’t stand around,” General “Gus” Stalinbrass told his aide when he heard the news from Kuzloduy. “Break out the anti-radiation suits. Get on the phone and find what interests the US has around—what’s the name of this fucking place? Kluzzy? Speak to our ambassador in the Bulgarian capital. No, I’ll speak to him. Let’s have some action. We must be able to take advantage of the crisis some way. Levels of US, UN, EC, support to Bulgaria. Who’s in charge? Do we have any forces there? Where the hell is this fucking country anyway?”

  “The US Sixty-Ninth Fleet has units in the Black Sea,” said the aide. “That’s down where the Crimea is, if you remember. Crimea’s in the north of the Black Sea, Bulgaria’s west.”

  “When I need a geography lesson I’ll ask for it.”

  “Sir. There’s a Bulgarian port called Varna. Units of the Tenth Fleet are within fifty miles of Varna.”

  “Is Varna on the coast?”

  “Yessir. It’s a port.”

  “How soon could we get our Crimean missiles realigned on Bulgaria if we had to? Find out if we should bomb this Kluzzy dump and stop all the nuclear nonsense. Speak to Beagleberger and don’t let the Air Force know what we’re doing.”

  “Yessir. But the Bulgarians are our allies.”

  “Shit, Harry, you heard of Friendly Fire, didn’t you?”

  The aide was a rock-solid colonel from Shippensburg, Penn. He had been around, looking immutable or something, on the one occasion Burnell had come face to face with Stalinbrass. General Stalinbrass had been poring over an immense video map of the secret city under Moscow, preserved since before Brezhnev’s day in the previous century and now being taken over as the UN Army HQ in Europasia.

  “ ‘World Cultural Heritage,’ my ass,” said the general, smiling at Burnell to show his flawless teeth. “What in hell do you guys think war is all about? So a few fucking churches get blown up? So what? You a religious nut or something?”

  “No, I’m not religious, General. My work is simply to catalogue sacred edifices and other buildings.”

  “So you are a religious nut.”

  “The case for preserving anything surviving from the distant past, sir, is that it represents the better side of mankind’s nature—the creative side that aspires not to be barbarous. If all the world’s art treasures were destroyed—”

  Laughing, Stalinbrass interrupted. “Come on, Professor. Don’t give me that crap. Save it for the classroom. We’re talking a handful of crummy Byzantine churches, right? What good ever came out of Georgia?”

  He did not wait for Burnell’s answer.

  “You wanna go there for WACH, OK, good for you. Washington wants you to go with my blessing, so go. Fine and dandy. Harry’s arranging a contact for you in—Harry, what’s the place down there rhymes with ‘syphilis’?”

  Switching off the video map, Stalinbrass strode across the expanse of his office while his aide consulted a Europasia map on the wall. In order to perch a ham on the edge of his desk, the general swept aside a photograph of his wife dressed as Marie Antoinette framed in gilt and one of Nicolae Ceausescu framed in silver. Perforce, Burnell followed him across the room.

  “Tbilisi.”

  “Fetter called…shit—Irving. A good man, Jim Irving, bit past it.” He leaned closer, raising a hefty finger like a courgette to stop Burnell saying anything. “Washington wants to improve its image. Understood. I want to improve mine. Do me a favor, Burnell—bring me back something I can use. Harry here will give you details of what we’ve turned up. What are those things, Harry? Ikons. OK. Something anyone can understand. An ikon with a pretty face on it. It would be good publicity for me, show I care.

  Instead of having my ass chewed off in the world media all the time, entiende?

  “You’re a Brit, Burnell. Brits have a natural grasp of these things. Pull off this little deal and I’ll see you OK. OK? Good man.”

  The paw he extended was bigger than a pawpaw.

  So Burnell had learnt of the existence of the so-called Madonna of Futurity. Before he left Stalinbrass’s tremendous presence, he was presented with a folder of aged cuttings and photocopies of cuttings from various sources in various languages.

  Most of these cuttings referred to a traveling art exhibition of the 1970s. At that time, much of the world was locked into an ideological confrontation between Communism and Capitalism. As part of the propaganda struggle, the Soviet Union had mounted an impressive exhibition of ikons which had toured the capitals of Western Europe, New York, LA, and Washington. Ikons from Armenia and Georgia were included, among them the celebrated Madonna of Futurity. Experts ascribed this work to an itinerant artist called Evtihije, of whom—in the manner of these things—nothing was known, except that he had died in some vague Armenian ditch after a lifetime of exemplary piety.

  A TV documentary item related the chequered history of the ikon: that it had traveled to the Vatican and, more surprisingly, back. But many ikons had a history of travel. It was the quality of the painting, the luminous rendering of the Mother of God and her Child, and the positioning of the figures, which attracted attention.

  Burnell’s folder included an official report, dated later than the faded cuttings, from his own department in the WACH. It affirmed that the ikon had been returned to Georgia after the exhibition. Finally, a form from Tbilisi stated that the ikon had been reinstated in the historic church of Ghvtismshobeli; the form originated in the period before the Soviet Union broke up—in fact, when Kadredin had been in charge of the church.

  Why had Kadredin volunteered to accompany him to Ghvtismshobeli? The reason he had given hardly seemed adequate.

  Burnell’s duty was performed with little more than a gesture toward those who employed him; he took every advantage of the bureaucratic inefficiency in which the offices in FAM were cocooned. In that respect, he embodied in himself the lack of enthusiasm characterizing a governmental-type department. There remained, however, General Stalinbrass’s commission. That had certainly, in its crass way, caught Burnell’s interest.

  Now Burnell stood in the church for which the missing ikon had been named. He was certain that Father Kadredin was involved in the ikon’s disappearance. Why else his evasiveness, the unlikely tale of the Abkhazi guerrillas, his setting a precise contemporary value on the ikon? Of course, much had vanished from the past; he was well aware of that. And yet…

  He waited until the priest and the young gunman were asleep in their cells before moving. Going stealthily into the courtyard between the dormitory and the church, he was confronted by the beauty of the night. The moon shone in a clear sky, almost full. This was the moon Irving’s beggar in Bogdanakhi would not see. Nothing stirred. He crossed to the church and was encompassed by its ancient stone.

  The cold inside the building had intensified: it seeped like mist from the walls. Lunar window patterns were stenciled on the floor. As Burnell’s eyes adjusted, the interior seemed to glow with its own luminance. He looked about him, listening, telling himsel
f he was not superstitious.

  There was nothing, only an immense susurrus from the fabric of the building. He concentrated on a search.

  He circled the entire watt area, fingertips light on the plaster, looking for hidden doors or alcoves. Nothing untoward there. He crossed to the apse, where the altar once stood. It was reached by a single step from the nave. Above Burnell’s head, three windows let in starlight. No scent of incense here, only cold and mold, where once darkly garbed divines had intoned for the sins of their congregation.

  Close by the step was a square trapdoor Burnell had observed earlier. He knelt and attempted to lift it. The countersunk iron handle had rusted, and broke in his hand.

  He went across to the main door and took up one of the planks which had previously barred entry to the church. With this he managed to lever up the trapdoor. It was heavy and without hinges. He set it down beside him and peered into the opening, regretting that his torch had been stolen along with the cameras.

  Moonlight spilled over the lip of the hole. It enabled Burnell to see into a small crypt. Something rustled in the depths. There was a ladder, but Burnell felt no great inclination to descend. It looked as if a man could scarcely stand erect in the crypt. He shifted his position, hanging over the edge. Rubbish, leaves, perhaps bones…

  As he hung there, sniffing the stale air, he heard a footstep behind him. Kadredin was standing a short distance away, his contourless figure mainly in shadow. Burnell stood up, clutching the shattered plank. They confronted each other.

  “You are going underground, m’sieu?”

  “You’re an insomniac too, then?”

  “The guilty cannot sleep. You wish to go down into the crypt? Go then, and I will remain here. You will find nothing, whatever you might be looking for. It is told that the crypt was designed to hold possessions of the young Queen Simonis, perhaps even the ornamentation adorning her poor little body. Matters fell out differently, as I related. Nothing remained to conceal.”

  “No ikons, of course, Kadredin.”

  “The empty crypt resembles an empty stomach, to my mind, sir. This entire edifice is the product of poor but religious men, the masons, the artists, the priests… Built in a poor age in a poor country. Such uncomplicated reverence is hard to understand in our day.”

  “Maybe the money wasted on yet another church should have gone on a welfare system. Georgia’s not poor, just ill-managed.”

  Kadredin came forward rather warily. He lifted the wooden trapdoor and snuggled it gently into place. As he straightened, he embarked on another monologue concerning the problems Georgia faced, and the oppression threatening from north and south. It was a land of great heroes and poets, yet alone in the world.

  “Bedtime, I think, Kadredin.”

  The priest came close with his rotten smell and adopted a more manly tone, advising Burnell to forget his own comfort for once. He understood poverty in a way Burnell could not. “You come from a rich country, so you must help me.”

  “I’m cold and I’m going to bed.”

  They traversed together the moonlit distance back to the dormitory building. Far in the distance, a dog was howling and being answered by another dog.

  Once in the hall, Kadredin caught hold of Burnell’s arm. “Don’t yet go to bed. There’s life still in the embers of the fire. Let’s warm up, n’est-ce pas?”

  Burnell allowed himself to be escorted to the refectory, where the priest kicked another log on to the remains of the fire. They had eaten here earlier; their crusts lay on the table, food for rats. Since moonlight did not reach into the room, they could barely distinguish each other’s face; neither made any attempt to light a candle, as if they knew something dark was about to occur which demanded surrounding darkness. Burnell dragged up a bench which squealed along the floor, and stretched out his hand to a growing flame. He waited, not too dissatisfied with the unpleasantness of the situation. A snort would have been welcome.

  Kadredin took his time before speaking. When he did speak, his voice was deep and mournful. He reminded Burnell of their whereabouts, far from anything that might be called civilization. “Far even from the nearest brother.”

  Burnell said nothing.

  “Does it occur to you, Dr. Burnell, that you might be in danger? Khachi obeys me as a dog his master. Just suppose for instance we decided to shoot you, because it suited us. Who would know? Ruffians, wandering bands, guerrillas—anyone would be blamed when your body was found.”

  Peering through the shadows at the pallid face near him, Burnell said, “That terrible American general, Stalinbrass, would soon find out who dared kill me. Is this where your piety has brought you, to thoughts of murder?”

  The silence which ensued was made no more enjoyable by lack of any denial of the charge on Kadredin’s part. While Burnell had seated himself, Kadredin remained standing, his tall shapeless body part of the cold shades, a plank of the place, his eyes gleaming red as they reflected the hot sparks in the grate. The fire was bringing out the stench of his sheepskin. When he spoke, it was to observe that the world was full of criminals. He paused, to add that many of them deserved no better than death. He merely wished to explain the situation, so that Burnell was clear in his own mind about it.

  When Burnell said emphatically that he was clear, Kadredin affected not to hear. He declared he was unhappy. Another pause, during which the room began to fill with smoke. All being well, the two of them and the boy would return to Bogdanakhi on the morrow. He repeated, “All being well…” Again he paused. His monologue consisted of silences stitched together with words; it was a spider’s web of a conversation. This ikon…

  Here again, he became silent. Into this silence, and out of the smoke, as it were, popped the head of Mayor Tenguiz Sigua, looking bloody and ghastly. Without saying a word, it reminded Burnell he was alone in a bloodthirsty country. Sluggishly, Kadredin started up on another tack. From Bogdanakhi, Burnell would fly to Tbilisi and thence to Germany. Pause. To Frankfurt. To the rich world. All being well.

  “Exactly,” said Burnell. “So we’d better turn in. Long trek ahead of us tomorrow…” He rose and, under pretext of stoking the fire, which was smoking furiously, grasped a stick that had served as a poker. His disquiet at the tone of the conversation was hardly soothed by observing that in the doorway, barring the way, stood Khachi; little of the youth could be seen through the smoke and darkness beyond the glint of firelight on the barrel of his gun.

  Kadredin was not to be deterred from his slothful recitation. There was something he had to get off his mind—by force if necessary. He repeated, “To the rich world…” For him there would be no such escape. He was trapped by a state of war he regarded as human sinfulness, in which he could feel no sympathy for either side. Pause. The peace and also the wealth of his beloved country was being destroyed by the greed of men seeking power. That greed made everyone poorer. Pause. He sorrowed to realize that he would live in poverty until the day he died.

  Kadredin’s manner of speech became more animated. He told Burnell he supposed that if he happened—just happened—to discover the ikon in which he was so interested, the ikon showing the Mother of God with the Holy Child…then in that case, he would take it with him to the rich world; was that not so?

  It was the turn of Burnell to pause. Assuming carelessness, he said, “This precious ikon’s not here, is it? Maybe it’s in—who knows? Moscow? Kiev? Washington? Maybe the Vatican got it back… Maybe the old lame woman we stayed with has—the Babo has it in her kitchen, propped up by a pot of goat lard…”

  In a low voice, the priest said, “Many many men have visited the Church of Ghvtismshobeli over the centuries. They came and went in haste, like criminals. They have been after reliquaries, crosses, tapestries, anything that could be stolen. All the treasures are gone. The world is full of criminals—persons without religion.”

  This time it seemed from his pause he was waiting for the fire to die. Then he said with great effort, “Suppose I told you
where the ikon was…”

  Immediately, Burnell perceived that the priest had had to goad himself to this crucial point. The night, the solitude, the silence, the strange surroundings, had led him to see menace where none was intended. Simple ineptitude, rather than murderous inclination, accounted for his halting delivery. With this realization, Burnell’s attitude changed. Keeping hold of the stick, he became brisk, he frowned commandingly.

  He said he would go out and stand by the lake. There he would wait for two minutes. Two minutes only. Unless the priest came and made a concrete statement, Burnell would have nothing more to do with the whole business, would hear no further word about the ikon—or about Georgian poverty, or indeed about the corpse of any teenage queens. He would retire to bed and that would be the end of the matter.

  He marched briskly away, pushing past Khachi, happy to feel he had reasserted himself. The moment the priest announced that he had some knowledge of the ikon’s whereabouts, Burnell became convinced he was going to try to pass off a fake on his visitor. No doubt the real Madonna was long since in Japan or Saudi Arabia or Rio, adorning an office or a palace or a brothel, along with other stolen works of art of which WACH had cognizance.

  The lake was phantasmal by night and, moreover, relatively smoke free. He breathed in the fresh air with gratitude. A fish plupped, disrupting the silver sheen of the water. In the stillness, a waterfall could be heard. The waters of the lake poured on their devious way to the Caspian. Burnell thought of the Byzantine princess, tumbled in death into these chill depths. No doubt the trout had been pleased to receive Simonis.

  Kadredin appeared. With him, walking by his side, was Khachi, toting his armory, his radio jammed to one ear. This, thought Burnell sardonically, marks the end of my assertion of myself. Perhaps my fears were not liars and they have decided their lives would be simpler if they shot me. I shall die to the tinny music of Radio Tbilisi.

  Coming up to him without preamble, Kadredin said, “M’sieu, the Mother of God ikon remains in the church.”