Chekhov’s Journey

by Ian Watson

  Occasionally their rafts sped past a clearing in the mass of spruce and stone pine, larch and silver fir; there would be a hut or two, where a few peasants might be hunched around a wood fire, smoking fish to last them through the winter. Once or twice they passed a vaster devastated scab, work of one of the summer’s forest fires. But these gaps in the woodland were as nothing.

  “All these trees!” exclaimed Lydia effervescently. “What a theme for drama!”

  “Do you really think so?” asked Vershinin. “Surely there’s no action in trees—you need action in a drama, eh Anton Pavlovich?”

  For weeks now Anton had suspected it would be a wise move never to write another play again …

  “You do agree, don’t you?”

  “If you say so, Nikolai.”

  Lydia struck a poetic pose. While the rivermen gaped at her, she improvised:

  “Surely the Angel of Silence has passed over this land! With her wing she has brushed the ducks, the herons, the hares, the … the frozen mammoths slumbering in the soil, and the infinitude of trees. How fearful is this silence! Heaven help the homeless wayfarer lost in it!

  “Yet the humblest human wayfarer is a Higher Being. He is higher than a goose or a fox. Wherever he goes, in his despair, he seeks—all unknowing—for the World Soul of the taiga… to free her from that seal of silence so that she shall finally speak her secrets—hidden from all human ears and eyes till now.”

  Vershinin grinned. “I thought we were looking for a million tons of iron … or a shipwreck from the stars?”

  “And only she, the World Soul, knows where those brave Higher Beings from the heavens have found their last resting place … Kolya.”

  “Tsiolkovsky says they all evaporated into thin air.”

  “Ah, but what if they didn’t? Just imagine, Kolya, finding the body of a being even higher than Mankind! It would be like coming upon the corpse of an angel… preserved by the cold, the way the mammoths are preserved. Imagine a play written about a Baron—who gets exiled to Siberia for conspiracy. He escapes! And he’s trudging through the wilderness in despair, soliloquizing, when suddenly he finds the dead body of an angel… Or maybe the World Soul herself hears him and crosses his path. She guides him through this army of trees to where the angel lies… And lo!” Lydia gestured. “Here she comes! Behold the World Soul, herself!”

  Just then another little clearing happened to open on the riverbank; wrapped in a shawl of rags a crone stood staring blankly over the rushing water at them.

  With a chuckle, Anton tossed his latest spent cigarette away. “You really ought to write that play when we get back, Lydia Fyodorovna.”

  “Should I? Ah, the words flow freely enough at the moment—but how does one halt them for long enough to set them down?” Lydia clapped her hands. “I know! I shall dictate the speeches to Olga, while I walk around composing them. She’ll be my amanuensis.”

  For a while the rivermen had been humming to themselves. Now the humming grew louder, like a hive of bees. Before long they struck up a dirge of a song. It was about the great bell of Uglich, deported across the Urals to Siberian Tobolsk for the crime of having been rung by rebels. This had happened four centuries ago, yet the memory of that ancient banishment was still as freshly preserved as a prehistoric carcase by the permafrost …

  Twenty

  AND STILL THE white-out wrapped the Retreat …

  “Oh, and let’s not forget how Konstantin Fucking Tsiolkovsky is bound to invent the Geiger counter just as soon as he gets to Tunguska! Do I really have to be the amanuensis of this rot? Why don’t we just collar a couple of bottles and all get pissed?”

  “I do sympathise,” Felix said to Sergey, “but why don’t you look at it this way: suppose we were to scrap the original scheme for the film—?”

  “Are you as barmy as he is?”

  “Half a tick! Just listen. Suppose we made a different film—namely, this other film which Mikhail is handing us on a plate. It could be highly original, very imaginative! It would put our names on the map: as Soviet artists of the first calibre.”

  “It could just as easily land us all in jail—if some Physics boffin in Academgorodok or Krasnoyarsk, unquote, happens to be scribbling secret equations for ‘time-flux’ travel!”

  “Oh, I hardly think that’s very likely. Don’t forget, too: this new film would be anti-Imperialist—the Americans only use their time technology for military purposes. Whereas we use it to colonise the cosmos. Then their Shield buggers up everyone’s hopes of the stars and causes the Tunguska explosion instead. It could be a rather cutting parable.” Felix turned to Kirilenko. “What d’you think, Victor Alexeyevich?”

  Kirilenko was appalled. “But this would present the split-hypnosis technique in entirely the wrong light! It would show the subject splitting into two separate fantasy personae! No, no.”

  “So what do you suggest? We scrap the whole project—after running our Chekhov Look-Alike Contest? We’d be a laughing stock. I say we should make the very best of what’s happened—and we’ll knock everyone sideways with it.”

  “I think we ought to get pissed,” said Sergey. “Perhaps we’ll see our way out through the bottom of a glass, or six. In vodka veritas!—or is that your sort of line, Petrov?”

  Mikhail ignored him. He was glancing from the cotton wool outside the window to Sonya, and back, as though to prompt her.

  “And what’s the climax of this new film, pray?”

  “I’ve no doubt Mikhail will tell us presently. As soon as he finds out himself.”

  “Don’t suppose the old story matters very much! Pretty stupid idea, really! Kind of simple-minded, eh? What sort of blockhead could ever have dreamed it up?”

  “Please!” said Felix. “This’ll be an experimental film … and it’ll be a thoroughly committed one into the bargain.”

  “Committed? It’s us lot who ought to be committed—to the nearest nut-house!” Sergey glared at Kirilenko. “Oops, the nuthouse is here already.” He jumped up. “I refuse to have any more to do with this farcical distortion of an honest project—into sheer fantasy. I’m walking out, in fact. Right now.”

  “But you can’t,” Mikhail said softly.

  “Oh, so now he’s the bloody script-writer and security man and everyone else!”

  Sonya hesitated, then nodded to Mikhail. “Yes, go on: tell them.”

  Mikhail spoke in a jolly way. “Well, I’m sorry to spoil your weekend, Sergey old son, but it’s physically impossible to get away from this place. When we went out for our little walk a while back, Sonya and I tried to go down the hill—and we found ourselves right back here where we started. I might add, we were walking in a perfectly straight line, too!”

  “What, cuddling and smooching and you had time to watch where you were walking?”

  Sonya started up, as though to slap him. “I suggest,” she said icily, “you try it yourself, Mr Pig.”

  “Oh, I shall.” Sergey hauled out of his pocket the keys to the Film Unit’s battered old Volga, garaged round the back of the building.

  “You’ll end up in a ditch,” said Felix. “And where does that leave the rest of us, if you run off with the car?”

  “I’m sure you’ll amuse yourselves adequately—”

  “Sergey, I won’t be bullied. We need to explore this other option—let’s keep an open mind, eh? We could revert to your idea later on.”

  Sergey jingled the keys. “Nothing doing.”

  Felix pursed his lips. “How very egocentric.”

  “Quite the prima donna,” Sonya gladly added.

  “Okay. Look, damn it: I’ve been challenged, haven’t I?” Sergey flushed. “So I’ll drive down the hill, and I’ll find somewhere to report our phone out of order. Then I’ll drive straight back up here again, right? I swear to you, either I get out of this madhouse for a breather—or I hit the bottle! Preferably on top of Mikhail’s skull. In fact, if I don’t leave this minute I’m going to throw up.”

 
“Perhaps a little hypnosis could help you?” Kirilenko pointed placatingly at the dusty sofa.

  “Fuck off with your hypnosis.” Sergey wrenched the doors open, and fled.

  Kirilenko went over to close the doors. “I do seem to recall that having me here was his idea in the first place …”

  “How can I apologize properly?”

  Kirilenko shrugged Felix’s excuses away. “I think Sergey’s notion of having a stiff drink wasn’t a bad one at all.” He wandered across to the window, but there was nothing whatever to be seen from it.

  “First rate idea! Mike, tell Osip to dig out a bottle and some glasses, will you?”

  Mikhail chuckled. “Won’t it look as though we’re having a party to celebrate his absence?”

  “Who cares?” Sonya said. “Besides, he’s going to need a stiff drink as soon as he gets back.”

  “He will?” asked Kirilenko.

  “Because he isn’t going to be able to drive down that hill. Because right now it isn’t there.”

  “Now, now, Sonya, you know full well that the mind plays tricks on itself when there’s reduced sensory input. Why, the very basis of hypnosis—”

  Kirilenko didn’t finish, nor did Mikhail even reach the doors on his errand—for these burst open, and in stumbled Osip, grey with fright.

  He headed for Felix. “I have to talk to you, Comrade!”

  “What’s wrong, man? The car hasn’t crashed already, has it?”

  “Car, what car? I managed to phone out, that’s what’s wrong. See, I been testing the phone every now and then.”

  “I bet you have,” said Mikhail. “Who did you get: yourself?”

  Osip stared round, uncomprehending. “I dialled… somebody I know. But the guy on the other end was a total stranger. ‘Who gave you this number?’ he wants to know. And: ‘What you calling me for, on a Sunday?’ ‘Eh, Comrade,’ says I, reasonable-like, ‘it’s only Saturday afternoon.’ So he starts in threatening and heaping abuse and calling me a saboteur and a silly joker—and next he says OGPU’ll sort out the likes of me. I ask you: OGPU! That’s years and years ago.”

  Muffled by double glazing and the fog, they heard the engine of the Volga revving, choke full out …

  “You sure, Osip?”

  “Sure as eggs is eggs, Mr Levin. He said OGPU.”

  “He was having you on.”

  “Not on that number, he wasn’t.”

  They heard the car drive off very slowly; perhaps there was a faint glow from its headlights, perhaps not.

  “Dear old Osip.” Mikhail draped an arm about the caretaker, almost affectionately. “Join the club.”

  “What club’s that, then? What’s going on here? You two used the phone! You called our own number—I saw you! What did you do that for?”

  “To see if it would ring. It did.”

  “Is that true?” Kirilenko asked Sonya. “You mean you phoned the same phone you were using—and you got it? That’s impossible.”

  “And Osip phoned out,” she said, “and he got somebody years and years ago, long before the KGB were even dreamed of. I think we can all avoid asking Osip why he was phoning his favourite number.”

  “Yup,” said Mikhail. “We’re all in the same boat now. We’re riding out the time-storm.”

  “What the devil are you two talking about?” Felix cried.

  “Well, it’s what Sonya and I discovered on our little stroll together …” Mikhail cupped a hand behind his ear. “Aha, and here he comes driving back, I do believe! Now, won’t he be surprised?”

  “Oughtn’t it to be getting dark?” Kirilenko consulted his watch. “Heavens, it ought to be black dark! Ah—our lights must be illuminating the fog. Weird effect.”

  “No night, nor day,” murmured Sonya. “Not any more—time’s gone away …”

  Somewhere around the corner, outside, a car engine roared and died.

  “You know,” said Mikhail to her, “that means there isn’t any secret funny business going on in Physics labs. The centre of this thing’s right here. It’s in this building. It’s us—it’s what we’re doing.”

  Feet came running down the hallway; Sergey appeared in the door. His eyes bulged, as if he’d met a ghost in a graveyard.

  “It won’t go down—”

  “What won’t, the Volga?”

  “The bloody hill won’t go down! It isn’t there—I nearly drove into this building! Had to jump on the brakes, I did.”

  Mikhail grinned. “You couldn’t by any chance have skidded round in a full circle? No, I suppose not…” He relented. “Sorry, old man—excuse my mockery! Osip, be a good chap and fetch us a bottle of vodka? We all need a drink. You do, too—come and join us.”

  “How come I couldn’t drive away?” bleated Sergey.

  “Ain’t anywhere to drive to. There ain’t anything out there at the moment. We can’t leave till it’s all over.”

  Sergey subsided into an armchair.

  With extraordinary dispatch, Osip fairly bustled in only a few moments later bearing a tray of glasses, with two half-litre bottles of Stolichnaya hooked between his fingers. Crashing the tray on to the table, he tore the caps off both bottles and poured shakily. Sergey hauled himself up, sniffing and snorting like a camel approaching an oasis. Perhaps this was just to clear the white fog from his nostrils. Or it might have been to stop himself from bursting into tears …

  Twenty-one

  “PRESUMABLY I’D BETTER tell the crew,” said Commander Astrov.

  “Why tell them we’re all doomed? What can they do about it? You’ll only spread panic.”

  “Yuri’s right,” said Sasha.

  “But I told them the time-jump would be quasi-instantaneous—so why haven’t I announced that we’ve emerged? They’re probably worried sick already. Do you think they didn’t notice the ship bucking like a horse when Anna fired the jets?”

  “So we’ve been busy! We’re trying to avoid space junk at the other end. T minus 43 years,” Yuri added more calmly with a glance at his retardograph. “Look, there’s no time to launch our shuttles—even if they could break out of the flux-field, which I doubt.”

  “I’m sure everyone ought to be told. It’s an awful thing to go to your death ignorantly.”

  “Thanks, but I’d rather be taken by surprise—right out of the blue.”

  “Oh, it’s out of the blue we’ll be coming in a few more minutes, and no mistake! I wonder if anyone in Siberia looked up in the sky and saw a Hammer and Sickle flying down from space? A sort of vision of future time…Maybe some of the reindeer people saw it. The Evenki… Then all the trees were knocked flat—just the way Czarist society was knocked flat a few years later … Shit, this is absurd talk. I’m going to tell them. How’s the reprogramming coming on?”

  “Slowly,” said Anna Aksakova.

  Yuri spoke up, more to delay Anton than for any other reason. “You do realize, don’t you Commander, that the flux-field is going to have to hold steady till almost the very end? Otherwise, given our shape, we’d be torn to pieces by the atmosphere and scattered across half of Asia. But we weren’t. I mean: we won’t be.”

  “Yes, that figures. We have to return to the Earth, our home… I wonder if it’s actually impossible to get away from our world by using the time-flux? Have you thought of that, Yuri?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh, we can send as much dead matter to the stars as we like—or as far back in time as we want. But as soon as we try to send conscious, living beings, it doesn’t work … What is time? Nobody really knows.”

  Yuri pretended interest. “Surely the main point is that all equations for physical processes work just as well in reverse as forwards? So processes can occur in either time-direction—theoretically. Well, we’ve proved that in practice, haven’t we?” He indicated his console. “T minus 47, see?” Immediately he regretted his gesture; he ought to be keeping the Commander’s mind off their impending doom.

  “Ah, but your equations don�
��t tell us what time is.”

  “Surely it has to do with the entropy total,” Yuri said cautiously.

  “But what if it doesn’t? What if the ‘passage’ of time is a construct of consciousness—of evolving consciousness? Maybe that’s why time seems to flow from past to future. Maybe it’s because of the dynamics of our evolution. And where, pray, did we evolve?” Anton stabbed a finger towards the main viewscreen, filled with the wild, solid fog which was part of the Earth. “Right down there, where else? Maybe ‘time’ as we know it doesn’t exist elsewhere in the universe. Because time hasn’t been constructed—out there. So we can’t get away from Earth by travelling through time.”

  “Surely not! What happened to the test probes we sent through the Flux? They certainly didn’t turn up on an earlier Earth, or people would have found them years ago. They were rigged to transmit for a hundred years.”

  “Maybe they just … stopped existing?”

  “Things don’t just cease to exist,” said Sasha sharply. “The Law of Conservation forbids it.”

  “We’ll soon cease to exist, Astrogator.”

  “Oh no we won’t! We will turn into heat and light and particles and droplets of germanium and copper and everything else. But the sum total of mass and energy won’t stop existing!”

  “Have you ever looked at a table of geological eras, Sorina?”

  “Of course. Hasn’t everybody?”

  “Yes, they look. But they don’t notice… one little detail. Each successive era is shorter than the one before—a child could plot the shrinking on a graph.”

  “Shrinking?”

  “That’s what I said. Look, the Carboniferous era lasts for about 350 million years. The Permian lasts for 280. Next comes the Triassic, at 230. Then there’s the Jurassic, at 190. And so on. Getting shorter all the time.”

  “But that’s just a convenient way of dividing prehistory.”

  “Is it indeed? I’ll tell you what it is. As life and brain structures evolve, so does time speed up. First of all, it’s all very slow and stately—but lately it’s been zipping along.”