Rasputin's Bastards (35 page)

Zhanna put a hand to her forehead and scrunched her eyes shut. Her mouth tightened.

“Hey,” said Stephen. He reached across and patted Zhanna’s knee.
More fucking tears
, he thought with an unkindness that made him ashamed. “Don’t cry,” he said.

Zhanna stopped. She put her hand on Stephen’s, pulled it further up the fabric of her pants. She rolled her chair towards him. “Can it be — ?” she said, eyes widening with a creepy kind of optimism.

Stephen yanked his hand away. Zhanna took it like a slap on the face.

“I’m sorry!” she bawled, pulling her hands to her chest, raising her knees to her chin. “I’m sorry! I’m no good at this, Stephen! No good!”

Stephen was jolted by a sudden spark of empathy. It was not unlike the times when he thought he’d gotten into Richard’s skull, or walked behind Amar Shadak’s eyelids. This poor girl had lived her life in this City 512. Everyone she spoke to, she did through the stark honesty of Discourse. Those who didn’t have the talent or training to speak back were open books to her. If a man wanted to sleep with her, he’d broadcast his intentions clearly — even though his eyes might be discreetly averted and his hands busied with paperwork or at a computer keyboard. Zhanna had lived a life without guesswork. She was about as intuitive as Stephen was psychic.

Stephen reached out again. He put his hand on Zhanna’s trembling shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Look. Don’t — don’t cry. But I’ll lay it out for you. Your intelligence is good on one thing: I’m queer. Here’s another fact Mrs. Kontos-Wu might not know: I’m HIV positive. You know what that means?”

“Y-yes,” said Zhanna. She nuzzled Stephen’s hand with her chin. “You’ve got the AIDS. I am sorry.”

“It’s shitty,” Stephen agreed. “But I’m not exactly sick with AIDS yet. I’ve just got the virus — and I’m not going to go spreading it around here.”

Zhanna opened her eyes and looked at him with fierce determination. “One day, we will cure the AIDS.”

“That’s what they say,” said Stephen.

“No,” she said, firmly, “one day
we
will cure the AIDS. That will be a part of the new world that we design.”

Stephen smiled.

“New world. It’s no wonder that they’re making a religion out of you with ambitions like that.”

Zhanna lifted her head and snorted derisively. “The religion. That’s foolishness. Like the Babushka nonsense.”

“Babushka.” Stephen sighed with inward relief; it looked as though Zhanna was as anxious to steer the conversation back to normalcy as he was. “There’s that word again. Who is Babushka?”

“Ask me questions I can answer,” said Zhanna. “I’m not sure who Babushka is. She contacted Vladimir when he was two months old. She convinced him that he could come to North America — arrange passage there — and together, they could bring everyone together. End the oppression. Now that Vladimir is there, however — he’s not so sure. Babushka — whatever, whoever she is — she’s the one who turned this into a religion. And that wasn’t what any of us wanted.”

“That’s right,” said Stephen. “Vladimir wanted to do the Spartacus thing.” Zhanna gave him a quizzical look. “Free the slaves,” he explained. “That’s what he told Ilyich Chenko. And now — now he’s with this Babushka, against his will?”

Zhanna nodded.

“Is that where we’re going then? To Babushka?”

“Not right away,” said Zhanna, “and when we do, we’ll not go by ourselves.”

“Then when — and with who?”

“After we go deep,” said Zhanna, “to Petroska Station. We need the help of the Mystics. And we have to go deep to find them.”

“Mystics?” said Stephen. “Petroska Station? Who are — ?”

Zhanna stopped him. “Stephen,” she said, “I am sorry. But no more questions. I must — I must talk with my brothers and sisters for a while. This communication in the Physick is exhausting. And there will just be more pain if we keep it up longer.”

“I'll go." He pushed himself up and slid into the dark corridor. The guard was gone when he got to the hatchway back to the part of the submarine reserved for mortals. Stephen ducked through it and slunk his way back to his cabin

Stephen lay in his bunk with his eyes shut. Below him, Konstantine Uzimeri kept up a regular, wheezing snore that mingled with the irregular drone of the engines, and the clanking of the pipes over their heads. Occasionally, Stephen coul hear the clattering and clanking as the Romanian crew went about their busines operating the old Foxtrot submarine. Stephen watched the multicoloured patterns of retinal ghosts crawl across the inside of his eyelids. They could be anything, he thought, as he drifted off to sleep. They could be squids — seven of them now, submarinal giants with deep eyes and tentacles as long as a ship — following in the frothing wake of the Foxtrot, as it dove ever deeper to its rendezvous with the Mystics in Petroska Station.

They could be squids. They could be anything.

Alexei gasped and blinked in eye-stinging heat. His spit felt cold on his tongue as he sucked steam over it. He coughed as the steam hit his lungs. He sniffed at a strange and familiar scent, of rising bread and boiling cabbage and pine and struggled to focus his eyes on something in the hazy darkness.

“Aie, shit,” he said. Alexei was surprised, pleased even, to hear his own deep man-voice. He ran his hand over his steam-slicked shoulders, the thick hair on his chest. “I’m back.”

In the darkness, another voice chuckled. “Back, are you?”

“Who is there?”

Alexei came more to himself each passing second. He knew he was sitting on a wooden bench; his feet dangled to touch what felt like bare stone, cold as ice in the heat of this room. He blinked again, and now he saw a shape — a lean figure of a man, lolling naked on another bench across this strange, log-hewn room.

“Hello, Alexei,” said the man. “I am Vasili Borovich. They call me the
Koldun
here. Welcome to the bathhouse, my cousin. And welcome home.”

Alexei squinted. “Home?”

“For all purposes — yes. You have slept a long time. Nearly two days. I know that seems a terribly long time, but there you are.”

Actually, it didn’t seem that long at all. As far as he was concerned, he’d spent literally months in the strange metaphor of his recollections. But he just nodded.

The Koldun, Vasili Borovich, smiled at him. “What did you dream?” he asked.

Alexei started to answer — to talk about the onionskins of his memories, the spy school and the psychic stuff and the sleeper school which were all lies or so he thought — and then a familiar reflex took over.

“I don’t remember,” he said.

The Koldun leaned forward and peered at him — as though trying to read something in his eye, spot the object of the truth and pull it out of him. Evidently he couldn’t find it, because he finally blinked and just shrugged.

“It will come to you,” he said. “That is fine.”

“I am sure,” said Alexei. He looked skeptically around the log-hewn room. “So this is home. Where exactly, Mister Koldun, is home?”

“You don’t remember your dream — it’s not likely you’ll remember this place.”

Alexei shrugged now. The Koldun smiled, and raised his hands, looked around.

“The village,” he said, “of New Pokrovskoye. It is home for us all.”

“If you say so,” said Alexei.

The Koldun’s smile faltered and his eyes narrowed, and Alexei found his hands going to cover his privates.

“You don’t remember it as home. But the Babushka has prepared it for you. You and your cousins. You should be very grateful.”

“The Village of New Pokrovskoye.” Alexei rolled the word around in his mouth. It did come easily — more easily, say, than City 512 — or Murmansk. “You should thank Babushka for me.”

“I will — pass it along.”

“So I have been asleep for two days?”

The Koldun nodded.

“Are you in charge of this place?”

The Koldun hesitated. “No,” he finally said. “Well, that is not true. I am — transitionally in charge. But I will not be for very long.”

“And this place is my home.”

“You are coming back to yourself. Good.”

“I’m only repeating,” said Alexei.

“You know, we are not going to accomplish anything sitting here in the bathhouse.” The Koldun slid down off the bench and drifted through the steam to the door. He turned back to Alexei and beckoned.

“Come,” he said. “It is time to go outside.”

Alexei followed the Koldun through the door, into a small antechamber. It was colder here, and small. The two had to shuffle and dodge to keep out of contact with one another. The floor was bare rock and Alexei curled his toes against the cool. He felt gooseflesh run up and down his arms, the backs of his thighs. There was a little window that was frosted with condensation. It admitted a cool, blue light to the tiny room. Beside the window was a door of wooden planks.

“Ready, Alexei?” The Koldun smiled over his shoulder as he pulled on a wrought iron handle and pushed the door open.

The sky held the consistency of fine marble — little lines of white transgressing a perfect blue dome that covered the world like the ceiling of a cathedral. Alexei drew a lungful of the cool, maritime air as he stepped naked out of the bathhouse. The sweat and steam cooled on him and ran down his flanks in little rivulets. If this one was a trick, he thought to himself, it was a good one.

“Name the smells,” said the Koldun.

Alexei frowned — crinkled his nose.

“Pine needles,” he said. “Mushrooms. A lady’s perfume.”

“Interesting,” said the Koldun. “Myself, I smell the city. Engine oil. Exhaust fumes. You, I think, are more in the Babushka’s favour than I today.”

“Babushka?” Alexei squinted down the hill. There was supposed to be a village there, but all he could see was the tops of thin scrub, and farther off, the ocean. “You mentioned her inside. Who is she?”

The Koldun laughed. “You wouldn’t know her by name — but you will have felt her in your dreams. You might have even dreamed of her. If you did, you smelled her, most likely. One day when you smelled a peculiar smell, a short time ago perhaps — did it not change your destiny?”

“My
destiny
?” Alexei frowned. “Burnt sugar,” he said. “I smelled it on a man’s breath, who pulled me from the ocean. It caused me to lie to him.”

The Koldun nodded. “The Babushka favours you,” he said. “As to who she is? She is the one who made this place — her and some others whose names and bones are lost.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. She was one of the first to come here — one of a small group of agents like yourself. Sent here to establish a base of operations for the dreaming army.”

“And where,” said Alexei, “is here? Don’t say New Pokrovskoye.”

The Koldun laughed. “We’re in Labrador, which is a part of Canada no one much goes to. We established it to keep a close eye on the NATO base at Goose Bay. We keep it now — well, let me just say that it suits our purposes, past and present.”

Alexei stomped his bare feet on the rock. He took another breath. This time, the smells were gone.

“We are in New Pokrovskoye, and Labrador. And you call yourself a Koldun.”

Borovich smiled and nodded.

“That’s an old name,” said Alexei. “It means that you are a village wizard.” He waggled his fingers. “Casting charms on people and such.”

The Koldun shrugged. He gestured to the log building behind them. “There is my sauna,” he said. A village Koldun, Alexei knew, spent a lot of time in saunas. “A good place to meditate. I do not cast many charms, though.”

“Except metaphorically,” said Alexei. “Tell me — did you preside over the awakening of all the newcomers to — ” he snapped his fingers.

“New Pokrovskoye.”

“Right.”

“No.”

“Another question, and I won’t trouble you. You talked about a ‘dreaming army.’”

“I did,” said the Koldun.

“Am I dreaming now?” said Alexei.

The Koldun laughed. “Truly,” he said, “that is a question I cannot reliably answer. Come over here — ” he gestured around the side of the structure. “We should put some clothes on you. Your balls are as small as pebbles in the cold.”

A few minutes later, Alexei was dressed in a pair of cotton trousers and a thick woollen sweater — clothing he’d never seen before but which nevertheless fit him perfectly — and walking down the hill with the Koldun.

He regarded the smaller man. The Koldun was old. Maybe he was old as Kolyokov was these days. But he was in much better shape. His hair was all there, and still mostly black, combed back into a thick ponytail. His beard had borne the years more vividly — it was streaked with grey and white where it drooped below his chin. Alexei felt as though he ought to like this Koldun character, and in many ways he did. A Koldun, at least as far as Alexei remembered from his mother’s stories, was a wizard true enough — but force of good in a community. And this one seemed to be that. He had, after all, pulled Alexei from the pits of dream; helped him back into himself; answered his questions as best he could; and given Alexei clothes and a bath.

But Alexei could have said the same things about Holden Gibson — and he didn’t like or trust that old bastard at all.

And on the subject of Gibson . . .

“I came here with some people,” said Alexei. “In a big boat. A yacht. I don’t see them here.”

The Koldun put up his hand to hush him.

“In time,” he said, “you’ll see them all.”

Alexei frowned. Something was in the Koldun’s tone he didn’t like.

“What about the children?”

The Koldun looked at Alexei sidelong, and smiled.

“In time, Kilodovich,” he said. “In time.”

They had been walking down a broad, rocky pathway between planted rows of small conifer trees. The path was ending now, intersecting another at a wooden platform from which a long, precarious stair descended down a cliffside. For the first time, Alexei got a proper view of the village.

He made an appreciative noise.

The village spread below them to the left and right, hugging the crescent of a wide and stony harbour like lichen. It seemed to Alexei that it was snatched not out of time, but memory. The houses were all of dark log, neatly cut with bright window trims and great red and green beams along the spines of their wood-shingled roofs. Did a village such as this ever truly exist a century ago? Probably not. But its sight filled Alexei with an almost painful nostalgia — far from his just-relived memories of City 512, this was the place he wished to have come from.