Watson, Ian - Novel 11 (16 page)

 
          
Mikhail woke with
a hangover. It didn’t
take the form of a headache, so much as of a certain sweatiness coupled with a
strong desire to remain horizontal.

 
          
A
table lamp, silk shade baked brown by the years, had been left on as though he
were a child, subject to bad dreams. He squinted at it. The bulb seemed
preternaturally bright, as if it had been sneakily increasing its luminosity
all night long. Uttering a faint groan, he groped for the switch—which was
damned stiff, and set far too high up the neck of the lamp. Always a battle switching
off one of these things! Usually it ended with the lamp lying on the floor,
blazing away stubbornly.

 
          
A
pair of vinegar-brown bloomers caught his attention. These, and an elasticated
bra, were tangled up with his own black acetate shorts on the floor. On closer,
bleary inspection he detected a heap of woollen chainmail lying underneath,
beside his trousers.

 
          
Turning
over, he found to his surprise that what was crushing his spine was not a
displaced bolster, but Dr Sonya Suslova . . .

 
          
He
propped himself stiffly on one arm. Unpeeling the sheet, he inspected her
breasts. They lay sluggishly parchmented by sleep, the nipples softly dissolved
so that they had almost sunken into pits.

 
          
Sonya
woke and blinked. Hastily she pulled the sheet right up to her chin. “Oh!” she
said, her blue eyes widening.

 
          
“Good
morning! God, I feel I’ve been through a mangle ... I guess we must have made
love last night?” This was not, he realized, a very tactful way of juxtaposing
his hangover, and her.

 
          
She
yawned, granting him a vision of the pink cave of her mouth and throat, uvula
pressing against arched tongue like a large clitoris. Her mouth snapped shut.
“Can’t you remember?’’

 
          
“Er
. . . Afraid it’s all a bit hazy. Well, did we?’’

 
          
“It
seems highly likely we did, since we’re lying in bed together!’’ She giggled.

 
          
Mikhail
leaned over her. “Perhaps we ought to jog our memories?’’

 
          
However,
Sonya popped out of bed, hauling the sheet around her. “What’s the time?’’

 
          
Mikhail
saw his watch lying under the lamp. “Seven. Bit after.” Automatically he
scooped up the watch and began winding it.

 
          
What
a dumb thing, to fuss on with a watch when there’s a naked woman in the
bedroom! But actually, the clockwork watch was a vital link with reality. A
watch was the only means left to them to measure time, when darkness and
daylight had both melted into the same amorphous pearly mist . . .

 
          
Rolling
off the bed, naked, he stood up with an effort and made for the window. Parting
the chintz curtains, he inspected the luminous fog; it looked just as empty of
content as yesterday. By the time he turned away—and this wasn’t long—Sonya
somehow had managed to dress herself at top speed. Already she was buttoning up
her calico blouse. Thus, from being a hopeful lover, he was transformed into a
patient standing starkers in a surgery—so that the Doctor could diagnose
knobbly knees, or something. Stubbornly he sat down, still naked, and crossed
his legs. Something was nagging at him.

 
          
Restored
to her chain-mail, Sonya grinned and perched on the bottom of the bed.

 
          
“That
was what I call a party!
All friends together, now.
Even Sergey.
Passed out on the sofa, he did—how theatrical!”
She laughed, since she knew for a fact that all artists habitually drank
themselves senseless, given half the chance, and succumbed in odd corners,
careless of clothes and comfort. “Osip won’t have much to say about it, either!
Do you remember how he was dancing with Felix, singing those rude songs?”

           
“Vaguely.”
What was nagging at him?

           
A hazy memory emerged of Sonya
clinging on for grim death to the banisters ... Oh yes, they had been a Soviet
mountaineering duo, and the stairs had been the
Caucasus
. They had crawled upstairs on their hands
and knees—hence these bruises on his knees! This involved a good deal of giggly
clutching to prevent either person from sliding into crevasses . . . And once
they had scaled the cornice of the landing, he had spotted Osip weaving about
below and given warning of the sighting of an
Almost
, the wild man of the mountains. Huddled on the floor
together, they had peeped through the rails, terrified of falling down the
precipice into his clutches . . . Camp Six, the
Summit
, had been his bedroom.

 
          
All this larking about seemed a long time ago.
Much more
recently than that, he’d . . . well, he’d been sound asleep.

 
          
And
dreaming! The
K. E. Tsiolkovsky
had
been falling through time, down towards
Siberia
! And Anton Pavlovich had been trekking
relentlessly up the
Angara
River
. . .

 
          
These
things had happened while he lay in a drunken fugue in bed, with Sonya blotto
beside him . . .

 
          
Suddenly
events collapsed into the right order, and he trembled and clenched his teeth.
He was possessed, and he knew he couldn’t shake
free—not by
way of vodka, nor by fucking, nor
even by sleep. The momentum of events
was independent of him now, just as it was independent of Victor the Master
Hypnotist.

 
          
“You
should get dressed,” Sonya said. “You’re shivering.”

 
          
“Not
with cold, I ain’t. Sonya, the whole thing’s been ploughing on regardless! I
remember now: after we fell asleep I was back in the time-ship—and I was up the
Angara
too. It wasn’t any ordinary dream. Even
when I’m unconscious, it’s all carrying on. I can’t stop it—none of us can. Are
we all drugged? Is that it, Doctor Suslov? Is this an experiment to disorient
people? Are technicians sitting in some basement underneath this building,
listening in through microphones and smirking? Are
they
pumping out that filthy fog? What is it: clouds of mind-gas?”

           
“It certainly isn’t
my
experiment! It isn’t Victor’s,
either, or he wouldn’t have got so drunk. No, of course it isn’t an
experiment!’’ “What is it, then?’’

 
          
“Time
has come adrift.
Because.
. .because///^, that’s
what.’’ Sonya looked torn between bursting into tears, and coming to mother
him. “We’re trapped in a time-bubble—like a soap- bubble. That’s why we
couldn’t leave this place yesterday. We just walked around the inside of a
bubble. Outside of the bubble it’s . . . 1890, or 2090, I don’t know.’’

 
          
“And
this bubble will pop—when I reach
Tunguska
?’’

 
          
“It
has to, Mike. The world will spring back.’’ She smiled wryly. “And meanwhile,
we’re still alive. You, in particular, we’re very lively.’’

 
          
“Thanks
for telling me!’’

 
          
“You’d
better get some clothes on—I’m
starving
.”
Sonya squirmed. “Actually I’ll go and get washed first.’’

 
          
“Are
we really alive, like other people?’’

 
          
She
made an uncertain gesture, and fled from his bedroom.

 
          
OSIP, unshaven AND
the worse for wear,
nevertheless had managed to produce hot coffee, and ham and eggs, by what
everyone agreed to call
nine o’clock
. He sat down at the dining table with the
others. That cottony fog was still rubbing itself up against all the windows of
the building—and he needed company. He dared not miss a word which might
explain this crazy, supernatural situation.

 
          
Not
that he was a secretly religious man—that sort of thing was all stuff and
nonsense. Still, he wouldn’t have minded having an icon about the place just at
the moment.
Purely for decoration.

 
          
He
stared at the window every now and then, fearful that the fog might be seeping
inside. If so, then you could walk upstairs—and find yourself back down at the
bottom again! He shuffled his chair closer to Victor Kirilenko, seeking
protection. ‘Knowledge is Power’, after all . . .

 
          
Kirilenko
mopped fat off his plate with a slice of bread, thumped a slice of cheese down
on top, and chewed.

 
          
“Um,”
he said. “Good thing we’ve got enough food to last a siege. Um, now Mike you’re
saying that this mental journey of yours just ploughs on at its own
pace—whether we like it or not? Even if we hold no more sessions, it’ll just
continue?’’

 
          
“Relentlessly.
Like an avalanche.’’

 
          
“Um, interesting.
I wonder—ah—suppose there really
is a
time- ship? And suppose your mind
is strongly in key with it—so that this affects the present in a paranormal
way.
. .’’ Kirilenko waved his greasy crust at Mikhail. “Of
course, there’s one big discrepancy.’’

           
“What’s that, then?” asked Osip.

 
          
Kirilenko
explained patiently, “A discrepancy is an inconsistency—something which
doesn’t add up.”

 
          
“I
know that!
I in’t uneducated.
I mean, what sort of
discrep.
. . discrep . . .
What is if!”

 
          
“Ah.
Well, the good ship
K. E. Tsiolkovsky
is supposed to crash in the
Tunguska
region in the year 1908, right? Thus accounting for the well documented and
exactly dated enigma, with which we are all familiar. Yet Anton Chekhov is
heading towards the same place in the year 1890—to investigate precisely the
same event, which occurred in 1888! There’s your discrepancy: twenty years of
it.”

 
          
“But
how can the same thing happen at two different times, Professor?”

 
          
“Right
now I believe it is equally probable that the
Tunguska
event happens in 1908
and
in 1888—it’s undecided. So what is going to decide it? Why, the
observers of this event—namely us! Specifically, Mike. Just as soon as Mike
witnesses the
Tsiolkovsky
exploding
in 1908, then all this phoney business back in 1890 will collapse. Poof! The
fog will roll away, and you’ll have your authentic Chekhov heading for
Sakhalin
, as originally occurred. This other trip
will be a ghost event with no substance.”

 
          
“That’s
way beyond me, Professor. What causes a ghost, of an event?”

 
          
“Aha,
there we have it in a word—and that word is ‘cause’! If a ship travels back
through time—mark you, I don’t say that any such thing really exists—then
obviously this disrupts cause and effect. Perhaps the passage of the ship sets
up a sort of wake, composed of ghost events? But consider: maybe such ghosts
are swirling around us all the time—ghosts of unfulfilled possibilities? Our
normal consciousness only lets us experience a single chain of cause and
effect. But these are extraordinary circumstances we’re in, now. Mike is
experiencing possibilities, as though they’re real events—and the
K. E. Tsiolkovsky
is a superb metaphor
for what’s going on in his head. And maybe that’s all it is: a metaphor.”

           
“How about the fog?” insisted
Osip.
“And none of
us being
able to
leave?”

 
          
“Mike’s
mind must be very powerful,” said Sonya; she flushed. “Indeed, he must be some
kind of medium, without realizing it. Obviously his case would repay—”

 
          
“No
thanks,” interrupted Mikhail with alacrity, “I’ve no desire to spend the next
ten years locked in a lab.”

 
          
“Nor
I, dear boy—that’s why I said
'would
repay’.” “Nobody’s gonna lock you up, Professor.” Osip edged even closer, as a
duckling to its dam. He refilled Kirilenko’s coffee cup, nudging and jostling
him officiously.

 
          
“Your
duty, Mike, is to steer this ship of your mind to a
safe.
. . well, that’s to say, to its destruction—in the year 1908. You must
observe
that event, so that it really
happens. And then we’ll all be free of this imprisoning mesmerism.”

 
          
“Is
he a mesmerist, too?”

 
          
“You’ve
heard of the Indian rope trick, Osip? Well, it’s said that the Indian yogi performs
this so-called trick by means of mass suggestion. I think we may well have run
across an even stranger case of mass suggestion, here!”

 
          
“Do
you mean
it’s
all clear out there?” asked Sergey.
“What, we could walk off down the hill—if we could only see how?”

 
          
“I’m
starting to suspect it.”
Kirilenko steepled his hands as if
in prayer.

 
          
“And
Osip could phone out—?”

 
          
“How
about that voice I heard?
I in’t making it up, Professor!”
“Of course you aren’t. Isn’t it curious, though, that you only heard the voice
after Mikhail Petrov had used the phone?” “Ah—”

 
          
“Might
I voice one small objection?” asked Mikhail sarcastically. “A minor point, but
how come I’m suddenly a master of mass suggestion when I’m such a dud actor—I
mean, let’s be frank!—that I need a hypnotist to make me any good?”

 
          
Yet
Kirilenko was unabashed. “That’s because of super-ability, don’t you see? Your
own repressed talent is to persuade audiences.

           
It’s an actor’s business to convince
the audience utterly, The yogi and the method actor have a lot in common,
Mike—but the yogi goes a stage further. The yogi weaves a
perfect
illusion. He does so by using a superconscious
communication channel.
Beyond voice.
Beyond body language.
Incidentally, the object of the
exercise
wasn’t
to enhance your
talent—but that’s what seems to have happened.”

 
          
Sergey
nodded ruefully. “Speaking as a member of the audience, I’m convinced. Though
I’ll never know how the hell I got the
Volga
swung round in that space—!”

 
          
“The
trouble is,” said Mikhail, “I’m convinced too. Oughtn’t a yogi to be aware of
what he’s up to? I sure ain’t.”

 
          
“But
are we really an audience in the strict sense?” asked Kirilenko. “Aren’t we all
very much active participants?
Fellow conspirators, almost?”

 
          
Felix
thrust his chair back noisily. “It’s a good thing we didn’t decide to make a
film about the young Lenin! Or we’d really be in the soup.”

 
          
“In
that case, you wouldn’t have chosen Petrov for the part.”

 
          
“Heaven
knows what games a Lenin look-alike would have got up to in your hands!”

 
          
“Look,”
said Sonya, “if we’re all supposed to be fellow conspirators,
I
suggest we avoid blaming any particular individual, hmm?”

 
          
Sergey
thumped on the table, jarring cups and cutlery. “I’m going to speak freely—as
an intimate friend, seeing as we all toasted each other so sincerely last
night. Audience, participants: I don’t care! All this talk, when we should be
getting on with it! If Mike says it’s all carrying on regardless, I’ll believe
him—he was telling the truth about outside. I want to know what’s going on with
Anton and Anton Astrov. One thing I can tell you is that time’s moving much
more slowly for Astrov than it is for Anton. With him
it’s
minutes, compared with days.”

 
          
“No
it isn’t,” said Felix. “Astrov is living through years of time, speeded up.”

           
Kirilenko dropped his napkin, and
arose.
“Sergey’s quite right—about getting on with it.”

 
          
“Can
I come with you?’’ begged Osip.

 
          
“If you clear up, first.’’

 
          
Osip
fairly scurried.