Transreal Cyberpunk (8 page)

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Instead of returning in triumph to Kaliningrad, our train headed south. We were bound for Baikonur Cosmodrome, where the rockets are launched. Actually, Baikonur is just the “security name” for the installation. The real town of Baikonur is five hundred kilometers away. The true launch site is near the village of Tyuratam. And Tyuratam, worse luck, is even more of a hick town than Baikonur.

This cheerless place lies on a high plain north of Afghanistan and east of the Aral Sea. It was dry and hot when we got there, with a cease-less irritating wind. As they marched us out of the train, we saw engineers unloading the drive. With derricks.

Over the course of the trip, as the government rocket experts fiddled with it, the drive had expanded to fit their preconceptions. It had grown to the size of a whole flatcar. It had become a maze of crooked hydraulics, with great ridged black blast-nozzles. It was even bound together with those ridiculous hoops.

Vlad and I were hustled into our new quarters: a decontamination suite, built in anticipation of the launch of our first cosmonauts. It was not bad for a jail. We probably would have gotten something worse, except that Vlad’s head sometimes oozed a faint but definite blue glow, and that made them cautious.

Our food came through sterilized slots in the wall. The door was like a bank vault. We were interrogated through windows of bulletproof glass via speakers and microphones.

We soon discovered that our space drive had been classified at the Very Highest Circles. It was not to be publicly referred to as an alien artifact. Officially, our space-drive was a secret new design from Kaliningrad. Even the scientist already working on it at Tyuratam had been told this, and apparently believed it.

The Higher Circles expected our drive to work miracles, but they were to be miracles of national Soviet science. No one was to know of our contact with cosmic powers.

Vlad and I became part of a precedence struggle in Higher Circles. Red Army defense radars had spotted the launching of the yurt, and they wanted to grill us. Khrushchev’s new Rocket Defense Forces also wanted us. So did the Kaliningrad KGB. And of course the Tyuratam technicians had a claim on us; they were planning to use our drive for a spectacular propaganda feat.

We ended up in the hands of KGB’s Paranormal Research Corps.

Weeks grew into months as the state psychics grilled us. They held up Zener cards from behind the glass and demanded that we guess circle, star, or cross. They gave us racks of radish seedlings through the food slots, and wanted us to speak nicely to half of them, and scold the other half.

They wanted us to influence the roll of dice, and to make it interesting they forced us to gamble for our vodka and cigarette rations. Naturally we blew the lot and were left with nothing to smoke.

We had no result from these investigations, except that Vlad once extruded a tiny bit of pale blue ectoplasm, and I turned out to be pretty good at reading colors, while blindfolded, with my fingertips. (I peeked down the side of my nose.)

One of our interrogators was a scrawny hardline Stalinist named Yezhov. He’d been a student of the biologist Lysenko and was convinced that Vlad and I could turn wheat into barley by forced evolution. Vlad finally blew up at this. “You charlatans!” he screamed into the microphone. “Not one of you has even read Tsiolkovsky! How can I speak to you? Where is the Chief Designer? I demand to be taken to Comrade Sergei Korolyov! He’d understand this!”

“You won’t get out of it that way,” Yezhov yapped, angrily shaking his vial of wheat seeds. “Your Chief Designer has had a heart attack. He’s recovering in his
dacha
, and Khrushchev himself has ordered that he not be disturbed. Besides, do you think we’re stupid enough to let people with alien powers into the heart of Moscow?”

“So that’s it!” I shouted, wounded to the core at the thought of my beloved Moscow. “You pimp! We’ve been holding out on you, that’s all!” I jabbed my hand dramatically at him from behind the glass. “Tonight, when you’re sleeping, my psychic aura will creep into your bed and squeeze your brain, like this!” I made a fist. Yezhov fled in terror.

Silence fell. “You shouldn’t have done that,” Vlad observed.

I slumped into one of our futuristic aluminum chairs. “I couldn’t help it,” I muttered. “Vlad, the truth’s out. It’s permanent exile for us. We’ll never see Moscow again.” Tears filled my eyes.

Vlad patted my shoulder sympathetically. “It was a brave gesture, Nikita. I’m proud to call you my friend.”

“You’re the brave one, Vlad.”

“But without you at my side, Nikita ... You know, I’d have never dared to go into the valley alone. And if you hadn’t drunk that piss first, well, I certainly would never have—”

“That’s all in the past now, Vlad.” My cheeks burned and I began sobbing. “I should have ignored you when you were sitting under that piano at Lyuda’s. I should have left you in peace with your beatnik friends. Vlad, can you ever forgive me?”

“It’s nothing,” Vlad said nobly, thumping my back. “We’ve all been used, even poor Chief Korolyov. They’ve worked him to a frazzle. Even in camp he used to complain about his heart.” Vlad shook his fist. “Those fools. We bring them a magnificent drive from Tunguska, and they convince themselves it’s a reaction engine from Kaliningrad.”

I burned with indignation. “That’s right. It was our discovery! We’re heroes, but they treat us like enemies of the State! It’s so unfair, so uncommunist!” My voice rose. “If we’re enemies of the State, then what are we doing in here? Real enemies of the State live in Paris, with silk suits and a girl on each arm! And plenty of capitalist dollars in a secret Swiss bank!”

Vlad was philosophical. “You can have all that. You know what I wanted? To see men on the moon. I just wanted to see men reach the moon, and know I’d seen a great leap for all humanity!”

I wiped away tears. “You’re a dreamer, Vlad. The Infinite is just a propaganda game. We’ll never see daylight again.”

“Don’t give up hope,” Vlad said stubbornly. “At least we’re not clearing trees in some labor camp where it’s forty below. Sooner or later they’ll launch some cosmonauts, and then they’ll need this place for real. They’ll have to spring us then!”

§

We didn’t hear from the psychic corps again. We still got regular meals, and the occasional science magazine, reduced to tatters by some idiot censor who had decided Vlad and I were security risks. Once we even got a charity package from, of all people, Lyuda, who sent Vlad two cartons of Kents. We made a little ceremony of smoking one each, every day.

Our glass decontamination booth fronted on an empty auditorium for journalists and debriefing teams. Too bad none of them ever showed up. Every third day three cleaning women with mops and buckets scoured the auditorium floor. They always ignored us. Vlad and I used to speculate feverishly about their underwear.

The psychics had given up, and no one else seemed interested. Somehow we’d been lost in the files. We had been covered up so thoroughly that we no longer existed. We were the ghosts’ ghosts, and the secrets’ secrets, the best-hidden people in the world. We seemed to have popped loose from time and space, sleeping later and later each day, until finally we lost a day completely and could never keep track again.

We were down to our last pack of Kents when we had an unexpected visit.

It was a Red Army general with two brass-hat flunkies. We spotted him coming down the aisle from the auditorium’s big double doors, and we hustled on our best shirts. The general was a harried-looking, bald guy in his fifties. He turned on our speakers and looked down at his clipboard. “Comrades Zipkin and Globov!”

“Let me handle this, Vlad,” I hissed quickly. I leaned into my mike. “Yes, Comrade General?”

“My name’s Nedelin. I’m in charge of the launch.”

“What launch?” Vlad blurted.

“The Mars probe, of course.” Nedelin frowned. “According to this, you were involved in the engine’s design and construction?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “Thoroughly.”

Nedelin turned a page. “A special project with the Chief Designer.” He spoke with respect. “I’m no scientist, and I know you have important work in there. But could you spare time from your labors to lend us a hand? We could use your expertise.”

Vlad began to babble. “Oh, let us watch the launch! You can shoot us later, if you want! But let us see it, for God’s sake—”

Luckily I had clamped my hand over Vlad’s mike. I spoke quickly. “We’re at your service, General. Never mind Professor Zipkin, he’s a bit distraught.”

One of the flunkies wheeled open our bank vault door. His nose wrinkled at the sudden reek of months of our airtight stench, but he said nothing. Vlad and I accompanied Nedelin through the building. I could barely hold back from skipping and leaping, and Vlad’s knees trembled so badly I was afraid he would faint.

“I wouldn’t have disturbed your secret project,” the general informed us, “but Comrade Khrushchev delivers a speech at the United Nations tomorrow. He plans to announce that the Soviet Union has launched a probe to Mars. This launch must succeed today at all costs.” We walked through steel double-doors into the Tyuratam sunshine. Dust and grass had never smelled so good.

We climbed into Nedelin’s open-top field car. “You understand the stakes involved,” Nedelin said, sweating despite the crisp October breeze. “There is a new American president, this Cuban situation ... our success is crucial!”

We drove off rapidly across the bleak concrete expanse of the rocket-field. Nedelin shouted at us from the front seat. “Intelligence says the Americans are redoubling their space efforts. We must do something unprecedented, something to crush their morale! Something years ahead of its time! The first spacecraft sent to another planet!”

Wind poured through our long hair, our patchy beards. “A new American president,” Vlad muttered. “Big deal.” As I soaked my lungs with fresh air I realized how much Vlad and I stank. We looked and smelled like derelicts. Nedelin was obviously desperate.

We pulled up outside the sloped, fire-scorched wall of a concrete launch bunker. The Mars rocket towered on its pad, surrounded by four twenty-story hinged gantries. Wisps of cloud poured down from the rocket’s liquid oxygen ports. Dozens of technicians in white coats and hard-hats clambered on the skeletal gentry-ladders, or shouted through bullhorns around the rocket’s huge base.

“Well, comrades?” Nedelin said. “As you can see, we have our best people at it. The countdown went smoothly. We called for ignition. And nothing. Nothing at all!” He pulled off his brimmed cap and wiped his balding scalp. “We have a very narrow launch window! Within a matter of hours we will have lost our best parameters. Not to mention Comrade Khrushchev’s speech!”

Vlad sniffed the air. “Comrade General. Have you fueled this craft with liquid paraffin?”

“Naturally!”

Vlad’s voice sank. “These people are working on a rocket which misfired. And you haven’t drained the fuel?”

Nedelin drew himself up stiffly. “That would take hours! I understand the risk! I’m not asking these people to face any danger I wouldn’t face myself!”

“You pompous ass!” Vlad screeched. “That’s no Earthling rocket! It only looks like one because you expect it to! It’s not supposed to have fuel!”

Nedelin stared in amazement. “What?”

“That’s why it didn’t take off!” Vlad raved. “It didn’t want to kill us all! That drive is from outer space! You’ve turned it into a gigantic firebomb!”

“You’ve gone mad! Comrade, get hold of yourself!” Nedelin shouted. We were all on the edge of panic.

“This blockhead’s useless,” Vlad snarled, grabbing my arm. “We’ve got to get those people out of there, Nikita! It could take off any second—everyone expected it to!”

We ran for the rocket, shouting wildly, yelling anything that came into our heads. We had to get the technicians away. The Tunguska device had never known its own strength—it didn’t know how frail we were. I stumbled and looked over my shoulder. Nedelin’s flunkies were just a dozen steps behind us.

The ground crew saw us coming. They cried out in alarm. Panic spread like lightning.

It wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t all been Russians. A gloomy and sensitive people are always ready to believe the worst. And the worst in this case was obvious: total disaster from a late ignition.

They fled like maniacs, but they couldn’t escape their expectations. Pale streamers of flame gushed from the engines. More streamers arched from the rocket’s peak, the spikes of auroral fire. The gantries shattered like matchsticks, filling the air above us with wheeling black shrapnel. Vlad stumbled to the ground. Somewhere ahead of us I could hear barking.

I hauled Vlad to his feet. “Follow the dog!” I bellowed over the roar. “Into the focus of the ellipse, where it’s stable!”

Vlad stumbled after me, jabbering with rage. “If only the Americans had gotten the drive! They would have put men on the moon!”

We dashed through a blinding rain of paraffin. The barking grew louder, and now I could see the eager dog of blue light, showing us the way. The rocket was dissolving above us. The blast-seared concrete under our feet pitched and buckled like aspic. Before us the rocket’s great nozzles dissolved into flaming webs of spectral whiteness.

Behind us, around us, the paraffin caught in a great flaming sea of deadly heat. I felt my flesh searing in the last instant: the instant when the inferno’s shock wave caught us up like straws and flung us into the core of white light.