Watson, Ian - Novel 11 (20 page)

 
          
The
Tungusi chuckled softly, and led Anton unresistingly back towards the tent,
pulling him along by that loop of string. And one of the horses neighed
miserably: a statue restored to life . . .

 
          
Weariness
overcame Anton the moment the two men reached the tent flap. He was barely able
to pull his boots off in the last guttering flickers from the candle, and creep
back inside his bedding, before he fell deeply asleep.

 
          
NEXT morning Tolya
gave no sign that
anything odd had happened between Anton and him the night before; what’s more
he talked in the same barbaric and halting Russian as ever. So Anton wasn’t at
all convinced that his nocturnal experience had been anything other than a
particularly vivid dream. Perhaps he had walked in his sleep, in the clearing .
. .

 
          
After
a lot of grumbling on Tolya’s part, considerable browbeating by Vershinin and a
mite of bribery from Mirek, the Tungusi even agreed to guide them further
towards their destination; and within a couple of hours the party was making
its way along the south bank of the Chambe in an easterly direction. The day
was bitterly cold, though hardly a breeze was stirring; and under a cloudless
sky that augured well—though not to Tolya— the snow was almost blue, not white.
So low must the temperature have been that the snow ran off their boots and the
horses’ hooves and the sledge-runners like dry dust; none of it could cling.

 
          
A
couple of versts beyond the Tungusi encampment they reached the Avarkita and
waded across it amidst little rafts of ice; after which they had to light a
bonfire of branches and stamp around to dry their legs. Five versts further on
Tolya pointed out the best place to cross the Chambe itself,
then
he took them to where a single raft was cached, hidden by snow amidst tall
spruces.

 
          
He
pointed north by north-west. “Before
noon
, see trees what fell down. I go now.’’

 
          
“Oh
no you don’t!’’ barked Vershinin. He caught hold of Tolya’s arm. “You’re coming
along too! How are we supposed to find the trail on our own? We’re paying you
good roubles—a lot more than you deserve!”

 
          
“Is cursed.”

 
          
“Drivel!
What’s wrong with our money? Your eyes lit up before.”

 
          
“Money
clean
. Place cursed.”

 
          
“Balderdash and poppycock!”

 
          
“I
don’t know about that,” said Tsiolkovsky thoughtfully. “It occurs to me that if
billions of atoms get broken, and if these fragments impregnate the ground,
then conceivably the earth continues to release active particles—”

 
          
“Shut
up.” Vershinin pulled out his service revolver and waved it about.

 
          
“Let’s
try to be rational?” suggested Mirek.

 
          
“What’s
rational about a curse? I ask you! Tell me, my northern savage, how can any
part of God’s good Earth be cursed? This might be a wretched, desolate hole,
and the conditions of life might be shit, but
cursed
—isn’t that going a bit far?” He rounded on Mirek for a
moment. “Are you going to let us all be stymied by a curse? I’ll tell you what
kind of curses I believe in!
Curses that get things done!”

 
          
“Quite
so,” said
Lydia
. “But
do
put the gun away.”

 
          
“You
not see,” Tolya said.
“Is curse.”

 
          
As
Vershinin was holstering his revolver, obedient to her word, Tsiolkovsky began
mumbling. “Such particles . . . they might well involve, um, a form of
burning
energy . . . like the sun’s
energy . . .”

 
          
“Be
quiet, drudge! Come along, wild
man,
tell us all about
this precious curse! What does it do? Make people’s balls fall off?” “It belong
Tungusi people.”

 
          
“Aha!”
There was a glint in Mirek’s eye. “Do I hear someone invoking mineral rights?
One has to realise that even
if
mining is possible, this will require tens of thousands of roubles in
investment capital before utilisation—”

 
          
“He
means,” interrupted Anton, “that Ogdy—their god of
fire,
or of heat and cold or something—has dethroned their sky god, Buga, by knocking
down all the trees.”

 
          
“How
on Earth do you know that?” Sidorov’s expression was a study in doting wonder.
On Tolya’s face, however, was a different expression: one of complete surprise
at this revelation—as though he hadn’t said it all in Anton’s hearing just a
few hours earlier. . .

 
          
‘And
maybe he never did,’ thought Anton. ‘Not if I was dreaming . . . But what if
Tolya was in some sort of trance last night? A trance in which he spoke much
better Russian than he normally does? His brain soaks up the Russian language
like a sponge, but only the top of the sponge is ever in touch with the
surface—last night he spoke from the depths.’

 
          
Sensing
that somehow he had gained the upper hand, Anton fixed Tolya with what he hoped
was a look of penetrating command. “You
mil
guide us—all the way.”

 
          
The
Tungusi glanced aside, like a village dog, outstared. Presently he nodded.

 
          
‘Maybe,’
Anton reflected, ‘all that nonsense last night was supposed to send me
scuttling with my tail between my legs... on the principle that it would have
sent a Tungusi scuttling!’

 
          
He
turned to Vershinin, and spoke angrily. “They may be wild men! And what this
place needs
are
mines and railways
and dispensaries and schools! But how can we even think of this when
Russia
herself is so uncivilised? When pig
ignorance rules the roost everywhere? I tell you, Baron, it’s the ordinary
Russian people who are devils of ignorance—not just these tribesmen!”

 
          
He
found himself remembering the red flag stitched to the clothes of his double in
the mirror ... A hammer and sickle—all the way from the Red Planet.
Symbols of hard work which had successfully built a ship of space?
Yes, that’s what they might have been: emblems of honest, clear-sighted labour.

 
          
“And
what’s more,” he said to Mirek, “our local socialists aren’t likely to change
things much! What do they call themselves: Marxists, eh? Lackeys of a German
Jew’s dogmas... All they can produce are tiny explosions of mayhem which only
make matters worse. If society’s ever going to change, maybe the impetus will
have
to come from the planet Mars!”

 
          
The
immediate effect of Anton’s outburst, in the dry chill air, was to rack him
with a bronchial spasm. He coughed into his glove eight or ten times.
Exhausted, he continued staring at his gloved fist. On the fabric he saw a tiny
red star, of bloody sputum.

 
          
By
late afternoon they had been struggling through devastation for many versts.
Uncountable pines and birches had been blasted to the ground. Under the snow
cover the taiga seemed to be an infinite battlefield where massed armies of
giants had been laid low, doomed to lie here for several hundred years till
very slowly they rotted away, summer by summer. All the tumbled trunks pointed
south.

 
          
Yet
branches and wrenched-up roots twisted every which way, too, like bare broken
bones—the force of the blast had instantly stripped away all trace of former
greenery from the branches. So the only way though very often was to hack a
path with axe or sickle.

 
          
But
they made progress.

 
          
To
the east the land sloped downward, and there they could see the River Makirta
approaching them and twisting away again a dozen times over; at least the map
was right in that respect. Low knolls pimpled the terrain.
Lydia
had scrambled up several of these with
Mirek, she to gain a little elevation for photography, he to take sightings
through his theodolite.

 
          
In
worsening weather late in the day, they camped. A bitter wind was blowing
steadily from the west by now, raking their cheeks; it seemed to be scudding
grits of ice into their skin instead of snowflakes. If the wind had been coming
from the north, it would hardly have been possible to breathe.

 
          
A
couple of hours earlier they had all rubbed their faces with goose grease. It
had been Mirek’s inspiration to bring along jars of this thick sticky fat: a
piece of forethought for which
Lydia
thanked him profusely while she rescued her
complexion from ruin. Anton, who had been trudging in a daze, thought for a
while that they were all donning theatrical grease paint, a commodity from
another world—to which he doubted if he would ever again belong ... He feared
he was going to lose the sight of his weaker eye. He had wept tears from it,
and these tears froze on his cheek, notwithstanding the grease. These tears of
ice only melted after quite a while inside the chilly tent which they erected
finally in the lee of a knoll.

 
          
He
and Sidorov, Mirek, Tolya and Tsiolkovsky all crammed into a single tent,
huddling for warmth which seemed to elude them.
Lydia
and Vershinin shared a second, smaller tent
pitched close by; though there was no doubt in Anton’s mind as to their . . .
frigidity, in the circumstances. It was enough agony to expose yourself
momentarily outside for a piss, with your back to the wind; and the yellow
stain on the snow froze instantly. As for having a crap the following morning,
he certainly intended to hold
that
back
for as long as possible, till it was all ready to burst out in one five-second
rush. No,
Lydia
and Kolya weren’t making love . . .

 
          
Anton
drifted slowly off to sleep, fully dressed, as though succumbing to exposure.

 
          
He
was lost in a great house made all of ice . . . Desperately he tried to find
the room where sister Masha and mother Evgenia were praying for him—the room
with the icon. He wanted so much to light a candle in memory of his father.

 
          
But
these ice walls were as reflective as mirrors; so that he kept on turning
corners and bumping into himself. These sudden contacts with his own image
chilled him to the marrow.

 
          
Eventually
his image spoke to him.

 
          
“Hullo
there,’’ it said in a chirpy way. “My name’s Mike. I’m an actor—star of
provincial stage and screen!’’ (What sort of screen could he possibly mean?)
“I’m acting
you
, old Antosha. And
you're
acting
me
. . .’’

 
          
The
image faded. The ice wall ran with moisture as though weeping. Through the
halls of ice Anton heard Tolya’s mocking laughter echo. At once he awoke,
sweating and shivering—the sweat seeming to freeze as soon as it oozed out of
him. His arm had thrashed about and fallen across Tolya’s body. Bitterly Anton
turned over to face the other way.

 
          
“Time-storm?
It’s just
a word I made up—an empty
noise!”

           
“Even so, Anna.”

 
          
“Well,
supposing this
is
a
time-storm—whatever such a thing might be. What does that tell us? Nothing at
all! We’re none the wiser.”

 
          
“Yuri,
did we pick up any temporal momentum there?”

 
          
“Uh
. . . Yes, you’re right! We picked up almost 20 chronodynes. That isn’t as much
as we lost to the American Shield.”

 
          
“No,
it wouldn’t be. Listen,” said Anton, “the temporal momentum we lost to the
Shield must have been discharging itself back through history from our starting
point. Try to imagine it as a tidal wave running the wrong way up a river—and
gradually losing power. I think the wave caught up with us just now—in 1908. It
discharged its remaining momentum, and boosted our flux-field. Result: it
tossed us back
beyond
1908.”

 
          
“But
we all
died!
I’m sure I died,” said
Anna Aksakova.

 
          
“Oh,
we did die—make no mistake. But then history altered; and we hadn’t died, after
all. What happens now is that we’re going to explode in 1888.”

 
          
“But
this is mad! What about
Tunguska
in
1908?”

 
          
“Nothing
will happen in 1908, Anna—not now. For a while it was reality,
then
the storm overtook us. The wave caught up,
It
thrust us further back.”

 
          
“Are
you saying we’ve changed history?” asked Sasha indignantly.

 
          
“Maybe
there are a million streams of time?
Each one with its own
unique history?
Some similar, some wildly different.
A wave built up behind us, surging against the current. It was a wave of our
own causing. Yes, I see it now! The wave burst the banks, and washed us into a
different stream—so it could dissipate its energy. Now the streams are settling
down again. Soon everything will be flowing the right way.
Just
as soon as we hit the 1880s.”

 
          
Yuri
cackled. “What does it matter when we explode? Nobody paid much attention in
1908. You can bet on even less attention in the 1880s.”

 
          
“So
we won’t kill anybody’s grandmother,” Anton said. “Hitler and Stalin will still
be bom. The October Revolution will happen on time. And
we'll
all be born, too, in time—and we’ll fly backwards through
time.”

 
          
“We
will?” Sasha struggled to express
herself. “But
we
know that
Tunguska
happened in 1908!”

 
          
With
an effort Yuri Valentin pulled himself together. “Maybe you’re right about
there being more than one stream of time,” he said to Anton. “But I don’t see
how there can be millions of streams, like you just said. Maybe there are just
two—with one main difference between them: the date when we crash. And that’s
because . . . it’s
us
who split time.
So in this present stream the wave catches up with us and bounces us back to
1888, cancelling
Tunguska-
1908. Time rolls by. We all grow up in a
Tunguska-1888 framework —and that won’t make a scrap of difference to the
world! The
Tsiolkovsky
sets off
again, and the same thing goes wrong—but this time we’re heading for a crash in
’88. Just as we explode, the wave catches up—and bounces us forward into a 1908
framework.
Which doesn’t make a scrap of difference to the
world . . .
”

 
          
“So
we set off again?” said Anna. “And travel round the same loop for ever and
ever? I can’t bear it.” She began to gasp for breath, as though she wanted to
weep but was empty inside.

 
          
Yuri
tried to reassure her. “It won’t affect us like that, Anna. We die once, then
twice—and that’s the end of it, I’m sure.”

 
          
“But
these two streams
must
alternate,” said
Sasha.
“For ever and for ever.
Over
and over again.
Or else the pattern wouldn’t work. The streams are
mutual—they’re braided together. Your 1888-explosion world has to be followed
by a 1908-explosion world.
That one has to be followed by an
1888-world.
Ad infinitum.”

 
          
“Yes,
but don’t you see, these two possible sequences will always be exactly the
same, no matter how often each is repeated? They’ll each of them be identical
in themselves. It’s impossible to distinguish between identical events that
occupy the same patch of space-time—so we can’t be conscious of any repetition.
Look, our successors—that’s the best way to think of them—our successors will
live out their 1888-framework lives, and they’ll die in 1908. Then
their
successors, who’ll be identical to
us, will live out their
own
lives—and
they’ll be
us.
I’ll be saying exactly
what I’m saying now. It
will
be me.
It
is,
present tense. They aren’t really our successors—they’re us.”

 
          
Anton
had been fiddling with his moustache. He chuckled. “Okay, this can’t be the
first time round, can it? It must be
happening
an
infinite number of identical times—and it’s never caused me grief before! You
could even say we’ve become immortal, in a funny sort of way. Not that I ever
noticed it before . . . Well done, Yuri, lad. What year is it, by the way?”

 
          
“1895.
You
aren’t surely going to tell the crew,
againV
’ “Doubt if I could explain in
time! If they’re immortal, they’re immortal. And right now they must think
they’ve been reprieved. It’s like Dostoevsky in front of the firing squad. It
would be too cruel to set them up again. Anyway . . .” He hesitated.

 
          
“Anyway,”
said Sasha—and she
was
shivering, with goose bumps on
her skin, “we’ve no guarantee that we’ll die, and an end of it, this time
either.
Maybe there’s a closed loop
between 1908 and 1888. Maybe this
is
the first time, and we just bounce back and forth from now on, altering reality
and altering it back again— because the Cosmic Censorship won’t allow reality
to be altered. Maybe we’ll die and die and die forever!”

 
          
Anton
leaned over to dig her in the ribs. “Look on the bright side, darling! We’d
really be immortal then, and know all about it.
So we’d get
very very wise—apart from the slight distraction of being killed every ten
minutes or so.
They say you can get used to anything.”

 
          
“No,
it can’t be that way,” said Yuri. “The whole of history from the 1880s on has
to be involved. I’ll tell you why: just before I died I saw' images of events
and personalities streaming past me.”
“Ah, you as well?”

 
          
“Those
images were from the whole period right up to our own day. That’s how far the
braid extends.”

 
          
“I
saw that too,” said Sasha. “And I saw a face, as well—just at the very end,
before I found myself alive again.”

 
          
“Yes,
the face,” agreed Yuri. “I saw the face.”

 
          
“I
didn’t,” said Anna sharply. “I didn’t see any history either!” “That’s because
you broke your neck
before
we
exploded,” said Anton.
“Can’t expect to see things when you
break your neck.
So you saw your own face, Yuri, did you?”

 
          
“No!
Of course not.
I saw yours.”

 
          
“So
did
I
,” said Sasha. “But it wasn’t quite your
face—there was something different about it, as if it was your twin brother’s
face
.” “Only, I don’t have a twin brother... Or do I?
Maybe that was Anton Astrov, Mark 2, in the
Tunguska-
’88 framework—waiting in
the wings?”

 
          
Ionisation
effects suddenly enflamed all the viewscreens, like jets of gas in burning
ovens . . .

 
          
“And
there was another face behind that face. It was wearing old-fashioned
spectacles—what did they call them?” Sasha mimed.

 
          
“Pince-nez,”
said Yuri. “That’s right: there was one face wearing another face that was
almost the same!”

 
          
“Flux-field off!”
This time Anna hunched, to protect her
neck . . .