Watson, Ian - Novel 11 (9 page)

 
          
“The whole point
of the film is
Chekhov’s bloody journey!” swore Sergey in a passion.
“Not
how he sits on his ass in bloody
Krasnoyarsk
scribbling about something that happened
eighteen years later when he was bloody dead!”

 
          
Mikhail
sprang to the defence of his alter ego. “I’m still planning a pretty heroic
journey, ain’t I? It’s just in a different direction, that’s all.”

 
          
And
Sonya thought: ‘How like a
Caribbean
pirate Mikhail looks, with that patch over his eye! Like Captain Blood . . .
Or—like Commander Astrov, with a pet fly perched on his shoulder instead of a
parrot.’ She giggled quietly. Sergey directed a withering glare at her.

 
          
Outside,
blank white mist continued to hide everything: a thick milky haze, a host of
particles suspended in an ocean... an ocean of time . . .

 
          
“Commander
Anton Astrov . . .” Sonya only realized that she had uttered the words aloud,
when it was too late to recall them.

 
          
“Ah.
Yes, indeed.
Hmm.
The Astrov business . . .” Kirilenko
was visibly embarrassed. “One point I ought to have emphasized earlier on is
that it’s quite
difficult
to—how
shall we put it?—articulate the future, except in a caricature-like manner. By
that, I mean this . . .” Kirilenko chuckled with false heartiness. “Ah, what a
grammatical solecism I have just perpetrated! Still, if we Russians must
possess such a subtle language that we don’t even know the declensions of all
our nouns . . . ! But never mind. Let me put this question to you: What would a
man of the eighteenth century make of a television set? He would have to assume
that it was an ingenious camera obscura. And what would he make of the mushroom
cloud from an atom bomb? Why, probably it would look like a volcanic eruption.”

 
          
“What’s
your point, man?” said Felix. “Is there one? Or are you just babbling?”

 
          
“I
never babble, Felix Moseivich. My point is that Mikhail must necessarily
misinterpret the future—in terms of today. He symbolises, in other words. Hence
the Hammer and Sickle
starship,
and the cartoon book
name of the American defence system.”

 
          
Sonya
spoke impetuously. “But
is
there a
starship of some sort?
A ship that travels backwards through
time and space?”
She carried on pell-mell, ignoring Kirilenko’s look of
reproof. “What I mean is: why this
particular
thing? Why this kind of starship rather than something else? He says that the
American war-shield works on the same basic
principle,
doesn’t he? So why shouldn’t this represent a genuine precognition?
A glimpse of a technique which will actually exist one day?”

 
          
Kirilenko
drummed his fingers rapidly on the arm of his chair, and when he answered it
was in a quick, quiet, tight voice.

 
          
“If
he’s picking up authentic information, it’s possible that he’s milking the
brains of some researcher in the present—not the future.
From
somewhere nearby.
Maybe the
Krasnoyarsk
Institute of Physics—they do space
research there. Or maybe further afield, somewhere secret . . . This might put
us all in a highly embarrassing, not to say dangerous position.” Kirilenko
tapped his nose meaningfully. “The less said about this possibility, the
better. Thankfully it has no relevance at all to Anton Chekhov—or to the
Tunguska
fireworks.”

 
          
“I
thought,” said Sergey, “you were trying to get him to forecast the outcome of
the bloody film? Or have we all forgotten that the film has nothing whatever to
do with bloody
Tunguska
?”

 
          
“He
does seem to have gone a bit astray,” allowed Kirilenko.

 
          
Sergey
guffawed. “At least he’s consistent!
Astray in the past,
astray in the future.”

           
“You must agree it’s a fascinating
case.”

 
          
“So
that’s what you call it?’’

 
          
“Well,
don’t blame
me
\” said Mikhail. “I was
doing my darnedest to focus on
Chekhov’s
Journey.
Honest! But my own personal film speeded up incredibly—and
suddenly I was Anton Astrov instead. Chatting up my luscious, prosaic
Astrogator.’’ “What exactly do you mean by your ‘own personal’ film?’’ Felix
asked him.

 
          
“It’s
hard to express. As far as I’m concerned, this hypnosis business feels just
like watching a film—but acting in it at the same time, if you get me. I’m
watching myself act, but from inside . . .’’ “Nobody blames you,’’ Sonya
assured him. How could Mike possibly regard her as prosaic? If he could only
know the hot flushes of confusion which had assaulted her the night before . .
. and which she had nobly overcome.

 
          
‘Hot flushes, indeed!’
She rebuked herself. ‘I’m behaving
like a fatuous provincial wife, straight out of Chekhov, about to ruin
herself
in some idiotic love affair!’

 
          
There
was a cursory knock at the double door, and immediately Osip stepped uninvited
into the room.

 
          
“What
do you want?’’ demanded Felix.

 
          
“Just
thought you comrades might like to know our phone’s packed up . . . Must be the
snow, eh?’’

 
          
“And
who the devil were you phoning?’’

 
          
Osip
looked blank. “Eh? Just picked the phone up to dust it.’’

 
          
As
SOON AS
he was installed in the
Zelenin residence, Anton’s health promptly picked up. No more migraine, no more
itchings in the arse.

 
          
The
daughters Nastya and Masha were as chalk and cheese to each other. Nastya, the
elder, was small and serious. She was a selfpossessed witness of everything
which went on—a sort of house spy.
While her younger sister
Masha was taller by a head, willowy, erratic and highly-strung.

 
          
Presiding
over these ill-matched girls were a young German governess, Olga Franzovna, who
was addicted to card tricks, and Polena the fat old nursemaid, skivvy and cook.
Definitely this was a woman’s household—even if the Countess and the governess
were both wayward types—so Anton soon settled down into a tolerably familiar
mould. He wrote to
Moscow
. He wrote to Borovsk. He prepared lists and tore them up. He visited
local suppliers together with Jaroslav Mirek, haggled and drew up more lists.
Some money began arriving from
Moscow
and
Petersburg
.

 
          
Meanwhile,
daily in the drawing room, rehearsals of
The
Bear
took place—far more rehearsals than such a brief one-act skit could
possibly require. However, the Countess was true to her promise, and Anton was
not asked to involve himself in these—though he soon grew heartily sick of the
sound of his own trivial lines resounding from the drawing room. The three
actors seemed to have become absurdly addicted to the little play. They
rehearsed it over and over with such fervent dedication that it might have been
a religious Mass he had written.

 
          
Playing
opposite
Lydia
in the role of Popova was . . . Baron Nikolai Vershinin, ideally cast
as the bear with the sore head. Dr Rode took the part of the old servant Looka;
and Vasily Fedotik always accompanied his two friends to act, nominally, as
prompter. Since the actors soon knew their lines backwards, Fedotik was quite
de trop
in this capacity—which was a
considerable relief to him. Too much attention to the printed word was bad for
the eyesight. So while the principals shouted and rumbled to each other, he
whiled away his time happily at a card table, playing patience with himself.
Occasionally Olga Franzovna joined him, to show off her repertoire of card
tricks.

 
          
After
a week or so Anton realized that there was more to these endless rehearsals
than met the eye . . .

 
          
For
Lydia
was indeed a dashing widow, even more
liable to discharge a duelling
pistol
in real life
than she was in art. And Vershinin was indeed an abusive, bellowing fellow—with
a soft heart underneath. What was actually happening in that drawing room,
under the pretext of rehearsals, was a kind of courtship ritual.

 
          
How
many more times would these two embrace each other passionately, to the
astonishment of Looka-Rode . . . before they embraced in reality?

 
          
Once
Anton understood this, his discomfort at hearing the silly lines so oft
repeated began to fade away—together with his earlier suspicion that the
Countess might make an amatory bee-line for
him
. . .

 
          
From
Olga Kundasova a package of books arrived, and Anton began to learn all about
meteors, comets, asteroids and planetoids—without ever experiencing a single
twinge from haemorrhoids.

 
          
So
the summer wore hotly on. Until one day when—funded by Suvorin, who had also
pulled strings at Anton’s request—there arrived in
Krasnoyarsk
on several months’ leave of absence from
his elementary school: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky himself.

 
          
And
at once Anton wondered whether he had made a serious error of judgement . . .

           
Tsiolkovsky arrived on the Zelenin
doorstep late one afternoon. Polena opened the door for him, and shrieked in
alarm, bringing
Lydia
and Olga and Anton hastening to her aid.
For it
seemed a moot point whether the emaciated tramp who stood there ought not to
proceed onwards to the nearest hospital ward.

 
          
Granted
that Tsiolkovsky was worn out by a long and tiresome journey—and nobody could
reasonably expect a traveller who had just traversed the Siberian plain to
arrive with his clothing anything other than soiled, crumpled and decorated
with straw. Yet Tsiolkovsky appeared to have neglected to eat a scrap during
the entire journey. His eyes peered out weakly through cheap spectacles. What’s
more, it immediately became clear—in spite of the size of the man’s ears with
their long dangling lobes—that he was almost deaf; certainly he seemed to have
dire difficulty in communicating. This picture of misery was completed by a
cheap suitcase tied together with string. In short Tsiolkovsky looked just like
the most wretched type of deported exile.

 
          
Nevertheless,
once the man had succeeded in identifying himself, Lydia Zelenina drew him
graciously inside—though she raised an eyebrow.

 
          
“Most
honoured Sir!’’ Dropping his suitcase, Tsiolkovsky blundered into Anton’s
embrace, and the two men hugged each other—rather more dutifully than devotedly
on Anton’s part.

 
          
“Polena,
we will eat dinner much earlier than usual.’’

 
          
The
old woman nodded to her mistress, and bustled off, casting back glances of pity
and contempt. What was this fellow, then: a house guest or a refugee?

 
          
Right
there in the hall, Tsiolkovsky knelt down and began to unpick the string from
his suitcase, as if he expected that he would have to doss down before the
front door like a watchdog. Meanwhile the two young sisters had crept up behind
a pillar to peer at him: Masha wide-eyed and giggling, Nastya with the narrowed
gaze of a police agent.

 
          
From
amidst a jumble of dirty crushed laundry Tsiolkovsky produced a manuscript
bound with a frayed blue ribbon. This he presented to Anton.

 
          
“Thought
perhaps . . . thought maybe . . . after dinner?
As an
entertainment?’’
Tsiolkovsky choked. “Better at expressing myself on
paper! ’’ Did Anton’s ears deceive him or did Tsiolkovsky speak Russian with a
faint trace of a Polish accent?

 
          
The
manuscript was entitled
On the Moon,
and was penned in a neat, sloping copperplate hand.

 
          
Oh
well, this had to be that same piece of—what had he called it in his first
letter, Science Fantasy? A glance confirmed that the pages were a first-person
narrative.
Undoubtedly the very same.
I hold, thought
Anton, an infant
genre
in my hands.
He was careful not to drop it.

 
          
“Olga,’’
said the Countess loudly, “would you kindly show this gentleman up to his
room?’’

 
          
Tsiolkovsky
gaped.
“Room?
Eh? Oh yes—’’

 
          
Rather
better groomed and with his beard combed out, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky sat down
at table a couple of hours later. The instruction to Polena to hurry might as
well have been spoken in Chinese. But no doubt she had the welfare of the other
dinner guests equally in mind. This evening, these were Mirek, and Ilya
Sidorov.

 
          
The
meal commenced with kidney and cucumber soup accompanied by several glasses of
vodka which presently loosened Tsiolkovsky’s tongue, though they did little to
improve his powers of hearing. While Olga and
Lydia
quizzed Tsiolkovsky about the hazards of
his journey, Anton tried to assess the man.

 
          
He
had already glanced through
On the Moon
,
and a peculiar piece of fiction it was indeed—all about lunar latitude and
longitude, and thermal conductivity and light intensity, and the joys of
feeling the chains of gravity slacken; wrapped up in the form of a dream.
Pleasantly enough written, on the whole, but hopelessly didactic!

 
          
Watching
the man slurp down three helpings of Polena’s soup while trying to conduct a
conversation, Anton couldn’t but recognize an element of wish-fulfilment in the
tale. Could its author only but cut the dash that his characters did—striding
the landscape in great leaping bounds! Of course, Anton could sympathize with
such a fantasy, having only recently hauled his own prematurely ageing carcase
half way across
Siberia
, full of envy for the birds. But really,
there was no irony in this Konstantin Eduardovich.

 
          
Soup
was followed by roast duck and stewed cabbage.

 
          
“Let
us imagine,” said Tsiolkovsky between mouthfuls, “a cosmic spaceship . . .
powered by the same principle as the sun itself . . . ! When it came to its
doom it was as though a miniature sun had exploded . . . using up an aeon’s
energy in an instant.” Sidorov spoke slowly and loudly, as to the deaf. “Do you
mean to say this spaceship was powered by jets of gas?”

 
          
“No,
no! The sun cannot burn its fuel... in the way a gas-jet burns. Somehow the
very
atoms
of the sun . . . must
burst apart.” “An atom’s indivisible,” Mirek said. “Everybody knows that. “It’s
the smallest piece of matter you can have.”

 
          
Tsiolkovsky
cupped a hand behind his ear; Mirek repeated the objection.

 
          
“Aha,
but what if it isn’t the smallest? What if it only seems to be so . . . because
each atom is locked together with immense force? Once we can survey the true
extent of the destruction, I can calculate the energy needed—it’ll be possible
to estimate the strength of this ‘binding force’ . . . What’s more, how will
these broken bits of atoms behave? Maybe they’ll fly around frantically . . .
trying to join up again? Maybe they’ll run smack into other atoms . . . and split
them too?”

 
          
“If
broken atoms hit a living body,” said Sidorov, excitedly, “I mean, if they
burrow into living cells . . . I’m thinking about those scabs on the reindeer!”

 
          
“Exactly.
But medicine isn’t my province.” Tsiolkovsky
nodded deferentially at Anton, and crammed more cabbage into his mouth.

 
          
Anton
smiled. “I assure you, I know nothing whatever about Broken-Atom Sickness . .
.”

 
          
“Equally
... if we were to bombard chosen inorganic substances ... in a controlled way,
with broken atoms—perhaps we could deliberately transform one element into
another?
A bar of lead . . . into a bar of gold.”

 
          
“That
isn’t science,” protested Mirek. “That’s alchemy. Look, the atom is called an
atom—from the Greek—because you can’t divide it. We might find a lot of iron
and nickel and tin buried under the taiga, but I can guarantee we aren’t going
to find gold.” “Eh?”

 
          
“I
said—”

 
          
“I
heard what you said, Mr Mirek. I didn’t say there was any gold—aren’t you
listening? What I said was
,
we might find evidence of
a spaceship from another world, powered by a form of propulsion . . . undreamed
of at present. With respect, I’m afraid your attitude’s all too typical. Too
many scientists are bound by mental chains.”

 
          
“Quite!”
Sidorov nodded sagely. “All your conventional professors—I’ve said it before:
Lord Nelson’s blind eye!”

 
          
“I
myself have the dubious privilege of being self-educated. . .” Tsiolkovsky
tried to scrape some more duck flesh from a bare bone. “I taught myself in
isolation from professors, laboratories and universities ... Of course this can
lead to ignorance of the latest scientific progress, but I also believe it
yields a freshness of approach ... a willingness to look at phenomena from a
new viewpoint—
provided
, always, that
the mathematics is correct! My dear Sir, just because science tells us that an
atom can’t be divided and uses a Greek word to say so, doesn’t make it a fact
for ever more.”