Time Will Run Back (5 page)

The platoons marched off until the square was almost deserted. But not quite. Peter looked around. Behind him was the man with the bushy eyebrows. And somewhat further away was a new figure—a short, gorilla-like man with extraordinarily long arms.

“Did you have a good time?” asked Peter. Edith’s ORP had returned to the square and been dismissed. He himself had put in four dreary hours.

“Oh, wonderful!” she answered. “We had lunch; then setting-up exercises; then we played organized softball; and then we were taken to see the kulak family guillotined.”

They walked through blocks of drab tenements. Edith stopped in front of one. “Here we are!” she exclaimed. She led him up three flights of stairs and opened the door to a dark room looking on a tiny courtyard. “Isn’t it nice?” she asked.

Peter looked around. It was a medium-sized room into which had been crowded four beds, a number of chairs, and a couple of packing cases apparently used as bureaus. Two of the beds were in complete disorder.

“This is our part of the room,” said Edith proudly, pointing to the two neatly made-up beds.

The only occupant of the room as they entered was a white-haired man, distinguished and intelligent looking. He was sitting in an invalid’s chair.

“Father,” said Edith, “this is Comrade Uldanov.”

Her father glanced suspiciously at Peter’s empty lapel.

“He just got into Moscow yesterday, father, but he expects to get his license number tomorrow.”

“Uldanov...” said the old gentleman. “That sounds familiar.”

He held out his hand. “I’m glad to know you, comrade. My number is EN-57.”

Peter shook hands. “My full name is Peter Uldanov.”

Her father shot a questioning glance toward Edith, who gave him a reassuring one in return. “My name is John Maxwell,” he said.

“Oh—you are English?”

“Yes, an engineer.”

“Father was one of the chief designers of the new Lenin super-dam!”

“Where is that?” asked Peter.

“Why,” said Edith, “it will be the biggest dam ever built—”

“It’s still in the blueprint stage,” cut in Maxwell. “The old story—shortage of labor, shortage of raw materials, and above all, shortage of ration tickets.” Peter looked around. “Do you have to share this room with other families?”

“Only with the O’Gradys,” said Edith. “A nice quiet family. They have a little boy of three and a nine-months-old baby girl.”

“How about privacy?” The question was out before Peter had decided whether it was tactful.

Father and daughter exchanged distressed glances. ‘Tm surprised that you should mention such a bourgeois concept,” said Edith. “We have all the privacy that a socialist society needs. See!” She pointed to wires near the ceiling that intersected the room. There were curtains, or rather sleazy sheets, hanging from them. They had been pushed up against the walls, and she pulled them out straight. They divided the father’s from the daughter’s bed and both from the rest of the room.

“Snug, isn’t it?” she asked.

Peter became indignant. “Couldn’t they give you anything better than this?”

Another distressed glance between father and daughter. Edith looked appealingly at Peter, put her finger to her lips and shook her head, as if they were being overheard by someone not present. “How could you ever get anything better than this?” she said loudly and distinctly, as if speaking for an audience. “All of us will indeed get still better living quarters if we work longer hours and tighten our belts. And now let’s go out for our walk!”

They helped Maxwell out of his chair and handed him his cane. “Father has just recovered from a bad case of pneumonia,” said Edith, still very loudly and distinctly. “The doctor prescribes walking, and I have a permit to take him out at this hour.”

There was something abnormal about the conduct of these two that made Peter uneasy. When they were in the street and well past the house, Edith asked coldly: “What made you say things like that, when you knew we might be listened to?”

“But by whom?”

“You know that every room in Moscow is wired for sound reception and that the secret police may be listening at any time.”

“Can we be overheard now?” asked Peter. “Not unless we’re being followed,” said Edith. “That’s why I waited for the privacy of the street to tell you this.”

Edith’s remark reminded Peter. He looked back. There was the inevitable man with the bushy eyebrows, and behind him in turn the man with the long arms.

“Well, we
are
being followed,” Peter laughed. “I’ve been followed ever since I got to Moscow yesterday. And by the same handsome pair.”

Edith and her father glanced back. Their faces became livid. Edith turned on him. “You
knew
you were being followed?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you did not hesitate to lead these people to me, to my house, to put them on the track of myself and my father?”

“But they aren’t following
you
; they’re following
me!”

“Don’t you know that whenever the secret police suspect anyone of disloyalty, everybody he associates with is under suspicion?” Tears came into her eyes. “The least you can do now is to leave us immediately, and take your spies with you!”

Maxwell faced him with a menacing expression, but said in a low tone, “You must establish yourself as our enemy.”

“What can I do?” asked Peter, bewildered.

“Anything—You are forcing yourself on my daughter, and she and I resent it—” Peter grabbed Edith, pulled her to him, and kissed her vehemently. He suddenly realized that he had been wanting to do it all along.

He felt Edith’s hands on his chest pushing and Maxwell’s hands on his shoulders pulling him away. At arm’s length Edith gave him a stinging slap on the face. Maxwell shook his fist at him.

He turned and ran. When he had run half a block he glanced back. He was relieved to find that both his followers were running after him. At least, he thought, they won’t bother the Maxwells.

He walked directly to his hotel.

When he had got to his room he closed the door (it was illegal, he had found, for Proletarians to lock their doors) and examined the room from base to ceiling to see whether it was wired for sound reception.

He found two tiny microphones built into the walls at diagonally opposite corners.

He sank onto the bed.

STALENIN, pipe in hand, walked slowly back and forth, “I’m going to tell you something, Peter, that is known to nobody on earth except my personal physician and my private secretary.... About six weeks ago I had a stroke...”

“Oh!”

“I recovered in four days. It seemed to leave no mark. But my doctor warns me that I may have another, more serious. It may affect my heart, my brain—paralyze me—carry me off. That’s primarily why I brought you from Bermuda two weeks ago.... 1 don’t know whether your mother ever made clear to you the real reason for our breakup.”

“You said, Your Supremacy, that she objected to the Great Purge that carried away her brother—” “Yes, yes. But our real split came earlier. It was ideological, like all real splits.
She accused me of betraying the revolution! Me!
She insisted that the kind of communism I had put into effect was not Marxian-Leninism! It was, of course, the
essence
of Marxism and Leninism. If I had had her liquidated then and there, as I first thought of doing, she would have gone to her death convinced that she was right. I was determined to force her to change her mind, and
really
change it, before she died. And that was why I kept her alive, guarded and isolated, on that island. I was going to show her, when the job was done, the great classless society that I could bring into being. I was going to lead her through a world flowing with milk and honey. Her accusation was a monstrous lie! I was going to prove
even to her
that it was a lie! So far from betraying the revolution, it has been my supreme mission to carry the revolution to its destined fulfillment!”

His pace quickened and his excitement grew as he spoke. Suddenly he put his hand to his heart, and Peter saw that he was making a deliberate effort to calm himself. After a pause he went on:

“Time was not on my side.... She died too soon. And now, perhaps,
I
am going to die too soon.... And that is why I sent for you.”

He walked slowly to his desk and shook the ashes out of his pipe. “Since your mother insisted that
I
was not creating true communism, maybe you can. I’m going to let you try.”

Peter was staggered. “But, Your Supremacy, I know nothing—”

“If you know nothing, it’s because you were taught nothing. You were educated precisely in accordance with your mother’s views. I chose the best teachers in Wonworld to teach you the subjects that she wanted you taught. And she didn’t want you to be taught anything about politics or economics or history because, she claimed, you would only be indoctrinated with corrupted views. Well, let’s see what you can do with the views she taught you!”

“But, Your Supremacy, I wouldn’t have the remotest idea of where to begin! You wouldn’t want me to
wreck
Wonworld, but that is precisely what I would probably do. I don’t even know what my mother’s principal objection
was
to your regime. She never spoke to me about it.”

Stalenin looked astonished. “She never spoke to you about it?” “She seldom talked about the world outside. She seldom mentioned your name.” Stalenin was taken aback. He walked up and down as if trying to absorb this.

An intercom buzzed on his desk. “Yes. I’ll see him right away.”

He turned to Peter. “It’s Bolshekov. Go out through this back door. The guard at the end of the corridor will show you the way down. Be back here promptly at ten o’clock tomorrow.”

The next day Peter found his father in an altered mood.

“Even if nothing had happened to your mother, I would soon have faced a decision about you. Obviously you couldn’t have been kept isolated on that island all your life. As soon as I passed on, you would have been automatically assassinated.”

“Why?”

“First, for being my son. And second for being miseducated, and hence an ideological menace.... Your life is in the greatest danger.”

He sank into a chair. “I can trust no one.”

Peter was amazed. “Not even Bolshekov?” He remembered how many times Stalenin had publicly lauded the “loyalty” and “devotion” of Bolshekov. Hadn’t he given a renewed expression of his confidence on May Day?

“I trust Bolshekov least of all,” said Stalenin. “He is the greatest menace to my regime, to my life. And to yours.”

“But why?”

“There was a time when I did trust Bolshekov completely. Perhaps his own ambition had not yet become overvaulting. He is tremendously able, shrewd, fearless—and a complete fanatic. There was a time when, though I was known as No. i, the twelve members of the Politburo had no numbers. Bolshekov exposed a plot within the Politburo to assassinate me. He extorted confessions from the three members involved, and they were liquidated. I should have known that those confessions were meaningless. You can make anybody confess to anything. But I was away addressing the Wonworld Congress of Scientists at Paris when all this occurred. When I got back there was no version but Bolshekov’s for me to hear. He convinced me that this plot was the result of the absence of any clear line of succession to my power. Such plots were apt to recur, he pointed out, so long as anybody in the Politburo thought he could seize power with me out of the way. I asked his suggestion for the cure. He recommended that everybody in the Politburo be given a public number so that the resort to violent methods for succession to power would be impossible. I agreed to this. And, still more unfortunately, out of gratitude I named him No. 2. Not till I had done this did I realize what should have been obvious to me from the first—that in naming him No. 2, I had in effect publicly named him as my titular successor. Now all he had to do was to get rid of me. And that, I have found, is precisely what he is planning to do.”

“But wouldn’t it be a simple matter, Your Supremacy, to give him a lower number?”

Stalenin waved his pipe impatiently. “A man in Bolshekov’s position cannot be demoted. Suppose I named him No. 3 or 4 or 5? This public evidence of my distrust would mean that no one would ever know whether to obey him or not. Everyone would shun him. He could not hold even minor power. He himself would know that he was doomed, and have me killed, if he had the chance, before I had him killed. No, the only thing is to arrest him, force a confession out of him, and then kill him.”

“But—”

“You are wondering,” continued Stalenin, “why I could not simply have him shot and then blame the shooting on enemies of the State. I have thought of that. There are one or two things to be said in its favor. For example, I could accuse others, whom I suspect of being ambitious, of having engineered the assassination. I could have confessions wrung from them, so diverting all suspicion from myself and killing several birds with one stone. You may be sure that Bolshekov has thought of doing the same thing in my case—having me assassinated, staging simultaneously a fake attempt on his own life, having other members of the Politburo—especially Adams—arrested, extorting confessions from them, and so on.”

His pipe had gone out again. He walked over to his desk and refilled it.

“These things take considerable arranging,” he went on. “I have increased my own bodyguard, and have agents watching Bolshekov. No doubt he has taken similar measures in my case. He must already know about your presence in Moscow. The bushy-browed comrade who has been following you around for the last two weeks, by the way, is one of my own agents—to protect you. He has sent me daily reports. The long-armed fellow is undoubtedly a spy for Bolshekov. But I shall pretend to know nothing about the matter. Bolshekov and I must act against each other without rousing each other’s suspicions. Action on either side may come any day.”

Everybody in Wonworld lived in fear. Peter now realized that the Dictator himself lived in as great fear as anyone else. He had to rule by fear because he was himself ruled by fear.