Watson, Ian - Novel 11 (17 page)

 
          
“I’M
AFRAID I did it too quickly/’ said Anna Aksakova. “Look, my over-ride programme
won’t lock in.’’

 
          
“Never
mind, forget it.’’ Anton gazed at that whisking bowl of a viewscreen, which by
now was only showing a tiny portion of the Earth. “What’s going on down there,
Yuri?’’

 
          
Valentin
consulted his datalscope. “It’s 1917.
The Revolution.’’
He laughed bitterly. “Now you see it, now you don’t—we’re back in Czarist times
already.’’

 
          
“I
suppose that makes us dangerous revolutionaries?
Forerunners
of the Great Explosion . . .’’

 
          
“Eh?’’

 
          
“The Revolution.’’

 
          
“Oh, that explosion.’’
Yuri tapped the isocalendar. “Well,
that shouldn’t worry the Czar for long. I make it three minutes till
Tunguska
.’’

 
          
Anton
switched on his chin-mike.
“Commander Astrov to All Crew.
We have failed. Our ship will be destroyed in approximately three minutes. This
will happen too quickly for any of us to feel pain—or even to realize. There’s
nothing to fear.’’ He felt his pet fly buzzing in the little box in his pocket
as if trying to escape. “For your information, we will drop out of flux in the
year 1908. We believe the ship may well explode over the
Tunguska
region of
Central Siberia
. If it’s any consolation, we’re all about
to become part of a great mystery. Goodbye to you all.”

 
          
He
switched off. They sat and waited.

 
          
“Thirty
seconds to go,” said Yuri.

 
          
“The
flux-field’s holding steady,” reported Anna.

 
          
Sasha
gestured at the screens, ablaze with light. “Massive ionisation effects—we must
be visible for hundreds of kilometres.”

 
          
“The
field’s off!”

 
          
Briefly,
on some screens, they saw a brown and green landscape streaked with clouds far
below. Then the ship lurched hugely, swinging askew as the thin air tore at its
irregular contours, pitching it along a new course.

 
          
Yuri
cried out in agony as G-forces smashed him against his straps, snapping ribs.
From somewhere else in the ship came distant screams. And Anna Aksakova’s head
lolled sideways at an impossible angle . . .

 
          
The
gyrating
Tsiolkovsky
pitched in a new
direction. The shafts of the sickle and the hammer, the blunt hammer head, all
were raging with the abrasion of the atmosphere, trying to tear apart from each
other. But the ship had no time to break up.

 
          
Anton
struggled for words. “Sasha! I—”

 
          
He
fell through time, dazed and sickened by a strobing mosaic of visions which
overloaded any attempt to make sense of them all. Everything which had happened
since 1908 seemed to be flashing through his brain in images, burning it out
cell by cell . . .

 
          
Images of war, of burning cities under siege, mobs rioting, trials,
of jets dropping sticks of bombs, of spacecraft blasting off, and of new cities
rising.
The faces of Lenin, Hitler, Gandhi, Mao, Gagarin, Einstein,
Shostakovich, Berryman,
Qiang
-Xi raced towards him,
and away. Images of past time and images of his own time whirlpooled around,
dragging him down through the vortex.

 
          
He
screamed.

 
          
Like
chaff burning off from a heat-shield, fragmentary visions streamed out of the
sun-bright depths of the vortex. Flashes of
Hiroshima
,
Stalingrad
,
Freedom Moonbase, the Great Comet of 2070, the March on
Mecca
, the reconstruction of the
Eiffel
Tower
, the deification of the paranormal infant
Claudia Rapuchini and her assassination . . .

 
          
He
continued screaming.

 
          
All
these fragments
did
form part of a mosaic.
The shattered pieces flew together and became a face. It was his own face, each
of the cells of his skin and flesh a separate bit of history. . .
The same high forehead, the humorous wrinkles fanning from the
sides of the eyes, the dark tousled hair.
The face cast a shadow behind
it, like a deathmask moulded from inside the head . . .

 
          
“Oh,
let me
die!"

 
          
He
did not die. The mosaic face broke up, and he fell down the funnel of visions
again. The whirlpool began to ripple nauseatingly, distorting everything he
saw. Waves arose; they rushed up the funnel towards him, tearing images apart
and reforming them upside-down or inside-out—warping faces, altering events.
For a moment his own body seemed to knot itself into a Klein bottle shape,
then
it snapped back again . . .

 
          
Abruptly
he dropped through the bottom of the funnel. He was still sitting in his
Commander’s seat, staring at the swirling fog on the screen. “What—?’’

 
          
“But
I’m alive,’’ said Anna in wonder, nearby.

 
          
“My
chest,’’ mumbled Yuri—and he breathed in cautiously. “It’s okay, it isn’t
smashed . . .’’

 
          
“We’re
still alive!’’ Sasha cried. “But how can we be? Look: we’re still diving
towards the Earth—we haven’t hit it yet. God, surely we don’t have to live
through that again!
And again and again and again!’’

 
          
“Flux-field’s
back on,’’ said Anna. “According to this it’s never been off.’’

 
          
Yuri
waved at the datalscope. “We’re back in 1905. We missed
Tunguska
.’’

 
          
“But
we didn’t miss it—we exploded!’’

 
          
“And
still we’re heading down the years.’’

 
          
“Towards what,
another
collision?’’

           
“Around 1890.
No, a bit earlier.”

 
          
“Do
we have to hit and hit and hit again—like a stone bouncing over a lake, before
we can sink? I can’t bear it, not again.” “This is your time-storm, Anna,”
Anton said. “This is what it’s like.”

 
          
.
. . And
as SOON
as Baron Nikolai
Vershinin awakes from sleep in the rude hut at Vanavara, he feels the warmth of
the Countess’s naked body next to his, and rejoices that he has enjoyed such
ecstasy as on the previous night. Surely he can enjoy this same ecstasy one
more time before they get ready to be ferried over the
Stony Tunguska
River
into a savage landscape, where they will
have to sleep fully kitted out in fur coats and boots.

 
          
He
pulls the bedding down a little way to contemplate the faint, blurred outline
of
Lydia
’s face and shoulders in the grey of dawn—in their haste they had left
the window only partly curtained.

 
          
The
snow on the ledge and the leaves of frost on the panes focus, as in a lens, the
faint light coldly upon the bed; the rest of the room is as black as inside a
cupboard.

 
          
The
night before,
Lydia
made love to Nikolai in a way that he thinks of as sincere. There was
no inane chatter, no babble of meaningless vows,
no
‘poetry’. Instead, in each other’s arms they had both released a tension which
had been pent up in their souls and bodies for many weeks—the product of a void
in both their lives, which he for his part had filled up with bearish growls,
and she for hers with eccentric behaviour.

 
          
As
is the case with essentially frigid people, who need to rub their bodies
together in abandon as the only way of setting them on fire, their love-making
was sensuous and lustful. They had snatched at their joys almost desperately,
he and she
.

 
          
To
awaken her, Nikolai kisses her shoulders.

 
          
He
whispers, “Darling Lydia’’, yet there is little love or passion in his voice,
for they both owe a desperate, selfish duty to themselves . . .

 
          
Her
lips move underneath his lips. “Kolya,” she murmurs. There’s a harshness in the
way she says his name; it resembles the stubborn grating of a pair of adjacent
boulders in a river which is rushing ever onward past them in flood, towards
some mysterious and distant destiny. And thus she opens her embrace to him . .
.

 
          
She’s
still half asleep, and she remains so, as though what takes place now is only
the continuation of a haunted dream—and this relieves her of any sense of
connexion with the rest of the day.

 
          
Later,
she sits up. Candlelight vies with the ice-light. Having pulled on her
lace-decorated chemise, she brushes out her chestnut hair. Vershinin lights a
cigar; it’s the last one he has left.

 
          
“What
encounters there are in our lives!” he exclaims. But then he paces about the
room monotonously like a caged tiger, wearied suddenly by the length of time it
takes her to get ready. ‘Just imagine
this,
every morning!’ he thinks to himself, feeling a strange blend of lust and
boredom.

 
          
“I
wonder how Masha and Nastya are getting
on?
”
Lydia
asks idly. “Nastya’s the sly one, you know!
She stares at a closed door as though she can see right through the wood—as if
a sixth sense tells her everything. It’s quite disconcerting! But she’s too
young to understand any of it . . .”

 
          
‘So
if I became your husband,’ thinks Vershinin, ‘then Nastya would watch my door
all the time—to make sure I wasn’t slipping out to your boudoir, or even
smoking in bed! Why should a child exercise such a damnable tyranny, unless
that’s the way you want it to be?
Unless it’s your excuse . .
.

 
          
‘You’re
glad to be free of a dull fool of a husband... so now you frustrate yourself,
to keep your freedom! Oh, you cut a fine figure,
Lydia
,
you really do—with your German camera and
your cigarettes and your dashing ways. And really, all the time, you’re a
slave—to liberty! That’s it.’

 
          
At
first Nikolai is delighted by his perspicacity; but then the suspicion dawns on
him that Lydia and the wayward governess Olga Franzovna are in reality secret
lovers . . . Thinking back, it seems to him that when he kissed Lydia awake, it
was not his own diminutive, Kolya, which she murmured so demandingly in
reply—but rather ‘Olya’, diminutive of Olga, the name of her dream.

 
          
Such
a thing isn’t totally beyond his comprehension. It isn’t even beyond his
sympathy, swear as he might at such perversions in the Mess; prescribe, as he
might, a swift phallic cure for them . . .

 
          
Had
Lydia
and Olga sworn blood
brotherhood (or sisterhood), nicking their wrists with sharp knives, blending
their bloodstreams?
What impulsive, impetuous creatures they both had seemed to him—surely they
both nursed strong desires!

 
          
‘What’s
got into me?’ he wonders. ‘Such slander, against a woman I’ve just slept with!’

 
          
He
puzzles on and on, convinced that he has never thought so deeply as this
morning. It’s as though
Lydia
has lit a taper of speculation deep in him,
which is flickering its light into dark corners . . .

 
          
On
impulse he catches and raises her wrist, to stare at the white skin closely,
seeking for the faint crack of a long-healed scar.

 
          
“What
on Earth?’’

 
          
“You
ought to wear a fine golden wristwatch,
Lydia
. I’ll buy you one, some day.’’

 
          
“Who
needs to know the time? It’s always either too late, or too early.’’

 
          
Nikolai
guffaws. “Not for us, it wasn’t.’’

 
          
“You
embarrass me, Baron. Have you lost your respect for me so soon?’’

 
          
“Not
a bit of it! I’m crazy about you—that’s the trouble. Ach, love! I think love’s
a pretty dodgy proposition. A fellow can fall in love with a sheep, if he’s
lonely enough.’’

 
          
“But
a sheep can’t fall in love with him.’’

 
          
“Or
a woman could fall in love with a governess.’’

 
          
“Really?’’
Lydia
purses her lips. “I wouldn’t know.’’

           
“God fell in love with the world,
Lydia
. And He composed flowers and rivers, and
birds and trees and clouds, to woo us. But in our responses we’re just like
sheep. Munch, munch—not ’alf bad, this patch of grass! Munch, munch—this
clover’s a bit of all right! That’s what everyone’s really like inside. Yet
Cupid’s blind, and love’s an enchantment which stops us from seeing the truth.
But the enchantment wears off after a while: two years, or three at the most.
So where’s the use? Before you even get going, you’re condemned!”

 
          
“Lust,”
she answers, “is sometimes far more honest.”

 
          
“That’s
a true word you’ve spoken. It’s because of confusing lust with love that we all
get into trouble. Only God knows love.”

 
          
“Because
He doesn’t know lust . . .”

 
          
“I
think love is something you feel for people in anguish. It’s a form of
sympathy—it hasn’t anything to do with beauty.” And suddenly Nikolai kneels by
Lydia
’s side, and to his surprise he bursts into
tears. “Forgive me, lady! Forgive me for not feeling love for you—because
you’re beautiful! I’ll tell you what anguish
is
.
Anguish is an ‘impossible love’, not one you can fulfil—if you follow my
drift?”

 
          
“I
believe you’re reading my heart,
mon
cheri.
If I’d
known you could read hearts, I don’t think I should have made love to you!
Imagine a world where everyone can read everyone’s heart at a glance—how
awful.” She speaks lightly, though really this is the levity of deep pain.
“
Voyez
: no hidden
secrets, no enchantments, no impossibilities . . . Consequently, no love—ever
again.
Bien, le fin
d’amour.”

 
          
However,
by now her hair is fully brushed. And somebody walks past the frosted window,
down the snowy Vanavara street, banging two pieces of metal together noisily;
alarmed, a pack- horse whinnies . . .