Zero K (25 page)

“Of course, always. But what Ross did for us was a turning point. His unwavering faith, his worldwide resources.”

“You've had defections perhaps.”

“His willingness to be a participant in the most telling manner.”

We were led slowly along a narrow passageway.

On one wall there was a cracked clay tablet set horizontally and bearing a tightly compressed line of numbers, letters, square roots, cube roots, plus and minus signs, and there were parentheses, infinities and other symbols with an equal sign in the midst of it all, an indication of logical or mathematical equality.

I didn't know what the equation was meant to signify and I had no intention of asking. Then I thought of the Convergence, the name itself, the word itself. Two distinct forces approaching a point of intersection. The merger, breath to breath, of end and beginning. Could the equation on the plaque be a scientific expression of what happens to a single human body when the forces of death and life join?

“Where is he now?”

“He's in the process of cooldown. Or soon will be,” she said. “You are the son. Of course he made me to understand that you have reservations about this concept, this location as well. Skepticism is a virtue on certain occasions, although often a shallow one. But he never characterized you as a man with a closed mind.”

I wasn't only his son, I was
the
son, the survivor, the heir apparent.

We encountered access tubes and airlocks and entered the cryostorage section. We were without escorts now and we went along a walkway that was slightly elevated. Soon an open area came into view and seconds later I saw what was in it.

There were rows of human bodies in gleaming pods and I had to stop walking to absorb what I was seeing. There were lines, files, long columns of naked men and women in frozen suspension. She waited for me and we approached slowly, at a height that provided clear perspective.

All pods faced in the same direction, dozens, then hundreds, and our path took us through the middle of these structured ranks. The bodies were arranged across an enormous floor space, people of various skin color, uniformly positioned, eyes closed, arms crossed on chest, legs pressed tight, no sign of excess flesh.

I recalled the three body pods that Ross and I had looked at on my earlier visit. Those were humans entrapped, enfeebled, individual lives stranded in some border region of a wishful future.

Here, there were no lives to think about or imagine. This was pure spectacle, a single entity, the bodies regal in their cryonic bearing. It was a form of visionary art, it was body art with broad implications.

The only life that came to mind belonged to Artis. I thought of Artis in her fieldwork, the time of mud trenches and crawl spaces, the objects dug up, earth-crusted tools and weapons, incised limestone fragments. And was there something nearly prehistoric about the artifacts ranged before me now? Archaeology for a future age.

I waited for the woman with the Mongolian scarf to tell me that here was a civilization designed to be reborn one day long after the catastrophic collapse of everything on the surface. But we walked and paused and walked again, in silence.

If this is what my father wanted me to see, then it was my corresponding duty to feel a twinge of awe and gratitude. And I did. Here was science awash in irrepressible fantasy. I could not stifle my admiration.

I thought finally of lavishly choreographed dance routines from Hollywood musicals of many decades past, dancers synchronized in the manner of a marching army. Here, there were no cuts or dissolves or soundtracks, no motion at all, but I kept on looking.

In time I followed the woman along a corridor that had murals of ravaged landscapes, on and on, scenes meant to be prophetic, a doubled landscape, each wall repeating the facing wall—disfigured hills, valleys and meadows. I looked left and right and left again, testing one wall against the other. The paintings had a kind of spiderwork finesse, a delicacy that intensified the ruin.

We came finally to an arched doorway that led into a small narrow room, stone-walled, in faint light. She gestured and I entered and after several steps forward I had to stop.

At the far wall there were two streamlined casings, taller than those I'd just seen. One was empty, the other held the body of a woman. There was nothing else in the room. I did not approach for a closer look. It seemed required of me to maintain an intervening space.

The woman was Artis. Who else would it be? But it took a while before I was able to absorb the image, the reality, attach her name to it, let the moment seep into me. I took a few steps forward, finally, noting that her body stance did not match the pose of all the others in their pods.

Her body seemed lit from within. She stood erect, on her toes, shaved head tilted upward, eyes closed, breasts firm. It was an idealized human, encased, but it was also Artis. Her arms were at her sides, fingers cusped at thighs, legs parted slightly.

It was a beautiful sight. It was the human body as a model of creation. I believed this. It was a body in this instance that would not age. And it was Artis, here, alone, who carried the themes of this entire complex into some measure of respect.

I thought to share my feelings, if only by look or gesture, a simple nod of the head, but when I turned to find the woman who'd led me here, she was gone.

The empty capsule would belong to Ross of course. His body shape would be restored, face toned, his brain (in local lore) geared to function at some damped level of identity. How could this man and woman have known, years ago, that they would reside in such an environment, on this subplanet, in this isolated room, naked and absolute, more or less immortal.

I looked for a time, then turned to find an escort standing in the doorway, younger person, genderless.

But I wasn't ready to leave. I remained, eyes closed, thinking, remembering. Artis and her story of counting drops of water on a shower curtain. Here, the things to count, internally, will be endless.
Forevermore
. Her word. The savor of that word. I opened my eyes and looked a while longer, the son, the stepson, the privileged witness.

Artis belonged here, Ross did not.

•  •  •

I followed the escort into the veer and then out along a series of halls where there was a closed door every twenty meters or so. We came to an intersection and the escort pointed down an empty hallway. It was all simple sentences, subject, predicate, object, things narrowing down, and I was alone now, my body shrinking into the long expanse.

Then a wrinkle, a crease in the smooth surface, and I saw the screen at the end of the hall just as it began to lower, and here I am again, waiting for something to happen.

The first figures appeared even before the screen had fully unfurled.

Troops in black-and-white come striding out of the mist.

It's a formidable image, undercut nearly at once by the crushed body of a soldier in camouflage gear sprawled in the front seat of a wrecked vehicle.

Stray dogs roaming the streets of an abandoned urban district. A minaret visible at the edge of the screen.

Troops in snowfall, crouched together, ten men spooning some slop from wooden bowls.

An aerial shot of white military trucks passing through a barren landscape. Maybe a drone image, I thought. Trying to sound informed, if only to myself.

I realized there was a soundtrack. Faint noises, engines revving, remote gunfire, voices barely audible.

Two armed men seated in the bed of a pickup truck, each with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

Men in robes and headscarves throwing stones at a target that remains offscreen.

Half a dozen troops poised within a ruined battlement, looking over the parapet, rifle butts protruding from the wall notches, and one soldier wears a comic-strip facemask, brightly colored, long pink face with green eyebrows, rouged cheeks and a leering red mouth. Everything else is black-and-white.

I did not have to ask myself what the purpose was, the meaning behind all this, the mindset. It was Stenmark. It was here because. The visual equivalent, more or less, of his address to the group in the boardroom.

The boardroom. When was that? Who exactly was in the group? Stenmark's world war. The man passionate, trembling at times.

Men in black walking single-file, each with a long sword, sunup, ritual murder, black head to foot, a chill discipline marking their stride.

Soldiers asleep in a bunker, stacks of sandbags.

Exodus: masses of people carrying whatever possessions they can manage, clothing, floor lamps, carpets, dogs. Flames rising across the screen behind them.

It takes me a while to notice that the soundtrack has become pure sound. A prolonged signal that rejects any trace of expressive intent.

Riot police tossing stun grenades at people retreating across a broad promenade.

Two elderly people on bicycles in devastated terrain. In time they ride alongside a column of tanks in a snowy field, a single limp body visible in a ditch.

Bodies: slaughtered men in a jungle clearing, vultures stepping among the corpses.

It was awful and I watched. I began to think of others watching, other screens, other halls, level after level throughout the entire complex.

Children outside a minivan, waiting to enter, black smoke hanging still in the distance, one child looking back that way, the others turned toward the camera, faces blank.

Hand-to-hand, six or seven men with knives and bayonets, some in camo jackets, concentrated bloodletting, up close, a tall man staggered, ready to fall, the others thrusting into the instant of stop-action.

Another drone image, ruined town, ghost town, small figures scavenging among the rubble.

A soldier's unshaved face, the raw warrior breed, black knit cap, cigarette jutting from his mouth.

A cleric in rapid stride, Orthodox priest, canonical garments, his cape, his cassock, people marching behind him, others joining, folding into the picture, fists raised.

Facedown corpse on a potholed road, bomb debris everywhere.

The halls are jammed with people watching the screens. All of them thinking my thoughts.

Another comic-strip facemask, a cartoon facemask, a soldier among others, formed up, rifle held across upper body, his white face, purple nose, red lips curled in a sardonic sneer.

A woman in a chador, seen from the rear, stepping out of a car and walking head-down into a crowded square where a few people notice and watch and then begin to scatter, camera pulling back, then the blast, purely visual, seeming to rip the screen apart and shred the air around us. All those watching.

Mourners at graveside, some with automatic weapons strapped over their shoulders, the same black smoke seen earlier, a long way off, not climbing or spreading but utterly, eerily still, resembling a painted backdrop.

A small child with a funny hat squatting bare-ass to crap in the snow.

Then there is a pause and the steady keening noise of the soundtrack fades away. The screen fills with a numb gray sky and the camera slowly levels and the first impressive image is repeated.

Troops come striding out of the mist.

But this time the shot is prolonged and the men keep coming and there are wounded among them, limping figures, bloodied faces, a few men helmeted, most wearing black knit caps.

Sound resumes, realistic now, explosions somewhere, aircraft flying low, and the men begin to advance more warily, weapons held tight to bodies. They move past a mound of burning tires into city streets, buildings collapsed, wreckage everywhere. I watch them walking over shattered stonework and there are isolated shouts soon overwhelmed by the concentrated discharge of weapons.

It looks and sounds like traditional war, men in arms, and I recall the warped nostalgia that Stenmark had talked about, all the world wars embedded in these images, a soldier with a cigarette in his mouth, a soldier asleep in his bunker, a bearded soldier with a bandaged head.

Sounds of local gunfire and the men take cover, searching out the source, firing back, and the soundtrack flows into the action, loud, close, voices calling, and I have to step back from the screen even as the camera becomes more intimately involved, creeping along the terrain for close-ups of men's faces, young and not so young, fingers gripping triggers, bodies edged against the frame of a ruined structure. It's quick and clear and magnified, a sense of something impending, and all I'm able to do is watch and listen, a sudden clutter of sound and image, the camera sways and jitters and then finds a man standing in the hulk of a wrecked car, rifle sweeping the area. He fires several times, upper body flinching in rhythm. He ducks down and waits. We all wait. The camera scans the area and it is empty debris and light rain and then the single figure is back in sight, kneeling on the driver's seat and firing once out of the shattered side window. Periods of near silence and the camera remains angled on the crouched man, who wears a headband, no helmet, and then the firing resumes from various quarters and the picture jumps and the man is hit. This is what I think I see. The camera loses him and catches only traces of muddled background. The noise becomes intense, rapid firing, a voice repeating the same word, and then he is back, wandering out into the open, without his rifle, camera steadying, and he is hit again and goes to his knees and I'm reciting these words to myself as I watch. He is hit again and goes to his knees and there is a distinct image of the figure, khaki field jacket, jeans and boots, spiky hair, he is three times life size, here, above me, shot and bleeding, stain spreading across his chest, young man, eyes shut, surpassingly real.

It was Emma's son. It was Stak.

He topples forward and the camera spins away and that's who it was, the son, the boy. Battle tanks approaching now and I need to see him again because even though there is no doubt, it happened too fast, it was not enough. A dozen tanks in lazy array rolling over sandbag barriers and I stand here waiting. Why would they show it again? But I have to wait, I need to see it. The tanks move along a road that bears a sign with Cyrillic and Roman characters.
Konstantinovka
. There is a crude drawing of a skull above the name.