Nine Layers of Sky (12 page)

Interlude

BYELOVEDYE, N.E. 80

The airships wallowed like tethered porpoises over the refinery, riding the warm forest wind. A pair of boots dangled from an open hatch: Shadia Anikova, completing the afternoon’s air detail. Despite the attendant threats, it was work she enjoyed, monitoring the borders of the Republic, checking for breaches. It was proper army work and it got her out in the open air, away from the confines of Central Command and the solicitous, disquieting presence of the Mechvor Kitai. If only she hadn’t been posted so close to the southern border this time.

They were high up here, close to the range that divided Pergama from the southern steppe. It was still possible to see the distant heights of the Balchus, snowcapped even in summer, rising in irregular detail above the Pergama plain. First City was lost in the distance, veiled in the afternoon haze. Beyond that, there was nothing but the endless forest, rolling two thousand miles to the north of the Republic. Someone else would be sitting above the forest even now, on the deck of another airship, watching for a breach. Anikova envied that person, even though the southern detail got extra pay. The south was the province of the
kochebniki,
the horse clans. And the clans were known to kill strangers, calling them devils and worse.

The airship dipped ponderously as Anikova swung hand over hand down the guide rope to the deck. Below, a bulbous dome tethered to a wide platform towered above the surrounding trees. At the edges of the platform, shockwire and trips protected the raised walkways from intruders, in compliance with standard regulations. But the principal intruders here were only the rats that inhabited the underside of the platform barriers. Occasionally goats from the river pastures would wander up and come to grief on the shockwire.

As far as the crags, the pines formed a dense, dark wall, but from this height Anikova could glimpse the tops of the native trees—ezhny, bhul, and dzadra— floating above the line of conifers. Behind her, the dome bulged slowly upward as it filled. A light wind stirred the blue feathers of the dzadra, as though smoke drifted across the top of the forest, and the kited airships bounced on their moorings above the dome. Their shadows fell across the platform as they moved, momentarily hiding the sun.

Anikova was squinting upward into the sky, trying to see whether there was any sign of the returning DK9, the two o’clock, when Arkady Iskakhov came down the walkway to stand beside her. He sketched a salute, though Anikova was never one to stand on ceremony. Having made colonel in her mid-forties, she was content to go no further. She did not like to think that it was because she feared further promotion, perhaps a permanent posting to the south. Even Central Command was better than that, even Kitai. Or was that really true anymore?

“Two o’clock’s late,” Iskakhov remarked.

“Yes, I know. I was just wondering why.”

Iskakhov shrugged. “Don’t know. They said they were coming in early. In fact, they had a head wind. Maybe there was a hitch over Sanskiya.”

“Could be. So, are you going off shift now?”

“In a minute, yes. I’ve got to log the readings, but actually, she’s looking pretty good at the moment.” They turned to look at the billowing udder of the dome, a khaki bag straining at its moorings. “And then I’m off. Back on Wednesday. Do you want anything from town?” He was a good sort, Anikova thought. Not her type, but a decent soldier all the same.

“No, I don’t think so, thanks,” she said. “I’m staying till tomorrow night, then I’m returning to First City.
Kak zhal,
eh?—a real shame. I’ve been working at Central Command for the past few weeks. To be honest with you—” but then she broke off. Iskakhov would understand. Even among sympathetic colleagues, one had to be careful what one said these days.

“
Ladna.
So we won’t be seeing each other for a bit?”

“I hope not. Nothing personal, Colonel.”

Wind stirred the swelling bag of the dome and it bulged out across the platform. “Here we go,” Anikova said, shielding her eyes. Above them, the serene watermelon shape of the two o’clock airship sailed into view.

“Christ,” Iskakhov said. “He’s a bit low.”

“Why is he flying so low?” Anikova said simultaneously, and then the airship turned, revealing a soundless burst of light that tore a vertical strip in the world from sky to forest.

“My God, my God, it’s a breach!” Anikova heard Iskakhov cry. “Why didn’t the monitors pick it up?”

With horror, Anikova realized that she could see clear to the other side of the breach. It was huge. She had never seen such a rift in the world before. Beyond lay a whirling mass of mist and water. Then, as abruptly as it had come, it closed, but it was already too late for the airship.

The guide ropes of the DK9 brushed the azure plumes of dzadra and then the topmost masts of the pines. From this angle, the airship was immense, foreshortened against the sky. As it approached, it lost height, lurching so that its nose nudged the trees. They could see the truncated front of the cabin, slung low under the base of the ship, and as they watched, there was a sudden, soundless flare of light. The airship burst upward, its sides opening out like petals in a flower of fire, then sank down into the trees. Tinder-dry, they sparked and flared.

Anikova and Iskakhov were enveloped in an immense wash of heat, which scorched the throat and eyes, but Anikova was already running for the console comm. She could barely speak. Trying to shout into the comm, she heard her parched voice as a whisper, but the crew had seen the whole thing on the monitors, and in minutes they were out on the platform.

Anikova could hardly see through the smoke pouring from the blazing forest. She heard the siren start up and a rumble as the fireditches opened, but they had left it too late. The flames ran in rivulets along the dry edges of grass toward the platform and licked around its heavy legs, flowing under and around it until the refinery was circled by a burning collar. The crew started up the side ladders toward the kited ships. Anikova turned and came face-to-face with the foreman, ashen beneath the smoke.

“The protocols—” the man managed to say.

“Fuck the protocols,” Anikova shouted. “Do you want to die?” Through the sooty haze she glimpsed Iskakhov vanishing up the ladder, and ran after him, the foreman close at her heels.

The fire had reached the edge of the platform, creeping swiftly over and across. As Anikova climbed, she felt the rungs grow hot, and through the smoke she found herself looking out across a sea of fire as the forest caught alight. The flames ran along the platform toward the dome, and then Anikova was up and into the cabin of the kite, hauled over the portal by Iskakhov. She reached for the foreman’s hand, but the man’s foot slipped on the greasy rung. The foreman fell, going down without a sound into the flames boiling at the foot of the ladder. Iskakhov grabbed at Anikova and pulled her back into the cabin. His face was grey.

“Where’s everyone else?” she cried hoarsely. Only a third of the crew were in the cabin, casting off. “We can’t leave now.”

“If we don’t, we never will,” someone said grimly. The kite rope was sucked into the edge of the cabin and there was a lurch as the ship detached. They floated upward, rocking on the hot shaft of air, and through the open door Anikova watched, fascinated and numb, as the filled dome expanded and tore. She covered her mouth as the gas welled upward and then they were away, spinning over the burning woods and up into the clear air.

Iskakhov knelt, retching on the cabin floor, and Anikova’s legs gave way. She sat down hastily beside him. When she tried to speak, she found that no sound came from her seared throat, and when she raised her hands, they were black with soot.

Below, the forest was on fire.

Part Four

One

Ilya?” BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

Elena looked frantically around, but her companion was nowhere to be seen. And neither were the line of trees, the road, or the slope down which they had so recently come. She glanced behind her, half-expecting to see the warriors, but there was no one. The wall of the mountains stretched away behind her, but they were higher than even the Tien Shan, and the sky that their snowy summits seemed to reach was a darker blue. There was no sign of the storm, but the ground beneath her feet was wet with the passage of rain. She was standing at the edge of a field. Lines of young wheat marched away toward a break of oaks, their leaves yellow with the first touch of spring.

“Ilya?” Elena called again. There was no reply. It was very quiet. A flock of birds wheeled overhead and she could hear the whistle of their wings. They were white cranes, with long, graceful necks, and as she watched, they turned and flew toward the sun. The air smelled strange, and it was a moment before Elena realized that it was merely fresh, without the acrid tang of pollution that filtered up from the city streets.

Slowly, she began to walk along the edges of the wheatfield, trying to fight down the panic and analyzing the data at her disposal. If the warriors had been some kind of mirage, they had been a very detailed one. She had smelled the sweat of the horses, heard the creak of the harnesses. And what of the Golden Warrior? Even now, a ferocious debate was raging between Kazakhstan’s academics as to whether the armor had belonged to a woman. It was, apparently, a woman’s helmet, and it was certainly true that the armor was quite small. And it had been a woman’s fierce face that Elena thought she had glimpsed beneath the tall, golden cone—but then, she wanted to believe that the Golden Warrior had been female, so perhaps her expectations had engineered her vision.

Yet none of this could offer any explanation of where Elena was now. And a sudden cold thought struck her: What had happened to the object?

Elena scrabbled in her handbag and there it was, as heavy and unyielding as ever. She slung the bag more securely about her neck, undid her heavy winter coat, and slipped off the uncomfortable shoes. Where there was a wheatfield, there would be habitation. She remembered the voices she had heard in the vision. They had sounded normal, ordinary. There had been a child. Whatever this world might be, she told herself, if they grew crops and raised children, it could not be as terrifying as all that.

Two

BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

There was no sign of Elena or, thank God, of the warriors. And he knew at once that this was not the true world, even though the sounds that came to him were familiar ones: birdsong, the noise of small animals in the undergrowth, the rustle of leaves. To his disgust, Ilya found that he was shaking. Some hero, indeed. The first sign of real danger and he stood quivering in his boots. Elena was better off without him, wherever she might be.

Farther off, he could hear voices. Ilya listened.

“. . . it’s not showing up on the chart. I can’t track the mileage without it . . .”

“. . . more tea in the samovar, if you want some . . .”

“. . . if you can’t find the details on the computer, why don’t you just look at my ticket? It’s simple enough . . .”

Ordinary conversations, thought Ilya, spoken in a curiously accented Russian, but where
was
this place? He thought that he had seen it before, in dreams. It had the same feel. He looked up at the sky, where the bright sun burned, and found no answers. Ilya closed his eyes, listening beyond the ring of voices, seeking the edges of the world.

A voice, very clear, very cold, said, “We ride again, I tell you. Even if it takes us across the border, we ride!”

It was the voice of the Golden Warrior, he was sure of it. He could not tell whether it was the voice of a woman or a man. But in that case, how was he able to understand what the voice was saying? He did not speak Kazakh and the Warrior would not converse in Russian. And what was a horde of fourteenth-century Kazakh horsemen doing in a world where people had problems with their computers and the sky was a darker blue? In eight hundred years, he had never heard of such a place.

“Ilya?” His head snapped around. It was Elena, but he could not tell where she was. He tried to narrow it down, filtering out the great murmur of voices until he found her. Minutes later, it came again.

“Ilya!”

Away to the west, somewhere along the mountain wall. Even if he could not speak to her, at least she was alive. Relief filled him. He started walking west. Fragments of speech washed over him like the waves of an invisible sea, but he was used to that. It was the heroin that was a problem, or the lack of it. Withdrawal made his throat dry and his vision blur. Sometimes he stumbled. His joints were aching, and once it was as though the world’s pain had come to greet him. It brought him to his hands and knees, gasping and retching on the dry earth.

I will find you.

There it was again, that unknown voice in his mind. He struggled up and walked on, listening for Elena. He did not hear her again for some time, and now she was no longer calling his name. She was singing softly beneath her breath. He did not recognize the song, but he knew the sound of her voice. It struck him that he would know it anywhere, and the knowledge brought dismay: the promise of further hurt, for both of them. He followed nonetheless.

The landscape was similar to the country around Almaty: hills giving way to the higher, forested slopes. Far above, toward the glittering summit of the mountains, Ilya saw the carved gouges of glaciers. But the land that fell away from the mountain wall was fertile: long fields of wheat, and apple orchards. High on one of the hillsides was a long, low house, surrounded by trees, but Ilya thought it best to keep away from habitation. And besides, he could still hear Elena’s voice.

The sound of her song led him onto a road: not the usual potholed tarmac, or even the dirt roads of earlier years, but a straight trackway made of some kind of smooth black stone. It was unlike anything he had seen before. He bent and ran a hand along its surface. It was cool and seamless and hard, like obsidian. Ilya frowned. He tried to walk more quickly, but the pain was coming in waves and it was difficult even to stand. He should lie by the roadside, he thought dimly, let the world take him. Death was long overdue—and yet, somewhere within, he realized with distant amazement that he no longer wanted to die.

Elena’s song stopped. He heard her say,
“Ilya?”

—and then he saw her at last, a small figure farther along the road.

She ran to meet him, holding her shoes in her hand. She appeared genuinely glad to see him, and for a moment that realization blotted out the pain.

“Ilya, you’re here.” She reached out to him and then, evidently embarrassed, let her hands fall by her sides. “Where are we? Where is this place?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, Elena. I’ve no idea.”

“How did we get here?” She was not, it seemed, expecting an answer, for she went on, “I’ve been looking at the plants. I know some of them, but others—look.” She held out a fronded blue strand like a horsetail. “I’ve never seen this before. And those trees—what are they? Surely we can’t be on another planet?”

“I don’t think so.” A little reluctantly, Ilya told her about the voices.

“They were speaking Russian? Are you sure?”

“It’s the only language I can speak well, Elena. A little German, French, Kazakh—I know Russian when I hear it.”

“You must have pretty good hearing,” Elena said, giving him a puzzled look.

“I have . . . abilities. My hearing is one of them. I can hear a voice from a thousand miles away.”

Elena looked doubtful. He could hardly blame her.

“How sure are you that it’s actually your hearing? Could it be something like telepathy?”

“It’s not just voices. I can hear other things, too. Natural sounds: leaves falling, the unfolding of a bee’s wing.”

Elena’s eyes widened. “I thought your name was familiar. I’ve
heard
of you. In childhood stories—the legends of Russia.”

Ilya gave a wry smile. “Yes, I was famous for a while. A
bogatyr,
an ‘elder valiant champion.’ ” He paused, embarrassed. “A hero, basically.”

“Aren’t you supposed to have a flying horse?”

He smiled. “I wish. I’ve had many horses, but none of them had wings. And my sword isn’t a magic one, either. It’s just a sword. People love to embroider a plain enough tapestry.”

“But you weren’t the only
bogatyr,
” Elena said. “There were others.”

“There were, yes. The Sons of the Sun, they called us.” He started to cough at that point, turning away from Elena and burying his mouth in his sleeve.

“Ilya, are you all right?”

“I’ll be okay. . . . Not just sons, either, but daughters. Some had unnatural strength, others the sight of an eagle. We passed into legend, became nothing but stories. Mankind outstripped us.”

“
Mankind?
Are you telling me that you aren’t human?”

“I have been told that I am not. I myself do not know.”

She was staring at him.

“Do you believe me?” he asked. He found that her answer mattered to him.

She gestured around her in response. “My views of reality have undergone something of a change, Ilya. This morning it would have seemed preposterous. Now it’s verging on the plausible.” She paused. “But if you’re not human, then what are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think you could be from here? Wherever this place is?”

“I don’t think so, Elena. I was born in Russia. My mother was an ordinary woman; we were peasants. We lived in a little log
izba
in the middle of the Siberian forest. You were a foreigner if you came from half a kilometer up the track.”

Elena said nothing.

“We ought to try to find some kind of shelter. And food,” Ilya said, thankful to change the subject.

“There are houses up on the ridge. And you said you heard people speaking Russian. I think we should take a chance.”

“I don’t like the idea of seeking people out.”

“Neither do I. But it’s that or sleep in barns, and steal.” His face must have been easy to read, for she added after a glance, “You’d rather do that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” he admitted.

“Then perhaps we should compromise. Hide out for a time, watch whoever we see. If they don’t appear dangerous, we’ll chance it. And you can listen to them, can’t you? What do you think?”

“Very well,” Ilya said warily. “We’ll see.”

A track branched off from the main route, leading up into the foothills. Ilya worried that they might be too visible, but there was no sign that they were being watched. It was unnaturally quiet. They saw no one in the fields; there was no traffic along the road. Ilya tried to filter out the wash of background noise. He could hear the humming of machines all around them. He did not know what they were, but it was a twenty-first century soundscape: washing machines, computers, generators.

Gradually, however, a greater sound began to impinge upon him, a singing through the air. It was coming across the mountains. He stopped, shading his eyes with his hand.

“Ilya? What is it?”

“I don’t know. A plane, maybe.”

He was wrong. The next moment, the immense bulk of a zeppelin sailed above the peaks. It was silver, its flanks caught the late afternoon light until it shone as brightly as a captive moon.

“It’s huge,” Elena said in wonder.

As the thing turned, Ilya saw that it bore letters on its side: RT817.

“Does that mean anything to you?” he asked.

“No,” Elena said, gazing into the heavens and shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun. “I don’t recognize the symbol, either.”

The zeppelin did not bear the hammer and sickle, but another sign: a many-pointed star, in ideologicallysound crimson. The air was filled with the sound of the zeppelin’s engines, and more craft were soaring above the mountain wall. These were smaller, sharper, like silver arrows. They darted beneath the zeppelin.

“Are they attacking it?” Elena asked.

“I don’t know,” Ilya replied, but he did not want to take the chance and get caught beneath some aerial battle. Memories of German bombers flashed through his mind. He caught Elena by the arm and pulled her into a nearby hedge. This time, there were no trees among which to shelter. Fields of beets stretched away from the road. A craft flashed by, so close above them that Ilya glimpsed the line of rivets that ran along its underside. The craft roared up, a needle against the sky, twisted, fell back.

But as it came round, Ilya, blinking away the dust, saw a curious thing: a line of light in the sky, splitting the pure dark blue. There was a bitter, chemical smell. He reached for Elena’s hand. The world changed once more. He tasted earth, the bitterness of beets, snow. They fell through into a howl of sleet in the darkness beyond.