Nine Layers of Sky (23 page)

Four

KYRGYZSTAN, 21ST CENTURY

She dreamed that she was back at Baikonur, sitting tensely with the rest of ground control as the Kvant module neared the station.

Something was nagging at her. Surely Mir had long since fallen from orbit? But she could see it on the screen, a spinning web above the world, and now the module that was drawing closer to it was no longer the familiar squat shape of Kvant, but the gleaming structure of the new international station. Elena found that she was gripping the side of the control module so tightly that her hands hurt.

“
Ladna,
Elena. Ready?”

“What?”

“We’re all waiting, Elena.” Yuri Golynski was beaming at her. “Bring her in.”

“But I’ve never done this before. I’m in astrophysics.”

“Not anymore.” They were all looking at her expectantly. “It’s all up to you now.”

She looked down at the instrument panel and it had changed to a garden. Blue-fronded ferns had replaced the levers, cushions of moss sprouted where the console buttons had been.

“I don’t understand,” Elena said, but she began to move her hands in a sequence of dreamlike passes between the ferns, so that they drifted apart. Slowly, the new space station began to glide toward Mir, spinning as it went. Elena felt as though she was conducting an orchestra. She waved her arms, not having the faintest idea what she was doing.

“Gently, Elena . . .” It was Ilya’s voice in her ear. She looked up at him, puzzled.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve made you some tea,” Ilya said. He took her hand and guided it across the console.

“No,” she said. “I can do it on my own.”

The two structures nudged one another and merged. Elena watched in fascination as the solar arrays slid across one another, meshing the two stations into a seamless whole.

“Well done,” someone was saying. “A perfect match.” And Elena woke up.

Five

KYRGYZSTAN, 21ST CENTURY

It was dark when they reached the border: a huddle of huts alongside a checkpoint on the Andjian road. The bus stopped and an official climbed aboard to check papers. Elena handed over her scanty identity documents; Ilya delivered his greasy bundle of assorted forgeries. He made sure that the official got a good look at the folded packet of dollars.

“Don’t you have proper papers?” the official asked.

“Aren’t those good enough?” Ilya said.

“We have to cross,” Elena added. She plucked at the official’s sleeve. “My mother’s ill—we only found out last night.” The official looked down at her, expressionless, and spoke the words that Ilya had been dreading.

“Come with me, please.”

“Look, can’t we sort this out?” Ilya moved the packet of dollars from one hand to the other.

“Just come with me.”

There was nothing for it but to comply. As they stepped down from the bus, the driver leaned across. “I’m sorry. I can’t wait, you understand? I don’t know how long they’re going to keep you.”

“When’s the next bus due, then?” Elena asked.

“There’ll be another one along in the morning, the eight-fifteen.”

“But we can’t stay here all night.”

“I’m sorry,” the driver said. Ilya heard the words as clearly as if the man had spoken them aloud:
It’s not my
problem.

“All right,” he said. “Elena, come on. We’ve no choice.”

They were taken into a small cubicle, partitioned off from one of the huts.

“I have to make a phone call,” the official said.

“Can’t you just let us through? You might be making a mistake, you know. You wouldn’t want to do that.” Ilya spoke mildly, but he took care to catch the official’s eye as he did so. With chilly satisfaction, he saw the man’s face grow pale.

“We have to check. We’ve had people coming over the Afghan border, running drugs and arms.”

“But you can see we’re Russians,” Elena pleaded. Ilya watched the official’s face begin to close down with a familiar bland, blank denial. He knew that they would get no further with this line of talk, and he did not have to look at Elena to see that she understood it, too. It was how things were.

“All right, all right,” Ilya said. “Make your phone call.”

The official left the room, shutting the door behind him. Ilya listened.

“Who is he calling? Can you hear?”

The official was describing them. “A man and a woman. The man’s tall, got a thin sort of face, doesn’t look too good to me. The woman’s a blonde—no, not dyed. Blue eyes, about thirty-five. Pretty enough. Wearing a fur coat. Yes, they’re Russians. No, no one’s searched them yet. Do you want me to do it? What?”

Ilya strained to hear the voice at the other end of the telephone line, but there was only the crackle of static.

“I don’t . . . even if that’s the case, then I can’t just . . .”

Ilya made a sudden decision. “Elena. Give me the bag.”

After a doubtful moment, she handed it over to him. He reached inside it for the object, cupped the heavy fossil in his hands.

“Ilya? What are you doing?”

He closed his eyes. “Seeing if I can get us out of here.” In imagination, he conjured forests, meadows, still lakes. He tried not to remember Manas’ words:
You
might not find yourself on solid ground, or in the middle of
a sea. Take us away from here,
he prayed to the thing in his hands.
Take us somewhere safe.

I hear you.
That familiar, small voice. He knew, now, that it was the coil.

Dimly, he was aware that the official’s voice was breaking up, as though the connection was a bad one. But the official was only standing in the next room. It was working. He frowned, concentrating. Behind his eyelids the world grew bright, then dark. For a terrible moment Ilya felt as though the walls were closing in on him, slamming forward to crush him between them. He thought he cried out. Then everything was quiet.

Elena said, “Has it worked?”

“I don’t know.” They were still sitting in a room. But looking around him, he could see a difference. The paint on the walls was a dull green, rather than blue, and surely the bench was in a different position? Rising, he moved silently across to the door. He could hear nothing beyond it. Ilya waited a minute, then tried the door. It opened easily. He stepped out into twilight. They went through the door of the hut, expecting to be stopped at any moment, but there was no sign of life beyond.

“I can’t see a soul. Come on. Let’s go while we can.”

Elena needed no persuasion. They ducked into the scrub by the side of the road. A ditch ran along the roadside, running with a trickle of water. It was easy enough to traverse. They went along it for several hundred meters, then dodged back onto the slope. The hut lay behind them in a blur of faint light. The road was quiet. They started walking, but they had gone no more than a couple of kilometers before Ilya had to rest.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Elena’s face was creased with worry. He looked away.

“Sorry. I just don’t seem to have much stamina.” He could date to the hour how long he had been clean. How long did it take before withdrawal started to ebb? He had felt all right for the last couple of days, but now it was back, as though the drug’s lack was eating through his bones. He would have done anything for a shot. Elena sat down on the dusty earth beside him and put an arm around his shoulders. Her touch was somehow irritating, even uncomfortable, but he did not want to push her away. He wished that they had found somewhere to stay, that they were back on the bus, that he could lose himself in her and try to block out the insistent summons of the drug, but it was no use. He would just have to ride it out. He put his head on his knees and said, “Give me a moment.”

When he woke, the sky was pale behind a tangle of sage. He was lying uncomfortably on his back on stony ground, his coat tucked beneath him and his head resting on Elena’s shoulder. Her eyes were open. She was staring at the sky.

“God, Elena, what time is it?”

“Nearly dawn, I think.” She sat up, grimacing, and rubbed the back of her neck.

“What happened? Did I pass out?” Shame came in a hot rush.

“Yes, you did. Are you certain that this really is the other place? Byelovodye?”

He looked about him.

“Look at the road,” he said. It was the same black substance that they had seen before. It reached into the distance, snaking through ochre hills dusted with snow. The air smelled of sagebrush and cold.

“Do you think you can walk?” Her voice was tentative, considerate of his pride, but he did not think he had much left.

There was no traffic. Soon, the stony land fell away and the road led down through groves of apricot and almond, lacy with blossom. They saw no sign of habitation, though once a herd of horses flashed across the road. A bridge led over a mass of foam. Ilya and Elena, in unspoken agreement, climbed down the embankment to a scatter of sand and stones, to wash as best they could. The freezing water made Ilya feel slightly more human. Elena perched on a rock above the current, vigorously scrubbing her face.

“That’s better. Ilya, when we go round the next bend, I want to see a first-class hotel with a proper bathtub. . . .” She grinned at him. “Arrange it for me, would you?”

He smiled back. “I’ll speak to the serfs directly.”

But when they clambered back up the embankment, and followed the curve of the road, they found only a huddle of buildings, eaten away by fire.

“What can have happened?” Elena asked, shocked. “This looks recent.” The air smelled of smoke and soot. Treading gingerly over the wreckage, Ilya turned his ankle on something smooth that rolled beneath his foot. It was a blackened bone.

“Bandits wouldn’t do this, surely?”

“Maybe there’s been a raid,” Ilya said.

“But to burn a whole village out like this. . . .” She fell silent. They both knew how many times it had happened before in their own world: the squads sent in, a quick flurry of death in the night, then the world closing over tragedy like the waters of a pool after a stone has been hurled into its depths.

“We shouldn’t stay too long,” Ilya said.

Three kilometers along the road, they came across another village. This, too, had been burned. All that was left were ruined walls and the fire-swept branches of an apricot tree, its remaining blossom still crisped by heat.

Ilya was looking up the slope. “Look.”

The poles sprang up from the hillside like a grove of trees. They were ten feet high, tied with red rags. A horsetail banner had been nailed to the top of each pole; the long hairs stirred in the wind.

The sight made Ilya uneasy. “I haven’t seen anything like this for a long time. This is a very old custom.”

“They still do it out on the steppe sometimes. They mark the dead in the old way, just as the hordes used to do.”

“But this is a Moslem region,” Ilya said. He pointed to the regular graveyard down the valley: the pointed stones each bearing the etched face of the dead, encased neatly between white plaster walls. “Why didn’t they bury their dead down there?”

“Maybe it wasn’t
their
dead.”

He knew she was thinking of the Golden Warrior, the horde sweeping down. The back of his neck prickled.

“Ilya? I think we should go.”

He felt as though the poles were watching them, spirits rising from the dust. He did not look back. They walked alongside the road, keeping close to the almond groves. Ilya kept listening, but it was as if a blanket of silence had fallen over the world.

Interlude

BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

You have to find them,” the General said. He leaned back in his chair and gave Anikova a narrow look.

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

Outside, spring rain was gliding over the city, casting the mountains into shadow and stormcloud. Anikova had come into Central Command at a run, but she had still been too slow to avoid a soaking. Now, she sat on the edge of a silk-upholstered chair, trying not to scatter rainwater over General Umarov’s immaculate office. The carpet alone must have cost a fortune. But she was not supposed to take note of things like that. She had already taken care to comment on the austerity of his office, dropping a word in the right circles, knowing it would get back to the General and that he would understand. It was not the first time her tact had been rewarded.

“You’ll do more than that. The breaches have been increasing in number ever since the coil was stolen. There has been too much chaos already and those we have sent to deal with it are failing to report back. I have heard nothing from the Mechvor Kovalin or his local recruits for three days now. We need stability. If the coil falls into the wrong hands, that’s precisely what we will not have. We need one gate open, under central control.”

“I understand,” Anikova said. She thought with a vague, unfamiliar wistfulness of the woman she had seen, the woman from the other side.
I would love to
know what is really happening there. I would like to see it
with my own eyes.
But, of course, that was impossible.

“Do we know where the latest breach occurred?”

“We have it down to a ten kilometer radius on the Pergama border, just south of Irzighan.” The General’s fleshy mouth pursed in irritation. “Ever since the coil went missing, it’s these regions that seem to be affected most.”

“How big was it?”

“Not too large, luckily. More like a crack than a breach, according to the reports. It sealed itself almost immediately, but if any interventionists came through, they must be found.” He leaned across the desk. “Colonel Anikova, this isn’t the first of these minor rifts in the area. There was another one a few days ago, not far from your own family’s dacha. I had it checked out and nothing was reported, but we need to make it clear to people, to keep their eyes open.”

“Understood,” Anikova said.
I know there was a
breach. I saw it. I spoke to someone from the other side.
The General was looking at her; she was suddenly certain that he could read her knowledge in her face. She said nothing.

“I want you to leave right away. Go to the border.”

“I’m ready, sir,” Anikova said, knowing that it was a lie.