Watson, Ian - Novel 11 (7 page)

 
          
But
surely no one in their right mind would despatch a letter thousands of versts
for that reason alone? Not unless they were crackers . . .

 
          
.
. .
ballistic
shockwave . . .

 
          
Anton
skipped through to the end.

 
          
.
. . therefore my conclusion, most respected Anton Pavlovich, based upon the
newspaper reports from Siberia which you quote in your article, together with
the other hearsay evidence you cite, is that an interplanetary space
vehicle—perhaps from the planet Mars—exploded high above the forests of the
taiga whilst attempting to enter the Earth’s atmosphere subsequent to its
journey through the void. This disaster would have been caused by overheating,
due to the resistance and friction of gas molecules encountered at high speed.

 
          
I
have carried out some experiments, employing matchsticks for trees, and I feel
confident in predicting that the trees directly beneath the centre of the
explosion will be found to remain erect, although stripped of their foliage and
branches.

 
          
I
have also carried out some calculations, a copy of which I append to this
letter. I have always felt sure, hitherto, that a ‘ship of space’ such as I
envisage ought to be powered by a principle of ‘jet propulsion’ employing
liquid fuel as the propellant. However, I have estimated the probable size of this
‘ship’, basing my estimate on the appearance of the shockwave in the upper
atmosphere, as described by your good self. And I have carefully calculated the
explosive force of appropriate masses of various propellants—including naphtha,
liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen et cetera (taking into account the certainty
that this ship would already have consumed a proportion of its fuel during
initial acceleration)—and in no way can I account for the force of the blast
described unless some entirely new principle of Science were employed.
Unless
— may I hazard?—Mass be regarded
as a ‘bound state’ of Energy, only a tiny fraction of which Energy is released
during the normal process of combustion. Were Mass to be totally convertible
into Energy (by some method which I cannot yet envisage), then sufficient force
might well be available to cause the destruction described.

 
          
This
supposition set me to wondering about the sum total of heat which our planet
receives yearly from the Sun—in view of the distance, size and probable age of
that body. Were the Sun an ordinary ‘bonfire’ of gas, Sir, it would have
consumed its whole substance long ago . . . !

 
          
This
was followed by an appendix of mathematical calculations of which Anton could
make neither head nor tail. He read the whole letter through again slowly from
the beginning.

           
Perhaps he was still in a state of
mental confusion due to the journey back from Kansk; and hence suggestible. Or
maybe this letter from out of the blue did indeed address the question of how
one could pay one’s dues to Science in a manner more worthwhile than merely
prospecting for meteoric ore ... Whatever the reason, the letter had an effect
upon him equivalent to only one other piece of correspondence he had ever
received in his life: four years before from D.V. Grigorovich hailing Anton as
a new star in the literary firmament and exhorting him not to squander his
talents as a hack.

 
          
However,
this letter he now held in his hands wasn’t from a Grand Old Man of the past
addressing a young and careless tyro who might yet make good. It was from a man
of the future, who had not yet had a chance to prove himself . . .

 
          
Pouring
the second instalment of his nightcap, Anton re-read the letter. Then he began
scribbling calculations of his own, though these had nothing at all to do with
ballistics or the energy value of naphtha.

 
          
He
had already paid off a good half of his advance from Alexey Suvorin; and his
books were still steadily netting cash for the
New Times
bookshop. Come the
Spring
, he’d
been planning to ask Alexei Sergeyevich for another two or three thousand
roubles advance, repayable over the next five years.

 
          
Why not right now?

           
Then there was this proposed fund
which Suvorin mentioned . . . Subscribers could well be lured by the prospect
of meteoric wealth.

 
          
He
must write post-haste, tomorrow, to Suvorin—and to this Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
too.

 
          
Eventually
Anton crawled into bed, his head spinning. Instantly he fell asleep, exhausted.

 
          
So
THEY SPENT
their first night at the
Artists’ Retreat. Cloud had closed in hours earlier, hiding the mountains and
the valley. Outside, snowflakes were swirling higgledy-piggledy in the light
from the windows, though no great amount was actually settling. It was rather
like being inside a child’s snow-scene which was being tipped this way and
that, constantly stirring up the same finite amount of white plastic flakes.

 
          
For
supper, through in the dining room, Osip had dished up some hot beet soup with
ham bones, followed by pickled sturgeon and boiled cabbage.

 
          
The
dining room of the Retreat had been a minor ballroom once, before it had been
crudely partitioned—leaving a blue plastered ceiling far too high for the space
which remained, one moreover which curved upwards without ever curving down
again. A single electric chandelier hung well off centre. The solitary window
was huge, stretching from floor to ceiling, and draped in faded purple damask
like a stage.

 
          
Conversation
over supper was desultory; and this was not merely because Osip hung around to
hear as much as he could.

 
          
Mikhail
could be said to be in disgrace—were it not that Kirilenko was as fascinated as
he was disconcerted by the strange turn that events had taken. While Kirilenko
also would have been in disgrace—were the Doctor’s expertise not the only straw
left to cling to, as the film project foundered further into a chaos of
unhistory . . .

 
          
Meanwhile
Sonya Suslova was brooding. She was worried about her mentor’s reputation, but
still eagerly certain of his perspicacity. Thus she had begun to search out
psychological motives by which to explain Mikhail’s aberrant response to
hypnosis. But this was not easy, since Mikhail was increasingly able to ‘turn
on’ Anton at will and seemed blithely assured of the validity of his Anton;
which made him a difficult case to analyse—for who was one analysing?

 
          
What’s
more, Sonya was starting to feel strongly attracted to this handsome
chap—whichever chap he might be!—as so many ladies, years earlier, had felt
drawn to Mr Chekhov. This sentiment was only intensified for her by the feeling
of sensory deprivation in the Retreat, with the world beyond the walls blanked
out.

 
          
Probably,
Sonya decided, she was experiencing something akin to the imprinting of a
newly-hatched duckling—upon its mother duck, or an old boot, whichever came
first.

 
          
Yet
she felt sure that she could help Mikhail therapeutically by a more direct form
of involvement with him. In the sheets is truth, after all! Where was the harm
in a bold initiative?

 
          
She
knew perfectly well where the harm was, professionally. But by now absurdity
seemed to have invaded all their lives, and it was certainly undermining hers.
She felt detached from the realities of the present. It was as though she,
Sonya, had been hypnotised—not Mikhail. Or as if the
tobacco
smoke
curling upward from Kirilenko’s briar pipe contained narcotics . .
.

 
          
Anyway,
Mikhail was making eyes at her, wasn’t he? He seemed bent on enjoying every
moment of the limelight—as much as he savoured the pickled sturgeon.

 
          
She
puzzled. Anton had never been a ladies’ man, had he? Perhaps Mikhail was only
teasing her, in keeping with his other role . . .

 
          
Perhaps
she ought to have a few words in private with Dr Kirilenko, about this
confusion she was feeling? But he was too obviously preoccupied.

 
          
That
night Sonya managed to control herself. She refrained from tiptoeing along the
corridor at
midnight
.

           
However, when she awoke next
morning, it was with a feeling of angry frustration, a sense of resentment that
she had tossed an opportunity away.
An opportunity to make a
prime fool of herself?
But she hardly cared about that. All the minor
frustrations of her life seemed all at once to have reached a climax.

 
          
‘That’s
more than can be said for me!’ she thought bitterly.

 
          
She
came downstairs to a breakfast of black bread, cherry jam and slices of
Dutch-style cheese, to find Felix and Sergey already snapping away at each
other across the table. As nobody else was in the room yet, Sonya went over to
the window to avoid getting involved.

 
          
Not
one single external object was visible. Not a tree, not a bush, not a stone. A
blank white covering of snow hid what she remembered to be a paved path running
right around the building; the thin even layer was as neat as a newly tucked-in
sheet. As for the rest of the world, well, the Retreat might as well have been
floating in mid-air in the heart of a cumulus cloud. There was only a dense
white mist, woolly and indefinite, unmoving.

 
          
“What
weather!’’ she exclaimed . . .

 
          
.
.
.just
as Dr Kirilenko swept into the dining room,
arm in arm with Mikhail, an elder statesman leading his protege.

 
          
“I’ve
been giving a lot of thought to our little difficulty,’’ he said without
preamble. “Now, it’s possible to project a hypnotic subject into a
future
role, as well as a past one. And
when I say ‘future’, naturally I’m referring to the future as foreseen on the
basis of subconsciously available data. The popular journalists might be
tempted to describe this as ‘Reincarnation in the Future’—’’

 
          
Sergey
glared malevolently.

 
          
“—though
needless to say it has no connexion with an afterlife in some future body—no
more than yesterday’s work had anything to do with actual reincarnation! And
when I say ‘actual’, I must remind you that no such thing as reincarnation
exists, except in popular fancy.
Nevertheless
,
an element of genuine precognition may well be present in such exercises. If it
could be properly developed a superability of this type would make the work of
Futurology less of a guessing game.”

 
          
“Sod
your Futurology,” said Sergey.
“I’ve got a script to get together.
Preferably this weekend.”

 
          
When
Kirilenko first came in, Sonya had quickly sat at table and helped herself to a
slice of cheese. Now she found in her agitation that she was spreading the
cheese with jam . . .

 
          
“I
think what Gorodsky
means
,” said
Felix heavily, “is that while you w'ould win our riveted attention at any other
time, right now we have a more pressing problem on our plate.”

 
          
“Quite!”
Kirilenko refused to take offence. “So what I propose for our first session
today is to tell Mike that he has already successfully
completed
his role in
Chekhov’s
Journey.
In his mind, he will be living in the future. The film will
already be ... in the can. This may, ah, clear the stage . . .”

 
          
Without
further ado, as though it wasn’t up to Felix to yea or nay this suggestion,
Kirilenko proceeded to sit down and tuck into cherry jam from the orchards down
Irkutsk
way.

 
          
“Any
port in a storm,” muttered Sergey direly.
“To quote our
beloved Fedotik.”

 
          
Sonya
discovered that jam spread on cheese was really quite tasty. This was just as
well, since she could hardly scrape it off again, in front of them all.

 
          
Mikhail
grinned at her.
“Onward to the future!”