Nine Layers of Sky (16 page)

“We’ve just come from Kazakhstan, from Taldy Kurgan,” Elena went on. “We’re here to see my nephew at the university. His mother died recently, and there are some problems, so . . .” Her voice trailed away, but the woman’s face was immediately sympathetic. Ilya wondered where Elena had developed this talent for fabrication. He tried to look appropriately bereaved. Murmuring condolences, the woman shuffled around to the front of the desk.

“Come with me. There is a nice room, looks out onto the street. Very reasonable in price.” They followed her along a narrow, dark passage and up a flight of stairs.

“How much?” Ilya asked.

“Five hundred
som
for the room, for one night. How long are you staying?”

“We’re not sure. It depends how quickly we can get things sorted out.” Elena sounded harassed. The woman clucked.

“Terrible, terrible. I’m so sorry. Maybe it won’t take so long. But the room will be available. It’s a quiet time of year, this. Very busy in the summer—they all come, on the way to the lake. Have you been to Issy Kul?”

“Yes, a long time ago,” Elena said.

The lake.
Ilya remembered a shining rift of water, almost a hundred kilometers long, the mountains floating above it like clouds, and a great silence filling the world. He had stood on its shore and a man walking by with a herd of goats had told him its name: Ysyk Kol. It must be the same place. He had been there for almost a month, hiding out in the ruins of a fort that had once belonged to the Scyths. Despite its wildness, it had felt like a place of safety. The water had been warm, even in the depths of winter, the gift of underwater thermal springs.

“Ilya?” Elena was looking at him oddly. “The landlady wants to know if this will do.”

They were standing at the door of the room. Wan sunlight poured through grimy windows. He saw two beds, pushed apart, with iron-spring mattresses. The plaster was flaking, but heat was blasting out of a radiator and a television set stood in one corner. “It’ll be fine. Do you want us to pay now?”

The woman nodded. “There’ll be a deposit. One night’s charge. Here are the keys: This big one is for the room, and these two are for the outside door. But I put the chain on after midnight, so don’t be late. There’s a girl who comes to do the cleaning in the mornings. If you need to ask for me, I am Raisana Akyenbekova.”

Ilya handed over the money.

“Sign here.”

Ilya inscribed an indecipherable signature. “My name is Ivan Kostlovich. My sister is Natalya.” The woman nodded and left, closing the door behind them. Elena sank down on one of the beds. “Do you think the TV works?”

“We can try. You’d better do it, though. I’m not good with these new machines.”

After some fiddling with the aerial, Elena got the thing to function. She crouched over it, changing channels until a picture appeared. An old film—some epic set in Soviet times—then a cartoon for children. Ilya eyed the fuzzy, brightly colored images with distaste. He did not like television. It contained too many voices, rang imperiously upon the ear. Elena frowned.

“I was hoping for the news. What’s the time?”

“Four o’clock.” Ilya said. He lay back against the bolster at the head of the bed and closed his eyes.
Only
for a moment,
he thought, but when he opened them again, the sky was blue with twilight and Elena was nowhere to be seen. He was just about to go in search of her, still groggy with sleep, when there was the rattle of the key in the lock and she reappeared. Her blonde hair was wet.

“I had a bath. Thank God; at last. The bathroom’s down the hall.”

“You should have told me where you were going,” Ilya said, not yet forgiving her for the moment of panic when he had woken to find her gone.

“I didn’t want to wake you. I thought you could do with a rest. How are you feeling?”

“Not so bad.” He grimaced, rubbing his eyes. She had taken her handbag with her to the bathroom, he noticed. She did not yet entirely trust him. “Weak.”

“You need food and sleep.”

“I’ve had both. I need a wash.” He struggled up from the bed and went to the door. “I won’t be long.”

The bathroom was some distance along the hall. Ilya shaved quickly, then stripped and stood under the trickle of brown water from the shower. It woke him up, at least. He went back to the bedroom, feeling slightly refreshed. Elena was watching the television. He sat down beside her, maintaining a careful distance between them, and was pulling on his boots when there was a knock at the door. They looked at each other in alarm.

“It must be the landlady,” Elena said. She called, “Who is it?”

“It’s me. Raisana.”

Cautiously, Ilya opened the door. The landlady was standing outside.

“There’s someone to see you.”

“Who?”

“He didn’t give a name. He’s waiting downstairs.”

“Did he ask for me by name?”

“No. He said, ‘The two people who came here this afternoon.’ ”

“It might be someone from the university,” Ilya said, to diminish her suspicions. “I told my son to phone first, but you know what youngsters are like. . . . Perhaps it’s one of his friends.” Behind the lie, his mind was racing. “What does he look like?”

“I can’t really tell—his coat’s pulled up. I told him you’d have to come down. My husband doesn’t like people who aren’t guests coming into the rooms. We’ve had things stolen. Not that I’m suggesting a friend of yours—”

“It’s not a problem. We’ll come downstairs.” He picked up the sword, still in its fishing-rod case. “For my son,” he added, in response to the landlady’s puzzled glance. His thoughts were speeding ahead. What if they had to put up a fight in the hallway? Raisana would call the police, assuming they weren’t already here. He could not think of a way to say, “Is this man from the FSB, do you think?” without arousing her suspicions.

But when they stepped into the hallway, he saw that it was not a policeman at all. It was Manas the bogatyr.

Interlude

BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

From the heights of the Edraya, Pergama Province stretched below in a blur of heat. The waves of dark green and azure forest were broken only by the little towns, basking in the sun. The smoke of the recent fires still hung above the peaks of the Balchus, and the dim land was marked with a long scorched scar. Shadia Anikova found herself reluctant to look at it, as though she could force it from memory.

“Look, you can see it,” Natasha said, destroying Anikova’s attempt at denial. “Must have been one hell of a bang.” She reached out and squeezed her sister’s hand. Anikova gave a tight nod.

“I didn’t think we were going to make it. I still can’t believe it happened. One minute everything was fine and normal, and the next moment . . . There was a breach. No warning, nothing.” She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to blot out the recollection of that great rift of light opening out over the land. It was, however, the reason she was here today. Kitai had insisted that she take a break for a couple of days, and Anikova had been happy enough to agree, though not for reasons of personal trauma: a weekend at the family dacha had won her a brief respite from the Mechvor.

“I didn’t see anything in
Novosty
this morning, and you know I always read it from cover to cover.”

“Of course not. They don’t want information like that to get out.”
They?
When, she wondered with bemusement, had Central Command ceased to be
us
? “The
Rad
told the newspapers it was a gas explosion. Who knows, some people might even believe it.” It didn’t matter whether they believed it or not, Anikova thought, nor how convincing the government-doctored information really was. The important thing was that people wanted to believe that it had just been a gas leak, that their world was not starting to fall apart at the seams.

Only two generations, and already the truth of where they had come from was classified information, available only to the military and the upper echelons of government. And even among those in the know, it was receding into legend.
After all,
Anikova thought,
I
was born here, and so was my mother. My grandparents
came here for a reason; they were pioneers.

No one wanted to go back to the mess that was Russia, the swift deterioration of revolutionary goals that should have remained pure, and they had not been given the option. Everyone knew it was a one-way trip. But although she had known no other place, she couldn’t help wondering about the
Matraya-Derevnya,
the Motherland: what kind of people lived there now, and whether they spoke the same language, followed the Party, worshiped the same God.

Natasha had parked the
siydna
on the landing spot immediately above the viewpoint. Now, she leaned over into space to catch the breeze.

“You could fly from up here,” Natasha said, hanging over the edge. “You could just jump, and soar.”

“God, Tasha, please, could you not do that. Ever since the—the explosion”—it was becoming easier to get used to the fake term—“I’ve started having a problem with heights. Anyway, you wouldn’t soar for long. You’d plummet.”

“I’d fly,” Natasha said, her voice distant. The breath of wind carried her voice away, lifting her dark hair like a wing. It was not safe to say such things, not even here into the wind’s silence.

“So, shall we go on up to the point?” Anikova said, uneasy.

“When does the switchback run? On the hour?”

“As far as I know.”

“We haven’t been up here since October,” Anikova said. “Do you remember? We took Uncle.”

“Oh, that’s right. Nursultan came with us, too.” She gave Anikova a reproachful look for editing her boyfriend out of their personal history, as so much had been revised from their nation’s.

“I remember that,” Anikova said with a thin smile. She did not like Natasha’s boyfriend, whom she suspected of countergovernment sympathies. That she secretly shared those sympathies did not lessen her dislike. And there was the Islamic question, too: Nursultan’s grandfather was the Imam of a major mosque.

The switchback began at Voronezh Point, careening across the sharp hills of the Edraya as far as Mariupol. There, the hills dropped in a scarp to the forested plains surrounding Azhutsk. By the time the sisters reached the point, there was already a queue. They could see the returning switchback coming down the opposite slope before crawling back up the ridge to the point. Anikova started to laugh.

“What?”

“So much for exercise,” she said. “First we take the
siydna,
then we take the switch.”

“Well, we’re walking now,” Natasha said.

“A couple of hundred meters, yes.”

The switchback came in with a thin electric hum. Above it, the air wavered. Anikova could smell hot metal: an enticing, tarry odor. They filed through the gate and strapped in.

“Oh, I’m sitting backward,” Natasha said, dismayed. “Change with me, Shadouschka?”

“No, thanks. You can handle it.”

“Shadia!” Natasha cried. But her sister’s name was lost in the gush of air as the switchback took off, hurtling down the slope and up the other side of the ridge. As they climbed, the pace slowed and the scent of pine, resinous and acrid, filled the car. Anikova could have reached out and drawn her hand along the branches. Blue fronds of dzadra floated out between the clusters of fir. All the roads in Pergama skirted the forests, but the switchback had been carved straight through, to follow the line of the gorges.

They were far enough into the woods at this point for Anikova to feel that a bridge had been crossed, that they were in the part of Byelovodye that belonged only to itself, and not to the colonists. She knew that it was foolish, there on the plunging, plummeting monorail with the pergolas and cafes of Lake Irrin at the other end, but she wished the switchback would stop, that they could get off and wander into the woods’ heart. Then she thought of the
rusalki,
smiling behind their mantles, and of the other things that were supposed to live in the forests, and she felt herself grow cold.

As they came up over the last ridge, Anikova caught a glimpse of Lake Irrin lying below, blue and gentle in the afternoon sunshine. The switchback rolled down to a halt beside the lake station. As they stepped down onto the platform, the air was noticeably cooler, with a breeze blowing across the water. Anikova felt as though she could breathe for the first time since the breach. The psychic turmoil left behind by the Mechvor’s probing was ebbing away, too. But she did not want to think about Kitai, not today.

They walked slowly along the promenade, to the edge of the water. Irrin glittered in the sun. Carp swam lazily in the shallows, between the green banners of weed. The little town itself reached up the slopes of Drezneya, built in the thirties as a resort and self-consciously charming. It was much favored by the members of Central Command and the
Rad
for their summer homes. It was pretty in winter, but difficult to reach without
siydni
transport, and often walled off by the blizzards.

“Some wealthy people up here,” Natasha said, as she did every time they came. At the end of the promenade a teahouse overlooked the lake, and they secured a table on the terrace. Natasha sat looking up at the chalets, each with its balcony and dark curling roof.

“You could afford to live here,” Anikova teased. Natasha snorted.

“
I
couldn’t. Nursultan’s family could.”

“That’s what I meant.”

Natasha raised her dark eyebrows.

“And what makes you think Nursultan wants to live cheek by jowl with Christians? Not that he’s prejudiced, you understand, but—”

“How is he, anyway?” Anikova asked.

“His father’s influence has put him on the Standards Committee. I haven’t seen that much of him.”

“He passed selection, then?” It surprised Anikova. She thought again of those doubtful sympathies; of the earnest counseling of the Mechvor.

“I suppose so. Did I tell you he’s out in Tatzinsk?”

“No. What’s he doing there?”

“There’s talk of a joint party summit in the autumn: us, Bakistan, and Uralesk. The Bakistanis want to develop Tahe as a free-trade zone.”

“The Uraciks won’t like that.”

“They’re pragmatists,” Natasha said absently.

“They’re willing to concede a certain amount, as long as they get what they want in return, which is a chunk of the southern steppe. That’s the trouble with this world. What with the tribes, Christians, Islam, and the Party, it’s not big enough for all of us any longer.”

Anikova stirred her glass, watching the tea—the color of beechwood—swirl within. God forbid that they should go back to the situation in the fifties. She and her sisters had heard their father’s stories over and over again: the spark attack on Akcholai, the firestorms set by the horse tribes.
Place makes you what you are,
Anikova thought,
and when that is stripped away and you
are forced to live somewhere utterly new, then you have to
revise who you are and where you derive your identity.
Their mother had gained hers from nationalism, but she had watched her father become increasingly disillusioned, until the breach had taken him from them.

And where do I take my identity from?
Anikova wondered, staring out over the rippling waters of Irrin.

Voices drifted across the lake from an ornamental pleasure boat, and Anikova could hear the tap of a horse’s hooves along the road. The
Rhus
and their horses, she thought, inseparable wherever they went. The sun was skimming the western rim of the Balchus, floating above the Edraya. Soon it would be gone.

Anikova and Natasha walked back along the lakeshore and sat on the station wall to wait for the switchback. Going toward Voronezh, the woods were dim in the fading light. Anikova strained her eyes looking through the shadows, but the woods were still. The scent of resin was still strong in the early evening air. She leaned back in her seat and shut her eyes, and, unbidden, the thought came to her:
We are still here, we
Russians. After all this time and all the things that have befallen us, we are still here.

The thought made her uneasy, as if time was reaching back to them, a breath of future change in the idyllic day.

That was the problem with her people, Anikova reflected, always giving a nod to fate in case something unpleasant waited around the corner, never accepting that life, even for a short while, could be truly untroubled.