Zhukof, Georgy
— marshal of the Soviet/Red Army (1896-1974).
‘Thus his path had been a circle, or an ellipse or spiral or whatever, but certainly not straight; straight lines evidently belonged only to geometry, not to nature and life.’
– Hermann Hesse,
The Glass Bead Game
IT IS AUGUST
1239 in Novgorod, northern Russia. The weather is hot and dry, the sky the deepest cerulean blue. Close by, the window – a Western touch – is open wide, giving a view across the central garden.
This is
my
house, the land purchased with
my
silver, made from
my
DNA, the house itself built only this spring to my own design. A Russian-style house, of course, but with Western touches, such as the sanitation.
Ernst stands beside me at the huge pine table, poring over the hand-drawn map. It looks crude – as crude as anything in this god-fearing, god-forsaken century – but the details are accurate. It only mimics crudity.
Ernst is frowning, as he always does when he’s concentrating, then he looks up and, meeting my eyes, smiles.
‘It looks fun. I only wish I was coming with you.’
‘You can if you want,’ I say, but he knows I don’t mean it.
‘No, no … I’ve plenty to do here. Besides, when winter comes …’
He doesn’t say it, but I know what he means. When winter comes, it would be best to be inside a town, not out in the wilds of Russia.
‘You’ll need to keep good time,’ Ernst says, tracing the course of my prospective journey with his finger. ‘If you delay …’
Again, it doesn’t need to be said. There are few roads in the Russia of this age and none at all between Novgorod and Moscow. Russia’s rivers are its main means of transportation, and when winter comes …
The rivers freeze. Those roads are closed.
Besides, Ernst has been ahead of me already, checking out the route beforehand and making deals. Arranging things.
There are four points marked along the way in bright red ink. Those are my supply dumps, already set up and in place. Again, this is Ernst’s doing. At each dump are duplicates of everything I need: food, equipment and weaponry.
And a focus. To jump to if in need. Or to send a message up the line to Four-Oh. We’ve worked it all out, you see. Each dump is marked by a tracking signal, which only I, in this non-technological age, will be able to locate. To make the hazardous journey safer, less subject to accident.
And there’s a good reason for that this time. Because I’m not going alone.
Ernst looks past me, and, in his quaint Germanic manner, comes to attention and bows his head. I turn and smile.
‘Katerina … you didn’t have to get up.’
She grins. Her long, dark hair is tousled and she’s still in her sleeping gown. But that doesn’t worry her this once. It’s Ernst. She squeals and hurries over to him, hugging him to her, like a long-lost brother.
‘Otto, why didn’t you tell me Ernst was in town!’
For a moment, in her happiness at seeing Ernst, she doesn’t notice the map spread out on the table. But then she does and looks at me sternly.
‘Otto …?’
‘What?’ I say nonchalantly. She turns and looks at the map, struggling to take in its details, but knowing what it means. Then, looking up at me again, she scowls, a hurt expression in her eyes.
‘Otto … are you going away again? Is that why Ernst is here?’
‘Yes,’ I say, and see the disappointment in her eyes. But I’m teasing now, and I really shouldn’t. She goes to speak again and I raise a hand. ‘And before you ask, no. Ernst
isn’t
going with me. Ernst is staying here in Novgorod for the winter.’
‘You’re going
alone
?’
And now I smile. ‘No, my darling little one. You’re coming with me.’
The apprentices have wandered from their benches to come and stare over each other’s shoulders at the drawings that their master, the chief carpenter, has unrolled and fastened to his worktop.
The old man is frowning heavily and pulling at his beard, in a state of what, for him, is almost agitation.
‘I’ve never seen the like,’ he says. ‘Never in all my life.’
It’s true. The design comes from the future. It’s one of Hans Luwer’s, a beauty if you ask me, but the master can’t see that. All his life he’s been used to making sleds a certain way – the way his father made them and his father before that – and this is too new, too revolutionary for him.
He sighs deeply, then straightens up and looks at me across the bench.
‘No, Meister Behr. I am afraid I cannot make this. This … blueprint, as you call it … it makes no sense.’
It makes perfect sense, of course, but that’s not what he means. He is frightened of it. Frightened of the departures in its design. It is, after all, radically different from any design he’s seen or is ever likely to see. But next to him, his senior apprentice is staring and staring at the diagram, his eyes filled with pure wonder at what he’s seeing. He wants to make this new thing. In fact, he absolutely burns to turn my drawing into something real, something he can touch with the palm of his hand.
‘But Master …’ he begins, daring to interrupt the old man in his excitement. ‘This is—’
‘Be quiet, Alexander Alexandrovich. I cannot make this thing. It would not be
safe
.’
‘But Master …’
This time the old man turns and even raises a hand. Alexander Alexandrovich desists. But his eyes still burn.
I take the old man aside.
‘Here,’ I say, handing him a small bag filled with silver coins – dirhams, freshly copied, using my own DNA, in Four-Oh not six hours past subjectively. It’s the only way we can transfer such copies, from place to place and age to age. Only our DNA can survive the jump. ‘Let your boy take this on. If it doesn’t work …’ I shrug. ‘I’ll pay you anyway, understand? Another twenty dirhams.’
The master’s eyes have lit at the sight of all that silver and the promise of yet more. I have paid him lavishly – ten times the worth of the sled, as much and more as a prince might pay – and so he bows low before me.
‘Whatever you wish, Meister.’
‘Good. Then I want the job done for St Vladimir’s day.’
His head jerks up. ‘St Vladimir’s day? But that’s—’
‘Ten days away, I know. Is that a problem?’
Before he can answer, Alexander Alexandrovich steps in. ‘It will be done, Meister. I guarantee it.’
‘Good. And there’ll be a bonus if you do a fine job.’
But now I’ve overstepped the mark. Both the master and his senior apprentice straighten, almost bristling at this insult to their pride.
‘Meister Behr,’ the old man says sternly. ‘Understand one thing. When Yakov Arkadevich takes on a job, it is done not just well, but perfectly. We are the best, you understand. The finest in all Russia.’
Walking back to Katerina’s father’s house, I find myself smiling broadly. I know the sled will be built to my design. I knew it long before I knocked on Master Arkadevich’s door. After all, with the slight improvements Alexander Alexandrovich makes to it, it forms the basis of those sleds we copied and which wait, even now, at the supply dumps along the way – the same basic design that will be used throughout Russia for the next seven hundred years.
Razumovsky greets me off-handedly. Something is bugging him and he’s in a bad mood, even for him. I tell him of my plan to travel east and he asks me why I should want to do that. Isn’t everything I need right here in Novgorod? I tell him no; I’m taking a very special cargo of goods inland with me and this single trip could make my fortune, and that with the proceeds I plan to buy an estate and a thousand serfs. That impresses him, but when I tell him that I’m taking his daughter with me, he objects strongly.
‘That’s no place to take a woman, Otto! There are thieves and bandits and ruffians of every kind out there!’
‘I know,’ I answer, ‘but there are thieves of a different kind right here in Novgorod and I am as loath to leave Katerina here as she is to let me go alone. Besides, I
am
her husband!’
That, irrefutable as it is, settles matters. But Razumovsky still doesn’t like it. He comes up with a dozen reasons why his daughter should stay. And most of them have merit, only …
I can’t bear to be parted from her. And this journey gives me a valid excuse to be with her every day for the next six months.
And every night
…
Razumovsky is saved from coming up with further reasons by the arrival of Ernst.
Ernst, I know, has been back to Four-Oh to get the latest news, but he tells Razumovsky that he’s just come over from the Peterhof, the German Quarter of the town, where he’s struck a deal for fifty furs. Ernst wants to celebrate, and this surprises me somewhat, but I can’t ask why. Not with Razumovsky there. It’s not the ‘deal’ Ernst wants to celebrate, that I know, but there is a definite spring to his step as he calls out to Razumovsky’s servants to bring us wine.
Razumovsky needs no encouraging. When the servants bring three flasks of wine, he sends them away for a dozen more. So it is that, as evening falls, the three of us sit drunkenly at the bench, laughing and slapping each other’s backs.
Razumovsky’s ability to consume endless amounts of liquor without needing to excuse himself is legendary. Even so, he eventually needs to use the midden, and when he does, I lean across and ask Ernst what’s going on.
‘They’ve killed Shafarevich!’ he says, his eyes gleaming. ‘Freisler shot him between the eyes. Then they snipped off time behind him, neat as a sewn wound!’
I laugh, astonished. Shafarevich is the Russians’ equivalent of Freisler, in charge of all the dirty jobs, the nasty sort that even us hardened agents want to wash our hands of, and he’s been a thorn in our side for as long as I’ve been an agent – yes, and for long before that. No wonder Ernst wants to celebrate.
When Razumovsky returns, I call for more wine, then climb on to the table and raise a toast to my father-in-law – a toast that has the sentimental Razumovsky in tears.
‘You’re a good son to me, Otto,’ he says, hugging my legs, not letting me get down from the table. ‘A man could not ask for a better son.’
Only I’m glad I’m not Razumovsky’s son, for if I was, how then could I have married Katerina?
Ernst wakes before me and he’s making breakfast when I stagger out into the kitchen. There’s no sign of Katerina, and when I ask one of the servants, he says that she’s gone to the market to buy food for our trip. My head is thick and painful, my wits dulled by our prodigious bout of drinking, but just the memory of Ernst’s news makes me grin.
‘So the bastard’s dead,’ I say, and laugh.
‘Time-dead,’ Ernst says, and that special phrase sobers me, because it’s what we all fear. All of us who travel back and forth in time. Because death’s not final for us. Not until there’s no way anyone can change it. Not until Time itself is snipped off and sealed and made inaccessible to change.
Time-dead.
Ernst serves me breakfast: a thick slice of ham with eggs. It’s delicious, but my stomach is feeling none too good after its evening exertions and I push the platter away unfinished.
‘Did you put in the designs?’ Ernst asks, taking my plate and beginning to pick at what’s left.
‘Yes.’
‘I bet Master Arkadevich was horrified.’
I laugh. ‘He was. But his senior apprentice …’
We meet eyes.
‘Strange, isn’t it?’ Ernst says. And I know what he means. Alexander Alexandrovich is a very clever young man, quick and flexible of mind. In our own time he would have made a fine technician or engineer; yet here he is in this age of darkness and superstition, wasted, one might say, on making things from wood.
Some of my younger students make the mistake of thinking themselves more intelligent than the men and women of the past. They think that the context in which they live reflects the degree of their intelligence. It is not so. And how could it be? Could mankind really have evolved so far in so very short a time? No. It’s an impossibility. What might seem like ignorance is merely lack of insight. Or of potential.
I decide on the spot to go and see our young friend and try to speak to him alone, away from his master. And so, having washed and shaved, I set off for Master Arkadevich’s.
It is midday when I get there and, picking my way through the jumble of wood and half-finished carts and sleds that clutter the front of the building, I ask where Alexander Alexandrovich might be found.
‘He’s asleep, Meister,’ one of the apprentices answers me, grinning broadly.
‘He was up all night,’ another adds, ‘working on the new design.’
‘Has he been sleeping long?’ I ask, and there is laughter.
‘He fell asleep over his bench. He did not
want
to sleep.’
I grin. Clearly I have found the right man for this job. ‘Then let him sleep. I will come back in an hour or two. I’ll wake him then. Only there are a few things I wish to discuss.’
‘But the master—’
I give the apprentice a handful of small bronze coins and wink. ‘There is no need to trouble the master, eh, my boy?’
The ‘boy’ – forty if he’s a day – grins toothlessly. ‘No need at all, Meister Behr.’
With time on my hands, I go down to the market to see whether I can spy my Katerina among the stalls. At first there’s no sign of her and I begin to think that she has gone already, but then I see her, her back to me as she examines a bright blue cloak, her servant Natya beside her, discussing the quality of the garment.
I smile, the day lit up by her presence.
I walk across and stop on the other side of the stall, watching her until she looks up and notices me there. She looks down, smiling shyly, playing a game we often play, as if she doesn’t know me yet, but quite likes me. As if she is a young maiden again, waiting to be swept away by her future husband. Natya, slower on the uptake, looks from her mistress to me, then back again, then does a comic little double-take, surprised that it’s me who’s standing there, and not some boyar’s son. Dull-natured as she is, Natya cannot understand the powerful chemistry that is between Katerina and I. She thinks her mistress could have done better, and that she is wasted on some ‘old man’ like me, tall as I am, rich as I am.