Part 19 (1/2)

'You see immediately of course,' says Khyrbysk, 'that the contemporary human body isn't fit for such a destiny. Active evolution, that is the key: the extension of human longevity to an unlimited degree; the creation of synthetic human bodies; the physical resurrection of the dead. These are the prerequisites for the exploration and colonization of distant galaxies. The living are too few to fill the s.p.a.ce, but that is nothing. The whole of our past surrounds us. Everybody who ever livedtheir residual atomic dust still exists all around us and holds their patterns, remembers themand one day we'll resurrect our dead on distant planets. We will return our ancestors to life there! The whole history of our species, archived, preserved, will be recalled to live again in bodies that have been re-engineered to survive whatever conditions prevail among the stars. And when that time comes the whole cosmos will burn with the light of radiant humankind.'

Mikkala Avril, astonished, excited, confused and strangely disturbed, feels it inc.u.mbent upon her to speak. She opens her mouth but no words come.

'You doubt the practicality of this?' says Khyrbysk. 'Of course you do. These ideas are new to you. But there is no doubt. We have already seen the proof of it. What do you think the angels were, but ourselves returning to greet ourselves. It is a matter of cycles. The endless waves of history. The great wheel of the universe turns and turns again.'

Mikkala Avril is puzzled by this reference to angels. It stirs vague troubled memories. Uncertain images of large dead forms. Dangerous giants walking. She thinks she might have heard talk of such things long ago, but nothing is certain now. She can't remember clearly. Rizhin's New Vlast burns with such brightness, the blinding glare of it whites out the forgotten past.

'Of course,' says Khyrbysk, 'our science is far from being able to do this yet. The success of Proof of Concept was a great step forward, but there are technical problems that may take hundreds, even thousands of years to overcome. Yet surely if all humanity is devoted to this one single common purpose then it will be done. And that, Mikkala Avril, is what the New Vlast is for. Rizhin himself appointed me to this task, as he appointed you to yours. ”Yakov,” he said to me then, ”devote all your energies to this. Abandon all other duties. This, my friend, this is Task Number One.” '

6.

When Mikkala Avril had left him, Yakov Khyrbysk reached for pen and paper. A man of many cares and burdens, he had a letter to write.

Secretary, President-Commander and Generalissimus Osip Rizhin!

When you entrusted me with the responsibilities of Task Number One, you invited me to come to you if ever I needed your help. 'I am a mother to you,' you said (your generous kindness is unforgettable), 'but how may a mother know her child is hungry, if the child does not cry?' Well now, alas, your child is crying.

Our work progresses better than even I might have hoped. We have had technical successes on many fronts, and our theoretical understanding of the matters under consideration advances in leaps and bounds. I claim no credit for this: our scientists and academicians work with a will. Your trust and vision inspire us all daily. Building on the success of the Proof of Concept (which came to an unfortunate end, but the fault there lay with the human component not the s.h.i.+p herself, and we have stronger human components in preparation now), we are well ahead in production of the greater fleet. Both kinds of vessels required are in a.s.sembly. The supply of labour continues to exceed attrition and our ma.s.s manufacturing plants outperform expectations (see output data enclosed).

But we have struck an obstacle we cannot ourselves remove. Our reserves of angel matter are exhausted. We simply do not have a supply sufficient to power the launch of the numerous s.h.i.+ps envisaged. All known angel carca.s.ses have been salvaged and there is no more.

Helpless, I throw myself at your feet. Find us more angel matter and we will deliver you ten thousand worlds!

Yakov Khyrbysk, Director Three days later he received a scribbled reply.

Don't worry about the angel stuff, that's in hand. Forget it, Yakovsoon you'll have all you can imagine and ten thousand times more. Drive them on, Yakov, drive your people on. Make the clocks tick faster.

O. Rizhin.

7.

Kistler had given Lom an envelope with a thousand roubles in it and a place name.

I hear whispers, Lom. Phrases. Vitigorsk, in the Pyalo-Orlanovin oblast. Post Office Box 932. That's all I can give you. Make of it what you can A thousand roubles was more than Lom had ever held at one time in his life. He bought an overnight bag, some s.h.i.+rts and a 35-millimetre camera (a Kono like Vishnik had, but the newer model with integral rangefinder and a second lens, a medium telephoto). He also bought ten rolls of fast monochrome film and an airline ticket to Orlanograd. From there he took buses. Four days and several wasted detours found him set down at a crossroads in a blank s.p.a.ce on the map. He shouldered his bag and began to walk west into the rhythmic glaring of the late-afternoon sun.

Gra.s.slands and low, bald, rolling hills.

Lom measured his progress by the heavy pylons and the rows of upright poles that stretched ahead of him: high-tension power cables and telephone wires. If the wires and cables were heading somewhere, then so was he.

The road was straight and black and new, a single asphalt strip edged with gravel. Wind hummed in the wires, slapped his coat at his knees, scoured his face with fine dry sandy dust. He'd never felt so alone or so exposed. He was the only moving thing for miles. Whether he was going forwards or backwards he had no idea. There was no plan. He put no trust in Kistler, except that Kistler's demolition of his proofs had the compulsion of truth, and Kistler had shown him a different tree to shake.

One tree's as good as another in that regard.

The world's turned upside down, and I'm the terrorist now and this is Kantor's world. Everything is changed and gone and new, and I am become the surly lone destroyer, opening gaps into different futures by destruction, ripping away the surfaces to show what's underneath.

One target's as good as another when everything is connected to everything else.

Maybe I'm just a sore loser, and this is nothing but resentfulness and grudge.

I never saw Maroussia on the river. Trick of memory. Didn't happen.

Six years. I've been alone too long.

A huge truck thundered up the road behind him. He had to step off into the gra.s.s to let it pa.s.s. Three coupled sixteen-wheeled containers in a cloud of diesel fumes and dust, the wheels high as a man. There were no markings on the raw corrugated-steel container walls, just fixings bleeding streaks of rust. The driver stared down at him from the elevation of his cab, a blurred face behind a grimy window. Lom nodded to him but the driver didn't respond.

Time to get off the road.

The forty-eight-wheel truck dwindled into the horizon and silence, leaving him alone under the weight of the endless grey sky. Lom turned and left the asphalt behind him. The gra.s.s was coa.r.s.e under his feet, tussocky and spa.r.s.e.

For the first time in far too long he opened himself to the openness around him. There was a hole in his head. A faint flickering drum-pulse under fine silky skin. A tissue of permeable separation.

He let the wind off the hills pa.s.s through him. The soil under the gra.s.s was thin. A skimming of roots and dust. He ignored it and felt for the rock beneath, the bones of the living planet. Beneath his feet were the sinews of the world, the roots of ancient mountains, knotted in the slow tension of their viscid churn. The low surrounding hills were eroded solid thunderheads.

Lom's heart slowed and his breathing became more quiet and easy. He kept on reaching out, down into the dark of the ground, till he touched the heart rock of the world: not the sedimentary rocks, silt of seash.e.l.l and bone, but the true heart rock, extruded from the simmering star stuff at the planetary heart. Layered seams of granite and lava, dolerites, rhyolites, gabbros and tuffs, buckled, faulted, shattered and upheaved under the pressure of their own s.h.i.+fting. Rock that moved too slowly and endured too long to grieve. He felt the currents of awareness moving through it, eddying and swirling, drifting and dispersing: sometimes obscure and indifferent and sometimes watchful; sometimes withdrawing inwards to collect in pools of deep dark heat, and sometimes sharpening into intense, brilliant, crystallised moments of attention.

There was life in the air. The ground wore a faint penumbra of rippling light like an electrostatic charge, the latent consciousness of the stone fields. He let the currents play across his skin. Felt them as a stirring of the fine small hairs of his arms and the turbulence of his blood. He was alive to the invisible touch of the deep planetary rock. It reached into his body to touch the chambers of his heart.

This is who I am. I will not lose sight of this again.

The gra.s.slands were not empty. Everywhere, invisible vivid small animal presences burrowed and hunted. Bright black eyes watched him from cover. The high-tension power lines were black and sheathed in sleeves of smoke. When he opened his mouth to breathe, their quivering tasted metallic on his tongue.

Rizhin's new world was thin and brittle. Translucent. Lom reached up into the sky and made it rain simply because he was thirsty and he could.

Beyond the skyline was the place he was going to. He knew the way.