Ian Hocking - The Amber Rooms

On the steppe, Saskia thinks, as she floats in a slow barrel turn, there is time to spare.

The wolf has been rendered mid-howl. Saskia thinks of the elements of this vast, uncountable world. She cannot know them all. She cannot predict them. It is this thought that conjures movement in the image of the steppe and the immensity of its time, small rivers, caravans of traders on battered pathways.

In the grass, there is a mark no more detailed than the brush-tick that represents a nameless bird in the middle distance.

But Saskia knows it is her body lying there.

When she opens her eyes, she understands that the floor is not grass but a parquet of exotic woods, and all her memories of these infinite Amber Rooms are taken from her, not unkindly, by something that is neither creator nor ghost.

When Saskia opened her eyes, she was once again in the Amber Room. She must have fallen on the floor. Her cheek throbbed and the base of her skull hurt, but she was otherwise uninjured. Her body recorded nothing of her fall from the balcony of the physical observatory. It was a memory. But she had no doubt that the memory was real. That Saskia had been murdered; somewhere, her body lay broken on rocks.

Slowly, Saskia gathered her skirt and stood. The room was empty. Its windows showed a night sky over the square and the palace was quiet. Her yellow-tinted glasses were crooked on her nose, and she could discern no use for them in this candle-lit chamber with its spells of darkness and sudden light, so she removed them and tucked them into her collar. The model of Frederick the Great had been pushed over and split in two. She peered into its base, which was hollow and large enough to conceal a man.

Like the room, it was empty.

She examined her reflection in one of the mirrors near the door to the staircase. The woman there was familiar, even down to the black scarf and sensible blouse. Gone was the ostentatious Allegory of the Future. She had seen this outfit before, when entering the room for the first time. She had become that reflection. This was not the reality she had left. This was a parallel version.

In the fragments of wood near the base of the model statue was a business card. Saskia crouched to take it. The card had the appearance of a business card but was too heavy and its surface rather smooth. The typeface was unusual.

It read:

Ms Tucholsky, Tutor

Mathematics; English; Physical Education

References upon request

Messages received at Hotel de l’Europe, Nevsky Avenue and Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa

The card grew hot beneath her thumb. She dropped it. A black outline of her thumbprint lingered on the surface, then vanished. The words on the card scrolled aside. An icon of a clock face appeared and its hands raced clockwise.

She smiled.

The icon disappeared.

‘Saskia,’ said the card, ‘I am back.’

His voice tantalised her with a release from the loneliness that only a taste of her own time, the twenty-first century, could bring. She put the card to her lips and closed her eyes.

‘Ego,’ she said. ‘My old friend.’

‘Saskia, we have just experienced an entanglement event. It forced my shutdown and might have caused you dizziness or loss of consciousness.’

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘Before we discuss the matter, I must report that there are two men approaching from the main staircase. You need to leave the palace directly. I suggest using the Private Apartments of the Empress Maria Fyodorovna.’

Saskia unbuttoned her collar and tucked Ego into her bosom. She hurried towards the door set in the wall adjacent to the enfilade. She grasped the handle but the door would not open. Before she could force the lock, the door to the enfilade opened behind her. She skipped across the room and concealed herself in its lee.

‘… something inside,’ said a man, perhaps the junior of the two. They had stopped on the threshold.

‘Has the alarm been raised?’ said the other. His voice was at once familiar and strange. Saskia was standing with her back to the mirror. She tilted her head to the right, hoping to glimpse the men without revealing her presence.

‘I believe so,’ said the junior.

‘You believe so?’ The senior’s voice had cooled. It became less familiar. Saskia could not yet see him and did not dare move any further. ‘Why don’t you go and check?’

‘Yes, sir.’

She listened to the fading footsteps of the junior guard, which were accompanied by the soft rattle of armour. There was no sound from the senior guard other than an impatient sigh expelled through the nose. Saskia leaned over again, but the mirror was too small to reveal the man. Why was he waiting in the doorway? Did he see her? Her cheek throbbed. A dull ache grew at the back of her head; to be sure, someone had struck her there. The injuries to her cheek and the base of her skull were the only impressions, in the absence of memory, that she could use to reconstruct the moments before becoming aware in this version of the Amber Room. What had Ego meant by an entanglement event?

A flash lit the room. Her first thought was fireworks. The afterglow, however, was white and unaccompanied by the sighs of spectators. She turned towards the mirror on the adjacent wall. By tilting, she could see the reflection of the window that overlooked the square. She demanded answers from her vision and the slice of night reflected there swelled to a grey rectangle flickering with false positive shapes. Within the shapes were two constants: bold lines that described two horses, each with a rider, and all lit in the magnesium of a signal flare. Soso and Kamo were cantering into the night. As Saskia looked, Kamo’s horse tipped into a perfect levade. There was a bundle slung across the withers. This had to be the first Imperial Mail satchel from the Tiflis heist. The other satchel would be draped across Soso’s horse, which was now too far away to discern.

Saskia thought once more about the events of the evening, here, prior to her arrival. She constructed a likely version: The satchels had been hidden inside the base of the statue. Soso, Kamo and Saskia had gained entry to the Amber Room; the statue had been overturned; Saskia had been knocked unconscious, and her two companions had escaped. And yet it was not certain she had been a companion. She might have intercepted the pair and tried to stop them. In another scenario, she was a hostage.

Saskia reduced the intensity of her vision. Her perceptual world shrank once more to the confines of the Amber Room. She tensed to see the back of the senior guard—a Hussar. He was crouching, oblivious to her, at the base of the overturned model. The candlelight created pools of shade. Saskia moved through these until she was behind the man. As she shifted her weight to her right leg and coiled her left, ready to kick his neck in the unprotected gap between his helmet and his back, he turned.

‘Fuck,’ she said.

‘Ms Tucholsky?’

‘Pavel Eduardovitch Nakhimov.’

She dropped the leg and stood up straight.

This Pasha was taller than the Pasha she had failed in the original Amber Room. But of all the Amber Rooms, and all the people she might meet in them, why Pasha, here? He wore the full uniform of a Hussar of the Imperial Guard: a white, dolman jacket with gold piping, sable epaulettes, and a bearskin helmet. His whiskers, however, were too thin to complete the impression of masculinity.

‘You’re a Hussar,’ she said. There was pride in her voice.

‘And you are under arrest,’ he said coldly.

Saskia put her hands to his cheeks and kissed him three times. ‘I’m so glad to see you.’ She kissed his shocked face again, thinking of the dead boy. ‘So glad.’