David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

RodionovRodionovtoolateabandonthisoneabandonabandontoolatetoolate…

Alexei left the rumbling Discourse behind to follow little Shadak. He felt tears in his eyes, in a sudden burst of empathy for Amar Shadak. Hadn’t he, just days ago, undergone the same revelation? Hadn’t he too fled his metaphor — torn a rip in the side of it and crawled out, back into himself? He had an unreasoning desire, then, to see Amar do the same thing: tear his way from the metaphor, return to his body, and begin the process of reassembling himself.

Alexei stumbled out the gate. The stones outside the villa were sharp on his feet, and the wind whipped off a glacier that hadn’t been there before. He turned back to the villa. The building was twisting and reorienting too. A slim tower that Alexei was certain had not been there before had thrust itself up from the rear of the building. A murder of crows competed for perch on its steep, tiny roof, cursing each other as they flapped and scrambled. Clouds now gathered to the east. The air felt electric with the coming storm. The world of this villa — this safe place — was becoming real.

So quickly. When Alexei was in City 512, it had taken months to make him believe his place. It had taken all of Fyodor Kolyokov’s strength and will; all of Alexei’s time; for months, to create a world that was only a skeleton compared to this one. Alexei waded into the grasses and peered down the hill. Where, in this blossoming metaphor, had Shadak lost himself? Unthinking, he put his hands to his mouth and called out: Amar! Show yourself! He smirked as he did so. He was not, of course, really here. He was observing — a ghost. He could no more make himself felt here than he could —

A whistling came across the grasses then, and a sharp pain in the side of Alexei’s head — and thought incomplete, Alexei fell.

The dark was silent and empty this time — a void like death. Alexei spun in it — or maybe he didn’t move at all and simply imagined himself spinning. Or maybe he was dead and this was how death was.

The silence fell away.

“Kilodovich.”

Vladimir?

“Apologies, Kilodovich. Things are taking place in the world of Physick that required my attention. Urgently.”

So urgently you disappear without a word?

“Stop whining. I see that you have learned some things.”

Oh fuck off. What’s going on in the world of Physick that’s so urgent?

Vladimir sighed. “I must apologize, Kilodovich. I have used you once more.”

What do you mean, used me?

“It was important,” said Vladimir, “that my siblings and I escape from the school house in New Pokrovskoye. There has been a fight. You are injured. You need to come back or you will die.”

So you have been using me. Alexei spat into the void. Just as Kolyokov used me here — as a vessel for his own designs.

“Hmm. Good. So you are working through your history.”

Do not change the subject. You’re using me what — to engineer an escape?

“And I am paying you for the privilege. Unlike what Fyodor Kolyokov did.”

Paying.

“Alexei. Fyodor Kolyokov used you for more than a vessel to engineer an escape.”

Did he now?

“He used you like a sleeper agent. But instead of sending you into a foreign city or an embassy, he sent you straight into his enemy’s mind.”

This I have guessed. He used me there, to break down his enemy — to turn him into a sleeper agent too. But to do so quickly — in the field — without having him forced to visit City 512. He used me — Alexei felt a rush of understanding sluice through him, like half-frozen runoff — he used me to make all of them into sleepers, didn’t he?

“There. Good. Now you can come back. We have work to do in New Pokrovskoye. You do not have much time.”

Alexei thought about that. He thought about returning to his body, doing more work that Vladimir bade him to do for him. Metaphorical bile rose in his metaphorical throat.

Fuck off , he said.

“What?”

Babies aren’t used to being told to fuck off, said Alexei. But I’m saying it. I’m done with you, Vladimir.

Suddenly, the weightless void felt more like the sky — and Alexei felt as though he were falling, his stomach catching in his throat. He could see shapes in the darkness, whirling past him. He grasped at the darkness, reaching for something — Vladimir, the pram —

“Kilodovich.”

Now Alexei was lying on flagstones in the courtyard of Amar Shadak’s metaphorical villa. His head hurt. The kid — Amar Shadak — was crouched over him. He looked, Alexei thought, kind of like Ivan, who’d struck him in the head with a rock back in his imaginary spy school, when he’d started asking uncomfortable questions about reality. Little Shadak had probably used the same trick on him now — a rock to the head — to knock him unconscious and bring him here to this much better-made metaphor of a plaza.

“You are a lying fuck,” he spat. “You’ve been working for the fucking KGB all along, haven’t you? This whole plan is fucking compromised.”

Alexei tried to sit up. As he did, ropes bit into his arms and ankles. Shadak had tied him up with metaphorical rope. Shadak slapped him backhanded across the face.

“This is some kind of brainwashing shit, isn’t it? That’s why everybody was acting so fucking strange in the caves, wasn’t it? You slipped some drugs into the food or the air or something — and fucked us all up.”

“N-no drugs,” Alexei heard himself saying. “You are the one who knows about drugs.”

Shadak stood up and kicked Alexei in the stomach. The pain was excruciating. Alexei shut his eyes.

“How far does this — this thing of yours go? The Mujahedeen? Jim Saunders?” Shadak sat down against the wall of the pond. His eyes were narrow with rage. “Ming Lei?”

Alexei tried to distance himself from the conversation, so he could put things together. But it was difficult — while he still didn’t seem to have direct control over his actions, he was so wrapped in this metaphor of flesh that the pain and the twist and the smell of things overwhelmed him. It was a bit like being drunk — his mind was fine, but his body acted as if with a will of its own.

“Untie me,” he heard himself say. “I can explain.”

Shadak looked at him. “You can fucking well explain tied like a fucking ape on the ground,” he said.

Alexei felt himself struggling. The ropes tore at the flesh of his wrists and ankles. Which was puzzling; hadn’t he, just a moment ago, been in complete control of this metaphor? Alexei heard himself sob, his breath rasping inside his skull. He listened then — for something else, a sound that had been at the core of this matter since the beginning:

The rumbling sound of Discourse.

And he realized with a chill that it was gone.

Alexei was alone in this metaphor. Fyodor Kolyokov and the others had grown silent.

Or, he thought, been made silent. What had been the name he’d heard most in Discourse? Rodionov?

Alexei thought back — to the general in City 512, who’d played at executing the poet, to discredit Kolyokov.

Rodionov was coming. They had seemed worried about that. Alexei thought he could understand why they might be worried about that.

Perhaps, thought Alexei, General Rodionov had finally arrived.

“This isn’t supposed to be happening like this,” said Alexei miserably. “This has gone bad.”

“Ha. Bad for you maybe.”

“No. Bad for you too.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not finished,” said Alexei. “And I don’t know how to do it on my own.”

“Do what?”