David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

Fuck , he thought — if Uzimeri could see me now .

Of course, he couldn’t. Because Uzimeri was too busy worshipping the fucking Children and Babushka and Zhanna — making a big fucking religious experience out of everything — to go riding a giant Captain fucking Nemo squid along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

No — you had to be running with the Mystics to do that.

They’d explained to him that the giant squid were actually among the most ideally suited organisms on the planet for dream-walking. Not particularly intelligent, they nonetheless were blessed with the largest brains of any invertebrate on Earth. The brain was mostly occupied with working a prodigious nervous system and fiendishly articulate tentacles. But the lack of much conscious thought also made plenty of room for a piggybacked consciousness.

Stephen spread his squid’s tentacles in a Mandela and spun in the dark ocean. He understood that some of the squid that formed the firmament of the Mystics were bioluminescent. When he brought this one in, he’d have to see about taking one of those out on the ocean. Maybe take it up near the surface at dusk — put on a show for some lucky cruise ship.

Maybe they’d even let him start doing the exterior maintenance that the Mystics seemed to use the squid for now.

“Hey. Kiddo. That’s enough.”

“Yeah. Up and at ’em.”

“Get out of there already.”

“We’re not kidding.”

“Yeah. Time to work.”

Stephen felt his eyes open — and the ocean vanished. In its place, a big Romanian monk — with a greying beard and piercing black eyes — leaned over him.

He was back in Petroska Station — in the bed they’d set him up in.

The monk started to twitch, as the other Mystics chimed in.

“You got to watch that, Stephen.”

“You can get addicted.”

“Hurt yourself.”

“You’ll go blind.”

“Oh stop it.”

Stephen sat up. He guessed from the changing timber of the voices that there were four Mystics inhabiting the poor Romanian right now.

“Fun for you?” asked the Romanian.

“Yeah.” Stephen rubbed his eyes. “Thanks,” he said, meaning it profoundly. Since he’d come to Petroska Station, the Mystics had been pretty indulgent allowing him to play with their squids. They seemed to think it was useful to have him do this — although he couldn’t see how. He wasn’t taking them out on maintenance detail for the station — he wasn’t engaging in reconnaissance — and his fooling around didn’t seem to have anything to do with dealing with the encroaching threat of this Babushka creature that the Mystics seemed so worried about.

“You’re welcome,” said a Mystic.

“But now it’s time to stay awake.”

“Hmm. Whatever you say.” Stephen threw his legs over the side of the bed — stood up and stretched. “How goes the war?”

The Romanian pursed his lips, nodded.

“Good.”

“Yeah. Good.”

“You just stay here.”

Stephen laughed. “What am I — a prisoner?”

The monk laughed too — on whose behalf, Stephen wasn’t sure.

It was hard to chart just how many Mystics actually inhabited this vast underwater station. He’d been here more than a day and he hadn’t yet seen one of them in the flesh. He understood now that the Morlocks weren’t Mystics at all. They were the Jacques Cousteau version of Richard at the front desk of the Emissary; sleepers who’d come down here years ago to service the structure while the Mystics went about their business — dream-walking through the waters off Cuba while hidden somewhere in their isolation tanks here at the bottom of the sea.

Somewhere.

“You didn’t answer my question,” said Stephen.

“You’ve got to stay put.”

“That’s what’s good for you.”

“Yes, because.”

The Monk looked at Stephen, his lips slowly relaxing.

“Um,” said Stephen after a moment, “because what?”

The Monk turned away from Stephen, walked across the room to a little cushioned seat.

“Because?”

“Because.”

“Big fight’s coming.”

“This one’s not your fight.”

“Stay put.”

The Monk sat down, folded his hands in his lap. His eyes focused somewhere far, past the bulkhead.

Stephen got up. He walked over to the Romanian. Snapped his fingers at first one ear, then the other, and then he waved his hand in front of the guy’s eye. Nothing.

“Because,” said Stephen. “Fine.”

He struggled to keep his voice nonchalant, but it was a trick.

Who the hell was inside the Romanian now?

Maybe no one.

He reminded Stephen of the way the Romanians got when they were guarding Zhanna and the others at the back of the submarine, but not performing complex tasks. Zhanna had said something about leaving them like that — going through their chores like automatons.

Like Richard — at the front desk of the Emissary.

Stephen looked at him. He stared back past Stephen impassively.

Stephen walked around the room. It wasn’t large by normal standards — but it was a gymnasium compared to the casket-sized chambers of the submarine. And the light was comfortable — warm and incandescent, with none of the flicker or humming that plagued Stephen in the cabin he shared with Uzimeri. There was even a ventilation grate in the ceiling, that pumped cool, fresh air. He sniffed at it.

It smelled antiseptic — and still. The fan was off.

Stephen turned to regard the Romanian again. The Romanian might as well have been dead, but for his chest, slowly rising and falling.

Stephen stared at him hard — regulated his breathing — imagined a descending scale of colour, taking him down through the spectrum. He tried to picture himself travelling through the air — into the ear of the Romanian — behind his eyes. To see himself, standing in a room near the top of an ancient Soviet sea station, trying to read a mind without the scarcest hint of talent or ability to do so.

“Shit,” said Stephen aloud. Babushka, Lena, right in front of him — and he couldn’t get a hint. Maybe if she was inside a squid…

Stephen sighed. What, he wondered as he stood up, walked past the insensate Romanian and pushed the hatch open, would Uzimeri say now?

The hallway outside was narrow, and the painted metal panels along it described a wide curve. Stephen picked a direction and hurried along it. He felt his pulse hammering. Shit. Babushka. The Mystics had named her as a threat — told him that she had already invaded the minds of his comrades down in the submarine and then — for all intents and purposes — disappeared.

Stephen finally stopped what seemed half-way around the circle, when he found a doorway that seemed to lead deeper into the station. He passed through it — found a room with a narrow spiral staircase going up — and followed it. He had to find the Mystics.

Stephen emerged in a large domed room — maybe thirty feet in diameter. The floor was covered in green carpet that smelled faintly of mould. Sconces in the ceiling projected swathes of light from the circle’s edges towards the middle, but not quite reaching it. The whole thing created the discomforting aspect of a giant iris over Stephen’s head.

But that wasn’t the only discomforting thing.

The room was filled with sensory deprivation tanks. There must have been two dozen of them — arranged in concentric circles, from the middle of the room to its edge. They were identical to Fyodor Kolyokov’s — huge Soviet sarcophagi, with tubing and conduits coming from them and disappearing into little black boxes set into the floor.

Stephen approached one. He touched the hatch cover, to confirm what he thought.