David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

“Red,” said Kolyokov as the technician turned the latch on his tank. “And orange, and yellow…” And green…

Oh, how Kolyokov loved dream-walking in those days. To step from his imperfect flesh and into the crafted, beautiful form of his metaphorical body. They were all Gods — terrible and beautiful in the guise of their dreams. Vasili might erase his thin face and pale, too-long fingers — extend the jawline that in reality receded beneath a slight overbite. Kolyokov could trim away the roll of fat that even then spread over his belt, and replace it with the sharp-lined torso that only seemed to appear in sculptures.

In such an idealized form, Kolyokov rose over top his tank — up past the gantries, over the rows of fluorescents that hung in a row on thick black wires.

“Hey — Fyodor! Wait for your leader!”

Kolyokov stopped, and hovering there waiting, glanced down at the tanks. He marvelled at the luminescent thing that rose out of the tank marked BOROVICH.

“Look at you,” said Kolyokov as Vasili Borovich’s newly tuned metaphor rose to join him.

Vasili had pulled out all the stops. His chin was sculpted heroically, to social-realist proportions, as was his newly minted chest. His hair, clipped short to keep out the lice, here hung to his shoulders in a wild black mane. At first, Kolyokov thought he might be wearing robes, but as Vasili rose Kolyokov saw they were no such thing.

Vasili had given himself wings — white angelic wings, over a slim, naked form that would have fit snugly on an Olympic swimmer.

In spite of himself, Kolyokov laughed.

“Comrade Commander,” he said, “don’t tell me you’ve taken up religion? Or is it a woman?”

To his surprise, two pink spots appeared on Vasili’s magnificently sharp cheekbones, and his perfect blue eyes glanced downward.

Kolyokov laughed again and gave one of Vasili’s immense wings a tug with one hand.

“She must be a wonder,” he said.

“You have no idea,” said Vasili, still not meeting Kolyokov’s eye. “Now let’s go — it’s almost time for the rendezvous.”

And with a single flap of his wings, Vasili Borovich led the way to Germany, and the interrogation.

A thin layer of snow enshrouded the farmstead. The little cluster of buildings was surrounded by a web of tire tracks, spreading out from a smaller circle of vehicles tucked close into the house. Yellow light came from one window, stretching across the mucky white for what looked like twenty metres before it faded. In that light, Kolyokov could see the shadows of the KGB men as they paced to and fro — waiting for the interrogation to begin.

Kolyokov and Vasili settled to the ground outside that window and peered inside.

There were three KGB men in a large room that had at one time been a family room. One tended a coal fire in a little pot-bellied stove in one corner. Another was walking back and forth, his eyes darting nervously about the room. A third smoked a cigarette in a chair, beside a bed where their subject, a heavy-set young man with curly blond hair, was strapped naked.

“Look at them,” said Vasili with a grin. “They’re scared out of their minds.”

“Why shouldn’t they be? They’re alone in the winter, waiting for interrogators that are invisible and can read their very thoughts.” Kolyokov reached inside, and idly entered the mind of the pacing man.

“You see? That one — I can’t make much sense of it, but he’s thinking about a sum of rubles — a sum I’m pretty sure he shouldn’t have on his salary.” Kolyokov smiled thinly. “I’ll make a note of it.”

“Is this what we’ve come to at City 512? Peeping into the minds of our brave Comrades?”

Both Vasili and Kolyokov started. The voice was a woman’s — and Kolyokov thought it was the sweetest thing that he had ever heard. He and Vasili turned to see her.

She stood in a long, hooded robe, lined with mink, that covered all but her mouth, which was pulled now into a mischievous smile. Kolyokov’s hand slipped from the KGB man’s mind.

“Lena,” said Vasili. Almost of their own accord, his wings extended outward and over his head.

The woman — Lena — laughed. “Vasili Borovich? Is that you in the folds of that outrageous metaphor?”

The wings faltered, but Vasili kept his composure. “None other, my dear,” he said, and stepped forward — surely, thought Kolyokov, as though he were expecting an embrace. Kolyokov had to suppress a smirk, as this woman Lena stepped passed him, ducked underneath his extended left wing-tip, and brushed past Kolyokov to peer into the window.

“My name is Lena,” she said.

“Fyodor,” said Kolyokov.

“Well, Fyodor,” she said as she stepped through the glass and wall and into the room, “I’m glad to see someone didn’t overdress for the occasion.”

The interrogation took only a few hours — but in those hours, Kolyokov learned more about his gift and its application than he had in his entire lifetime spent studying at City 512. Lena had done this before — and she knew the tricks of a dream-walker’s defences as a locksmith knows the tumblers of a well-made safe.

Their subject turned out to be a formidable lock indeed. As they stepped into the metaphor of his defences, they found themselves standing upon a great plain. The ground was cracked like a dried sea bed — the sky the colour of fire and smoke. Kolyokov was confused — there appeared to be no entry point here at all. Perhaps they should dig? Vasili swore and flapped his angel wings in frustration. Lena held up a hand, and slowly began to turn, her eyes narrowed to observant slits. Finally she pointed.

“That horizon,” she said, “is closer than the others. We go there.”

It took what seemed like an hour to get there, but finally they found what the closer horizon signified: a cliff, dropping treacherously into a deep canyon. It might be scalable — looking down, Kolyokov could see things nested in crooks and ledges; and they would have had to have gotten there somehow. But if this were a defence system, he didn’t think the route would be easy.

“Hell,” said Lena, looking further.

“Don’t despair, my dear,” said Vasili, putting a hand on her shoulder. Lena shrugged it off.

“I’m not despairing,” she said. “Just observing. This place — it’s a Christian Hell. Look.” She pointed into the yellow mist that clung to the floor of the great canyon. Kolyokov peered.

“I see what you mean,” he said. “There are circles — tiers, going down in ever smaller circles. Think there’s an ice field in the middle?”

Lena spared Kolyokov a dazzling smile. “You’ve read your Dante,” she said, and made a scolding noise. “Careful, Fyodor. The Divine Comedy cannot be on the approved reading list at City 512.”

Kolyokov shrugged. Had he been there in Physick, she might have seen him blush.

“Well,” she said, “this is no doubt a terrifying metaphor for the weak Christian bourgeoisie in the West. Here, though, we are made of sterner stuff, hey Comrades? There is no Hell for we Soviets, but the chains and wheels of unchecked Capital.”

“You are very wise, my dear,” said Vasili.

“Actually,” she said, “I am very funny. That was a joke, my little Comrade Angel. Now why don’t you flap your wings. Perhaps it will break your fall.” And with no more than the tiniest of nudges, she sent Vasili Borovich cartwheeling over the edge of the abyss.

She laughed sweetly, as he plummeted and rolled and finally, when he was no more than a distant speck — began to spin and glide into the yellow sulfur of Hell’s ground mist.

Breaking the American’s shield was a complicated business. At the bottom of the cliff, there waited an army of red Imps, carrying pitchforks, breathing flame and uttering unsettling commentaries concerning Vasili’s parentage. Kolyokov was inclined to dive down and help out, but Lena held him back. While Vasili kept the American occupied, she meant to outflank him. If this metaphor was anything like the defensive metaphors that she was familiar with, there was only so much of it the American could control at once.