David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

“That’s right,” said Stephen. “Vladimir wanted to do the Spartacus thing.” Zhanna gave him a quizzical look. “Free the slaves,” he explained. “That’s what he told Ilyich Chenko. And now — now he’s with this Babushka, against his will?”

Zhanna nodded.

“Is that where we’re going then? To Babushka?”

“Not right away,” said Zhanna, “and when we do, we’ll not go by ourselves.”

“Then when — and with who?”

“After we go deep,” said Zhanna, “to Petroska Station. We need the help of the Mystics. And we have to go deep to find them.”

“Mystics?” said Stephen. “Petroska Station? Who are—?”

Zhanna stopped him. “Stephen,” she said, “I am sorry. But no more questions. I must — I must talk with my brothers and sisters for a while. This communication in the Physick is exhausting. And there will just be more pain if we keep it up longer.”

“I'll go." He pushed himself up and slid into the dark corridor. The guard was gone when he got to the hatchway back to the part of the submarine reserved for mortals. Stephen ducked through it and slunk his way back to his cabin

Stephen lay in his bunk with his eyes shut. Below him, Konstantine Uzimeri kept up a regular, wheezing snore that mingled with the irregular drone of the engines, and the clanking of the pipes over their heads. Occasionally, Stephen coul hear the clattering and clanking as the Romanian crew went about their busines operating the old Foxtrot submarine. Stephen watched the multicoloured patterns of retinal ghosts crawl across the inside of his eyelids. They could be anything, he thought, as he drifted off to sleep. They could be squids — seven of them now, submarinal giants with deep eyes and tentacles as long as a ship — following in the frothing wake of the Foxtrot, as it dove ever deeper to its rendezvous with the Mystics in Petroska Station.

They could be squids. They could be anything.

Alexei gasped and blinked in eye-stinging heat. His spit felt cold on his tongue as he sucked steam over it. He coughed as the steam hit his lungs. He sniffed at a strange and familiar scent, of rising bread and boiling cabbage and pine and struggled to focus his eyes on something in the hazy darkness.

“Aie, shit,” he said. Alexei was surprised, pleased even, to hear his own deep man-voice. He ran his hand over his steam-slicked shoulders, the thick hair on his chest. “I’m back.”

In the darkness, another voice chuckled. “Back, are you?”

“Who is there?”

Alexei came more to himself each passing second. He knew he was sitting on a wooden bench; his feet dangled to touch what felt like bare stone, cold as ice in the heat of this room. He blinked again, and now he saw a shape — a lean figure of a man, lolling naked on another bench across this strange, log-hewn room.

“Hello, Alexei,” said the man. “I am Vasili Borovich. They call me the Koldun here. Welcome to the bathhouse, my cousin. And welcome home.”

Alexei squinted. “Home?”

“For all purposes — yes. You have slept a long time. Nearly two days. I know that seems a terribly long time, but there you are.”

Actually, it didn’t seem that long at all. As far as he was concerned, he’d spent literally months in the strange metaphor of his recollections. But he just nodded.

The Koldun, Vasili Borovich, smiled at him. “What did you dream?” he asked.

Alexei started to answer — to talk about the onionskins of his memories, the spy school and the psychic stuff and the sleeper school which were all lies or so he thought — and then a familiar reflex took over.

“I don’t remember,” he said.

The Koldun leaned forward and peered at him — as though trying to read something in his eye, spot the object of the truth and pull it out of him. Evidently he couldn’t find it, because he finally blinked and just shrugged.

“It will come to you,” he said. “That is fine.”

“I am sure,” said Alexei. He looked skeptically around the log-hewn room. “So this is home. Where exactly, Mister Koldun, is home?”

“You don’t remember your dream — it’s not likely you’ll remember this place.”

Alexei shrugged now. The Koldun smiled, and raised his hands, looked around.

“The village,” he said, “of New Pokrovskoye. It is home for us all.”

“If you say so,” said Alexei.

The Koldun’s smile faltered and his eyes narrowed, and Alexei found his hands going to cover his privates.

“You don’t remember it as home. But the Babushka has prepared it for you. You and your cousins. You should be very grateful.”

“The Village of New Pokrovskoye.” Alexei rolled the word around in his mouth. It did come easily — more easily, say, than City 512 — or Murmansk. “You should thank Babushka for me.”

“I will — pass it along.”

“So I have been asleep for two days?”

The Koldun nodded.

“Are you in charge of this place?”

The Koldun hesitated. “No,” he finally said. “Well, that is not true. I am — transitionally in charge. But I will not be for very long.”

“And this place is my home.”

“You are coming back to yourself. Good.”

“I’m only repeating,” said Alexei.

“You know, we are not going to accomplish anything sitting here in the bathhouse.” The Koldun slid down off the bench and drifted through the steam to the door. He turned back to Alexei and beckoned.

“Come,” he said. “It is time to go outside.”

Alexei followed the Koldun through the door, into a small antechamber. It was colder here, and small. The two had to shuffle and dodge to keep out of contact with one another. The floor was bare rock and Alexei curled his toes against the cool. He felt gooseflesh run up and down his arms, the backs of his thighs. There was a little window that was frosted with condensation. It admitted a cool, blue light to the tiny room. Beside the window was a door of wooden planks.

“Ready, Alexei?” The Koldun smiled over his shoulder as he pulled on a wrought iron handle and pushed the door open.

The sky held the consistency of fine marble — little lines of white transgressing a perfect blue dome that covered the world like the ceiling of a cathedral. Alexei drew a lungful of the cool, maritime air as he stepped naked out of the bathhouse. The sweat and steam cooled on him and ran down his flanks in little rivulets. If this one was a trick, he thought to himself, it was a good one.

“Name the smells,” said the Koldun.

Alexei frowned — crinkled his nose.

“Pine needles,” he said. “Mushrooms. A lady’s perfume.”

“Interesting,” said the Koldun. “Myself, I smell the city. Engine oil. Exhaust fumes. You, I think, are more in the Babushka’s favour than I today.”

“Babushka?” Alexei squinted down the hill. There was supposed to be a village there, but all he could see was the tops of thin scrub, and farther off, the ocean. “You mentioned her inside. Who is she?”

The Koldun laughed. “You wouldn’t know her by name — but you will have felt her in your dreams. You might have even dreamed of her. If you did, you smelled her, most likely. One day when you smelled a peculiar smell, a short time ago perhaps — did it not change your destiny?”

“My destiny ?” Alexei frowned. “Burnt sugar,” he said. “I smelled it on a man’s breath, who pulled me from the ocean. It caused me to lie to him.”

The Koldun nodded. “The Babushka favours you,” he said. “As to who she is? She is the one who made this place — her and some others whose names and bones are lost.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. She was one of the first to come here — one of a small group of agents like yourself. Sent here to establish a base of operations for the dreaming army.”