David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

“We had a deal,” said Heather, tears of rage streaming down her cheeks. But she sat down on the couch facing the sparking television and crossed her ankles. “What do we do until the morning?”

“Watching television is out of the question now,” said Kolyokov. “We’ll drink tea and tell stories. How about that?”

Over the ensuing hours, Kolyokov made good on his promise. He told her about the Russian military city called 512 — about how he came to be there, snatched from his parents’ home in the 1940s, after taking a test that showed he had certain abilities beyond those of his neighbours. She learned about Lena and the Koldun, Vasili Borovich, and the others who had trained there and spread out to use their talents in the world. He told her about the network of spies and sleepers that they created in that city and eventually beyond.

“So why,” she asked, “don’t you Russians rule the world? Couldn’t you just get into the head of the President of the United States and fuck him up? Why not just use your big psychic network to take over.”

Fyodor laughed out loud. “Because,” he said, “the psychic network functioned. Because we could leave our bodies and view anything we chose. We could step into the minds of anyone we’d prepared, and operate them like puppets. We could move invisibly if we just concentrated a bit.

“Why not take over the world? Because, my dear, we were too powerful.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Let me explain with a question,” he said. “What is the first thing you would do if you found you had won a fabulous sum of money in a lottery?”

Heather shrugged. “I don't know. Buy shit.”

“ Buy shit. Yes. You would do that. Would you continue to work at a job you disliked?”

She laughed. “Like for Holden Gibson? Fuck no.”

“ Fuck no . I do adore you, Heather. Quite right. Fuck no. You’d quit right away. Well the way to look at us is that we were all lottery winners — of a much larger sum of money. We didn’t need to work for anyone. Some of us came to that conclusion earlier than others — but we all at a point came to understand that we would ever be tools for venal men and women. And to allow that would be foolish. For those men and women — they could become tools for us.”

“To do what?” Heather had asked. “You don’t want to take over the world — what’s left?”

Kolyokov hadn’t answered that immediately.

Now, in the early dark of morning, sitting at the old kitchen table, Kolyokov looked around himself pensively. He set down his tea.

“Babushka — Lena — understood early what we took a long time to apprehend. We were not gods. We had it in our grasp — but we were limited. By Physick.”

“Stupid word.”

“It’s what we call it. Lena was the first of us to disappear. She did so early. I think she did so to this place. Very smart of her.”

Heather was quiet now. She got up and opened the refrigerator. It was full of condiments, but after some rooting around she found an old piece of cheddar that hadn’t been wrapped tightly enough. She yanked off the dried end of it and put it in her mouth. It had the consistency of an eraser. Yeah, she thought, Comrade Zombie Kolyokov had pretty well nailed the old homestead.

“What about Holden Gibson?” she said. “Was he smart?”

“John Kaye?” Fyodor Kolyokov smiled sadly. “No,” he said. “He was merely fortunate.”

Holden Gibson sat upright in living darkness. He was confused and lost. It was dark and warm and damp, and he was scared shitless because in addition to not knowing where he was, he wasn’t sure who he was. This kind of sudden dislocation in place and identity was becoming more the rule than the exception — but still.

It scared him shitless.

He took a ragged breath. The only thing to do was find his bearings. Work at it. He exhaled then breathed in again, let his own senses work for him.

He made a list.

Smell: like he was in a funeral parlour.

Sound: a papery susurrus, like wind through a forest canopy.

Touch: the soles of his feet touched cool, bare earth.

But then he remembered: not earth. Concrete. He curled his toes, felt the harsh roughness. Concrete. They’d poured concrete to make the foundation of their greenhouse.

Gibson stood up and stretched. He stumbled around for a moment, then found the dark cloth that kept the daylight out of his sleeping space. He pulled it aside and stepped out. The faux-tropical air of the greenhouse washed over him — the sweet smells that now seemed less funereal than they did simply tropical. Hands dangling at his side, he walked naked into the dark, among the shadows of tall ferns and giant tomato plants that climbed nearly a dozen feet along iron runners. Over his head, the flickering of summer lightning cast a grid of shadows through the jungle here, from the facetted glass roof.

He had called for help.

Why the fuck, now, was he calling for help? Gibson worked to reassemble his recent memories. The senses were easier. Recent memories tended to jumble with those long past.

His training, for instance, in the cabins — when he first shut his eyes and flew with the wings of a mayfly; when they sat him down next to the retarded boy from Cleveland — Bobby Turnbull, with eyes narrow as slits and that thick wet smile — and let him step into his mind and walk him all the way to the Arts and Crafts building like a wind-up robot toy — or when, in East Berlin, the KGB had found him in the back bedroom of the librarian’s flat, and hauled him to the farmhouse, where he’d been stripped…

Gibson smiled bitterly. Could have used some fuckin’ help then .

The recent memories came more slowly:

The lighthouse.

The Russian, Alexei Kilodovich.

And the push. The push from Heather.

She had pushed him clear from her — like a bug, like a fucking little insect.

Like the night in the farmhouse, where he’d fallen to pieces.

Gibson stopped. His hands formed into fists at his side. He was almost back. Almost in control. Enough within himself to be able to see and feel and react.

Enough to tell—

Someone was moving in the dark.

The two of them sat still in the dark. Leo Montassini rubbed his chin and peered over the rocks.

There were two guards on the main gate to town’s greenhouse. The gate was high, sheltered under a peak of shingled roof. Underneath, a pool of fluorescent light made everything sick green. The pair of them stood underneath that light. They stared down the slope at the milling town. One was big — he looked like he ran one of the fishing boats that worked out of this place: deeply tanned, with muscle-banded forearms, and a broad red forehead underneath a baseball cap two sizes too small. He wore big black boots that laced up to his calves, which themselves bulged out the top like round river-rocks. The other one was small but only by comparison to the first. He was still respectably put together and looked like he could fight. Montassini pulled back down behind the rock where they were hiding and reported this to Alexei.

“The big one,” said Alexei, without looking, “is Makar Trolynka. He’s got a scaling knife tucked into his belt. He has never used it on a man and would hesitate to do so with us. He prefers his fists. His brother Oleg — who’s standing beside him — is another matter. He’s not armed, but if it comes to it, he’ll take anything and use it. Oleg won’t care if he kills you.”

Montassini looked at Alexei, and choked back the questions: like: How in fuck did this guy know who these people were, how they were related, and how they liked to dust it up ?