Peter Higgins - Radiant State

Lom felt the living angel’s attentive gaze pass over him and come to rest, returning his regard as if it knew it was watched. As if it knew its enemy and disdained him. It came to him then, dream knowledge, that he was Maroussia watching. He was seeing with Maroussia’s eye. Alien Maroussia Pollandore, preparing to kill this thing if she could.

It was still dark when he woke but there was no more sleeping. In the first light of dawn Lom went to see Kistler, and then he went to find Eligiya Kamilova, who was back in her house on the harbour in the shadow of the Ship Bastion. That house was a survivor. Eligiya was there, and so were Elena Cornelius and her girls, Yeva and Galina. Rising for the day. Having breakfast.

I bring your children home to you Elena , Kamilova had said that day in the street. I have looked after them as well as I could. You can stay in my house until you find your feet.

What I owe you, Eligiya , said Elena, it’s too much. It can’t ever be repaid .

When he came for Kamilova in the early morning, Lom found Elena’s girls just as he remembered them from when he and Maroussia stayed at Dom Palffy six years before. They had not grown. Not aged at all. That was uncanny. It disturbed him oddly. Kamilova was dark-eyed, thin and haunted. She had a faraway look, as if she felt uncomfortable and superfluous, marginal in her own home.

‘I want you to come with me into the forest,’ Lom said to her. ‘Bring your boat and be my guide.’

Kamilova was on her feet immediately. Face burning.

‘When?’ she said.

‘Now. Today. Will you come?’

‘Of course. It is all I want.’ She turned to Elena Cornelius. ‘Keep the house,’ she said. ‘It is yours. I give it to Galina and Yeva. There is money in a box in the kitchen. I will not be coming back. Not ever.’

For all of the rest of her life Yeva Cornelius carried an agonising guilt that she hadn’t loved Eligiya Kamilova and didn’t weep and hug her when she left, but felt relieved when Kamilova left her with Galina and her mother. It was a needless burden she made for herself. Kamilova didn’t do things out of love or to get love. She did what was needed.

Lom and Kamilova had the rest of the day to make arrangements. Kistler had arranged a truck to come for Kamilova’s boat. The Heron . It was to be flown by military transport plane, along with Lom and Kamilova and their baggage and supplies, as far east as possible. As near to the edge of the forest as they could get.

Lom spent the time with Kamilova in her boathouse. She knew what she needed for an expedition into the forest and went about putting it all together while he poked about in her collection of things brought back from the woods. He felt excited, like a child, anxious to be on his way. He’d been born in the forest but had no coherent memories of life there. All his life he’d lived with the idea of it, but he’d never been there. And now he was going. And Maroussia was there.

When it was nearly time for the truck to come, Kamilova looked him up and down. His suit. His city shoes.

‘You can’t go like that,’ she said.

She found him heavy trousers of some coarse material, a woollen pullover, a heavy battered leather jacket, but he had to go and buy himself boots, and by the time he got back the truck had come and the boat was in the back and Kamilova was waiting.

Elena and the girls were there to see them off.

‘You’re going to look for Maroussia, aren’t you?’ said Elena.

‘Yes,’ said Lom.

‘You’re a good man,’ she said. ‘You will find her.’

She looked across the River Purfas towards the western skyline where the sun was going down. The former Rizhin Tower, now renamed the Mirgorod Tower, rose dark against a bank of reddening pink cloud. It was still the tallest building by far, though the statue of Kantor was gone from the top of it. The new collective government with Kistler in the chair had had it removed and dismantled.

‘They should call it Lom Tower for what you’ve done. People should know.’

‘I wouldn’t like that,’ said Lom. ‘I’d hate it. Nothing’s done yet. It’s just the beginning.’

Kistler had found jobs for Konnie and Maksim, working for the new government, and he’d sent out word to look for Vasilisk the bodyguard–Kistler was a man to repay his debts–but so far he could not be found. There was trouble brewing: many people had done well out of Rizhin’s New Vlast, and not everyone was glad to see the statue gone. There were Rizhinists now. Hunder Rond had disappeared.

Kistler had offered to find a job for Elena Cornelius but she had refused.

‘What will you do?’ said Lom.

Elena smiled. ‘I’m going to make cabinets again.’ She hugged Lom and kissed him on the cheek. ‘When you find Maroussia, bring her back here and see how we have done.’

‘Maybe,’ said Lom. ‘That would be good.’

He swung himself up into the cab of the truck next to Kamilova and the driver.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

The plane carrying Lom and Kamilova and the Heron landed at a military airfield at the edge of the forest: three runways, heavy transport planes coming and going every few minutes. Soldiers and engineers and their equipment were everywhere: rows of olive and khaki tents in their thousands; roadways laid out; jetties and pontoons and river barges clogged with traffic; the smell of fuel and the noise of engines. Huge tracked machines churned up the mud and eased themselves onto broad floating platforms. It was an industrial entrepôt, the base camp of a massive engineering project and the beachhead for an invasion, all combined in one chaotic hub and thrown now into reorganisation and dismay. Orders had been changed: the collective government under Lukasz Kistler required the living angel not mined for its substance but destroyed. Eradicated. Killed. The order came as a signal, unambiguous and peremptory.

Destroy it? the commanders of the advance said to one another. Destroy it? How?

A few miles east of the airfield low wooded hills closed the horizon: rising slopes of dark grey tree-mass which stretched away north and south, unbroken into the distance, shrouded in scraps of drifting mist. Westward was clear summer blue, the continental Vlast in sunshine, but a leaden autumn cloud bank had slid across the sky above the forest like a lid closing, a permanent weather front coming to rest at the edge of hills.

In hospital tents men and women on low cots stared darkly at the ceiling. Others slumped in wheelchairs, legs tucked under blankets, or hobbled and swung on crutches, aimless and solitary, muttering quietly. Bandaged feet. Arms, hands and faces marked with chalky fungal growths and patches of smooth blackness.

‘Have you seen this before?’ Lom said to Kamilova.

‘No. This is not the forest doing this.’

‘The angel then,’ said Lom. ‘They’ve found it.’

Out of the trees through a gap in the low hills the broad slow river flowed, turbid and muddy green. An unceasing traffic of barges and motor launches and shallow-draught gunships cruised upstream, heavily laden and low in the water, and came back downstream riding higher, empty, bruised and rusting.

‘There’s another way,’ said Kamilova. ‘The old waterway joins the river downstream of here.’

The Heron and their gear was loaded on a flatbed truck. Early in the morning, before their liaison officer was up and about, Lom and Kamilova drove out of the camp alone. Nobody questioned them at the gate.

A day’s sailing downriver and the sinking sun in their eyes was gilding the river a dull red gold when Kamilova swung the boat in towards the left bank under overhanging vegetation. Lom saw nothing but a scrubby spit of land until they were into the canal and nosing up slow shallow waters clogged with weed. Disgruntled waterfowl made way for them, edging in under muddy banks and exposed tree roots, or rose and flapped away slowly to quieter grounds.