Peter Higgins - Truth and Fear

‘Ever since the Vlast confiscated the Pollandore from Lezarye,’ she was saying, ‘people in the Lodka have been trying to find out its secrets and use its power, but they never could. Only now there’s me, and now there’s you. The Shaumian woman . That’s what the paluba called you. You have the key and you are the key. Those are the words, or something like them. So. I know, you see. I know it all. And now you can show me how to use the Pollandore. You can give me these secrets.’

Chazia’s face was so close to hers, Maroussia could feel her breath. It was cool, and smelled like damp moss and stone, like the mouth of a deep well, with a taint of meat. Her hair was darkly reddish, cropped short and sparse. The rims of her pale blue eyes were pink, her teeth were small and even and pretty. There was a patch of slate-coloured angel flesh stretching from her left cheekbone almost to her ear.

No! Maroussia was screaming inside. No! She closed her eyes and turned her head away.

‘I’m the one to have the power of the Pollandore,’ said Chazia. ‘It is my destiny. I have a great purpose.’

Maroussia pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them defensively. Her naked feet were cold against the rough plank floor of the freight car. She felt the vibration of its wheels on the rails below.

‘The Pollandore isn’t a power ,’ she said.

‘Of course it’s power, darling,’ said Chazia. She rested her hand on Maroussia’s bare knee, and stroked her comfortingly. Their shoulders were touching. ‘And you’re going to show me how to use it.’

Chazia slipped her arm round Maroussia’s shoulder and leaned her head against Maroussia’s head. Maroussia could smell her hair. Clean, with a faint trace of scented soap. The hand on Maroussia’s shoulder gripped gently but firmly. Maroussia felt a numbness there, as if her flesh was disappearing, as if the shoulder were merging with the hand that touched it.

Chazia’s body was starting to join with hers. Melt into her. Maroussia wanted to shake it off. Push her away. But she could not. The feeling was relaxing. Reassuring. There was something intimate about it. She felt they had known each other for ever. Chazia’s presence was so completely familiar. Solid and trustworthy. Two thoughts, one thought. Like oldest friends. Like sisters.

‘After all,’ said Chazia quietly, gently in her ear, ‘what were you going to do with it yourself?’

‘Destroy the angel in the forest.’

‘There you are , you see, sweetness,’ whispered Chazia triumphantly. ‘And you said it wasn’t power.’ Chazia nuzzled her nose against Maroussia’s neck. ‘Have a little sleep now, darling. You need to build your strength. There’s no hurry at all. We’ll have plenty more time to talk before we reach Novaya Zima.’

The engine note slowed and deepened. Lom became aware that the Kotik was descending, its nose dipping slightly, the line of the artificial horizon creeping up the face of the dial. He looked at the clock on the instrument panel. It was coming up to eleven. He glanced across at Gretskaya.

‘Going down to have a look,’ she said. ‘See where we are.’

The endless shining oceans of cloud rose to meet them and resolved into detail: rolling vaporous hillscapes, valleys and canyons. Lom braced himself, though he knew it was pointless. The floats under the wings ploughed into the thickening mist, tearing it up like cotton wool. Then fog closed round the machine, so thick the wing tips were lost in it. The Kotik did not appear to be moving forward. Nor did it seem to get any lower, although the altimeter needle was swinging leftwards all the time and the light was fading into subaqueous gloom.

The muffled roar of the engine died as Gretskaya throttled right back. The nose sank lower and the seaplane began to glide. The only sound was the hum of air passing through the slowly turning propeller and over the surface of the machine. The cockpit became suddenly fragile, cosy and close. A den to hide in. Heavy droplets of rain splashed against the windscreen and spread in trembling threads and trails. From north to south, straight across their path, lay a dark uniform green and purple wall. Not a wall. A mouth. Lom noticed that the wing at his shoulder was flexing and bouncing. Agitated water beads danced back across the lacquered surface towards the trailing edge and disappeared into grey fog.

Gretskaya sat quite still, her eyes glued to the altimeter. Lom watched the pointer creep backwards: 4,000–3,000–2,000. The machine plunged on through a mist of drenching, driving rain. 1,000–500. Lom sensed beneath them, blotted out by the foggy gloom, the heaving, queasy belly of the sea.

The engine abruptly roared into life. Gretskaya pulled the stick back, climbed to a thousand feet, and began to circle.

‘Trouble?’ said Lom.

Gretskaya shook her head, but she looked grim.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not immediately. There’s forty-five minutes left in the tank, and we’re not that far off Slensk. But I need to see where we are and the cloud’s too low. We can’t stay circling up here.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘Go down and wait for the weather to clear,’ she said. ‘Only I don’t know what’s down there, and I daren’t go any lower to find out. Could be sea. Could be land. Trees. Hills. Hills would be bad.’

‘It’s water,’ said Lom. ‘Open sea.’

Gretskaya looked at him sceptically.

‘How do you know?’ she said. ‘There was nothing to see.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Absolutely. I know.’

Gretskaya went quiet, thinking. Minutes passed.

‘You can’t know,’ she said at last. ‘But the odds are on your side, and if we stay up here we start to run out of options.’ She took a deep breath. ‘We’ll go a little further west, just to be sure, then drop down and take a closer look.’ She opened the throttle, pushing the airspeed indicator up till it was nudging a hundred, and let it run. Ten minutes later she cut it again. Gliding into a shallow descent, she pulled on her goggles and hauled open the cockpit lid. The icy rain in their faces. The noise of the wind.

The altimeter counted down: 500–400–300. Lom wiped the rain out of his eyes and held his breath. Still there was nothing to see but rain and fog. Gretskaya was leaning out of the cockpit, staring down.

A dark indistinct mass loomed up beneath them. The engine roared and Gretskaya snatched the stick and held it level. The aircraft flattened out and the dark mass disappeared in mist. Then it was back, ink-black and flecked with straggles of foam. Gretskaya hauled the stick right back into her stomach and the Kotik lurched and fell out of the sky. It smacked heavily into the sea, bounced and came down again, throwing up walls of spray. It seemed impossible to Lom that it wouldn’t tear itself apart or tip tail over nose into the wall of water.

For thirty seconds the machine forged on, then it slowed and came to rest. Gretskaya flicked off the ignition switch and pulled the cabin cover shut against the rain. The propeller stopped its rhythmic ticking and silence fell.

‘Fuck,’ she said. ‘Fuck.’

The plane had become a boat, rising and falling on the long, queasy swell. They were in a circle of mist. Rain pitted and rebounded from the dark green striated skin of the sea.

‘OK,’ said Gretskaya. ‘So now we wait.’

Lom twisted in his seat as Florian clambered up from the cabin and stuck his head into the cockpit. He looked tired, haggard and slightly green. He contemplated the scene beyond the windscreen for a moment–the rain, the mist, the narrow circle of purple-green sea–and grunted.

‘Not Slensk then,’ he said.