Rasputin's Bastards

THE IDIOT IN YOUTH

Alexei spotted the baby carriage wedged between two tall rocks on the steep slope of a valley. The carriage was a geometric marvel of dark blue steel tubes, plastic armatures and soft foam cushions, riding on four big, knobbly tires that looked purpose-built for the tricky off-road conditions of southeastern Afghanistan. The timing was wrong though — this thing had probably been manufactured in the late 1990s. Afghanistan, on the other hand, was vintage 1987. A rich black puff of oil smoke drifted across the blue sky. Small-arms fire chuffed in the distance, softening to pops and fizzes in the echoes of the rocky hills. Russians or Mujahedeen — one or the other or more likely both — were not far off.

Alexei wiped sweat off his brow as Vladimir glared up at him.

“Alexei Kilodovich! You are an idiot!” Vladimir was wearing a little blue terrycloth jumper, which offset the girlish bonnet tied over his head to keep the sun off. He clenched two tiny fists and kicked his blue-clothed feet in little circles. Alexei struggled with the carriage, and finally pulled it loose. Vladimir, faced scrunched in rage, continued talking as he went.

“I show you your history — give you a door to make it — to discover yourself. And what do you do? You walk through the fence — just as you were about to discover yourself.”

“It’s all bullshit,” said Alexei glumly. He righted the carriage, and walking backwards, pulled it jostling down to the little creek-bed at the valley’s base.

“Why do you use that term?” said Vladimir. He was in full sunlight, and tried vainly to turn away from it. “Bull-shit. Cattle feces. Fertilizer. It means nothing.”

“That,” said Alexei, “is a good read on my meaning. This metaphor you put me in. Where’s the meaning? You can create anything with your mind — so can I — make it as convincing as flesh — and before you know it the memory and the truth and the shit start to mix.”

“How deep,” sneered Vladimir. “Are you a philosopher, Kilodovich? Pah. I think you just have no stomach for this.”

The carriage wobbled over the jagged edge of a rock.

“It’s mental masturbation.”

“The way you approach it maybe.”

“Tell me how I should approach it then?”

“Oh, I don’t know… How about like the mystery that our lives are? A tapestry of a lie, that by unravelling you can discern the truth about yourself?”

“What a good idea,” said Alexei. As the ground grew more level, he turned the carriage around so he was pushing it. All Alexei could see was Vladimir’s tiny gesticulating hands over the carriage’s sun-shade. The diabolical baby was prattling on now about taking responsibility for life and facing up to one’s past with courage — and something about a present threat that would undo them all unless Alexei got to it, but Alexei paid him scant attention.

He found himself looking beyond the carriage, at the terrible splendour of Soviet Afghanistan. The valley they moved through was wide, and like the surface of the moon. Bomb craters had drawn radial pictures on the earth, marking trajectories of ash and sand and bone. On the far side, high cliffs thrust up in great spires like dribbling mud-crusted candles that blotted the sun. In the distance, there was a woofing sound that Alexei knew to be the noise of mortar fire. More craters on the way. He found himself smiling slightly, an unfamiliar feeling moving like feather through his middle.

He knew this valley.

He had been here before.

There had been, he started to recall, some good times here.

“You’re feeling nostalgic,” said Vladimir. “That’s what that is. It feels like you’re going to be sick. Like you’ve eaten too much ice cream. Like you’ve forgotten to bathe.”

“It’s pretty here,” said Alexei.

“It is not pretty here,” said Vladimir. “This is a great shame — a great evil.”

“You weren’t even alive,” said Alexei.

“It was a great evil.”

Alexei shrugged. He wasn’t going to get into a debate about Brezhnev-era Soviet foreign policy with a five-month-old in a baby carriage. “What are we doing here?” he asked.

“We are here for a look,” said Vladimir.

“At?”

Vladimir raised a tiny hand and pointed. “You.”

Alexei squinted and looked. “Ah. I see.”

The valley was near the Khojak Pass, just across the border in southern Afghanistan — on a route to Kandahar that was only nominally roundabout. The convoy that crossed it was a mix of trucks and camels. It moved under the shadow of the cliffs like a nervous snake.

The convoy was carrying a large load of weapons: old Soviet weapons, brought in by way of Egypt. There were a lot of them — RPGs and rifles; rockets and grenades and landmines. Some of them — the ones that Amar Shadak had arranged, through a Chinese contact of his — were serviceable. The bulk of the shipment was no more than dangerous junk.

There were four trucks all told and maybe thirty men accompanying them. They wore cowls and carried rifles. Alexei leaned forward and squinted. “I remember those guys,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yes.” One of the guys riding a camel alongside the lead truck held his rifle up, made chuffing noises as he pretended to shoot it in the air. From inside the cabin, girlish laughter echoed through the valley. The guy rested his rifle on his lap. “There is Wali Beg. What a clown.”

“This is like a holiday,” said Vladimir. “You even brought a girl.”

“It is like a holiday.” That morning, Alexei remembered meeting the trucks at the border rendezvous. It was still dark and would be for hours. His pal Amar Shadak had pulled himself out of bed just an hour before and he was bleary-eyed. Shadak’s pretty girlfriend Ming had handled the odd hour better. She’d put on a pair of loose coveralls that didn’t quite disguise her sex but appeared to quiet any last-minute objections Shadak might have had. Alexei had brought some thin pastries for breakfast and given the best to Ming.

“You even brought a girl,” repeated Vladimir. “Into Afghanistan.”

“Yes,” said Alexei. “I would be sitting beside her in the back of the truck right about now. Ming Lei. Ha. I have not thought about her in years.”

“Good for you,” said Vladimir. “What happens next?”

Alexei thought about that. “Next, I—” and he thought about spy school “—we—” and he thought about Czernochov and trigonometry “—soon—” and he looked down at Vladimir, who had twisted around in his seat to peer back up at Alexei.

“You can’t remember, can you?”

“It was a good time,” said Alexei — even as he began to suspect this was not the case.

Vladimir sighed. “Pay attention,” he said. “You’re not in yourself anymore; you’re watching yourself. Maybe this way you will learn something.”

The convoy proceeded through the valley. In the rear cab of the truck, Ming Lei was sitting quietly — peering out the small, dust-crusted windows with only a little worry in her eye. Shadak sat up front with the driver. Young Alexei sat back with Ming Lei. The flirtatious Wali Beg had ridden ahead for a moment. Shadak was talking to the driver. Alexei was staring at Ming’s right hand, which had begun twitching in her lap. She had not apparently noticed this — nor had anyone else. Alexei was smiling.

“Hey. What you got to be happy about?” Shadak turned around to look at Alexei. Ming’s hand stilled, and Alexei looked at Shadak.

“Things are going well,” said Alexei.

“Are they? That’s mortar fire in the distance.” Shadak appeared pissed off. “I thought you knew this pass.”

“I have never been here before in my life,” said Alexei.

“Funny.”

Alexei looked back at Ming. He smiled. She smiled.

“Just relax,” said Alexei.

Ming repeated it on his heels: “Just relax.”

Shadak sighed and faced forward. He would be thinking about the rendezvous — fifteen kilometres or so north from here, a squad of Mujahedeen and their captain should be waiting. If everything went according to plan, they would escort the convoy to a hidden camp somewhere east of Kandahar. But Shadak would be uneasy with the whomping of artillery so close. He would be uneasy about the small-arms fire chatter that echoed through the hills. He would not admit it, but he would be very uneasy about Alexei Kilodovich, sitting in the back of the truck next to Ming.

Alexei appeared uneasy too. He looked at the back of Shadak’s head as they jostled along, frowning slightly. He looked at Ming. Her hand came up to her face, and she drew a finger across her chin. He nodded to himself and looked at the back of Shadak’s head. Shadak sat still.

A hillside not far ahead of them exploded in a shower of dirt and stone.

Shadak jolted upright in his seat. So did Alexei. Ming remained calm. Outside the cab, the camels’ eyes showed white and their masters struggled to keep control of them.

The convoy stopped.

“What is this? What is this?”

Shadak appeared panicked. Alexei said nothing — just stared at him.

The driver did a better job of calming Shadak. He put his hand on the young man’s shoulder and spoke calmly: “That would not be for us,” he said. “It is stray fire.” But he did not appear to believe his own words.

The convoy sat still in a settling cloud of dust. Finally, Ahmed Jamal — one of Shadak’s original Mujahedeen contacts — rode up to the truck. He leaned into the cab.

“I will send scouts ahead,” he said. “To see what is going on.”

“Fine.” Shadak was pissed. They sat still in the cab, as Ahmed rode over to a clutch of his fellows. Two of them took off on foot, up the slope of the valley — with binoculars and rifles.

The caravan sat still. Shadak fidgeted. Alexei tapped his thighs with his fingertips. The shadows lengthened. And finally, Ahmed came back.

“We don’t go farther today,” he said. “We don’t go back, either. We’re trapped. There are caves to the east of here. We go there for now. “

“What of the exchange?” said Shadak irritably. “We’re expected.”

Ahmed nodded. “Maybe by more than just my brothers,” he said. “There is evidence of a large battalion ahead of us. A large engagement. We think that firefight might be one with our brothers. We go to the caves. When the battle finishes, they will meet us there maybe.”

Alexei mumbled something inaudible as Shadak threw up his hands and swore.

“Why can’t I hear what I’m saying?” Alexei asked Vladimir as they watched the drama unfold from the back of the truck. “For that matter — why can’t I tell what I’m thinking? This is my memory, is it not?”

Vladimir was perched in Alexei’s lap. He pulled his foot out of his mouth and looked up. “Good question, Kilodovich. It’s true, isn’t it? Every other memory you’ve seen, you’ve been able to watch from inside your own head. But here — we’re stuck on the outside, yes? Like ghosts.” He waggled his little fingers. “How terrifying.”

It wasn’t terrifying, precisely. But it was unsettling — like listening to a tape made of one’s self made twenty years ago, too late on a night after consuming far too much liquor. From the inside, even the worst of memories are seen through the reassuring filter of self-delusion. From the outside, this day in Afghanistan, there was no such filter. Alexei took an instant dislike to himself.

“Hey,” he said, leaning forward. “What am I doing now?”

Amar Shadak’s head was down. He was staring at his hands. Alexei raised his own hand then, extended his forefinger — and held it, less than an inch from the nape of Shadak’s neck. His lips moved as though he were mumbling something. The finger hovered there for a few seconds, until Shadak started, looked up, and turned around. Alexei snatched his hand back.

“What in fuck are you doing, Kilodovich?”

Alexei blinked. Ming blinked.

“What in fuck are you doing?”

“I saw a scorpion,” whispered Ming.

Alexei cleared his throat. “She thought she did,” he said. Ming’s hands folded on her lap. “You’re fine. Don’t worry.”

Beside Shadak, the driver waved out the window — returning a signal that neither of them had seen. He started the truck’s motor, threw it into gear — and the little caravan began a long circle across the valley — to the east, and the caves.

“This is a fuckup,” said Shadak angrily as the reddish dust rose into shafts of late-day sun in their wake, and the mortar-fire continued. “A complete fuckup.”

Three kilometres out, Alexei finally convinced Vladimir to leave the cab of the truck and follow at a distance. The conversation had pretty well died, and Alexei had been reduced to regarding his twitchy, gawky former self try and make it through the afternoon. What is it about youth, he wondered, that fits so poorly in its own skin? Then he’d started to wonder whether he fit into his own skin any better now — and how it would be if he were to review his thirty-sixth year two decades hence. Would he seem the same slouching creep of a boy that he did to himself now? Every venality pasted to his forehead like a sign?

It hadn’t taken long before Vladimir announced he’d had enough of this recursive morosity. They stepped out of the cab — Alexei lowered Vladimir back into the pram — and they walked among the camels and transports as the convoy made its way through a narrow pass that twisted like a serpent, as it climbed higher into the eastern foothills.

“I don’t remember this part,” said Alexei.

“Really?” said Vladimir. “Here you are. Maybe you fell asleep and woke up in the nice cozy cave.”

Alexei shook his head. “I don’t remember waking up in a nice cozy cave,” he said. “You want to know what I remember?”

“Please,” said Vladimir.

“I remember this assignment. They sent me in to infiltrate the C.I.A. arms pipeline into Afghanistan. I established myself as a deserter from the Red Army in Pakistan, arranged it to be contacted by the CIA. Saunders was easy to trick. He set me up with that character Shadak. What a character he was!”

Alexei smiled to himself, as he thought about the weeks spent nightclubbing with Shadak, meeting up with his girlfriend Ming — insinuating himself in with them both — as the CIA stalled, running checks against his background and so forth. It was a good time: it was one of his first missions out of school. And in spite of the deception, he liked Shadak. Vladimir glared up at him. Alexei cleared his throat and went on.

“So we made the contact with the arms supplier, established the border crossing, arranged the drop-off. All the time, I sent back reports to the headquarters in Kabul. Things went very smoothly. Then—”

“Yes?”

“Then…” Alexei frowned. “Well, I couldn’t very well contact anyone once we were underway. But that was fine. The run into Afghanistan didn’t take very long. Although—”

“Yes, Kilodovich?”

“Although,” said Alexei finally, “it took longer than expected. I remember that. There were some complaints from Kabul. Oh, that was a bad month afterwards. I spent — how long in debriefing? A long time.” He shook his head. “So you see, there was none of this ambush and trek to the caves. I think that perhaps we are watching another fiction.”

“I see.” Vladimir clapped his hands over his head. “Another fiction. Let me ask you this, Kilodovich. How late were you in finally delivering the arms and reporting in?”

“It hardly matters—”

“How late?” Vladimir glared.

“I don’t see—” Alexei bent forward suddenly, a terrible pain lancing through his skull. “Ah! What the fuck was that for?”

“How late?” said Vladimir with real menace. “Tell, or I send another one your way.”

Alexei straightened and rubbed his temples, worked his jaw.

“Three weeks.” He frowned. “Three weeks?”

“No wonder they locked you up for a while when you finally reported in,” said Vladimir. “They must have thought you’d deserted.”

“What did I do,” said Alexei, standing still for a moment as a pair of camels insubstantial as a desert mirage passed around and through him, “for three weeks?”

The cave’s mouth was shaped like a scream. It was a wide scream — wide enough to admit the trucks and the camels into the shadows beneath its yellowish upper lip, the blunted teeth of rocks that littered its lower jaw. Beyond, the cave’s floor was flat enough that they could all stop there, safe in shadow but still near enough the entrance to make a hasty escape if need be.

Higher on the cliff-face there were various perches, good for sentries. Wali Beg handed his camel over to one of his brothers and, AK-47 in hand, clambered up to the lowest of these — an outcropping of red stone with a small, skeletal bush growing from the cracks. He vanished for a moment behind the rock, only emerging briefly to wave curtly to those below that he was safe. Then he was gone again.

Inside, the four trucks lined up behind one another. The men threw what camouflage they could over the truck nearest the cave mouth, and then began to unload the cargo. Shadak ordered the munitions taken deeper into the cave — the larger ones to a level plateau some forty metres inside; some of the smaller cases — which were in some circumstances more valuable — into what turned out to be a network of side tunnels, some of which were no wider than a thin man’s shoulders.

“We will reload the trucks,” he said, “when it is safe.”

Ahmed nodded. “It may be,” he said, “that we won’t reload the trucks at all. Tonight, I will send two men to the contact point. See what has become of our friends. If things have not gone well — this cargo may have to stay here for some time, until we can arrange another party.”

Shadak looked at him. “I don’t want to leave this untended,” he said.

“No need to,” said Ahmed. “This place is not unknown to us. We call it the Cistern. We have used it in the past as a — staging ground. We shall use it again perhaps. So there are provisions.”

Ahmed Jamal led Amar and Alexei and Ming Lei down one of the side tunnels they’d ignored — a narrow fold in the rock that seemed almost not to be there, unless one’s lamp were held just so, and one knew where to look. They had to bend forward and backward, and sharp stone scraped painfully across their backs and shoulders. But quickly, they emerged into what seemed like daylight.

Shadak laughed out loud at the sight of it. They weren’t outdoors precisely — but at the bottom of a twisting channel through the rock that dribbled sun through a high opening. The cave at the bottom was large — shaped like a letter “E” that had been tilted on its back to make three smaller cubbyholes.

In here were tidy stacks of crates — each one too large to move through the passage by which they entered.

“How—” began Shadak, looking at the crates.

Ahmed pointed to the sky. “We lowered them,” he said. “On a great winch that we then tossed down the hole and buried in the sand—” he pointed at a small mound toward the top left corner of the E “—there. They are not intended to be carried out again. They are to be consumed in this place. By men who need to hide.”

Ming Lei bent down and ran the sand on the cave’s floor through her fingers. “Like beach,” she said. “But no water.”

“There is enough water,” said Wali Beg. “You will be able to live here comfortably for weeks.”

“Only us?” said Shadak. “You are not staying here then?”

Ahmed shrugged. “I will leave you some men. I must go and see to our brothers.” He pulled loose his cowl then, shaking loose long black curls down to his shoulders, and strode across the cave-floor to the first of the three cubby-holes. “You will find blankets here, and rations of food in tins, as well as lamps and a stove for heat in the night. Here—” he stepped to the next hole — “is ammunition and some small arms. Better to use these than the merchandise.” He stepped out and with a flourish to the next one — with the same little crates. “Here is your water,” he said. “It seems plenty, but that’s all there is. Don’t use too much.”

And then, with the same flamboyant stride, Ahmed crossed the cave to the space in the rock, and vanished into it.

“Well,” said Alexei. “It is us three for now. Others, no doubt, will join us soon. Let’s see what the Mujahedeen have left for us.”

“I would like some water please,” said Ming. “Not too much…” she added with a little grin.

“We brought a woman,” said Alexei. “Into Afghanistan. That’s crazy. What a risk!”

“You are just figuring that out,” said Vladimir. His eyelids fluttered.

“No, I’m not. But I’m just looking at it. Why didn’t we figure something else out? Why didn’t someone else object? Wali Beg, for instance?”

Vladimir closed his eyes and curled his chin into his shoulder.

“Unless,” said Alexei, “none of them had the capacity to object. It is puzzling — wake up!”

Vladimir shook his head and blinked sleepily. “I am listening.”

Alexei was quiet for a moment. He shook his finger in the air, opened and shut his mouth. Looked at the sand at his feet as he thought it through.

“I think I know why I am not in my body — why I cannot know my own thoughts.”

“Tell.”

Alexei took a breath. He felt the excitement of revelation coursing through his blood. “In our own memories, we change history. We delude ourselves half the time anyway. And then as the days and weeks and years pass, we change them. We forget the things we don’t want to have as a part of ourselves, and we edit and amplify those things that bolster us. So any memory, unchecked, is a lie.” He looked at Vladimir expectantly. Vladimir said nothing.

Alexei continued. “I have failed to find truth in memory. So you have taken, somehow, a film of the past — in the manner of tape-recording a drunken man at a party — to show me the true scope of my history. It is true, isn’t it?” Alexei pointed at his younger self — awkwardly stepping over the sand to lift a crate from the bottom tine of the E. He struggled and swore as the older Alexei stood behind him. “Look at him! Thin and weak and lecherous. Stupid enough to go along with a scheme to bring a pretty girl on a KGB operation. This is not how I care to remember myself. An indication that it is true — yes?”

Vladimir grabbed his foot and sucked on the toes. Alexei suspected it was unsanitary, but he didn’t stop him.

“Why don’t you answer me?” he said. “I am coming closer to understanding my history! This is what you wished, is it not?”

Around them, the phantoms of Alexei’s past were busying themselves setting up a camp. Shadak stepped back out with Ahmed, to supervise the camouflaging of the trucks, and study the routes to the sentry points that the guards would use to watch the pass over the coming days. Young Alexei dragged the crate a few steps further, but dropped it in the sand and swore. He turned around and sat on it. And as he did, his face slackened and his eyes went blank.

Ming, meanwhile, stopped what she was doing and walked gracefully into the shaft of light that was coming down through the chimney. She stood straight for a moment, then lifted a hand to the coveralls she wore, and undid the top button. Her eyes were on thin young Alexei but they were focused elsewhere.

Alexei stopped talking. He walked over to himself, and studied his face. It was as a statue. He turned back to Ming. She had removed the top of her coverall and was pulling off the T-shirt underneath. Her small, dark-nippled breasts gleamed in relief from the sun. Her eyes held the same stillness as those of Alexei’s younger self.

“What is this?” he asked.

Vladimir said nothing.

“Is she—”

Ming dropped the top and bent to pull off her boots. She slipped off the rest of the coveralls and stood naked before Alexei.

“Did we—” Alexei blinked. “Did we… make love?” He would, he hoped, have remembered that.

“I don’t think so,” said Vladimir. “If I remember the file — about now — look to there.”

Alexei turned. There were noises in the tunnel.

Wali Beg stepped into the chamber. He too had removed his cowl, to reveal a half-bald head and eyes that on another occasion would have been laughing. Now they were dead as Ming’s.

Ming turned to him. Young Alexei sat perfectly still, his eyelids fluttering. Wali Beg stepped into the light. He extended a hand to touch Ming’s shoulder. Ming did not flinch away. Wali Beg moved his fingers down her collarbone and took hold of a breast in the calloused palm of his hand. Ming pressed herself into it. Young Alexei’s eyes opened to behold the scene.

Alexei sat stunned. He looked to himself — the couple — awkwardly up into the shaft of light through the cave — and finally, back at Vladimir.

“I’m dream-walking them. Aren’t I?” Alexei paced off to the far end of the cave and came back again, hands excitedly grasping one another behind his back. “That is it! Of course! All the times that Kolyokov and the rest told me that I had no talents — that is the lie of my life!” Alexei thought back to the tiny memories he had of his mother and what she used to say: You are a little Koldun — a little lodge wizard. He looked back at the strange couple, clasped in a passionless embrace. “I am dream-walking them! I have been a dream-walker all along! A wicked dream-walker like Fyodor Kolyokov!”

“What a clever man you are,” said Vladimir drolly. “Good thinking. But no. Completely wrong.”

Alexei’s face fell. “No?”

Vladimir shook his head. “You talk too much, Kilodovich. Too much talking is dangerous. You should listen more.”

Alexei opened his mouth. Vladimir made a hushing motion with his little hands. Alexei closed his mouth again and frowned — and listened.

Alexei blinked in astonishment. There were voices. Other voices. Russian voices — which he vaguely recognized.

Stop playing. This is serious business.

What is serious business? This? It is done?

Not done.

Not done?

All.

All but—

All but one.

Soon.

Why?

Remember Rodionov. GeneralRodionovsaidhewouldreturninforceandfinishthisobsceneexperimentwit

hgunsandtechnology“YouarefinishedKolyokovwehaveawartofight”“thenletmefightt hewarwithyou”“onelastchanceonelastchance”

Your problem.

Our problem.

Problem?

Letrodionovdohisworstweshallbebeyondhisreachinthestationinthestationwher-etheseasingsandthedevilcannotreachus

Problem if he discovers our boy here.

Point.

Point.

Agreed.

Pay attention.

Over

By

Shipment —

Who?

Thedeafonetheonethatwillnotmaketheonewiththecontactsinpakistantheonewho-broughtthegirlwelovethegirlthegirltheonewhobroughthimtheonewiththesolidskull-solidskullsolidskull

Amar Shadak.

“What is that?” whispered Alexei. “It is incomprehensible.”

Vladimir’s smile was all gums. “Discourse,” he said. “That which you are hear-ing is what we call Discourse. When we speak to one another without words. It is like the conversation we are having now. But broader.”

“Broader?” Alexei frowned. “It sounds insane. Who is it that is speaking?”

“Many,” said Vladimir. “You really have no inkling about Discourse, do you?”

“I’ve heard the word. Many who? Is Fyodor Kolyokov among them?”

“Oh yes.” As they spoke, Ming and Wali Beg separated and turned on a foot to face away from one another — like dancers in a music box. Young Alexei stood with his hands dangling at his side, his head back and jaw slack.

“Am I — was I among them?”

Vladimir rubbed his face and his smile vanished.

“You are getting close,” he said, “to the nub of things.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” said Alexei.

“Listen,” whispered Vladimir.

The caves fell silent: only the faint whistling of wind through unseen fissures; the distant thunder, more sporadic now, of artillery fire. Ming and Wali Beg had sat down, backs to one another and cross-legged in the sand. Young Alexei’s eyes were open, and seemed alert, but he sat still, leaning laconically against a crate in the top tine of the E. The sky was a disc of gold and azure at the top of the chimney. It mingled with the dark blue of the top of the carriage to make purple. Nothing moved — it was as if nothing lived. Idly, Alexei rocked the carriage.

“What is to happen next?” asked Alexei.

The carriage creaked.

“Vladimir?”

Alexei stepped around the carriage. His breath caught in his throat.

“Vladimir!” The seat was empty. Vladimir was gone.

Alexei bunched his fists. And looked around the cave. He swore. The little bastard had abandoned him! Left him at the cusp of understanding. In a great, silent cave, where even the whistling of the wind was muted.

“Talk to me!” He hollered it to the sky. To the others. The wind whistled.

And after a moment, he could hear:

RodionovRodionov

Discourse.

The Discourse was still going strong — but the more Alexei listened, the more he could hear of it. And hearing more of it turned the entire thing into a cacoph-ony; it was like trying to tell the data from a telephone modem by listening to the connection screech:

Iyouitwillnotbeinthehellofyourmakingwewilltransformyouwalkwalkrunrunmo-verunredorangeyellowgreenblueindigovioletranoverrodionovcaseykandaharasey…

Was this Vladimir’s idea, Alexei wondered? To leave him alone with this in-decipherable rant, to let him figure out his history with this? He couldn’t believe that. He got up off the crate, and strode across the sand. He turned sideways and folded himself through the crack in the cave wall. And then, as he bent back and forward around the difficult rocks in the tunnel, Alexei lost track of the Dis-course. And the silence of the caves was broken by another sound — of angry whispering — just two voices; and just ahead.

Alexei continued forward — creeping, trying to be stealthy, in spite of the fact that he could move unseen and unheard. Finally, he made it to the end of the tunnel — and stepped out into the small antechamber. There was Shadak — and another man: one of the Mujahedeen. A thin-bodied, thin-bearded young man who Alexei vaguely remembered from the trip out.

“This is complete shit,” Shadak was saying. “You are not even attempting to hide the shipment. Why are there no guards on the hillside? This is a fucking set-up, isn’t it?”

The man was didn’t answer. He stared at Shadak and through him. Shadak ran a hand through his hair. He glared at the man.

“You fucker,” he said. “If this were a fucking drug run, I’d have shot you by now.

This is fucking intolerable.”

The man ran his own hand through his hair.

“Why don’t you fucking answer me?” he demanded. “Why don’t you fuck-ing—”

Shadak stopped. He looked up. Directly at Alexei.

“You!” he said, eyes wide. Alexei’s own eyes went wide too. Then he felt a chill at his back — moving forward through him, like a storm through his flesh.

“What do you know of this?” said Shadak darkly.

“I — I don’t,” said Alexei.

“More than you,” came a voice from Alexei’s throat. “But not for long.” At the same time, he heard:

Redorangeyellowgreenbluepreparetheagentonetwothreereadysetgowemust-finishthisoneorallmaybelostthenRodionovRodionovRodionovonovovovovovfocus-focusonlyonechancetodothisrigh —

And then, Alexei found himself looking at the back of his own head. His own younger head. As the head receded, Alexei pieced together what had happened: his younger self had just passed through him — an intersection of his ghosts.

Of many ghosts. Locked in Discourse.

Alexei stepped back and watched his younger self step up to Shadak.

“What the fuck,” said Shadak darkly, “is going on?” He thrust his thumb back over his shoulder. “Nobody out there is doing a fucking thing! They’re standing still like fucking zombies and there’s work to be done! Those fucking Russian guns aren’t going away — they’re — they’re — they—”

“On your knees,” said young Alexei.

“What?” Shadak blinked, and looked down at Alexei’s right hand. It was hold-ing an old Tokarev automatic pistol. Pointed at Shadak.

“On your knees,” he repeated.

Shadak’s face reddened. “What the fuck is this?”

OhhesgoodgoodskullthickasleadnothingthroughtheregoodgoodbadRodionovheresoonohey

heresoon

Alexei bent — stepped forward —

And stepped into himself.

He sat there a moment — crouched with his head sticking out of his younger chest, his ass poked out of the back of his younger knees. Shadak was staring up at him in a mix of outrage and terror. The gun was indisputable betrayal — Alexei didn’t need to read Shadak’s mind to know his mind. Shadak was saying something else — but intersecting as he was with himself, Alexei couldn’t make it out.

All he could hear, this close, was the chaotic scramble of Discourse.

FyodorconcentrateonmetaphoryoudmitritakeinthroughidtherestofyouhelpkilodovichvesseltoestablishthespacialstimulusstimulusstimRodionovRodionov

And then

— a fugue —

“Rodionov could kill us in a second. This is folly.”

Alexei blinked. The caves of Afghanistan were gone, replaced by a great dark-ness — a deep void where the voices of the Discourse slowed. Alexei floated in this void, rolling head over heels like a cosmonaut. In the darkness, he could make out shapes — huge shapes of men and women, ass-end toward him. They were big as sky-scrapers, as submarines. They spoke with voices as deep as a thunderclap and as af-fecting as an earthquake.

“Rodionov,” said another of the giants, floating beyond his reach, “will not kill us. He does not even know where we are.”

“Still — he has it in him. He’s got the will.”

“We should turn him.”

“Set your Alexei on him, Fyodor — and see.”

“Yes. Make him sleeper.”

Alexei swam toward the giants. He felt as though he were rising, and for a time imagined this place not a void at all, but water: a huge lake on which these bickering creatures floated. But that metaphor strained quickly; for as he looked up at them, he saw that they couldn’t be apprehended as floating in a particular order. They over-lapped one another as they floated.

“No need to worry about Rodionov,” repeated the first one. “We make these sleep-ers here — he will never know. And we — we will control the arms pipeline through Afghanistan. Now, and forever.”

The giants continued to bicker, but Alexei couldn’t hear it. With a popping sensa-tion, he broke through the surface of the medium of this new place —

— and looked on lights. Like a night sky in wilderness, there were so many.

Not stars, though. They were paired — like eyes, staring down on him — across at him — from a wall of black, roiling cloud. Some were bright, some were dim, and occasionally they winked on and off — as though they were blinking.

Behind him — below him — at the surface of the liquid medium from which he’d emerged — giants conferred.

“Comrade Vostovitch. Stop playing sex games with the girl. Assemble the Mujahe-deen. Make the ready the Cistern.”

“They are on their way.”

“And Tokovsky. Bring one more along to watch Shadak. Kilodovich has other work to do.”

“This one?”

“No. Too small. The one by the truck.”

“Where?”

As Alexei watched, a great arm reached out — up — possibly down — from the sur-face of the liquid, and touched upon the wall — ceiling — floor? — where two points flashed on and off. “There,” rumbled the giant.

Curious, Alexei approached those two, climbing/crossing/falling the expanse in a heartbeat.

It was as though he put his eyes to the lenses of binoculars. But rather than see-ing a distant peak through them, he now looked upon the side of a truck. The picture turned sickeningly and was replaced by the darkness of the cave mouth. Men were moving away from him — heading deeper into the cave with boxes and weapons. Then the view shifted again, and approached the fold in the cave wall that Alexei knew led to the chimney room. If he concentrated, he could hear conversation coming through the fold. Then the view was through it, and all was dark for a time.

Alexei pulled back from the lights, and pushed away from the wall, drifting back toward the giants. He felt himself smile as the understanding dawned on him.

This, he realized, was a catalogue of City 512’s sleepers. Two points of light for all of them. He tried to count, but stopped: it seemed there were as many on this wall as there were stars in the sky. He flitted over to another set of eyes — looking down at a sheet of typewritten French — and another, that were sitting on a train, inches from the glass, watching the industrialized outskirts of some city or another drift by in the rising, or possibly setting, sun — and others, in meetings and driving automobiles and masturbating at pornography and actually making love…

Alexei laughed, and did a little cosmonaut tumble. He turned around in so doing, to face the giants. His eyes had grown accustomed to the peculiar non-light in here. The giants were floating on the odd surface, all in the same place — overlapping — like a great Shiva, a multi-armed, multipeded god-goddess. Arms would flash out, touch-ing these lights or those lights, or one of them, to reach below the water to pluck at something, or rest folded on the shared stomach.

Where in all that, wondered Alexei, in all that great collective of being, was Fyodor Kolyokov?

Where, he wondered, was Alexei?

“Where is Kilodovich?” said one of the giants as the hand came back above the water.

“There!” And before Alexei could move, one of the great arms shot forward and wrapped around his waist. “Gotten loose! Nearly escaped!”

“I told you this was dangerous, Fyodor.”

“Many tools are dangerous in untrained hands.”

Alexei twisted in the grip of the giant. As he did, he saw the star field had increased: as though the contact with the giant had expanded his vision.

For now he saw not just the brightest points, but dimmer ones too. The hand drew him along the wall, and he caught more glimpses through these: a forest, with high coniferous trees, and a large bearded man muttering something about a “mantra” to a group of attentive children while armed guards hovered conspicuously near the tree line; a woman, legs crossed, bouncing up and down on a mat (the unseen sleeper was bouncing too, making the whole thing as nauseating as a roller coaster); another bouncing view, this time looking at a man — heavyset, with a drooping handlebar moustache and receding hairline, that Alexei thought he recognized before he sped past. Then views of Moscow and the sky and a city that looked like London and other places that were but blurs of colour. What were these, wondered Alexei? Were they sleepers less accessible to these huge dreamers? Sleepers belonging to Americans, perhaps? Who was the bouncing man that he thought he’d recognized?

And what, he wondered, was that dimmest light?

It flickered in the distance — barely visible at all, like the last dying ember of a candlewick.

“There,” said a dreamer.

Alexei found himself propelled toward the two eyes. They held a view that blurred and faded in the dark cave . Of a gun barrel. Of a figure that through this filter Alexei took a moment to recognize.

It was himself — young Alexei Kilodovich — woven of strands of understanding and perception that were alien to him. The eyes, Alexei realized now, belonged to Amar Shadak.

“Inside,” said another dreamer.

“Alexei,” whispered a dreamer’s voice that was this time unmistakable: Kolyokov. “Do that which we have made you to do. Disassemble Amar Shadak. Make him ready for us.”

And then, the light faded altogether, and the grip around his middle loosened, and Alexei found himself on the ground — held only in the grip of gravity, outside a low house before mountaintops. The sky over its red clay shingles was dark, the trees growing around its cut stone foundations were bare. The house itself was made like a Roman villa. There was a stone archway at one end that led into a weed-choked plaza. Alexei stood up and headed for the villa, a purpose in his stride. He didn’t know what that purpose specifically would be: but if he could trust Fyodor Kolyokov’s words this one time, it would be the thing that they had made him for.

It was a strange and tricky villa. When Alexei stepped into the courtyard, the stones were white with snow and the pond in its centre was covered in a thin veneer of ice. The sky overhead had turned a terrible white and where the light from it struck it made a flickering, washed-out glare. Alexei retreated for the shade of the overhanging roof. In spite of the ice and the snow, Alexei found himself sweating. He heard the sound of sloshing water through another archway, and he followed it through the arch, into a narrow corridor that seemed to run the circumference of the courtyard, and then to what must have been a kitchen. Embers burned at the bottom of a great hearth at one end; the middle was dominated by a long wooden table covered in a brown canvas cloth. The cloth was stained a deep purple here and there — maybe wine, from the tipped-over jug that rocked through a twenty-degree arc in a divot at the far end of the table. Or maybe blood; at the far end, the skinned carcass of an animal — a sheep, or perhaps a goat — hung from an iron hook over an open wooden barrel. The sloshing came from inside the barrel.

Alexei crept over and looked inside. The barrel was dry. The sloshing sound continued.

Alexei rubbed his chin, and looked up at the animal. He took a finger and touched the bare muscle at its shoulder. It was cool, and although it glistened in the dim light, it was dry. It felt a bit like plastic. Maybe, thought Alexei, that was how flayed muscle feels after it’s been draining for a day. Maybe.

Alexei went over to the embers in the fire. He licked a finger and touched it to one. There was a convincing hissing sound, as the spittle boiled against his skin. There was the barest hint of pain. He nodded, scrunched his mouth. Not bad.

Alexei pushed himself up off his haunches, and next regarded the rocking jug. He touched it lightly. It stopped rocking, and settled into the divot in the old table. He took his hand away — and the jug rolled to its left. By the time he stepped away, shoved his hands into his pockets, the jug was rocking back and forth again like nothing had happened.

He was tempted to go back outside — test the ice on the pond — test the snow on the flagstones — maybe go outside altogether, run to the nearest of the mountain-peaks, reach into the rock and see if it weren’t just as soft as wet clay, as insubstantial as gauze, and see if he could just step out of this place.

Alexei resisted the temptation. If he’d learned nothing over his time stewing in his own history, he’d learned to recognize this place for what it was:

A metaphor.

And not a particularly good one.

Alexei stepped back to the hallway. He ran his finger along the stone of the wall, felt for the coolness, the fractal roughness of chipped, ancient stone. It was there, he thought. Or it was coming.

Alexei leaned against that stone, so he had a view of the courtyard and the entryway, and he waited there — for whatever it was coming to complete its arrival.

He didn’t wait long.

Amar Shadak stumbled through the archway, flinching at the lash of a great, devilish whip. He was smaller than he had been for a long time — as small and soft and weak as he had been when he was just fourteen; when his mother still lived; when his father was still in Romania, building the beginnings of his empire. He stumbled through and fell to his knees, felt the lash, and climbed again to his feet. The whip withdrew through the arch like the tail of an immense rat. Shadak stumbled to the edge of the pond, reached into its icy waters and splashed some on the reddening fabric of his shirt.

“Fuck you!” he screamed. His voice was high, but it was tinged with violence.

“Manners, boy.”

“What? Who the fuck—”

A shadow grew over the stonework of the little plaza.

“You know who the fuck.”

Shadak forced himself to look into the archway — to the figure that drifted from beneath it. It was all greys and blacks — a pale creature wearing a long dark coat, black hair that seemed to drift around its skull as though suspended in water. The eyes reflected glints of fire. It smelled of river mud. It carried its whip like a great phallus or maybe a severed umbilical cord, dangling out its middle while both arms twitched and gestured. Clearly, it scared the crap out of Amar Shadak. But he didn’t look away.

“What is this place? Where the fuck are we? Where is fucking Kilodovich?”

The thing was twice as tall as Amar Shadak. In the pale light of the courtyard it stood like a hangman’s tree, like the Crucifix. It wore a beard on its chin, thin and scraggly and long. When it spoke, it spoke with wind that stank.

“You are home. In your safe place. A place where I shall not trouble you, so long as you remain. It is a place that reminds you what you are.”

“And what is that?”

“A rich man. Who collects. Weapons and vehicles and money. Collects it for us.”

The Shadak boy stood up. He clenched his fists defiantly. “Fuck off,” he said.

“Manners.” The thing lifted a narrow arm, and bent a finger chidingly as the whip twitched. The kid Shadak flinched at the sight of it. He still didn’t look away, though. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

“My safe place?” he said. “What is safe about here?”

Leaning against a pillar, Alexei found himself shaking. A safe place. That’s what this metaphor was — just like the spy school that Alexei had believed was a part of his childhood. This place was the equivalent for Amar Shadak: a Roman-esque villa, with food and wine and a view of mountains. In the courtyard, Shadak was working it out too — with considerably less success. He wouldn’t, of course, stand a chance. Alexei had been mired within his own safe place, his own metaphor, for what seemed like months before he’d broken loose — and that had been on its revisitation, with more than a few hints from Vladimir that escape was necessary. For Amar Shadak, this place was real.

Alexei pushed himself away from the pillar and strode out from beneath the overhanging roof. Neither Shadak nor the tall thing noted his presence as they continued to spar with one another, and there was no reason that they should. For although this thing had no doubt happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s, it had not happened with a middle-aged Alexei Kilodovich bursting in and interrupting the session. Alexei was tempted to do so — but he knew it would be about as effective as shouting a warning at a movie hero from the balcony.

But still — right now, he intuited that watching was not enough. If Vladimir were here, he’d ask him questions — make him explain the goings-on in this strange villa. But Vladimir was gone now. The guided tour was over.

He sat down next to the trembling little metaphorical body that Amar Shadak inhabited. Shadak was listening now, his eyes locked on those of the spectral thing, who was engaged in some kind of recitation. Telephone numbers; addresses; symbols and images; a sequence of colours, each of which might be associated with a different animal, which in turn might be associated with a string of numbers or an address in a strange city, or the face of a stranger. They all combined into a chaotic modem-squawk of imagery and words and numbers. Alexei watched little Amar Shadak’s lips move as he silently repeated back certain things, and drew up new associations. Then he looked around the courtyard. It seemed to be saturating the tiles deepening their reds, the ice on the water gaining depths and imperfections, the sky overhead shifting from a pale white to a deep alpine blue. Alexei nodded to himself. The more that Shadak heard, the firmer his metaphor became.

Alexei looked at the thing’s eyes. He knew, of course, who those eyes truly belonged to. Hadn’t those been Kolyokov’s instructions to him? Disassemble Amar Shadak. Make him ready for us.

Somewhere inside that preposterous masquerade, thought Alexei, lurked young Kilodovich, hell-bent on a mission from Fyodor Kolyokov to break the spirit of Amar Shadak. For himself, Alexei began to feel dizzy. He was inhabiting a metaphor within a metaphor, watching a metaphorical version of himself operating with an assassin’s assurance within the second of those metaphors.

Alexei leaned close to Shadak. “I am sorry,” he said.

At that, Shadak’s eyes flashed — and he looked up at the apparition with new understanding.

“Kilodovich,” said Shadak.

The thing reeled back at that, and looked about in confusion. Shadak grinned at that.

“Alexei Kilodovich,” he said, his adult sneer creeping back into his voice. “You miserable fucker. You fucking steal my woman and usurp my contract. You are KGB aren’t you? Setting us all up for a big bust.”

The apparition grew, and the whip pulled back from its middle, twitching in the air over Shadak like a huge tentacle.

“Oh fuck off. You’ve hypnotized me. This is complete bullshit.”

“Manka. Vasilissa. Baba Yaga.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

The whip cracked in the air like a pistol shot, and Shadak shrieked as it lashed down on him.

“You fucker!” he howled. “You fucker!”

Shadak bent over himself and shut his eyes. He began to weep.

The metaphor, meanwhile, continued to flower. Cracks appeared in stone that had been smooth; Latin scripts appeared on stones; in the pond, the ice began to melt and crack. The wind from the mountains smelled of flowers. The apparition looked into the blue perfect sky — as if for advice — and at that moment, little Amar Shadak rolled across the ground and fled behind the giant. It flipped its whip at Shadak, but the kid was too quick. He vanished through the archway. The apparition began to follow it, but stopped again — listening to the cascade of words and ideas and pictures that inhabited the substance of this place:

RodionovRodionovtoolateabandonthisoneabandonabandontoolatetoolate…

Alexei left the rumbling Discourse behind to follow little Shadak. He felt tears in his eyes, in a sudden burst of empathy for Amar Shadak. Hadn’t he, just days ago, undergone the same revelation? Hadn’t he too fled his metaphor — torn a rip in the side of it and crawled out, back into himself? He had an unreasoning desire, then, to see Amar do the same thing: tear his way from the metaphor, return to his body, and begin the process of reassembling himself.

Alexei stumbled out the gate. The stones outside the villa were sharp on his feet, and the wind whipped off a glacier that hadn’t been there before. He turned back to the villa. The building was twisting and reorienting too. A slim tower that Alexei was certain had not been there before had thrust itself up from the rear of the building. A murder of crows competed for perch on its steep, tiny roof, cursing each other as they flapped and scrambled. Clouds now gathered to the east. The air felt electric with the coming storm. The world of this villa — this safe place — was becoming real.

So quickly. When Alexei was in City 512, it had taken months to make him believe his place. It had taken all of Fyodor Kolyokov’s strength and will; all of Alexei’s time; for months, to create a world that was only a skeleton compared to this one. Alexei waded into the grasses and peered down the hill. Where, in this blossoming metaphor, had Shadak lost himself? Unthinking, he put his hands to his mouth and called out: Amar! Show yourself! He smirked as he did so. He was not, of course, really here. He was observing — a ghost. He could no more make himself felt here than he could —

A whistling came across the grasses then, and a sharp pain in the side of Alexei’s head — and thought incomplete, Alexei fell.

The dark was silent and empty this time — a void like death. Alexei spun in it — or maybe he didn’t move at all and simply imagined himself spinning. Or maybe he was dead and this was how death was.

The silence fell away.

“Kilodovich.”

Vladimir?

“Apologies, Kilodovich. Things are taking place in the world of Physick that required my attention. Urgently.”

So urgently you disappear without a word?

“Stop whining. I see that you have learned some things.”

Oh fuck off. What’s going on in the world of Physick that’s so urgent?

Vladimir sighed. “I must apologize, Kilodovich. I have used you once more.”

What do you mean, used me?

“It was important,” said Vladimir, “that my siblings and I escape from the school house in New Pokrovskoye. There has been a fight. You are injured. You need to come back or you will die.”

So you have been using me. Alexei spat into the void. Just as Kolyokov used me here — as a vessel for his own designs.

“Hmm. Good. So you are working through your history.”

Do not change the subject. You’re using me what — to engineer an escape?

“And I am paying you for the privilege. Unlike what Fyodor Kolyokov did.”

Paying.

“Alexei. Fyodor Kolyokov used you for more than a vessel to engineer an escape.”

Did he now?

“He used you like a sleeper agent. But instead of sending you into a foreign city or an embassy, he sent you straight into his enemy’s mind.”

This I have guessed. He used me there, to break down his enemy — to turn him into a sleeper agent too. But to do so quickly — in the field — without having him forced to visit City 512. He used me — Alexei felt a rush of understanding sluice through him, like half-frozen runoff — he used me to make all of them into sleepers, didn’t he?

“There. Good. Now you can come back. We have work to do in New Pokrovskoye. You do not have much time.”

Alexei thought about that. He thought about returning to his body, doing more work that Vladimir bade him to do for him. Metaphorical bile rose in his metaphorical throat.

Fuck off, he said.

“What?”

Babies aren’t used to being told to fuck off, said Alexei. But I’m saying it. I’m done with you, Vladimir.

Suddenly, the weightless void felt more like the sky — and Alexei felt as though he were falling, his stomach catching in his throat. He could see shapes in the darkness, whirling past him. He grasped at the darkness, reaching for something — Vladimir, the pram —

“Kilodovich.”

Now Alexei was lying on flagstones in the courtyard of Amar Shadak’s metaphorical villa. His head hurt. The kid — Amar Shadak — was crouched over him. He looked, Alexei thought, kind of like Ivan, who’d struck him in the head with a rock back in his imaginary spy school, when he’d started asking uncomfortable questions about reality. Little Shadak had probably used the same trick on him now — a rock to the head — to knock him unconscious and bring him here to this much better-made metaphor of a plaza.

“You are a lying fuck,” he spat. “You’ve been working for the fucking KGB all along, haven’t you? This whole plan is fucking compromised.”

Alexei tried to sit up. As he did, ropes bit into his arms and ankles. Shadak had tied him up with metaphorical rope. Shadak slapped him backhanded across the face.

“This is some kind of brainwashing shit, isn’t it? That’s why everybody was acting so fucking strange in the caves, wasn’t it? You slipped some drugs into the food or the air or something — and fucked us all up.”

“N-no drugs,” Alexei heard himself saying. “You are the one who knows about drugs.”

Shadak stood up and kicked Alexei in the stomach. The pain was excruciating. Alexei shut his eyes.

“How far does this — this thing of yours go? The Mujahedeen? Jim Saunders?” Shadak sat down against the wall of the pond. His eyes were narrow with rage. “Ming Lei?”

Alexei tried to distance himself from the conversation, so he could put things together. But it was difficult — while he still didn’t seem to have direct control over his actions, he was so wrapped in this metaphor of flesh that the pain and the twist and the smell of things overwhelmed him. It was a bit like being drunk — his mind was fine, but his body acted as if with a will of its own.

“Untie me,” he heard himself say. “I can explain.”

Shadak looked at him. “You can fucking well explain tied like a fucking ape on the ground,” he said.

Alexei felt himself struggling. The ropes tore at the flesh of his wrists and ankles. Which was puzzling; hadn’t he, just a moment ago, been in complete control of this metaphor? Alexei heard himself sob, his breath rasping inside his skull. He listened then — for something else, a sound that had been at the core of this matter since the beginning:

The rumbling sound of Discourse.

And he realized with a chill that it was gone.

Alexei was alone in this metaphor. Fyodor Kolyokov and the others had grown silent.

Or, he thought, been made silent. What had been the name he’d heard most in Discourse? Rodionov?

Alexei thought back — to the general in City 512, who’d played at executing the poet, to discredit Kolyokov.

Rodionov was coming. They had seemed worried about that. Alexei thought he could understand why they might be worried about that.

Perhaps, thought Alexei, General Rodionov had finally arrived.

“This isn’t supposed to be happening like this,” said Alexei miserably. “This has gone bad.”

“Ha. Bad for you maybe.”

“No. Bad for you too.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not finished,” said Alexei. “And I don’t know how to do it on my own.”

“Do what?”

“Make you,” he said. “I don’t know how to finish making you.”

“What?”

“I didn’t know,” said Alexei. “I didn’t know anything.”

Shadak came at him. He punched him and kicked him and tore at his shirt. He picked up a stone from the ground lifted it over his head. He glared down at Alexei.

“You don’t know how?” he said. “Then learn.”

And with that, he smashed the stone down — into Alexei’s skull.

The void again. Alexei spun in it. It was like being dead. He opened his mouth to cry out for Vladimir, then shut it again. He’d told the baby to fuck off. He couldn’t go crawling back to him now.

No. Alexei thought about what little Shadak had told him to do:

Learn.

Alexei would have to take charge of this realm of memory on his own. He had done something awful — become the agent of Fyodor Kolyokov and those others — to create something in Afghanistan.

But they — the dream-walkers — they weren’t in Afghanistan. They hadn’t set foot there.

They were in City 512.

The place where they all were born.

Where Kilodovich had come from.

That, he knew, was where he would have to go.

And it wouldn’t do to have Vladimir take him there.

Alexei breathed and turned and willed himself to leave Afghanistan for the moment. He blinked, and imagined, and used what force of will he had —

— and the void faded. Alexei Kilodovich steered himself north, and into the heart of old Soviet Russia.

It was a thin, dry snow that fell outside City 512. Comrade General Rodionov was wearing a heavy woollen overcoat and a fur cap but it wasn’t good enough. He was still freezing cold as he got out of the car. He rubbed his hands together and watched his breath cloud in front of him. The dozen KGB men alongside him were better off — they were wearing body armour and heavy gloves and helmets. Some of the men wore crucifixes and charms around their necks. Others lined their helmets with tinfoil, or carried garlic bulbs in their pockets. Some of them etched crosses in the tips of their bullets. Still others muttered little prayers and hexes that their grandmothers had taught them.

Rodionov simply hummed as he got out of the car and started toward the low buildings that hid the top of the shafts. It was a tune that his own Babushka had sung to him when he was tiny — one so old he could not even remember the words or where it had come from. But it had helped him sleep. Now — perhaps it would keep Rasputin’s devilish progeny out of his mind.

It was probably the most effective thing. Alexei Kilodovich found the old bastard’s brain completely impenetrable. He stood beside Rodionov, still a spectre.

Rodionov strode toward the huge open doorway in the nearest warehouse. There were perhaps a dozen men and women lying naked, face-down on the cold concrete, while Rodionov’s men held rifles on them.

“The assault has gone well, Comrade General,” said one of the men — a Colonel by his insignia. He gestured with his rifle to the prisoners. “We have rounded up these ones from the coffins. There are others still—”

Rodionov held his hand up. His eyes narrowed.

“I do not recognize these,” he said.

“Comrade General?”

“These,” said Rodionov, “are not the dream-walkers.”

“We found them in the coffins,” said the Colonel, but he said it like a question. “Surely—”

Rodionov hummed out loud. He stepped into the warehouse building, past the prisoners. The building was lined with his men, several of whom he obviously did recognize. He nodded at one or another, as they clutched their assault rifles to their flak-jacketed chests. The space in here was as big as an airplane hangar and all but empty. Alexei trotted along behind him. This following along wasn’t very illuminating, and as they stepped through a metal cage-work structure in the middle, Alexei decided to take another step.

He had, in little Shadak’s metaphor, been able to break the wall and hold a conversation. So he would, he decided, do the same thing here.

“Comrade General,” said Alexei as they stepped into a stairwell. “Stop that music.”

Rodionov blinked.

“Rasputin,” he said.

Alexei frowned. “Rasputin?”

Rodionov nodded. He didn’t precisely look at Alexei — but he was responding to him.

“You healed the Czar’s son and made yourself a place in the court,” he said, “and you used that place to do what?”

“Tell me,” said Alexei.

“To do nothing,” said Rodionov. “Nothing but fuck women and drink vodka and live in nice houses.” He sneered. “Mystics. You could have the world, and you just feed off it.”

“I am not Rasputin,” said Alexei.

“You are Rasputin. You are all Rasputin.”

“You sound as though you have been practising this little speech,” said Alexei.

“I have,” said Rodionov. “Indeed — I have found it useful to practise everything I do beforehand, when I am dealing with you bastards here at City 512. When I do not — well. I become distracted.”

“How is that?”

Rodionov stopped and looked around. “I cannot see you,” he said. “Can you make yourself visible?”

“I am visible,” said Alexei.

“No,” said Rodionov, “you are not. How do I become distracted? Well. I start to investigate the odd appropriations moving to Cuba — for an underwater project that had supposedly been cancelled. Before I know it, I have had too much to drink. My memories are foggy, and I remember another appointment. I decide to review intelligence reports coming out of this division — see whether we have made any headway in Central America. And suddenly I am on my way to the airport to meet an old friend, who does not arrive until next week. So — I practise. I write things down. I leave little tape recordings for myself. Clues. I have done enough of that — and lo! Here we are! Bringing this pestilent time of our history to an end.”

“I see,” said Alexei.

“Except I must ask myself,” said Rodionov, “what distractions might come before me now? Perhaps a ghost walking beside me to keep my eye off the mark?” He shook his head. “Appear — so I may deal with you in flesh. Or walk behind me if it is your wish to view your destruction. Or better, return to your little water tank. Take time to make peace with yourself.”

And at that, Rodionov hurried down the stairs, shouting ahead to his men who had secured the second level. He stepped deftly around the carriage on the landing. Alexei paused and crouched down in front of it. Vladimir glared back at him.

“You,” said Vladimir, “are not being helpful.”

“I am sorry I told you to fuck off,” said Alexei. “That was rude of me.”

“You are forgiven,” said Vladimir. “Now come back.”

“To my body?”

“Yes. Your body is injured. I am spending all my time tending it. We also have a prisoner.” He leaned forward and regarded Alexei slyly. “Holden Gibson.”

“You have Holden Gibson,” said Alexei. “I see.”

“You wanted to kill him, yes?”

“You put me here to stop that as I recall.”

“Things have changed, Kilodovich.”

Alexei looked at little Vladimir levelly. “Now you want me to come back to kill him?”

“I did not say anything. Only it is time to come back. You understand your true self now.”

“I understand,” said Alexei, “that I have been used and manipulated.”

Vladimir sneered. “You have been used — but as you have seen, you did not protest too greatly. We saw the games you played with Amar Shadak’s poor girl. That was not only Fyodor Kolyokov playing that game, Alexei.”

Alexei nodded. That was true. He could come up with any rationalizations: I was a young man, whose ethical compass was not exactly well-configured at that time; it was a fleeting lapse; I may well have been deceived by a false metaphor such as my dreams of an early childhood.

But the fact was that whatever the excuse, Alexei had done the thing. He had torn Amar Shadak in two and made puppets of the rest. From the lower levels of City 512, he could hear shouting as Rodionov’s men found the empty isolation tanks, and realized that their quarry had left. Then the small-arms fire, as some of those men turned on one another — obscuring once again the KGB’s trail to the dream-walkers of City 512.

Those puppets would never be right, Alexei knew. He had made them badly for his masters, and his masters had dropped the strings. He looked at Vladimir.

“Now,” he said, “you have work for me — to make things right.”

“Come,” said Vladimir.

Alexei looked at him. “I apologize,” he said. “This is very rude. But once again: fuck off.”

And Alexei floated again — this time not in a void, but in the air over the world. He was flying over mountaintops — high over the red-brown hills of Afghanistan. Clouds obscured things here and there, but he could see men and machinery moving below in what looked like a mountain pass. He could see the flash of explosions, the drifting of white smoke. People scurried beneath that smoke like frightened insects. Some fell and stopped moving. He could see smaller groups of men, moving around a more remote hilltop. Near the top of that hill, an opening in the stone. When he peered into it, he saw others — these ones moving through the tunnels of a cave, like ants or termites, with a common seeming purpose. He let himself float down to see inside. To return.

He fell down the chimney and drifted through the supply chamber — where an exhausted Ming Lei sat with Wali Beg, munching on biscuits that they’d liberated from the supplies. They looked at each other warily — they smelled of each other and couldn’t, either of them, recall what had happened to make that so. Alexei slipped through the crack in the wall, until he was in the chamber where he had last encountered Amar Shadak. It was empty now, so he followed the fissure into the main chamber of the cave. There, he found Shadak — and himself. Young Alexei sat cross-legged in the sand, barely a metre from Shadak — who was curled in the dirt, his fists pressed against his forehead. The Mujahedeen that were with them stood a respectful distance away — their heads lowered, as though in prayer, their shoulders trembling as though with grief. Young Alexei was mumbling something in Russian — Amar Shadak was sobbing in no language at all. Older Alexei settled down on the sand, and leaned into the space between them — as though by so doing, he could intercept the communications that moved between the two like radio waves. It was no good. There was no Discourse for Alexei to hear. The lines had been cut.

He pushed off with his toes, and drifted out the front of the cave to the sentry point halfway up the hillside. A man sat there alone, arms wrapped around an old AK-47 and chin resting on its barrel-tip. His thumb caressed the trigger as tears welled up in his eyes.

He sat there with the man — fascinated and repelled — and watched as his thumb moved away from the gun, and he sat back as the shadows grew long and the sun began to set. Just before the sun disappeared completely over the ridges of the near horizon, Alexei spied a lone figure making its way out of the mouth of the cave. The sentry saw him too. Sobbing, he sat up and levelled the rifle — lining up the lone figure in his sights. His hand wasn’t steady, though, and he soon lost his aim. He returned to his perch, shaking his head and sobbing, while young Alexei Kilodovich made his way out of the cave and set off towards the Red Army division, in the newly silenced war zone of southern Afghanistan.

“You should pull the trigger,” said Alexei. “There I am. The agent of your misery. Getting away.” Young Alexei stepped down a slope, and soon disappeared from view behind a tumble of rocks. “Got away.” He made to slap the sentry across the back of his head.

To Comrade General Rodionov, Alexei was a haunting, a ghost at the back of his head. Not so here. The poor man didn’t so much as flinch. He simply sat there — and waited, for a command that apparently no one would give.

Alexei had taken this man — a gangster from Turkey — an innocent little stripper from Hong Kong — fifty others, maybe more — and he’d mind-raped them. Turned them away from their own wills, their lives, their religions. Made them into puppets.

Or half-made them. Alexei sat down on the rock beside the sentry. He leaned over to look into the man’s eyes. There was a spark there — something that was left of him. So he had not completely destroyed him.

But in a way, that was a worse thing. The part of this man that dreamed — that felt — that part was ensconced in some place not so dissimilar to the villa where Alexei had left Amar Shadak. Small and helpless and alone — while his body, his venal body, flopped and turned and marked the years, without motivating force any greater than flesh.

Beside him, the Mujahedeen guard reached into his trousers and scratched an ass-cheek. Alexei looked at him — and then across the little valley here. His younger self had emerged from the rocks again, some distance off. Scurrying like a rabbit back to his Soviet masters. Alexei pointed at him, sighting along his forefinger with one eye closed. “Pow,” he said, raising his fingertip like it was a pistol.

As Alexei lowered his finger, the sad Mujahedeen sentry faded like a ghost — the shrub behind which he hid grew and withered and fell away. Alexei kicked his feet. He found that he was suspended now, above the rock — as though he were flying.

“Ha,” he said to no one. He really, as he thought about it, couldn’t care less what happened to his body in New Pokrovskoye. He kicked higher still, watching as years etched changes over the rough Afghani landscape.

Alexei rose above an Afghanistan finally purged of the Red Army and its shadowy agents. Time passed in a breath, and he rose higher still.

Who needed a body anyway? The only thing his body was good for, Alexei realized, was spreading more torment — tearing men in two, and turning them-selves into slaves.

Here — here, was like an afterlife.

Devoid of responsibility.

Alexei spread himself across the sky, to a point where his mind was as insub-stantial as a high cloud — then he congealed himself again, and spread his arms like wings.

“Whee,” he said softly, as he drifted and swooped free at last of the shackles of his life — of memory. He flew on toward the water’s edge. And from there, he dipped into the surface — and spread.