Rasputin's Bastards

THE LITTLE HERO

Water was before him and around him, above and below — a great amniotic all. Floating in it, he could imagine drawing his thumb to his face, shutting his eyes, and letting the fine, fine mother’s food flow in through his belly button. Forgetting about his troubles in a great big womb…

He could imagine it, but of course that was wrong. The ocean was no mother. It didn’t, for instance, turn around one night, kill your father and try to smother you and your first true love because its piece of shit KGB operator had decided it was time to clean house.

And mothers had nothing like the giant squid. Which Stephen Haber decidedly did: sixty-or-so feet long from ass to tentacle-tip, with eyes the size of soccer balls, two tentacles and eight arms and a nervous system that seemed almost faster than light.

Oh yeah.

Stephen guided himself through the murk — jetting the cold ocean through his middle — revelling in the new sensorium. Stephen laughed and sang inside. He was flying a squid! Through the Atlantic Ocean — miles from his body. He was fucking well dream-walking!

Fuck, he thought — if Uzimeri could see me now.

Of course, he couldn’t. Because Uzimeri was too busy worshipping the fucking Children and Babushka and Zhanna — making a big fucking religious experience out of everything — to go riding a giant Captain fucking Nemo squid along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

No — you had to be running with the Mystics to do that.

They’d explained to him that the giant squid were actually among the most ideally suited organisms on the planet for dream-walking. Not particularly intelligent, they nonetheless were blessed with the largest brains of any invertebrate on Earth. The brain was mostly occupied with working a prodigious nervous system and fiendishly articulate tentacles. But the lack of much conscious thought also made plenty of room for a piggybacked consciousness.

Stephen spread his squid’s tentacles in a Mandela and spun in the dark ocean. He understood that some of the squid that formed the firmament of the Mystics were bioluminescent. When he brought this one in, he’d have to see about taking one of those out on the ocean. Maybe take it up near the surface at dusk — put on a show for some lucky cruise ship.

Maybe they’d even let him start doing the exterior maintenance that the Mystics seemed to use the squid for now.

“Hey. Kiddo. That’s enough.”

“Yeah. Up and at ’em.”

“Get out of there already.”

“We’re not kidding.”

“Yeah. Time to work.”

Stephen felt his eyes open — and the ocean vanished. In its place, a big Romanian monk — with a greying beard and piercing black eyes — leaned over him.

He was back in Petroska Station — in the bed they’d set him up in.

The monk started to twitch, as the other Mystics chimed in.

“You got to watch that, Stephen.”

“You can get addicted.”

“Hurt yourself.”

“You’ll go blind.”

“Oh stop it.”

Stephen sat up. He guessed from the changing timber of the voices that there were four Mystics inhabiting the poor Romanian right now.

“Fun for you?” asked the Romanian.

“Yeah.” Stephen rubbed his eyes. “Thanks,” he said, meaning it profoundly. Since he’d come to Petroska Station, the Mystics had been pretty indulgent allowing him to play with their squids. They seemed to think it was useful to have him do this — although he couldn’t see how. He wasn’t taking them out on maintenance detail for the station — he wasn’t engaging in reconnaissance — and his fooling around didn’t seem to have anything to do with dealing with the encroaching threat of this Babushka creature that the Mystics seemed so worried about.

“You’re welcome,” said a Mystic.

“But now it’s time to stay awake.”

“Hmm. Whatever you say.” Stephen threw his legs over the side of the bed — stood up and stretched. “How goes the war?”

The Romanian pursed his lips, nodded.

“Good.”

“Yeah. Good.”

“You just stay here.”

Stephen laughed. “What am I — a prisoner?”

The monk laughed too — on whose behalf, Stephen wasn’t sure.

It was hard to chart just how many Mystics actually inhabited this vast underwater station. He’d been here more than a day and he hadn’t yet seen one of them in the flesh. He understood now that the Morlocks weren’t Mystics at all. They were the Jacques Cousteau version of Richard at the front desk of the Emissary; sleepers who’d come down here years ago to service the structure while the Mystics went about their business — dream-walking through the waters off Cuba while hidden somewhere in their isolation tanks here at the bottom of the sea.

Somewhere.

“You didn’t answer my question,” said Stephen.

“You’ve got to stay put.”

“That’s what’s good for you.”

“Yes, because.”

The Monk looked at Stephen, his lips slowly relaxing.

“Um,” said Stephen after a moment, “because what?”

The Monk turned away from Stephen, walked across the room to a little cushioned seat.

“Because?”

“Because.”

“Big fight’s coming.”

“This one’s not your fight.”

“Stay put.”

The Monk sat down, folded his hands in his lap. His eyes focused somewhere far, past the bulkhead.

Stephen got up. He walked over to the Romanian. Snapped his fingers at first one ear, then the other, and then he waved his hand in front of the guy’s eye. Nothing.

“Because,” said Stephen. “Fine.”

He struggled to keep his voice nonchalant, but it was a trick.

Who the hell was inside the Romanian now?

Maybe no one.

He reminded Stephen of the way the Romanians got when they were guarding Zhanna and the others at the back of the submarine, but not performing complex tasks. Zhanna had said something about leaving them like that — going through their chores like automatons.

Like Richard — at the front desk of the Emissary.

Stephen looked at him. He stared back past Stephen impassively.

Stephen walked around the room. It wasn’t large by normal standards — but it was a gymnasium compared to the casket-sized chambers of the submarine. And the light was comfortable — warm and incandescent, with none of the flicker or humming that plagued Stephen in the cabin he shared with Uzimeri. There was even a ventilation grate in the ceiling, that pumped cool, fresh air. He sniffed at it.

It smelled antiseptic — and still. The fan was off.

Stephen turned to regard the Romanian again. The Romanian might as well have been dead, but for his chest, slowly rising and falling.

Stephen stared at him hard — regulated his breathing — imagined a descending scale of colour, taking him down through the spectrum. He tried to picture himself travelling through the air — into the ear of the Romanian — behind his eyes. To see himself, standing in a room near the top of an ancient Soviet sea station, trying to read a mind without the scarcest hint of talent or ability to do so.

“Shit,” said Stephen aloud. Babushka, Lena, right in front of him — and he couldn’t get a hint. Maybe if she was inside a squid…

Stephen sighed. What, he wondered as he stood up, walked past the insensate Romanian and pushed the hatch open, would Uzimeri say now?

The hallway outside was narrow, and the painted metal panels along it described a wide curve. Stephen picked a direction and hurried along it. He felt his pulse hammering. Shit. Babushka. The Mystics had named her as a threat — told him that she had already invaded the minds of his comrades down in the submarine and then — for all intents and purposes — disappeared.

Stephen finally stopped what seemed half-way around the circle, when he found a doorway that seemed to lead deeper into the station. He passed through it — found a room with a narrow spiral staircase going up — and followed it. He had to find the Mystics.

Stephen emerged in a large domed room — maybe thirty feet in diameter. The floor was covered in green carpet that smelled faintly of mould. Sconces in the ceiling projected swathes of light from the circle’s edges towards the middle, but not quite reaching it. The whole thing created the discomforting aspect of a giant iris over Stephen’s head.

But that wasn’t the only discomforting thing.

The room was filled with sensory deprivation tanks. There must have been two dozen of them — arranged in concentric circles, from the middle of the room to its edge. They were identical to Fyodor Kolyokov’s — huge Soviet sarcophagi, with tubing and conduits coming from them and disappearing into little black boxes set into the floor.

Stephen approached one. He touched the hatch cover, to confirm what he thought.

Sure enough — the hatch swung open, and the stink of eons wafted out.

The old woman was in chains in the bottom of Filtration Room Three. She was like the rest down here — pallid, with wide dark eyes and a mouth that puckered back over too few teeth. She glared up at Mrs. Kontos-Wu from her prison between the two intake pipes. Mrs. Kontos-Wu rested her hands on opposite elbows, drumming her fingers, as she looked into those dark, empty eyes.

“Lois?” she said.

“That,” said the hag, “is one of my names. To you.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu sighed. Why don’t you just spin your head around now? she thought. But she said instead:

“Babushka, then?”

The hag didn’t answer — just held Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s gaze, trying to worm her way inside, until she had to look away. Mrs. Kontos-Wu walked back across the gantry to her two companions — Vanya and Mishka, who looked scarcely more human than the woman below.

The two were trembling — much as Vanya had been, when he’d first hailed Mrs. Kontos-Wu from across the algae pond. Help us, he’d said. He’d repeated that over and over again, even after Mrs. Kontos-Wu promised she’d try — if he’d only tell her what the trouble was.

“Minds are going,” he’d said. “One by one by one. You can save the minds — stop this, yes?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu didn’t know. But she was looking for a distraction now — anything to keep her awake, and out of the metaphor that had so betrayed her.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

Vanya took her hand in his own clammy paw and led her further into the depths of this station — yammering on the way. It developed that he was an old submariner who specialized in the nuclear plants. His family came from Belarus, near Minsk. He’d been transferred to Petroska Station after taking an aptitude test, one winter’s morning in 1978. Left behind a daughter and his young wife. Mrs. Kontos-Wu politely suggested that he might be missing them but he explained that no, he visited them every chance he got. “They have nice country house now — big A-frame. On lake. I go there every day. Make love to my wife.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu looked into the creature’s dark eyes, set back in pale, hairless brows, and tried to convey credulity.

“But now,” he said as they climbed a narrow spiral staircase and pushed open a hatch to the machinery decks, “I soon will never go back. She take our minds.”

“She?”

“Oh yes.” he said, nodding quickly. “Then we good for nothing.”

He’d taken her up four floors, and into a room that might at one time have been a comfortable barracks room. Now, though, it resembled a ward room in a government-run retirement home. The walls were panelled in wood veneer punctured with thousands of thumb-tacks. It was lit by flickering fluorescent tubes set into the ceiling. It smelled like pee. There were maybe a dozen beds there — all of them occupied, with the same sort of bizarre, pale creatures. They stared vacantly like Alzheimer’s patients.

One other — who Mrs. Kontos-Wu later learned was Mishka — looked after these ones, shuffling about with bed pans and trays of food.

“She take our minds,” repeated Vanya. “We good for nothing.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu frowned.

“Are these,” she guessed, “the Mystics?”

It was certainly possible that they might be. She could in fact imagine Fyodor Kolyokov like this, if he’d managed to a few more years in that isolation tank of his.

Vanya, however, seemed to think that idea was hysterically funny. He laughed and laughed. “Mystics? No, no. Not Mystics.”

“Not Mystics.”

He nodded. “Tools of the Mystics,” he said. “Tools.”

“Puppets.”

“Puppets. With—” he made a snipping motion with his fingers.

“The strings cut,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu wryly. “Yes.”

He nodded. “You here to save us. Like the other one. The baby.”

“Like the baby?” Mrs. Kontos-Wu frowned.

“You,” he said. “Like the baby.”

“Vladimir? No. I’m not like Vladimir.”

The old man looked disappointed for a moment, then brightened. “We begged for new saviour. Boy came through — just ignored us. Went fooling around in the sea. But now — here you are. Saviour.”

“I’m no saviour,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu.

“Perhaps,” he said, “you simply do not know it yet.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu shook her head. “I think,” she said, “I’m just a puppet with its strings cut. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

Now, she was facing down a puppet with its strings very much intact. They had led her here — to a place where they’d tied the puppet up, after she’d become quite violent just a day ago. The creature would not talk with Mishka and Vanya — tell them what’s going on — but they told them to bring Mrs. Kontos-Wu there, and she’d talk to her.

Of course, when they met it was clear what the creature’s agenda was.

She called out to Mrs. Kontos-Wu now.

“Hey! Don’t you want to know how the book ends?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu went back to the railing. She leaned on it.

“It’s not a real book,” she said.

“Oh,” said the hag. Lois. Babushka. “You know what is real, do you my child?”

“I’m not your child.” Mrs. Kontos-Wu stepped over to the stairs going down to the floor of the pumping station. “And I think I do know what is real. At least, I know the real that I choose.”

“Ha. Wise answer. Are you sure you want to come down here?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu swung around and stepped onto an access ladder. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Doesn’t it remind you of someplace?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu stopped. “What place?”

“Why, that book,” said the hag. “The one that wasn’t real.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu looked down at the woman. Her hair was black and frizzy — it trailed down her shoulders and ended in twisted, greasy knots.

“The Cistern of Blood, child.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu looked around. Certainly there was a superficial resemblance — the pumping room was entered through a space high above its floor, and it took the form of a deep cylinder. Overhead, there was a grate that led to some other chamber. It wouldn’t take much to imagine the steel walls replaced with stone — and the light of an Istanbul marketplace filtering in through the grate above her. The hag continued. “You might find yourself rescuing Jim. Or,” she added, “doing as I said and returning to your berth — taking care of the bastard children there — and joining me.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu stopped on the ladder. Above her, Vanya and Mishka watched expectantly.

“How are you doing?” called Vanya. “Almost got it?”

“Doing fine,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu nonchalantly.

She climbed down the stairs.

“Heh heh. Good girl,” said the hag. “Now. Do as you are told. Go and kill the children and destroy the Mystics — and join me back at the school.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu stepped over to the old woman who was possessed by Babushka — the woman who’d killed through her. She looked back up — thought briefly of climbing the ladder and heading back to the submarine, along a route that was suddenly clear to her.

But she looked back at the hag, leaned down in front of her.

“It’s been a long and sad life here, hasn’t it?” she said, and with one hand delicately pinched the clammy nostrils together — put her other hand over the old woman’s mouth.

When he’d been outside swimming in the brain of his giant squid, Stephen had treated himself to a tour of Petroska Station from the outside. It was an eccentric structure — a rambling thing that in some places resembled a giant bathyscaphe — others a medieval castle — and others a high-rise apartment building done on the cheap. How tall was it? If you counted some sections that scudded down the slope of the shelf, and the five little towers that poked out of its middle, you could probably put fourteen storeys on it. But those towers were narrow as needles, and you couldn’t say whether they were inhabitable. And some of the shapes that crawled down the slope could have housed nothing more than conduits. It was as though the place had been grown rather than built. Stephen had circled it for hours — tapping it with tentacles and sliding one of the squid’s immense eyes close to the bulkheads. But it was no good. He couldn’t make a useful map of the place.

That was clearer now than ever. He knew he had to get out — he’d checked each of the sarcophagi, and found all but one empty. The one that was locked contained a body — a corpse, bloated and swimming in the brine. Fyodor Kolyokov would have been like that, if he’d stayed in his tank a few weeks longer.

It all raised very interesting questions — questions like: if the Mystics weren’t in their tanks — where they should have been, if they were dream-walking Romanians and teaching Stephen how to fly squid and having a big conference with the children on the submarine — if they weren’t there…

Then first: where were they, and second: were they even the things that Stephen had been talking to in the first place?

What had they said about the ocean? It was dangerous like the face of God? You could lose yourself in it and find yourself in it.

Was it possible that the Mystics had migrated into the ocean itself? Just maybe kept this place operating and alive for old times’ sake?

Stephen set it all aside. Bottom line: he had to get out. Talk to the children. Because now more than ever, he was certain that the thing the self-proclaimed Mystics were worried about — Lena, the Babushka — had come upon them. The fact that the Romanian in his stateroom hadn’t even bothered to pursue him actually confirmed that: if indeed “she” was “everywhere” as they put it, then there would be no need to stop him from doing anything. Anytime she wanted to, she could just swat him.

Stephen made his way to the edge of the aerie. He reached up and touched the curve of the dome. It was cool. On the other side, he suspected there was nothing but ocean.

Ocean, where squid roamed.

His squid.

Stephen wanted to try the squid out again. Of course, it would be dangerous — before they had vanished, the Mystics had warned Stephen not to go to sleep — to stay put. No doubt, dream-walking into a giant squid right now would put Stephen at risk.

Wouldn’t it be worse, though, Stephen rationalized, to remain lost in this giant underwater catacomb? Abandoned here when the submarine detached? Wouldn’t that be worse?

Stephen concocted a plan. He’d dream-walk a squid — send it along the bulkhead, tapping it with its tentacles as he went. When Stephen heard the pok-pok sound, he’d know where the squid was — and thereby, have an idea how to get back to the submarine.

Plus which, thought Stephen, he’d have another chance for a go-around in a giant squid.

Of course, it was a cheap rationalization. Stephen closed his eyes. He watched the light crawl across the inside of his retina. He did the things that he’d done when the Mystics had sent him there. He was prepared for failure — for waking up, gasping, as he had a hundred times at the Emissary while Fyodor Kolyokov flew the skies.

And yet —

— it worked.

Stephen spun around, sent tentacles reeling out, contracted the chitinous suckers like camera irises — peered into the dark, got his bearings — thought he spotted the peculiar signature of Petroska Station.

“Stephen? Stephen Haber?”

Stephen spun in darkness, looked around for something else — another creature here that might have the gift of language. There was nothing, though. He was alone with his squid. If not alone in his squid.

“Who the fuck’s that?” he demanded. It didn’t sound as he’d imagined Babushka sounding. The voice was Russian, true enough. But it was deep. Familiar sounding.

“I am surprised you do not remember me.”

Stephen glared around in the dark. “Yeah, you know what? I’m sure that in context—”

“Alexei Kilodovich.”

“What?”

“I am Alexei Kilodovich.”

Stephen thought about that for a moment. He thought about how Alexei Kilodovich could end up here inside the brain of a giant squid, at the bottom of the ocean and just outside a secret Russian underwater city.

“Here?” he finally said, and — “What?”

“You remember me now? You hired me to look after Mrs. Kontos-Wu.”

Stephen’s mind raced. “Um, yeah. Right.”

“You are aware, I am assuming, that the whole thing was a bullshit ruse by Fyodor Kolyokov.”

Stephen took a breath — felt himself slipping away from the squid brain and back into the real world — and put things in order. This was not, in fact, all bad.

“Fyodor Kolyokov,” he said. Kolyokov had, Stephen remembered, told Stephen to find Kilodovich. He was to be a “hidden asset” in New York — and yes, he was to understand himself to be a bodyguard. This was before Babushka — before the submarine, and Turkey — before the old man even knew he was dead. Stephen felt a momentary pang of guilt — because instead of searching for Alexei Kilodovich, Stephen had spent his time here goofing around inside the giant brain of a giant squid. He was hardly showing the take-charge attitude that Kolyokov had demanded of him.

Yet here was Alexei Kilodovich — right now. The hidden asset — the dumbass bodyguard — and Shadak’s price. Here. In the brains of a behemoth.

Stephen laughed.

“You think this is funny?” said Alexei. “Fyodor Kolyokov fed us a huge bucket of shit and made us like it. Even Wolfe-Jordan.” In the dark, Alexei Kilodovich paused significantly. “A lie, Mr. Haber. A lie.”

Stephen kept laughing. “Oh fuck off, Alexei. No one was fooled by Wolfe-Jordan — except maybe the I.R.S. And obviously yourself.” He felt his composure returning as he talked. “Okay, now you tell me — what are you doing here?”

The squid brain went silent for a moment. Stephen turned his attention outside — watched as the sea reeled past — guided the kraken down, to the tangle of metal and glass that sprawled across the shelf — the submarine that suckled at its belly. He let the tentacles flutter out, scraping along the bulkhead of the thing, tapping on it.

“I flew,” said Alexei finally. “I flew across time, and then through the sky. For a long time, I flew over land — I saw Rome, you know, from high — it looks beautiful in the dawn light — then past Gibraltar. Like a bird, but far faster. And not with the cold that would come.”

“Dream-walking,” said Stephen. “Fine.” Kolyokov did that kind of thing all the time.

“And all the time, I am getting nearer to the ocean. I am thinking: fuck New Pokrovskoye.”

“Where?”

“New Pokrovskoye. Where I am — I think, fuck Vladimir and his plans for me. He wanted me to figure things out — fine.”

“Vladimir?”

“Little kid. Brain like a forty-year-old.”

“Vladimir.” Stephen caught his breath, and thought about Chenko and Pitovovich’s incredible story. “The Vladimir.”

“Are you listening? I am telling you a story. So I fly along the water, and just for fun I stick my finger in it. Felt okay, so what the hell, I stick my head in. Before you know it, I hear a beautiful song. And then — I’m like an oil slick on that ocean. Everywhere. Including here.”

“You didn’t use the bathyscaphe, did you?”

“The what?”

Stephen sighed. Kolyokov didn’t tell him much about dream-walking. But he had made clear to Stephen for many years about his anxiety coming from deep water — the compelling song of the ocean. The bathyscaphe was Kolyokov’s safety metaphor.

“That’s what Fyodor Kolyokov used to use, any time he had to dream-walk underwater. A bathyscaphe — a diving bell.”

“What are you, crazy? I told you I was flying by myself. No bathyscaphe.”

Stephen shook his head. “You have a lot to learn,” he said.

“That is what everyone keeps telling me.”

“You may not know it, but you’re in a lot of trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“You’re spreading.” That was one of the things that Kolyokov had warned Stephen about when it came to dream-walkers playing in the water. The medium was so huge — the salt water so perfect a conductor — that the ocean itself took on a kind of diffuse sentience. It was easy to simply dissolve in it. “Alexei,” said Stephen carefully, “stop spreading.”

“Ah. What is the point?”

“Imagine a bathyscaphe,” said Stephen.

Alexei started humming, some Russian song. Stephen swore. He was dissolving. And he didn’t have even sense enough to imagine any kind of protection, let alone a bathyscaphe. Stephen thought hard about what to do.

“Manka,” he said, “Vasilissa. Baba Yaga.”

Alexei continued humming, and Stephen wasn’t really surprised. The mnemonic was designed to wake up sleepers. And if Alexei had been a sleeper at a time in his life, that time was long-past. Alexei was a dream-walker. He was a true psychic.

“Shit shit shit shit,” said Stephen. What the fuck do you do for a real psychic? Then he said, “Oh,” and thought: New Jersey.

Just a few weeks ago, he’d snuck away from the Emissary to go to this little psychic fair in Jersey, where he’d in addition to getting his aura red and his chakras reset, he’d picked up the tapes: Lorelei Jones’ Ten Steps to Psychic Oneness.

Stephen had listened to them just the once — and he wasn’t sure if he could remember any more than eight of them. But what the hell, he thought. Better than nothing.

“Alexei,” said Stephen, “I want you to visualize the colour red.”

Alexei kept humming, but the cadence slowed a little. So Stephen went on. “Red red red red red. Is that good? Now feel your breathing—” he cut that part short. Alexei after all wasn’t necessarily breathing right now. “Okay. Imagine orange. Orange orange orange orange. Got it? Now yellow.”

Stephen kept that up until he’d made it down the spectrum to violet, and then he said: “Now look ahead of you and you’ll see a door.”

On Lorelei Jones’ tape, that door led to a green field with butterflies and a perfect clear sky and the scent of flowers wafting through the comfortable spring air. Stephen substituted: “The door is very thick and when you open it, you step into a cramped room where you’ve got to duck your head. The room has all kinds of controls flashing here and there. The controls say how deep you can go and they flash on and off if you’re detected by anyone. And the walls of this room are very thick. They’re steel and ceramic and insulation material like asbestos but not so toxic. There are air tanks underneath your seat. And from the top of it, there’s a line of woven steel that will pull you up to the surface in a second. And—”

“All right.” The humming stopped. “Shut up. I get the idea. A bathyscaphe.”

Stephen breathed a long sigh. “So you’re back now?”

“Yes. Maybe I shouldn’t have told Vladimir to fuck off.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have gone swimming without a buddy.”

“Well. Thank you for pulling me back. Is this one of Fyodor Kolyokov’s tricks?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well however you came about it — thank you. This looks to be a very useful vessel.”

“Metaphor.”

“Right. Well, it’s got all kinds of instruments. This scope here — it looks like some kind of a radar. It goes round and round — how does it work?”

“Um,” said Stephen, “I think you have to decide.”

“Ah. Very good. It — let’s see. It tells me where I am. Detects others. There — hah! There you are! Little tiny blip.”

“Is there anything else?” he said.

“Let me look. Hah. Yes. There are some others — not so far off in the water.

Maybe they are inside squids too? They are a ways away now so it is impossible to tell.”

“The Mystics?” said Stephen.

“Could be the Mystics. Who are they?” Alexei paused. “Ah! The ones who fled City 512!”

“That’s them.”

“Well okay good. I have to say I prefer this method to Vladimir’s.”

“What is Vladimir’s method?”

“It’s like psychiatry. You spend all your time reliving things and come out for the most part ashamed of yourself. It does have its uses, but this is cleaner. Where did you learn of it?”

Stephen was quiet for a moment. He had imagined all kinds of meetings with Kilodovich — but they all involved talking to an unimaginative thug that he had understood to be nothing more than muscle to protect Mrs. Kontos-Wu on an off-shore outing. Not some green dream-walker who he could swap ten-steps-to-power techniques with inside a giant squid.

“What,” said Stephen, “are you doing here?”

The squid went silent again. Tentacles rat-a-tat-ted across a ganglia of conduits, then extended momentarily into a deep fissure in Petroska Station’s superstructure.

“I am unravelling,” said Alexei finally.

“Do you want to do the bathyscaphe thing again?”

“No. Not unravelling that way. It is my life.”

“What?”

“I have been on a mission to unravel the lie that is my life. Understand it. Know myself.”

“Ah.” Stephen knew a lot of people who were on that sort of a mission. The psychic fair in Jersey was filled with them. They drifted from booth to booth — checking out their Kirlian auras, sitting down with psychic gypsy mind-readers; buying crystals and listening to tapes and crouching underneath pyramids — on an inwardly spiralling mission of self-discovery. Stephen had found these people maddening, incomprehensible. Here they were, on the cusp of utter transformation — grasping at a tool that could lead them literally to omnipotence — and all they could think to do with it was try and figure out why their marriage went wrong or their father was mean to them when they were six, or whether they were ever going to finally get laid.

“I feel this way too,” said Alexei. “It seems like a lot of bullshit.”

Stephen whipped a tentacle across a line of rivets. “What are you, reading my mind?”

“No, no,” said Alexei. “I can tell from your tone. You think I am some full of shit neurotic. But this thing — this unravelling thing. It has been useful.”

“That so?”

“Da. I have been doing much thinking and remembering. I’ve worked a few things out. I think I understand what my place in things is.”

“Okay,” said Stephen, “I’ll bite. What is your place in things?”

“Well, before this bathyscaphe trick,” said Kilodovich, “I have to admit that I was not sure. But here — look! It is a scope for self-understanding. And I can see it! Right here in front of me!”

“And what does it say?”

“I am the destroyer,” read Alexei, “of worlds.”

“Ow!”

Stephen felt as though he had been lashed — flung at great speed out of the brain of the squid. And at the same time, he felt as if he had been kicked.

He didn’t know about the lashing. But the kicking sensation was obvious. A Romanian was looking down at him, pulling his boot back from Stephen’s kidney. The Romanian kicked him again.

“You little fucking traitor,” he snarled — in a different voice. “What have you done with the Mystics?”

Stephen swore as he gasped breath into his lungs. “Z-Zhanna,” was all he could manage before he blacked out.

After a moment, the hag coughed and spat and rolled over, looking up at Mrs. Kontos-Wu as she climbed the ladder to the gantry. Mishka and Vanya looked down at her, then at Mrs. Kontos-Wu. Then at the old woman again.

“Why did you do that?”

“You asked for my help,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu. “You wanted to get the Babushka out of here — am I not correct?”

They looked at her. Vanya ran a rubbery finger across his chin. Mishka started down the ladder, not saying anything.

“Babushka,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu, “is out of her. She thinks the body is dead. I’m willing to bet she won’t be back again for a while.”

From below, the hag let out a pitiable wail. Vanya looked away, his shoulders shaking.

“You’re welcome.” Mrs. Kontos-Wu spun on her heel and headed back out the door. They would thank her later, she thought, as she stepped through the portal — and into a room that was sickeningly familiar. It was filled with tall book-cases, lit by golden sunlight admitted through tall leaded-glass windows.

Mrs. Kontos-Wu looked at her hands. They were young and soft — a girl’s hands. They were also shaking.

She was back in the library. Over by the window, she spied a comfortable chair with the tented cover of a novel on its seat. The chair beckoned her. She could at last find out what happened at the end of Becky Barker and the Mystery of the Scarlet Arrow.

Mrs. Kontos-Wu balled her young hands into fists and stepped deliberately backwards. She set her mouth in a line and narrowed her eyes — giving the outward impression, she hoped, of determination — but in fact, just fighting back the tears of despair that were battling their way to the surface.

“Bitch,” she said under her breath. For it was clear to her what had happened. She’d just given Lena — Babushka — Lois — whoever, the finger. Stood up to her. And now, the bitch was making it clear that that kind of talk wouldn’t do.

“Well fuck you,” said Mrs. Kontos Wu. She backed away from the chair. “I’m not reading the book.”

Something rustled, and there was the dull thudding sound of old books falling on older carpet. Something grunted, and Mrs. Kontos-Wu saw a flash of movement at the edge of the K-L aisle. She backed into the X-Z aisle.

“I’ll burn the place down again,” she said in a voice that sounded firm. Like arson was easy here.

It was a different matter in the real world. In Physick. All you had to do was pinch the nostrils, cover the mouth — and if it gets too bad, retreat. Retreat to Bishop’s Hall.

Here, though, in Bishop’s Hall…

There was, really, no retreat.

You could close the book — but the book was always there — tented on the plush seat by the windowsill, tempting you into it with questions. What happens to Jim now that he’s down to one hand? Football’s out of the question. And Bunny? Poor, poor Bunny… What’s to become of her?

Mrs. Kontos-Wu shut her eyes — felt the tears come. And then she heard a voice:

“At the end of the book, Becky calls in Les Gendarmes, and they break up the order of the Scarlet Arrow once and for all. Antoine’s father — or père as the French put it — is sent to prison, and Antoine goes to live with Bunny and her family back in America. Jim is fitted for a hook which in the last line he pretends is a pirate hook and everyone laughs.”

“That’s a lie,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu. But she opened her eyes and gasped.

In front of her, a tall black-haired man stepped out of the sunlight and shut the book. He bent down and peered at her.

“Mrs. Kontos-Wu?” He looked relieved as he extended a huge hand to shake her small one. “You are well. I am relieved — I thought for certain I had lost you when the children torpedoed your boat.”

“What have you done with the Mystics?”

Stephen blinked and coughed. He didn’t have to look around to know he was back on the submarine — the old-socks stink and the endless tick-ticking of the lights were enough to tell him that he was here, in the old engine room, handcuffed to a chair. He didn’t need to look around to see that.

But look around he did. Three Romanians were surrounding him — one, the little guy with glasses he’d pummelled a day ago outside the sleeping chambers.

It was he who was talking. But Stephen knew it wasn’t him.

“Zhanna,” said Stephen, “I’ve — I’ve been in contact with someone you need to talk to.”

The little Romanian sneered. “Answer the question,” Zhanna said through him. “Where are the Mystics?”

“I don’t know about the Mystics,” said Stephen. “They’re gone. You need to talk to this guy. Alexei Kilodovich.”

“Alexei Kilodovich.” This time it was the tall bearded Romanian who brought him here. “A trick. The Mystics are dead and you have killed them. Somehow, through you, Fyodor Kolyokov has destroyed the Mystics. Tell me how and it will be quick.”

“Zhanna,” said Stephen, “please. This is important. I’ve been in contact with—”

“You’ve been in contact with no one! You are a fucking little deaf boy who moved at Fyodor Kolyokov’s beck and call! We were warned about you!”

“Warned?”

“Yes. We were warned that — that someone on our ship had been given instructions to kill the Mystics and then murder us!”

“And you think it was me.”

“What else am I to think?” The third Romanian who was bald and fat stepped around. “We find you with the empty isolation tanks. The Mystics were old — they had not the capacity to dream-walk without the necessary equipment — that being their tanks. What did you do with them?”

“The Mystics,” said Stephen, “have been out of those tanks for a long time. Maybe there’s another place on board the station. Why don’t you ask the Mystics?”

“They are gone,” she said. “You know this. I should never have trusted you.”

“You never did trust me,” said Stephen.

“That is not true.”

“That’s why you won’t meet face to face.”

“I can see your face,” said Zhanna. “And it’s lying.”

“You don’t have a clue.” Stephen sighed. “Look. Something’s happened. We can agree on that. The Mystics — they’ve disappeared. That’s a puzzle — but that’s not the problem.”

“To hell with you!” One of the Romanians kicked at Stephen, but Zhanna obviously didn’t mean it — Stephen dodged it too easily.

“The problem,” said Stephen, “is Alexei Kilodovich.”

The short Romanian snorted, shook his head and looked up at the low ceiling.

“Alexei Kilodovich. You’re fixated on him. Just like Vladimir.”

“You don’t think there’s a reason for that?”

“Yes, yes. Alexei Kilodovich. Vladimir thought he was some sort of progenitor. A powerhouse — a key for what he wanted to achieve. Maybe he was right and that’s what Kilodovich was. But—”

“But?”

“So,” said Zhanna through a tall dark-bearded Romanian, “were the Mystics. And they, at least, were not fucked over by Fyodor Kolyokov.”