But then something happens.
It is only a beat of quietness in the roar of the storm, only the fall of a twig on the river. None but an archangel could hear it. None but an archangel could sense the flicker of a shadow in the face of the sun. The quick thinning of ice. The opening of a moment’s gap in the wall of his cage.
With a scream of desperate hope Archangel launches his mind towards the hollowing.
Maroussia flinched and looked over her shoulder as if she had heard a loud noise.
‘Not yet!’ she groaned. ‘Not so soon!’ She looked at Lom in alarm. ‘There’s no more time. I have to go now.’
‘Wait! Tell me what you need me to do.’
‘Stop Kantor,’ she said. ‘Stop him.’
‘You mean kill him?’
‘No! Not kill. Not that. If you only kill him, the idea of him will live, and others will come and it will be the same and worse. Don’t kill him; bring him down, destroy the idea of him. Ruin him in this world, using the tricks of this world. Ruin this world he has created.’
‘But… how? I’m just one person.’
‘You have to find a way. Who else can I ask, if not you? Who will listen to me if you don’t listen? There is no one else.’
‘And if I can do this,’ he said, ‘then afterwards…’
‘No,’ she said, ‘there’s no then. No afterwards. No consequence. No reward. I can’t see then. I can only see what will happen if this doesn’t. Do you understand?’
‘No,’ said Lom. ‘I don’t understand. But it doesn’t matter.’
She was looking at him across a widening distance, and he knew that she was leaving him.
‘I have to go now,’ she said. ‘I’ve already stayed too long. I wanted… Oh no…’
There was a ripple, a shadow-glimmer, and Maroussia was gone.
In the forest it takes Archangel time to react and time to move, and time in the forest is recalcitrant. Slow. Even as he gets close to the gap, it is closing. By the time he reaches it, the tear in the wall has snapped shut. He is too late.
This time.
But now for him there is hope.
And on the quiet River Yannis it was moonless dark and long after midnight and the stars were uncountably many, scattered like salt across darkness, bitter and eternal. She was gone, and Lom felt they hadn’t said anything at all, not really–nothing adequate, nothing enough. She’d come to him and spoken to him, but he didn’t know anything, he didn’t understand more; in fact he understood less than ever, and all the terrible loss and solitude of the last six years was open and fresh and raw once more: the bleak ruination, the need and the grief and the necessity of acting, of doing something, of finding her again. Perhaps that was the point of her coming. Perhaps that was what she had done.
Lom packed his bag and left the mailboat without waiting for Shenkov to return.
5
The Vlast Universal Vessel Proof of Concept circles the planet at tremendous speed, outpacing the planetary spin, passing by turn into clean sunlight and star-crisp shadow. The cabin’s interior days and nights come faster and last for less time even than the rapacious advancing days of Papa Rizhin’s New Vlast, but aboard the Proof of Concept there is no perceptible sense of forward motion.
Cosmonaut-Commodore Vera Mornova, tethered by long cables to her bench, drifting without weight and having nothing much to do, presses her face against the cabin window. The air she breathes smells of hot rubber, charcoal and sweat. The spectacle of the stars unsettles her: they burn clean and cold but seem no nearer now, and all she sees is the infinities of emptiness that lie between. It is her lost, unreachable home that captures her loving attention: the continent, striated yellow and grey by day, the glitter of rivers and lakes, the sparse scattered lamps in inky blackness that are cities by night, the dazzling reflection of the sun in the ocean, the green chain of the Archipelago, the huge ice fields spilling from the poles towards the equator and the edgeless forest glimpsed under cloud.
Misha Fissich drifts up alongside her, accidentally nudging her so she has to grab the edge of the window to stop herself spinning slowly away. He offers her a piece of cold chicken.
‘Hungry?’ he says. ‘The clock says lunchtime. You should eat.’
She shakes her head.
‘No, not now, Misha. I’m not hungry. Thanks.’
‘You should eat,’ he says again. ‘The others are watching you, Vera. If you don’t bother, neither will they.’
‘OK,’ she says. ‘Thanks.’ She smiles at him and takes the chicken and chews it slowly.
When she’s finished, it’s time for the radio interview: a journalist from the Telegraph Agency of the New Vlast, her voice on the loudspeaker sounding indistinct and far away.
Commodore Mornova, she says, the thoughts of all our citizens are with you. You and your crew are the foremost heroes of our time. Parents are naming their newborns after you. Will you tell us please what it’s like to leave the planet? What do you see? How does it feel? How do you and your comrades spend your time?
‘We feel proud and humble, both at once,’ says Vera Mornova. ‘It is humankind’s first step across the threshold: a small first step perhaps, but we are the pioneers of a great new beginning. History is watching us, and we are conscious of the honour. Space is very beautiful and welcoming. We test our equipment and make many observations.’
Such as? Please share your thoughts with us.
‘Well, from orbit one can clearly discern the spherical shape of the planet. The sight is quite unique. Between the sunlit surface of the planet and the deep black sky of stars the dividing line is thin, a narrow belt of delicate blue. While crossing the Vlast we see big squares below–our great collective farms! Ploughed land and grazing may be clearly distinguished. During the state of weightlessness we eat and drink. It is curious that handwriting does not change though the hand is weightless.’
And do you have a message for your loved ones left behind?
‘Tell them,’ says Vera Mornova, ‘tell them we love them and remember them in our hearts.’
Part II
Chapter Four
1
The sky above Mirgorod was a bowl of luminous powdery eggshell blue, cloudless and heroic. Enamel-bright coloured aircraft buzzed and twisted high in the air, leaving trails of brilliant vapour-white. The loudspeakers were broadcasting speeches and news and orchestral music at full distorted volume. The production of steel across the New Vlast exceeded pre-war output by 39 per cent. The cosmonaut-heroes continued to orbit through space.