He made a good job of it, a brilliant job actually–Pavel Antimos was a genius at that kind of thing. But Hunder Rond was better, and Rond had had years to prepare, so Pavel had no way of knowing that, when he put in a chit for a particular registry number, a tag on the file triggered a clerk to marry a pink perforated slip with its other half and slide them both into a manila envelope addressed only to a box number. The arrival of the same envelope some hours later in a post room halfway across the city led to a telephone call, which led to another call, to the Parallel Sector, to the office of Hunder Rond.
‘It could be nothing,’ the caller said. ‘A random coincidence.’
‘We have anything on this Antimos?’ said Rond.
‘No. Nothing at all. He has an exemplary record.’
Rond took a decision.
‘Let’s pick him up,’ he said. ‘Collect him now.’
‘Shall I talk to him?’
Rond looked at his watch.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Leave him to me.’
And so, at the end of the day, when Pavel called in at the Catering Procurement Branch on his way home from work, two women in the black uniform of the Parallel Sector emerged from a side room and took him into custody with little fuss. Pavel showed no rage. He was not distraught. It was a moment he had prepared himself for, many years before, and when it happened he went along with them, numb and automatic. The only thing that really surprised him was how little his arrest actually mattered to him, now that it had finally come. He hated his life. He hated his apartment. He wouldn’t miss anything at all.
‘You don’t need to hurt me,’ Pavel said to Rond in the interrogation room. ‘I will tell you anything you want. I will say whatever you ask me to say. Let me be useful to you. I help you, and you keep me alive. Yes?’
He was half right anyway. One out of two.
3
Lom encountered the vyrdalak Moth in the reading room of the Central Registry. She came down silently, weightlessly, out of the moon-dim lattice, the glass-broken rust-scabbed ceiling dome, the strut and gondola shadows of the Gaukh Engine. (The Gaukh Wheel! Stationary and permanently benighted sun wheel, ministering idol of information now burned, ash-flake-scattered, released to rain.) Out of the wheel Moth came to him, face first, noiseless and beautiful. Her presence brushed across his face like settling night-pollen. Quiet vortices of neck-prickling wakefulness. She was young with the freshness of ageless moonlight. Youngness is the oldest thing there is.
Close she came and tipped at the air near his face with a quick dry tongue.
‘You smell sweet,’ she said, wide dark eyes shining. ‘Foresty. Earth and trees.’ Her sunless skin was warm, her wide mouth purple-dark. ‘I’m Moth,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s Vissarion.’
She sniffed.
‘No, it isn’t,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’
‘I thought no one was here,’ said Lom. ‘The giants and rusalkas have left, the river’s gone silent, but you’re still here?’
‘The forest is closed, but we’re not of the forest. We’ve always been here.’
‘We?’
‘Three sisters, all nice girls. I’m the one that wanted to come. My sister Paper thinks you’re dangerous, name’s-not-Vissarion. She says you stink of angel like Lavrentina. I say you stink of angel like nothing else does now, but not like Lavrentina; you’re also sweet. I say you’re liminal compendious duplicitous. I say you’re beautiful but violent and you’ve hurt and killed much in your time but you’re not dangerous. Which is right, name’s-not-Vissarion? Say whether Moth or Paper.’
‘Lavrentina?’ said Lom when finally she took a breath.
‘Changing the subject?’ said Moth. ‘That’s an answer of a kind. Do you know Lavrentina? She said she was coming back but she hasn’t come back yet. Do you know where she is?’
‘What do you have to do with her?’
‘Oh, she knew us! There were more of us then and some of us she used for purposes and missions and death. Some liked it. It was purpose. Bez liked it a lot but he hasn’t come back either. The word that Lavrentina liked was coterie but we didn’t like all that my sisters and me. We kept from Lavrentina far away. Keep to the rafters when Lavrentina’s about! Come down when she’s gone! The rest of us have gone away but not the three sisters we like it here. Is Lavrentina ever coming back?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Lom.
‘So answer the question then name’s-not-Vissarion are you a danger thing?’
‘Are you?’
‘Not to you.’
‘Then Moth,’ said Lom. ‘The answer is Moth.’
She laughed.
‘I like you name’s-not-Vissarion even if I don’t believe you even if you bring us fire and death.’
‘No,’ said Lom. ‘I don’t.’
She frowned.
‘We’re not stupid,’ she said. ‘Listen this is how it is. The days pass slowly here it’s quiet and cool there’s shade and moonlight and the sun doesn’t reach in here. There are other places like this across the city. But no giants, no rusalkas. No wind walkers. They’ve all left the city and gone far to the east under the trees. The Pollandore drew things to itself while it was here including us but all those ways are closed now. We consider ourselves abandoned the new city has no time for us they would hate us if they knew. This red man Kantor has no time for us Kantor you know Kantor? Has a new name but still the same we know we’re memory. Ask us what we do here all the time I’ll tell you what we do here all the time we read a lot. They took much but they didn’t take it all away there’s lots still here to read.’
She leaned in confidentially to whisper something in his ear, as if it was a secret.
‘The libraries,’ she said, ‘have libraries in them.’
She paused.
‘Do you understand anything I’m talking about?’ she said. ‘Anything? Anything at all?’
‘Yes,’ said Lom. ‘I do. I understand it all.’
‘I think you do,’ said Moth. ‘There’s noise and fire in the city anxiousness hunger bombs it has not stopped yet it goes away but it doesn’t it never stops. We go out sometimes to the city to forage. That’s better now. More for us. No! Not killers idiot! The bins at the back of the market. You can stay here with us if you want. You’ll find plenty to read. Stay out of the basements though the corpses in the mortuary make a lot of noise they thrash about but they can’t get out and anyway there’s nowhere else for them to go.’ She paused again and gazed deeply into his eyes. Hers were warm dark waters. ‘I’d like to kiss you, name’s-not-Vissarion, you smell good.’
‘What?’
‘Weren’t you listening? I thought you were listening. I want to kiss you. Can I do that? Only once to see what it is like. You’re very fierce and warm.’
‘If you want,’ said Lom. ‘If you want to, yes.’
Moth’s mouth on his was dry and cool and dark as a well and tasted faintly of fruit. Something inside her was buzzing lazily like a wasp in a sunlit afternoon window.
‘What time is it now?’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ said Lom.
‘No you don’t because the clocks don’t work any more. Clocks tell you something, but it’s not the time.’
Lom stayed in the Lodka, walking and thinking, long after Moth had left him alone. There was water in the basins and when he tired he went back to the reading room and slept. Better than in the Pension Forbat. Morning sun flooding the broken dome woke him. He didn’t want to go back out into the city, but he went.