Guests and technicians alike smoke relentlessly.
President-Commander Osip Rizhin has not yet arrived in the control room. An empty chair waits for him between Khyrbysk and the chief engineer, whose name is never mentioned for he is a most secret and protected national resource.
‘T minus eighteen hundred, Proof of Concept.’
Thank you, Launch.
‘You are all well?’
There is an implication in the question. The captain of cosmonauts carries a pistol in case of… arising human problems. The psychology of each cosmonaut has been thoroughly and expertly examined, but the effects on emotional stability of massive acceleration, prolonged weightlessness and extreme separation from the planetary home are unknown. Every member of the crew is equipped with a personal poison capsule. The foresighted bureaucratic kindness of the Vlast.
We’re all good, Launch. We could do with some music to pass the time.
‘We’ll look into that, Proof of Concept.’
The launch controller’s gaze sweeps across the technicians at their workstations and settles on Engineer-Technician 2nd Class Mikkala Avril. He raises an eyebrow and she stands up.
Five minutes later, hurrying back down the passageway from the recreation room with an armful of gramophone records, hot with anxiety to return to her console, Mikkala Avril runs slap into men in dark suits armed with sub-machine guns. Rizhin’s personal bodyguard, walking twenty-five steps ahead of the President-Commander himself. Papa Rizhin–Papa Rizhin! In person!–is bearing down on her.
Terrified, the young woman in whom beats the heart of the New Vlast presses herself flat against the wall and shows her empty hands, the stack of records tucked hastily under her left arm. She has been taught what to do in such an extremity. Always look him in the eye, but not too much. Stay calm at all times, be respectful, answer all enquires with humour and firmness, above all conceal nothing.
Mikkala Avril stands against the wall, back straight, eyes forward. The gramophone records are slipping slowly from the awkward sweaty grip of her elbow. Any moment now they will fall to the floor and there is nothing she can do about it. Desperately she squeezes them tighter between arm and ribs, but it only seems to make the situation worse.
Papa Rizhin glances at her as he passes and notices her confusion. Stops.
‘Are you working on the launch?’
His voice is recognisable from his broadcasts but it is not the same. It is surprisingly expressive, with the tenor richness of a good singer. Up close his cheeks are scattered with pockmarks like open pores, something which is not shown in portraits: the legacy of a childhood illness, perhaps.
‘Yes, General,’ she says.
‘What is your task?’
‘To monitor the telemetry of the in-atmosphere flight guidance systems, General. The vessel carries small rockets to correct random walk—’
‘Yes,’ says Rizhin, interrupting her. ‘Good. You are young for this responsibility. And is all in order? Is there any concern?’
‘No, General. None. All is in perfect order.’
Inevitably the sweat-slicked gramophone records choose this moment to fall slap in a heap at Rizhin’s feet.
Mikkala Avril stares blankly at the wreckage: the titles of the musical pieces in curling script on the glossy sleeves; the monochrome photographs of mountains and lakeside trees. She feels her face turning purple.
Rizhin shows no reaction and does not look down.
‘What is your name?’ he says.
‘Avril, General. Engineer-Technician 2nd Class.’
‘That is good then. Avril. I will remember the name. The New Vlast needs young engineers; it is the noblest of professions. You are the brightest and the best.’
He glances at last at the fallen records and smiles with this eyes.
‘Youth must not fear General Rizhin,’ he says. ‘He is its friend.’
When he’s out of sight she crouches down to scrabble for the records. Shit, she mutters under her breath over and over again. Shit. Shit. Shit.
‘T minus twelve hundred, Proof of Concept. We have some music for you.’
A syrupy dance tune begins to play over the tannoy: ‘The Garment Workers of Sevralo’.
Yakov Khyrbysk groans inwardly and glares at the launch controller. Must we? He glances at his watch and wonders where Rizhin has got to. Wandered off, sniffing out buried corpses. It makes Khyrbysk uneasy, and he is edgy enough already.
On the other side of Rizhin’s empty seat, the chief engineer is leaning forward, long dark-suited limbs gathered in tight about him. He steeples his long slender fingers. The fingernails are ruined: blackened sterile roots that will not grow again. The chief engineer (whose name on Rizhin’s order is never spoken now, not even by himself) survived five years in prison camps before Khyrbysk found him and managed to fish him out. He hunches now like a bird on a steep-gabled rooftop, watching in silence. He has the pallid complexion of a man who lives his life underground and takes no exercise, but he is hot with energy. It stares from his eyes. Fierce, stark intelligence. Such energy would have burned through a weaker person long ago, but the chief engineer’s constitution is a gift of nature. It is hard to tell how old he is, a young forty or a harrowed twenty-five. His hair is cut short at the back and the sides like a boy’s.
The convoy of sedans waits outside, lined up, engines running, ready to race Rizhin and the dignitaries to safety in case of disaster. Khyrbysk wonders if someone has thought to issue the drivers with dark glasses. He is considering checking on this when Rizhin arrives and takes his seat. Kicks back, legs stretched out, reclining.
‘Today we start the engine of history, Yakov,’ says Rizhin. ‘Today we blow open the door on our destiny.’ He fishes for a paper packet of cheap cardboard cigarettes and lights one, drawing the rough smoke deep into his lungs. ‘Those are good phrases. They have a smack to them. I’ll use them in my speech.’ He exhales twin streams through his nose. ‘No problems, eh, Yakov? No fuck-up?’
‘We’ve made test firings every week for the last three months.’
So many tests that the Chaiganur desert is scorched and glassed and pitted for hundreds of miles in every direction, the landscape pocked with scar-pits that show the corpse-grey rock beneath the orange earth. So many tests. Yellow plumes and dust streaks still linger in the upper atmosphere like nicotine stains.
The first test launches carried automatic radio transmitters. Later they sent up dogs and pigs and apes. One of the first monkeys to fly slipped free of its muzzle and screamed for three days until they had to cut the radio off. After that they equipped the beasts with remote-controlled execution collars. A bullet in the back of the neck. Nine grams of lead. Now there is a small menagerie of mummifying corpses orbiting overhead in thousand-ton steel tombs. The success rate was improving all the time, but nothing is certain. Khyrbysk knows that. Nothing is certain except his own fate if Proof of Concept pops its clogs and goes phutt! in front of the entire Presidium and the assembled press corps of the Vlast. Nine grams of lead for dear old Yakov Khyrbysk then.