Lom feared he was permanently gone, that they’d lost him for ever in Rizhin’s interrogation cell, but slowly with the passing of the days some of Kistler’s fire and energy returned, though not like before. When Lom had first seen Kistler he was a master of the world, filled to the brim with confident assurance. The smooth sheen of real power. It had been there in his voice, in his gaze, in the way he moved. Now he was coming back, but darker, more determined, altogether more dangerous. His hurt and his fall, the shock of his humiliation and psychic destruction at the hands of Rizhin and Hunder Rond were raw and near the surface and he was vengeful. His face was thinner and he glared at the world through dark-hooded eyes.
‘I should thank you,’ Kistler said on the third day. ‘All of you. I know what I owe, and I will not forget.’
‘We came because we need you,’ said Lom. ‘I went to Vitigorsk as you suggested. I’ve got information you can use. If you want it. If you feel you still can.’ Lom paused. ‘Or my friends can help you get far away, if that’s what you want. To the Archipelago, even. That is possible. It can be done.’
‘Yes,’ said Konnie from the front seat. ‘We can arrange that. We’ve done it before, for others. It’s what we do.’
Kistler said nothing. He looked for a long time out of the window: there was dry grass out there, dull grey lakes and low wooded hills in the distance.
‘We would understand,’ said Lom, ‘if you decided to go. No shame in that.’
Kistler didn’t look round.
‘Liars,’ he said. ‘You people didn’t risk yourselves just to let some sick old fucker go free. Certainly not a bastard and a criminal like me.’
Kistler’s eyes followed a young girl leading a horse across a hill, until they left her far behind. Lom thought he wasn’t going to say any more. Long minutes passed before Kistler spoke again.
‘I’m going to bring the fucker Rizhin to his knees,’ he said. ‘And I will do whatever it takes, whatever it takes, to make that happen. I want to see him broken. I want to see him hurt. I want to see him crawling on the floor in his own shit and piss and puke and blood. I would die to make that happen and be glad. I would suffer and howl till the end of fucking time, as long as it was him and me there together. So tell me. What have you got?’
‘Pull over,’ said Lom to Maksim, who was driving. ‘I’ll get my bag from the back.’
As they drove on, Lom told Kistler about the vast construction plants at Vitigorsk. The plans for a fleet of atomic-powered vessels to go to the planets. The experiments in resurrection and synthetic human bodies. The aspiration to abolish death.
‘Insane,’ said Kistler, ‘insane, but—’
“That isn’t all,’ said Lom. ‘It’s just the beginning.’
He opened his bag and brought out the papers from Khyrbysk’s office.
‘They are building vessels of two kinds,’ he said. ‘There was a conference a couple of years ago. A hotel on a lake. Rizhin was there, and Khyrbysk, and the chief engineer. Others too. Some names you know. Papers were circulated and minutes taken. All most efficient, and Khyrbysk kept a copy.’
He spread a folder open on his knee.
‘They are constructing two kinds of vessel,’ he said again. ‘One, a fleet to go to the planets and the stars. Five years, they think, ten at the most before they are ready. Resources are no obstacle. Rizhin promised them whatever they need. They will be arks. Transport ships to carry pioneers and the equipment they will require. It’s all planned. They’ll select the people carefully. Even two years ago they’d begun to draw up criteria and candidate lists. They are gathering scientists, artists, writers, athletes. The best of the armed forces and the finest workers.’
‘Let me see,’ said Kistler. ‘Show me the names.’
‘They need huge amounts of angel matter to power the craft,’ said Lom. ‘More than all the carcasses can supply. But there is a living angel in the forest and Rizhin says it’s huge. Immense. An angel mountain. He’s going to find it and excavate its living flesh. Army divisions are already in the forest searching.’
Kistler was still looking at the lists. The people at the conference.
‘I don’t recognise these names,’ he said. ‘None of the Central Committee is here. No one from the Presidium or the ministries. Only Rond.’
‘They don’t know,’ said Lom. ‘None of them know about it because they’re not going. They’re not invited to the stars. But the arks are just part of it. There’s another kind of vessel design. These are for low planetary orbit only, and there are to be thirty of them. They’re also building bombs. Huge atomic bombs. Emperor Bombs. The power of these weapons can’t be understated, it can’t even be imagined: a single one would have the power of sixty million tons of high explosive, big enough to flatten entire cities and destroy half a province on its own. They expect them to set the air itself on fire. The orbital craft, the second design, will be artillery platforms. Flying gunships, each one equipped with twenty Emperor Bombs. That’s six hundred of them. The dust will blacken the skies for years. Five years of darkness and winter. Clouds of poisonous elements will cover the continent, raining disease and death. The atmosphere of the world will burn away.’
‘Even if they could build such weapons,’ said Kistler, ‘they could never use them. We know the Archipelago has its own atomic weapons now. We would destroy each other.’
‘No need for the Archipelago to do that,’ said Lom. ‘Rizhin’s orbiting gunships are intended to do it all. Burn the Archipelago, burn the Vlast, burn the endless forest too. Burn it all. Scorched earth. Leave the planet a smoking cinder.’
Kistler stared at him. Lom saw growing understanding in his eyes.
‘I see,’ said Kistler. ‘Rizhin and his arks will leave the planet and destroy it behind them so no one can follow, so no such ships are ever built again.’
‘That’s part of the reason,’ said Lom, ‘but also so that no one who goes with Rizhin to the stars can ever dream of coming home again.’ He took the note of the conference and found the page he needed. ‘Rizhin’s own words were recorded verbatim.’
He handed the paper to Kistler.
‘We must leave nothing behind us. No before-time. No happy memory. No nostalgia for golden age and home. And above all, no one to come after us. We will be the first and the last. There is no past, there is only the future.’
Kistler read it over several times. Shaking his head.
‘A single man might think this,’ he said, ‘but that others should follow, and help him, and do his work…?’
‘Khyrbysk for one didn’t care,’ said Lom. ‘Nor did the chief engineer. There are letters between them that Khyrbysk kept.’
Lom quoted a passage. He had it by heart.
‘“Where death is temporary, a million deaths, a billion, ten billion, do not matter. When we have mastered the science of retrieving memory from atoms we can come back here for the dust, if we have need of the ancestral dead to fill the planets we find.”
‘I’m not sure if Rizhin believes the resurrection stuff himself,’ he added. ‘You can’t tell that from these papers.’
‘But,’ said Kistler, ‘can they really do this? Could they actually build these things? Could they truly hope to travel to the stars?’
‘For our present purposes,’ said Lom, ‘that doesn’t really matter, does it? It hardly makes any difference at all. Rizhin intends it. He has corresponded with Khyrbysk–I’ve got letters in his own hand here. The project has begun.’