“OK- Menial. The fact is, the Russian Revolution got defeated, and never got repeated—perhaps because the defeat was so devastating that it made any subsequent attempt impossible.” She laughed harshly. “And like the man said, it’s gonna be socialism or barbarism. Socialism’s out the window, it was dead before I was born. So barbarism it is. We’re fucked.”
Menial was shaking her head. “No, nothing’s inevitable. We make our own history—the future isn’t written down. ‘The point is to change it.’ Look at the Sheenisov, they’re building a real workers’ democracy, they’ve proven it’s still possible—and what do you do? You fight them! On the side of the Yanks and the Kazakhstani capitalists.”
“Like I said,” Myra sighed. “Real politics is complicated. Real lives, mine and those of the people I’ve taken responsibility for. The future may not be written but the past bloody well is, and it hasn’t left me with many options.”
“You mean, you haven’t left yourself-—”
“Tell you what,” Myra said, suddenly annoyed. She waved at the stack of cardboard and paper around her. “Here’s my life. There’s a lot more on the computer.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Password’s ‘Luxemburg and Parvus’ for the easy stuff. You’re welcome to all of it. The hard stuff, the real dirty secrets, I’ve put a hundred-year embargo on, and even after that it’ll be the devil of a job to hack past it. If you’re still around in a couple of centuries, give it a look.”
“This is what you’re doing?” Merrial asked. “Turning over your archives to the Institute? Why?”
Myra could feel her lips stretch into a horrible grin. “Because here it has a very slightly better chance of surviving the next few weeks, let alone the next few centuries. You want my advice, kiddo, you stop worrying about socialism and start getting ready for barbarism, because that’s what’s coming down the pike, one way or another.”
Merrial stood up and glared down at Myra. “Maybe you’ve given up, but I won’t!”
“Well, good luck to you,” said Myra. “I mean that.”
The young woman looked at her with an unreadable expression. “And to you, I suppose,” she said ungraciously, and turned on her heel and stalked out. Whether automatically or deliberately, she switched off the light as she went. Myra blinked, fiddled with her eyeband and got back to work.
“Everything all right?” Irina Guzulescu was limned in the backlight of the library doorway.
Myra straightened up and dusted off her hands.
“Yeah, I’m doing fine, thanks.” She laughed. “Sorry about the dark, I was using my eyeband to see with, instead of putting the light on.”
“Probably just as well,” the small woman said. She advanced cautiously into the room, past the opened crates and labelled stacks of Myra’s archives. “Some of the books in here are so fragile, I fear sometimes one photon could…” She smiled, and handed Myra a mug of coffee.
“Oh, thanks.” It was cold in the library’s still, stale air. She clasped her hands around the china’s warmth. “Is there anywhere I can go for a smoke?” she asked.
“Oh, sure, come on down to the basement.”
The basement seemed hardly changed; the big table that took up most of the room brought back memories—the long discussions and arguments around it, the adventures planned there, the afternoon she’d talked with Jon and Dave, and gone with Jon.
Along the way, Irina had picked up her own mug at the kitchenette cubby-hole. She sat down opposite Myra and shoved an ashtray across the table. In the unforgiving light she looked older; she’d obviously had the treatments, but the weight of her years still pulled at her face; it didn’t sag, but it showed the strain.
“Well,” Myra said, lighting up, “uh, that thing you said? About the place being watched? Why’s that?”
Irina moved her hand as though flicking ash. “Police mentality,” she said. “Obviously if we study the post-civilised, we’re potentially sympathetic to them, and to the enemy within.”
“The what?”
“The Greens.” Irina laughed. “The FU and the Greens, it’s like it used to be with the SU and the Reds. In the good old days of the Cold War, being interested in the other side at all was suspect, no matter how useful it might be. And of course the same on the other side.” She smiled. T worked at the Institute of American Studies in Bucharest. Securitate on my case all the time.”
Jesus. You must be nearly as old as I am.” Myra thought the remark tactless as soon as it was out of her mouth, but Irina preened herself at it.
“Older,” she said proudly. “I’m a hundred and ten.”
“Wow. Hundred and five, myself. Had the earlier treatments, of course, but I’ve just had the nano job.”
“Ah, good for you, you won’t regret it.” She smiled distandy. “You know, Myra Godwin, you are part of the history. Of this Institute, and of the societies it was set up to study. I supervised a student a few years ago in a PhD thesis on the ISTWR.”
“Never thought I’d end up in charge of my very own deformed workers’ state.” A dark chuckle. “Not that I ever believed that’s what it was, or is,” Myra hastened to add. “Or that such a thing could exist. Ticktin cured me of that delusion a long time ago.”
“Hmm,” said Irina. “It was Mises and Hayek for me, actually. Ticktin didn’t rate them very highly. Or me.” She laughed. “Used to call me ‘Ceauşescu’s last victim’.”
“Well, yes,” Myra said. “Never found the liberals terribly persuasive myself, to be honest. The question that always used to come to mind was, ‘Where are the swift cavalry?’ ”
Irina shook her head. “I’m sorry?”
“Oh, it was something Mises said. If Europe ever went socialist, it would collapse, and the barbarians would be back, sweeping across the steppe on swift horses. Well, half Europe was—not socialist as I would see it, but as Mises would see it—and where are the swift cavalry?”
Irina stared at her. As though unaware of what she was doing—the reflexes of a habit she must have thought was conquered coming back—she reached across the table for Myra’s cigarettes and lit one up.
“Oh, Myra Godwin-Davidova, you are so blind. Where are the swift cavalry, indeed.” She paused, narrowing her eyes against the stream of smoke.
“What mode of production would you say exists in the Former Union?”
“The post-civilised mode?”
“A euphemism.” She waved smoke. “What would your Engels call a society where cities are just markets and camps, where most people eat what they can grow and hunt for themselves, where almost all industry is at the village level, where there is no notion of the nation?”
“Well, OK, it’s an old-fashioned term,” Myra said, with half a laugh, “but I suppose technically you could call it barbarism. Technologically advanced barbarism, but yes, that’s what it is.”
“Precisely,” Irina said. She looked at her cigarette with puzzled distaste and stubbed it out. “There are your swift cavalry. Look outside our cities, at the Greens. In fact, look inside our cities. There are your swift cavalry!”
Myra really had never thought of it like that.
“The only swift cavalry I’m worried about,” she said bitterly, “are the goddamn Sheenisov.”
To her astonishment and dismay, Irina began to cry. She pulled a grubby tissue from her pocket and sobbed and sniffled into it for a minute. On a sudden impulse, Myra reached across the table and grasped her hand.
“Oh God,” Irina said at last. “I’m sorry.” She gave a long sniff and threw the tissue away, accepted Myra’s offer of a cigarette.
“No, Fm sorry,” Myra said. T seem to have said something to upset you.”
Irina blinked several times. “No, no. It’s my own fault. Oh, God, if you just knew. I stayed here to see you, not just to let you in.” The cigarette tip glowed to a cone, she was sucking so hard. “Nobody else wanted to come in this morning and meet you. They think you are a terrible person, a monster, a criminal. I don’t—” She blinked again, brightening. “I go back, you know. To Romania, and to… other ‘post-civilised’ countries. All right, to the Former Union. And you know what? People are happy there, with their farms and workshops and their local armies and petty loyalties. The bureaucrats are gone, and the mafias have no prohibitions to get rich on, and they are gone. The provinces have their small wars and their feuds, but—” she smiled now, sadly “— I sound like a feminist, if you remember them, but the fact is, it’s just a testosterone thing. Young men will kill each other, that’s the way of it. For a woman, Moscow—hell, any provincial post-Soviet town—is safer than Glasgow.”