Sorokin was a leading member of the secret Northern Society, which was one of several radical groups whose goal was to bring an end to the autocracy. Drakov was thirteen when Sorokin’s hopes were dashed in the tragic Decembrist Uprising. Sorokin had escaped the slaughter in the Senate Square, only to be arrested and brought before the Tsar, who personally ordered his exile to Siberia. They followed so that Vanna could be close to him. Drakov knew that she had never loved him, at least not as Sorokin loved her, but she thought him a kind and good man and she owed him gratitude and loyalty. They were released from that obligation by Sorokin’s death. He succumbed to influenza within the year, dying in his prison cell.
Vanna died soon afterward, murdered by a rapist, an ugly, smelly Georgian who took advantage of the fact that her only protector was a child of 15. When Drakov attempted to go to her defense, the rapist slashed him across the face with his knife, then kicked him repeatedly until he could no longer move. He left him bleeding, had his way with Vanna, and left her dead. Falcon had told him that the scar could be easily removed when she brought him to the 27th century, but he would not consent to it. The scar served as a daily reminder to him of what Moses Forrester had brought his mother to. It always kept the memory alive.
He survived being orphaned at 15. He survived Siberia to make his way with an old fur trader to the Russian settlements in Alaska, where he took up the fur trade, learning to hunt, learning to live in the wilderness. At the age of 20, he was on his own again. He still looked like a child. Many tried to take advantage of him. He learned how to protect himself. He learned to fight and he learned to kill. He already knew how to hate.
At the age of 24, he became a seaman, working on a trader’s schooner. They hunted seals in the Pribilofs with great success. By the age of 38, he had his own ship. He was known as the youngest captain in the Pribilofs, for few suspected his true age. It was something he had learned to conceal, though he could not explain why he looked so much younger than he was. Still, seamen were always superstitious and after a time, stories began to circulate about Captain Drakov, who miraculously did not seem to age. By then, he had made his fortune. The time had come to travel once again to some place where he was not known. He sold his ship the year that the Americans acquired Alaska and traveled to Boston. He was 55 years old and he looked like the son of a man that age.
He purchased a large mansion on Beacon Hill and set about making a new life for himself. He learned about investing in the stock market and within a few years, he had multiplied his fortune many times. He was thought to be some European nobleman and he soon became much sought after in Boston society. He, the illegitimate child of a runaway serf, rubbed shoulders with the scions of the finest families on the Eastern seaboard. But notoriety led to curiosity and it wasn’t very long before people began to inquire into his affairs, into his history. It did not seem very long before it was time to move once more.
He arrived in England in his seventieth year. He had no need of looking for an occupation. He had millions. He had everything a man could want-wealth, youth (to all appearances, he was quite young), position; the scar so ignobly received was believed to have been inflicted in a duel and so added an adventurous mystique; he could easily indulge the lavish tastes he had acquired. He entertained the finest minds in all of Europe, became a patron of the arts, sought all manner of diversions. Still, no matter what he tried, he could not find a sense of self. He was a shadow with substance, a creature who could not possibly exist, yet did exist, blessed-or cursed-with eternal youth. Why did he not age? Why did he never become ill? After a time, he was not the only one who wondered about such things, as people who had known him in America arrived in London and the gossip began anew. Only this time, he decided that he would not run away. He had had enough of running from himself. Let the speculators speculate, let the gossips gossip; let the curious wonder. He no longer gave a damn.
He became a figure of mystery and infamy. He was rich enough and he had become powerful enough to do as he pleased. He no longer cared what others thought. Doctors clamored to examine him, to conduct tests to see if they could determine the secret of his youth. He gave them all the back of his hand. Officials who became curious about his background were quickly silenced by the expedient of bribing their superiors. He quickly learned that each man had his price, some higher than others, but none so high that he could not afford to pay and never miss the loss. Women were irresistibly drawn to him, fascinated by the virile power of a man who seemed to be forever in his prime. He entertained them all, but he had none of them. He was still a virgin, unwilling to risk bringing a child into the world, a child whose father would have been a man born of some sort of supernatural union. He had no wish to pass on the curse. He remained chaste, until he met Sophia Falco.
She appeared one day in London, a woman of intrigue and mystery, apparently a rich countess from the Mediterranean. No one seemed to know much about her background. She was like quicksilver; elusive, charming, breathtakingly beautiful and compelling in a strange and savage way, like some predatory feline. She was full of animal grace and power. She fascinated him. They seemed to be two of a kind, each determined to live life solely on his own terms, with no thought for the opinions or concerns of others. Drakov was unable to resist her. He had never before met a woman who possessed such strength and independence, who affected him so profoundly.
All the while, she was penetrating his defenses, suspecting the truth about him, a truth not even he himself knew. She thought him to be a member of the temporal underground, a soldier who had deserted from the armies of the future. She thought she could make use of him and of his resources. When she finally learned the truth, for by then he could no longer keep it from her, she laughed. He could never forget that laugh. In it was contained a wild joy, grim realization of some grotesque joke that he was unaware of, bitterness, and even grief.
Each time he fantasized confronting Moses Forrester at last, having his father helpless before him, much as Rudolf Rassendyll had been, he always heard her laugh again. It had been a laugh that he had heard only that one time, for she laughed rarely and never quite like that, and each time he experienced anew the gripping fear that he had felt when he first heard it. There was an understanding in that laugh. He felt himself reflected in it, a pathetic caprice of fate, a sad and ultimately meaningless joke that served only to unite events, having no significance in and of itself.
He longed to make that fantasy reality, to confront his father, to see his face in the flesh, to hear his voice, to make him real and to demand some sort of an accounting. Look at me, he wanted to tell him. I exist! I think, I breathe, I feel! Did you even once consider me when you released your poisoned seed in a paroxysm of lust? Did you ever give any thought to what would become of the young girl who gave herself to you, to whom you whispered words of love, to whom you promised to return, all the while knowing you would leave her, never to come back? It was not enough for you to use her. It was not enough to shame her. You had to leave her with a hope that could never be fulfilled. Where were you when she gave birth to me in a ramshackle wooden cabin in the dead of Russian winter? Where were you when she was being violated? Damn you, where were you when she died?
Ultimately, at the bottom of it all, was one central question that was posed by all the other questions, a question that he knew he could never bring himself to ask directly. Where were you when I needed you?