Towering over the Pollandore on its own framework of girders, the swollen samovar–the uranium gobbet in its bulging belly, the uranium seed sleeved in its high-explosive kernel–awaits its moment in the sun. Uncle Vanya’s big fat beautiful cousin. Cables snake away across the ice.
Several miles from the Pollandore’s crude gantry, in a concrete bunker with walls three feet deep and one thick panoramic window, Ambroz Teleki was handing out tubs of sunscreen and aviator glasses with dark-tinted lenses. Lavrentina Chazia waved him away.
‘I’m not staying cooped up inside this hutch,’ she said. ‘I’m going out to feel the hot wind on my face.’
Teleki was horrified.
‘But that’s impossible! Secretary Chazia, you do not appreciate the danger… the strength of the blast… Even at this distance—’
Chazia silenced him with a look.
‘At dawn,’ she said, ‘there will be a new sun. Am I not to bask in its warmth?’
She turned to the corner where the Shaumian girl sat watching her with dark resentful eyes.
‘And you, Maroussia darling,’ said Chazia, ‘you will see the flash on the horizon and know the moment for what it is. The destruction of the Pollandore. I’m glad you’re here to see it, it’s only right you should. That thing has been a source of delusion for us both, in our different ways. To be released from it will be a great step forward. You’ll see things in their true relations then.’
Chazia had been reluctant to destroy the Pollandore after investing so much in it for so long. She had wanted to carry out the angel’s instruction, but the thought of doing it was deeply painful. She had continued to put up inward resistance until rigorous self-examination and the guidance of the angel had gradually opened her eyes to the truth. It had taken time, but at last, freed from false consciousness by a better teaching, she’d come to realise what a beguiling cipher the Pollandore was: a meaningless emptiness, a zero mirage into which she’d been led to pour her desires, against her true interests and the reality of things as they were. The Pollandore had woven subtle nets of illusion to protect itself while it exploited her, just as it had ensnared Maroussia.
‘Make sure she watches,’ Chazia said to the SV lieutenant standing guard at Maroussia’s side. ‘Make her stand there and see.’
Maroussia glared at her but said nothing.
‘The pain will pass,’ said Chazia kindly. ‘Truth hurts but better understanding sets us free.’ Then she turned away and went through to the other room, the office. She opened the crate that held her suit of angel flesh and began to put it on.
The excitement of anticipation made her tremble.
Wolf-Florian galloped low across the surface of the snow, stretching his limbs in the relief of being wolf again, bounding over raised drifts. He could sense the Pollandore ahead of him. It was below the horizon but its call burned behind his eyes like he had never felt it before, and the calling pulsed with a desperate joy. He was running through the shadows of invisible trees. The flat disc of ice across which he ran was forested with the ghosts of ancient trees.
Ahead of him was the Pollandore and behind him was Lom, a perfumed beacon spilling his beautiful headstuff into the freezing air, all unaware of what he was and what he could become. And between them–Florian was closing on her now and could sense her presence–was the Shaumian woman.
Florian still did not know what to do.
The woman was change and the woman was desperate threat. A door in the world stood slightly open, which she might fling wide or slam shut. And he did not know which.
He would kill her before she could reach the Pollandore.
With his last dying breath he would carry her safely to it, so she could do what she would do.
When the time came he would know what to do.
But for now, still, even as he ran towards her, he did not know, and the not-knowing hurt. It hurt more than the desperate working of his heart as he pushed himself on at the extremity of his body’s capacity across the hardened crunching snow.
A flake of Archangel watchfulness settles upon the gantry of Uncle Vanya’s big fat cousin and flexes its fragment-wings of sentience like a bird. Archangel bird is come to taste the joy of destruction.
He observes with pin-sharp joy the diminished, fragile, vulnerable sphere beneath him. Here is the Once Great Threat. Here is the Pollandore. How pathetic Archangel finds it now, so feeble and tiny amid the wastes of ice, and bound with chains to a barrel of death!
To think that in his hurt and wounded beginning on this confining world he–he! Archangel!–once had feared this useless thing! Feared this excremetal node of weaknesses! He does not fear it now.
Destruction time coming.
Pleasurable anticipation thrills.
He lets the time of its coming run slowly. Tasting it.
He will crush this disgusting thing under the heel of his triumph. He will abort it. Soon this trivial gap will be closed, and a new roaring radiant gate will be thrown open.
Archangel-fragment throws back his bird head and crows at the approaching dawn. It is a mighty banner-shout unfurling across the glittering immensities of what will come to be.
When Chazia had gone, Maroussia got up from her chair by the window and went over to the SV lieutenant.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘I would like to visit the bathroom.’
The lieutenant looked at her with relaxed contempt. Memories in the back of his eyes. Memories of what he’d seen Chazia do to her, and what he himself had done. Maroussia pushed the thought away. She wouldn’t think of that. Not now and not ever.
‘Sit down,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Wait.’
‘Please,’ said Maroussia. ‘Please. It is urgent. I have to go now.’
The lieutenant swore.
‘Come then,’ he said. ‘But for fuck’s sake be quick.’
Lom ploughed on alone through the snow, following the line of the overhead rail. The cluster of huts was at least half a mile away. It was slow going. He hunched his face into his collar against the bitter cold. Stuffed his hands into his pockets, flexing his fingers to keep them mobile. His breath plumed steam clouds. What had seemed flat terrain from the rail car was undulating ridges and dips, crests and berms. The circle of the half-visible around him grew inexorably wider, the twilight before dawn inching towards grey. But there was nothing to see: only the levels of rolling tundra, indistinct under thin drifting mist.
He was holding tight to the idea–the unsurrendered certainty–that Maroussia was there in that cluster of huts half a mile ahead. He had no plan. That didn’t matter: plans never lasted thirty seconds when the action started. Here in subarctic near-darkness, alone and driving himself forward, chest heaving, heart pounding, across the sharp crusted snow, he knew what he had to do, the only thing he could possibly do, and he was doing it.
There was nothing else in the world but him and the half-mile of ice between him and Maroussia. It all came down to that. He had chosen this. He had made his decisions and chosen the path that brought him here. He was absolutely responsible and absolutely free and he would not fail; he would not be too late and he would not die, because to fail was to fail Maroussia, and that he would not do.