The Vlast’s information machine was in fact three machines, or rather it was a machine in three parts: that was how Chazia expounded it. First, there was the soft machine, the flesh machine, the machine of many humans. They were the Outer Agents: uniformed policemen, plain-clothes detectives, infiltrators and provocateurs — tens if not hundreds of thousands of them — watching and listening, collecting information about the political activities, opinions and social connections of the population. The Outer Agents used direct observation, and they also employed their own informants — dvorniks, tram drivers, schoolteachers, children. Their primary targets were the shifting and fissile groups of dissidents, separatists, anarchists, nationalists, democrats, nihilists, terrorists, insurgents and countless other dangerous sects and cults that sought to undermine the Vlast. Naturally they also collected an enormous amount of collateral intelligence on the families, neighbours and associates of such people, and on public servants and prominent citizens generally, for the purposes of cross-reference, elimination and potential future usefulness.
The soft machine fed the second machine, the paper machine: tons and tons of paper; miles of paper; paper stored in the dark cavernous stacks that ramified through the basements and inner recesses of the Lodka. Nothing was thrown away: nothing had ever been thrown away in the history of the centuries-long surveillance. The technicians of the paper machine were the archivists and code breakers and, at the pinnacle of the hierarchy, the analysts. It was they who, working from summary observation sheets, prepared the semi-magical Circles of Contact. Finding cadres, plots and secret cells in the teeming mass of the population was harder than finding needles in haystacks. Circles of Contact was how you did it. You began by writing a name — the Subject — at the centre of a large sheet of paper and drawing a circle around it. Then you drew spokes radiating from the circle, and at the end of each spoke you put the name of one of the Subject’s contacts or associates. The more frequent or closer the contact, the thicker the connecting spoke. Each associated name then became the centre of its own circle, a new node in its own right, and the process was repeated. The idea was to find the patterns — connections — linked loops — that would crystallise out of seemingly inchoate lists of names and dates and demonstrate the presence of a tightly knit but secretive connection. Lom found it exhilarating. It was like focusing a microscope lens and seeing some tiny malignant creature swimming in a bath of fluid. This was why he had become a policeman. To understand the pattern, to find the alien cruelty at its heart, to cut it out.
And the third machine, Chazia had said, the heart and brain of the operation, was the machine of steel and electricity: the famous Gaukh Engine, right at the heart of the Lodka. And now Lom was standing in its shadow.
The archivist came back.
‘The material you ordered is unavailable,’ she said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means you can’t have it. You don’t have the appropriate authorisation.’
‘Where do I get authorisation? I mean urgently. I mean now.’
‘This material is stored in Commander Chazia’s personal archive. They are her personal papers, and her personal permission is required. In writing. I’m sorry, Investigator. There’s nothing I can do.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you. I’m grateful for your help.’
Shit.
I’m running out of threads.
Pull another one.
19
The tattered pelmet of an awning fluttered in the wind. It was the colour of leather. Florid script crawled across it. Bakery. Galina Tropina. Confections. Coff –.
Vishnik went in.
The woman behind the counter frowned at him. She had arms the colour and texture of uncooked pastry, and her hair was artificially curled, sticky-looking, dyed a brash, desiccated copper. There were a couple of empty tables at the back.
‘I would like coffee,’ said Vishnik. ‘Strong, please. And aquavit. A small glass of that. Plum. Thank you.’
His legs were trembling. He was getting sensitive: things were getting to him more than they should. I’ve been spending too much time on my own. He used to like being alone, when he was young. But that was a different kind of loneliness: the solitude of the only child who knows that he is free and safe and loved. That was the rich, enchanted solitude of Before. Before the purge of the last aristocrats, when the militia had come winkling them out of the obscure burrows they had made for themselves in their distant country estates.
That was a different world. The storms smashed it long ago. All I am now is fucking memories. I move through life facing backwards.
He checked the camera. It was a precise, purposeful thing. A Kono. When he was growing up in Vyra, a camera was a hefty contraption of wood and brass and leather bellows, which required a solid and man-high mahogany tripod to hold it steady. But the Kono was matte black metal, about the size of his notebook, and sat comfortably in the palm of his hand, satisfyingly solid and weighty. Vishnik had built a darkroom in the kitchen of his apartment, where he developed his own films and made his own prints, which he kept in boxes. Many, many boxes.
A girl came into the bakery and put a basket of provisions on the counter. Her black dress fell loosely from her narrow, bony shoulders. Her fine strengthless hair had parted at the back to show the pale nape of her neck. She wore thick grey stockings and scuffed, awkward shoes. The woman behind the counter smiled at her. The smile was a sunburst of love, extraordinary, generous and good, and in the moment of that smile it happened: the surface of the world split open, spilling potential, spilling possibility, spilling the hidden truth of things.
The sheen of the zinc counter top separated itself and slid upwards and sideways, a detached plane of reflective colour, splashed with the vivid blues and greens of the tourist posters on the opposite wall. The hot-water urn opened its eyes and grinned. The floorboards turned red– gold and began to curl and writhe. The woman’s arms were flat, biscuity, her hands floated free, dancing with poppy-seed rolls to the tune of the gusting rain, and the girl in the black dress was floating in the air, face downwards, bumping against the ceiling, singing ‘The Sailor’s Sorrow’ in a thin, clear voice.
Cautiously, slowly, so as not to disturb the limpid surface of the moment, Vishnik raised his camera to his eye and released the shutter. He wound the film on slowly — cautiously — with his thumb and took another. And another. Then he opened his notebook and began to write, spilling words quickly and fluently across the page.
The Pollandore, buried beneath a great and populous upper catacomb of stone in the heart of the city, waits, revolving.
In darkness, but having its own light, it turns on its axis slowly. Swelling and subsiding. Gently.
Like a heart.
Like a lung.
Like respiration.
Every so often — more frequently now, perhaps, but who could measure that? — somewhere inside it — deep within its diminutive immensity — a miniscule split fissures slightly wider — a cracking — barely audible, had there been anyone to hear it (there wasn’t) — the faintest spill of light and earthy perfume.