‘I’d give you more, Investigator,’ he had said. ‘If I could. But this is the limit of my delegated expenditure authority.’ He didn’t even try to pretend this was true. ‘Of course, if you’d prefer to see the Under Secretary…’
At least now he had cash in his pocket. He stopped off on the way back to Pelican Quay and bought some onions, lamb, a box of pastries and a couple of bottles of plum brandy. Vishnik wouldn’t take rent, but it was something.
When he got to the apartment, Vishnik was waiting for him, full of energy, strangely exultant, dressed to go out. Lom sat on the couch and started to pull his boots off. He shoved the bag of shopping towards Vishnik with his foot.
‘Here. Dinner.’
‘This is no time for fucking eating, my friend,’ said Vishnik. ‘It’s only six. We’ll go out. I want to take you to the Dreksler-Kino.’
‘Another day maybe. I’ve got to work.’
‘What work, exactly?’
‘Thinking.’
‘Think at the Dreksler. You can’t be in Mirgorod and not see the Dreksler. It’s a wonder, a fucking wonder of the world. And today is Angelfall Day. ‘
Lom sighed. ‘OK. Why not.’
Lom didn’t wear his uniform. On the crowded tram he and Vishnik were the only passengers without one. The Dreksler-Kino was draped with fresh new flags and banners, red and gold. Its immense marble dome was awash with floodlight. Vertical searchlights turned the clouds overhead into a vast liquescent ceiling that swelled and shifted, shedding fine drifts of rain. Inside, twenty thousand seats, ranged in blocks and tiers and galleries, faced a great waterfall of dim red velvet curtain. The auditorium was crowded to capacity. A woman with a flashlight and a printed floor plan led them to their seats, and almost immediately the houselights dimmed. Twenty thousand people became an intimate private crowd, together in the dark.
There were cartoons, and then the newsreel opened with a mass rally at the Sports Palace, intercut with scenes from the southern front. The war was going well, said the calm, warm voice of the commentator. On the screen, artillery roared and kicked up churned mud. Columns of troops marched past the camera, waving, smoking cigarettes, grinning. Citizen! Stand tall! The drum of war thunders and thunders! The crowd cheered.
The commentator was reading a poem over scenes of wind moving across grassy plains; factories; columns of lorries and tanks.
There was stomping, jeering and whistling when the screen showed aircraft of the Archipelago being shot down over the sea. Corkscrews of oil-black smoke followed the silver specks down to a final silent blossoming of spray.
A familiar avuncular face filled the screen. The face that watched daily from a hundred, a thousand posters, newspapers and books. The Novozhd, with his abundant moustache and the merry smile in his eye.
Citizens of the Vlast, prepare yourselves for an important statement.
He’s looking older, thought Lom. Must be over sixty by now. Thirty years since he grabbed power in the Council and gave the Vlast his famous kick up the arse. The Great Revitalisation. Eight years since he re-opened the war with the Archipelago. Three decades of iron kindness. I go the way the angels dictate with the confidence of a sleepwalker.
In the Dreksler-Kino everyone rose to salute, and all across the Dominions of the Vlast people were doing the same.
‘Citizens,’ the Novozhd began, leaning confidingly towards the camera. ‘My brothers and sisters, my friends. It is now three hundred and seventy-eight years exactly, to the hour, since the first of the angels fell to us. There and then, in the Ouspenskaya Marsh, our history began. From that event, all that we have and all that we are, our great and eternal Vlast itself, took root and grew. We all know the story. I remember my mother when she used to sit by my bed and tell it to me. I was a child then, eyes wide with wonderment.’
The auditorium was in absolute silence. The Novozhd had never spoken in such intimate and fraternal terms before.
‘My mother told me how our Founder came to see for himself this marvellous being that had tumbled out of the night sky. And when he came, our Founder didn’t only see the angel, he saw the future. Some say the angel spoke to him before he died. The Founder himself left no testimony on that count, so we must say we don’t know if it’s true, although…’ The Novozhd paused and looked the camera in the eye. ‘I know what I believe.’ A murmur of assent and a trickle of quiet applause brushed across the crowd. ‘On that day,’ the Novozhd was saying, ‘the Founder saw the shape of the Vlast as it could be. From the ice in the north to the ice in the south, from eastern forest to western sea, one Truth. One Greatness. That’s what the first angel gave us, my friends, and paid for with the price of his death.’
Lom had looked up synonyms of Vlast once. They filled almost half a column. Ascendancy. Domination. Rule. Lordship. Mastery. Grasp. Rod. Control. Command. Power. Authority. Governance. Arm. Hand. Grip. Hold. Government. Sway. Reign. Dominance. Dominion. Office. Nation.
‘You know this, friends,’ the Novozhd was saying. ‘Your mothers told you, just as mine told me. And this isn’t all. Something else came to us with the first angel, and it kept on coming as other angels tumbled down to us like ripened fruit falling out of the clear sky.’
‘All of them dead,’ whispered Vishnik. ‘Every single fucking one of them dead.’
‘Brave warrior heroes,’ the Novozhd was saying, ‘fallen in the battles that broke the moon. Giving their lives in the eternal justified war. A war that wasn’t — and isn’t — against flesh and blood enemies, but against powers, against hidden principalities, against the rulers of the present darkness that surrounds us.
‘And what else did the angels bring us? Didn’t they give us the Gift of Certain Truth? Try to imagine, my brothers and sisters, my friends. Imagine if you can what it must have been like to live in this world before the first angelfall, when people like us looked up at the night sky and wondered — only wondered! — what might be there. They knew nothing. They could only guess and dream. Speculation, ignorance and superstition. Dark, terrible times. Until we were freed from all that. The long cloudy Ages of Doubt were closed. We were given incontrovertible, imperishable, touchable EVIDENCE. Ever since the first angel fall, we have KNOWN.’ The Novozhd half-stood in his chair and smacked his fist into this palm. ‘KNOWN! On this day, three hundred and seventy-eight years ago, the first of the Years of the True and Certain Justified Vlast began! May we live for ever in the wing-shadow of the angels!’
Roars from the twenty thousand. Shouting. Crowds on their feet, stamping. On the screen the image of the Novozhd paused, anticipating the ovation now being shouted and sung across five time zones. After a suitable period he raised his hand. Acknowledging, calming, requiring silence.
‘And today a new chapter is beginning.’
The audience fell quiet. This was something different.
‘We have been fighting our own war, friends, which is part of the great war of the angels, and not different from it. We too have been fighting against hidden powers and unsanctified principalities. The Archipelago — the islands of the Outsiders — the Unacknowledged and Unaccepted Lands — where no angels have ever fallen. Where even their existence is not taken for certain and true.