Lom raised the Exter-Vulikh and fired a stream of shells into the mudjhik’s belly. The clattering detonations echoed off the surrounding concrete, deafening even above the roar of the turbine sluice, but the shells had no discernible effect. Lom had not thought they would. It was a gesture. The magazine exhausted itself in a few seconds and he threw the gun over the rail into the water below.
For a moment nothing happened. Stalemate. The mudjhik watching them from its end of the walkway. Lom and Maroussia staring back. Waiting. Then the mudjhik turned sideways and began to edge its way across the narrow steel bridge, squeezing itself between the flimsy rails. Lom reached for Maroussia’s hand — it was the time for final, futile gestures — but he didn’t find it. Maroussia had darted forward, running straight at the mudjhik. Lom felt its surge of raw delight as it grabbed for her, reaching sideways, swinging its leading arm wildly. He felt it reaching for her with its mind at the same time. Opening itself wide. Drawing at her. It was like a mouth, gaping.
It’s trying to suck her in.
Understanding slammed against Lom’s head like a concussion. And with it another thought. Another piece of insight.
It’s too confident. It fears nothing at all.
And he saw what Maroussia was trying to do.
The mudjhik’s swing at her was too awkward a move for its precarious position on the walkway. She ducked and the arm missed her, sweeping through the air above her head. The impetus of the move overbalanced the mudjhik slightly. It stumbled and leaned against the walkway rail, which sagged under its weight.
Lom pulled Safran’s Sepora out of his pocket and fired, again and again, aiming high to clear Maroussia, aiming for the huge eyeless head. The recoils jarred his hand and shoulder. He flung all his rage and defiance and disgust and hatred at the mudjhik’s undefended, questing, open-mouthed mind. He was still tired and weak — the power of his push was nothing compared to what he had done under the ground — but he felt the jar as it impacted. It was enough. Together, the mental onslaught and the heavy magnum rounds confused the mudjhik and added momentum to its stumble. The narrow guard rail collapsed under its weight and the mudjhik fell into the churning, roaring waters of the cistern below.
82
Maroussia was lying on the narrow iron walkway. She wasn’t moving. Lom ran across. He knelt down beside her and laid his hand on her head. She stirred, raised her head and looked at him.
‘Is it gone?’ she said.
‘Yes. It’s gone. Are you… are you OK?’
‘If that thing is gone then we can go back. I need to go back.’
‘It’s almost dark,’ said Lom. ‘And it’s a long walk back. There won’t be any trams till the morning. We’ll have to stay here.’
She sat up slowly. She looked dizzy and sick.
‘No. I…’ But she had no strength for a night journey. No strength to argue even.
‘Just for tonight,’ said Lom. ‘We can stay in the Gate Master’s cabin.’
The Gate Master’s lodge was an incongruous wooden superstructure on the lip of the sea gates. The lock on the door gave easily at a shove from Lom’s shoulder. Inside was near-darkness. The smell of pitch and lingering tobacco smoke and tea. Maroussia found a lamp and matches. In the yellow lamplight the interior had a vaguely nautical flavour: large-scale charts of the harbour and the inner reaches were pinned to the walls, and more of the same were spread out on a plan table under the seaward window, with instruments, pencils, a pair of binoculars. There was a chair, the kind with a mechanism that allowed the seat to revolve and tip backwards. A long thin telescope on a tripod stood on the floor; heavy oilskins hung from a hook on the back of the door; a pair of large rubber boots leaned against the foot of a neat metal-framed bed. The Gate Master had left everything prepared to make himself comfortable when he returned: firewood stacked in the corner, water in the urn, a packet of tea, a box of biscuits. Lom pulled the heavy curtains across the window while Maroussia lit the stove and the urn. There were even two mugs to drink from. Maroussia sat on the edge of the bed and Lom took the swivelling chair, leaning back and putting his feet up on the table.
‘What if someone sees the light?’ said Maroussia.
‘There’s no one for miles. Anyway…’ Lom shrugged. ‘Shipwrecked mariners. Needs must.’ But he took Safran’s heavy revolver from his pocket and laid it on the table within reach.
‘Any bullets left in that?’
‘No.’
Maroussia was looking at him. Her eyes were dark in the lamp shadow. Uncertain.
‘Before the mudjhik fell…’ she began, and stopped. He waited for her to continue. ‘I felt something. Inside my head.’ She paused again. Lom didn’t say anything. ‘I don’t know… There was a kind of sick feeling, like I was going to faint. Everything seemed very far away. And then… it was like a fist, a big angry punch, but inside my head. It didn’t feel aimed at me, but it almost knocked me over anyway. And then the mudjhik… went.’
‘What you did was crazy. Running at it like that. You were lucky. If it had caught you when it swung—’
‘It was you, wasn’t it? The mind-punch thing. It felt like you. You did it.’
Lom said nothing.
‘And when you blew yourself out of the ground…’ said Maroussia. ‘How do you do that? I mean, what is it?’
‘I don’t know. It’s something I used to be able to do. When I was a child. Then it stopped when Savinkov sealed me up. But since the seal was taken — actually before then, when I came to Mirgorod — It’s been coming back. I just… I just do it.’
There was a long silence. Pulses of sleet battering at the window. Maroussia was examining the woollen rug on the bed. Picking at it. Removing bits of fluff.
‘Who are you?’ she said eventually. ‘I mean, what are you? Where do you come from? I mean, where do you really come from?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lom. ‘But I’m beginning to think I should try to find out.’ He took a biscuit from the box. It was soft and stale and tasted of dampness and pitch. He swallowed it and took a sip of tea. Cooling now. Bitter. He chucked the box of biscuits across the room onto the bed next to her. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Have one.’
‘No.’
‘Sleep then. We need to clear out early tomorrow. You can have the bed.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll take the floor.’
‘We could share the bed,’ she said. ‘There’s room.’
She was sitting in shadow. Lom couldn’t see anything in her face at all. Another scatter of sleet crashed against the window. The door with the broken lock stirred in the wind.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That would be better.’
83
Lom lay on his back, pressed between Maroussia and the wall. He was tired but sleep hadn’t come. As soon as he had got into the bed, Maroussia had pulled the blanket over them both, turned on her side, away from him, and apparently gone straight to sleep. He felt her long back now, pressed against his side, the length of her body stretched against his.
The wind and rain had died away. He could hear the slow rhythm of her breathing and the quiet surge of the sea. And it seemed to him that somewhere at the edge of his mind he could hear Safran under the water, crying in his pain. But if he tried to reach for the thread of it, it wasn’t there.
‘Vissarion?’
‘Yes?’
But she said nothing more. Only the gentle ebb and flow of her breath. The rising and falling of her ribs against him. He turned on his side so that his face was against the back of her neck. He could smell her dark hair. The moment of rest at the end of the pendulum’s swing, before it fell back and swung again. They would have time. Later. Or they would not.