Wolfhound Century

20


Lom stopped in front of the Armoury and looked up. Narrow and needle-sharp, the One Column on Spilled Blood speared a thousand feet high out of the roof. The militia was headquartered at the Armoury, not the Lodka, a distinction they carefully maintained. Being both soldiers and police, yet not exactly either, the militia considered themselves an elite within the security service, the Novozhd’s killers of choice.

He climbed the splay of shallow steps and pushed his way through heavy brass-furnished doors into a place of high ceilings; black and white tiled floors; cool, shadowed air; the echoes of footsteps; the smell of polish, sweat, uniforms and old paper. There were texts on the walls, not the exhortations and propaganda that encrusted the city, but the core tenets of the committed Vlast.

ALL THAT IS COMING IS HERE ALREADY.

HISTORY IS THE UNFOLDING OF THE CLOTH, BUT THE CLOTH HAS ALREADY BEEN CUT AND EVERY STITCH SEWN.

A clerk behind a high counter was watching him.

‘I’m looking for Major Safran,’ said Lom

‘Just missed him. He left about ten minutes ago.’

‘How do I find him?’

‘Try the stables. He’ll be with the mudjhik. Never goes home without saying goodbye.’


The stables, when he found them, were a separate block on the far side of the parade ground. The doors, fifteen feet high and made of solid heavy planks, stood open. Lom stepped inside and found himself in a high-ceilinged hall of stone: slit windows near the roof; unwarmed shadows and dustmotes in the air. It didn’t smell like stables. No straw. No leather. No horse shit. The mudjhik was standing motionless at the far end of the hall, in shadow. A militia man was sitting at its feet, his back against the wall.

‘I’m looking for Major Safran.’

‘That’s me.’

Lom took a step forward. The mudjhik stirred.

‘Come on,’ said Safran. ‘He’ll be still.’

The mudjhik was a dull red in the dim light, the colour of bricks and old meat. Taller than any giant Lom had seen, and solider, squarer: a statue of rust-coloured angel stone, except it wasn’t a statue. Lom felt the dark energy of its presence. Its watchfulness. The mudjhik’s intense, disinterested, eyeless gaze passed across him and the sliver of angel stuff in Lom’s forehead tingled in response. It was like putting the tip of his tongue on the nub of a battery cell: the same unsettled sourness, the same metallic prickling. The same false implication of being alive.

Safran waited for Lom to come to him. He was about thirty years old, perhaps, smooth shaven, his hair clipped short and so fair it was almost colourless. His uniform was crisp and neat. A small, tight knot tied his necktie. Without the uniform he could have been anything: a teacher, a civil servant, an interrogator: the joylessly nutritious, right-thinking staple of the Vlast. And yet there was something else. Safran seemed… awakened. The life-desire of the mudjhik glimmered in his wash-pale eyes. His slender hands moved restlessly at his side, and the mudjhik’s own hands echoed the movement faintly. And there was the angel seal, the third blank eye, in the front of his head.

‘Well? I’ve got five minutes.’

Lom took off his cap. Letting Safran see his own seal set in his brow.

Safran grunted. ‘You can feel him then.’

‘It’s watching me?’

‘Of course.’

Lom looked up into the mudjhik’s face. Except it had no face, only a rough and eyeless approximation of one. It wasn’t looking anywhere in particular, not with its head sockets, but it was looking at him.

‘They call them dead,’ Safran was saying, ‘and they use them like pieces of meat and rock, but that’s not right, is it? You’d know what I mean.’

‘Would I?’

‘We know, people like you and me. The angel stuff is in us. We know they’re not dead.’

Lom stepped up to the mudjhik and placed his hand on its heavy thigh. It was smooth to the touch, and warm.

‘Is it true,’ he said, ‘that it contains the brain and spinal cord of a dead animal?’

‘You shouldn’t touch him. He has his own mind. He acts quickly.’

‘With a dead cat for a brain?’

Lom didn’t remove his hand. He was probing the mudjhik, as it was probing him. He encountered the distant pulse of awareness. Like colours, but not.

‘Not cat,’ said Safran. ‘Dog. It’s in there somewhere, but it’s not important. You really should step away.’

It was like being nudged by a shunting engine. Lom didn’t see it move, but suddenly he was lying on his back, breath rasping, mouth gaping, hot shards of pain in his ribs. Safran was standing over him, looking down.

Lom rolled over and rose to his knees, head down, retching sour spittle onto the floor. No blood. That was something. He felt the mudjhik pushing fingers of awareness into his nose, his throat, his chest.

Stop!

Lom repelled the intrusion, slamming back at it hard. He wasn’t sure how he knew what to do, but he did. He felt the mudjhik’s surprise. And Safran’s.

Lom hauled himself unsteadily to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘You’re a crazy man,’ said Safran.

Lom was becoming aware of the link between Safran and the mudjhik. There was a flow between them, a cord of shared awareness.

‘Did you make it do that?’

‘That’s not how it works.’

‘But you could have stopped it.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t try.’

‘And if I hit you, what would it do?’

‘Defend me.’

‘I saw your picture in the paper.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Levrovskaya Square. You were getting a handshake from a bank. I wasn’t sure what for.’

‘Protecting the money.’

‘But you didn’t. Thirty million roubles disappeared from under your nose.’

Lom was rubbing his chest and pressing his ribs experimentally. The pain made him wince but nothing felt broken. The mudjhik had judged it just right.

‘It might have been worse,’ said Safran. ‘They didn’t get into the bank.’

‘They weren’t trying to. The strong-car was the target.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. The bank was happy. It wasn’t their money. Hadn’t been delivered.’

‘You were waiting for them. You must have known they were coming.’

‘So?’

‘You could have stopped it. You were meant to let them get away.’

‘You should be careful, making accusations like that.’ The mudjhik took a step forward. ‘People have been killed wandering about in here. Accidents. It’s dangerous around mudjhiks if they don’t know you.’

‘Were you paid off?’

‘What’s your name, Investigator?’

‘Lom. My name is Lom.’

‘And who are you working for, Lom? Who are you with? Does anyone know you’re here?’

‘You could buy a lot of militia for thirty million roubles.’

‘And you should piss off.’

‘So how did you know they were coming?’

‘Detective work.’

‘You had an informant. Someone in the gang, maybe. Who was it?’

‘Don’t they teach you the rules where you come from, Lom? What’s the rule of informants? The first rule?’

Never reveal the name. Not even to your own director. Even you, you yourself, must forget his name for ever. Remember only the cryptonym. One careless word will ruin both your lives for ever.

‘You’re in trouble, Major. Corruptly receiving bribes. Standing aside to let thirty million roubles go missing.’

‘You couldn’t prove that. Even if it was true, which it isn’t.’

‘You were following orders then. Whose? Tell me whose.’

‘Shit. You’re not joking are you.’

‘You want to stay a major for ever?

‘What?’

‘Taking bribes is one thing. But nobody likes the ones that get caught. It’s not competent. It’s not commanding officer material.’

‘I should kill you myself.’

The mudjhik’s feet moved. A sound like millstones grinding.

‘But you won’t. You don’t know who I’m working for. You don’t know who sent me. You think I’m here for the hell of it?’

‘Who?’

‘No.’

Safran shrugged and looked at his watch.

‘There was no informant.’

‘Yes, there was.’

‘No, there really wasn’t. It was just some drunk. I have people who make it their business to be amenable in the bars where the artists go. They keep their ears open. It’s not hard. Artists are always pissed. Neurotic. Boastful. Shutting them up is the hard thing. Anyway, there was this particular one, highly strung even in that company. Mild enough sober, but he likes a brandy and opium mix, and after a few of those he starts abusing anyone in range.’

‘And?’

‘So one evening this idiot starts broadcasting to the world that he’s mixed up with some great nationalist hero, and he’s got a sack full of bombs. You should all be shit scared of me, that was his line. One day soon there’s going to be a rampage. He tells everyone how he and his new friends are going to rob a strong-car when it makes a delivery to a particular bank he mentions. Turned out it was true.’

‘The name?’

‘Curly-haired fellow. A woman’s man. Studio somewhere in the quarter. I broke in to have a look. It stank. Obscene pictures too.’

‘The name.’

‘Petrov. Lakoba Petrov.’





21


Lom wanted to go back into the Registry to see if there was a file on Petrov, but when he got there he found the doors shut against him. The Gaukh Engine was closed to readers for the rest of the day. Shit. He looked at his watch. It was just past four. He considered going to his office, but what was the point? It occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. To eat he needed money, and for that he needed Krogh.

Krogh’s private secretary was in the outer office. He made a show of closing the file he was reading – Not for your eyes, Lom – and stood up. Making the most of his height advantage.

‘Ah. Investigator Lom.’

‘Nice office you got me,’ said Lom. ‘Thanks.’

‘Thought you’d appreciate it. How’s the Kantor case going? Anything to report?’

‘Not to you.’

The private secretary picked up the desk diary.

‘I can fit you in with the Under Secretary this evening. He’s very busy. But I can find a space. As soon as you like, in fact. Soon as you’re ready, Investigator. Just say the word.’

‘I need money.’

The private secretary sat down and leaned back, hands behind his head.

‘I see. Why?’

‘Because I do this for a job. The idea is I get paid for it. Also, expenses.’

‘Have you discussed an imprest with the Under Secretary? As I said, I can fit you in.’

‘No. You do it. Sign something. Open the cash tin. I need two hundred roubles. Now.’

‘What expenses, actually?’

‘Rent.’

‘But you’re staying with your friend, aren’t you. The good citizen Professor Vishnik at Pelican Quay. The dvornik there is a conscientious worker, not the type to be browbeaten, or bribed come to that. I have the Vishnik file with me now, as it happens.’ He picked up a folder from his desk and made a show of leafing through it. ‘His terms of employment at the university are rather irregular, I feel.’

Lom leaned forward and rested his hands on the desk.

‘Vishnik’s my friend. Something happens to him, I’ll know who to come and see about it. Just give me some money, Secretary. I don’t intend to live off my friends, or steal food, and I don’t intend to pay bribes for informants out of my own pocket. Especially not unreliable ones.’

The private secretary gave him a friendly grin.

‘Of course, Investigator. Anything for the Under Secretary’s personal police force.’

‘And who,’ said a woman’s voice behind Lom, ‘is this fellow, to get special treatment?’

It was Lavrentina Chazia. Commander of the Secret Police.

‘This is Investigator Lom, Commander,’ the private secretary said. ‘He is doing sterling work for the Under Secretary. On provincial liaison.’

Lom wondered whether he had imagined an ironic note in the private secretary’s reply: some hidden meaning, some moment of understanding that had passed between him and Chazia. Whatever, Chazia was examining him shrewdly, and he returned the gaze. Indeed, it was hard not to stare. She was changed, much changed, since he had seen her last. The sharpness and predatory energy were the same, but there was something wrong with her skin. Dark patches mottled her face and neck. They were on her hands as well: smooth markings, hard and faintly bluish under the office light. He recognised the colour – it was in his own forehead – it was angel skin. But he had never seen anything quite like this. There had been rumours even in Podchornok that Chazia had been working with the angel-flesh technicians, experimenting, pushing at the boundaries. Lom hadn’t paid them much attention, but it seemed they were true.

‘So,’ said Chazia, ‘this is the notorious Lom. You’re from Podchornok, aren’t you?’

Lom was surprised.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I’m flattered. I’d hardly have expected someone like you – I mean, in your position—’

‘Oh I know everything, Investigator. Everything that happens in the service is my business.’ Again Lom had the uneasy feeling that she meant more than she said. Her pale narrow eyes glittered with a strange energy that was more than confidence. Something almost like relish. Hunger. ‘For example,’ Chazia continued, ‘I know that you were over at the Armoury this afternoon. Talking with Major Safran. No doubt you were… liaising with him.’

Lom felt his stomach lurch. The private secretary was watching him curiously. Lom felt… lost. Stupid. That was what he was supposed to feel, of course. Chazia was playing with him. It occurred to him that she hadn’t turned up in Krogh’s office by chance. She was showing herself to him. Letting him know who his enemies were. But why? What did it mean? Some political thing between her and Krogh that had nothing to do with him? Possibly.

‘Safran and I are both products of Savinkov’s,’ he said, indicating the lozenge of angel stuff in his head. ‘I don’t get many chances to compare notes.’

He wondered whether Chazia had already talked to Safran herself, whether she knew of his interest in the Levrovskaya Square robbery, and Petrov. But there was no way to read her expression.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I hope you got something out of it.’ She smiled, showing sharp even teeth, and her pale eyes flashed again, but her face showed little expression, as if the patches of angel stuff had stiffened it somehow. The effect made Lom feel even more queasy. Out of his depth. He was relieved when she had gone.





22


Lom took a tram back to Vishnik’s apartment.

The private secretary had signed him a chit. It took Lom more than an hour to find the office where he could get it cashed. It was only twenty roubles.

‘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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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.


In snow-covered lands – in fields of wheat –

In roaring factories –

Ecstatic and on fire with happy purpose – With you in our hearts, dear Novozhd –

We work – we fight –

We march to Victory!


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 f*cking 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.

‘Many brave warriors of the Vlast have fallen in the struggle. I know them all, I have felt the anguish of each one, and I’ve cried your tears – you who are listening to me now and thinking of your own sons and daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, comrades and friends. Let’s remember the fallen today. We owe them an unpayable debt. Don’t be ashamed to weep for them sometimes. I do. But praise them also.

‘I know you all. I am your friend as you are mine. The angels know you too. Friends, I am here to tell you that the time of Victory is close! The Archipelago is sending an ambassador to Mirgorod to sue for peace with us. The enemy weakens and tires. The light of truth dawns in their eyes. Yes, my friends. Victory draws near. One last push! One last supreme effort! The great day is soon.

‘I want you to hear this from my own lips. Pay close attention now and remember. On this very day of Truth and Light I want you to hear it and be sure. Your love is with me. Our victory will be absolute and total. With the Truth of the Angel clear in our minds it cannot be otherwise. Goodnight.’

The image of the Novozhd at his desk faded out, replaced by a full close-up of his face. He was outside now. The sunshine was in his face, making him crinkle the corners of his eyes in laughter lines. A breeze teased his hair. As the opening bars of the ‘Friendship Song’ began to play, the words started scrolling slowly up the screen and twenty thousand voices sang.


All join in our song about him –

About our beloved – our Novozhd! And us his true friends –

The people – his friends!

Count us? You cannot!

No more could you count

The water in the sea!

All join in our song about him!


‘F*ck,’ said Vishnik as they filed out slowly into the rain. ‘We need a drink.’





23


It was almost midnight. After the Dreksler-Kino, Vishnik had dragged Lom to a bar where they drank thin currant wine. He would have stayed there all night if Lom hadn’t insisted on going back and getting some food. And now Lom was sitting on the couch in Vishnik’s room with his legs stretched out along the seat. His chest was sore and bruised where the mudjhik had hit him, but the stove had heated the room to a warm fug and the bottle of plum brandy was nearly empty. The apartment smelled of lamb goulash and burning paraffin, and also of something else – the sweet tang of hydroquinone. Lom recognised it from the photographic laboratory at Podchornok.

‘That smell. Is that developer?’

‘What?’ said Vishnik. ‘Oh. Yes. I was printing.’ His face was flushed. He had been drinking steadily all evening. ‘Photographs. Have you ever made photographs, my friend? Marvellous. Very f*cking so. You’re completely absorbed, you see. In the moment. Immersed in your surroundings. Watching your subject. Observing. How does the light fall? What is the shutter speed? Aperture? Depth of field? It is an intimate thing. Very f*cking intimate. It drives out all other thoughts. Your heart rate slows. Your blood pressure falls. You are in a waking dream. Time is nowhere. Nowhere.’ Vishnik lurched unsteadily to his feet. ‘Wait. Wait. I’ll show you. Wait.’

He was going towards the kitchen when there was a loud rapping at the outer door. Vishnik froze and stared at Lom. The fear was in his face again. His eyes went to the bag waiting packed by the door.

‘I’ll get it,’ said Lom. ‘I’ll deal with it. You wait here.’

Lom opened the door, half expecting uniforms. But there was only a woman, her wide dark eyes staring into his.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I was looking for Raku Vishnik. I thought this was his place. I’m sorry. Would you know, I mean, which—?’

Vishnik had come up behind him.

‘Maroussia?’ he said. ‘I thought it was your voice. This is a good surprise. Don’t stand in the doorway. Come in. Please. Come in.’

She hesitated, glancing at Lom.

‘I’m sorry, Raku. I wanted to ask you something. But it can wait. You’re not alone. Now’s not the time. I’ll come back.’

‘Ridiculous,’ said Vishnik. ‘F*cking so. You can speak in front of Vissarion, for sure. He is my oldest friend, and he is a good man. If there is trouble, perhaps he can help. At least come in now you’re here. Warm yourself. Eat something. Have brandy with us. ‘

‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s no trouble. It doesn’t matter.’

Lom had been watching her carefully. The yellow light from Vishnik’s room splashed across her troubled, intelligent face. She looked worn out and alone. Like she needed friends. She would be worth helping, Lom found himself thinking. He wanted her to stay.

‘Don’t mind me,’ he said. ‘Please. You look tired.’

She hesitated.

‘OK then,’ she said. ‘Just for a moment.’

Lom stood back to let her in. As she passed he caught her faint perfume: not perfume, but an open, outdoor scent. Rain on cool earth.


‘Well,’ said Vishnik. ‘How can I help?’ He was pacing the room, eager and animated. ‘What is it that I can do for you? There must be something, for you to come so late. Tell me, please. I am eager for gallantry. For me, the chances are few. Ask me, and it is yours.’ His eyes were alive with pleasure. He was more than a little drunk.

Maroussia looked at Lom again.

‘I don’t know that I should…’ she said.

‘Oh for the sake of f*ck, Maroussia,’ said Vishnik. ‘Tell us what you need.’

She took a breath. ‘OK. I want you to tell me about the Pollandore, Raku. I want you to tell me anything you know about it. Anything and everything.’

Vishnik stopped pacing and stared at her.

‘The Pollandore?’

‘Yes.’ Maroussia was looking at him earnestly. Determined. ‘The Pollandore. Please. It’s important.’

‘But… f*ck, this I was not expecting… of all things, this.’ Vishnik fetched another bottle from the shelf and settled himself in a sprawl on the rug on floor. ‘Why are you asking me this?’

‘You know about it? You can tell me?’

‘I’ve come across the story. It’s an old Lezarye thing. Suppressed by the Vlast long ago. Nobody knows about the Pollandore any more.’

‘I do,’ said Maroussia. ‘My mother used to talk about it. A lot. She still does.’

‘Really?’ said Vishnik. ‘I thought… those stories are forgotten now.’ He turned to Lom. ‘Did you ever hear of the Pollandore, Vissarion?’

Lom shrugged. ‘No. What is it?’

‘Maroussia?’ said Vishnik. ‘Will you tell him?’

‘No,’ said Maroussia. ‘I want to hear it from someone else.’

‘OK,’ said Vishnik. ‘So then.’ He poured himself another glass. ‘Do you ever think about what the world was like before the Vlast, Vissarion?’

‘No,’ said Lom. ‘Not much.’

‘Four hundred years,’ said Vishnik. ‘But it might as well have been four thousand, no? Our civilisation, if we might even call it that, has lived for so long in the shadow of the angels’ war, our history is so steeped in it, we live with its consequences in our very patterns of thought. Who can even f*cking measure the damage it has done?’ Vishnik paused. ‘That’s what the Pollandore is about. The time before the war of the angels.’

‘The Lezarye walking the long homeland,’ said Maroussia quietly. ‘The single moon in the sky, not broken yet.’

‘The world had gods of its own, then,’ Vishnik was saying. ‘That’s how the story goes. Small gods. Gentle, subtle, local gods. But those gods are gone now. They withdrew when the angels began. They foresaw destruction and a terrible, unbearable future. They couldn’t co-exist with that. Their time had to end.’

Vishnik emptied his glass and poured another. Lom wondered just how drunk he was. And how long since he’d had an audience like this.

‘But before they went,’ Vishnik continued, ‘one of them, a forest god, made a copy of the world, the whole world, as it was at the moment before the first angel fell to earth. It was a pocket world, a world in stasis. Everything squeezed up into a tiny box. A packet of potential that would exist outside space and time, containing not things themselves but the potential for things. Possibilities. Do you see?’

‘Yes,’ said Lom. ‘I guess so.’

‘The idea was,’ said Vishnik, ‘that this other future, the future that could not now be, in our world, was to be kept safe. Waiting. A reserve. A fall-back. A cupboard. A seed. That’s the Pollandore. That’s the legend, anyway.’

‘But what happened to it, Raku?’ said Maroussia. ‘Where did it go?’

‘The people of Lezarye kept it safe for a while, but in the end the Vlast took it.’

‘Yes,’ said Maroussia. She was leaning forward. Looking at Vishnik intently. ‘But what did they do with it? Where is it now?’

Vishnik shrugged.

‘They tried to destroy it,’ he said, ‘but they could not. It was lost. Why are you asking me this, Maroussia? These are old forgotten things.’

‘I want to find it.’

‘Find it?’ Vishnik looked startled. ‘F*ck.’

‘Yes. And please don’t tell me it doesn’t exist. I don’t want to hear that again.’

‘But… It’s a good story, yes. A symbol. Truth in a picture. But what makes you think this? That it actually exists?’

Maroussia hesitated. Lom tried to read her expression but couldn’t. She was looking at Vishnik with a pale and troubled look.

‘Things have been… happening,’ she said. ‘Things have been coming… to my mother. From the forest. She was there once, long ago, before I was born, and something happened. I don’t know what. But she always used to talk about the Pollandore. And now… Things happen in the city. I see… stuff that isn’t there… only it’s more real than what is there. It’s like glimpses of a different version of the world. It’s as if the Pollandore was trying to open. That’s what it feels like. That’s what it is.’ She stopped. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not saying this right.’

But Vishnik was hardly listening any more.

‘Oh, my darling girl!’ he said. ‘You see these things too? I thought I was the only one. And you think it’s the Pollandore? That’s… that’s… I hadn’t seen that, but it could be. It could be so. What an idea that is. F*ck. Yes. But—’

‘Raku? Do you mean you know what I’m talking about?’ said Maroussia. ‘F*ck,’ said Vishnik. ‘I could hug you. I could f*cking hug you.’

‘Could somebody tell me, please,’ said Lom, ‘just what the hell you two are talking about?’

‘Tell you?’ said Vishnik. ‘F*ck. Show you.’ He stood up and lurched unsteadily in the direction of the kitchen.

‘Raku?’ said Lom. ‘What are you—’

‘Wait,’ said Vishnik. ‘This is what I was going to show you anyway. Wait.’


Lom and Maroussia sat for a moment in awkward silence while Vishnik rummaged in the other room and came back with a large round hatbox. He dumped it on the low table and took off the lid.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Look.’

The box contained photographs. Hundreds of them. Vishnik shuffled through them, picking out one after another.

‘See?’ said Vishnik. ‘See?’

The photographs were odd and beautiful. A light in a window at dusk, shining from a derelict building. A penumbra of gleaming mist about a house. A great dark cloud in the sky. There was a sad magic in them all. It was in the sunlight on a street corner, in the ripples in a pool of rain on the pavement, in the way the light caught the moss on a tree. Gleams and glimpses. Tracks and traces. There was a purity of purpose in Vishnik’s work that was strangely moving.

‘I’ll tell you something,’ said Vishnik, pointing to one picture. ‘That building there. See it. It does not exist. It never did. I photographed it, but it’s not there. I have been back. Nothing.’ He picked up another. His face was flushed. His breath ripe with brandy. ‘See this burned-out store? There was no fire. See this alleyway? Its not on any map. See this island? There is no island in this water. And this couple has no children. I know them, Vissarion. They live here. But see… there… that child?’

Maroussia was looking through the photographs intently, staring at each one with a frown of concentration. She said nothing.

‘And these,’ Vishnik was saying, opening a small package and laying the contents out on the table. ‘These are my specials. My very f*cking absolutely specials.’

The first picture was a street scene, but the familiar world had been torn open and reconstructed all askew. The street skidded. It toppled and flowed. All the angles were wrong. The ground tilted forwards, tipping the people towards the camera. It wasn’t an illusion of perspective, the people knew it was happening. A bearded man and an old woman threw up their arms and wailed. A baby flew out of its mother’s arms.

Maroussia picked up the picture and stared at it for a long time.

‘Oh Raku,’ she whispered. ‘This is it. Yes. This is it.’

Raku went to sit next to her.

‘How often do you see this?’ he said quietly.

‘Not often,’ said Maroussia. ‘Sometimes. You?’

‘All the f*cking time. But then I look for it. Every day.’

‘How long have you been doing this, Raku?’

‘Two years,’ said Vishnik. ‘Maybe more. Other people are seeing it too, I’m sure of it. It’s not the kind of thing you talk about though.’

Lom remembered the woman in the paper, the mother who had killed her children. The floors keep opening, that was what she’d said. Will no one stop it? He looked through the other pictures. Vishnik’s specials. One showed an interior, a hotel bar, but the walls of the room were broken open to the elements and the ceiling was studded with stars. A woman’s head was floating upside down in the corner of the picture, smiling. The barman, from the waist up, floated in mid-air, while his legs – were they his? – danced at the other end of the room. In another, a girl was descending like a messenger from the sky to milk a luminous cow. In her ecstasy at the lights blazing across the black night, she had left her head behind. The whole city was ripping open at the seams.

‘You made these?’ said Lom.

‘All the time,’ said Vishnik.’Always.’ He picked one out and showed it to Maroussia. ‘This is today’s. It’s a good one.’

She looked at it and passed it to Lom. The print was still damp. It had been taken in a café or a bakery, something like that. There was a girl in a black dress floating in the air. Up near the ceiling. The top had come off the counter: it was up there with her.

‘These are good,’ said Lom. ‘How do you do it?’

‘What, you think these are fakes?’ said Vishnik.

‘Well—’

‘F*ck off with fakes. Of course they’re not f*cking fakes. This is what’s happening. Out there. This is the city. Maroussia has seen this.’ He looked at her. ‘No? Am I not right?’

‘Yes,’ said Maroussia. ‘It’s the Pollandore.’

‘See?’ said Vishnik. ‘Shit. Why would I make such stuff up? Why do fakes? F*ck, Vissarion. You’ve been a policeman too long.’

Maroussia stared at Lom.

‘What?’ she said. ‘What did he say? You? You’re the police?’

Lom didn’t say anything.

‘Well,’ said Vishnik. The colour had drained from his face. ‘Yes, I suppose he is a policeman. Of a sort. But a good policeman. Not really a policeman at all.’

‘Raku?’ said Maroussia quietly. ‘What have you done?’

‘It’s OK,’ said Lom. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t—’

But Maroussia was on her feet, gathering her coat. Her face was closed up tight. She looked… alone. He wanted to reach out to her. He didn’t want her to go, not like this.

‘Maroussia—’ he said.

‘Leave me alone. Don’t say anything to me. I’ve made a mistake. I have to go.’

Vishnik was aghast.

‘No.’ he said. ‘Don’t go. Not when we’ve just… F*ck. F*ck. But it’s fine. Vissarion is a friend. Your friend.’

‘Don’t be an idiot, Raku,’ said Maroussia. ‘That could never be.’

Lom watched her walk out the room, straight and taut and brave. He felt something break open quietly inside him. A new rawness. An empty fullness. An uncertainty that felt like sadness or hunger, but wasn’t.