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  ‘Nervous, my friend?’ he says.

  ‘No, my General. The sun is hot, that’s all. I don’t like formal occasions. They make me uncomfortable’

  ‘Call me brother,’ says Rizhin. ‘Call me friend. You are not afraid, then?’

  ‘Certainly not. This is our glory and our life’s purpose.’

  ‘Good fellow. Your names will be remembered. That is why the cameras and all these stuffed shirts have turned out for you.’

  On the way back to their cars the dignitaries stare at the stubby red behemoth glowing in the sun: the Vlast Universal Vessel Proof of Concept with its magazine of two thousand apricots, rack upon rack of potent solar fruits.

  Rizhin is walking fast, oblivious to the heat, eager to be on the move. Secretary for Agriculture Vladi Broch breaks into a waddling jog to catch up with him. Broch’s face is wet with perspiration. Rizhin flinches with distaste.

  ‘Triple ash leaves?’ says Broch. ‘If you give them that now, what will you do for them when they come back?’

  ‘When they come back?’ says Rizhin. ‘No, my friend, there is no provision for coming back. That is not part of the plan.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Broch. ‘ Oh. I see. Of course. But… so, how long will they last?’

  Rizhin shrugs. ‘Who knows?’ He claps Broch on the shoulder. ‘We’ll find that out, won’t we, Vladi Denisovich? That is the method of science. You should get friend Khyrbysk to explain it to you some time.’

  5

  In the control room at Chaiganur the tannoy broadcasts radio exchanges with the cosmonauts. From the edges of the room the whirring movie cameras follow every move with long probing lenses, hunting for the action, searching for the telling expression.

  ‘T minus 2000, Proof of Concept. How are you doing?’

  All is good, Launch. Very comfortable.

  The cosmonaut’s voice grates, over-amplified and crackling.

  ‘I remind you that after the one-minute readiness is sounded, there will be six minutes before you actually begin to ascend.’

  Understood, Launch. Thank you.

  The cosmonauts have nothing to do. No function. No control over their vessel unless and until the launch controller flicks the transfer switches. Their windows are blind with heavy steel shutters, which they will take down once they reach orbit.

  If they reach orbit.

  The last of the ground crew is already three miles away, racing for the safety perimeter in trucks.

  And so the cosmonauts wait, trussed on their benches, separated by the thickness of two heavy bulkheads and a storage cavity from a warehouse of atomic bombs. They are sealed for ever inside the nose of Proof of Concept, locked in by many heavy bolts that will never be withdrawn, and the ship beneath them is alive with rumble and vibration, the whine of pumps, the whisper of gas nozzles, the thunk and clank of unseen mechanisms whose operations the cosmonauts barely understand.

  The technicians who actually control Proof of Concept are ten miles away inside a low concrete caisson, a half-buried blockhouse built with thick and shallow-sloping outer walls to deflect blast and heat up and over the top of the building. Not quite twenty in number, the technicians occupy a semicircle of steel desks facing inwards towards the launch controller at his lectern. They lean forward into the greenish screens of their cathode readout displays, flicking switches, twisting dials, turning the pages of their typescript manuals. They wear headphones and mutter into their desk microphones. Quiet purposeful conversations. For them this is no different from a hundred test firings: everything is the same except that nothing is the same.

  Behind the controller a wide panoramic window of sloping glass gives a view across the flatness of the steppe. The assembled dignitaries and journalists sit in meek rows between the controller and this window on folding chairs, the sun on their backs, not wanting to cause a distraction. In something over thirty minutes they will turn to watch Proof of Concept climbing skyward to begin her journey. They have been issued with black-lensed spectacles for the purpose. For now they clutch them in their laps and observe the technicians, alert for any hint of anxiety in the muted voices. They watch for the flicker of red lamps on consoles, the blare of an alarm, a first indication of disaster. More than one of them wants to see failure today: a grievous humiliation for Director Khyrbysk and his protectors could mean great advantage for them. Others are cold-sweating terrified of the same outcome: if Khyrbysk’s star wanes, theirs will tumble and crash all the way to a hard exile camp or a basement execution cell.

  Guests and technicians alike smoke relentlessly.

  President-Commander Osip Rizhin has not yet arrived in the control room. An empty chair waits for him between Khyrbysk and the chief engineer, whose name is never mentioned for he is a most secret and protected national resource.

  ‘T minus eighteen hundred, Proof of Concept.’

  Thank you, Launch.

  ‘You are all well?’

  There is an implication in the question. The captain of cosmonauts carries a pistol in case of… arising human problems. The psychology of each cosmonaut has been thoroughly and expertly examined, but the effects on emotional stability of massive acceleration, prolonged weightlessness and extreme separation from the planetary home are unknown. Every member of the crew is equipped with a personal poison capsule. The foresighted bureaucratic kindness of the Vlast.

  We’re all good, Launch. We could do with some music to pass the time.

  ‘We’ll look into that, Proof of Concept.’

  The launch controller’s gaze sweeps across the technicians at their workstations and settles on Engineer-Technician 2nd Class Mikkala Avril. He raises an eyebrow and she stands up.

  Five minutes later, hurrying back down the passageway from the recreation room with an armful of gramophone records, hot with anxiety to return to her console, Mikkala Avril runs slap into men in dark suits armed with sub-machine guns. Rizhin’s personal bodyguard, walking twenty-five steps ahead of the President-Commander himself. Papa Rizhin–Papa Rizhin! In person!–is bearing down on her.

  Terrified, the young woman in whom beats the heart of the New Vlast presses herself flat against the wall and shows her empty hands, the stack of records tucked hastily under her left arm. She has been taught what to do in such an extremity. Always look him in the eye, but not too much. Stay calm at all times, be respectful, answer all enquires with humour and firmness, above all conceal nothing.

  Mikkala Avril stands against the wall, back straight, eyes forward. The gramophone records are slipping slowly from the awkward sweaty grip of her elbow. Any moment now they will fall to the floor and there is nothing she can do about it. Desperately she squeezes them tighter between arm and ribs, but it only seems to make the situation worse.

  Papa Rizhin glances at her as he passes and notices her confusion. Stops.

  ‘Are you working on the launch?’

  His voice is recognisable from his broadcasts but it is not the same. It is surprisingly expressive, with the tenor richness of a good singer. Up close his cheeks are scattered with pockmarks like open pores, something which is not shown in portraits: the legacy of a childhood illness, perhaps.

  ‘Yes, General,’ she says.

  ‘What is your task?’

  ‘To monitor the telemetry of the in-atmosphere flight guidance systems, General. The vessel carries small rockets to correct random walk—’

  ‘Yes,’ says Rizhin, interrupting her. ‘Good. You are young for this responsibility. And is all in order? Is there any concern?’

  ‘No, General. None. All is in perfect order.’

  Inevitably the sweat-slicked gramophone records choose this moment to fall slap in a heap at Rizhin’s feet.

  Mikkala Avril stares blankly at the wreckage: the titles of the musical pieces in curling script on the glossy sleeves; the monochrome photographs of mountains and lakeside trees. She feels her face turning purple.

  Rizhin shows no reaction and does not look down.

  ‘W
hat is your name?’ he says.

  ‘Avril, General. Engineer-Technician 2nd Class.’

  ‘That is good then. Avril. I will remember the name. The New Vlast needs young engineers; it is the noblest of professions. You are the brightest and the best.’

  He glances at last at the fallen records and smiles with this eyes.

  ‘Youth must not fear General Rizhin,’ he says. ‘He is its friend.’

  When he’s out of sight she crouches down to scrabble for the records. Shit, she mutters under her breath over and over again. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  ‘T minus twelve hundred, Proof of Concept. We have some music for you.’

  A syrupy dance tune begins to play over the tannoy: ‘The Garment Workers of Sevralo’.

  Yakov Khyrbysk groans inwardly and glares at the launch controller. Must we? He glances at his watch and wonders where Rizhin has got to. Wandered off, sniffing out buried corpses. It makes Khyrbysk uneasy, and he is edgy enough already.

  On the other side of Rizhin’s empty seat, the chief engineer is leaning forward, long dark-suited limbs gathered in tight about him. He steeples his long slender fingers. The fingernails are ruined: blackened sterile roots that will not grow again. The chief engineer (whose name on Rizhin’s order is never spoken now, not even by himself) survived five years in prison camps before Khyrbysk found him and managed to fish him out. He hunches now like a bird on a steep-gabled rooftop, watching in silence. He has the pallid complexion of a man who lives his life underground and takes no exercise, but he is hot with energy. It stares from his eyes. Fierce, stark intelligence. Such energy would have burned through a weaker person long ago, but the chief engineer’s constitution is a gift of nature. It is hard to tell how old he is, a young forty or a harrowed twenty-five. His hair is cut short at the back and the sides like a boy’s.

  The convoy of sedans waits outside, lined up, engines running, ready to race Rizhin and the dignitaries to safety in case of disaster. Khyrbysk wonders if someone has thought to issue the drivers with dark glasses. He is considering checking on this when Rizhin arrives and takes his seat. Kicks back, legs stretched out, reclining.

  ‘Today we start the engine of history, Yakov,’ says Rizhin. ‘Today we blow open the door on our destiny.’ He fishes for a paper packet of cheap cardboard cigarettes and lights one, drawing the rough smoke deep into his lungs. ‘Those are good phrases. They have a smack to them. I’ll use them in my speech.’ He exhales twin streams through his nose. ‘No problems, eh, Yakov? No fuck-up?’

  ‘We’ve made test firings every week for the last three months.’

  So many tests that the Chaiganur desert is scorched and glassed and pitted for hundreds of miles in every direction, the landscape pocked with scar-pits that show the corpse-grey rock beneath the orange earth. So many tests. Yellow plumes and dust streaks still linger in the upper atmosphere like nicotine stains.

  The first test launches carried automatic radio transmitters. Later they sent up dogs and pigs and apes. One of the first monkeys to fly slipped free of its muzzle and screamed for three days until they had to cut the radio off. After that they equipped the beasts with remote-controlled execution collars. A bullet in the back of the neck. Nine grams of lead. Now there is a small menagerie of mummifying corpses orbiting overhead in thousand-ton steel tombs. The success rate was improving all the time, but nothing is certain. Khyrbysk knows that. Nothing is certain except his own fate if Proof of Concept pops its clogs and goes phutt! in front of the entire Presidium and the assembled press corps of the Vlast. Nine grams of lead for dear old Yakov Khyrbysk then.

  If he were a weaker man, he would think it unfair. He would think Rizhin ungrateful. Was it not Yakov Khyrbysk who sent the shipment of atomic shells to Mirgorod so Rizhin single-handed could break the siege? It was. And was it not Khyrbysk who expanded the town of Novaya Zima into a huge, sprawling secret city where penal labourers built the armoury of manoeuvrable atomic field-weapons that tipped the balance of the war? It was. But Khyrbysk is a canny operator: he has never made the mistake of reminding Rizhin of all that he owes him.

  Six months after the victory at Mirgorod, when the war against the Archipelago was still in the balance, Rizhin had ousted the feeble government of Fohn and Khazar and made himself President-Commander of the New Vlast. After that, the first thing he did was fly north to Novaya Zima to see Yakov Khyrbysk.

  ‘You must forget these bombs, Yakov,’ Rizhin had said. ‘I’ve got ten men who could run this show better than you. Talk to me about the other thing. Task Number One. Tell me about the ships that will carry us to the stars.’

  Khyrbysk’s stomach lurched. It was sheer brutal astonishment. How did he know?

  ‘And bring me Farelov,’ Rizhin added.

  ‘Farelov?’

  ‘Are you the brain here, Khyrbysk? Does all this come from your head? I do not think so.’

  Khyrbysk had blustered. He cringed to think of it now.

  ‘Well,’ he said,’ of course the theoretical foundations were laid by Sergei Farelov. Sergei is a brilliant mathematician and a visionary engineer, truly visionary, but he is not the sort of fellow to be the leader of an undertaking like this. I made Novaya Zima. I am the organiser, I am the efficient man. I am the will that drives it on.’

  ‘Bring me Farelov,’ said Rizhin. ‘And Yakov…’

  Rizhin paused, and Khyrbysk, caught off guard, found himself looking unprepared into the gaze of a potentate. The neutral brown eyes of a man who knows for certain and unremarkable fact that he can do to you anything that he wants, anything at all–cause you any pain, destroy you and those around you in any way he chooses–and there is no protection for you, not anywhere, none at all. It was not a fully human gaze.

  ‘Do not keep secrets from me, Yakov,’ said Rizhin. ‘Never try that again. I don’t like it.’

  Farelov arrived, tall and slender as a birch tree with wide nocturnal eyes.

  ‘You are the great engineer, then,’ said Rizhin, raking him with his gaze. ‘You are a vital national resource. You belong to the Vlast. Your very existence is a state secret now. Your name will not be spoken again.’

  Farelov returned his gaze without speaking. He nodded slowly.

  ‘How long will it take?’ said Rizhin. ‘How long to build this thing so it works?’

  ‘I will answer,’ said Khyrbysk hastily. A promise not kept was a death warrant. He hesitated, mind racing. ‘Fifteen years,’ he said. ‘At the outside, twenty.’

  ‘Five,’ said Rizhin. ‘Make it five.’

  ‘Five! No. Five is impossible.’

  ‘Why impossible, Yakov?’ said Rizhin. ‘This, nothing else but this, is Task Number One. Tell me what you need and you shall have it. Without limit. The resources of the continent will be at your disposal. A hundred thousand workers. A million. Twenty million. You just tell me. Never hide your needs. How does a mother know her baby is hungry if the baby does not cry?’

  Khyrbysk looked at Farelov.

  ‘It can be done,’ said the chief engineer quietly. ‘In theory it can be done.’

  ‘So,’ said Khyrbysk. ‘OK. Five years then.’

  And in five years, though it was impossible, he had done it. He’d brought Task Number One this far, to this point of crisis: Proof of Concept baking quietly on her launch pad in the country of the hot panoptic undefeated sun.

  6

  In Mirgorod the new clocks are striking noon as the woman with the heavy canvas bag on her shoulder crosses towards her apartment building. The block where she lives is harsh and slabby: a cliff of blinding colourlessness under harsh blue sky in the middle of a blank square laid out with dimpled concrete sheets that are already cracked and slumped and prinked with grass tufts and dusty dandelions. Scraps of torn paper lift and turn in the warm breeze.

  She climbs the wide shallow steps and pushes through the door into the dimness of the entrance hall. The sun never reaches in here and the lamps are off. There is no electricity supply during the day. No lift
. She nods to the woman at the desk and crosses to the stairwell.

  Her room is five flights up. The stairs smell of boiling potatoes and old rubber-backed carpet. On the landing of her floor an oversized picture of Papa Rizhin is taped to the wall. He is smiling.

  She opens the door of her apartment into a blast of hot stale brilliance. The brassy early-afternoon sun is glaring in through a wide window. There is no one there. The women she shares with–young girls, sisters from Ostrakhovgrad–are out at work, but the room is heavy with their scent and full of things. The three beds, a table and chairs of orange wood, and shelf upon shelf of purposeless gewgaws and tat: make-up and toiletries, small china ornaments, magazines in faint typeface on thick brittle paper filled with advertisements and optimistic stories. The one big flimsy yellow cupboard stands open, overflowing with nylons and cheap summer clothes. Both girls are conducting affairs with high-ups in the Ministry of Supply. There is a can of raspberries tucked in the underwear drawer.

  One of the sisters brought with her to Mirgorod a poster from the wall of the Ostrakhovgrad Public Library and tacked it inside the cupboard door: a photograph of strong women with the sun on their faces, shoulders back, heads up, the wind in their hair. DAUGHTERS OF THE VLAST, COME TO THE CITY! CITIZEN WOMEN! REBUILD OUR LAND! So many men were killed in the war, there was free accommodation on offer in Mirgorod to women of working age with no children.

  The woman unwinds the pink towel with the lemon-yellow tractors and lays the long oilskin-covered bundle on her bed. Kneels on the floor to unbuckle the straps. Forcing clumsy hands to do what once went smooth as breathing.