Time Travel Omnibus, page 664
I thought I heard someone clear his throat; I heard a distinct knock on the door. It was repeated twice. “Fredichka,” said Ignatiev, “turn around. You will meet Baron Kurbsky, and you will see that he is very much annoyed.”
I turned. The glow I had seen the night before was there, in the room’s far corner. There was the shadow of a chair, a chair not there before. And towering over it was a tall man, straight and powerful, red-cheeked, with mutton-chop whiskers and a fierce moustache. He wore a splendid uniform; he wore a sword. In front of him, at strict attention, stood an orderly. The knock came again.
“Open it!” the baron ordered, his deep voice perfectly clear, perfectly distinct, yet somehow apart from us, remote.
The orderly saluted, obeyed.
Two officers entered, wearing the uniform of the same regiment. One of them was short, almost fragile, but with eyes like ice; the other, tall and slightly stooped, had a gentle, almost scholarly look about him, accentuated by his spectacles.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” the baron said.
“Good evening, Pavel Pavlovitch,” answered the taller of the two.
“You have, I trust, met with Prince Skriavin’s seconds?”
“We have, Pavel Pavlovitch. The answer is almost as we had expected. He has accepted. He has, of course, chosen pistols. But he wants to fight at a mere ten yards.”
The baron’s mouth twisted.
“Look at the tube, Fredichka,” said Ignatiev; and I saw that its whole surface was pulsating wildly, fired with a darker red. “That baron was a real man, I tell you—a true Russian! What a temper! See how clear the whole scene is.”
“The coward!” Baron Kurbsky growled. “He is afraid to fight me like a soldier, with swords. Well, if he wants pistols he shall have them!”
The taller officer looked troubled. He placed a hand softly on the baron’s forearm. “Pavel, Pavel,” he said, urgently, “my friend, please consider. The prince is deadly with the pistol. He has killed four good men already. You are married. You have three boys, a girl. Could not we, your seconds, go to him and try to compose the quarrel? It was only over a ballet girl, not any matter of importance.”
“Enough!” shouted the baron. Roughly he flung off his friend’s hand. “Serozha, I will not apologize! Never say anything like that to me again! Yes, yes, you are a true friend, I know. So go and meet again with his seconds. Arrange the time and place. Inform me. We will see how deadly this prince is!”
The two officers bowed; they said goodnight; the orderly stood at attention by the door as they filed out. But the door as we knew it remained closed; and I realized that, throughout that hot and angry scene, the deep chill had flowed from all of them toward us, toward me.
Ignatiev switched off his machine. He laughed. “What a fool he was! The prince was just as deadly as they said. The two fought next morning, in a field belonging to another nobleman, and the prince, very cool and quick, wounded him mortally at the first exchange; the baron’s ball missed by several inches. His doctors and the baroness nursed him for several painful days, but there was nothing to be done.”
He filled our glasses. This time, we drank to the baron and the prince.
“There!” he said. “By now are you convinced that there’s no danger to you, no matter what turns up out of the past? That is important—for tomorrow you’ll have to have your wits about you. What we evoke where we are going may be far more dreadful than these small domestic scenes I’ve shown you. Tomorrow we shall scan matrices going back four hundred years, when Ivan Grozni ruled in Muscovy. Your linguistic skills will have to be as sharp as possible, for you will hear the Russian spoken then—and God only knows in what sort of accent. You are quite sure of your ability to understand?”
Still shaken, still oppressed by that strange chill, I said I was, that the computers could be relied upon.
Then it was supper time, and he dropped the subject. We ate hurriedly and in silence, so much so that even Marfa was surprised and puzzled, looking from one to the other of us but not asking questions. I realized that he could hardly wait to get back into the library, his decanters, and his plans.
As soon as we returned, he began drinking again—brandy this time—and getting increasingly excited as he talked.
“Tomorrow, Fredichka,” he told me, “I take the first small step. I have a friend in the Department of Antiquities, and they have given me permission to investigate a passage they have found. It’s in the heart of Moscow, under an old Czarist building damaged in the war and just torn down. A fine new building will be erected on the site, and the plans called for a cellar much deeper than the existing one, so they began digging and found a deeper cellar still, filled in not just with earth but with what was left of a great ancient house that burned and collapsed into it, probably when the Khan of the Crimea and his Tartars burned Moscow in 1571. Ah, that was a time, Fredichka! Ivan fled to the far north, leaving Moscow to its fate, and the gates of the defended Kremlin were kept locked against the people while the Tartars looted, raped, and burned. The city was destroyed—yes, there was actually a modern fire-storm, imagine it! But some escaped. There were deep secret tunnels leading from houses in the city, under the Kremlin moat, under the walls. And that, I think, is what they’ve found. There is a great bronze door, and it was barred from the inside, but they have opened it. It leads into a vaulted passage, and this in turn has curious arched alcoves along each side, any of which could be the bricked-up entrance to a room, for tunnels such as these were not only for escape. Sometimes they themselves served as hiding places, from enemies, from the Czar’s wrath, for treasure, who knows? Now the passage has been completely blocked by fallen rubble; it extends only about fifty yards. But I and the Department of Antiquities both want to know what lies along its walls. I told them that if there were any hidden rooms my device would find them. My friend there offered to assist me, but I told him no—that I wanted no one present if it failed to work, that I would bring my own assistant, who wouldn’t dare to say, ‘I told you so!’ ”
His laughter rumbled in his throat. “You wouldn’t, would you, Fredichka?”
I told him truthfully that I would not.
“We will drink to that!” He poured brandy for the two of us. “I can see ways already to make the instrument so sensitive that the emotional vectors will be much less critical. I can see ways to in-crease the area covered immeasurably. Perhaps we shall raise the ghosts of entire battles! We shall watch as Dmitri Donskoi defeats the Mongols, and see Greeks and Persians fighting to the death at Salamis! We shall see blood flowing in the Roman Coliseum—ah, there will be ghosts there, I can tell you!”
He sat there drinking, fondling the silver and enamel kovsh, and boasting, more to himself I think than me, of what his instrument would do, and of the fame he’d reap from it. Next time he offered to refill my glass, I begged off, pleading that I would really need a clear head tomorrow.
He shrugged disparagingly. “Well, then, go off to bed. But I shall give you one more thought to take with you. My device will not only solve all these ancient problems.” He leaned out over the broad desk to stare at me. “It will do much more than that! The past is not all ancient, Fredichka. The past starts now. Words spoken and deeds done yesterday, last week, last year will be as readily available as the poor ghosts you’ve seen. Think what a political instrument that will be, eh? There will be no more secrets, none at all! Believe me, our friends in power will appreciate what Ignatiev has done for them.”
The concept stunned me. I stood there goggling at him while all its terrible implications crowded in.
“It’s nothing anyone need be afraid of—unless he has a guilty conscience or guilty knowledge.” He smiled cruelly, mirthlessly. “And I’m sure you don’t have a guilty conscience, do you, Fredichka?”
I tried to laugh. “After eleven years in prison?”
He did not answer me.
As I left the room, I saw him turning his device on again, to eavesdrop on I know not what resurrected painful scene.
I went back to my bedroom, infinitely more disturbed than I had been since my release. I sat down on the bed and tried to think. But that one thought of the secret police using his device had fallen on me like a pall, bringing with it a chill as penetrating as any that accompanied his specters. I sat there for two hours and more. Suddenly a useful tool for historical and archaeological and linguistic research had been turned into an instrument of tyranny. It was too terrible a thought to bear.
Ghosts of ideas flitted through my mind. Perhaps I could expostulate with him, convince him that he had forged a two-edged sword. Perhaps I could suggest that when he published, as he was determined to, Western imperialists would also have the weapon. But even as the ideas came to me, I realized how futile they all were. He had no fear of the secret police, of prisons, of concentration camps. And he would only laugh at the idea of the United States getting his device—after all, their media and their Congress never would permit its use to invade the privacy they held so dear.
Of course, I thought of trying to escape, to Sweden, England, anywhere—and was overwhelmed by hopelessness. I was alone, friendless, without influence or money.
despairingly, I reviewed my association with him. I had not trusted him—but he had recognized the importance of my work. I realized suddenly how high my hopes had risen, not for celebrity—no, not that—but perhaps for a quiet professorship at a university far from Moscow, away from politics. What really were his intentions toward me? My mind kept going over our conversations, hinting at false notes in his assurances, a subtle wrongness in his manner to me. And had it been mere coincidence that Marfa had given me so many sleeping pills? Had she perhaps realized that, when he finished with me, I might need them?
I had never seriously contemplated suicide, not even in the prison, but now I did. I thought of my friends still imprisoned; of others long ago who, for all I knew, might still be free. Now that I knew what his device would do, I wanted no share in the responsibility, in the guilt. I brought the bottle out, counted the pills. There were almost sixty of them left.
But I did not use them. Suddenly it came to me that maybe, somehow, I could put them in Ignatiev’s coffee, in his vodka. I knew, of course, that the idea was hopeless—that he would taste them—that I would never get the chance—but the will to live is strong. Besides, dead I would be completely useless. By dying I would only make his triumph more complete. I wept. Finally, I swallowed two of the pills, and put the bottle in my jacket pocket, and went to bed.
Strangely, I slept and slept well, awakening only to a slow awareness of my predicament and my despair. The morning was a fresh, delightful one, breathing of blue skies, idly drifting clouds, and spring; and at the breakfast table Ignatiev was in a jovial mood. I found myself wondering whether I had not indeed read too much meaning into his boasting. It is so easy to snatch at thin, false hopes.
We finished breakfast. Everything was ready: his instrument, two large lanterns, one electric, the other using some sort of liquid gas, camp chairs, two small folding tables, a little bag with a vodka bottle and paper cups. He slapped me on the back. “Get your heavy overcoat, Fredichka,” he told me. “Put on a muffler. I will lend you a fur hat. It will be cold where we are going.”
I obeyed, feeling foolish in the gentle air. Marfa and I carried the equipment out to his big car. As we drove away, she watched us sadly, wistfully.
It was a pleasant drive. There was little traffic, and the limousine rolled silently and swiftly through the avenues. Ignatiev did not have much to say, apparently because he did not want his driver to know what he was up to—after all, in the Soviet Union, no matter who you are, you do not chatter loosely about such matters as raising ghosts. I, of course, knew better than to start a conversation. I wanted to absorb the optimism of the weather, to pretend that all was indeed well with my world.
We reached our destination, a large, now vacant lot surrounded by tall buildings, stores, government offices. There was a big board fence around it. It was not a working day, and a watchman, an old man with a Budenny moustache, wearing a worn-out sweater, was waiting to remove the barrier. We drove in and down a long, steep ramp. The excavation was indeed twice as deep as any ordinary cellar, and on one side we saw that up against the wall of earth a rough shed had been built. We stopped beside it. The watchman, who had replaced the barrier, joined us. He removed the padlock from the door. Obviously, he had his orders. He was polite almost to the point of groveling servility.
We unloaded our equipment. Ignatiev told the driver we would be busy for at least three hours, that he was to run certain errands and come back then. We turned on both the lanterns. We went into the shed.
It served no purpose except to conceal the arched stone doorway of a tunnel, closed by a vast bronze door, green with age and burial. I could see where they had cut through it with a cutting torch, quite delicately, to push open the interior bolts.
“Don’t worry about us, Uncle,” Ignatiev said to the old man. “We’ll come out after our work’s done.” And he closed the shed door behind us.
Powerful as he was, the bronze door moved slowly under his hand, restrained by corroded hinges and its sheer weight.
It moved. We entered, our lanterns already casting wavering shadows on the gray stones. Cold air enveloped us, air too long imprisoned, cold and dead, as though an ancient winter had hibernated there. Ignatiev pulled the iron door shut, slaying spring’s sweetness instantly. I thought of it—and I no longer could believe it. I scarcely could believe that 20th-century Moscow still lived be-yond that door. I felt that we had been sucked back four hundred years.
Ahead of us, the tunnel lay, just as Ignatiev had described it: floored with stone, with cold stone walls, a vaulted ceiling nine feet high, and on either side a row of alcoves, their arches made partly with stones, partly with huge bricks.
Ignatiev pointed at them. “See!” he exclaimed, excitement ringing in his voice. “Italians taught us how to make those bricks. I think that proves my friend was right. In his opinion the house here that the Tartars burned belonged to a powerful boyar named Khmelnikov, a member of Ivan’s Oprichniki, the group he used to terrorize all other Russians. Khmelnikov was Basmanov’s bosom friend—Basmanov, Ivan’s catamite—and Ivan sent him on a mission into Italy to find him architects and artists. Yes, I think this may prove it. Well, we soon shall see.”
We walked another twenty feet, and the cold grayness, the shadows, and the sense of things long dead brought all my fears of the night before back to me, more real than they had ever been, more stupefying. The cold gray taste of my despair was in my mouth.
“We might as well set up shop here,” Ignatiev said. “Put one table up just outside that alcove, where we won’t get in the way of passing ghosts.” He laughed. “We wouldn’t want them walking through us, would we, Fredichka? The other table can stand in that alcove over there, across the tunnel, with a lantern on it.”
I set the tables up. I unfolded the two camp stools. He did not sit. He could hardly wait to open his device, to turn it on.
“We must be patient. This will take much longer than it did to find the baron; our friends here have been dead four times as long as he.”
We waited. The lights of his invention blinked in their rows. The years rolled backward ponderously on its display, the months and days rushing madly by comparison. It seemed to last forever.
But the green glow of the tube, bisected only by one thin red line, remained inert. The red never flashed or danced or flared as it had when he had brought the baron back.
“Look here!” he cried at last. “Almost four hundred years—and nobody has entered in all that time! Now we proceed more slowly, Fredichka.”
He made adjustments. The days and months and years slowed down. The 1590s, the 1580s passed, and eight years more.
Abruptly, then, the tube went mad with wild red light.
“Ah-ha!” Ignatiev shouted. “It is 1571. The date’s correct, even the month and day. The Tartars now are burning Moscow! In just a moment, I think we will greet Khmelnikov!”
He made the necessary changes. The display began to read the hours and minutes in reverse.
“Ah, here they come!” he whispered.
The great bronze door was closed—but I could hear it opening; I could hear excited voices, and eerily, remotely, from outside, the confused sounds of battle.
I looked. There, once again, I saw the glow. Three men had entered, wearing rich brocades and furs, carrying battleaxes and curved Asian swords, with conical helmets on their maned heads. Two of them carried smoking torches. With them, they hustled two women and a boy, the women weeping, the boy clinging to one of them in fear.
The oldest of the three was powerful, middle-aged, with a dark skin, high cheekbones.
“That is he!” exclaimed Ignatiev. “That is Khmelnikov! His mother was a Tartar—see his eyes?”
The group paused only long enough to shoot the enormous bolts. They came toward us—and the cold, the strange cold that they brought with them, reached out for us.
“Quick!” Ignatiev ordered. “What are they saying?”
“They are cursing the foul Tartars and the Khan of the Crimea,” I told him. Their accents were—well, I can only describe them as barbaric. But I could understand them perfectly, and even in my mental anguish I felt a thrill of pride; my theory and its application had been thoroughly confirmed.
