Batyushkov nodded. That was true, and as a bonus the land was spectacularly beautiful. Greener than much of New Virginia, which soothed his Leningrad-born eyes. At this time of year, the young apple and apricot orchards of his Settlers left patches of fragrant pink mist strewn along the valley, and the colts kicked up their heels in the green pastures thick with golden poppies. The mansion’s design was based on that of a nobleman’s manse from the old days before the Revolution; one he’d seen on the shores of the Black Sea, converted to a sanitarium and resort. Waves crashed on the cliffs not far away.
Many of those Settlers were Russian too. Most were not, which Batyushkov grudgingly admitted was a wise precaution from the Commission’s point of view. They would let him flavor this part of the stew, but not make a separate pot of his own.
“Yes, the Crimea is a little like this,” the Batyushkov said. “Many have said so.” He scowled. “That is as well, since the real Crimea is lost to the rodina, the motherland. Part of that absurd Ukraine, like amputating a man’s leg and calling it a brother… and probably those Ukrainian peasant bumpkins will let the Tatars take it over sooner or later. Stalin was a fool to kill only half of the Tatars when he deported them, and Khrushchev was a worse fool ever to let a single one return from Kazakhstan.”
The younger man nodded. “Uncle Dimitri… I thank you for bringing me here. Science no longer prospers in Russia; things are not as bad as they were even five years ago, but they are not good. And the Gate!”
His face took on a transfigured look, one Batyushkov had seen on mujahideen in Afghanistan, as they called on their stupid Allah just before they were crushed under a tank’s treads from the feet up to encourage them to talk.
“The Gate… our theories have only the merest hints of the possibility of such a phenomenon. Many would call it impossible; until this month, I would have called it impossible!”
“I would have as well, until I saw it,” Batyushkov said. “The question is, though, can you understand it? Can you duplicate it?”
Sergei Lermontov spread his hands. “I do not know,” he said. “If I can understand it, it will take much time—much effort—many facilities, supercomputers, experimentation. Eventually, I must bring colleagues to join me.”
Batyushkov smiled, a smug expression. “And the ami, they have no hint of what it is?”
“Very little,” Lermontov said. “I have studied the papers of the physicists at the University of New Virginia. They are not particularly capable men.”
“They are what the Commission could get,” Batyushkov said. “Men embittered by failure in their original homes. And they are not allowed free transit, so they have no access to the laboratories or talent of FirstSide.” The satisfied smile grew broader. “And you, my nephew, will be. Thus you may study the phenomenon, have access to the facilities of FirstSide, and travel freely.”
Lermontov nodded. “This will be helpful. I cannot, however, guarantee results. Certainly not at anytime within the next two years.”
“Nichevo,” Batyushkov said: It cannot be helped. His hand closed into a fist on the table as he went on: “Understand, you must take no chances. Playing at boyar here, that is acceptable; certainly better than living in today’s Russia and looking always over my shoulder. The wealth I gain as a member of the committee, that is more than acceptable, and I can keep it and hand it down to my children, which would probably not be the case in Russia. But control of the Gate—knowledge of how to make more—that is power. Imagine whole new worlds… better still, imagine being able to establish more such gates to our world. To be able to come and go anywhere, at any time; the storage facilities of a nuclear facility, the inner chambers of any headquarters or fortress… given that, much that we have had to accept as inevitable becomes much less so!”
“Za nas!” Sergei Lermontov said, springing to his feet and raising the glass.
“Za nas!” Dimitri Batyushkov replied. “To us, indeed!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tom grinned at the big billboard—it was the first one he’d seen this side of the Gate—and put the binoculars back into the case between the front seats. The wind from the water ahead dried the sweat on his face. For the moment they were stopped at the crest of a low hill, where two live oaks overhung the road in a patch of grateful shade, to enjoy that and the silence. Ahead the land fell away to a flat valley that ran down to the strait.
“No respecter of persons, eh?” he said, before he pressed the starter button. “I like Ralph Barnes already.”
“Ralph’s a law unto himself. He’s not lying about the burgers, either.”
The Mermaid Café was roughly where the downtown section of the city of Martinez would have been, although differences in the details of the shoreline made it hard to be certain. A thousand yards farther north there was a long wooden pier out into the blue water of the Carquinez Strait, with a second cluster of buildings at its base. The road was graveled dirt, as it had been since they left the northern outskirts of Rolfeston, which ended in a Tivoli-style amusement park. After that the bayside road had run through man-empty country nearly to the site of Richmond—the sheer absence of the great oil refineries and chemical plants had left him speechless—and then they’d dog-legged back down the Briones Creek and along Vaca Canyon, much of the trip through hills he remembered as the upscale suburb of Orinda.
Here… the hills dreamed under the early-summer sun, grass turning the color of champagne colored by late wildflowers, oaks and firs green and cool by contrast, and redwoods in the sheltered bay-facing canyons. He’d seen two grizzlies, including one that stood in the road until they were within rock-throwing distance; other game too often to count; and once he’d heard the unmistakable rebel-yell squall of a catamount. They’d stopped often, to ramble or just sit and listen to the wind soughing through the grass. He kept noticing the taste of the air, as well.
Now that they were over the hills another dusty-white road wound southward from here, through farming country in the valley lowlands between the Berkeley hills and the Diablo range—lightly settled, mostly tawny pasture, but with the evidence of man in fields of grain, the regularity of orchards, planted windbreaks around tile-roofed farmsteads. This country was solid suburb on FirstSide, of course, built up in the fifties and sixties of the last century. Here it looked as if the first settlers had moved in about then and not many since.
Right, Tom thought. Let’s not get euphoric; yeah, all that wilderness along the bay looks wonderful, but that’s Mother Nature, not the Thirty Families and their Commission. Let’s get some input on how the people do here. The present population, that is; we already know what happened to the original one.