Kartsev mounted the Mausoleum. The rifle was firmly seated in Andreev’s shoulder. He lowered his right eye to the scope.
Even though Kartsev knew the cheers were a farce, he got a certain rise out of the sheer volume of crowd noise. When he reached the top of the stairs, however, he was angered to see the waiting collection of toadies. They all stood in front of their seats applauding. They wore black suits like undertakers. But as if that wasn’t enough, they wore black arm bands and lapel pins in the shape of a black flag. Their fat little hands clapped noiselessly. All turned to fawn over Kartsev.
He’d forgotten that most of them were still alive. Men he’d worked with — organized — in the months leading up to the government’s ousting. Their yellowed eyes and pallid complexions reminded him of the living dead. They had feasted on the flesh of their people, and were now reduced to gnawing on the carcass that remained. They held no higher beliefs. Most of the true believers were now rotting in shallow graves dug on the orders of these men. These men were not social scientists. They were bureaucrats of the death machine.
Kartsev greeted no one as he headed for the podium. He weaved his way among the disinterred — the captains and lieutenants of his army of walking dead. Only when Kartsev reached the podium could he truly turn his attention to the crowd. He smiled as he surveyed the pumping fists and bellowing lungs. The streaming black flags. The faces turned expectantly upward — toward him.
What power to summon such numbers. He raised his hand and waved.
The scope wobbled with each beat of Pyotr’s heart. At extreme magnification he could see nothing but Kartsev’s torso. Always refining — never fighting — Andreev focused all his attention on centering the crosshairs. Nothing existed for him now but the rifle — the scope. His left hand was locked tightly to the grip by the stock. His right hand grasped the pistol grip. His shoulder steadied the rifle stock at the butt. His cheek rested lightly against the cool plastic. The rolled rug lay under the heavy barrel — completing the man-rifle unit.
His index finger held firm pressure on the trigger. A hair more and the weapon would discharge. The crosshairs remained inside Kartsev’s torso. It wobbled, but from shoulder to hip to the opposite shoulder. It wasn’t Kartsev he aimed at, but a concept. A defined point in imaginary space. And that point was at the intersection of two lines. The vertical line split Kartsev’s necktie down the middle. The horizontal one ran from nipple to nipple. Pyotr waited patiently for the scope’s crosshairs to line up. For the momentary unity of imaginary and real lines.
There was an explosion of noise. Pyotr couldn’t recall even pulling the trigger. The smoke and haze cleared. The podium was empty. Pyotr slid through the window and was gone.
Kartsev sneezed violently and doubled over at the waist. Even so, he heard the booming report of the rifle. There was no doubt in his mind what it was. He remained bent low — shielded behind the thick armored podium. Directly behind him sprawled three dead men. There was gore and shattered bone everywhere. The backs of their chairs each had bloody holes in a descending line. They grew from the size of a melon at the top of the first chair, to a hole the width of a basketball near the seat of the third. The chairs’ former occupants had been cored straight through.
Everyone scurried about the rooftop like desperate cockroaches. Some rose, others ducked — all panicked.
But there were no more thunderous blasts from the lone gun. The assassin had missed his target… but didn’t realize it. The only sound Kartsev heard now was from the crowd. The disturbance and commotion spread quickly through Red Square.
‘He’s dead!’ Kartsev heard someone shout. The words were repeated far and wide. Kartsev realized too late what was happening. By the time he raised up all was lost, and he got a bird’s-eye view of the end. An end he had guessed might come that very day. It was an interesting footnote to his study of man’s behavior. The surging mass confirmed the laws about which he’d written. Staccato bursts of gunfire from the Black Shirts ended quickly. They had little or no apparent effect. Kartsev half-turned to see the loyal zombies hurling themselves to the ground. Jumping two storeys in a futile attempt to save their skins. But it only hastened their end, he could tell from their inhuman shrieks. From the blood-curdling screams that rose up from the earth.
Nothing would stop the mob once it was loosed. For it was no longer simply a collection of individuals. It was an entity obeying its own merciless laws of behavior. A detached Kartsev watched the hysteria sweep Red Square. Black Shirts killed, were overwhelmed, then died. Sometimes he glimpsed the living as they were lifted into the air over the masses. After brief torment they descended and were consumed by the crowd.
The most wondrous thing of all was the cacophonous noise. The pent-up potential energy of society turning kinetic.
The fat men atop Lenin’s Mausoleum fired feeble shots down the stairs. Their pistols blazed till empty and then died. The surging throng devoured their fattened prey like starving beasts. They brutalized some, threw others over the wall, but killed them all.
One by one the gaunt attackers caught sight of Kartsev. He stood all alone to face the wrath of mankind. They hesitated when confronted by so powerful a man. They were still cowed by their primal fear of Kartsev the Terrible. By the last remaining authority figure in Russia.
Kartsev frowned, drew his pistol and blew his brains out.
‘A just system of human government is stable. Unless the catalysts are powerful enough, it will tend to right itself and return to its center. But violence resonates in the unjust system. The vibrations of its excited molecules pass the disturbance along with evergrowing levels of energy. It is in such a system that one man can make a difference. All it takes is one man to send the unjust society careening down the road of history.’
Epilogue
Late at night, the university library was empty. Chin still had one hour left before it closed. Janitors mopped the floors. But most of the staff were congregated at the main desk, talking.
Chin sat at the computer — one of a few dozen now available to university students. He was logged onto the Internet. He dared not take what might appear to be a suspicious check of his environs. He stared instead at the on-line drawings of a patent application for a water pump. He’d already completed his report on the pump’s design. He’d deliver it to his first-year engineering class in the morning. Now, he just waited till he was absolutely certain no one could see his computer screen.
When that moment came, he typed in the long and complex URL. He hit ‘Enter’ and waited as the server made its connection. Soon enough the familiar title page appeared. He waited as the table of contents and each chapter loaded sequentially. Page after page was beamed electronically into his computer. Until the process was complete he was at the greatest risk. His trigger finger lay poised on the mouse button. The cursor sat atop the ‘Exit’ icon. But when the 1.6-megabyte document was inbound, the computer was slow to respond. Its windows closed sometimes in unpredictable ways. A small box filled with the dangerous words might linger on the screen. Chin knew that being caught would mean certain death.