The mass of people was a single collective entity, a herd mind with a simple overwhelming purpose, moving on instinct, getting through from second to second, shoving, shouting, pushing, desperate to escape before the mudjhik crashed into them. Lom charged into the middle of it and joined them. For the first time in his life he surrendered himself up to the tidal mind of a mob, obliterating independent thought and sinking without question below the surface into dark, exhilarating waters. The energy that flowed through him was tremendous. The people around him were shadows, rivals, part of him, indistinguishable. Somewhere at the outer edges of his mind he felt the grazing trail of the mudjhik, superficial and negligible. The mudjhik itself was being pulled into the dark vortex and absorbed. Lom ducked away from it and let himself be carried away.
53
Lavrentina Chazia sat alone in the projection room in the deserted offices of Project Winter Skies, running the film of the test explosion at Novaya Zima over and over again. The evacuation of Mirgorod was under way. Her instructions were being carried out. Her train was ready: the Pollandore installed, her angel skin crated and stored, the Shaumian girl under lock and key in a barred freight car. There was nothing that required her attention until the train left at noon. She ran the film again. And again. She must have watched it twenty, fifty times. She could close her eyes and watch it all unfolding inside her head: the technicians busying themselves with the final preparations; their stupid, excited grins; the caption, UNCLE VANYA; the wind across silent level tundra, dwarfing the gantry; and then the cataclysm. The blinding gush of absolute, total, irresistible destructive power. As soon as the film had finished she went back to the projector, rewound it and played it again.
It was almost impressive that Dukhonin had achieved so much alone. She had underestimated him. But whatever he had done, it was hers now. In Mirgorod, Dukhonin had kept the circle tight and she had killed them all. Their families would be rounded up and shipped off east. That they would end up as conscript labour in Novaya Zima itself was an elegance that pleased her.
The Vlast had made a terrible mistake. She realised that now. All of them, and she along with them, had made a terrible mistake. They had been so focused on the fallen angels and what they meant, and what could be done with the flesh of their carcases, they had all failed to realise what human ingenuity could do by itself. They had taken their eye off those obscure laboratories.
But Kantor had not. Kantor had found them. And Kantor had found Dukhonin and made him his puppet. When he needed to tap into the resources of the Vlast he had chosen Dukhonin as his point of entry. Vain, industrious, narrow-minded Dukhonin. It had been a good choice.
Kantor’s continuing existence pained her. Him she could not touch, not yet, but his time would come, and soon. He thought he pulled her strings. He thought he could keep things from her. But she would tip him over. She would see him swing from his own lungs. When the time came. Not yet but soon.
On the screen Uncle Vanya erupted once more. Chazia shifted in her chair and grunted at the punch of excitement in her belly and groin.
It was all coming together for her now. Power. Power. Power. The living angel. The Pollandore. And this: Novaya Zima. This was a strength that would wipe the Archipelago from the face of the planet and build her Vlast for a thousand, a hundred thousand years! The Founder himself would be nothing more than a footnote in the story of the rise of Lavrentina Chazia and the Vlast she would build. With this, the living angel would listen to her. With this, could she not erase the angel itself from the face of the planet? Yes, and burn the forest too. All of it. The whole of the planet would be hers.
54
Lom took a tram as far as the northern edge of Big Side and walked the rest of the way back to the Raion Lezaryet. It was almost midday. The Purfas Gate was open but the VKBD were watching the bridge. They let him cross without question–they weren’t interested in who went in–but no one was coming out. A small knot of men stood in sullen silence just inside the wall.
As Lom climbed the steep narrow streets towards the house a distorted loudspeaker voice, high-pitched and hectoring, echoed instructions off the crowding gables. He couldn’t make out the words or the direction it was coming from. Shops and offices were closed, the streets almost deserted. Ahead of him two men in frock coats and wide-brimmed hats crossed the road, heads down and walking quickly. They entered the Clothiers Meeting Hall and shut the door behind them. The tannoy was getting louder. Following the direction of the noise, Lom reached the edge of a small cobbled square, defined on one side by the raion’s only hotel, the Purse of Crowns, and on the opposite corner by the Lezarye Courts of Commercial Jurisdiction.
A trestle table had been set up in the middle of the square. On it was a contraption like a radio, connected to a hefty separate battery, and next to it stood a sturdy tripod holding the loudspeaker horn. A small man in a dark suit and polished ankle boots was shouting into a microphone, reading from a sheet of paper. Hatless, he looked cold. His cheeks, his nose, the tips of his small ears were pink. Thin black hair slicked across his skull. Sweat-flattened strands across his forehead. He kept stopping to wipe his face and polish the lenses of little wire spectacles with a handkerchief from his jacket pocket. Half a dozen armed VKBD kept watch from the steps of the court. The tannoy and the echoes in the square distorted his voice. Lom had to listen the message through three times to piece it together.
‘Attention! Attention! Residents of Raion Lezaryet! The defence commissar and city captain of Mirgorod announces that this quarter is designated for immediate evacuation. There is no reason for alarm. Prepare yourselves for resettlement or work duty in other provinces. Women and children will leave first. Small hand luggage only is to be taken. You must gather at the Stratskovny Voksal at 6 p.m. sharp. Women with babies are to provide themselves with paraffin stoves. You must understand that any resistance to this order will result in police countermeasures. Attempts to avoid resettlement will lead to forced evacuation. It is expected that all demands will be met with punctuality and calmness. I repeat…’
Apart from Lom and the VKBD, there was nobody in the square to hear him. He was shouting at blank shuttered windows. Drawn curtains. Closed doors. There was a neat stack of paper on the table. Copies of the declaration for handing out. Nobody was taking one.
When Lom reached Elena Cornelius’s apartment it was deserted. Maroussia wasn’t there, and there was no sign that she’d been back. Their attic room was as he’d left it. Down in the kitchen everything was neatly stacked. The stove was banked up and smouldering quietly, no indication of a hurried departure, but Elena wasn’t there and nor were the girls.
Lom found the Count and Ilinca in their salon. They were sitting side by side on a threadbare chaise longue. Dressed for a journey. A pair of old scuffed suitcases and a faded dusty carpet bag in the middle of the floor. The door standing open, ready.
‘We knew the day would come,’ said the Count. ‘We are prepared.’