Angel Eyes (65 page)

Mars drank the first slug of pepper vodka gratefully, felt his throat begin to burn, then his stomach. He held out his glass for a refill. "You know, Tatiana, I believe that the Hero has won."

"Won what, comrade?"

"Oh, our little battle of wits." Mars sipped. "I confess that he's still a complete enigma to me. Is he mad or sane? Did he make contact with an alien entity during the event or is he so enraged at what we've done to him that he's been pulling our leg all this time?"

''If you want my opinion-"

"Yes. Of course, I do."

"Well, then." She took a long gulp of her vodka, as if she needed fortification to go on. "I think the Hero is mad. Whatever happened to him up there in space has made him mad. But he's not insane in any way that we can understand. He's not, for instance, psychotic or schizophrenic, something our scientists can put their finger on. No. The Hero's different from you or me."

"Of course he is. He's-"

"No, you're not understanding me," Tatiana said. She looked down into the bottom of her glass.

"What are you saying? That he's no longer human? Don't be idiotic, Tatiana. I'm beginning to think that you and Lara have been too long with him."

"But that's just it," she said. "We know him better than anyone. And I'm telling you that even if his physiology is the same as yours or mine, his mind is not. It's been altered."

Mars watched her in silence for a long time. Why is it, he asked himself, that every time I come here I feel as if I've entered a whole new dimension? Has the ???? turned everyone around him mad, or is what Tatiana is telling me the truth?

Abruptly he stood up, put the glass aside. He'd had more than enough liquor. "I'd better go see him."

He left Tatiana as he had found her, carefully folding the Hero's shirts.

Upstairs in the pool room it was very still. Even the water seemed to have ceased its constant lapping. It was dark, and Mars groped in the gloom for the light switch.

"Comrade, don't turn it on." It was Lara's voice. "The Hero's eyes have become sensitive to light."

Mars fumbled his way toward the pool. "Have you informed the doctors?" Now that he was closer, he could see the slight phosphorescence of the saltwater.

"Yes, they've examined him extensively," Lara said. "They're baffled."

"Bah," Mars said with a dismissive gesture. "They're baffled by almost everything. What use are they? What use is anybody? '' He squatted on the coping of the pool.

Lara swam up to him. He could see her dark eyes, her dark hair gleaming, plastered back against her skull. Her face was an almost perfect oval. Mars wondered why he had never noticed that before.

"Something's happening.''

The way she said it, low, deep in her throat, made the short hairs at the back of Mars's neck stir. ''What do you mean?''

"I mean that this sensitivity to light does not seem isolated, but rather part of an ongoing process.''

"What nonsense," Mars scoffed. Then, looking at the expression on her face, he said, "Is it the cosmic radiation affecting him so quickly?"

"The doctors say no."

"What do they know? Nothing." But Mars felt a peculiar writhing in the pit of his stomach. He remembered Tatiana telling him that it was her belief that the Hero's mind was no longer human. It's been altered. He recognized the tiny flame of his fright flickering in the phosphorescent darkness. "Lara, what is happening?"

"I'm not sure, but I think he's in the early stages of some kind of change."

"You mean-"

"He's metamorphosing."

Mars worked his jaws for a moment until he was able to whisper, "Into what?"

But he was greeted only with silence.

"Where is he?" Mars said after a time.

"In the pool," Tatiana said. "Around the other side with Arbat."

"Stay here," Mars ordered her. He got up, made his way around to the other side of the pool.

"Odysseus?"

Mars heard his voice in echo. It resounded in the darkness that now seemed alive with a hidden pulsing-of life, but what form of life? Mars gave a tiny shudder, squared his shoulders, called to the ???? again.

"Here I am, comrade."

The lapping of the water, a small splash over the coping at Mars's feet.

Mars looked down, saw the pale, pale flesh of the Hero's face and shoulders. Was it his imagination or was the Hero's skin even more colorless than usual, more metallic looking-more alien.

At that moment Mars felt a hand clamp around his left ankle.

"You're too faraway, comrade."

The grip on him tightened. "What are you doing?" Mars said.

''Why stand aloof at a distance?''

The Hero gave a mighty pull, and Mars lost his balance. His backside hit the coping with a painful smack. At the same time, he felt himself being dragged into the pool. He fought to resist, but it was as if his muscles were paralyzed, his body of no use at all.

The saltwater rose over him, and he felt the drag of the water on his clothes. He waved his arms, scissored his legs, but his shoes were weighing him down. The water closed over his face.

Then a fist grabbed his shirt and he was pulled upward. His head broke the surface of the pool and he spluttered. Saltwater ran down his face. His eyes cleared slowly. He was face to face with the Hero.

"It's a strange world," Odysseus said, "don't you agree, comrade?"

"Exceedingly strange." Mars was struggling with his fear. It had been bad enough when the Hero had scared him with the fake radium pellet he had thrown into me pool, now Mars was in here with the Hero himself-and what was the Hero becoming?

Odysseus guided him to the side of the pool. "Thank you for not turning on the lights."

Mars said, "You're welcome," then realized that this was the most civil exchange-brief though it was-that he and the ???? had ever had. He heard the small splashings beside him.

"I don't seem to need as much light as I used to in order to see." It was the Hero's voice, all right, Mars assured himself. But what was he saying? "Also, I see things I never saw before."

Mars opened his mouth to say, Like what? but no words would come out. He recognized, with a shudder, that part of him did not want to know. The same part of him that wanted to get out of here as fast as it could, and stay far away. With an act of will, Mars clamped down on that part, shoved it back into the shadows of his subconscious where it belonged.

"I can see underwater without opening my eyes." It didn't matter, he saw with a mounting horror he could not control, the Hero was going to tell him anyway. "Arbat says that I'm developing the kind of sonar that she has."

Mars forced himself to say, "All this sounds like so much fantasy, Odysseus." But there was no conviction in his voice. "Don't you think perhaps you're imagining these changes?"

"Just as I imagined the color between the stars?" His face was very close to Mars's. There was a sharp, distinct scent like cloves, but not cloves. "The color of God?" His eyes were like steel pellets, hard, highly reflective. "Perhaps this is all a dream, eh, comrade? My training, the flight of the Odin-Galaktika II, the EVA, Menelaus's death, the event." He spread his hands. "All this. The building, the pool, Arbat. You.

"If I were a solipsist, Volkov, I tell you that's what I would believe. But my experiences have made me into something as far from a solipsist as possible. I am not alone. Man is not alone."

His voice, though soft, had the quality of a tolling bell, as if there were reverberations like sparks filling the space above the pool even after he had ceased to speak.

Mars had had enough of this. He needed to establish control of the interview, give it a certain rhythm, to turn it from a conversation into an interrogation. That would calm him, he was sure.

"I am afraid to say, Odysseus, that your days of uninterrupted information gathering have come to an end." Mars was watching the Hero's face for a sign of reaction. He thought of Natasha Mayakova's face when he had announced that he was taking her to the Lubyanka. Too bad he couldn't do the same with the ????, but he could not afford a revolt from all the cosmonauts in Star Town. With the burgeoning breakdowns in farflung parts of the Soviet Union-the strikes, the pro-nationalist demonstrations, the acts of sabotage against government installations-he could not risk such a protest so close to home and from the symbols of Russian pride and superiority.

So it was to be no hard man for the Hero. Just Mars Volkov.

"You've been very clever, I'll admit," Mars said. "But I've been more clever. I have found the source of your illegal information."

"Is it your intention to isolate me, then?"

Damn him, Mars thought. I can discern nothing in his eyes. No emotion at all. "For a time," Mars said. "Punishment enough, I would think, for becoming involved in an illegal activity. And I assure you that I am being lenient, because I am ignoring entirely the charge of espionage that no doubt someone more rigid and zealous than I could level at you.'' He shook his head. "KGB files are off-limits to everyone other than ranking KGB personnel."

''Even members of the Kremlin, so I understand.''

"We are not here to debate the fine points of Soviet policy!" Mars thundered. Seeing the look on the Hero's face, he immediately regretted his tone. He was ashamed that he had been led to lose his temper.

"It seems self-evident," Odysseus said blandly, "that far too often Soviet policy and KGB policy travel two separate paths."

"For the good of the state," Mars said stiffly. Another error. "And the labor camps, as well. They exist for the good of the state."

Mars glared at the gleaming ashen face which he found so impenetrable. All right, he thought. Both barrels. "We have Natasha Mayakova, your courier.''

"By 'have her,' I take it you mean you have put her under articulated interrogation.''

"And we know her source," Mars pressed grimly on. "Valeri Denysovich Bondasenko. I'm afraid you're going to be information dry for some time to come."

"So that's how it's going to be."

"Yes."

"No more trying to be my kindly uncle, cajoling me out of the intelligence stored in my brain, pulling it from me like taffy, centimeter by centimeter.''

"The traitor Comrade Bondasenko has caused the situation to change," Mars said. "It's clear that-"

He stopped, horrified. The Hero's expression had gone slack, his eyes had rolled up into his head, and his head lolled on his left shoulder.

At the same time, Mars felt a stirring against his legs, something cold and rough like a shark's skin scraped against his flesh where the purling water had lifted his trouser leg. He kicked reflexively as he turned this way and that to see where Arbat was. He saw her across the pool looking curiously-somewhat hostilely he thought-at him.

When he turned back, the Hero's eyes had cleared. He was looking directly at him. Mars said, "What the hell happened to you?"

The Hero opened his mouth, spewed out sounds that had no meaning.

Mars felt the small hairs at the back of his neck stir again. He thought of Lara saying, He's metamorphosing. And his own response, Into what?

"Odysseus," Mars said, "can you understand me?"

The Hero said nothing, and Mars called for Lara. In a moment she swam up. "Look at him," Mars commanded her. "A moment ago I asked him a question and he answered me in a nonsense language. Has he ever done that to you or Tatiana?"

"No," Lara said. She was staring curiously at the Hero. "He looks different somehow."

"Different?" The icy crawling had returned to the pit of .Mars's stomach. "How do you mean?"

"His eyes," she said, swimming a bit closer.

Mars reached out, pulled her back beside him. "What about his eyes?" His fright had made him angry with himself, and he was impatient with her. ,

"I can see right through them."

"Impossible," Mars snapped. "A moment ago they were as opaque as ball bearings." But he peered into the Hero's face anyway. Had those eyes changed? In this low light he couldn't be certain unless he went closer. He wasn't going to do that.

He swam to the edge of the pool, hoisted himself out. Water sluiced from his sodden clothes, filled the spaces in his shoes. His tie was ruined. He rubbed at his leg where he had felt something mysterious scrape him.

"Lara," he said, "where is Irina Ponomareva?"

"I don't know, comrade." Lara was still staring into the Hero's face. "She left here some time ago."

"She had transportation?"

''I think she said she had a car.''

Mars nodded. He had loaned her the car, so he knew where to find it. It had a homing device hidden in the innards of the engine. Perhaps when he found the car, he would also find Irina. He stood up. He thought it imperative that he do so as quickly as possible.

"I need some dry clothes," he said imperiously.

"Right away, comrade." Lara tore herself away from her contemplation of the Hero. She got out of the pool, went quickly across the room, disappeared into a cubicle.

Mars stared down at the still, floating figure of the Hero. He thought with a shiver of the thing that had brushed against him in the pool. What is happening to you? he asked silently. What are you becoming? He suspected that even the Hero did not know the answer to that.

At the end of Red Square one crosses the Moskva River via the Moskvoretsky Bridge. From there one is confronted by the illusion of choice, for it is no choice at all: two streets which, though their paths immediately diverge, end up in precisely the same place: Dobryninskaya Square.

This is part of the great Sadovaya ring that girdles central Moscow, and here is known as the Zamoskvorechye, or the District Beyond the Moskva.

Centuries ago the Zamoskvorechye was the residential quarter not only for the czar's servants, but for the court artisans. Nowadays it is very different, like most of Moscow, having gone through a period of intense industrialization during the early part of the nineteenth century.

However, many delights still abound here, not the least of which is the Church of St. Gregory of Neocasarea. One arrives at this seventeenth-century triumph of Gothic architecture by passing over either one of the Kamenny bridges, following halfway down Bolshaya Polyanka Street.