Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (47 page)

“Where? Here.” The scientist gestured around the walls of the basement and then jabbed his finger at the instruments. “Brought everything important here. Stone walls after all. Never mind me, I'm a researcher. But he”—Lampier nodded at Berdichevsky—“mustn't. Dangerous.”

“Just what is so dangerous?” the bishop exclaimed in exasperation, tired of listening to these ravings. “What is this danger you keep talking about all the time?”

Lampier said nothing, squinting at the doctor and licking his lips nervously. “Word?” he asked His Grace in a quiet voice.

“What word?”

“Honor. Not to interrupt. Or inject me.”

“Word. I won't interrupt and I won't allow anyone to give you any injections. Speak, only slowly. Don't excite yourself.”

But this was not enough for Sergei Nikolaevich.

“On this,” he said, pointing to His Grace's chest, and the bishop, having apparently learned to understand the little man's speech a little, kissed his
panagia.

Then Lampier nodded in satisfaction and began his explanation, struggling with all his might to speak as clearly as possible.

“Emanation. Penetrating rays. My name. Masha wants a different one. But I like this one.”

“Rays again!” Donat Savvich groaned. “No, gentlemen, say what you will, but I have not kissed the cross, so come, dear colleague, let us go out into the fresh air.”

The two medical men walked out of the basement and Sergei Nikolaevich immediately became calmer.

“I know. I speak wrongly. Always ahead. Words too slow. Need more advanced communications system. Convey thoughts. Thought about it. Using electromagnetism? Or biological impulses? Then they'll all understand me. Thoughts directly—from eye to eye—that would be best. No, eyes are bad.” He suddenly became agitated. “Pluck eyes out! They only confuse! But I mustn't. Everything by sight. But sight is deception, false information. What doesn't exist, yes—but important things are missed. Wretched instrument.” Lampier pointed to his eye with his finger. “Only seven colors in the spectrum! But there are a thousand, a million, countless!”

Then he suddenly shook his head and clasped his hands together in front of himself.

“No, no, not about that. About penetration. I'll try. Slowly. Word!”

The physicist gave the bishop a frightened look, in case he might stop listening or turn away. But no, Mitrofanii was listening closely, patiently.

“Outskirts is there, yes?” Sergei Nikolaevich asked, pointing to the right.

“Yes,” said the bishop, although he had no idea in which direction the hermitage lay from there.

“Legend, yes? Basilisk. Fiery finger from the heavens, burning pine.”

“Yes, of course, that is a legend,” the bishop agreed. “Religion includes many magical traditions; they reflect the human longing for the miraculous. We have to interpret these stories allegorically, not in the literal sense.”

“Precisely literal!” Lampier cried. “Literal! It happened. The finger, the pine! There are coals. Fossilized, clearly a trunk!”

“Wait, wait, my son,” Mitrofanii put in. “How could you have seen the scorched trunk of that pine? Have you …” The bishop's eyes opened wide. “Have you been on Outskirts Island?”

Sergei Nikolaevich nodded as if that were nothing out of the ordinary.

“But… but what for?”

“I needed good emanation. Plenty of bad, gray-colored. Not rare. But pure orange, like yours, almost never. Not even the precise shade. Needed it—for science. I thought and thought. Eureka! Hermits are righteous, yes? So powerful moral emanation! Logic! Test and measure. Yes? Very simple. At night I took a boat and went.”

“You took a boat to the hermitage to measure the hermits’ moral emanation?” the bishop asked in a dubious tone of voice. “With those violet spectacles of yours?”

Lampier nodded, delighted to have been understood.

“But that is absolutely forbidden!”

“Nonsense. Superstition.”

His Grace was about to wax indignant and he even knitted his brows in a frown, but curiosity proved stronger than righteous wrath. “And what is there on the island?”

“Hill, pines, cave. The kingdom of death. Bald. Repellent. But not important—the sphere is the main thing.”

“What?”

“Sphere. Like this. Passage, chambers along the sides. Inside, under summit—round.”

“What is round?”

“Cave. I fell in. Broke through roof. Then a hole with roots, grass, earth, not visible now. But trunk still visible. Eight hundred years, still visible! Coals. Sphere, like a big, big pumpkin. Even bigger, like …” Lampier looked around. “Like an armchair.”

“In a round cave below the summit of the hill, there is a sphere,” Mitrofanii summed up. “What sort of sphere is it?”

“I was just. From above. Broke the ceiling. When Basilisk was. A meteorite. Fell, broke through, set pine on fire. Visible faraway at night. He saw it.”

“Who, Saint Basilisk?” The bishop wiped his forehead. “Wait. You are trying to tell me that eight hundred years ago he saw some kind of heavenly body fall to earth. He took it for the finger of God pointing the way, walked across the water, and found the island at night because of the burning pine tree?”

“You can't walk on water,” the physicist observed with unexpected coherence. “Relative density won't permit it. He didn't walk. He had a boat or something. That's not important. What's important is what is there. In the cave I fell into.”

“And what is there?”

“Uranium. Have you heard of it? You know it? Pitchblende. A deposit.”

His Grace thought for a moment and nodded. “Yes, yes, I read something in the
Physics Herald.
Uranium is a natural element that possesses unusual properties. Together with another element, radium, it is presently being studied by the finest minds of Europe. And pitchblende, if I am not mistaken, is a mineral with a very high content of uranium. Is that right?”

“A cleric, but you follow things. Good,” Sergei Nikolaevich said approvingly. “A light blue aura. A good head.”

“Never mind my head. What about this pitchblende of yours?”

Lampier drew himself upright. “My discovery. The nucleus starts to divide. Spontaneously. A special mechanism is required. And I invented a name: Nuclear Factor. Incredibly difficult conditions. So far impossible. Theoretically it can in nature. But very rare conditions. But there it was! A unique instance.” He dashed across to the table and began rustling the pages of a plump notebook. “Look, look! It splits! Look! Meteorite, extremely high temperature—one. Deposit of pitchblende— two! Underground sources—three! That's all! The factor! Natural! Worked it out! Energy of the nucleus, a chain! Once started, can't be stopped. Eight hundred years! I sent Masha and Toto a letter! No, they don't believe! Think I'm mad! Because I write from a madhouse!”

“Wait a moment, will you!” Mitrofanii implored him. The strain had brought beads of sweat out on the bishop's brow. “The fall of the meteorite into the deposit set off some kind of natural mechanism that started giving out energy. I don't understand anything about it, but assume everything is just as you say it is. But where is the danger in all this?”

“Don't know. Not a doctor. And I didn't write in the notebook, because I don't know. But I am certain. Absolutely certain. I was there a few hours, and nausea, then fever. Hermits are always there. So they die. Six months, a year, then death. A crime! It should be closed! But no one. They don't listen! I went to the one with the skull. He raised his hand …”

“What skull?” His Grace asked, confused again. “Who are you talking about?”

“On his forehead. Right here. The one with no face, with holes. There.” And once again the physicist gestured in the direction of Outskirts Island.

“A hermit. The holy elder Israel? With a skull and crossbones embroidered on his cowl?”

“Yes. The head. Went to Korovin, he injected me. Notebook, he didn't read it.” Sergei Nikolaevich's voice began to tremble as he recalled the old injury. “I thought and thought. Invented the Black Monk. Frighten them. A cursed place. And then research in peace. Without interference.”

“But how did you discover the emanation? I remember reading that radiation of that kind cannot be perceived by the sense organs.”

Lampier smiled proudly. “Not immediately. First a sample of the sphere. I realized straightaway, a meteorite. Fused surface. Rainbow colors. Especially with a torch. Mystery of the hermitage. Sacred. Holy elders’ secret. Eight hundred years. Probably the reason for silence. So they wouldn't give it away. Sample one way, then another. No good. Exceptionally hard. Came back again. Tempered steel file. Still no use. Then diamond file. From Antwerp. By post. It worked. A quarter of an hour—look, three grams.” He pointed to the little pile of powder in the flask. “Enough for analysis.”

“You ordered a diamond file by post from Antwerp?” Mitrofanii asked, mopping up his sweat with his handkerchief and feeling that his head, no matter how blue its aura might be, could not take in so much astounding information. “But surely that must have been very expensive?”

“Possibly. Never mind. Korovin has lots of money.”

“And Donat Savvich did not even ask why you needed such a strange instrument?”

“He asked. I was glad. Explaining—waved his arms about. ‘I don't wish to hear about the emanation, you'll have your file.’ Let him think. I got it.”

The bishop cast a curious glance at the table. “But where is it? What does it look like?”

The scientist shrugged casually.

“Disappeared. Ages ago. Never mind, not needed now. Don't interrupt with stupid questions!” he said angrily. “You kissed the cross! Listen!”

“Yes, yes, my son, forgive me,” His Grace said reassuringly and turned to see if Berdichevsky was listening. He was, very attentively, but to judge from his wrinkled brow, he did not understand very much. Unlike the bishop, Matvei Bentsionovich did not take any great interest in the latest news of scientific progress; he read almost nothing apart from legal journals. Naturally, he had never heard about the mysterious properties of radium and uranium.

“So what did the analysis of the meteoritic material show?” the bishop asked.

“Platinum-iridium nugget. From up there.” Lampier jabbed his finger toward the ceiling. “Sometimes from space. But rare, never so huge. Of course steel file is useless. A density of twenty-two! Only diamond. And no way to move it. Six thousand, seven thousand pounds.”

“Seven thousand pounds of platinum!” the assistant public prosecutor gasped. “But that is immensely valuable! How much is an ounce of platinum worth?”

Sergei Nikolaevich shrugged.

“No idea. But no value, only danger. Eight hundred years, penetrated right through. I found them: rays.” He nodded at the flask. “Pass through everything. Exactly as Toto wrote. About photographic film. And Masha wrote. Earlier. Korovin wrote a letter. Said I'm in a madhouse. They don't write now.”

“Yes, yes, I read about the experiments with radium radiation in Paris,” the bishop recalled. “They were carried out by Antoine Beckerel, and a married couple, the Curies. Pierre and Marie.”

“Pierrot is a crimson head,” Lampier snapped. “Not good. Masha shouldn't have. Better an old maid. But Toto Beckerel is clever, blue. I talk about them all the time: Masha and Toto. Ignoramuses! And Korovin too! A fine island! I went to the quayside, looked through the spectroscope. To find someone intelligent. Who could help. Explain to them. I couldn't. Good you're here. You understand, yes?” He looked at the bishop in fear and hope. “You understand?”

Mitrofanii walked over to the table, cautiously picked up the flask, and looked at the filings glinting dully inside it. “So the nugget is polluted with harmful rays?”

“Through and through. The whole cave. Eight hundred years! Even six hundred, all the same. Not an island, a gallows.” Sergei Nikolaevich grabbed hold of the sleeve of the bishop's cassock. “You are their superior! Forbid it! So that no one! Not one! And bring those back! If it's not too late. But no, too late to bring them. I heard, a new one just sent. If he hasn't been in the round cave, not long. Can be saved. Not the earlier two. But this one can be. How long is he there? Five days? Six?”

“He means the new hermit, the one that Pelagia was mistaken about,” Berdichevsky explained to the bishop, who was frowning perplexedly. “Well, well, the idea never even entered my head that your nun and Mrs. Lisitsyna were the same person.”

“I'll explain to you about that,” Mitrofanii said, embarrassed. “You see, according to the monastery's charter, it is absolutely impermissible, scandalous even, but …”

“Stop this stupid nonsense,” said Lampier, tugging unceremoniously at the bishop's cassock. “Take those out. Don't let any more in. Only me.

First I need screening material. I'm looking. Nothing so far. Copper no, steel no, tin plate no. Perhaps lead. Or silver. You're intelligent. I'll show you.”

He pulled the bishop over to the table, leafed through the pages of the notebook, and began running his finger over the calculations and formulae. Mitrofanii watched with interest and sometimes even nodded—either out of politeness, or because he really did understand something.

Berdichevsky looked as well, peeping over Sergei Nikolaevich's narrow shoulder. He sighed. Something jingled four times in his waistcoat pocket.