The Steel Tsar (23 page)

“But we intended to show that they didn’t work.” Una Persson was close to tears. “We have to stick to the original plan, Dempsey. It’s all we can do now! Once we have proved the impotence of the bombs...”

“It will prove nothing!”

The gallery behind him was now crowded with armed Cossacks and it was clear we would have no chance in a fight. For a moment or two Mrs. Persson kept at her work and then, with a helpless sigh, she put down the pliers. “We’ll have precious few chances again,” she said. But she seemed to have reconciled herself to this turn of fate. She clambered back up and stood there as Dempsey’s Cossacks swarmed around us.

A score of revolvers were leveled at us now. Slowly, Dempsey began to climb down from the gallery until he stood before us, holstering his own pistol. There was a silence in the hold. It was broken only by the creaking of the hatches, the melancholy howling of the wind outside.

“You can’t be allowed to interfere with my future,” said Dempsey. “And it is mine, Mrs. Persson. No one else’s. I have the moral right to decide what to do with these—” He waved vaguely towards the garishly painted bombs. “Your plan, Mrs. Persson, saved the maximum lives. Mine will save the maximum souls.”

“You’ll make a nonsense of everything...” But she faltered, as if suddenly she understood what he intended to do. She frowned and drew up the collar of her military coat.

“I told you before, captain,” she said. “You assume too much guilt. You have no right to this.”

“More right than you, Mrs. Persson. And even a little more than Bastable!” He grinned at us—or rather he attempted to show us a grin. Perhaps by twisting his lips in that peculiar rictus, he meant to prove that he was mentally balanced. His wild eyes strayed back to the bombs. “All the right in the multiverse,” he said. His manner and air were that of a fifteenth-century monk who had elected to league himself with the Devil. He was defiant. He was miserable. He was terrified. Whatever profound metaphysical battles were being fought across the multiverse, they were all of them mirrored in poor Dempsey’s tortured psyche. His eyes begged us for death, for an end to his torments.

“Please, Captain Dempsey—” I murmured. I tried to appeal to the reason I knew was still in him but which his madness had at least momentarily conquered. “You go against all your training. You should be on the bridge. The ship has no master!”

“Oh, no,” he said. “She has a master. Von Bek is at the helm. There’s no finer pilot.”

“Von Bek is a shade,” I said.

“Oh, to you, perhaps.” Dempsey turned his head so that he could not meet my eye. Like an old pike he had my measure and was refusing to take my bait.

“Djugashvili hasn’t the experience or the nerve for the job!” said Mrs. Persson. “You’ve left this ship and its cargo in command of a brute.”

“Von Bek is in command.” Dempsey spoke rapidly to the Cossacks, some of whom ran to the storage lockers in the upper galleries.

For my own part, I knew a strange sense of peace. My mind was no longer confused and there was no action I could take. Yet, should an opportunity present itself, I would still attempt to complete our original plan—if only to save Makhno.

“What does Djugashvili think of this?” asked Mrs. Persson.

Dempsey’s grin broadened. Now he seemed genuinely amused. “Unfortunately there was a loose cable in his cabin. It fell onto his bunk. Struck that helmet thing of his. Not so much an electric chair as an electric bed, I’m afraid. He would have appreciated the joke.”

“So he died in bed, after all.” Una Persson shrugged. “He always boasted that he would.”

“Oh, he’s not dead,” said Dempsey. “Just a little forgetful. There’s something I want him to see.”

I was not used to such casual humour on the subject of murder. Sometimes I thought my fellow nomads were from a different age—the court of the Borgias, or some near-future where murder was once more a familiar resort as the fragile institutions of law and democracy were allowed to crumble. I know they saw me as rather pious and squeamish but I have discovered that one thing does not change in the perpetual proliferation of Time and Space and that is one’s fundamental character. I could not imitate them.

Seeing my expression, Dempsey became quite suddenly calm. Almost apologetically he stretched out his hand to me. “It’s all right, old chap. Really. The Dempseys were always on the side of the angels. Honest Injun!”

The Cossacks returned with two packs which were handed to us.

“That’s your gliding apparatus,” Dempsey told us. “Here, I’ll show you how to put it on.” He rubbed at his sunken eyes. His voice became suddenly weary. “I’m chucking you off the ship. It’s either that or shoot you.”

Mrs. Persson showed no reluctance now. She donned the apparatus almost cheerfully. “I still don’t hold with this, Captain Dempsey. And my own responsibility here is morally dubious. But since you offer me no alternative, I bow to your version of Fate.”

Having committed myself to her cause, I could only do as she did and follow her as we were pushed towards an emergency hatch, already standing open.

Dempsey remained where he was, watching us. The last I saw of him was his ironic salute. “Goodbye, old man,” he said, “and good luck. I hope you get the chance to start again—”

Then with a great smack, Mrs. Persson struck the air and her silken wings opened beneath me, just as I, too, was thrust from the hatch into the air and felt my gliding apparatus come to life, arresting my wild fall through the skies and allowing me to turn and spiral like a hawk, high above the wide, Ukrainian steppe. Away to the south I could just see the glinting gold of some Orthodox dome, but to the west was nothing but rich and rolling land, enough land to feed the world. I kept sight of Mrs. Persson, whose black coat and dark blue wings gave her the appearance of some monstrous human-headed dragonfly.

I looked back to see the great bulk of the
Vassarion Belinsky
vanishing into the grey sea of cloud overhead, her black-and-yellow flags brave and brilliant on her yards, her turbines growling with confident authority. And somehow, then, I felt that Dempsey was doing the only thing he could do and I respected him for following his own dark star to the bitter, inevitable end. But I prayed for Makhno, just the same, as I gave myself up to the wonderful sensation of free flight. I realized I was fulfilling mankind’s greatest dream—to fly like a bird, as naturally and as joyously as if the air were our familiar habitat. Yet, slowly but surely, we began to lose height and, eventually, were dropping towards the coarse turf to land at last upon a grassy hillock. Mrs. Persson had more experience with the equipment than I. My ankle turned slightly as I landed, but the injury was not serious. I could still walk reasonably well. I began to help Mrs. Persson out of her equipment. She was grumbling. “The least he could have done was drop us near a town. Although in these parts they’d probably burn us as witches before asking any questions.” She shuddered. “I’m an awful snob about peasants, I’m afraid.”

I mentioned dryly that I thought those of her political persuasion had some sort of egalitarian duty to resist such prejudice. “Egalitarianism isn’t about prejudices,” she said, “it’s about equal shares of power. It’s the only means we have of steering some sort of even course through a future which is forever, by the very nature of the multiverse, unguessable. We have only institutions and a crude, fragile kind of democracy standing between us and absolute Chaos. That is why we must value and protect those institutions. And be forever re-examining them.”

She stopped herself. “I’m catching a touch of your earnestness, my dear friend.”

And then she embraced me, almost in anticipation of what happened next.

The wide steppe was suddenly bathed in brilliant light, as if the sun had broken through the cloud, and we bowed our heads before the brilliance, even as it began to fade.

We were looking up, to where the
Vassarion Belinsky
had disappeared, and we knew exactly what Dempsey had done and why he had not wanted the bombs defused.

A moment later the ground began to shake under our feet, as if an earthquake moved the whole planet, and we were flung down by a gigantic blow. The very air first whispered and rattled like knives, then shouted, then bellowed in vast agony. Then a hot wind blew over the grasslands and the wheat of Ukraine. That wind, I was sure, was all that was left of Djugashvili, the Steel Tsar, and Professor Marek, whose invention had begun a terrible war. I was sure that Captain Cornelius Dempsey’s spirit soared free at last, as the ash and scraps of the great aerial liner fell slowly across the landscape.

And then, like some unearthly echo, a sound rose upon the world—a voice without words, without beginning or end, and yet it seemed to contain all our wisdom. It was almost a cheer. Then, little by little, it began to fade. The light dimmed. The grey clouds swathed the wide steppe. In silence, we began to make our way towards the north.

That night we sheltered in a herdsman’s dugout. We could still smell the stink of the ship. I asked her if there were not some danger of after-radiation with these bombs. She assured me that Dempsey had been clever enough—especially if von Bek really were helping him—to phase the bombs into a neutral zone. All we had experienced was a minor after-shock, which had blown bits of the airship back into our own zone. “We’d be dead if that thing had gone off here,” she said.

I told her that I understood, I thought, why Dempsey had done what he did.

She moved closer to me, for my warmth, and again we embraced. “I understand, too. But we had agreed on a different plan. A plan which would have saved his life and Marek’s. This is just another loss, as far as I’m concerned.”

She refused to explain exactly what she meant. When she began to cry I made some clumsy attempt to comfort her.

Next morning she seemed to have recovered her spirits and was striding, almost gaily, over the rough turf, pointing out the village ahead. “Do you think it’s safe to approach?”

I told her I could not anticipate the welcome we would get but that we had little choice. We must throw ourselves on the mercy of the local people.

The wind blew her hair away from her face. She had a familiar glow to her skin again.

“Do you still feel bitter about Dempsey?” I asked. I had tried to convince her that the man had done the only thing he understood. He had sacrificed himself. He had refused to kill Makhno.

“The bombs,” she said, “their inventor, the despot prepared to use them and the despot’s servants are all gone now. But while that syndrome continues to exist, so will that particular event continue. I’d hoped to break it. To make a different ripple.”

“But it is broken,” I said. “Dempsey’s sacrifice did that.”

“No,” she said. “Dempsey’s sacrifice redeemed only Dempsey. This takes rather more effort than mere sacrifice and a show of willing, Captain Bastable. Dempsey knew that. He belonged to the League. He did not betray himself, I’m sure. But he betrayed the rest of us. It was self-indulgent of him to want to be such a hero. It was childish.”

I thought her judgment harsh. I said: “Perhaps all our efforts to break the circle are doomed?”

“Perhaps,” she said, “but we have no choice. We must continue to try. All we possess, after all, is a little faith.”

The sky had become a great, welling purple bruise, offering both rain and sunshine. As we neared the village, we heard the church bell tolling. Then out of the gates came a group of riders on shaggy ponies. For a second I feared that they were the Steel Tsar’s men. Then I saw they flew the Black Flag. They were outriders for Makhno and soon recognized Mrs. Persson, greeting her with whoops and loud laughter, astonished at the coincidence.

We rode back to Makhno’s camp with lighter hearts. More news arrived. The Central Government would allow the anarchists to set up their own settlements across the Ukraine and would guarantee their protection. It was more than they had hoped for.

When we got to the great camp, Makhno was already celebrating. “Our anarchist experiment will be an example to the world,” he said. “Once people realize it is possible to live with genuine self-government, they will follow us. It is all we ask.”

He sat at the head of a long table. Overhead were moored the hulls of the great black cruisers. The anarchist battle-fleet had at the last moment gone to the aid of the Cossacks and forced the Centralists to agree a truce. We learned that the mechanical Tsar had failed those it led quite as thoroughly as the original. It had begun to run berserk again and had been felled by one lucky shot from a Cossack
ataman
who had fired from horseback. This symbolic death had turned the mood of the Cossack Host. Makhno had become a peace-keeper, helping both parties discuss the terms for truce. Everyone emerged, he told us, with honour and he was now celebrated as a great diplomat, an honest negotiator. He was greatly proud of this reputation. He would, I thought, make something valuable of it.

The Steel Tsar was now no more than gaudy pig-iron, testament to more than one dream of power that had failed to become reality. For a second or two I mourned for Peewee Wilson, destroyed by his own belief that his sad ambitions and a few poorly developed skills could create a secure and orderly world.

I drank to the spirits of the heroic dead. Only Mrs. Persson refused to join in this particular ceremony. At length I myself became bored with such maudlin stuff and went to join her where she stood on the edge of the camp, one hand on a mooring line, looking out at the steppe.

“Did Dempsey really die for nothing?” I asked.

“What good is a martyr, Captain Bastable? A martyr shows us the power of faith. But what if that faith is misinformed? While people believe in heroes and the magic power of an individual to save them from the human condition, they will never be free. We must learn to love and celebrate human fallibility, human variety, human courage—”

“But Dempsey was courageous. He wanted to make amends.”

“To whom? To those millions he helped murder? The same millions you helped murder? They are dead and gone, Captain Bastable. They are dead and gone.”