prevented rested upon a verbal tradition among the Russian Christians of Ganesh: that a man named Razruzhenye, the defense minister of ancient Russia when the troubles began, ordered the first thermo/bio strike upon China and that this attack launched the Time of Troubles. Killing this one individual might well prevent the war and undo the whole course of disasters that followed.
“So,” muttered Stef. It seemed a little strange to him that Dyeva, who believed in the absolute value of life, was returning to the past to kill someone. But Yang in a footnote pointed out that such things had happened many times in the past: people who believed in freedom imprisoned freedom’s enemies; those who believed in life murdered anybody who seemed to threaten it.
His study finished, Stef ate a little, then fell into bed. He woke when his mashina chimed and managed to stumble through a bath. Then he confronted a large box of ridiculous clothing that had been prepared according to Professor Yang’s designs, based on what men wore in the mosaics of the Moscow subway.
At seven-seventy-five a government hovercar picked Stef off the roof and flew him to a neighborhood that he knew only too well, a cluster of huge anonymous buildings with vaguely menacing forms. They descended past the ziggurat Palace of Justice and the Central Lockup in whose subterranean rooms he had tasted the joys of interrogation.
This time, however, the huge pentagonal block of Earth Central was the goal. The hovercar descended through a well in the central courtyard that wits called the Navel of the Earth. Yama met Stef as he emerged in a sunless court of black hexagonal stone blocks and led him down one narrow blank corridor after another, past huge stinking Darksiders armed with impact weapons, into a vaulted underground room with a gleaming contraption standing in the center of the floor among a jungle of thick gray cables.
“So that’s it,” said Stef, interested by his own lack of interest. At the center of the wormholer was a two-meter cube with a round opening in one side, whose purpose he could easily guess.
Blue-coated techs helped him into a heavy coat with wide lapels and big pockets, slipped an impact pistol into the right-hand coat pocket, and slid a black power pack with a small control box into the left.
Somebody stuck a chilly metal button into his left ear.
“Pay attention to the control,” said Yama. “Take it in your hand. Now. Red button: job’s done, bring me home.Oke? White button: I need help, send backup now. Blackbutton: hold onto your ass, Dyeva’s succeeded and your world is finished. The power pack feeds a little tiny built-in mag space transponder that emits a kind of cosmic squeak for one microsecond. The signal crosses time exactly the way it crosses space, don’t ask me why. That’s what we’ll be listening for. Then we have to pull you back, send help, or-”
“Grab your butts. I see. But that also means you could just cut me off, leave me there, save yourselves a million.”
“Yeah, we could, but we won’t. Hell with that, I really meanI won’t. Not,” he smiled, “for a measly million that isn’t even my money.”
They stared at each other until Stef managed a weak grin.
“That’s good enough. Any problems?”
“Yes,” said Stef, “lots. I don’t speak Russian. I’ve got no goddamn idea how to find Dyeva even if I land in Moscow at the right time. I-”
Yama took Stef’s arm and began to walk him toward the wormholer.
“Don’t worry about the language. That thing in your ear will translate for you. And don’t worry about the time. A register inside the machine recorded the day Dyeva chose, the 331st day of 2091. So we’re sending you to that same date in hopes she’s close to the point of exit. If she’s not, you’ll have to find her.”
“How?”
“Come on, Stef. I sold the others on you because of your adaptability. This whole world you’re going into vanished in a cloud of dust. How much can anybody know about it? There’s just no way to be systematic.”
They stopped beside the huge glittering gadget.
“I really envy you,” said Yama in a choked voice. “This is the most crucial moment in human history.
You’re the plumed knight of our world, like Yoshitsune, like Saladin, like Richard the Lion-Hearted.”
Yama embaced him. “Take care, my old friend, andkill that fucking virgin.”
An instant later the techs had helped Stef into the wormholer and closed the heavy door, which looked like a nine-petal steel chrysanthemum. Yama stepped back, wiping his eyes. Kathmann had now arrived to observe the action and Yama joined him.
“Well, that’s one less friend I got,” said Yama. “This job of mine is hell. How are the preparations going for your assassination team?”
“As fast as possible. Of course they’re the ones who’ll really do the job.”
“There’s a chance that Steffens might pull it off alone.”
“Yeah,” said Kathmann, “and there’s a chance I might be the next Solar System Controller.Svidanye, ” he added, “see you later. Some more members of Crux have been arrested and I got work to do in the Chamber.”
In The Wormholer, seated as he had been instructed, knees drawn up, chin down, arms around his shins, sweltering in the heavy coat, feeling the pistol grate against his ribs, Stef tried to imagine Dzhun’s face, but found that it, like everything else, was inadequate to explain to him why he was where he was. The excitement he’d felt earlier was gone, replaced by mere dread. He could only suppose that his entire life had been leading up to one moment of supreme folly, and this was it.
Then a great violet-white light flashed through him, he felt an instant of supernatural cold, and he was sitting on a gritty sidewalk against a damp stuccoed wall.
He raised his face. The day was overcast, and a restless throng of thick-bodied people wrapped up against the autumn chill hurried past, not one of them paying him the slightest heed.
He looked higher. Behind the solid walls of elderly, three-story buildings with flaking plaster and paint he saw high polished towers of what looked like mirror duroplast. Immense crimson letters hovered just below the lowest layer of murk.
Since Alspeke was written mostly in cyrillic letters, he had no trouble readingMoskovskaya a Fondovaya Birzha, and when he murmured it aloud a soft atonal voice in his ear translated: Moscow StockExchange.
Below the StockExchange sign was a huge blue banner saying “1991-2091.”
Slowly he got to his feet, staggered, caught himself against the wall. A pretty young woman paused, stared at him, then drew a pale furry hood around her face and hurried on.
A couple of teenagers stopped also, looked at him and grinned. They squawked to each other in seabirds’ voices.
“What’s this asshole dressed up for?”
“Must think he’s Stalin or something. Hey, asshole-where’d you get that coat?”
A stout woman stopped suddenly and shook her fist at the kids.
“You leave that man alone! Can’t you see he’s crazy? He’s got troubles enough without you hooligans pestering him.”
A little man in a checkered coat stopped and joined her.
“Show some respect!” he shouted at the kids.
“What, for a guy dressed up like Stalin, for Christ’s sake? Hey you,” said a teenager to Stef. “You going to a party?”
Unfortunately, the translator didn’t answer questions, and Stef just stared at him.
“My God, he’s deaf and dumb, and you’re harassing him,” said the woman in scandalized tones.
By now a little crowd had gathered. Everybody had an opinion. It was the adults against the teenagers.
“You little bastards got no respect for anybody!”
“Not for you, Grandaddy.”
“Call me Grandaddy? Yes, I’ve got grandchildren, but thank God they’re nothing like you, you little pimp.”
In the confusion, Stef managed to slip away, leaving them arguing behind him. In an alleyway he unbuttoned the coat and stared down at the tunic and coarse trousers jammed into boots. The clothes werenothing like what people were wearing on the street. Already the stiff, kneehigh boots of faux leather were beginning to chafe his toes, and he hadn’t walked more than a hundred meters.
Cursing Yang, he tried to decide what to do. While he pondered, he worked his way from alleyway to alleyway until he suddenly spotted, among the hundreds of small shops lining the street-Boris Yeltsin Street-a shop with a sign that saidKostyumi. He didn’t need the translator for that.
