Rasputin's Bastards

THE LITTLE HERO

If any man on the Romanian crew ever sang, or had conversations, or just coughed and belched, that man saved it for times when Stephen was not around. The bridge of their submarine was quiet as a monastery.

That was fine with Stephen. He found, as the submarine dove deeper and further, that he was happiest free of the burden of conversation. His bunkmate Uzimeri was becoming more snide and contemptuous of him by the hour. Chenko and Pitovovich had launched into a full-bore campaign to get Mrs. Kontos-Wu to open up and really talk about the traumas Fyodor Kolyokov and City 512 had inflicted on her. Conversations with the three of them offered up all the subtle pleasures of a Scientology breakfast seminar. As for Zhanna? Happily, she was busy sleeping most of the time. And when they were awake, they avoided one another — both, no doubt, horrified at the potential for wrenching embarrassment that even a chance encounter in the submarine’s narrow spinal corridor held for them.

The Romanian “monks” were better. There were always eight of them who manned the bridge. They looked at one another rarely, spending their energy hunched over banks of coloured lights and switches and valves labelled in Cyrillic. They moved the controls with a kind of rhythm that suggested either knowledge or instinct. At some point, Stephen reflected as he came in to watch the morning shift, the two become the same.

A chart was laid out on a light table in the middle of the bridge, just to the fore of the periscope. No one stopped Stephen from looking at it, or the grease pencil marks on the surface of the plexiglass cover that held it in place.

Stephen munched on a stub of bread that would do as his breakfast, as he checked on their progress. From the looks of things, they had somehow made it past the southern tip of the British Isles overnight, and were heading now in a straight southwesterly direction. He took a ruler and set it against the line. The first significant land mass that it would intercept was Cuba. It could also hit southern Florida, or Haiti, or any of the smaller Islands surrounding it with just a small change in course.

But Stephen would put money on Cuba.

It seemed like an obvious place for it to be, whatever it was. Stephen could well imagine that the KGB or the Politburo or whoever it was that gave the okay for City 512 and Kolyokov’s dream-walking work would have connections with Castro’s bunch in the Caribbean. Still Soviet — but distant from the main apparatus.

Stephen imagined a huge plantation, covered in sugarcane wafting in the tropical breeze, with a bunch of old men and women — the mysterious Mystics — sipping cooling tea and reading each other’s auras to the songs of the cicadas; only occasionally descending into their brightly-painted sensory deprivation tanks to commune with the Universe.

It made a hell of a lot more sense than what Zhanna had said: “We have to go deep to find the Mystics.”

Perhaps when she said deep, she meant, deep into enemy territory. Deep into Cuba. Not deep underwater. Stephen leaned against a bulkhead. They were deep enough underwater as matters stood. The deck had maintained a notable, discomfiting pitch to forward for far too long during the night — and although he’d been paying attention, Stephen did not once detect a comforting, compensating pitch to the aft. Occasionally, he’d hear the sound of groaning metal — the sound of the ocean crushing in on them. It was not a comforting noise. Not at all.

Stephen wasn’t alone in his feelings. As quiet as the Romanians were, they were clearly more and more uneasy the deeper they went. This morning for instance. They still moved through their paces like robots. But every so often, Stephen would see a sign: a nervous tic under the eye of the navigator; or the radar operator run his fingers through his oily hair, and look up with just a flash of terror in his eyes. When he came in this morning, Stephen was sure he heard sobbing, echoing through the submarine’s narrow bridge.

Stephen gulped down the rest of his coffee and set the nearly empty cup down on the map table. The waves in brown liquid near the base vibrated in tidy little concentric waves. He put the last of the bread in his mouth and gnawed at the crust. The coffee at the bottom of his cup, he noticed, was pooling to forward.

They were diving again.

“Aren’t you supposed to sound a horn or something when you dive?” said Stephen. The bridge crew didn’t look up. The hull metal groaned. The engines thudded.

“Help us,” whispered a voice at Stephen’s back.

Stephen turned fast enough to set the cup tumbling. It splashed coffee over 2the top of the map board, pooling and beading on the grease pencil delineation of their course — running in thick streams toward the American coastline at the fore end of the map table. He grabbed the cup and, seeing no towels about, daubed up the coffee with his sleeve. It still smeared the grease pencil, but not to the point of illegibility. Some did make it underneath the plexiglass, and it spread underneath to make new contours on the sea bottom off Key West.

By the time Stephen looked back, whoever it was that had asked for his help was long gone.

Help us.

Stephen hurried to aft through the spinal corridor — ostensibly to take his coffee mug back to the galley and wash up — but really, because the whole Help us thing had creeped him out. The voice had sounded plaintive — beaten. It made it sound like the best way you could help was to find a brick or a rock, and bring it down on the whole miserable bunch of them.

Stephen stopped in the galley. Chenko was sipping coffee there; Uzimeri was fooling around with something at the stove. Boiling water spilled over the forward edge of his pot and made a devilish hissing sound on the element.

Chenko spotted Stephen and smiled at him.

“We are diving again,” he said amiably. “How deep do you believe we can go, before the sea crushes us?”

“Hopefully,” said Stephen, “a little deeper than this.”

“Trust in Zhanna,” said Uzimeri from the kitchen.

Chenko rolled his eyes.

“Refill your cup,” he said.

“Later.” Stephen sat down at the galley table. “So what do you think Petroska Station is?”

“Back to that, are we?” Chenko laughed. It was a little game they’d started at dinner the night before — before Mrs. Kontos-Wu had showed up, and the conversation had defaulted back to group therapy mode.

What on earth could Petroska Station be?

“Okay — here is one. It’s a weather station in the Antarctic. Tunnels run deep into the mantle — miles deep — and intersect with the massive tombs of an ancient civilization. The Mystics are using pyramid power derived from complicated crystalline structures that rested there untapped for cold millennia, to commune with the Universe.”

“Blasphemy!” shouted Uzimeri and made a face. Stephen laughed in spite of himself.

“What do you think, then, Konstantine?” said Chenko.

“A blessed place where all prayers are answered and Paradise is laid out for all to see.” Uzimeri gave a quick curt nod.

“That’s what you said last night.”

“Well that is what I think.” Uzimeri looked at Stephen. “It might have been revealed to me in a Vision, for all that you would know — hey boy?”

“Leave him be,” said Chenko. “Look to your water — it’s making a terrible mess in here.”

Uzimeri shook his head and turned back to the stove.

“So what do you think?” said Chenko, turning to Stephen. “Any clues?”

For an instant, Stephen debated telling Chenko about the strange voice he’d heard, begging him for help; the discomfort he’d seen in the Romanians who crewed this boat; and the dreams of great flowering squid, that kept a pace with the submarine as it sank deeper into the Atlantic murk.

He would, of course, say none of those things.

“Cuba,” he said cheerily. “Petroska Station is a little plantation outside Havana. The tourists don’t go there much, but it’s big with the locals.”

Chenko smiled — turned his coffee mug around as he peered into it, perhaps trying to read something in the grinds. He licked his lips, and opened his mouth to reply. Then he frowned, and looked up.

“What is it?” said Stephen.

“Listen,” said Chenko. His eyes scanned the bulkhead over them, and he squinted.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” repeated Chenko, and gestured all around them. “Do you not hear it? Silence.”

Silence.

Now that, thought Stephen, was not entirely correct. You could still hear the rattle of the electric fan as it pumped air from one end of the boat to the other. There was the occasional ba-bong from the submarine’s hull as it adjusted to the increasing pressure. And there was the hissing sound of superheating water on Uzimeri’s stove element.

But much of the din that made the submarine such a joy to ride in was gone. The engines had shut down.

And as Stephen listened, the other noises diminished too: the hissing of steam stopped, and the hull went quiet.

The submarine, Stephen realized with a shiver, was finally levelling off.

Uzimeri looked up — first at Stephen, then to Chenko. He cleared his throat.

“Think this is Cuba now?”

Help us.

Mrs. Kontos-Wu staggered into the galley next, accompanied by Pitovovich. Stephen sniffed the air. They had both been drinking.

“What’s going on?” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu, clutching her forehead as she sat down. “Why’s everybody so quiet?”

“Zhanna will explain,” said Pitovovich. Chenko nodded in agreement.

“Do you hear her?”

“Oh yes.” Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s eyes fluttered shut along with the others’. Zhanna, no doubt, was explaining things to them right now.

Stephen took it as his cue. He got up and headed toward the bridge.

The crew were like statues when he got there. They stood or sat at their posts, staring at nothing — like they had been shut down. Stephen ran his fingers in front of the eyes of one, standing by the periscope. The man didn’t blink.

Stephen went over to the map table. The coffee stain had obliterated the southern tip of Florida. Global warming couldn’t have done it better. He looked up the map. The grease pencil line hadn’t extended any further — although someone had obviously fixed it up after Stephen had left. And they had made a change. Stephen leaned closer to look. Now, at the end of the line, rather than just a dash of red, someone had drawn a tiny circle. Was this their destination? It was far short of the Caribbean — it was a point in the mid-Atlantic. There were no land masses here but Stephen noted that the contours of the chart connoting the topography of the sea bottom were nearly converged. Something was going on, on the sea bottom.

“Who,” he said quietly, “needs help?”

The men sat in place. They had not even heard him.

The submarine heard fine. It answered with a lurch, and a pok-pok-pok sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Stephen grabbed the edge of the map table with both hands. Sweat gleamed a white aura around his fingers where they pressed against the glowing plastic. The pok-pok-pok continued a few seconds more — and then there was a grinding noise that Stephen felt through his bones: metal against metal; a crack! sound.

A low rasping, like a screw-top turning on an ancient jar.

And then: quiet.

The deck became still as a cellar floor.

Stephen swallowed, as the truth of what was happening settled in on him.

The submarine had arrived. They were at the circle, on a great ridge in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

They were at Petroska Station.

Somewhere nearby, the Mystics were waiting.

There was a little room at the bow end of the submarine, just past the torpedo room, that Stephen had chanced upon during his early explorations. It was not wide enough for more than two men to stand side by side. There was a narrow ladder that climbed to the ceiling, where there was a small hatch. He’d asked Uzimeri about it when he first saw it. “Ah yes,” said the old man. “That is the docking hatch. For underwater rescue. I don’t have to tell you not to open it. On second thought, it’s you I’m talking to. Don’t open it.”

One of the Romanians was on the ladder when Stephen pushed his way into the room — turning the wheel on the hatch. Icy water splashed down over his arms, his squinting eyes. Stephen felt his throat clench at the sight of it. Even when the water flow subsided, just seconds after it had begun, Stephen felt himself shaking.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted over the shoulders of the other Romanians. The one on the ladder — thin and balding, he was not much older than Stephen — gave Stephen a quick, sad look then leaned aside as the hatch swung down.

“Hey!” said Stephen. But the Romanian was already climbing up — through the open hatch. A second crewman mounted the steps at the bottom of the ladder. Others prepared to follow.

Stephen was tempted to bolt for the back of the submarine — back to the galley, where he presumed everyone else was waiting; maybe even past that, to his cabin, where he could curl up on his bunk and pretend this wasn’t happening.

Instead, he grabbed the shoulder of one of the Romanians — this one, a squat brown-haired man with wide eyes. The man tried to shake him off, but Stephen made him turn and face him.

“What the fuck is going on?” he said. And instinctively, he tried to push it out of him: imagined himself walking down his fingers, through the man’s shoulders, and straight into his brain. “What is up there? Tell me what is up there,” Stephen demanded.

The man grabbed Stephen’s hand and flung it down. He gave Stephen that same, sad should-have-helped-us-the-first-time look that the first one had. Then he turned, and got back in line to climb the ladder.

Stephen stamped his foot — shamefacedly aware he was behaving like a three-year-old, but unable to do anything about it. Where the hell was everybody, anyway? Still hiding back there? Stephen slammed his fist against a bulkhead, shut his eyes and winced at the pain.

When he opened them again, he saw he was alone in the docking room. The last crewman was climbing through the hatch.

Stephen looked up the ladder. A weak reddish light wafted down. He tried to see what was in the chamber above. It smelled like a locker room. The light was very dim, but he thought he could make out spars of metal several metres above the hatch.

What the fuck was up there? Stephen swallowed. There was only one way to find out. He put his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder.

He was about halfway up, when the figure appeared in the hatchway. Flesh white as snow, mottled around the cheeks like a bath-wrinkled thumbprint — and naked so far as Stephen could see. He couldn’t tell a gender. The thing had no beard, and hair that was a wispy black and shoulder-length. But if there were breasts up there, they were hidden by the lip of the hatch.

Stephen stared up at the thing with a kind of disbelieving calm.

“Ah, hello,” said Stephen, looking into the creature’s eye. He struggled to keep his voice sounding casual. “This is Petroska Station, I’m guessing?”

It bleated something Stephen couldn’t understand.

“I mean—”

Before Stephen could finish, the thing in the hatch reached across the opening with a long, pale arm and lowered a black metal cover over the opening. It clanged shut with such finality that it did not even occur to Stephen to push it back open to get another look at the thing.

In total, nine Romanians had left the submarine through the rescue hatch. That left maybe a dozen on board. Stephen wondered if that was enough to crew and operate a 641 Attack Submarine.

“No,” said Chenko. “We’ll need those who went away back with us if we’re ever to leave here.”

“Aren’t you the least bit worried about that?”

“I am not the least bit worried about that.” Chenko leaned back on the bench of the galley and stared idly at the back of his hand.

“It really is all right, Stephen.”

Stephen gave an involuntary flinch as Mrs. Kontos-Wu patted his forearm.

“You didn’t see that fucking thing. Don’t tell me it’s all right.”

“Well,” sneered Uzimeri from across the table, “you didn’t have the benefit of understanding that Zhanna has bestowed on the rest of us, who are not deaf to the voice of God. So stop trying to panic us with your five senses bullshit misinterpretation.”

“It was a fucking Morlock,” said Stephen. “A zombie. A vampire. Right out of a fucking horror movie. Whatever they’re doing up there — the guys didn’t want to go.”

Konstantine Uzimeri regarded him smugly. “Bullshit,” he said.

Tanya Pitovovich smiled in a way that was meant to be reassuring. “They are only borrowing them,” she said. “It is a part of the transaction. Apparently, something similar happened the last time.”

“Last time. Which none of you were here for.”

Pitovovich shrugged.

“We can only be so many places at once,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu.

“For now,” added Chenko.

Pok-pok-pok, said the bulkhead. Stephen looked up.

“What the fuck is that noise, anyway?”

“Nothing—”

Stephen interrupted Chenko with a hand. “Nothing to be frightened, of, I know.” He sighed. “What else did Zhanna tell you?”

“Ah,” said Uzimeri, smiling beatifically, “how to put it into words?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu gave him a look. “Don’t be such a prick, Konstantine.” She turned to Stephen. “She told us that we’ve docked with Petroska Station. It’s deep underwater, as we’ve all guessed. Some kind of an old — habitat. For the next few hours, she and the others are in communication with the Mystics.”

“So Zhanna and the rest are in Petroska Station?”

“No. They’re still in their bunks.”

Stephen was confused. “If they don’t have to be on board Petroska Station to communicate with the Mystics, then why did we come all this way in the first place?”

The three looked at one another.

“Good question,” said Chenko finally. “We didn’t think to ask.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

And why would they? If you live your life based on the premise that the horny teenage girl asleep in an officer’s stateroom on a decommissioned submarine is about as fallible as the Pope — then what questions would you possibly have when she was done talking? If Zhanna says you’re safe in your submarine while rejects from Night of the Living Dead have their way with your zombified crew in some hidden undersea warren in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean — you must be safe.

Stephen was beginning to see the advantage to being a psychic deaf-mute. Around here at least, it let him think for himself.

The man watching the hatch to the officers’ section was a different one than the last time. This one was small and thin, with wire-rimmed glasses and light brown hair shaved to a peach fuzz on his scalp. He regarded Stephen with open hostility.

“Go back,” he hissed when Stephen stepped up to him.

“I have to see Zhanna,” Stephen said. The little man shook his head and told him to fuck off. To emphasize his point, he pulled out a small knife and waved it in Stephen’s face.

Stephen took a step backwards. He had been expecting something like this — if Zhanna and the rest of them were busy dreaming, even with a reduced complement of monks they’d make sure to pick an intimidating one to guard them. And if the big stoic ones were all gone — well, a crazy little bastard with a knife could still get the job done. At least Zhanna didn’t have them waving around guns anymore.

That had been something else Stephen had counted on.

Stephen muttered an apology as he feinted and ducked, drawing a slash of the blade into the air where his left shoulder had been. He carried the motion forward in a roll, grabbing the Romanian’s scrawny forearm and twisting it. The knife clattered to the decking. The Romanian grunted — he obviously didn’t want to wake the dreamers with a shout — and tried to grab at Stephen’s hair. Stephen let him and in the same spirit as the Romanian, ignored the ripping pain as a hundred or so hairs left his scalp in the Romanian’s fist. Stephen plunged his elbow into the Romanian’s solar plexus, then when he was doubled over, twisted once more and brought his knee up into the man’s face. There was a crunch as his glasses shattered, and a certain amount of blood that stained Stephen’s pant-leg. Stephen hoped he hadn’t damaged the man’s eyes. The man whimpered, and made a desultory and ineffective jab at Stephen’s privates with a half-open hand. Stephen hit him twice more in the side of the head, then pushed him to the ground and kicked him twice more. When it was clear the monk wasn’t going to get up again, he found his knife, pocketed it, and walked on through.

At least, thought Stephen as he stepped into Zhanna’s cabin and heard her quiet snores, they’d kept it quiet.

“Zhanna. Wake up.”

“What — who? Who is there?”

“It’s me. Stephen.”

“Mm. Might have known. You’re the only one I can’t tell coming. Did you do that to our watcher?”

“The guard? Yeah. Wake up.”

“Nuh-uh. Back to sleep. In council.”

“Fuck off. Wake up.”

Zhanna blinked, sat up, and glared at Stephen through the shadows of her cabin. She wrapped herself in a sheet. Her hair was dishevelled. And the quarters were close enough that Stephen recoiled a little at the sourness of her breath.

“You are fucking everything up,” she said.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Stephen. He was surprised at the petulance in his tone. “Maybe you can expect your monks to respect your ‘council.’ Maybe you can give the others enough of a show to keep them quiet. But me—” he shook his head. “You can’t expect me to buy into any of this crap. Not without some explanation first.”

“Because you’re dead inside, and you resent it.” Zhanna shook her head, wrapped the sheet around her like a sari and got out of her bunk. “All right,” she whispered. “We can’t talk here. We’re already waking the others. The Council has to continue. Come on. We’ll go to the engine room.”

They stepped out into the hall. Sure enough, it was getting crowded. The low drone of snores was gone — in its place, beds creaked and shadows in robes hovered at the edge of the corridors. They glared at Stephen and Zhanna as they moved past, to aft and the engine rooms.

“Go back to sleep,” said Zhanna as they passed one heavyset boy who looked about sixteen. The kid muttered something in Russian that Stephen didn’t quite pick up and stayed where he was, watching them as they climbed down the steps into the quiet room. The lights in here were low — conserving batteries, no doubt. A couple of Romanian monks sat slumped next to a bank of valves. It was as though their strings were cut. They might have been dead.

“Now,” said Zhanna, looking at him with exaggerated attentiveness. “What do you want to know?”

“All right. First question. What is Petroska Station?”

“It is where the Mystics are,” said Zhanna.

“Right. And who are the Mystics?”

“The ones in Petroska Station.” She gave a half-grin that was not altogether kindly.

“And why did you consign your crew to living death among a bunch of fucking pod people in a watery hell a thousand metres under the sea?”

Zhanna opened her mouth and closed it again.

“It’s pretty tough to fuck with someone’s mind if you can’t read it,” said Stephen nastily. “Now. Answer my question. Those men are scared shitless of the things up there and I don’t blame them. Why did you send them there?”

“It was — requested,” said Zhanna. She looked at the floor. “Part of the price that the Mystics demand, for dealing with us.”

“What are they doing with them?”

“I don’t know. They are as lost to me now as you.”

“Really.” Stephen stepped back and turned to look at the two men huddled in the back of the engine room. “Like them?”

“These men? No. They’re resting now. There’s no work for them to do — so I leave them to themselves. If I need them—”

“You know where to find them.” Stephen looked at her. “Do you think this is what your son Vladimir had in mind when he set this whole thing in motion? I seem to recall you said that he wanted to liberate these sleepers. Didn’t he apologize to poor Chenko?”

Zhanna glared at him. “Don’t throw that in my face. Your old master Fyodor Kolyokov was far worse to his sleepers than anything we have done. The great leech Fyodor Kolyokov — living rich off the backs of the sleeping army!”

“No one,” he said, “who worked for Fyodor Kolyokov begged me for help.”

Zhanna’s hands made fists. “You — you are a bastard,” she said quietly. “You don’t know what you are talking about and you don’t know what is at stake. Living in America with the stolen wealth of the family. How could you? You are not even one of us. I don’t know how I could ever—” she stopped herself. Her face was red, and her eyes were wet.

Whatever, thought Stephen.

“What,” he said, “are they doing to your people up there?”

Zhanna didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally, she closed her eyes. Behind him, the two men who had been sleeping jerked to their feet like the marionettes that they were.

“Why don’t you go look for yourself?” said one.

“They’ve been asking after you since we came,” said the other. “I thought I’d protect you. I’d thought you were worth protecting. But why don’t you just go look out for your fucking self?”

Then they fell back to the floor, strings cut. Zhanna had left the room.

Pok-pok-pok, pok.

The noise on the hull seemed to follow Stephen as he made his way to the fore of the submarine, and the hatchway to Petroska Station. The sounds were not, he decided, musical. There was a definite cadence — but it was perhaps the cadence of speech. Sometimes it repeated itself. As though the thing outside the hull was trying to communicate. Stephen narrowed his eyes, so the corridor of the submarine became a dim blur — and tried to imagine himself beyond its confines — perhaps in the body of a huge squid, its alien thoughts rushing past him and through him — its tentacles caressing the hull of the submarine like a lover — its suckers, clicking out the simple message, again and again.

Help us.

Stephen climbed the ladder. The hatch at the top was still closed, and when he reached it, he raised his fist to pound on it. Before he could touch the metal, though, it moved aside. Creaked open. Slammed against a metal stop on the floor over his head. And he was staring into dim red light. There was no Morlock there this time.

Stephen drew a breath, and climbed the rest of the way. He pulled himself over the damp, slimy lip of the hatch, climbed to his feet, and drawing a breath of the stale, metallic air that was somehow even worse than the air in the submarine, Stephen got a look.

He came up in a long room — maybe as long as the whole submarine, and like the submarine, somewhat cylindrical. Lights were positioned regularly near the ceiling — little red globes beneath wire encasements. Some of the lights were dark, and beneath them, the pools of night were absolute.

The Morlock — or vampire or pod person or sea hag — hovered naked at the edge of one of those pools. Stephen called out to it. But it didn’t answer with even a bleat this time. It simply motioned to Stephen to follow it to the end of the cylinder, where even at this distance Stephen could see a hatch.

He hurried to catch up — to get a better look at the thing. But it was faster than he, and opened the door and vanished through it before Stephen could see much more than a naked ass and hair that fell below its pale shoulder blades. Stephen found himself panting the stale air, as he stumbled into the new corridor. He called out again — but no one answered. No echoing hellos; no whispers of “Help us.” No pok-pok-pok on the hull.

Even the Morlock was gone by now.

Stephen realized with a sinking feeling that he was, for all intents and purposes, alone in Petroska Station. The corridor he was in was narrow, and went in three directions: left, right, and in a narrow tube with ladder rungs cut into it, straight up.

It was a long way from his Cuban plantation. It was nearer to the strangeness of Chenko’s ancient Antarctic city.

But as Stephen began to think about the implications of a giant station built by Russians, this close to the United States — the reality of this place was stranger than anything any of them could imagine.

Stephen spent what seemed like hours wandering the halls. The further he went, the more it seemed like a bizarre dream. He walked through four huge chambers with great rectangles of greenish water underneath bright white lamps; an infirmary with a dozen beds, attached to two operating rooms; another room with another pool — the water’s surface clear, and only somewhat green — with things that could only have been hard-shell diving suits hanging from the ceiling like sides of beef. On a second level, a great domed room filled with blinding white light and rows and rows of hydroponically grown plants: carrots that dangled in murky water like foetuses, and twisting vines of tomatoes the size of a boy’s head, and huge zucchinis and stalks of beans. There was a control room with banks and banks of old monochrome computer monitors that flickered with amber and green firelight. And there was a great kitchen, with pots that dangled from hooks and a huge walk-in freezer.

Here, he finally found some of the missing Romanians. They had the freezer door off its hinges, and were working with glue and staples on the seal around it. None of them would have given Stephen any notice on the submarine. Here, they stopped what they were doing, looked up and smiled at him.

“Stephen Haber,” said one.

“Old Fyodor,” said another.

“Kolyokov’s apprentice,” said another.

“It is good to see you here finally,” said a third. “We thought Fyodor was lost to us for good.”

Stephen was fascinated. The three men were speaking perfect English — without a trace of the heavy accent that had scarred their speech on board the submarine. And when they moved — it was without the peculiar rhythm that Zhanna and her brood forced them into.

Stephen snapped his fingers and pointed.

“You,” he said, “are the Mystics.”

The three Romanians nodded as one. Two others continued to work inside the freezer, pulling apart a complicated tangle of coils. Stephen caught a movement out of the corner of his eye — and saw two figures similar to the pale thing that had greeted him below. They stooped over, hauling an oblong green crate between them towards the freezer.

“Forgive us,” said one of the Romanians.

“The freezer hasn’t been working,” said another.

“… properly for years,” said a third.

“That and a hundred other systems around here,” said the first.

“Our People accomplished a great many things in the Great Experiment — but they did not, I fear, build things to last,” came a voice from behind him — a fourth Romanian.

“So,” said Stephen slowly, working it out as he spoke, “when you took the nine men from the submarine, it was… to fix your refrigerator.”

“Freezer,” said one of the two Romanians working on the coil. “And…”

“… some other things,” said his partner. “It is a good thing this place was never tested by nuclear war. It wouldn’t have lasted.”

The Romanians all turned back to their task. Stephen stood there for a moment, watched as the Morlocks dropped the box at the door. It made a clang. The Morlocks bleated at each other, and shuffled out of the kitchen.

“You see,” said a Romanian, “the ones who’ve been here a while just aren’t up to it anymore.”

“Like old tractors,” said another.

“They have lost their pull.”

Stephen nodded. “So you press-ganged our crew,” he said, “because they are up to it. For now.”

“Close enough,” said a Romanian, and gave him a look. “You look like a strong boy yourself,” he said. “Care to lend a hand?”

Stephen dragged over the box — which was filled with spare canisters and parts for reassembling a fan. He had never repaired a large industrial freezer before — but he found himself catching on to the muttered instructions. As they were putting the huge vault-like door back in place, he wondered aloud why it was they even needed a freezer down here.

“I’d think it was just about cold enough outside to preserve anything, this deep,” he said.

One of the Romanians laughed. “Listen to the oceanographer,” he said. “It is cold enough to preserve anything, we are so deep!”

“Yes, well he makes a good point. Isn’t that why we came here? To preserve us?”

“And what a good job we’re doing.”

One of the Romanians turned to him. “It’s true,” he said, “that it’s cool outside. But the freezer is better run by electricity. That is something we have no shortage of here.”

Stephen nodded. He described the power plant that he saw, and the Romanians all nodded.

“See? Smart boy. It’s a geothermal plant. Very high tech in 1977.”

“Would have been a Nobel Prize in it, if it were made by an American.”

“Would have never been made by an American.”

“So clever, they think they are.”

“1977?” said Stephen. “Is that how long this thing has been down here?”

“No. That was when it was planned. I don’t think they sank the spike until — when was it?”

“1982. That was when Reagan was making all those threats. Remember?”

“Oh, like it was yesterday.”

“We were the ‘evil empire.’”

“And they had no idea how far it went.”

“So true.”

“This thing,” said Stephen slowly — working it out as he went, “has been underwater — off the coast of the United States — undetected — for seventeen years?”

“Oh yes.”

“And you’ve been down here—”

“Seventeen years.”

Stephen leaned back against the wall of the galley.

“And how the fuck,” he asked, “did you manage that?”

“Well at first — it was a big secret project. Approved by Brezhnev himself. We thought we could inhabit the ocean’s floor. It would be better than the space program. Build a secret city — a secret country — under the sea.”

“It was fantastically expensive — but those were the good days for the ‘evil empire.’ We had lots of rubles to spend on big things.”

“At first we were going to put it in the Black Sea. Wasn’t too deep, and we could send ships to it from Odessa. It wouldn’t be a threat to anyone. Then some of us started thinking: why not be more ambitious? We had already managed to cloak whole installations, using our talents. Why not build it under the Americans’ noses?”

“So we sent over some people to Cuba. We set up a special account. We set our operatives to work — in the United States, in South America — and most of all, in the Kremlin.”

Ha! thought Stephen. He was right about Cuba. Sort of.

“And by the time it was finished—”

“Even Leonid Brezhnev had forgotten it ever existed.”

“He forgot first.”

“And those of us with the foresight to see the great purge coming—”

“—to foresee the end of City 512, and the scattering of our children—”

“—we moved down here.”

Stephen thought about that.

“Kolyokov always said that the sea was a dangerous place for a dream-walker. He never went near it without his bathyscaphe.”

“Bathyscaphe!”

“Ha!”

“Kolyokov was a big coward.”

“It’s dangerous all right. Like the Face of God.”

“There you go with God again.”

“Look. Stephen. It’s dangerous because it’s rich. A dream-walker can explore the soul of the ocean for a lifetime.”

“A dreamer can lose himself in it.”

“And find himself.”

“That’s deep,” said Stephen. “So you remained undetected — how exactly?”

“Well you know — a bit of this,” a Romanian tapped his forehead. “Same way your master Kolyokov kept his operations secret all those years. You make the right people forget—”

“And you make sure no one looks.”

“And,” said another, “this place is well-located to avoid detection. This part of the Atlantic Shelf is in a dead zone — no currents move here. We can be quiet.”

“But you know that’s not all of it.”

“Right.”

“We could not have done this without—” another Romanian tapped the wall “—a bit of help from them.”

“Them?” Stephen was completely confused.

“You know,” said a fifth Romanian as he came out of the cooling freezer. “Fish.”

“All the big squids outside.”

“They were great from the start.”

“Do you know how big their brains are?

“Huge.”

“Not much going on in them.”

“But that’s fine.”

“More room for us.”

“Squid.” said Stephen. He felt his shoulders trembling, as he thought back to his daydreams. His supposed daydreams — the things that could not have been the result of dream-walking…

“Don’t look so surprised. It’s not like you haven’t seen them already.”

“It’s not like you can’t see them again, if you want.”

Stephen felt tears brimming around the edges of his eyes.

“Look at the crybaby.”

“That is sweet.”

“You are such a sentimentalist, Yorgi.”