Rasputin's Bastards

THE LITTLE HERO

The Cold War was long finished and the West had new enemies to worry about but still — moving a Russian-built, gangster-crewed submarine up the eastern coast of America and into Canadian territories on nothing but battery power and a wavering sense of communal purpose was not an easy thing. It was, supposed Stephen, a miracle they were moving at all.

The submarine’s crew was used to working under the instruction of the dream-walkers. But since they’d departed, Zhanna had rigidly enforced what she termed “cranial silence.” So the crew had to find its own motivation.

Motivation was hard to come by when most of those crew were dirt poor, uneducated Romanian thugs who’d been given a taste of Paradise.

Stephen learned early on to stay out of the former monks’ way. Where before they ignored Stephen’s presence when they went about their duties, they now stalked the submarine in a kind of sullen rage — much of it seeming to be directed at Stephen himself. They met his eye with alpha-male challenges; made sure to elbow him when they passed in the hall; talked in harsh, angry whispers, glancing up with murder in their eyes.

Stephen couldn’t blame them — after all, he’d done serious injury to at least two of them over the past few days. He could likewise understand Konstantine Uzimeri’s hostility toward him; the two of them had never got along, things were coming to an ugly head in the world of dream-walking messiahs, and Uzimeri was a religious whack-job anyway.

Chenko and Pitovovich, though, he couldn’t figure. To them, Stephen Haber had become invisible. They talked in fast bursts of Russian whenever he came into the room, and if he were so craven as to sit down beside them with a plate of food — they would without a word stand up and leave. That pissed him off — only slightly less than the fact that Mrs. Kontos-Wu seemed to be siding with them more than with him.

The Morlocks were more welcoming — they were pathetically welcoming in fact. They’d taken up in the submarine’s torpedo room. And visiting them was like visiting aging relatives in cut-rate nursing homes. Stephen had spent less than an hour perched on the port tube while a half-dozen of the ancient creatures had sat on and around the starboard tube, gaping and grinning inarticulately at him.

He’d finally found a place where he could spend time among the children, who spent the days hopping back and forth between staterooms in their section of the submarine. They were at least decent toward him — although Stephen couldn’t help but feel that the kindness was partly due to guilt — they had, after all, erroneously tortured him if only by proxy — and partly for the practice. The Children, Zhanna included, together had the all the subtle conversational skills of Appalachian-born Star Trek fans.

“You fuck fellows?” said Petra, a greasy-haired former psychic girl who seemed to be about eleven, as they sat together in the converted map room sipping tea ten hours into their voyage.

“No,” said Stephen, “I’ve got AIDS and I don’t fuck — fool around with anybody. We’ve been through this.”

“Zhanna likes you,” said Petra, pressing onward bravely, and Zhanna, briefly the only one in the room more mortified than Stephen, pushed herself further back into the corner. “She has no hope, right?”

“I think Zhanna’s got other things on her mind right now,” said Stephen. Petra stuck her finger up her nose, and Stephen reached over and put his hand on her arm. “Don’t do that,” he said.

“Yes,” said Zhanna, “it is gross,” and she turned to Dmitri — a fat-assed fourteen year old with acne and wide, goggly eyes. “Stop staring,” she said, and he looked away, horrified. Zhanna gave Stephen a pained look. He decided to risk sending another mixed signal and patted her on the hand. Zhanna at least was learning how to deal with people and took it for what it was. She smirked and gestured around her.

“And you wanted to be a psychic,” she said. “Having second thoughts now?”

Stephen shook his head and chuckled. “You guys aren’t really much worse than the New Jersey Spring Psychic Fair.”

“That is bullshit.”

“Hey. I’m trying to be nice.”

“Yes you are.” Zhanna reached over to the little electric samovar and refilled her tea. “You want some?” she asked Stephen.

“Sure.”

Petra got up and excused herself to visit the head.

“Sound of that tea makes me want to piss awful,” she hollered as she slammed the door.

“I got to shit when you’re done in there!” yelled Dmitri with characteristic grace.

They had been drinking a lot of tea since taking off. It was important for the children at least to remain awake for the duration of the trip. Falling asleep would mean the possibility of dream-walking. While it was strictly speaking possible for a Child to sleep and not dream-walk, the temptation was really too great.

And maintaining absolute silence was crucial. That had been the plan — to keep the submarine off-line, and running deep — and distract Babushka and her minions at New Pokrovskoye with the squid attacks that would appear to the dream-walking Babushka as nothing so much as certain and horrific death. Stephen had wanted to go on those. During the briefing before they left, he’d tried again and again to enlist. But Zhanna had made the point that even Stephen’s crude, rudimentary squid-enhanced and oddly anomalous dream-walking wasn’t safe. The whole point of the exercise, she said, was to keep off the Babushka’s radar.

Of course, an equally acute problem was keeping off of real radar — and sonar. And satellites. As long as they stayed mid-Atlantic it was fine — but the final approach to New Pokrovskoye was going to be a bastard. The Canadian Navy patrolled those waters — mostly looking for poachers who were fishing the cod beds. But the submarine would raise questions.

Toward that end, they had enlisted some help — in the form of a school of shrimp that followed in the submarine’s wake. And occasionally, they were visited by one of the Mystics in the form of a squid — who would give them Morse Code messages. The first few were, things like “B-U-C-K-U-P-I-N-T-H-E-R-E-D-O-N-O-T-G-O-T-O-S-L-E-E-P” and “W-E-A-R-E-W-A-T-C-H-I-N-G-Y-O-U-R-B-A-C-K.” The first one of any note happened about five hours in with: “W-E-L-L-T-H-E-R-E-I-T-G-O-E-S” and “P-E-T-R-O-S-K-A-S-T-A-T-I-O-N-I-S-G-O-N-E.”

The last message, which had come just an hour ago, was more encouraging. They’d sat silently, listening to the pok-pok-ing on the submarine’s hull, while Pitovovich, who’d been working on the key while Chenko slept, took it down.

Finally, she read over the scratchy P.A. system:

“The way to New Pokrovskoye is clear. We think that we have driven Babushka off. Your reunion is imminent. Kilodovich has done his work. Victory is ours.”

An hour after that, the toilet in the officers’ mess flushed, water clanking its way through the pipes of the old 641, and little Petra stepped out, adjusting her track pants. Dmitri hurried in.

“Are we there yet?” said Petra as she returned to her seat.

“Soon,” said Zhanna. “Soon.”