Dislocation Space Read online

  Shargei put the shackles on her himself, wrists and ankles. He didn’t bother to make them tight.

  “I know you can get out of these,” he said, leaning close. “Don’t. Remember what you have to lose.”

  “I remember,” said Aleksandra quietly. “I remember.”

  * * *

  She slept on the aircraft, a new type she had not seen before. It was called an Antonov AN-2 and they only had to land six times to refuel, every stop at strange little airfields in the middle of nowhere, staffed by skeleton crews of orange-tabbed soldiers manning basic facilities. The last two refuellings were at night, the aircraft guided in to land by lines of flares and truck headlights.

  Somewhere along the way the flight crew changed as well. The only passengers were Aleksandra, Termin, Shargei and four silent soldiers, who sat at the back of the passenger cabin and paid Aleksandra no attention, only coming fully alive at each stop, where they paced out at the cardinal points of the compass and stood on guard. Looking outward, not in.

  Soon after dawn, Aleksandra peered through the small, round window by her seat, watching the forest beneath. Pine, spruce and larch, as far as the eye could see. The taiga, which she knew well, though better in its more western reaches, towards Karelia. She had not been to Siberia before the camps.

  But as the aircraft droned on, the forest suddenly disappeared. There was a demarcation line ahead, beyond it lay a wasteland of dead trees entirely stripped of their branches. From high above they looked like toothpicks stuck in pale ash. The destroyed area stretched for kilometres ahead and to either side, a vast swathe of desolation.

  “What happened here?” asked Aleksandra. “The American bomb?”

  She knew about the atomic bombings of Japan, though she had already been in her first camp at the time. Arrested, tried, and transported between June 10 and June 12, 1945, immediately after she had completed her last mission on Comrade Stalin’s personal orders, in Moscow. But prisoners arriving after her had talked about the end of the Japanese War, about the American A-bombs.

  “No,” replied Termin, shaking his head. “The devastation is much older, from 1908. There are various theories. The most popular is that it was a very large meteorite.”

  The aircraft shuddered and nosed forward.

  “We are landing here?”

  “Near the lake. Lake Cheko. You see the landing strip, and the camp?”

  “Another camp,” said Aleksandra sourly. She could pick it out, a rectangle of huts, a perimeter fence, the beaten ground around it where the trees had been bulldozed away, caterpillar track scars still visible in sweeping curves. That was a good sign, for it meant no zeks were involved in the tree-clearing labour. There were no guard towers, either. This was not a prison camp. Or not one of the usual ones.

  “You will be treated well here,” said Termin. “Your own hut, exclusively yours. There is a bathhouse, excellent food, the baker in particular is a genius. He was at the Hotel Metropol for years. We have vodka, wine from Abrau-Dyurso, even caviar at times!”

  “All dependent on good behaviour,” added Shargei.

  The aeroplane sank lower. Aleksandra continued to look through the window, examining the camp and the surrounding area, looking for landmarks, roads, other signs of habitation. Anything that might be useful when the time came to escape.

  “What is that enormous construction at the far end of the camp?” she asked suddenly. “Like a very long rabbit hutch … many rabbit hutches joined in lines … a maze? Some folly, an amusement?”

  “No,” said Termin. “It is not a folly. It is a model, of sorts. We call it the Replica. It is a representation of a network of narrow tunnels, made on a one-to-one scale, as best we can gauge.”

  “Ah,” said Aleksandra. “It is extensive.”

  “The main line is one thousand, four hundred and eleven metres long,” said Termin, enthusiastically. She had not seen him so energised. Whatever this was, he was deeply invested in it. “As you can see, not at all in a straight line. There are six branch lines, accounting for another nine hundred and eight metres, collectively. You cannot see all the twists and turns from up here, but there are many. Vertical and horizontal.”

  “What is it a replica of, exactly?”

  “You will be informed at the appropriate time,” interrupted Shargei.

  “What is it made from? It is a strangely uniform colour.”

  “Welded steel, painted grey,” said Termin. “The interior is lined with five millimetre cork. This attempts to mimic a small amount of flex in the Original.”

  Aleksandra frowned. This “replica” was a very, very expensive construction. And what was this reference to an “Original”?

  “What is the ‘Original’ and what is it made from?”

  Termin began to answer, but stopped at a movement from Shargei, who spoke instead.

  “We will be landing in a few minutes. I will take your shackles off.”

  Aleksandra raised her hands and the shackles fell into her lap. She lifted her legs and her ankle chains fell to the floor. She’d slipped her hands out while Shargei and Termin were sleeping, picked the locks on the ankle manacles with the wire she kept in her hair and closed them again, unlocked.

  Termin looked impressed.

  “These small rebellions can be tolerated,” said Shargei, his voice even and conversational, his eyes as dead as ever. “But no more. You know what is at stake. Do not overplay your hand, or overestimate your usefulness.”

  * * *

  Close up, the Replica was even stranger than it had looked from the air. Aleksandra stood on a short stepladder to look into the entrance point of the cork-lined 31.15 cm square tunnel, which was raised up a metre from ground level. From there it ran straight for only two or three metres, then made a sharp left turn of some one hundred degrees or so, carried on for several metres more, then corkscrewed down three turns, always maintaining that basic dimension of a 31.15 cm cube.

  She climbed down and followed the tunnel along the outside. After the corkscrew there was another straight horizontal section, longer this time, then more turns, to left and right and up and down, and then something different. A larger chamber, from which the “main” tunnel continued a little offset to the right, but there was also another branch going off sharply left.

  “This is Junction A,” said Shargei. Termin had disappeared into what Aleksandra assumed was the HQ hut or equivalent. “It is a cube 249.2 centimetres on each side. Four times the dimension of the basic tunnel. There are three more junctions like this: B, V, and G. Plus a total of four smaller junctions: O, P, R, and S which are only twice the dimension of the tunnel. Insofar as we have mapped inside the Original.”

  “Mapped inside,” said Aleksandra. “How? By whom?”

  Shargei didn’t answer her question. He asked one instead.

  “Can you move through this tunnel?”

  “Of course,” scoffed Aleksandra. “It is a little … roomier … than some of the sewers at Stalingrad. And not so long.”

  “Show me,” said Shargei. “To Junction A, and then return. As fast as you can.”

  He pushed back the sleeve of his greatcoat, and folded back the top of his glove, to reveal a gold Rolex. Undoubtedly the former property of a zek, or someone who never made it as far as a camp.

  “It’s cold,” said Aleksandra, looking over to the twisting tunnels of the Replica. “Colder inside that steel, cork lining or not.”

  “Don’t linger then,” said Shargei.

  “I need grease. A thick layer on my torso. For the cold, not for slipperiness. Bear grease is best.”

  Shargei nodded, gestured to one of the guards, who held out a large canister. It had a handwritten label “good grease”.

  Aleksandra took the canister, forcing herself to glance away from the label. She recognised the handwriting, and had felt her heart leap, but she hoped that this had not shown on her face. Allowing someone like Shargei information was always a bad idea.

  “I
will need blankets, hot tea, and vodka as soon as I come out,” she said. “Or better, a sauna. And I’ll still need the tea and the vodka.”

  “We have a sauna. It will be ready.”

  “Tell your soldiers to turn around,” said Aleksandra. “Remember what I said about gawping.”

  She didn’t actually care, but it was a way to exert control over the guards. Even the smallest victories could accumulate, become larger ones. If the guards got used to obeying her requests, it could become habit.

  Shargei gestured, and the guards faced outward. Termin turned to the side, and looked at the ground. Shargei kept watching Aleksandra as she stripped quickly, opened the jar and slathered herself from knees to elbows with bear grease, afterwards wiping the stuff off her hands on the rocky ground, gritting them up.

  It was cold, but nothing like the far eastern cold. Maybe only five or eight degrees below freezing.

  “You said quickly,” she said, standing by the stepladder. “How quickly?”

  “Sixteen minutes to get to Junction A and return,” said Shargei. “Or you are of no use to us. Slap the side when you reach the Junction, so I know you are there.”

  He looked at his watch, waiting for the second hand on the smaller, inset dial to sweep around to the top, and said “Start now.”

  Aleksandra did not rush. She climbed into the entrance, dislocating her right shoulder as she did so, undulating forward and pushing with her feet. The cork lining actually slowed her progress a little at first–she was unused to it–but soon she moved more swiftly, pausing to dislocate her left shoulder before the first turn.

  She’d expected total darkness in the tunnel, but there was light. There were tiny pinholes drilled through the steel, which had been set with coloured glass, allowing the sunlight to enter. At first it was red, then a bit further on it changed to an orange hue, and then yellow.

  Like a snake or an eel, she wriggled around the corkscrew turns. They were difficult, not like anything she had gone through before, but she did not allow herself any doubt. Her mind was thinking through the bigger situation, as she automatically twisted and writhed and edged forward.

  What was the point of this place? What could it possibly be replicating? It made no sense as a sewer, or a building conduit. But it had to be something like that, some secret way in to a secure place, somewhere they wanted Aleksandra to infiltrate.

  But Professor Termin had said it was not a shooting job. She was inclined to believe him, he seemed an innocent. A foolish innocent, unaware he too would undoubtedly be consumed by the beast he served. She would not trust Shargei’s word in any matter.

  She slithered on, around and down and up, the cork-lined walls tight around her, but never so tight she could not go on. It would be harder to go backwards, but not impossible, and she presumed she would be able to turn around in the Junction A space. The size of the junctions wasn’t like anything she could think of either. Surge chambers in a stormwater drain? But the drain would not twist and turn as this tunnel was doing. Not that it mattered what the Replica was mimicking. She had no choice.

  Go on. Try to stay alive.

  Maybe something would change.

  Stalin might die. Aleksandra might die. The Americans might drop lots of their new bombs …

  Aleksandra popped out of the tunnel into the larger box that was Junction A, clicking her shoulders back in so she could use her arms to lower herself to the floor. The pinholes here had been set with blue glass, and there were more of them, so she could see clearly.

  She slapped the walls on the left and right, hard. Even deadened by the cork, the sound echoed through the chamber and the tunnels, and would be clearly audible outside. A few seconds later she heard an answering knock, presumably from Shargei, the harsher sound of a pistol butt or something similar on the exterior steel.

  Aleksandra looked back up at the tunnel where she’d come in, and saw there was something written on the cork just under the exit hole. In blood, with a forefinger, she guessed, though it was surprisingly neat.

  It said “V.N.N.” and “Shargei is a cocksucking liar”.

  “I knew that already,” whispered Aleksandra, smiling as she hoisted herself up and into the tunnel again, moving swiftly, because the cold was leeching her strength and suppleness, making it harder to do everything. Shargei might be a cocksucking liar, but he’d spoken truthfully about not lingering.

  Aleksandra thought about “V.N.N.” as she squirmed towards real sunlight and the promised sauna, vodka and tea.

  The initials had to mean Vladimir Nikolayevich Novitski. He was the master, the chief instructor in contortion and gymnastics at the Moscow Circus School where Aleksandra had trained from the age of six in 1933, until they were both swept up into the Red Army in late 1941. She’d only seen him once since then, very briefly, learning he’d been assigned to a tank unit, and seen lots of action. Small, extremely flexible people were useful in tanks. Aleksandra had almost become a T-34 driver herself, until her extreme natural ability for shooting people from very far away had been noticed.

  It made sense that Vladimir Nikolayevich was the one who had mapped out the Original, whatever this Replica duplicated. But if so, where was he? If they had the master, why bring in the student?

  Aleksandra had an unpleasant premonition she knew the reason. But she pushed it down, like so many other such forebodings. If you expected terrible things to have already happened to those you love, it was less of a blow when you found your expectations met … or horrifically exceeded.

  She emerged from the Replica into bright sunlight, but it delivered little warmth. One of the women guards handed her a thick blanket, which she wrapped around herself, as she stepped into her felt boots. Her clothes were already tied up in a bundle, carried by another guard.

  “Fourteen minutes,” said Shargei, folding his glove back over the Rolex and pulling down his greatcoat sleeve. “Sufficient. Escort Comrade Captain Levchenko to the sauna. She is to be issued vodka, one litre bottle.”

  “And hot tea,” said Aleksandra. She had to grit her teeth to stop them chattering. The shivers she could control better, though her knuckles gripping the blanket ends were blue.

  “The babushka who tends the sauna will get you tea,” said Shargei dismissively. “You are off duty until tomorrow, Levchenko. You will be shown your quarters, and the mess hall. I do not think I need to remind you why you are here and the consequences of any … foolishness. But should you forget, I tell you now: there is nothing living, no refuge within sixty kilometres of this place and unlike the camps you know, we have dogs. German dogs, in fact. Very unpleasant dogs, they are still Nazis I think. We have a dozen of them in the kennels. You understand?”

  Aleksandra nodded. She understood. Any attempt to escape would end in failure. At least any attempt by land. Perhaps if she could commandeer an aircraft, make the pilot fly south … but to where? And as always, her family would pay. She could not live if the price was their death.

  Escape was not possible. Not for her.

  “Sauna,” grunted Aleksandra.

  * * *

  On the way to the sauna, trudging between unmarked huts, Aleksandra asked the guard where the infirmary was located.

  He did not answer, but his inadvertent glance indicated the direction.

  “The infirmary?” prompted Aleksandra again.

  The male guard who was carrying her clothes still did not reply. After ten or twenty seconds, the woman guard cleared her throat.

  “We are not to talk to you unless necessary. What do you need? We will fetch it for you.”

  “Aspirin,” said Aleksandra, though she didn’t actually need anything. The aches and pains were simply a reminder she was still alive.

  The guard nodded.

  They plodded on in silence, towards a large hut where gouts of steam emanating from one chimney and smoke from another indicated the sauna. The guards led her to the door, and handed her over to an unsmiling babushka, a crone with a decayed or
chard of a face rather than the apple-cheeked, smiling grandam of the colourful children’s books of Aleksandra’s distant, now seemingly almost fantastical childhood.

  The babushka accepted Aleksandra’s clothes and jerked her head.

  “We will take you to your quarters afterwards,” said the woman guard. “Don’t wander around.”

  “Vodka,” said Aleksandra. “Tea.”

  “I will bring it. Go in,” muttered the babushka.

  * * *

  Three hours later, the guards carried an apparently completely drunk Aleksandra from the sauna to her assigned hut, wrapped in several thick off-white towels she refused to let go, along with the empty vodka bottle. They didn’t know most of its contents had gone down the drain. The babushka grumbled along behind carrying a bundle of Aleksandra’s clothes, both old and new.

  Aleksandra counted the paces between the bathhouse and her own hut, and noted the direction from the sun and shadows. The guards put her down on a bed, a proper bed with a sprung mattress–and the hut was warm from the iron stove in the corner–flung some blankets over her and left, locking the door behind them.

  Aleksandra opened her eyes after a while, inspected the room, and went to sleep. She had always been able to tell herself when to wake up, a skill honed during the war, so six hours later her eyes flashed open. It was dark in the hut, save for a thin band of light coming through the gap in the curtained window from the arc lights that illuminated the walkways between the buildings and the perimeter.

  She let her eyes adjust for a minute, then crept out of the bed. There was a lidded chamberpot under it, which she used. Then she spent the next little while crawling around and examining the floorboards by touch. Finding several that were beginning to rot, she got out her saw-blade knife and worked at them, until she could lever up several boards and make a gap wide enough to slide through.

  Cold air blew in viciously through the hole, but she ignored it, poking her head down and feeling the space under the hut. The building was raised up on four bricks, a sufficient space for her to slide under and get out.