Mironenko was right; it was warmer inside. And there no sign of a dog. There was blood in abundance, however. The man Ballard had last seen teetering in the doorway had been dragged back into this abattoir while he and Solomonov had struggled. The body had been treated with astonishing barbarity. The head had been smashed open; the innards were a grim litter underfoot. Squatting in the shadowy corner of this terrible room, Mironenko. He had been mercilessly beaten to judge by the swelling about his head and upper torso, but his unshaven face bore a smile for his saviour.
"I knew you'd come," he said. His gaze fell upon Solomonov. They followed me," he said. "They meant to kill me, I suppose. Is that what you intended, Comrade?"
Solomonov shook with fear – his eyes flitting from the bruised moon of Mironenko's face to the pieces of gut that lay everywhere about – finding nowhere a place of refuge.
"What stopped them?" Ballard asked.
Mironenko stood up. Even this slow movement caused Solomonov to flinch.
"Tell Mr. Ballard," Mironenko prompted. "Tell him what happened." Solomonov was too terrified to speak. "He's KGB, of course," Mironenko explained. "Both trusted men. But not trusted enough to be warned, poor idiots. So they were sent to murder me with just a gun and a prayer." He laughed at the thought. "Neither of which were much use in the circumstances."
"I beg you…" Solomonov murmured,"… let me go. I'll say nothing."
"You'll say what they want you to say, Comrade, the way we all must," Mironenko replied. "Isn't that right, Ballard? All slaves of our faith?"
Ballard watched Mironenko's face closely; there was a fullness there that could not be entirely explained by the bruising. The skin almost seemed to crawl.
"They have made us forgetful," Mironenko said.
"Of what?" Ballard enquired.
"Of ourselves," came the reply, and with it Mironenko moved from his murky corner and into the light. What had Solomonov and his dead companion done to him? His flesh was a mass of tiny contusions, and there were bloodied lumps at his neck and temples which Ballard might have taken for bruises but that they palpitated, as if something nested beneath the skin. Mironenko made no sign of discomfort however, as he reached out to Solomonov. At his touch the failed assassin lost control of his bladder, but Mironenko's intentions were not murderous. With eerie tenderness he stroked a tear from Solomonov's cheek. "Go back to them," he advised the trembling man. "Tell them what you've seen."
Solomonov seemed scarcely to believe his ears, or else suspected – as did Ballard – that this forgiveness was a sham, and that any attempt to leave would invite fatal consequences.
But Mironenko pressed his point. "Go on," he said. "Leave us please. Or would you prefer to stay and eat?" Solomonov took a single, faltering step towards the door. When no blow came he took a second step, and a third, and now he was out of the door and away.
"Tell them!" Mironenko shouted after him. The front door slammed.
"Tell them what?" said Ballard.
"That I've remembered," Mironenko said. "That I've found the skin they stole from me."
For the first time since entering this house, Ballard began to feel queasy. It was not the blood nor the bones underfoot, but a look in Mironenko's eyes. He'd seen eyes as bright once before. But where?
"You -” he said quietly, “you did this."
"Certainly," Mironenko replied.
"How?" Ballard said. There was a familiar thunder climbing from the back of his head. He tried to ignore it, and press some explanation from the Russian. "How, damn you?"
"We are the same," Mironenko replied. "I smell it in you."
"No," said Ballard. The clamour was rising.
"The doctrines are just words. It's not what we're taught but what we know that matters. In our marrow; in our souls."
He had talked of souls once before; of places his masters had built in which a man could be broken apart. At the time Ballard had thought such talk mere extravagance; now he wasn't so sure. What was the burial party all about, if not the subjugation of some secret part of him? The marrow-part; the soul-part.
Before Ballard could find the words to express himself, Mironenko froze, his eyes gleaming more brightly than ever. "They're outside," he said.
"Who are?"
The Russian shrugged. "Does it matter?" he said. "Your side or mine. Either one will silence us if they can." That much was true.
"We must be quick," he said, and headed for the hallway. The front door stood ajar. Mironenko was there in moments. Ballard followed. Together they slipped out on to the street.
The fog had thickened. It idled around the street- lamps, muddying their light, making every doorway a hiding place. Ballard didn't wait to tempt the pursuers out into the open, but followed Mironenko, who was already well ahead, swift despite his bulk. Ballard had to pick up his pace to keep the man in sight. One moment he was visible, the next the fog closed around him. The residential property they moved through now gave way to more anonymous buildings, warehouses perhaps, whose walls stretched up into the murky darkness unbroken by windows. Ballard called after him to slow his crippling pace. The Russian halted and turned back to Ballard, his outline wavering in the besieged light. Was it a trick of the fog, or had Mironenko's condition deteriorated in the minutes since they'd left the house? His face seemed to be seeping; the lumps on his neck had swelled further.
"We don't have to run," Ballard said. "They're not following."
"They're always following," Mironenko replied, and as if to give weight to the observation Ballard heard fog deadened footsteps in a nearby street. "No time to debate," Mironenko murmured, and turning on his heel, he ran. In seconds, the fog had spirited him away again.
Ballard hesitated another moment. Incautious as it was, he wanted to catch a glimpse of his pursuers so as to know them for the future. But now, as the soft pad of Mironenko's step diminished into silence, he realised that the other footsteps had also ceased. Did they know he was waiting for them? He held his breath, but there was neither sound nor sign of them. The delinquent fog idled on. He seemed to be alone in it. Reluctantly, he gave up waiting and went after the Russian at a run. A few yards on the road divided. There was no sign of Mironenko in either direction. Cursing his stupidity in lingering behind, Ballard followed the route which was most heavily shrouded in fog. The street was short, and ended at a wall lined with spikes, beyond which there was a park of some kind. The fog clung more tenaciously to this space of damp earth than it did to the street, and Ballard could see no more than four or five yards across the grass from where he stood. But he knew intuitively that he had chosen the right road; that Mironenko had scaled this wall and was waiting for him somewhere close by. Behind him, the fog kept its counsel. Either their pursuers had lost him, or their way, or both. He hoisted himself up on to the wall, avoiding the spikes by a whisper, and dropped down on the opposite side. The street had seemed pin-drop quiet, but it clearly wasn't, for it was quieter still inside the park. The fog was chillier here, and pressed more insistently upon him as he advanced across the wet grass. The wall behind him – his only point of anchorage in this wasteland – became a ghost of itself, then faded entirely. Committed now, he walked on a few more steps, not certain that he was even taking a straight route. Suddenly the fog curtain was drawn aside and he saw a figure waiting for him a few yards ahead. The bruises now twisted his face so badly Ballard would not have known it to be Mironenko, but that his eyes still burned so brightly. The man did not wait for Ballard, but turned again and loped off into insolidity, leaving the Englishman to follow, cursing both the chase and the quarry. As he did so, he felt a movement close by. His senses were useless in the clammy embrace of fog and night, but he saw with that other eye, heard with that other ear, and he knew he was not alone. Had Mironenko given up the race and come back to escort him? He spoke the man's name, knowing that in doing so he made his position apparent to any and all, but equally certain that whoever stalked him already knew precisely where he st
ood.
"Speak," he said.
There was no reply out of the fog.
Then; movement. The fog curled upon itself and Ballard glimpsed a form dividing the veils. Mironenko! He called after the man again, taking several steps through the murk in pursuit and suddenly something was stepping out to meet him. He saw the phantom for a moment only; long enough to glimpse incandescent eyes and teeth grown so vast they wrenched the mouth into a permanent grimace. Of those facts – eyes and teeth – he was certain. Of the other bizarrities – the bristling flesh, the monstrous limbs – he was less sure. Maybe his mind, exhausted with so much noise and pain, was finally losing its grip on the real world; inventing terrors to frighten him back into ignorance. "Damn you," he said, defying both the thunder that was coming to blind him again and the phantoms he would be blinded to. Almost as if to test his defiance, the fog up ahead shimmered and parted and something that he might have taken for human, but that it had its belly to the ground, slunk into view and out. To his right, he heard growls; to his left, another indeterminate form came and went. He was surrounded, it seemed, by mad men and wild dogs. And Mironenko; where was he? Part of this assembly, or prey to it? Hearing a half-word spoken behind him, he swung round to see a figure that was plausibly that of the Russian backing into the fog. This time he didn't walk in pursuit, he ran, and his speed was rewarded. The figure reappeared ahead of him, and Ballard stretched to snatch at the man's jacket. His fingers found purchase, and all at once Mironenko was reeling round, a growl in his throat, and Ballard was staring into a face that almost made him cry out. His mouth was a raw wound, the teeth vast, the eyes slits of molten gold; the lumps at his neck had swelled and spread, so that the Russian's head was no longer raised above his body but part of one undivided energy, head becoming torso without an axis intervening. "Ballard," the beast smiled.
Its voice clung to coherence only with the greatest difficulty, but Ballard heard the remnants of Mironenko there. The more he scanned the simmering flesh, the more appalled he became.
"Don't be afraid," Mironenko said.
"What disease is this?"
"The only disease I ever suffered was forgetfulness, and I'm cured of that -” He grimaced as he spoke, as if each word was shaped in contradiction to the instincts of his throat.
Ballard touched his hand to his head. Despite his revolt against the pain, the noise was rising and rising."… You remember too, don't you? You're the same."
"No," Ballard muttered.
Mironenko reached a spine-haired palm to touch him.
"Don't be afraid," he said. "You're not alone. There are many of us. Brothers and sisters."
"I'm not your brother," Ballard said. The noise was bad, but the face of Mironenko was worse. Revolted, he turned his back on it, but the Russian only followed him.
"Don't you taste freedom, Ballard? And life. Just a breath away." Ballard walked on, the blood beginning to creep from his nostrils. He let it come. "It only hurts for a while," Mironenko said. "Then the pain goes…" Ballard kept his head down, eyes to the earth.
Mironenko, seeing that he was making little impression, dropped behind.
They won't take you back!" he said. "You've seen too much."
The roar of helicopters did not entirely blot these words out. Ballard knew there was truth in them. His step faltered, and through the cacophony he heard Mironenko murmur: "Look…"
Ahead, the fog had thinned somewhat, and the park wall was visible through rags of mist. Behind him, Mironenko's voice had descended to a snarl.
"Look at what you are."
The rotors roared; Ballard's legs felt as though they would fold up beneath him. But he kept up his advance towards the wall. Within yards of it, Mironenko called after him again, but this time the words had fled altogether. There was only a low growl. Ballard could not resist looking; just once. He glanced over his shoulder.
Again the fog confounded him, but not entirely. For moments that were both an age and yet too brief, Ballard saw the thing that had been Mironenko in all its glory, and at the sight the rotors grew to screaming pitch. He clamped his hands to his face. As he did so a shot rang out; then another; then a volley of shots. He fell to the ground, as much in weakness as in self-defence, and uncovered his eyes to see several human figures moving in the fog. Though he had forgotten their pursuers, they had not forgotten him. They had traced him to the park, and stepped into the midst of this lunacy, and now men and half-men and things not men were lost in the fog, and there was bloody confusion on every side. He saw a gunman firing at a shadow, only to have an ally appear from the fog with a bullet in his belly; saw a thing appear on four legs and flit from sight again on two; saw another run by carrying a human head by the hair, and laughing from its snouted face.
The turmoil spilled towards him. Fearing for his life, he stood up and staggered back towards the wall. The cries and shots and snarls went on; he expected either bullet or beast to find him with every step. But he reached the wall alive, and attempted to scale it. His co-ordination had deserted him, however. He had no choice but to follow the wall along its length until he reached the gate.
Behind him the scenes of unmasking and transformation and mistaken identity went on. His enfeebled thoughts turned briefly to Mironenko. Would he, or any of his tribe, survive this massacre?
"Ballard," said a voice in the fog. He couldn't see the speaker, although he recognised the voice. He'd heard it in his delusion, and it had told him lies.
He felt a pin-prick at his neck. The man had come from behind, and was pressing a needle into him. "Sleep," the voice said. And with the words came oblivion.
At first he couldn't remember the man's name. His mind wandered like a lost child, although his interrogator would time and again demand his attention, speaking to him as though they were old friends. And there was indeed something familiar about his errant eye, that went on its way so much more slowly than its companion. At last, the name came to him.
"You're Cripps," he said.
"Of course I'm Cripps," the man replied. "Is your memory playing tricks? Don't concern yourself. I've given you some suppressants, to keep you from losing your balance. Not that I think that's very likely. You've fought the good fight, Ballard, in spite of considerable provocation. When I think of the way Odell snapped…" He sighed. "Do you remember last night at all?"
At first his mind's eye was blind. But then the memories began to come. Vague forms moving in a fog. "The park," he said at last.
"I only just got you out. God knows how many are dead."
"The other… the Russian…?"
"Mironenko?" Cripps prompted. "I don't know. I'm not in charge any longer, you see; I just stepped in to salvage something if I could. London will need us again, sooner or later. Especially now they know the Russians have a special corps like us. We'd heard rumours of course; and then, after you'd met with him, began to wonder about Mironenko. That's why I set up the meeting. And of course when I saw him, face to face, I knew. There's something in the eyes. Something hungry."
"I saw him change -”
"Yes, it's quite a sight, isn't it? The power it unleashes. That's why we developed the programme, you see, to harness that power, to have it work for us. But it's difficult to control. It took years of suppression therapy, slowly burying the desire for transformation, so that what we had left was a man with a beast's faculties. A wolf in sheep's clothing. We thought we had the problem beaten; that if the belief systems didn't keep you subdued the pain response would. But we were wrong." He stood up and crossed to the window. "Now we have to start again."
"Suckling said you'd been wounded."
"No. Merely demoted. Ordered back to London."
"But you're not going."
"I will now; now that I've found you." He looked round at Ballard. "You're my vindication, Ballard. You're living proof that my techniques are viable. You have full knowledge of your condition, yet the therapy holds the leash." He turned back to the window. Rain lashed
the glass. Ballard could almost feel it upon his head, upon his back. Cool, sweet rain. For a blissful moment he seemed to be running in it, close to the ground, and the air was full of the scents the downpour had released from the pavements.
"Mironenko said -”
"Forget Mironenko," Cripps told him. "He's dead. You're the last of the old order, Ballard. And the first of the new." Downstairs, a bell rang. Cripps peered out of the window at the streets below.
"Well, well," he said. "A delegation, come to beg us to return. I hope you're flattered." He went to the door. "Stay here. We needn't show you off tonight. You're weary. Let them wait, eh? Let them sweat." He left the stale room, closing the door behind him. Ballard heard his footsteps on the stairs. The bell was being rung a second time. He got up and crossed to the window. The weariness of the late afternoon light matched his weariness; he and his city were still of one accord, despite the curse that was upon him. Below a man emerged from the back of the car and crossed to the front door. Even at this acute angle Ballard recognised Suckling.
There were voices in the hallway; and with Suckling's appearance the debate seemed to become more heated. Ballard went to the door, and listened, but his drug-dulled mind could make little sense of the argument. He prayed that Cripps would keep to his word, and not allow them to peer at him. He didn't want to be a beast like Mironenko. It wasn't freedom, was it, to be so terrible? It was merely a different kind of tyranny. But then he didn't want to be the first of Cripps' heroic new order either. He belonged to nobody, he realised; not even himself. He was hopelessly lost. And yet hadn't Mironenko said at that first meeting that the man who did not believe himself lost, was lost? Perhaps better that – better to exist in the twilight between one state and another, to prosper as best he could by doubt and ambiguity – than to suffer the certainties of the tower. The debate below was gaining in momentum. Ballard opened the door so as to hear better. It was Suckling's voice that met him. The tone was waspish, but no less threatening for that.