The worn index of American Sign Language disappears into the woolly depths of Dmitri's fur coat as he passes by a Red Army guard. There was a slight umpfh of the paperback cover on the metal of his belt, but the coat had swallowed it sufficiently enough. The guard stared ahead with disciplined boredom, no inkling of the contraband Dmitri carried. He dares not take it out again for a final come-over of its weary pages. Getting it in the first place had been difficult enough. He just hopes that the few seconds he'd gotten at the half a dozen crimson stoplights between his apartment and the facility had been enough study time. True he was intuitive, but language with hands only? English had been hard enough!
7-3-4-7 go his fingers against the lock for the water creatures' laboratory, and a buzz and a scraping of an opening door greet him. Dmitri's conscience, taxed into a coma in America and laxed into complacency in the Soviet Union, is blazing now. It yells at him, stinging his ears until he listens to its commands. The lab and facility around him, all the concrete and tile, doesn't just look like OCCAM because he'd smuggled schematics out of Baltimore; no, some cosmic, over intelligent thing had made it so. Both locations, on opposite sides of the planet, shared so much context. The water creature was suffering and trapped here, as in OCCAM. It would be poked and prodded and tortured, as it was in OCCAM. It was surrounded by people who viewed it either in commiseration or contempt; OCCAM, too, was manned by people who saw it that way. Strickland, even in death, hounded the amphibian man. Dmitri saw him in Mihalkov every day. So too had Strickland stalked the halls of OCCAM. Only now, thanks to Dmitri, two innocents are caged and forced into misery, instead of one.
It is for this that his sense of right and wrong berates him.
Today, like the day he'd caught Elisa trying to unhook the creature from his collar in T - 4, he listens to it. Today Dmitri doesn't grip it in his hand and squeeze until it is breathless and silent. He nurtures it; that seed of good in his heart, so often ignored and shunned, gets watered now.
Before Mihalkov had even rounded the corner after their standoff, his pragmatic brain had started turning, theorizing, plotting and analyzing. That machine was well-oiled after assassination and counterintelligence operations by the dozens; it knew what to do. It had happened almost without his knowledge. Dmitri'd been so pinned, rooted in the dire knowledge that those in charge were decidedly not. As soon as that fallout had dissipated, the planning became clear. He had to release them. Somehow, sometime soon, before whatever experiments the Kremlin had specified were completed, he had to get Elisa and the creature out. Justice demanded it. Dmitri still believed himself a good man, flying in the face of all the evil he'd done. A good man would correct the error made in Baltimore. But first, he'd need them, their acknowledgment, forgiveness and their allegiance.
So, conscience and practicality and Dmitri decussate into an atom-bomb of clear, perfect drive. It's the first time he's felt right since he's returned home.
The steel door retracts into the wall, and the way is open. Dmitri slips inside, removing his shapka from his head and placing it on one of the alcoves in the wall closest to him. The lab is quiet, and aside from the occasional click of boots or the ghost of a balalaika on a record player, all is quiet. Dmitri checks his watch, eyes roving over the blocky gold numbers. The train for Volgograd doesn't leave for an hour. There is still time.
Like ancient and bitter krakens, they emerge from their respective waters.
From out of the murkiness of the tube-tank on the wall, the water creature surfaces. Though his cramped and tepid quarters are uncomfortable, he at least looks healthy to Dmitri. Surely, not being injured and tormented with a cattle prod daily contributes to that. He'd also written down hard boiled eggs as part of the creature's required diet; ironic, that he ate better than millions of Soviets from the Socialist Republics in Central Asia. The endless chameleon eyes of the creature harden, noticing the man who'd failed so terribly to protect him. He stays silent, but Dmitri sees bubbles coalesce in front of the creature's countenance. He's huffing, like a maddened bull preparing to charge.
Then there is Elisa.
She's bound about the neck with the same make of chain he'd seen cage the creature so often. The gills the creature had inexplicably given her, that defied every edict of science itself, slap softly and wetly on her neck as she rises. Seeing who it was, Elisa drops back into the water up to her chest. The liquid hides her nudity. His countrymen had robbed her of her clothes and she looked sleep-deprived. All the same, her eyes burn when she looks at Dmitri, very much awake.
The creature's hands begin to move and they catch both Dmitri and Elisa's eyes. Dmitri catches a few slivers of the larger message. The amphibian man's hands are odd; the signs are slow but still unrecognizable under scales and webs and twitches.
You- him- here?
For an instant, the idealist and the child in him, that he thought he'd buried in Russia but had risen from the dead in that bar with his spymasters, manifests. The creature could sign! Elisa had taught it to, in essence, speak! The feat was on par with teaching an ape to sign. What did this mean for the creature's intelligence, consciousness, the way its memory functioned? Kilograms and cranial measurements and frontal lobes cycle in his head, until he sees the way Elisa looks at the creature. Like she's been accused of murder. It's now that he realizes something is wrong. The glances, the ease with which their features turned sour . . . Something had happened between them. Elisa fires back, swift and argumentative. Dmitri guesses he would have caught more of her words had it been slower.
No. How- say-
Her fellow amphibious lifeform responds.
Hurt- you so- you- me-
His knuckles rap on the tile of Elisa's water-pen. The stare that greets Dmitri as her head whips around is daggers in his chest. "Ms. Esposito?" Dmitri says in English, not looking her in the eye and gulping lightly. "I'm not here to torture or gloat. But, we need to speak." Again, she's mako-swift, and Dmitri waves her down. Too close in his movements towards the water creature's companion, the Russian pushes down the rush of cold fear at the low, chittering growl coming from the tank he faces away from.
"Slow," he motions to Elisa. "I cannot track what you're saying." He wishes Zelda were here, or the artist; an instant translator more proficient than any book. Convincing them to trust him again will be hard enough without the communication barrier. Elisa's teeth grind together and Dmitri can almost feel the scream that some other, voiceful Elisa out in the cosmos would sling his way. She breathes deep, smoothing, and signs at him. Her movements are mechanical, beat-like.
Give me a good reason why.
"Because," Dmitri replies. "I am in a situation you, more than anyone, are familiar with. I am the only one in this facility, maybe the only one in the country, who has your best interests at heart-" Dmitri pauses for a moment. "Can he hear me in there?" He nods at the creature, who seems like a third wheel to the dialogue between the two humans. Elisa signs Yes.
"Good," Dmitri continues for a moment. "As I was saying, I am the only one who wants to see you prosper. Once, you were the same for our friend here. The overseer of the lab, Semichastny, plans to put you both into the Caspian Sea once whatever research we conduct is done. My spymaster, Mihalkov sees this as a security risk, doesn't plan on letting either one of you leave the facility alive. I suspect he's got greater pull within the KGB than anyone realizes, which means the higher-ups are not on our side. The three of us . . ." He gestured to both amphibian . . . people? "Are not on good terms at best, are not on speaking terms at all, at worst. But the same was true at OCCAM, and you and I, Ms. Esposito, still managed to get him out. What do we have if not each other? A train leaves for Volgograd, a riverfront city, in an hour. I can have both of you on it, with me, and we part ways at the end of our trip. You both do what you will."
He looks at the floor now, pleading.
"I failed you in Baltimore, all of you. I let my arrogance get in the way of keeping him safe. In the end, I duplicated the suffering, not destroyed it. Now, I have two options. I can either save you or let you die. Let me fix my mistake, please. Come with me, Elisa."
Her face twists in an aggrieved, lip-biting smile. Tentacles of disdain and anger spread all over her face, like an octopus enveloping prey. Elisa's fingers are jagged, strained as she signs. She keeps the same pace as she has throughout their conversation, although now that fact hammers the defeat into Dmitri's head slower and harder; it lets him absorb it. The creature has already turned and swum back into the tank, defeated as well. Perhaps his primeval mind believes it's fate, that he die never seeing the sun again, entombed in cement and tile and glass.
I lost my friends. I lost my love. I lost my home. I've had a chain around my neck for I don't know how long. I've slept in water filled with poison. I've had my clothes taken from me. I've been hauled into a country that hates me because of you. I DIED. What life do I have to lose?
Out in the hallway, Arkady is silent. He lets Dmitri prattle on to the two mutants in their tanks; no need to rush it. Dmitri had no idea he was there, no idea his entire plot had been overheard and jotted down in the bear-man's mind. Arkady pulled back the hammer on the Makarov strapped to his rib, just in case. He hears some kind of slapping noise, wet flesh on flesh. It must be the fish-woman, speaking those strange languages with her hands. Someone that night on the docks had called it what . . . ASL? Not that Arkady cared terribly. English, Russian and big fists had gotten him far in the world. A particular sentence or two from Dmitri, in the laboratory, at once catches Arkady off-guard and perks up his ears. "A train leaves for Volgograd, a riverfront city, in an hour. I can have both of you on it, with me, and we part ways at the end of our trip. You both do what you will," Dmitri said.
Arkady takes off down the hall, briskly walking. He's got what he needs. A row of phonebooths lines the wall at the end of the corridor. Mihalkov's at the Kremlin Presidium now, speaking with the Presidium's Chairman. The large man flips the dial three times and Mihalkov's gritty voice, and a bit of static, fills the receiver a few moments later.
"I am with Chairman Brezhnev now, Arkady," He rasped from the phone. "What is it?"
"You're talking with the wrong Chairman, Mihalkov. Find Semichastny. Papov's making his move."
The Man In The High Castle opens in Dmitri's lap. A keening whistle blows somewhere outside, and the heavy, lumbering machinery shunts under his feet. Out the portal of the window, the train station gradually pans out of sight, and the snowy trees flash cold sunlight at him like a strobe light. Soon all that greets him through the glass is the endless, quiet expanse of Russian forests. It offers no distraction from the cycling and cranking of the mechanics in his mind, the constructing of a plan, an argument, a convincing. Dmitri is Russian; he's seen more than his share of snow-capped pines in his lifetime. After a few minutes, he gives up on the chance of seeing any animals. It is almost January. The bears will all be hibernating, and the flaming wheels of a train will scare away any deer or smaller predator. Dmitri looks back down at the book, running his fingers over the severe swastika and bursting sun of the vanquished Germans and Japanese. This was the second book he'd had to conceal in his fur coat. An attendant had walked down the aisle and asked him for his ticket. Now, with her gone, he could lose himself in a world that, for all its hellish evil, was fascinating.
He reflects on it. The Great Patriotic War was a distant thing for him. He and his sister, natives of Volgograd, had been evacuated hundreds of miles away when the Germans came knocking. It had been named Stalingrad then, and after they'd returned and been conscripted into the civilian reconstruction forces, he'd seen the oblivion the combat had wreaked upon his home. As the Red Army pushed forward across the country, closer to the enemy in a glorious tide of fury, so had Dmitri, Nadia and a thousand other proletariat, repairing what the fascists had torn down. Dmitri had seen many a dead man and woman then; it made killing for the KGB a triviality by comparison. After the war and his education were finished, he'd made mincemeat out of studies on the Germans' inventions: their rockets, the Zyklon B, their nuclear research, kaput as losses in Dmitri's home mounted; even their horrific, abhorrent racial pyramid. So many of the devices had been forged for killing and so many had potential to advance mankind towards the future. Such bevies of secrets were explored by the book's author, made possible by an impossible German victory. Dmitri was swamped by them when first he read the book.
As he thumbs through the pages, looking for those fictitious engrossings of alternate history, the silent plotter in his head keeps scribbling, keeps imagining, seeking some kind of salve to the problem of the creature and Elisa. When he finds the descriptions of the disgraced Reich's achievements, his practical intellect is out again, in his face. He can't concentrate on the words on the page. Dmitri flips again, going as far away as possible from the science fiction that had inspired his mind to turn on him.
So he substitutes it with another piece of science, far less fictitious.
From out of the bag at his feet Dmitri pulls a tan, slightly ruffled folder, stamped on its face with top secret in Cyrillic. If he can't slip away from his troubles into a novel of the world as it might have been, he may as well confront them head-on. After all, there isn't any vodka on the train. He'll have to bear the knife for now.
The first few pages of the assessment are photographs. The water-creature is depicted from every angle, his shimmering markings and herculean muscles on display. They must have opened the tank in which he'd traveled to the air. Dmitri saw no collar or chains binding it. The fins on the creature's elbows, the spines down his back, and the delicate workings of his head and gills were all recorded in excessive photographs. Even his eyes had been snapped. A finger in the photo holds his sideways-closing eyelids up. The sedative must still have been working its way out of the amphibian man's system. When had they taken these?
Dmitri cringes and removes his eyes from the contents of the folder as the photos of Elisa begin to appear. The photographs are almost exclusively of her gills, but a few show off her stripped body. It's unclear to Dmitri whether these have any scientific relevance or if the photographers were just beasts.
The first page is as expected.
Intelligence suggests foreign creature capable of drawing oxygen from both water and air. One set of lungs used for each. Cartilage separates pairs of lungs. Surgery required. Perform on creature, test and take notes on both lungs, similarities, differences. End-goal: revision of cosmonaut equipment, base oxygen source, water. Replaces air. Launches carry more. Longer period of research in space.
Below this were anatomical notes, similar to those Dmitri had presented to Mihalkov. Surgical instructions were scribbled all over the body of the creature; where to cut, what to go through and what to leave untouched. A large, red mark circles the space between the creature's pectorals, above a strip of plated chitin.
Creature demonstrates ability to self-repair wounds. Ability extends to other lifeforms. Unclear whether this is within definable scientific explanation or inexplicable. Potential for neither water or air-based oxygen supply requirement for space exploration. If replicable ability, cosmonauts heal damage sustained from space exposure. Additionally, standard military personnel have potential to repair battlefield wounds automatically. Invalids or wounded military personnel must be acquired. Political prisoners from Lubyanka if necessary.
Two photos are on the next page. One of them is of the creature's left pectoral, near his shoulder. Two scars mark his dark green flesh. Dmitri recognized the quarter-sized, distended blemishes. He has two near his ribs, from where a KGB mole he'd discovered had put a pair of Makarov rounds in him. These holes marring the creature's skin are differently sized. In the next picture, the marks are gone. All that remains in their stead is dark green, shot through with teal and gold.
Next :
Female bears mutation, water breathing respiratory system added to physiology. Gills manifested on throat. Blood sampled. DNA altered to some extent. Most probably cause is foreign creature. Transmission must be discovered. If genetic agent carried by creature, must be isolated and studied. If once again inexplicable, ignore. Secondary study. Prioritize the first and second.
This one bears close up, magnified photographs of the gills that had formed from Elisa's scars. A gloved hand pulls them back in a couple of the pictures, exposing the pathways into her throat which water flowed into. The insides are fleshy, veined. These photos, like those of the original water creature, are in color. The different phases of motion the gills made when they breathed are recorded. The ebb of inhalation and the flow of exhalation each have their own photographs.
Different angles, in black and white this time, show off their positions on her neck from the left, right, and forward facing.
Dmitri flips to the next page, and as he reads his heart sinks.
Foreign creature demonstrates territorial behavior. Examination of sedated female incensed it. Would have escaped confinement had it not been sedated. Further research lends towards connection due to courtship. Lends towards foreign creature possessing intelligence, higher brain function. Extends to human emotions? Female must be impaired. Elicit response from creature. To what degree human and what degree beastial? Secondary study. Prioritize first and second.
This one has no pictures, and if it did Dmitri isn't sure he could look at them. Incredulousness and then outrage explode in his breast. They want him to torture a woman . . . a living, breathing woman, to get a rise out of the water creature, measure whether or not a soul indeed dwelled in its piscine skin. Didn't they see how clunky and impractical, never mind horrific the experiment was? He understood English. He could sign. He and Elisa knew both tongues respectively. Why not question him? Why not perform some kind of psychological test on him?
Why is the whole world so insane that their first solution is always to spill blood? Where had gentleness gone?
He wrestles with the wrongness and the evil of it for a long while. The sun turns a little paler and bluer as he does, sinking to be level with Russia's white-topped forests. Clouds and snow turn the sky grey, which peters out towards the horizon.
He feels bile in his stomach as he turns to the final page. Dmitri reads slowly, and the words are stamped in his brain with flaming letters.
Physiology of foreign creature more human than piscine. Sexual organs, while piscine in appearance, function as human organs do. Creature is male. Capable of producing semen. If creature courts female, sexual relationship possibly developed. Semen capable of viable impregnation? Copulation coerced by any means necessary. If impregnation is successful, analyze eggs. Isolate gene for oxygen withdrawal from water. If gills are prerequisite, continue regardless. Potential for application in military personnel. Secondary study. Prioritize the first and second.
When the words finish branding their fiery tattoo in his mind, Dmitri is quiet. He shakes hands with his enraged conscience and his busy necessities, resolute and silent and vowing. He will free them or he will die trying. Dmitri has already made allies of his inner strengths. As he carries himself off of the stopped train, with legs barely conscious for the clenched rage that consumes his whole body, into the Volgograd train station, he knows that those won't be enough. Dmitri needs more than his emotions and his unceasing, ever-working brainpower.
He needs material friends. He needs allies in the physical world as well as the mental one.
Over the din of the crowds exiting their trains, Dmitri catches something. One word from a voice that echoed through decades of memories.
"Brother!"
