The walls of Jazz’s room (his cell?) were of corrugated metal sheets bolted to vertical steel stanchions. There’d be laminated padding, too, Jazz supposed, to keep the room soundproofed and isolated. Or it could be the case that in fact this entire area was a hospital, built to serve the staff of the Projekt. After the Perchorsk Incident, they’d probably decided it was advisable. A hospital area would be handy for periodic check-ups and would probably be situated alongside a decontamination facility -assuming, that is, that there was still an atomic pile down here. Back in the West they were pretty sure that there had been one. Anyway, Jazz had already spotted an excess-radiation warning device on the wall; at present it was green, with just a tinge of pink showing in the aperture.
The uneven rock ceiling was maybe nine feet high on average; it looked very hard stuff and there were no fractures, not even small ones, that Jazz could see. Still (and even taking into account the massive steel stanchions) he felt just a touch of claustrophobia, something of the enormous weight of a mountain pressing down on him. For by now there was no doubt at all in his mind but that that was where he was: under the Urals.
Running footsteps sounded and the door was thrown open. Jazz lifted his head as far as restrictions would allow and stared at the people who came panting into the room. Two men, and behind them the fat nurse. Hot on their heels came a third man; his white smock and the hypodermic in his hand gave him away at once: Jazz’s favourite pulse-feeler, the clucking doctor. Well, and maybe now he’d have something worth clucking about.
‘Mike, my boy!’ the man in front, dressed in casual civilian clothes, motioned the others back. He approached the bed alone, said: ‘And what’s all this that Nursie’s been telling us? What? You didn’t take your pills? Why ever not? Wouldn’t they go down?’ The ingratiating voice was that of Jazz’s DO.
Jazz nodded stiffly. ‘That’s right, “old boy”,’ he answered harshly, ‘they sort of stuck in my craw.’ He lifted his right hand and tugged at his fake bandages, tore them from his eyes. He stared at the four where they stood frozen as if they were insects trapped in amber.
After a moment the doctor muttered something in Russian, took an impatient pace forward and gave his needle a brief squirt. The second man into the room, also dressed casually, caught his arm and dragged him to a halt. ‘No,’ Chingiz Khuv told the doctor curtly, in Russian. ‘Can’t the two of you see that he knows? Since he’s awake, aware and with all his wits about him, let’s keep him that way. Anyway, I want to talk to him. He’s all mine now.’
‘No,’ Jazz told him, staring straight at him. Tm all mine – now! If you want to speak to me you’d better let him dope me up. It’s the only way I’m going to do any talking.’
Khuv smiled, stepped right up to the bed and looked down on Jazz. ‘Oh, you’ve already talked enough, Mr Simmons,’ he said, without a trace of malice. ‘Quite enough, I assure you. Anyway, I don’t intend to ask you anything. I intend to tell you a few things, and maybe show you a few things. And that’s all.’
‘Oh?’ said Jazz.
‘Oh, yes, really. In fact I’m going to tell you the things you most want to know: all about the Perchorsk Projekt. What we were attempting to do here, and what we actually did. Would you like that?’
‘Very much,’ said Jazz. ‘And what is it you’re going to show me? The place where you make your bloody monsters?’
Khuv’s eyes narrowed, but then he smiled again. And he nodded. ‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘Except there’s one thing you should know right from the start: we don’t make them.’
‘Oh, but you do!’ Jazz also nodded. That’s one thing we’re pretty sure about. This is the source. This is where it was born – or spawned.’
Khuv’s expression didn’t change. ‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘But that’s only to be expected, for you only know half the story – so far. It came from here, yes, but it wasn’t born here. No, it was born in a different world entirely.’ He sat down on Jazz’s bed, stared at him intently. ‘It strikes me you’re a survivor, Mr Simmons.’