‘Darcy?’ said Madison.
‘Well, maybe you’ll get to meet him some other time. He … he never was desperately fond of this place . . .’
Something less than four days earlier, inside the Perchorsk Projekt:
Chingiz Khuv, Karl Vyotsky and the Project Director, Viktor Luchov, stood at the hospital bedside of Vasily Agursky. Agursky had been here for four days, during which time his doctors had recognized certain symptoms and had started to wean him off alcohol. More than that: already they believed they had succeeded. It had been remarkably easy, all considered; but from the moment Agursky had been freed from the responsibility of tending the thing in the tank, so his dependency on local vodka and cheap slivovitz had fallen off. He had asked for a drink only once, when he regained consciousness on the first day, since when he’d not mentioned alcohol and seemed hardly the worse for the lack of it.
‘You’re feeling better then, Vasily?’ Luchov sat on the edge of Agursky’s bed.
‘As well as can be expected,’ the patient replied. ‘I had been on the verge of a breakdown for some time, I think. It was the work, of course.’
‘Work?’ Vyotsky seemed unconvinced. The thing about work – any kind of work – is that it produces results. On the strength of that, it’s rather difficult to see how you could be exhausted, Comrade!’ His bearded face scowled down on the man in the bed.
‘Come now, Karl,’ Khuv tut-tutted. ‘You know well enough that there are different sorts of work exerting different pressures. Would you have liked to be the keeper of that thing? I hardly think so! And Comrade Agursky’s condition was not strictly exhaustion, or if it was then it was nervous exhaustion, brought on by proximity to the creature.’
Luchov, who carried maximum responsibility in the Perchorsk complex and therefore wielded maximum authority, looked up at Vyotsky and frowned. Physically, Luchov would not have made half of the KGB man, but in the Projekt’s pecking order he stood head and shoulders over him, even over Khuv. The contempt he felt for the bully was obvious in his tone of voice when he said to Khuv:
‘You are absolutely correct, Major. Anyone who thinks Vasily Agursky’s duties were light should try them and see. Do I see a volunteer here, perhaps? Is your man telling us he’d make a better job of it?’
KGB Major and Projekt Direktor looked in unison, pointedly at Vyotsky. Khuv smiled his dark, deceptive smile but Luchov’s scarred face showed no emotion at all and certainly not amusement. Evidence of his annoyance was apparent, however, in the throbbing of the veins on the hairless left half of his seared skull. The quickening of his pulse was a sure sign that he disapproved of someone or something, in this case Karl Vyotsky.
‘Well then?’ said Khuv, who had been at odds recently with his underling’s boorishness and bad temper. ‘Perhaps I was wrong and you would like the job after all, Karl?’
Vyotsky swallowed his pride. Khuv was just perverse enough to let it happen. ‘I . . .’ he said. ‘I mean, I – ‘
‘No, no!’ Agursky himself saved Vyotsky from further embarrassment. He propped himself up on his pillows. ‘It is quite out of the question that anyone else takes over my job, and ridiculous even to suggest that an unqualified person should assume such duties. This is not stated in any way to slight you personally, Comrade,’ he glanced indifferently at Vyotsky, ‘but there are qualifications and there are qualifications. Now that I’ve overcome two problems – my breakdown, and my absurd . . . obsession, for I refuse to call it an addiction, with drink – the third will not be difficult, I promise you. Given the same amount of time as I’ve already spent, that creature will give up its secrets to me, be sure. I know that so far my results have not been promising, but from now on – ‘
‘Take it easy, Vasily!’ Luchov put a hand on his shoulder, stemming an outburst which was quite out of character for the hitherto retiring Agursky. Obviously he was not yet fully recovered. For all his doctors’ assurances that he was fit enough to be up and about again, his nerves were still on the mend.