The other’s drawn face was all concentration, showing no emotion whatever; and suddenly Vyotsky thought: something’s wrong here! He stopped grinning, took a single backward step.
Jazz’s right hand snatched at a pocket of his one-piece combat suit, came out holding a rusty but serviceable magazine. In a single fast-flowing movement he slapped the magazine into its housing and cocked the weapon. ‘Stand still!’ he snapped at Vyotsky.
Vyotsky froze. Jazz closed the distance between, stuck the muzzle of his gun up under the Russian’s chin. And he grated: ‘Funny, but you’re looking a bit pale, Ivan! Is something bothering you?’
Khuv came running from the Saturn’s-rings platform. ‘Hold your fire!’ he yelled – not to Jazz but to the soldiers on the perimeter where all weapons were aimed at the British agent. Khuv skidded to a halt a good ten feet away. ‘Michael,’ he panted. ‘What’s on your mind?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Jazz was almost enjoying this. ‘Ivan the Terrible here is coming with me.’ He took a firm grip on Vyotsky’s beard, pushed the SMG up harder under the Russian’s chin, backed toward the sphere.
Vyotsky was white as death. ‘No!’ he gurgled; but he didn’t dare to struggle, not and risk the Englishman putting too great a pressure on that trigger.
‘Oh yes you are, Ivan – or you die right here!’ Jazz told him. ‘Me, I’ve nothing to lose.’ He could feel the outer skin of the gate tugging at him.
Khuv came closer, and Jazz was struck with an even better scenario. ‘You too, Major,’ he said, ‘or I shoot right through this bastard and into you!’
Khuv was fast; he was in motion on the instant Jazz’s words registered, falling flat to the walkway and screaming: Fire, fire,fire.’
Jazz tumbled backwards into the sphere, yanking the stumbling Vyotsky after him. And –
– It was white in there! It was pure white, a solid white background against which Jazz and Vyotsky formed the only imperfections. They rolled on a solid-seeming floor, made invisible because it too was pure white! Shots were screaming overhead in a deafening barrage of rumbling thunder – which ceased in another moment as Khuv’s voice, slowed down to an almost unrecognizable drone, howled as if from an infinity away:
‘C-e-a-s-e f-i-r-e! C-e-a-s-e f-i-r-e.r Now that they were inside the sphere and he was safe, he didn’t want any further harm to befall them.
Jazz stood up, looked back. Through a thin film of milk, ‘outside’, all motion seemed slowed down almost to a standstill. It was a two-way effect. Khuv was half-way to his feet, one arm and hand raised high overhead as he signalled the ceasefire.
Jazz waved at him, then turned and pointed his gun at Vyotsky where he sprawled, terrified. ‘Up you get, Ivan,’ he said, and his voice came out sounding perfectly normal. ‘Let’s move it, shall we?’
Vyotsky looked around, came to his senses. His shoulders slumped. He slowly got to his feet, said: ‘Fuck you, British/’ and made a dive toward Khuv.
Or attempted to. Useless, for from now on this was a one-way trip! He hit against an invisible barrier, slid to his knees clawing at thin air. And as the truth dawned on him, then he did what Jazz expected him to do: he started screaming for help!
Jazz watched him grovelling there for a moment, then said: ‘Suit yourself, Ivan. Stay here and scream and gibber, and in the end die.’
Vyotsky’s head turned swiftly. ‘Die?’
Jazz nodded. ‘Of starvation, or exhaustion . . .’ Then he turned his back on the view beyond the Gate – of Khuv, against a backdrop of magmass walls and slow-motion soldiery – and started forward into what looked and felt like an aching white immensity.
From behind him Vyotsky snarled, ‘But why? Why? What good am I to you, here?’
‘None at all,’ Jazz called back. ‘But you’d have been even less good to Tassi . . .’
9
Beyond the Gate
Major Chingiz Khuv of the KGB faced his underling, Karl Vyotsky, across a distance of no more than ten feet and through a fine white milky film so thin it was almost invisible – yet they were worlds apart. Khuv could take two or three paces forward, reach out and shake Vyotsky by the hand. He could do it, but dared not. For in his present condition Vyotsky might just hold on, and while the Major couldn’t drag Vyotsky out of there, Vyotsky was certainly capable of dragging him in. They could still converse, however, albeit laboriously.