The Curious Journey of Mr. Eric Delko or Red Star Galactica

THE NEXT MORNING Basha gave no sign that anything weird had happened between Eric and him the previous night; what's more he talked in the same barbaric and halting Russian as ever. Eric, therefore, was unconvinced that his nocturnal experience had been anything other than an unusually vivid dream. He had walked in his sleep into the clearing, that was all.

After a lot of grumbling on Basha's part, considerable browbeating by Mishin and a mite of bribery from Matousek, the Tungusi even agreed to guide them further towards their destination; and within two hours the party was making its way along the south bank of the Chambe in an easterly direction. The day was bitterly cold, though hardly a breeze was stirring. Under a cloudless sky that augured well (though not to Basha) the snow was almost blue, not white. So low must the temperature have been that the snow ran off their boots and the horses' hooves and the sledge-runners like dust so dry that none of it could cling.

Two versts beyond the Tungusi encampment they reached the Avartika and waded across it amidst little rafts of ice; after which they had to light a bonfire of branches and stomp around to dry their legs. Five versts further on Basha pointed out the best place to cross the Chambe itself, then he took them to where a single raft was docked, hidden by snow amidst tall spruces.

He pointed north by northwest. "Before noon, see trees that fell down. Must go now."

"Oh, no you don't!" barked Mishin. He caught hold of Basha's arm. "You're coming along, too! How are we supposed to find the trail on our own! We're paying you good rubles, a good more than a dirty heathen bastard like you deserves!"'

"No can go. Place is cursed."

"Bullshit! What's wrong with our money? Your eyes lit up before."

"You money clean. Place is what cursed."

"Bullshit, balderdash and poppycock!"

"Well, he may have a point," said Tsiolkovsky thoughtfully. "It now occurs to me that if billions of atoms get broken, and if these fragments impregnate the ground, then conceivably the earth continues to release active particles..."

"Shut up!" Mishin pulled out his service revolver and waved it around.

"Can't we be rational?" suggested Matousek.

"Rational? About a curse? Emphatically no! Now, tell me, my northern savage, how can any part of God's good Earth be cursed? This might be a wretched, desolate hole, and the conditions of life might be shitty, but cursed---that goes too far, way too far." He rounded on Matousek for a moment. "Are you going to let us all be stymied by a curse? I'll tell you what kind of curses I believe it! Curses that get results!"

"I agree," Lydia. "But please put that gun away."

"Not say it again!" Basha roared. "Place is cursed."

As Mishin was holstering his revolver, obedient to her word, Tsiolkovsky began mumbling. "Such particles....they might well involve, um, a form of burning energy, like the sun's energy."

"Shut up, drudge! All right, you wild animal, tell us all about this precious curse! What does it do? Render a woman barren? Castrate a man?"

"It belong Tungusi people."

"Ah-ha!" There was a gleam in Matousek's eye. "Do I hear someone invoking mineral rights? One has to realize that even if mining is possible, this will require tens of thousands of rubles in investment capital before util...."

"He means," interrupted Eric, "Ogdy---their god of fire, or of heat and cold or something---has dethroned their sky god, Buga, by knocking down all the trees."

"How the hell do you know that?" Yanovich's expression was a study in doting wonder. On Basha's face, however, was a different expression, one of total surprise at this revelation---as if he hadn't said it all in Eric's hearing just a few hours earlier.

And maybe he never did, thought Eric. Not if I was dreaming. But what if Basha was in some kind of a trance that night. One in which he spoke much better Russian than he normally does? His brain soaks up the Russian language like a sponge, but only the top of the sponge is ever in touch with the surface---last night he spoke from the depths."

Sensing that he had somehow gained the upper hand, Eric fixed Basha with what he hoped was a look of penetrating command. "You will guide us----all the way."

The Tungusi glanced aside, like a village dog, outstared. Presently he nodded.

Maybe, reflected Eric, he hoped that all that nonsense last night would send me scuttling with my ass between my legs, on the principle that it would have sent a Tungusi scuttling!

He turned to Mishin and spoke angrily. "They may be wild men! And what this place needs are mines and railroads and dispensaries and schools! But how can we even think of this when Russia herself is so uncivilized? When pig ignorance is the order of the day everywhere? I tell you, Baron, it's the ordinary Russian people who are devils of ignorance, not just these tribesmen!"

He found himself remembering the blue, white and red flag of Mars, stitched in the clothes of his doppelganger in the mirror. What did it mean? Did it symbolize the different ethnic strains of Martian humans? Why, yes it did! And they call came together and successfully built a ship of space! Yes, that's what that flag was, an emblem of a clear-sighted, honest, industrious and unified people.

"What's more," he said to Matousek, "our local socialists aren't likely to change things much! What do they call themselves: Marxists, eh? Lackeys of a German Jew's dogmas. All they can make are tiny explosions of mayhem that only make matters worse. If society is ever going to change, perhaps the impetus will have to come from the planet Mars!"

The immediate effect of Eric's outburst, in the dry chill air, was to rack him with a bronchial spasm. He coughed into his glove eight or ten times. Exhausted, he went on staring at his gloved fist. On the fabric he saw a tiny red star of bloody sputum.432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvlpGtGgxMQ
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By late afternoon they had been struggling through devastation for many versts. Uncountable pines and birches had been blasted flat to the ground. Under the snow cover the taiga seemed to be an infinite battlefield where armies of giants had been laid low, doomed to lie here for several hundred years till very slowly they rotted away, summer after summer. All the tumbled trunks pointed south.432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbhDilqS8qz

Branches and wrenched-up roots twisted every which way, like bare broken bones. The force of the blast had instantly stripped away all traces of former greenery from the branches, making the only way through every often being to hack a path using an axe or sickle.432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTeznqC2jmE

Be that as it was, they did make progress.432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlh26zkqlWc

To the east the land sloped downward, and there they could see the River Makrita approaching them and twisting away twelve times over; at least the map was correct in that respect. Low knolls pimpled the terrain. Lydia had scrambled up several of those with Matousek, she to gain a little altitude for photography, he to take sightings through his theodolite.432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ08hOcrqtxY

In worsening weather late in the day, they made camp. A bitter wind was blowing steadily from the west by now, raking their cheeks; it seemed to be scudding grits of ice into their skin rather than snowflakes. If the wind had been blowing from the north, it would hardly have been possible to breathe.432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7k4ZbextKa

Two hours earlier they had all rubbed their faces with goose grease. It had been Matousek's inspiration to bring along jars of this thick sticky fat: a piece of forethought for which Lydia thanked him profusely while she saved her skin from damage. Eric, who had been trudging in a daze, thought for a while that they were all donning theatrical grease pain, a commodity from another world---to which he doubted he would ever again belong. He feared he was going to lose the sight of his weaker eye. He had wept tears from it and these tears froze on his cheek, the grease notwithstanding. These tears of ice only melted after quite a while within the chilly tent which they erected finally in the lee of a knoll.432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwidIXCcMv2

He and Ulyanov, Matousek, Basha and Tsiolkovsky all crammed into one tent, huddling for a warmth which seemed to elude them. Lydia and Yanovich shred a second, smaller tent pitched close by, though there was no doubt in Eric's mind as to their frigidity in the circumstances. It was enough agony to expose yourself momentarily outside for a piss, with your back to the wind, and the yellow stain in the snow froze instantly. As for having a shit in the following morning, he certainly intended to hold that back for as long as he could, till it was all ready to burst out in the 5-second rush. No, Lydia and Kuz were making love....432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjqRiKSOSQe

Eric drifted slowly off to sleep, fully dressed, as if giving in to the exposure.432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaBsums4xyC
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He was lost in a great house made solely of ice. Desperately he wanted to find the room where sister Oxana and mother Evegnia were praying for him---the room with the icon. He wanted so much to light a candle in memory of his father.432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQe855wv2Aa

But these ice walls were reflective as mirrors, so that he kept turning corners and bumping into himself. These sudden contacts with his own image chilled him to the bone marrow.432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5yrWJMEJO8

Eventually, his image spoke to him.432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcoDIKOkLkr

"Hello there," it said in a chirpy way. "My name is Arthur. I'm an actor, a star of provincial stage and screen!" (What kind of screen could he possibly mean?) "I'm acting, you, Comrade Eric. And you're acting me."432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnybdaDTbq5

The image faded. The ice wall ran with moisture as if crying. Through the halls of ice Eric heard Basha's mocking laughter echo. At once he awoke, sweating and shivering---the sweat seeming to freeze as soon as it oozed out of him. His arm had thrashed about and fallen across Basha's body. Bitterly Eric turned over to face in the opposite direction.432Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbFeVNpMttb
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The Curious Journey of Mr. Eric Delko or Red Star Galactica

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