Yvan Dragomilov - On The Spiral Stairway

He was late.

Fastening on his trousers, Adam locked the door behind him and started down the staircase leading to the lower Holdings. What he thought of as "the Festivities" were beginning in the courtyard, and here he was, malodorous, sweaty with exertion, unkempt and disarrayed, having dallied overlong at what, by any objective estimate, should have been no more than a hobby.

Reflections danced on a curving wall where light struck upward through an arch-topped window of the landing outside the door he had just secured: the glitter of polished military hardware, far below. Under the gaze of Zaytseva and his administrators, nonentities to the last man, the Romanovans were forming themselves into ranks, Cossacks in one long row, humans in another. Even high within the building, their booted, clattering across the flags, the shouted commands of officers, was unmistakable.

Running a hand over his face, Adam wondered how fast he could change his clothes, bathe, and shave. Before he had descended three steps, he felt a tickling sensation and lifted the hand to his cheek again. It came away bloody. A small scratch, one he would obtain payment for the next occasion he came here, tonight or tomorrow. Events were beginning to pile up. He found he had little time these days for anything besides the complicated, dangerous game he played with Zaytseva and his brother. He extracted a monocoded handkerchief from his tunic pocket, dabbed at his cheek until the cloth came away dry and, putting it away, continued downstairs, sated for the nonce, the current of his thoughts rushing along channels other than the hot, black, churning of arousal, frustration---and desire, for the moment satisfied, to exact a toll from more than one individual at once---which had become of late a kind of background noise roaring in his mind.

He paused upon the next landing and through another window watched preparations for the arrival of the entity Zaytseva was calling the Sconese ambassador. He had seen, as yet, no sign of an approaching vehicle, nor would he. The creature was not coming from Elizavetaburg. The story being handed about was that, although they could not travel among the stars without human help, Sconese possessed means of overcoming gravity, at least within the minor influence of a planet, independent of such awkward contrivances as starports and lubberlifts. Given the delight with which his brother and the woodsjacks interrupted greenway traffic, Adam thought this just as well. He began to curse himself again for being late, when, with sudden insight, he realized it might not do any harm, being absent from what was about to happen.

Weeks had passed before Adam announced a chance to make good their plans. Eugene was allowed to learn of Zaytseva's arrangement for meeting with the Scon somewhere on Genrich, sometime in the near future. The guerillas would raid the meeting place, the Holdings itself, directed by Eugene, operating upon information the elder brother could only obtain from Adam. The strike would be timed to embarrass the Usurper at a crucial, reputation-wrecking juncture. More important, it had to happen before Zaytseva could make use of the Sconese technology he awaited with greater anticipation every day.

Upon the next landing, halfway down the tower, Adam met a soldier, human rather than Cossack (Veronica, he had learned, affected a horror of the latter and would not have them "in the house"), perhaps no more than 19 years old. Seeing Adam sooner than expected, he halted and snapped to attention.

"Sir!"

Adam had found time to rearrange his clothing, run fingers through his sandy, thinning hair, and fasten his tunic to the throat. Standing several steps high, he gave the boy his most supercilious expression.

"Sir, I have been sent to....to...."

"Hurry me? Speaking as aristocrat to peasant, we will spare you embarrassment and consider your message delivered. Has the fighting commenced?"

"Nossir, that it has not. Have no fear, sir, it was never in doubt." At that moment a scream followed the thrum of quickblades. Further away came an explosion. Adam returned the boy's eager smile with a more cynical one.

"You are commended for your prescience. I want you to stay her, where you are, and allow none to pass. Do you think yourself capable of that?"

"Yes....sir." Disappointment clouded his features. Adam was appalled. The boy wanted to go and risk his life! Could one ever account for another's taste? Maybe this was the difference between classes, a willingness to fight, as opposed to a willingness to send others. To Adam, the latter seemed far more rational. The boy could learn something from this reprieve. In any case, he would not be the first unhappy soldier in history.

"See you do; they also serve that only stand and guard." Without awaiting reply, Adam rushed downstairs, thinking about this willingness to fight, and about his brother. They had met again upon several occasions in The Wasted Starwolf and other slum-scum haunts, arranging transfer of supplies pilfered, although Eugene was unaware of it, with the Usurper's permission, planning action after lesser action which consumed more resources than they won for the rebellion, seeing to the reproduction and distribution of subversive files intended to arouse the populace---but edited by subtle, clever Veronica, so that, by accumulation, they produced an attitude of despairing apathy---outlining various contingencies, and finalizing their overall plans.

In one respect, he had no further reason to envy Eugene. Each time they had met, the latter had asked after Maria, once other business had been settled, and entrusted to the former with some message which impressed even Adam as impersonal and perfunctory, considering that the two were lovers interrupted upon the brink of marriage. Mocking himself for it, Adam had felt nearly indignant on her account, although he had not hesitated to relay the cold communication at propitious moments, enjoying its disheartening effect.

Passing another window in his downward spiral, a deep shudder of gratitude---that he was up here watching instead of down there fighting---crept through Adma's body as the battle raged below. It had all been so sudden. The woodsjacks and Zaytseva's legions were now engaged man-to-man, squads against individual Cossacks (the later most times victorious), puny humans attempting to defend themselves, without much effect, from skycraft whose walking beams smashed whatever in their pat their blading failed to destroy. The plans he and Eugene had made, over many weeks in many different taverns, were now betrayed. By evening, likeliest within the hour, Adam would become, as he had always intended, next to inherit the Oligarchy. Chuckling to himself, he resumed his twisting descent.

Eugene had found it simpler to accept whatever his brother had seen fit to tell him of the well-being of the young woman who was, in fact, Eugene's well-used property, occupied with no concern other than the chafing of her restraints, the confines of her kennel, the extent to which survival depended upon permitting her body to gratify his every demand, no matter how intrusive or humiliating. The sad reality appeared, even to Adam, that Maria was less important to Eugene than Eugene to her. In truth, the eldest of the brothers, in the estimate of the middle, had never seemed much motivated by any passion, let alone those intent upon romance, sex, even the duties of Oligarch-Hereditary-in-Exile upon which he acted, but for which he demonstrated little visible enthusiasm.

Passing yet another window, Adam was distracted. Even this far from ground level, the screams of dying men, and of those killing them, were next to intolerable. More and more of the courtyard seemed covered with scarlet splashes or the crude soot-stains of explosions. It was futile, Adam told himself, and stupid. Did no one recognize a fact of grim reality as he did? Could no one cut his losses, give in to the inevitable, instead of wasting what pittance he had left of his resources with no hope of future recovery? As before upon the greenway, Eugene's attack on the Holdings had proved, as ordained from the start, a Romanovan ambush. Why could people never---

Ballonlike, the window before him bulged inward, glowing with unnatural light, crazed over its surface like malfunctioning pottery in a kiln. In a corner of his mind, Adam realized that this was adrenaline, his perceptions heightened by the threat of death. He tossed himself aside, out of the way of a window in the process of being destroyed, and the spell broke, time resumed its normal flow. A primitive rocket grenade crashed through, filling the passageway with smoke and flames of its exhaust, and splashed against the wall, dashing itself to pieces. The hand-shaped explosive charge had failed to detonate. As he picked himself up off the floor, inspected himself for injuries, and shook broken glass from his clothing, Adam discovered that he was indignant. What could Eugene have been thinking of? His own brother might have been killed!

On the other hand, what led him to believe Eugene could think? Already he had another lover in whom he found whatever solace he needed, a hardy woodsjack girl. Adam never doubted she had made all the moves in the direction of his brother, who always had other matters occupying his feeble mind and seemed to have forgotten Maria altogether at some level, visceral or lower. He had even brought his haughty peasant wench, barely more than a teenager, to their last rendezvous. In her presence, Eugene had appeared more animated and at the same time more relaxed. Lida Khabalova: appropriate for the manner in which she radiated musky energy for measures in each direction, as well as the fiercely proprietary manner in which she clung to Eugene's side, devouring him with her dark, fiery eyes. Adam had held it all back from Maria until the moment he could savor it best. He doubted that any female would ever look at him with quite the same---

At last, and maybe just as well, he reached the stairfoot, feeling he had fallen into the barrel of a huge kaleidofile, filled with chaos churning for its own sake. A few rebels had breached the Holdings---it was amazing that any had managed---but were being mopped up. Personnel poured from Zaytseva's office to fight a fire started when one had hurled some flammable against the wall, dousing himself in the process. Before being extinguished, flames had crawled to the ceiling, consuming ancient hanging from Chychak and scorching an expanse of graniplastic, although greater heat would have been needed to melt it. Having died screaming, the arsonist was now a pile of blackened, grinning leather smoldering upon the floor, filling the place with the reek of petroleum fractions and cooked meat. Waiting for a clear avenue between him and his goal, Adam observed it all with detachment, his thoughts somewhere else.

Eugene's new girl-woman. What a waste! Young she was as their dead brother Zakh. Not as amply proportioned as Maria, but with a compensating dynamism. Tight-bodied, smooth-skinned, moist-mouthed. Quivering with pent-up heat entirely lost on its principal object. How anyone could be so obtuse as Eugene, Adam was at a loss to understand. He would believe anything self-serving knave told him, so long as it was less bother than the truth. It annoyed Adam, even when the self-serving knave was himself. It had never occurred to Eugene that Adam might be anything but what he represented himself to be or might want anything but what he represented himself to want. Maybe gullibility demanded less effort.

Adam crossed to the double doors. Inside, chaos was more bureaucratic than military. The suite was deserted. Maps, abandoned by those conscripted into firefighting, had been marked, erased, remarked as tactical actualities changed. Situation estimates elsewhere upon the moonringed planet were being updated, disposition made up the spoils as if already won. He peered at the biggest map. Eugene had put everything into this operation, as he and his future father-in-law had planned. The rest of Genrich was quiescent. The majority of the rebels' hard-won equipment---vehicles, weapons, supplies---had been brought against the Holdings only to be taken or destroyed.

An aide appeared, looking for Adam to inform him that Zaytseva had taken to the safety of the dungeons at the first sign of invasion. Now a prisoner had been identified who permitted special questioning, Adam to help out in the process. Pulse quickening, Adam left the office, thoughts racing a head of their own accord. He was, he told himself, the victim of no such illusions as his brother suffered. At least such was to be believed professionally, wished for with some fervency. He knew what he was, a male Lida, no less savage for all that she bore the appropriate name, no less avid for satiation, no less desirous of power in all forms it might assume. Towards fulfilling his desires, he had labored, conferring with his brother against Zaytseva, with Zaytseva against Eugene, making visits to the tower often as he could, where he could discharge the tensions that a double life engendered, in an ambience where the power he wielded, over a single life, at least, was absolute.

In the first weeks of her captivity, he had supplemented his visits with excursions into town, in part from a necessity to learn things that he might apply during his sessions in the tower. His experience with Maria had been dangerous, exhausting, and left something to be desire in the way of compliance upon her part and satisfaction on his own. Also, he had ventured out to establish a pattern accounting for his absences when meeting with his brother. In the end, out of loathing for the tawdriness of professional women, dissatisfaction with a submission they counterfeited in exchange for money, and fastidious fears he had not realized he owned of exotic, incurable maladies---new artifacts and ideas being not the only things these days imported from beyond the Cosmopolity---he had begun making fewer such trips.

More stairs, into the foundations. He paused at the top, watching order being restored, surrenders accepted, with shouts for quarter and reversed arms everywhere as the rebels realized their situation. Prisoners would be sorted, some fed to the Cossacks, others sedated and lifted off planet in consignment to the Premier. This, he reflected, shaking his head, was the inevitable return upon intransigence; the coin in which, throughout history, little men always paid for breasting currents set in motion by bigger men. Integrity and bravery were not the irreducible primaries these defeated idiots believed. They were scarce commodities, luxuries no wise individual aspired to unless he could afford them. Like money, they were not ends in themselves, but instruments to be accumulated---and expended---with greater gain in mind. Why had these fools set so impossible a figure upon their honor that anyone wishing to deal with them was priced out of the market? What had they hoped to buy with their courage? Freedom? What was that? Adam knew these people. Had they driven Zaytseva off planet, they would have turned the next moment and enslaved each other, calling the process "self-government."

He had never owned any bravery to expend. With that share of integrity, which is inherited by every being, he had purchased something less illusory, less ephemeral than freedom: power. He had traded off a quality men call character, as he had traded off excursions into town, telling himself he obtained all he wanted within the confines of the Holdings. Events here, revolving around his brother and prospective father-in-law, merited more concern. Veronica also demanded attention; her promises, ever couched in the most provocative terms were always interrupted short of fulfillment, causing someone else, with few minutes afterward as possible, to suffer the more. Someday he would make property of the Usurper's daughter, add her to his collection, as it were, and work his will upon her as he did Maria.

He reached the bottom of the steps. Even here, in the dusty dampness of the foundations, the air rang with shouted excitement. Its general import seemed to be that the war, to any extend the word applied, was over. The back of the rebellion was broken. Adam wondered idly what that woodsjack bitch would be like to tame and add to his---so far---imaginary collection, then shied away from the thought, recalling the casual grace with which a quickblade had rested upon her arm. His first act as Oligarch would be to forbid women to carry weapons. Feeling better, he pushed aside a grated door to confront the prisoner being held there for questioning. "Allo, Eugene," he addressed his brother, "how have they been treating you, old fellow?198Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlTIr27dKyV
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A threadbare coverlet about her, Maria folded the bit of conductile she had used to unlock the tower door, relocking it behind her as a precaution. It might delay anyone who suspected her missing. Otherwise unclothed, and barefoot, she hurried down the stairs towards the occupied floors of the Holdings, all too aware of the bloodshed in the courtyard. She was also aware of the stench of fear clinging to her, mingled with the sweat of physical conflict and worse---and that her hair stuck out in all directions---but nothing could be done about it now. Spots of milling, multicolored light on an inner wall reflected greater events below. Zaytseva's minions were retreating from attacking rebels, shielding behind a wall of Cossacks advancing across the flagstones at the shouted command of their officers.

Maria ran a hand over her face, wishing for true clothing and a true bath. She descended, each motion awakening bruises, scratches, strains, and other indignities which, until this moment, she had little choice but to endure. For too long survival had hung upon satisfying Adam's punitive appetites, hoping for opportunity to extract retribution. Now, tonight or tomorrow, unless his "helpless prisoner" prevented it, he would become next claimant to the Oligarchy. She had no time for the fury roiling within her but paused upon a landing below only to glance out another window. Had she learned earlier of this meeting with an alien emissary, she might have stopped it before it was planned. Adam's boasting had warned her of the event and guerilla raid it was bait for. One look told her the rebellion was finished, all overt resistance to Zaytseva crushed. Certain obligations remained to be discharged, one of them to determine whether these aliens in fact existed, along with their mysterious technology, and what use Zaytseva hoped to make of it.

At the next landing, halfway down the tower, a young soldier jerked to attention as, lost in thought and---she realized too late---incautious, she halted, expecting the hum of his quickblade to end her escape.

"Stand where you are!" His voice squeaked at the end of the sentence. Her smile was as sweet as she could manage, while, grateful he was not a Cossack, she planned the next few seconds' action.

"Of course, Sergeant. Is it permissible to see the battle?"

He cleared his throat. "Trooper, ma'am, I got order to let no one pass."

"Well," she smiled again, awaiting opportunity, "I would not wish you to disobey---" His attention distracted by an explosion and a scream, he let his eyes wander. This was all she needed. Flipping the one weapon she had---a metal brace from the bedframe which she had, with great effort, removed and sharpened over the past weeks---from where it lay hidden by her palm and wrist, she drove it with her whole body, straight at his cheek. The makeshift knife slipped into his flesh, skipping along his cheekbone into the eye socket. Maria released her grip and drove it home with the ham of her hand. The trooper crumpled at her feet. Pausing to strip his quickblade from him, she hurried downstairs, tightening the straps about her arm.

Her descent, now, was more circumspect. At the next stop upon what had begun to feel like an interminable journey, she discovered a window shattered by one of the chemenergics---"arpeegee," Eugene had called it, in one of his cool, mechanical messages---he had reintroduced to good effect into the art of forty-second-century warfare. The hand-mad contrivance was far from perfect. She found its unexploded cargo lying at the foot of the wall it had struck, amidst glass fragments and other debris, along with one of Adam's handkerchiefs with which it seemed he had wiped blood from some part of himself.

Pacing the limits of her cell, trying to evade a despair threatening to overwhelm her, Maria had told herself she did not blame her fiance for conveying no warmth in messages entrusted to a 3rd party, even a brother he falsely believed trustworthy. Adam, not content to torture her physically, had leapt at the chance to comment on the sterility of Eugene's communication, wallowing in the effect it produced upon her already devastated morale. Despite taunts, she had always known she loved Eugene rather better than he loved her. As his bride-to-be she had resigned herself, mindful of the man preoccupations of a conscientious heir, admiring his unruffable, undemonstrative nature---contrasted with what she felt to be her own unpredictable swings in temperament---for, although he had never been much given to passion's heights, neither was he a victim of the inevitable, compensating depths.

Maria shook her head, tears in her eyes, ashamed she had allowed her mind to wander. It was not that she avoided the grim facts of reality. She had focused upon one at the expense of others with better claim on her. Through the broken window she observed the courtyard, stained with the blood of those whose dying screams already ceased to echo. It had been over with so soon. Man against man, woodsjack against trooper---even given the Cossacks---it might have been a match. But humans, protected only by their courage, against flyers! She could see the trail they had left, spelled out in ruined flesh.

It would not alter what Maria had to do. Although she sometimes served interests at conflict with her beliefs----or made greater sacrifices----she was guided by what she felt were certain self-evident (or at least fundamental) principles. Liberty, for all the word had fallen out of fashion, was the inheritance of every individual. One thing was efficacious in defending it (no guarantee being given even then): uncompromising courage. If Eugene's counterstroke had failed, if he himself were killed or taken, even if he had taken this Genrichian girl as his lover, as Adam gloated, and forgotten his "unwedded wife," she must continue his effort. If her role in life was to keep promises made by others, so be it. She would keep promises of her own at a better place and time, once the other was accomplished.

At the stairfoot, which she reached at long last, the clamor had not altogether died. Upon the contrary, the ground floor seethed with movement at cross-purposes, yelling and killing. Somehow the rebels had broken through, or maybe had been inside the walls all along among the servants. Someone had smashed a liter of some incendiary---"molotov" was the ancient word, another of Eugene's practical revivals---against one wall, destroying a prized Poohbah tapestry and blackening the ceiling. Smoke filled the hallway even yet, the smell of the molotov---and of its victims--overpowering.

Taking advantage of soldiers who should have been on guard and people dragooned out of offices, still coping with results of the fire, Maria slipped along a wall, her heart pounding loud enough to distract her even above the noise and crossed where lingering smoke was the thickets. She entered the abandoned suite. Inside, the blade-battered body of a rebel slumped over a table, half-buried in tatters of a large map upon which tactical projections and situation estimates had been marked with grease-pencil. The dead man had been in process of stripping it from a wall. In seconds, Maria was across the room to the inner office, the door of which had been left ajar, unsure what she was after. Access to Zaytseva's sanctum was not a thing to be depended upon twice. The threat represented by alien technology was of the highest priority.

A cursory examination of the room revealed nothing of particular interest. The maps outside were of greater value. She was about to give up, with a sense of peril survived to no good purpose, when, running her fingers beneath an edge of the desk, she heard a faint springing and a portion of the desk's surface slid upward. Inside a small cabinet, open upon the side which faced a person seated at the desk, was an unfamiliar-looking object, rather like a lantern lying on its side, transparent or translucent (Maria wasn't sure which) with metal ends, integral base, and what seemed to be a wire handle.

No chair stood behind the desk. Moving one from before it, she sat down. With one eye on the door---which she had closed and locked---and a comforting (if purposeless) grip on the yoke of her confiscated quickblade, she extended her left hand and seized the wire handle.

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On The Spiral Stairway

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