Tales from Kalgachia - 25
If Enver Kalmirov had limited his killing spree to the robber of his infant daughter's grave, the Abbot's Tribunal of Abrek City would likely have pardoned him. Everyone from the partisans who arrested him to the Abbot himself had said so. But restraint, Kalmirov noted, had in fact been his undoing. Upon visiting the small cemetery and sighting the gap-toothed thief making off with his daughter's talisman-turned-grave-ornament, along with half a dozen other trinkets from adjoining graves, he belatedly concluded that he should have succumbed to his rage without delay and eviscerated the man on the spot with his razor-sharp khanjali. But the sight had instead bestowed upon him an eerie calm which he had known neither before nor since, and the tectological holism of some half-remembered church sermon had come to his mind - the scuttling degenerate before Kalmirov's eyes may have borne tainted spawn of his own, and no good would come to the Garden unless that bloodline was eradicated entirely. So Kalmirov had crept behind the man at a distance, following him out of the graveyard and through Abrek City's lower fringes until he disappeared into a ramshackle izba cottage at the end of an unpaved track. Kicking the front door off its hinges a short time afterwards, Kalmirov had surprised the robber - along with gaunt-faced wife and four equally ratty children - whereupon his latent fury had finally found him and he had slaughtered them all in a short and surprisingly effortless space of time. All he really recalled of it was his unexpected enjoyment at the woman's agonal screams and the surprising coverage of spattered blood upon the ceiling's cracked plaster. Those screams would ultimately catch up with him, bringing the nosy babushka in the adjoining cottage to her window just in time to catch a good look at Kalmirov as he shuffled away up the track. He was only a minute from home when a sputtering wood-gas truck full of partisans had caught up to him, disgorging its rabble of armed men who had quickly turned him against a wall and plucked the bloodstained khanjali out of his belt. His thrashings of protest had been met with a square blow to the face, courtesy of a bootlegged Shirerithian lead-tipped cudgel which had bust his nose open and spilled yet more blood over his gymnasterka. After that point, he had resigned himself to his fate.
Now he was here, at the Abrek City March Reformatory - a dungeon complex of sorts, located within the city limits but beyond its urban Parishes. All of it was underground, except for a small exercise yard on the surface which was less than popular due to being located in a fetid bog which itself lay in a sunless hollow, infested this time of year with mosquitoes the size of a man's thumb. It was the mosquitoes Kalmirov really feared - an hour per day on the surface was mandatory for all inmates, plenty of whom had hepatitis and other blood-borne ailments, and the bloodsucking insects moved between them and the other prisoners with an incessant buzzing enthusiasm. The risk of infection was the only thing dissuading Kalmirov from eating the ones he swatted - he reckoned an hour's collected mosquito splatter could provide more protein then the slop he was served at mealtimes.
"Time's up, boys! In we go!"
The duty warder, a self-righteous Nezeni prick in an emerald-green cape, was calling the end of exercise time. On a series of rocky ledges above the hollow, his similarly-uniformed comrades counted the inmates back underground over the muzzles of their guns. Nobody dithered in returning down a narrow concrete staircase, its walls running with the moisture of the surrounding bog which, presumably, was collected and expelled by some kind of drainage pump when it trickled down to the bowels of the institution. Aside from the mosquitoes, the forest above was known to harbour a good number of Mishalanski bears and even the occasional Tee-al. At least below, the only thing to worry about was getting one's head kicked in by one of the Reformatory's more psychopathic inmates. As it was, Kalmirov got along comfortably enough with the more volatile characters of his cell cluster - word had gotten around that he was a multiple murderer and he was treated with a degree of respectful caution, although the presence of children among his victims remained unknown to the other inmates - if that ever got out, he knew his standing among them would be instantly and probably fatally reversed. The warders knew the full story, of course, and often intimated that they might let it slip when he was too vociferous in his protests against the Reformatory regime - but being hardened to a working life among the Garden's more pernicious weeds, they also betrayed a quiet admiration for his act of 'service' to society. Aside from the occasional grumble, Kalmirov had proven to be an untroubling inmate - he did his time quietly and stayed out of the haphazard gang system operating among the others. He did not smoke or possess many tradeable items, which kept him out of the debt-driven cycle of beating and shanking which had scarred or outright killed other men, often right in front of him. Moreover his IQ test upon initial incarceration had placed him in the top ten percent of the Reformatory population.
Any one of these redeeming features, or more likely some subtle combination, had earned him a certain special attention from the Reformatory administration - an attention of which he was largely unaware until returning to his cell, whereupon he was suddenly confronted with the sight of the Reformatory Governor himself - a dumpy old Lywaller who stood almost a full head shorter than Kalmirov. The man was accompanied by two warders Kalmirov had never seen before, and bore a sheepish smile.
"Do forgive me for invading your privacy, Kalmirov," he said. "I wonder if I might have a little word with you. You don't have anything else planned, do you?"
One of Kalmirov's eyebrows involuntarily jumped - was the man mocking him? Before he could meditate further, he found himself replying:
"Oh, uhh... no sir. There's no problem."
"Marvellous," said the Governor. "Damir, will you...?" He nodded at the heavy timber door - metal was too scarce in Kalgachia to use for such things - and one of the warders slammed it shut, instantly blocking out the hubbub of the atrium beyond. In the silence, the Governor sat himself on the edge of Kalmirov's bunk and seemed to be collecting his thoughts.
"Kalmirov... myself and the administration have a proposition for you."
"A proposition, sir?" The situation was already so surreal that Kalmirov could do little more than parrot the Governor's words.
"A proposition," said the Governor. "We have been approached by... gentlemen concerned with the defence of the Garden. They are seeking... suitable volunteers... for a project they are running. Would you be interested?"
"They want conscripts?" Kalmirov's head recoiled at the idea.
"No no no, dear fellow, you've got the wrong end of the stick. You'd remain a civilian."
"What else would they want with me, sir?"
"Well they wouldn't tell us. It's a secret. You'll only know if you get involved with it. I suppose if you're looking for a catch, that would be it. They're looking for... a certain type of character."
"A killer, I suppose."
"Actually no... they didn't specify that. But they didn't rule it out either. They need somebody with... resilient properties and a certain base intelligence. They asked us to extend their offer to the more resilient and intelligent individuals presently under our care, of whom you happen to be one."
"Well with all due respect, sir..." said Kalmirov. "What's in it for me?" He was careful not to detail the tentative comfort of his incercertaion, lest the warders leverage it against him.
"They've promised to return you to our care when they're finished with you... but provided you haven't caused them any trouble, we'd be inclined to consider your service an integral part of your rehabilitation and grounds for immediate parole. We'd enrol you in some Church remediation classes to ease you back into society, but aside from that you'd be a free man."
"I see..." Kalmirov muttered. His inscrutable expression was well-practised - he had found it essential to avoid provoking other inmates - but the Governor had worked his way from the ranks as a common warder, and recognised the darting surprise in the eyes of Kalmirov which settled into a critical squint. "And if I decline your offer?"
The Governor sighed and shook his head. "Kalmirov, you have seen what becomes of the long-term inmates here. In theory, of course, everyone here can be rehabilitated - or else the tribunals would have handed them... different sentences. But you and I know different, dear fellow. After a certain point, when the odious dynamic out there..." he jerked his head toward the door, "...has seeped into the marrow of your bones, do you really think there is anything we can do to reform you? A couple of hours' preaching on a Byeday against endless days among those degenerates? In this place, the only people who can preserve their souls are those who came in here with some remaining scrap of virtue. You came in here with plenty, man. I can see it in your eyes. But the longer you stay in here, the faster it will drain away. You'll end up a hollow shell of a man begging for death, chasing the fleeting pleasures of contraband... the distractions of gang politics... to numb the pain. Eventually you'll age, your strength will abandon you, your luck will run out and you'll meet a violent end... or you'll have to make a Storish bargain to avoid it. I've seen it happen to plenty of your kind over the years. Don't think it won't happen to you... and don't think you'll get an offer like this again! Ultimately the choice is yours, Kalmirov, but for the love of the Garden I beseech you to choose wisely. Before it's too late."
The old man looked almost desperate - actually desperate, in fact. To Kalmirov's surprise the Governor's words affected him beyond the banal, wibbling sermons of the Reformatory Credent during the institution's mandatory Byeday chapel services. Unlike the Credent's mechanistic firehose of Ketherist slogans there was no streak of disingenuous cynicism in the Governor's tone - that alone reminded Kalmirov of life on the outside, of the days when he moved among the affable and the outright kind. Now it was almost as if the salvation of the Governor's soul depended on that of Kalmirov's. On some kind of spiritual level he seemed to have skin in the game, beyond the petty concerns of administrating the Reformatory. Kalmirov respected that. The Governor had betrayed his weakness - an unforgivable sin among the Reformatory inmates - but instead of instinctive and violent disdain, Kalmirov suddenly found himself identifying with the plaintive grey eyes of the old man sat on his bunk, as he might have done on the outside. Perhaps he was not beyond redemption after all.
"Very well, sir," he said. "As you put it like that... I accept."
Wherever they had taken him after that, it was far away - some distance out of Abrek Lieutenancy to be sure. There was little to be had in the way of clues, rocking around for several hours in the back of a canvas-covered flatbed truck with nothing to look at but the dim miner's lamp swinging from one of the roof arches. The crack of white daylight between the rear covers had been guarded by two military policemen of the KDF Provost Marshal's Office - mixed-blood types from Oktavyan who were terse at first but loosened up when they realised Kalmirov was not inclined to cause trouble. As the day wore on the gap of daylight between them had faded through twilight gold into the blackness of dusk.
Kalmirov's new hosts, to his relief, were civil in their handling of him - no hood or restraints. He got the impression that their mission was a welcome break from hauling inebriated soldiers out of Parish drunk tanks and doubling them back to garrison at baton-point - at any rate they had told him they were unaccustomed to handling civilians. They had politely declined to answer Kalmirov's questions about their destination and he chose not to press them about it. They, for their part, seemed uninterested in Kalmirov's criminal record. His small talk with them covered more general subjects, peppered with the occasional joke or anecdote to pass the time - altogether a more human experience than he got from the holier-than-thou regime of the Church-run Reformatory. He savoured the moment, suspecting that his conditions would degrade again in short order.
Late into the evening the sudden echo of the truck's engine indicated its entry into another tunnel, perhaps the fifth it had transited on the journey. But now the truck lurched to a halt and shut off its engine while still inside. The two guards lifted the canvas flap open and Kalmirov was led out of the vehicle, into the blinding floodlights of a large underground parking lot. Between its unadorned square pillars stood row upon row of trucks - mostly wood-gas affairs - and the occasional limousine. Kalmirov had little time to take it in as each of his arms were taken gently by the guards and he was led into an industrial cage elevator of mineshaft type. After descending for an unnervingly long time - Kalmirov could have sworn he felt the heat increase as he descended into the bowels of Micras - the guards disembarked him along a low-ceilinged tunnel so packed with steam pipes and electrical cables that there was barely enough room for the men to pass between them. After navigating a series of splits in this labyrinthe, Kalmirov was eventually shown to his cell - big enough that he was unable to touch opposite walls simultaneously, unlike his previous accomodation. The mattress on his bunk was twice the thickness and the blankets were a finer grade of wool than the coarse goat-hair which had itched him to sleep in the last couple of years. The light even had a switch so it could be turned on and off as the occupant pleased. Kalmirov was in the middle of silently congratulating himself for taking a step into the good life when he began to read the graffiti scratched into the cell wall by its previous occupants:
"show your faces!!! i know you are there!!!"
"all is lost. the GARDEN has forsaken me"
"HELP HELP HELP"
"if there is any mercy in the garden it will bring me death before my children see the man their father has become"
"they said id feel nothing. they lied"
"a lifetime of pain in one day and they want me to smile tomorrow morning?"
"IF THEY OFFER YOU ANESTETTIC DO NOT REFUSE IT LIKE I DID"
"today i left this cell alone. i am not alone now"
"THE BUZZING MAKE IT STOP STOP STOP STOP-"
This final inscription was underlined in a shaky streak of dried blood, applied by fingertip. A chill was steadily working its way up and down Kalmirov's spine when the wooden grate of the cell door snapped open, causing him to jump. A tray full of food was being held through it - recognisable food, with actual vegetables and thin cuts of mutton, all in generous quantities. A mug filled with some kind of fruit juice - fruit juice! - stood beside it.
"Get this down you and get some sleep," said the voice behind the grate. "You'll be called in seven hours."
Kalmirov took the tray and carefully conveyed it to the cell's slim table. "Thank y-" he began, but the grate snapped shut before he could finish.
"You sure he's Laqi? He doesn't look shifty enough."
Such was Kalmirov's welcome from the wild-eyed, bespectacled nerd in civilian dress to whom he was presented the following morning, in a small paper-strewn office. The young man's clipped tie and folded-up sleeves were just a little too neat for comfort.
"Check his paperwork if you don't believe me," said one of Kalmirov's KDF escorts, with surprising irreverence. "Straight from Abrek City Reformatory."
"What charge?"
"Sextuple homicide."
"Oooh," the young man pouted. "Spicy..."
"He's been no trouble to us, like."
"Well he'll be more interesting than another batch of recusant Froyalaners. The Garden knows I've done that demographic to death... literally." He turned his attention to Kalmirov himself. "Kalamov, was it?"
"Kalmirov, sir," said Kalmirov.
The young nerd laughed. "Sir!? Do you know, I think you're the first non-Froyalaner ever to call me that... were you as decorous to those six people you killed?"
"No, sir," said Kalmirov flatly.
"Oh well," said the man. "I suppose I should introduce myself. Victor Eggson..." He extended his hand, which Kalmirov tentatively shook. "...From the Applied Psychotronics Team at the University of Bergburg. We're working on a commission from your uniformed friends here..." he nodded either side of Kalmirov at his military escort. "All very exciting stuff, as you'll soon see."
"Yes the graffiti in my cell suggests that, sir," said Kalmirov.
"I'm sorry, I don't remember asking you to speak." Eggson smirked in triumph as Kalmirov averted his eyes toward the floor. Outside, the sound of an openly-weeping man being dragged past on his heels briefly permeated through the office door. Eggson continued unfazed. "You'll find we're a kindly bunch here, if you go along with our programme. Your compliance and general tenor will be reported to your previous custodians in Abrek if..." he coughed. "I mean when... you return to them. You will have an oppurtunity to put forth your experiences to us, but for now I must ask you to be a good listener. Can you do that?"
"Yes sir," said Kalmirov, inwardly wincing at Eggson's patronising tone. The man must have some Lywaller in him, he thought.
"Good," said Eggson. "Now... how do you fancy a day up top for some fresh air?"
"Very much, sir." Kalmirov nodded with a sarcastic grin. All joking aside, he reasoned that the surface around here might be more salubrious than the bug-ridden bog at Abrek Reformatory. There would be a different catch, though - of that he was sure.
"Marvellous!" Eggson smirked back and looked at Kalmirov's principal escort. "Are the boys ready?"
"Yup," said the escort.
"Off you trot, then. I'll be along in a tick."
Kalmirov found himself standing at the head of a steep valley, carved out of the surrounding mountains by a small, babbling stream. Sparse clusters of coniferous trees sprung up in places. Eggson had mentioned Bergburg, but this could have been anywhere in Kalgachia. There was no sign of human civilisation except for the rutted gravel track on which his truck had arrived. This was the most liberty he had known since his first incarceration and he briefly considered the escape oppurtunities - poor, at first sight. Each slope of the valley was lined with a scattered string of bored-looking but armed soldiers who shifted on their feet as they waited for Eggson, now attired in an ill-fitting parka jacket like some kind of Nova English ski tourist, to finish his 'briefing'.
"Now remember, Kalmirov... all you have to do is walk down that valley until someone tells you to stop. Watch your footing on the scree beds, they're a bit slippery. Make a note of everything you see, hear or feel on the way down. We'll be asking questions later. Understood?"
"Yes sir," said Kalmirov, peering down the valley. Aside from the loitering troops there appeared to be nothing notable on his route. A small stand of trees stood to one side - but too far for him to dash for cover before being gunned down. He began an unsteady shuffle down the slope, his feet sliding and rolling over the scattered rocks.
Behind him, Eggson raised a military field radio to his mouth: "Subject is approaching. Stand by."
For some minutes Kalmirov worked his way down the valley, keeping close to the gushing stream and at one point sliding into it as he lost his footing - his Reformatory-issued shoes, not entirely to his surprise, leaked. He picked himself up and shuffled on, this time a little further from the water.
He was around halfway down the valley, still wondering about the purpose of the exercise, when the very heavens above him were split asunder and the remorseless hands of a thousand gods wrung his soul like a wet towel. Fear and anguish consumed him in a moment, and a cacophony of wrathful roaring crackled his ears. The mountain valley was reduced to an irrelevance in the greater fabric of existence, as was Kalmirov's own body. His muscles fell limp and he tumbled to the ground.
As quickly as it had arrived, the archonic grip vanished from his being and the valley's sharp gravel stabbed his sides as he rolled down it, finally bumping to a halt against a boulder. He had no time to pick himself up before the world dissolved once more into blinding light, carnal screaming and withering pain. Then an even louder voice, delivered as the guttral snarl of a pitbull, emerged from the roar as an amplitudinal crackle:
"..AND IN THESE DAYS SHALT THOU SEEK DEATH, AND SHALL NOT FIND IT, AND SHALL DESIRE TO DIE, AND DEATH SHALL FLEE FROM THEEEEEeeeeeee..."
The voice whined upwards to a painfully high pitch, broadening in tone to a pervasive hiss which began sputtering. Rustling. Rustling like leaves and quietening, so that it was no longer painful to hear it. The fear which had locked Kalmirov's throat and spine into suffocating rigidity fell away as if vanquished, and the rustling was accompanied by glorious birdsong. From his position, curled on his side against the boulder, a sideways view of the valley returned to his eyes - but this time its colours were richer, more enhanced. Even the thousand shades of grey upon the mountainside were emanations of beauty, and the distant soldiers stood upon it seemed to radiate a protective benevolence as though they were a host of kindly deities, made of love and light alone. They, or some other host of beings beyond Kalmirov's sight, now serenaded him with a sea of song so transcendent and beautiful that it seemed beyond the means of the material world to utter.
Then it was all gone. The valley returned to normal. Kalmirov sat against the boulder for a moment, collecting himself. He vaguely remembered being here for a reason. He rose to his feet. The voice of Eggson spoke directly into his ear:
"Okay Kalmirov, that'll do for the moment. You can come back now."
Kalmirov recoiled and turned to face Eggson, whom he presumed directly next to him. Nobody stood there. He looked up the valley whence he had come and spotted Eggson in his actual location by the truck, lowering the field radio and beckoning with his hand for Kalmirov to return. Kalmirov took his time winding his way back up the valley - he found some difficulty expunging the events of the previous moments from his memory. It was as if he had relived his entire Urchagin in the space of a few seconds, but with a hundred times the intensity. More than once his mind drifted away and he stumbled into the stream again, forcing himself to adjust his course back toward the truck. The next thing he knew he was stood swaying in front of Eggson, although he did not remember walking up to the man.
"I'll ask you a third time, Kalmirov, and I'd better not have to ask a fourth. How was it?"
"Mmm?" mumbled Kalmirov. "Oh..." He screwed up his eyes and blinked. "Terrible. And wonderful. Can you do it again? No no, don't do it again... I don't know..."
"What came first, the terrible part or the wonderful part?"
"Uhh... terrible. I think."
"And did you hear any voices? Besides mine, I mean."
"A pack of angry dogs... gods... god dogs... telling me I wanted to die..."
"Ah, excellent!" Eggson bounced on his heels and pencilled a few lines onto his clipboard. "So, are you ready to go again?"
"What?" said Kalmirov. "No, I... what happened to me out there?"
"Oh bless," said Eggson to some nearby soldiers. "He's not the same man now, is he?"
The soldiers laughed.
"Well then", said Eggson. "Round Two. Most of my subjects don't make it past the first. You're doing very well, I must say. Back you go."
"Wha? Oh..." Noting the insistent wave of one of the soldier's rifle barrels, Kalmirov's shoulders sank and he lurched around, shuffling back down the valley at a far slower speed than his first run. On the way he considered Eggson's words. He was not the same man. He had no idea who he was any more.
Stumbling toward the nearest cluster of coniferous trees, he noticed the shape of two heavily-camouflaged soldiers lurking within. Between them was a similarly-concealed object of a disc shape, which pivoted to face directly at him.
Oh no, thought Kalmirov as his whole world fell away again.
