Chapter 77 76
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Well, as a certain supremely self-confident penguin once said on a large tropical island: *Smile and wave, gentlemen. Smile and wave.* The waving, perhaps, was excessive. But a smile never hurt anyone. Though that was, admittedly, a debatable claim. Still.
I forced my lips apart with a deliberate act of will.
"Well, hel-lo-o-o," I said, loudly now, after that quiet exhale of *Ze-e-e-en.*
"Victor," came a voice from the figure of Death — a surprisingly pleasant woman's voice. "Let him go. He has already lingered in this world far too long, by your Will. His time has finally run out."
"Time?" I stretched my lips a little further. Only now the smile was beginning to fill with something genuine. Genuine, aggressive predation. It was a baring of teeth, not a smile. "Time is in my hands!" I raised the hand still wreathed in green constructs.
"Time — perhaps," Death conceded without argument. And for the record, there was nothing in her figure that one usually attributes to Death. No skeletal fingers, no black shapeless robes, no jagged scythe. Quite the opposite: the figure on this particular lady was something to behold — ninety, sixty, ninety, on a frame of a hundred and eighty-five centimeters. A beautiful, severe black dress. The only concession to convention was the hood — a hood with a short cape that barely covered her shoulders — and a mask. A skull mask on her face. But through the slits of that mask, entirely living human eyes were visible. "But not Life. Everything has its end. His life has ended."
"You're asking. Which means I have a choice." A narrowing of the eyes joined the bared teeth.
"You do," Death said, not disputing it. "You can bring him back today. But he will die tomorrow. Or the day after. Or at any random moment from this one forward. How long can you hold him in this world by your Will? Let him go now. You know perfectly well that the death of the body is not the end of the Path. And there, beyond, they are already waiting for him. His soul needs to move forward in order to grow."
"I need him here," I said, still showing my teeth. "I don't care about his soul. Let him work."
"His soul… but what about yours?" Death tilted her head slightly toward her shoulder.
"Mine?" I tensed harder, and the smile began to die.
"If you bring him back now, you take responsibility upon yourself for everything he does from this moment forward," she said. "And he wi-i-i-ill do things."
"I don't care." Responsibility had never frightened me. I had made decisions my entire life and answered for them.
"All the more so now. Now that you've felt my touch. And now that you know you can pull him back. Again. And again."
The smile went out as if someone had flicked a switch. He would climb on my neck entirely after this! He was already halfway there — now he'd go ahead and dangle his feet.
"Take him," I said, and lowered the hand I'd been holding up.
"Are you certain?" I heard a smile in her voice, and even a trace of mockery.
"Absolutely. He can go to hell."
"Hm." She tilted her head. "Shall I make him a woman in his next life? An interesting thought…"
I involuntarily twitched. And reminded myself that with this Lady, one had to be extremely careful with words. Though — when had such reminders ever stopped me from saying something stupid?
"Death. Answer me something."
"Ask, Victor," she said easily.
"What about my descendants? The ones lying in the crypt? Are they dead?" There was no point in wasting the opportunity to clarify something this important, straight from the primary source.
"Yes," she answered in a tone that made it clear the question had been imprecise, and that she was giving me another attempt.
"Have they… gone?" I thought for a moment and rephrased.
"No, Victor," she answered, her intonation signaling that yes, this was the formulation that would yield the answer I was looking for. "They have not gone. Their souls are suspended in an unstable equilibrium. Their bodies were killed, but they are not ordinary bodies. They hold on. They do not let go. But they also lack the strength to return to life."
"Can I bring them back?"
"How would I know, Victor? That is the business of the living. Not mine," she said, and shrugged.
"Then I'll give you him," I nodded toward Stalin, still frozen exactly where he stood. "But I'm taking them."
"Bargaining?" She tilted her head again, this time toward the other shoulder.
"No. Stating my decision."
"You know, Victor," Death said after a brief pause, "he would like to speak with you before he goes. Will you listen?"
"Is he going to beg for his life?" I frowned with suspicion.
"No," said Death. And I had the impression that behind her mask, she was smiling.
"Then I'll listen."
The moment I said it, Stalin "unfroze" and turned to face me.
"Viktor Ivanovich," he said with a quiet smirk, and drew deeply from his pipe, which had jumped back between his teeth at the same moment his head had returned to his shoulders. He took that drag with a visible, unhurried pleasure. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn the entire conversation had been arranged for the sake of this one final smoke — at the very end, after all, pleasures that once seemed minor and ordinary become immeasurably precious. "I honestly and conscientiously tried to justify the high trust you placed in me," he said, after exhaling the smoke. "I tried to build communism. I could not. And more than that — I came to the conclusion that at this stage, it is impossible. For that to happen, human consciousness must first grow. And on that front… things are bad. The majority, the mass of people, do not want communism. People do not want to be equal. And they will not be, no matter how hard anyone tries to make them so. All that effort produces is growing tension in society."
"You gave up?" My eyebrows rose. "You?"
He didn't answer. He was drawing again from the pipe.
"That explains why she's taking you now," I said, glancing toward Death. She remained still.
"I understood what Comrade Erskine meant by his 'Gift,'" he said slowly, exhaling smoke. "And I understood what truly mattered. I understood why I was given these thirty years to live. The Ancient One will pass you the key. You'll figure it out."
"A key?" I frowned. "What key? To what?"
But Stalin didn't answer. He was taking a third drag.
"I didn't see my killer, Viktor Ivanovich," he said at last, exhaling again and looking with quiet regret into the bowl of his pipe, where nothing remained of the tobacco but ash. "But I am certain it was a conspiracy. Someone wanted to be rid of me — and to remove my successor from the game."
"Successor?!" My eyebrows shot up. "Successor?! I'll be damned if I want anything to do with that headache!"
"You said the Union would hold together for forty years after me," he continued, as if he hadn't heard me at all. "That is not accurate. Ten years. Twenty at most. The collapse is already inevitable. The World Revolution has failed, and empires only live while they expand. My empire has run into its borders — borders it cannot cross. And do you know what, Viktor Ivanovich?"
"What?" I said flatly.
"I don't feel sorry for the Union. It did not justify the hopes placed in it. It could not change human consciousness — Georgio was wrong: existence shapes consciousness, but does not compel awareness to grow. Don't try to preserve it. Preserve the Federation. That matters more than the Union. That is what I wanted to say today when I came to you." He exhaled slowly. "That is all I wanted to say."
Stalin was quiet for a moment.
"Farewell, Viktor Ivanovich. Forgive me for letting you down."
"Farewell, Iosif Vissarionovich," I said. "You are forgiven."
And at that moment, the world around me began to move again. The figure and presence of Death vanished. But Stalin still stood — just as the spells continued to hang around my hand, which was raised again and back in its "working" position.
Stalin turned from me to face those present. He withdrew the mouthpiece of the pipe from his lips and lowered the hand that held it. At that precise instant, the first members of the KGB operations team came running around the corner — the ones the first bodyguard had been sent to summon. And at the head of the group, running alongside his men, was none other than the Chairman of the Committee himself. Seeing a living Stalin, they slowed and stopped, frozen in bewilderment.
"There is a conspiracy in the country. Render Comrade Creed every possible assistance in uncovering it, and in the development of the Martial Arts Federation. His word is my word. Comrade Romanova — you will help him."
Natasha nodded.
I swept my hand to the right. Stalin fell again. Or rather, his head fell first and rolled, and then his body folded — settling back into exactly the position it had been in before I began working my magic. As did the head.
I released the weave. The green contours around my hand went dark, and the Eye closed.
"What are you standing there for?" I growled. "Did you all hear him? Let's move."
And as if they had simply been waiting for my command, everyone immediately remembered why they were here. And which duties, precisely, were theirs.
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