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The City
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Little Sister The Audience
THE AUDIENCESHE BARELY NOTICED the open metalwork, as sturdy as any factory joists and as delicate as rime. She paid little attention to the marvel of the huge but silent mechanisms that gently rotated the structures within the Tower, each hanging sphere big as an average apartment block. Of the POP operatives who accompanied them through the mirror-lined corridors and into a glittering elevator, like a hollowed-out diamond, she retained only the general impression of young stern faces and long leather overcoats. All Svetlana remembered afterwards was the abundance of Light. It spilled from every giant window and skylight, gleamed on the polished marble floors and ceilings, reflected from mirrors and gilded cornices, twinkled in the garlands of tiny bulbs draped over arched doorways and blazed from the giant electric chandeliers. Light was everywhere, filling Svetlana with its promise of the bright future and washing away the grief and despair that had clogged her mind like layers of
Little Sister Goodbyes
GOODBYESTHEY ONLY HADan hour or so before the train was supposed to leave. Svetlana spent much of the morning going over the med kits she had been issued before departure. There were not enough. There were three-hundred people in her combat battalion, and she only had twenty kits. But with judicious use of gauze and iodine, she could stretch it out to cover most emergencies. Well, except for those that required actual surgery. Even if she knew how to do it, there were no scalpels or sterilization supplies in the kits. There were also no doctors. Most of them were sequestered in the Health Institute right here, in the City, trying to find the cure for the black-star infestation. The last she heard, they had met with significant success. Certainly, the random Patrols that went around the City, stopping passers-by and shining an electric torch into their eyes, were finding fewer and fewer traitors. She almost never saw them execute anybody anymore. Recently, these Patrols were com
Little Sister Shadows
SHADOWS“Your son, unit commander Senior Sergeant Kurchenko Andrei Andreevich was wounded in the battle for the socialist Motherland. He was loyal to his military oath and showed heroism and bravery. He died of his wounds and was buried in the county cemetery of Helmsted near Magdeburg (Germany) on March 15, 1945. This letter serves as the official document for opening a pension request’s proceedings (as per Order no 220 of NKO USSR)”.***Svetlana touched Alex’ hand shyly as the two of them stood on the bank of the creek, looking down into the swift water speckled with white and pink petals. Spring came early this year, and the cherry and apple trees were already in bloom. Drowning in the billows of fragrant blossoms, Little Wells looked lovely and peaceful.She was dispatched here after the decisive rout of Wulfstan troops on the Western front. After the years of blood, mud, screams of the wounded and cursing of the dying, the post of a rural nurse, responsible for the new clinic
Little Sister The Lost Notebook
THE LOST NOTEBOOKTHE DAY HERfather was arrested, Svetlana lost her notebook.The notebook was important because all the latest definitions were there, written down in her careful round script. She searched for it everywhere: under the roll-up top of her desk, where balls of blotting paper nested like spider eggs; at the bottom of her satchel where she discovered an ink-stained white ribbon; on the floor of the classroom, crawling between the rows of desks until she was chased away by old Aunt Sonya, the cleaner.She could not find the notebook and went home downcast. She could always ask her best friend Tattie. But Tattie lived five streets away and the winter day was drawing to a close—the sky was like a dusty bowl filling with darkness. It was at night when the oborotni came out and prowled the streets. Though the Patrols of Light were there to protect the workers coming home from late shifts, children were strongly discouraged from venturing outside after dark. Even if, li
Little Sister The Eyeless
THE EYELESSWHEN SHE CAME TO, sluggishly and reluctantly, she found herself lying on the family’s shabby sofa. Andrei was sitting by her side. A sparse dawn bled through the window.“Mama,” she whispered.“She went after them,” he said. “I told her not to ... It’s not a good idea. But she would not listen.”Svetlana stared at him. His face looked dusty. She noticed, distantly, a half-healed scar on his cheek.“They took my Dad, too,” he was saying under his breath. “A month before the war started. They said he was a cosm ... cosmop?”“Kosmop,” she said. “It’s a kind of vermin.”“This is what they said. I can’t even pronounce it.”“My father is innocent,” Svetlana said dully. “It was not ... it wasn’t him. Somebody made a mistake. I need to go and talk to them. Now!”She tried to get up but fell back onto the sofa again. Her head was spinning, blue spots rotating in her field of vision.“Hey, hey,” Andrei pushed her back.“You need to eat,
Little Sister The Sealed Floors
THE SEALED FLOORSTHEY FOUND THEMSELVES in the dirty darkness, faintly diluted by the anemic light dribbling from an unshaded electric bulb. Svetlana was momentarily surprised by the fact that there was electricity in the sealed floors but then realized it was necessary to keep whatever was breeding here in check.The light was so dim, though. Would it even work?She looked around. She had not been to the upper floors since she was a child and remembered little of them. Ahead of them, a flight of concrete stairs disappeared into the gloom, littered with desiccated insects and mice droppings. There was a shed to the right where the janitor’s tools used to be stored when the entire building had been occupied.Andrei looked back at the door that shuddered but held as the fists of the eyeless hammered at it.“Funny neighbors you have,” he remarked acidly.“Don’t you dare.” Svetlana turned on him, her cheeks blazing with indignation. “Those are good people. Good workers. The Enemy had
Little Sister The Speak House
THE SPEAK HOUSETHE STREETS WEREempty the next morning as they trudged through the shivery frostbite of the crystal air toward the Speak-House. Svetlana was so cold that even her thoughts seemed frozen in her head. She clung to one certainty—she needed to talk to the people in charge and tell them what she had seen. Hopefully, then her parents would be restored to her, and everything would be as it used to be.But what about Andrei? He marched by her side, his face set in a frown. He was her witness. If her story of the eyeless was doubted, he could lend his support. Would he be believed? Wouldn’t he be suspected of being in the service of the Enemy? How could she know for sure that he was not? Okay, he could not be an Enemy himself; something deep inside her insisted on his humanity, but what if he was a foreign infiltrator of some kind?When they had woken up in the office, she had been unable to move, her limbs seized with the paralysis of chill. The fire had gone out in th
Little Sister The Train Station
THE TRAIN STATIONTHEY HAD GONEback to Svetlana’s apartment because they could think of no other place to go.The door was sealed with a black spider-star, but Andrei unceremoniously kicked it in. It was freezing inside because the central heating had been turned off. It was routinely done when an entire apartment block had to be written off as a nest of the Enemy.Otherwise, her family’s possessions had been left untouched. There was food in the larder, and the kitchen stove still worked. They made giant mugs of tea and ate bread and sausage, huddling under heaps of blankets.Svetlana had lived in this apartment since the day she was born. Her textbooks still lay in an untidy heap on the desk in the corner of the living room that doubled as a dining table when her parents were on different shifts and the family did not eat together. The paper flowers she had made, scorched by the power of the Voice, drooped in the vase made of a jam jar. She could see into the kitchen where
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