Permafrost(26)

I wish I was. Like I said, they’ve gone. All of them. No insects, nothing. Maybe we’re too late, even with the seeds, but it’s all we can do—all we have left to try. That’s the truth, Tatiana, and if I owe you part of it, I owe you all of it. So here it is, if you’re ready.

I am.

But I’d caught her hesitation.

In fifteen years, you’re gone. It’s not the Scouring, not the end of the world. Just an ordinary human life which doesn’t work out as well as it could. We know because we have the records you left behind, the traces you left on time. The Brothers collated them. Not many, it’s true—there’s a lot that never came through the bad years, when the famines and diebacks got severe, and World Health was the only authority left. But we have enough to piece together the arc of a life. Government employment records. Hospital records. Court appearances. How much of this do you want to know?

None of it. All of it.

The surgery isn’t the problem. They bring you back to the hospital a few times through the summer, but you recover well and there aren’t any complications. You go back to work. But it’s a troubled existence. Gradually your life comes off the rails. You get arrested for drunk driving, three times in ten years, and eventually you lose your job because of increasing absenteeism and illness. You’re married, but it doesn’t last long. You sink further into alcoholism and sickness. That’s when your medical records start building up again. But there isn’t all that much the hospital system can do for someone with such a self-destructive streak. You’re dead by 2043. I wish it were otherwise, Tatiana. The one good thing is that you miss the Scouring completely. There are millions who wish they’d had that good fortune.

The good fortune to die early?

It sounds harsh, I know. But I lived through those years. Some of my mother’s celebrity protected me—I wasn’t exposed to the worst of it, by any means. But you didn’t have to see things at close hand to know how bad they were. The terror, the hunger, the gradual realisation that we were not going to make our way through, none of us. There’s a final generation now, after World Health brought in the forced sterilisation programs. It was a kindness, not to bring more children into the world. I teach them, those last children. But they won’t have anything to grow into.

Unless you succeed.

Unless we succeed, yes. But as you might have noticed, things are already going a little off-target. This situation with Antti and Vikram being here earlier than me, the business with Miguel . . . whatever that’s about.

You’ve got yourselves into a big mess.

More than we were counting on. Although why we ever thought that altering the past, even in a small way, was going to be simple . . .

We walked on in silence for a few hundred metres.

My eye was drawn to the birds loitering in the high treetops, black as soot and restlessly aware of my solitary presence, their small bright minds alert and vigilant. Tatiana had gone quiet and I wondered if something had reverted in the control structure, the window that permitted us to talk finally closing again.

I was wrong.

I want to help.

You are helping. Just by existing, just by giving us a means to make the changes we need to . . . that’s enough.

No. More than that. You’ve told me my life’s a series of screwups. Part of me wants to disbelieve you, but there’s another part that says, yes, face it, she’s probably right. And I do believe the rest of it. I’d rather accept that there’s a time traveller in my head, if it’s a choice between that and believing that I’m going mad.

You’re not going mad. No more than the rest of us, anyway.

Then I’m helping. I’m going north with you, north with those seeds. Was there anything in my biography about that?

No . . . not that I recollected.

Then it’s something different, something that you can’t be sure won’t make a difference. To me, and to everything else. You’re going to tell Antti about us, as well. He needs to know.

I looked at the trees, at the black forms clotting their high levels.

I bet you know what those birds are.

Tatiana laughed in my head.

Crows. How could you not know that, unless you’re telling the truth?

*

“Are you feeling better?”

I sat down opposite Antti.

“Yes. I just needed that dose of fresh air.” I grinned, looking down at my too-young hands, laced together before me. “When I was out in the field I picked up a fly, held it close to my face like it was something sent in from another dimension. I couldn’t believe I was holding a fly, and that it was alive. So amazingly perfect and small and alive. You’ve been here eight months. How long did it take for you to get over that kind of thing?”

He smiled. “I didn’t. I haven’t. If there’s a moment when it stops feeling strange, I’ll put the Makarov against my head.”

“I don’t think that would be too fair on Tibor.”

“No,” he admitted. “Tibor wouldn’t thank me for that.”

“There’s something we need to talk about. Maybe you already know about it, but I can’t be sure.”

He looked into my eyes, frown lines pushing deep ruts into his brow. “Go on.”

“Since I’ve been coming back, Tatiana’s been in my head. More and more with each immersion. We can talk, and if she wants to she can override some of my motor impulses. It was . . . difficult, to begin with. But we’ve been communicating.”