moon-faced man in spectacles. ‘Kantor’s Fighting Organisation is too vicious, too wild. Our reputation suffers by association.’
‘Ridiculous!’ said the man in the waistcoat. ‘This is war! We can’t afford to be fastidious. While we do nothing our people are dying. Pogroms are growing worse. Show trials. Executions. Whole streets are being cleansed while we sit here and talk and do nothing.’
They were voices, just voices, so many useless, chattering, indistinguishable, male, redundant, broken voices. The paluba hardly troubled to hear them. She already knew that she had failed here. She had known it when she saw the little glass of amber tea and smelled the fear in the room. Nonetheless, she must not give up. Everything must be attempted.
‘There is no time!’ said the paluba. ‘None at all. We can stop what is coming. But we must move now. Now! The alliance of Lezarye and the forest—’
‘And what are we to do, exactly?’ said Efim. ‘Send in the Fighting Organisation? Could they blow this angel up with their grenades?’
‘The answer lies in the Pollandore.’
Efim stood up. ‘I’ve had enough of these fairy tales. And of these disgusting… things. Call me when this rubbish is over.’
The paluba felt the finality of the room turning against her.
‘The Pollandore is stirring,’ she said. ‘It is beginning to have effects. It is beginning to spill, perhaps even to break apart. Even in the forest we have felt it.’
‘The Pollandore is nothing. More stories. More nonsense.’
‘The time has come.’ The paluba was whisper-roaring at them. ‘Open the Pollandore. This is the message from the forest. The time is now. You have to open it.’
‘What you ask is impossible. Even if we knew how to open it – whatever it is.’
‘Even if it existed, even if this wasn’t all absolute rubbish…’
‘I bring you the key,’ said the paluba. ‘I offer it to you now. This is my message to you, the gift I bring you from the one who sleeps.’
‘The Pollandore is in the keeping of the Vlast,’ said Peder. ‘Unless they have already destroyed it. I’m sorry, madam. We cannot help you in this. Not at all.’
She had failed. She had known it as soon as she came in, and it had proved to be so. But there was another way. The Shaumian women. She had hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. It was not… reliable. That had been shown already, many times. But she would have to try. If there was time.
29
When Lom got back to the apartment, Vishnik was out. Lom turned on the lamp, poured a glass of aquavit and opened the dossier on Kantor. The early stuff was standard: student records, informants’ reports of domestic life, associates and contacts. There was an extracted account of the Birzel Rebellion court proceedings and the Executive Order of Internal Exile. Notes on the subject’s conduct in the camps. Something about a wife. She had followed him to the camp, but once there she had become pregnant by another man, abandoned Kantor and come back to the city.
Lom read the whole file through from cover to cover, but the papers only filled out what Krogh had told him without adding much, until he got to the end. In a separate pouch at the back, attached with a string tag, were some loose pages with manuscript notes on them in a tight, spidery hand. Some of the notes were initialled. LYC.
Lavrentina Chazia.
Lom sat up and began to read more carefully. This was something else. There was an account of Kantor’s repeated escape attempts. Violent attacks on other inmates. He had crushed an informant’s hand in a vice. ‘A resourceful man,’ Chazia had scribbled across it. ‘He dominates the camp. The guards fear him. Commandant reluctant to discuss the case.’
On another page, in a different ink, were the words ‘Spoke to Kantor today. He has agreed.’ Attached to the same report with a paper clip was a single sheet of lined paper torn from a bound notebook. It was covered in Chazia’s scrawl, apparently written in haste, in pencil, and in parts illegible. It took him a long time to puzzle out the words, and some whole passages defeated him. ‘It spoke to me at Vig! It is an angel, a living angel! There can be no doubt of it. We are acknowledged, we are acceptable. The power of it! The power is…’ The next few lines were not readable. ‘… hands trembling. I can’t hold it all…’ Illegible. ‘… write before it fades. Not words – ideas,