Godlike Machines Read online

  “It’s you,” she says. “There’s no doubt.”

  I shake my head. “There’s been a mistake. Our files mixed up. I’m not Doctor Kizim. I remember being on that ship, everything that happened.”

  “Only because you spent so much time in his presence,” Grechko says, not without compassion. “After Dimitri fell into the intermittent vegetative state, we considered the risks of contamination to be significantly reduced. We relaxed the safeguards.”

  “I am not Doctor Kizim.”

  “You are. Just as Malyshev believed he was Yakov, you believe you’re Ivanov. But you’ll come out of it, Georgi—trust me. We got Malyshev back in the end. It was traumatic, but eventually his old personality resurfaced. Now he remembers being Yakov, but he’s in no doubt as to his core identity. We can do the same for you, I promise. Just come back with us, and all will be well.”

  “Look at the picture,” Nesha says, handing the pass back to me.

  I do. My eyes take a moment to focus—the snow and the cold are making them water—but when they do there’s no doubt. I’m looking at the same face that I’d seen in the mirror in Nesha’s apartment. Cleaned and tidied, but still me.

  “I’m scared.”

  “Of course you’re scared. Who wouldn’t be?” Grechko stubs out the cigarette and extends a gloved hand. “Will you come with us now, Georgi? So that we can start helping you?”

  “I have no choice, do I?”

  “It’s for the best.”

  Seeing that I’m going to come without a struggle, Grechko nods at the man with the syringe to put it back in his pocket. The other hatted man gives me an encouraging shove, urging me to start walking along the landing to the waiting elevator. I resist for a moment, looking back at Nesha. I crave some last moment of connection with the woman I’ve risked my life to visit.

  She nods once.

  I don’t think Grechko or the other men see her do it. Then she pulls her hand from her pocket and shows me the musical box, before closing her fist on it as if it’s the most secret and precious thing in the universe. As if recalling something from a dream, I remember another hand placing that musical box in mine. It’s the hand of a cosmonaut, urging me to do something before he slips into coma.

  I have no idea what’s going to happen to either of us now. Nesha’s old, but not so old that she might not have decades of life ahead of her. If she’s ever doubted that she was right, she now has concrete proof. A life redeemed, if it needed redeeming. They’ll still humiliate her at every turn, given the chance. But she’ll know with an iron certainty they’re wrong, and she’ll also know that everything they stand for will one day turn to dust.

  “Am I really Doctor Kizim?” I ask Grechko, as the elevator takes us down.

  “You know it in your heart.”

  I stroke my face, comparing what I touch with the memories I feel to be real. “I was so sure.”

  “That’s the way it happens. But it’s a good sign that you’re already questioning these fundamental certainties.”

  “The cosmonaut?” I ask, suddenly unable to mention him by name.

  “Yes?”

  “You mentioned him being in an intermittent vegetative state.”

  “He’s been like that for a while. I’m surprised you don’t remember. He just lies there and watches us. Watches us and hums, making the same tune over and over again. One of us recognized it eventually.” With only mild interest Grechko adds, “That piece by Prokofiev, the famous one?”

  “Troika,” I say, as the door opens. “Yes, I know it well.”

  They take me out into the snow, to the Zil that must have been waiting out of sight. The man with the syringe walks ahead and opens the rear passenger door, beckoning me into it as if I’m some high-ranking party official. I get in without causing a scene. The Zil’s warm and plush and silent.

  As we speed away from Star City, I press my face against the glass and watch the white world rush by as if in a sleigh-ride.

  Table of Contents

  Troika