Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

side
by side by the pathway, waving to her.
    ‘It’s all right,’ she told her swiftly tense
bodyguards. ‘I know these guys.’
    She shook hands, smiling, with the Korean and the Japanese;
introduced them to the Kazakhstanis. Discreet compliments on her
rejuvenated appearance were exchanged with her admiration for
their now healthier physiques. Even their relatively humane
imprisonment had marked them, weighing them down with something
which their new freedom – if freedom it was – had
enabled them to shrug off. They walked taller. They confronted
the Kazakhstani emigres unabashed.
    ‘So, you are Sheenisov,’ said Mustafa, in a
disgusted tone.
    ‘Lay off,’ said Myra. ‘They’re OK We
have to talk.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Nok-Yung. ‘We have to
talk.’
    It was a mild day, for the time of year. Not shirtsleeve
weather, but comfortable if you dressed warm, as they all had.
Myra indicated a semi-circle of benches in a concreted picnic
area along the bank a little. The two ex-prisoners shrugged, then
nodded.
    Nok-Yung and Se-Ha sat on either side of her, the two
bodyguards on separate benches a few metres away. Children,
snug-wrapped in quilted satin bomberjackets and padded trousers,
capered about and yelled, oblivious to the adults.
    ‘So how are you getting on, in this brave new
world?’ Myra asked.
    ‘We’re fine,’ said Nok-Yung, his comrade
nodding emphatically. ‘Our families are joining us soon,
and in die meantime we have much to do.’
    ‘You both got jobs?’ Myra smiled.
    ‘There are no jobs,’ Se-Ha said primly.
‘There is work. We have been… co-opted, and we have
been sent to talk to you.’
    ‘Well, I had guessed this was hardly a
coincidence,’ Myra said. ‘But I had not expected to
see you as Sheenisov cadre already.’
    ‘It’s an open system,’ Nok-Yung said.
‘Interesting contributions are quickly taken up; amplified;
discussed.’
    ‘The opposite of the nets, then,’ Myra said. They
laughed.
    ‘And the opposite of the Leninist system,’
Nok-Yung said earnestly. ‘Once you are in, you are in, there is no… apprenticeship? No candidacy,
noworking your way up. Past experience,’ he added rather
smugly, ‘counts.’
    Myra flashed her eyebrows. No doubt the militant and the
Marxist mathematician had found their niches quickly. Tm sure
that’s all fascinating,’ she said. ‘But
I’m here to put a diplomatic proposal to the Sino-Soviet
Union as a whole. Can I do that, just by talking to
you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Very well.’ She put it to them, straight: the
deal, the crossing corridors. Let the revolutionary horde flow
around Kazakhstan, like a flood around a rock, and they could
swamp the rest of the world, for all she cared. (Gould and would
run into the sand, she did not say, but that was what she
expected.)
    They listened politely, now and then asking for clarification,
making notes and doodling maps on hand-held slates that –
while obviously information-retrieval devices – looked as
though they were made of… slate. Se-Ha stood up.
    ‘I must consult,’ he said, nodded, and walked
briskly away. Nok-Yung accepted a cigarette, and leaned back
luxuriantly, sprawling out with his elbows on the back of the
bench. He regarded Myra through narrow eyes and curling
smoke.
    ‘Why do you resist the SSU, Myra?’ he asked
mildly. ‘It is only democracy. It is only socialism. A
means – and an end, compatible at last, after all the
disasters and crimes done in the name of both.’ He spread
his hands. ‘There are no secrets here, no deceptions. When
you were as young as you look -’ he smiled ‘ –
you would have thought this revolution, this liberation more
wonderful than your wildest dreams.’
    ‘Don’t let my mujahedin friends hear you
say that!’ she warned, half in jest. She glanced over at
NurupKerbayev. He smiled back, eyes and teeth flashing like
knives.
    ‘But you’re right,’ she went on.
‘Let’s just say… I may look young again, but
I’ve had a long, long life in the meantime. I’ve come
to believe in myself, and in… my country, Kazakhstan. And
I will not be assimilated, and nor will we.’ She waved a
hand around. ‘These people, they may seem… happy
enough to wait and see. But deep down, no -just below the surface
– they are seething with suspicion. They are not your
Mongolians or Siberians, who God knows had it bad enough under
Stalinism but who found