Anatole Benedictov had fallen in love with Rita several years earlier,
when he was teaching at the University and she was a gay, vivacious biology
student there. Shortly before that he had presented a brilliant thesis for
an advanced degree dealing with electric currents in living organisms, and
had published a study of electric fish which had aroused much discussion
among biologists. During one of his lectures he had noticed several girls
giggling and whispering as they passed a sheet of paper through the
auditorium. He strode rapidly over to them and snatched up the paper. He
looked down at it and frowned. What he saw was a sketch of himself,
shaggy-haired, thickset, with a fish's tail, conducting with a trident as
fish danced round him. Beneath the sketch were the words, written in a fine
handwriting:
Neither fish nor fowl, neither physicist nor biologist, He's an
intermediate class electro-ichthyologist.
"Whose work is this?" he asked, letting his angry eyes roam over the
auditorium.
A slender blonde girl rose. "It's mine," she said politely, her brown
eyes gazing boldly into Benedictov's.
It was an announcement rather than a statement.
"Thank you," Benedictov said slowly, in a slightly nasal voice,
thrusting the drawing into his pocket and continuing his lecture.
After they were married, Benedictov admitted to Rita that when she said
"It's mine" he had suddenly felt a wave of heat engulf him.
As for Rita Matveyev, she had long been in love with the brilliant
lecturer.
Rita graduated from the University the year they were married and
started teaching biology in a secondary school. That same year Benedictov
was given a laboratory at a research institute. Here he enthusiastically
continued his investigations in the sphere of action potentials. The young
couple led a fast-paced life, keeping open house for their many friends.
Half a year before their cruise on the Uzbekistan the Benedictovs had
moved into a new flat. On moving day there occurred a strange event which
triggered a series of disasters.
Rita and her husband had decided to leave a lot of their old things
behind when they moved. Anatole naturally protested when he found her
putting an old flower vase and a rusty bar of iron into a packing crate.
"We agreed not to take such things, Rita," he said. "You ought to throw
that trash away."
Rita discarded the vase but insisted that she could not part with the
bar of iron, which had been in the possession of her family for years and
years.
"A Matveyev relic?" Benedictov asked with a laugh, picking up the bar.
He turned it over in his hands and shook it.
The blade of a knife slid out of the side of the bar.
Benedictov stared dumbfounded at the narrow blade. It was covered with
a thin, transparent layer of grease through which a wavy pattern showed. He
cautiously touched the blade. His fingers went through it-just as they would
have passed through empty space.
He pressed his hand to his eyes.
"What's the matter?" Rita asked in alarm. She came up to him and
glanced at the bar. Her eyes widened.
No, she didn't know anything about the bar except, that according to an
old family legend a distant ancestor had brought it back from India. Her
father had treasured the bar all his life, and now she was doing the same.
No one had ever imagined there might be something inside it.
Benedictov held the bar as if it were a rattlesnake. He slowly closed
his fist over the blade. His fingers came together over emptiness.
Rita gave a start. "Wait a minute," she said. "There was another bar
just like this one, all covered with rust. We used it to prop up the old
wardrobe that had a broken leg." She ran into the next room, returning a
moment later to say, "It's gone. We must have thrown it out yesterday when
we carted all that old rubbish away."
The first few moments of astonishment gave way to curiosity. Benedictov
carefully examined the bar. Two lines of letters were engraved on one side.
Between the two lines there was something that looked like a crown. Or it
might have simply been a spot of rust. Benedictov noticed a fine line
running round the outside of the bar. The whole thing was obviously not a
solid bar of iron but a box with a cover.
After a long struggle Benedictov finally pried off the top. Inside the
box lay a knife handle, with a piece of cloth wound round it. The cloth must
have become loosened with time and when the box was shaken the blade dropped
out.
There was nothing extraordinary about the beautiful handle of yellowed
ivory. It could be grasped. He concluded that the section of the blade that
went into the handle must be made of ordinary metal too, otherwise it would
not remain attached to the handle.
But the blade itself! It passed freely through everything without
leaving the slightest trace, as though it were made of thin air.
The first glimpse of the mysterious knife marked a turning point in the
life of the Benedictovs. Anatole determined to get to the root of the
mystery.
"Penetrability. The ability to pass through matter. That's the goal,
Rita. You say this knife has been in your family at least two hundred years?
Well, if they could make a knife that passes through matter you and I can
certainly do the same."
Anatole painted glowing pictures of Altered Matter which man could
easily control. Rita became enthusiastic too. She helped Anatole to set up
experiments and kept a record of their results.
Weeks and then months passed. Benedictov turned his study into a small
laboratory where, more and more frequently, he worked through the night. He
grew impatient and irritable. Rita noticed that his behaviour had become
strange. At times he would be depressed and sullen, and then he would
suddenly become his cheerful, energetic self again, capable of working for
days on end without resting. He fell into apathy just as suddenly.
Rita grew worried. She now realized that Anatole had taken on a job
that was too much for one man. But when she tentatively suggested that he
ought to let the Academy of Sciences know about his discovery he declared
that he could not do this until he himself got to the bottom of it. With
great difficulty she persuaded him to take her on a holiday cruise on the
Volga.
We already know how disastrously their holiday ended.
When the doorbell rang, Anatole jumped up but Rita got to the door
first. She opened it to Nikolai Opratin, who looked his usual dapper self in
an elegant grey suit. Bending his neatly combed head, he touched his cold
lips to Rita's hand and inquired after her health.
"I am in perfect health," Rita said, enunciating the words distinctly.
"Goodbye."
"Hold on, there. Where are you going?" Anatole asked.
"To the pictures." The door slammed shut and the two men were left
alone in the flat.
"All the better without her." Anatole growled, leading the way into his
study.
Nikolai Opratin cast a critical glance over the equipment. Then he
removed his jacket, carefully pulled up his trousers at the knees, and sank
into an armchair. Benedictov sat down opposite him.
"First, Anatole, I want you to tell me in detail about the knife,"
Opratin began.
He listened closely to Benedictov's account.
"Indian magic. If I hadn't seen it myself I wouldn't believe it.
Penetrability ends near the handle, you say?"
"Yes, there's a sort of intermediate zone of about six millimetres. The
part that goes into the handle is ordinary steel."
"Did you weigh the blade?"
"Yes. The weight corresponds to the size."
"That's extremely interesting. It means the knife behaves like ordinary
matter in the gravitational field."
"It seems to me," said Benedictov, "that the bonds between atoms, or
perhaps within atoms, have been changed in some way in this knife.
I am convinced that the properties of living organisms, whose vital
functions are connected with the discharge of energy in the form of action
potentials, will provide the key to the riddle."
He went over to the round aquarium encircled by wire and launched into
a discourse, but Opratin soon interrupted him.
"I get the picture, Anatole," he said courteously but firmly. "You put
the fish between the plates of a capacitor in an oscillatory circuit and
look for a resonance in the bioelectrical frequency of the fish. I don't
think this avenue will lead you anywhere. You're right, though, about one
thing -that the inter-atomic bonds in the knife were altered. But how was
the energy of the intrinsic bonds of this substance overcome? If we only had
the knife now! By the way, you said it lay inside an iron box. You haven't
lost the box too, have you?"
Benedictov took a small iron bar from a drawer and held it out to
Opratin. It looked something like a pencil case.
Opratin sprang to his feet. "What the devil!" he exclaimed. "The same
letters!"
Engraved on the cover were the letters "A M D G". Below the letters a
crown had been engraved, and below that were "J d M" in smaller letters.
Opratin walked the length of the study and back again, his steps
ringing like the pounding of a hammer.
"What's the matter?" Benedictov asked, turning his head to follow
Opratin. "What's upset you?"
"Oh, nothing much. What do those letters stand for?"
"The upper four are the initial letters of a Jesuit motto but I don't
remember it. I don't know what the bottom ones stand for. It's unlikely they
have anything to do with our problem."
"Well, let's not lose time setting up our first experiment. When you
described your generator I got an idea. Was a crate of instruments delivered
to you today?"
"Yes. By the way, were you the one who sent that ape to this place
disguised as an electrician?"
"How could you ever think that? He's my laboratory technician.
Extremely useful, and not a bad fellow at all. But to get back to business.
I think we should begin with a minimum surface, with the point of a needle."
Opratin opened a case and took out a metal holder to which a long,
highly polished needle was attached. Then he briefly set forth the method of
the experiment.
The equipment lay on a small table, under a binocular magnifying glass.
The needle and the holder were placed in a screw-clamp with a micrometer
screw in such a way that the needle point was close to a steel cube. All
this was inserted in a coil between parallel plates and enclosed in a
thick-walled vessel. Wires connecting the apparatus with the electrostatic
machine and the oscillator ran through holes drilled in the glass.
"Now we'll see what your oscillator is capable of," Opratin remarked.
"Well, here we go. We'll try to make the electric field act on the intrinsic
bonds of the substance of this cube."
The disc of the electrostatic machine began to whirl, humming softly.
"Switch on the oscillator," Opratin commanded.
A tumbler clicked. Inside the glass vessel the little motor slowly
turned the micrometer screw, bringing the point of the needle closer and
closer to the cube.
Opratin and Benedictov kept their eyes glued to the magnifying glass.
A bell tinkled as the tip of the needle came into contact with the
cube. The automatic recorders were switched on. The point continued to move,
penetrating into the steel. But the sensitive instruments did not record any
force. The needle was entering the steel cube without meeting resistance!
That lasted only a moment.
The next instant Opratin and Benedictov were flung against the wall.
The glass chamber was shattered to smithereens.
Benedictov looked round. He was overwhelmed. Had it all been a dream?
Opratin rose to his feet. His face was pale. Blood trickled down his
forehead.
"The cube!" he cried. "Where is it?"
They found the cube in a corner beside fragments of the screw-clamp.
When they examined it under a microscope they could not find the slightest
trace of a hole made by the needle. But the automatic recorder, an impartial
witness, told them that the needle had penetrated into the steel to a
distance of three microns.
The two scientists sank into armchairs facing each other. For a time
they were silent.
"What," Benedictov finally said, "do you think of the whole thing?"
"I think it was a great moment." Opratin spoke in a calm voice and his
face now wore a somewhat detached expression. "We achieved penetrability for
an instant by weakening the bonds of the substance of the cube. But the
energy that created those bonds was released-and that was what hit us."
After a long pause he continued, his voice calmer than ever: "We've
made a start, Anatole. But we won't get anywhere working at home. Once we're
invading the structure of matter there's no telling what kind of blasts may
be produced. We must build a big installation. We'll need a Van de Graaff
generator without fail. We're going to conduct a great many experiments."
"What do you propose?"
"I can arrange matters so that I work by myself, without any outsiders
poking their noses in. But what about you? You aren't a member of our staff,
unfortunately." Opratin fell silent. Then he said bluntly: "You'll have to
join the staff of the Research Institute of Marine Physics."
Nikolai and Yura had been experimenting with mercury in the small
glassed-in gallery in Cooper Lane for several days. They had put together a
"mercury heart", an old-fashioned apparatus used to demonstrate how electric
current builds up surface tension.
The device was assembled on one pan of a laboratory scales. A large
drop of mercury was covered with a solution that would conduct electricity.
A screw with a needle lay so that the point of the needle touched the
mercury. The drop of mercury was connected by the conducting solution to the
anode of a storage battery and the needle was wired to the cathode.
A weight on the other pan kept the scales balanced.
The electric current increased the surface tension, making the drop of
mercury shrink and move away from the needle. But when the circuit was thus
broken, the drop of mercury spread out until it again touched the needle.
This "mercury heart" pulsated continuously.
The young engineers tried to act on the "heart" with high frequency
current by winding a spiral round the apparatus and linking it up with a
valve oscillator. They hoped a certain definite frequency of oscillations
would greatly increase the surface tension of the mercury and squeeze it to
such an extent that it would no longer touch the needle. Then, by adding
mercury and registering the increase in the weight of the drop, they could
measure the degree to which the surface tension had increased.
They tried different shapes of spiral and different frequencies but
nothing came of it. The "mercury heart" continued to pulsate with the same
calm, steady rhythm.
"We're not getting anywhere," said Yura, turning off the current.
"We're just wasting our time."
But Nikolai patiently continued to vary the experiment.
TO THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The rusty iron bar that Privalov brought home from the bazaar lay at
the bottom of the pantry for more than a fortnight. Privalov had not
forgotten about the bar but simply had no time to examine it.
Finally, one afternoon, he attached a vise to the kitchen table.
Humming a popular tune, he laid out his tools. His wife Olga, who was doing
up the dishes, frowned.
"I wish you wouldn't bring home so much junk," she grumbled. "What do
you want that dirty piece of iron for?"
Meanwhile, Privalov had put the bar into the vise and was removing a
thick layer of kerosene-softened rust with a sharp scraper.
"It's not iron," he said. "Don't you remember? I once told you that
iron is rarely met in its pure state. It is usually alloyed with carbon to
make steel. The element iron, or ferrum, is found in a pure state only in
laboratories. Incidentally, it hardly ever rusts. All the rust on this bar
means that it is steel."
"What about stainless steel?"
"Stainless steel is just a name. There is sometimes more chromium and
nickel in it than iron.
"I seem to be learning lots of new things in my old age," Olga said,
wiping a plate. Her eyes were amused. After a time she said, "Let's go to
the cinema, Boris. I know where 'The Sorceress' is on. It's an old picture,
but we haven't seen it."
"I have nothing against 'The Sorceress'," said Privalov as he scraped
away. "You know I've always stood up for witches, magicians and goblins. But
before we deal with the occult sciences I'd like to see what's inside this
little box."
"Box? Do you mean to say this little bar is hollow?"
"Exactly. The moment I picked it up at the bazaar I noticed that it's
too light for its size. But I didn't see any joints, and I wanted to learn
how it's put together."
"Be careful, Boris. It could be a booby trap."
"That's not likely. I don't see a single opening for a fuse or a safety
lock."
"But what if it really is one?"
Privalov grinned. "You remind me of the grandmother in Tolstoy's
Childhood. Remember? She refused to listen to an explanation of why small
shot isn't the same as gunpowder."
"A very flattering comparison."
"Don't fly into a huff. You see, the box was made very long ago, before
delayed-action mechanisms were invented." He set a frying pan on the gas
range and put the box in the pan.
"Are you going to fry it?"
"I'm applying the cleansing action of fire." Privalov turned the box
over. "We'll just warm up all these rheumatic old joints." Humming all the
time, he shook some tooth-powder into a saucer, poured water into it and
stirred the mixture, then dipped a cloth in it and smeared the sides of the
box. The chalk hissed as it quickly dried on the hot metal.
Next Privalov dipped a dry rag in kerosene and squeezed out the rag
above the box. The yellow drops were instantly soaked up by the chalk. Thin,
clear-cut lines forming a severe geometrical pattern showed up, as though
scratched on the box by a needle.
"It's put together with dowels, like a wooden box. The edges must have
been caulked, and then the whole thing was polished. Kerosene on chalk will
always show up a crack, no matter how tiny."
"You're not going to open it now, are you?"
"Oh, yes, I forgot. 'The Sorceress'." Privalov quickly tidied up the
table and went off to wash his hands.
Boris Privalov entered the laboratory towards the end of the day.
"Do you remember the rusty iron bar I picked up at the bazaar that
day?" he asked Nikolai and Yura. "Here it is, all cleaned up."
"Why, it's dowelled," said Nikolai, turning it over in his hands. "Must
have been made ages ago."
"Let's open it," Privalov suggested. He went over to the bench and put
the box into the jaws of a vise. With each tap of a hammer the dowels
loosened, one side of the box rising at an angle. Another blow of the
hammer, then still another, and one side of the box clattered to the floor.
Three heads bent over the open box. Inside lay a white roll of cloth. Yura
reached out to touch it but Privalov caught his arm. He cautiously unwrapped
the roll. Inside it were sheets of thin but strong paper.
The pages were covered with fine handwriting in letters that were
hardly connected with one another.
"It's in a foreign language!" Yura exclaimed. Privalov pushed his
glasses up onto his forehead and looked down at the manuscript.
"Black ink", he said. "It wasn't written in this century. Ink isn't
made out of nut-gall nowadays. From the way the letters are shaped they must
have been written with a goose quill. And it's in Russian, although in the
old-time spelling." "An old manuscript!" Yura exclaimed delightedly. "Boris,
we must get Val to read it for us. She's a philologist and her field is Old
Russian."
"Could it be a last will and testament, I wonder?" Privalov said
thoughtfully. He began to read, but it was slow work because of the
unfamiliar spelling. The manuscript began as follows:
"I commence this epistle on the second day of January in the year of
Our Lord 1762, desirous of passing on my thoughts and ideas to my beloved
eldest son, Alexander.
"My youth was spent in trials and tribulations and wanderings, similar
unto those of Homer's Ulysses. Upon attaining manhood I was often called
away from home by duty, so that I seldom saw you, Alexander. After you
entered the service I retired. Now I spend my days at home, and I see less
of you than ever.
"As I await my last hour I have chosen this time to set down an account
of matters to which I have given much thought, and I place my hopes in you,
for you are strong in the sciences.
"I shall put down my story point by point, from the beginning, lest I
should omit something. First, during the reign of our great ruler, Peter the
Great, son of Alexis, eternally blessed be his memory, I was despatched on a
long journey...."
Many the men whose towns he saw
whose ways he proved',
And many a pang he bore in his own
breast at sea,
While struggling for his life and
his men's safe return.
Homer -THE ODYSSEY
Lieutenant Fedor Matveyev of the Russian Navy had gone through the same
school as many another young nobleman who, by the will of Peter the Great,
was torn away from his placid rural life and cast into the maelstrom of
those turbulent times.
The School of Navigation in Moscow, instruction in carpentry, the wheel
wright's craft and shipbuilding in Holland, the Louis Quatorze Nautical
School in Marseilles, artillery training in Paris, and round-the-clock work
in the shipyards of the new, cold city of St. Petersburg had turned the
illiterate village bumpkin, pigeon fancier and church singer into a smart
naval officer fluent in foreign languages and inured to the deprivations of
a wanderer's life.
The indomitable will of Russia's extraordinary tsar had scattered these
young men of a new mould far and wide.
Fedor Matveyev was not the least surprised when he received orders to
join a hydrographic expedition on the Caspian Sea. He and young men like him
had no time to be surprised-they were too busy surprising others.
When Fedor reached the Caspian town of Astrakhan his ears were still
ringing with the roar of the battles on the Baltic Sea, and his right
shoulder ached from a wound made by a Swedish falcon bullet.
He was struck by the quietness here. In contrast to the steel-grey
waters and overcast skies of the Baltic, the Caspian Sea was green; it had
yellow sandy beaches, a dazzling blue sky and a merciless southern sun.
The tsar's instructions ordered the expedition, which was under the
command of Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky, "to search assiduously for harbours
and rivers where ships might be put in and scout-boats find a haven during
storms; to establish the location of sandbars and underwater reefs, and
enter all these and other things on maps; to cross the sea and note the
location of islands and shoals; to put the width of the sea on the map".
Fedor Matveyev enthusiastically set about mapping the unfamiliar sea.
There was an ancient mystery about those uninhabited, windswept shores.
Fedor knew that beyond the sun-baked yellow sands lay fabulous India.
He was unaware, as yet, that Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky's expedition
had another mission, a secret one.
Finding the shortest trade route to India had long been one of Peter
the Great's ambitions. He had heard much about that country's wonders and
unbelievable wealth.
Indian goods reached Europe through Persian and Arab merchants.
European goods flowed to India through the same hands. Yet, reflected Peter,
Nature herself had decreed that Russia should be a middleman in the commerce
between Europe and Asia.
On the route to India lay Khiva and Bukhara, troubled lands whose
rulers were constantly engaged in strife. In the year 1700 Shah Niaz, Khan
of Khiva, had expressed a desire to become a subject of the Russian tsar,
hoping with Peter's help to bolster up his shaky throne. But then new rulers
succeeded one another so rapidly in Khiva that it was impossible to keep
track of them.
Everything was a mystery in that sun-scorched land.
For instance, old maps showed the Amu Darya flowing into the Caspian
Sea. Herodotus, the Greek historian, and Arab historians also, said the Amu
Darya flowed into the Caspian. Yet it was rumoured that the fickle river had
shifted its channel. The rulers of Khiva, it was said, had built an earthen
dam which caused the river to flow into the Sea of Aral.
What sort of river was this Amu, river of the Bull, known to the
ancient Romans as the Oxus and to the Arabs as the Jihun? Peter the Great
was aware that it rose somewhere in India. If it could be turned back into
the Caspian, and if he, Peter, could be master of its banks, or at least
live in peace and friendship with those who held them, India's rich
commodities could be delivered down that river to the Caspian Sea, across
the Caspian to the city of Astrakhan, and from there up the Volga into
Russia-by-passing the Persian merchants. These Indian commodities would be
cheaper, and, besides, Russia's treasury would profit. Furthermore, Peter
had heard there was gold in that area, near the town of Irket.
All these rumours must be verified. The area must be explored by trusty
men.
Peter could not tolerate delay. Early in May 1714 he ordered Prince
Bekovich-Cherkassky, a lieutenant in the Preobrazhonsky Guards Regiment, to
set out for the Caspian Sea with the men he needed, "to search for the mouth
of the river Amu Darya". On May 19 he ordered the Prince, in addition, "to
proceed to Khiva and from there to Bukhara, to ascertain the possibilities
of trade, and under cover of that, to find out everything he could about the
town of Irket."
Before his conversion to Christianity Prince Alexander
Bekovich-Cherkassky's name had been Devlet Kizden Mirza. He came from a line
of Kabardian rulers. As a boy he had been stolen by Nogai tribesmen. He fell
into the hands of the Russians when Russian troops under Vassily Golitsin
besieged the town of Azov, and was taken into the home of Vassily's brother
Boris, one of Peter's tutors. In 1707 he was sent abroad to study. Soon
after, he married into the Golitsin family, taking Boris Golitsin's
daughter, the Princess Martha, for his wife. When Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky
joined the Preobrazhensky Regiment he attracted the tsar's attention. It was
to this strong, courageous, well-educated young man with a knowledge of the
East that Peter the Great assigned the difficult mission of finding a route
to India.
On his way to Astrakhan, which he reached in August 1714, Prince
Bekovich-Cherkassky stopped at Kazan, on the Volga. Here he took more than
1,500 soldiers and 19 cannon under his command.
The expedition set sail from Astrakhan for Guryev, a town on the
Caspian, at the mouth of the Ural River, on November 7 and nearly perished
at the very beginning of the voyage. A vicious autumn storm scattered the
twenty-seven light Volga boats and two schooners. The battered flotilla
limped back to Astrakhan one month later, at the beginning of December,
without ever having reached Guryev.
After wintering at Astrakhan and obtaining about two dozen new boats,
the expedition set sail again on April 25, 1715.
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky stood on the weather side of the
quarter-deck as his flagship emerged from the Volga delta into the expanses
of the sea. The green waters of the Caspian now gurgled beneath the
schooner's keel. The Prince stood there, lost in thought. He was only a
little Over thirty at the time, and the realization that he was responsible
for so many men and so many ships weighed heavily on him.
He gazed in silence across the green vastness, wondering what awaited
him beyond those deserted shores and the burning, shifting sands.
The flotilla cruised along the eastern coast of the Caspian until late
autumn. It stopped at Guryev, rounded the Mangyshlak Peninsula and sailed
southwards for a long time, mapping and describing in detail the strange,
deserted coastline. The sun blazed down on them. The barrels of water taken
on at Guryev became putrid; the men were tormented by thirst. But even
stronger than thirst was the yearning for distant Russia, for shady forests
and smoke rising from the chimney of one's own log cabin.
The flotilla sailed past a gap in the coastline through which the sea
rushed noisily. This was the mysterious Gulf of Karabugaz, eternally covered
with a dark haze of evaporation.
Then it sailed over a long, dangerous underwater spit that is now
called Bekovich Bank. After rounding the bank it entered Krasnovodsk Bay, a
place that slept the sleep of the dead amidst burning sands and hillocks.
In the autumn of 1715, one year after it had first sailed out into the
Caspian Sea, the flotilla returned to Astrakhan. The expedition had failed
to reach either Khiva or Bukhara, and it had not learned anything about gold
in that area. But it had confirmed the fact that the Amu Darya did not flow
into the Caspian and that its old channel had dried up. Also, it had mapped
the coast of the Caspian.
The expedition proved to be too small and unsatisfactorily equipped for
a long, dangerous overland journey.
On February 14, 1716, Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky was given a new
assignment. He was appointed Ambassador to the court of the Khan of Khiva
with instructions to proceed to Khiva along the Amu Darya, carefully
studying the river and examining the dam to see whether the river could be
turned back into its old channel instead of flowing into the Sea of Aral. He
was also to determine how many men would be needed to do that.
Rumour had it that Khan Shirgazy, who now ruled Khiva, was extremely
hostile to the local princes and was eager to consolidate his power. Prince
Bekovich-Cherkassky was instructed to persuade him to become a Russian
subject loyal to the tsar by promising to help him to unite his domain. In
return for putting a Russian regiment at his service the Khan would
presumably act in the interests of Russia.
The Prince was also instructed by Peter to send an intelligence agent
to Khiva disguised as a merchant to search for a water route to India.
By decree of the Senate the strength of the expedition was enlarged to
6100 men in three infantry regiments, two dragoon units, two Cossack
regiments, a marine detachment and a building crew. The building crew
included men experienced in the construction of fortifications. The
expedition also had scribes, interpreters, doctors and pharmacists.
The regiments and baggage-trains gathered at Guryev. Prince
Bekovich-Cherkassky set out for Guryev from Astrakhan, accompanied for a
short distance, as far as the Caspian, by his wife Martha and their
children. A fishing vessel followed the flotilla to take her and the
children back to Astrakhan.
Soon after they set sail the weather changed. A furious wind drove
heavy waves against the current. The Prince bade his wife and children
farewell, then stood for a long time watching the triangular white sail of
their boat grow smaller in the distance. As he observed the clouds gathering
above the Volga and listened to the wind howling in the rigging, he was
filled with foreboding.
Before long the news reached Guryev that his wife and daughters had
been drowned in the storm. Only his little son had been rescued.
When in the company of others the Prince tried to hide his sorrow. But
the sight of him sitting alone in his tent, gazing fixedly into space, his
face a picture of despair, was enough to wring the hardest heart.
At the end of May 1717 the expedition set out from Guryev for Khiva.
There was a good road, and they had an abundance of water as well as plenty
of forage for the horses. The expedition was able to make up to fifteen
kilometres a day across the salt marshes, and reached the Emba River in a
week's time. There the men and the horses rested for two days, then built
rafts and crossed the river.
Here the sands began. Following a caravan route, the expedition finally
reached the blue Sea of Aral.
The men were tormented by the heat and by thirst. All around them
stretched scorching sands. Time and again the expedition failed to reach the
next well by nightfall. Slowly but surely it was moving towards its doom.
Fedor Matveyev found the march difficult. Although he had a good
physique and endured the heat better than many of the others, a presentiment
of disaster kept nagging at him. Outwardly, however, he was composed. He
encouraged the weary and seemed to know just where to dig shallow wells
during bivouacs. The water brought up was brackish but potable.
Finally the expedition reached Lake Aibugir. Now Khiva was only a few
days' march away.
It had been assumed, when plans for the expedition were first laid,
that Khan Shirgazy was a weak ruler, fearful of his subjects, and would
eagerly accept an offer of Russian military aid. That was no longer the case
in 1717. Khan Shirgazy had brutally suppressed an uprising and was now
stronger than ever before. As the Russians approached Khiva he resolved to
show his enemies just how strong he really was.
One morning a band of Khiva horsemen galloped into view from behind the
hillocks along the lake shore. Brandishing curved sabres and filling the
desert with war cries, they charged the Russian camp.
The attack failed because the sentries were vigilant and the camp was
surrounded by a wall of carts from the baggage-trains. The attacking force
had to dismount and lie prone. The exchange of fare lasted until evening.
During the night the Russians fortified their positions. They dug
ditches on three sides of the camp and built an earthen rampart. The fourth
side was the lake, which was thickly overgrown with reeds. They tied reeds
into bundles and piled them together to conceal the batteries.
The next morning an army of 20 000 men-ten times more than the
expedition had-led by Khan Shirgazy himself, surrounded the camp.
The siege lasted two days. The Russian cannon pounded away steadily;
the men did not run out of either cannon-balls or vodka, and water for
cooling the gun barrels was at hand. Heavy losses were inflicted on the
attacking Khivans. Although the Prince's men were exhausted from their
gruelling march they fought gallantly.
When Khan Shirgazy saw that he could not take the camp by storm he
decided to resort to guile. To the astonishment of the Russians the
besieging troops vanished during the night. Silence reigned over the desert.
The next day passed in tense expectation. Towards evening a lone
horseman came galloping across the desert towards the camp. Wearing a
richly-embroidered robe and turban, and with his hennaed beard, he was a
colourful sight. When he reached the camp he introduced himself as Ishim
Hodja, envoy of the Khan, and explained courteously that the attack had been
made without the Khan's knowledge. The Khan, he said, had ordered the heads
of the guilty to roll, and now invited the Prince to a council of peace and
friendship.
The latter sent a Tatar named Useinov to tell the Khan that he, Prince
Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky, was an envoy of the white tsar, bearing
credentials and many gifts, and that it would be to the Khan's great
advantage to receive the Russian mission.
Khan Shirgazy received Useinov and asked him to tell the Prince that he
would reply after he had consulted with his advisers.
He did consult with his advisers. They said it had been a mistake to
withdraw from Lake Aibugir, for the Prince did not have many men and it was
too early to resort to guile.
Soon the curved blades of the Khiva horsemen again glinted in the sun
in front of the Russian fortifications beside the lake. Slender arrows and
clay bullets glazed with lead again flew towards the camp. Again clouds of
black smoke drifted across the desert as the Russian gunners, veterans of
the war against Sweden, took aim and fired. After beating off the attack
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky again sent his parliamentarian to the Khan to
demand an explanation of this perfidious conduct.
Khan Shirgazy insisted once again the attack had been made without his
knowledge. Again he declared that those to blame for the attack had already
been caught and punished, some by death and others by a fate worse than
death. The next day Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky himself rode over to the
headquarters of the Khan for a talk.
The Khan received him graciously. He promised to order his men to tear
down the dam on the Amu Darya. He promised to be a younger brother to Peter
the Great. He pledged peace and love and he kissed the tsar's scroll.
The day was clear, with a fierce sun beating down mercilessly. All of a
sudden the motionless air stirred, and a light breeze arose.
Dogs howled and horses neighed. The sheep which the Khan's men had
brought along for a feast huddled together, bleating piteously.
A black smudge appeared on the disc of the sun. It grew rapidly,
spreading across the sun. Darkness fell. Stars came out.
The Khiva men beat on tambourines and drums to drive away the demons
that were trying to swallow the sun.
Khan Shirgazy was alarmed. Could this be a bad omen, just when he was
about to sign a treaty with the white tsar?
An elderly mullah in a green turban stood on tiptoe, his goatee
tickling the hairy ear of tall Khan Shirgazy. He whispered, a crooked finger
pointing to the darkened sun, "Do you see the omen, oh mighty ruler?"
"I do," the Khan growled.
"The omen is shaped like a crescent. It signifies that the glory of
Islam will eclipse the glory of the infidels."
This reassured the Khan. When the eclipse ended he accepted the gifts
of the white tsar with a light heart. Examination of the gifts lasted until
evening.
Then the Khan and the Prince mounted their steeds and set out for
Khiva, riding side by side. They were followed by the Khan's suite and the
Russian expedition. The Russians, now in good spirits, sang as they marched
along.
A short distance from Khiva the Khan and his men set up camp on the
bank of a stream. The Russians pitched their tents nearby. Prince
Bekovich-Cherkassky and his companion, Prince Samonov, were the guests of
honour in the Khan's tent.
During supper the Khan explained to the Prince that it would be
impossible to quarter the entire Russian mission in Khiva because there
would not be enough food for them and it would take some time to bring in
more supplies. Unless the Prince had plenty of his own provisions, in which
case, of course-
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky had to confess that he was running short of
provisions. The Khan then suggested that he divide the Russian force into
five units, each to be quartered in a different town where, he promised, the
food and lodging would be of the best. Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky and his
companions would, of course, be offered hospitality in Khiva itself.
It is hard to understand why Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky ever agreed to
such a dubious arrangement. Perhaps he believed that Khan Shirgazy really
had been frightened by the Russian artillery during the skirmishes at Lake
Aibugir. Or he was so overwhelmed by his personal grief that he was unable
to think clearly.
The Russian foot soldiers, dragoons and gunners marched off from the
stream in five different directions, each group accompanied by Khiva guides.
The thick dust raised by the departing units hung for a long time in the
hot, still air. Slowly the strains of their marching songs died away in the
distance.
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky stood in front of the Khan's tent, gazing
after his men, oblivious of the Khivans who had crowded round him.
The units vanished from sight. The dust began to settle.
"You dog! Betrayer of Islam! You have sold your soul to the infidels!"
said Khan Shirgazy softly, laying a hand on the Prince's shoulder. "You dog!
You tried to deceive me with your miserable gifts!"
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky spun round. Although he had difficulty
understanding the Uzbek language he immediately grasped the meaning of the
Khan's words. All he had to do was read the Khan's face.
Khan Shirgazy drew out the royal credentials from the sleeve of his
robe. Slowly and solemnly he tore the paper in half, threw the pieces on the
ground, spat on them, and rubbed them into the sand with the pointed,
turned-up toe of his yellow boot.
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky took a step backwards. He reached for his
sword, then dropped his hand.
Smiling and chattering, the Khan's bodyguards drew closer, their swords
bared.
Khan Shirgazy turned away. "Don't spoil the face," he murmured as he
passed the bodyguards.
The heads of the senior Russian officers were brought to Khiva and
displayed to the public.
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky's head was not among them. Rumour had it
that Khan Shirgazy had sent the head as a gift to the Khan of Bukhara, but
cautious, far-sighted Abul-Faiz had refused to accept the horrifying gift
and had sent it back.
The five Russian detachments were destroyed one after another. Some of
the men were killed, others were sold into slavery. A few managed to escape,
some during the fighting and others later, while in captivity. Only a very
few managed to make their way back to Russia by various routes after
enduring indescribable deprivation and dangers.
When Fedor Matveyev opened his eyes he found himself lying beside a
dusty road that ran through a tract of desert where only camel's-thorn grew.
He groaned as the memory of that frightful day came back to him. Had it been
yesterday, or the day before?
The pitiless sun, directly overhead, made his eyes ache. He felt weak
and nauseous. There was a sharp, constant pain in his right shoulder.
When Fedor awakened again the sand, soaked with his blood, was cool.
Enormous stars glittered in the black sky. His throat was dry.
Wheels creaked close by, accompanied by a monotonous, wailing song in
an unfamiliar language.
"If they capture me I'll be tortured and killed," Fedor thought. "I
must creep farther away from the road."
With an abrupt movement he turned over on his stomach, gave a sharp cry
of pain, and fainted once more.
During the night he recovered consciousness several times. Each time he
saw the same bright stars overhead and heard the creaking of wheels and the
plaintive song. Added to these sensations was the feeling of being jolted
and the acrid odour of sheep's wool and horse sweat.
Fedor had been found lying unconscious near the road by an Uzbek
peasant named Sadreddin, who put him in his bullock cart and took him home.
There he and his family nursed Fedor solicitously, using ancient remedies to
treat his deep wound. Fedor's collarbone was broken- but young bones mend
quickly. The wound was encouraged to fester and was not allowed to heal so
that the pus could carry away the small fragments of broken bone.
After the fever subsided Fedor began to recover. He was given
nourishing food and could feel himself growing stronger day by day.
What would happen next? Fedor could not but be worried. The peasant who
had taken him in was a kind man but he could not help wondering how he could
turn the presence of this infidel to advantage. The young Russian could help
him in the fields, and he probably knew some handicraft which he could
practise. But it would be impossible to hide a healthy young Russian for
long. The Khan's men would learn about him sooner or later-and that would be
the end of Sadreddin. Taxes were onerous as it was, and now he would be
when he was teaching at the University and she was a gay, vivacious biology
student there. Shortly before that he had presented a brilliant thesis for
an advanced degree dealing with electric currents in living organisms, and
had published a study of electric fish which had aroused much discussion
among biologists. During one of his lectures he had noticed several girls
giggling and whispering as they passed a sheet of paper through the
auditorium. He strode rapidly over to them and snatched up the paper. He
looked down at it and frowned. What he saw was a sketch of himself,
shaggy-haired, thickset, with a fish's tail, conducting with a trident as
fish danced round him. Beneath the sketch were the words, written in a fine
handwriting:
Neither fish nor fowl, neither physicist nor biologist, He's an
intermediate class electro-ichthyologist.
"Whose work is this?" he asked, letting his angry eyes roam over the
auditorium.
A slender blonde girl rose. "It's mine," she said politely, her brown
eyes gazing boldly into Benedictov's.
It was an announcement rather than a statement.
"Thank you," Benedictov said slowly, in a slightly nasal voice,
thrusting the drawing into his pocket and continuing his lecture.
After they were married, Benedictov admitted to Rita that when she said
"It's mine" he had suddenly felt a wave of heat engulf him.
As for Rita Matveyev, she had long been in love with the brilliant
lecturer.
Rita graduated from the University the year they were married and
started teaching biology in a secondary school. That same year Benedictov
was given a laboratory at a research institute. Here he enthusiastically
continued his investigations in the sphere of action potentials. The young
couple led a fast-paced life, keeping open house for their many friends.
Half a year before their cruise on the Uzbekistan the Benedictovs had
moved into a new flat. On moving day there occurred a strange event which
triggered a series of disasters.
Rita and her husband had decided to leave a lot of their old things
behind when they moved. Anatole naturally protested when he found her
putting an old flower vase and a rusty bar of iron into a packing crate.
"We agreed not to take such things, Rita," he said. "You ought to throw
that trash away."
Rita discarded the vase but insisted that she could not part with the
bar of iron, which had been in the possession of her family for years and
years.
"A Matveyev relic?" Benedictov asked with a laugh, picking up the bar.
He turned it over in his hands and shook it.
The blade of a knife slid out of the side of the bar.
Benedictov stared dumbfounded at the narrow blade. It was covered with
a thin, transparent layer of grease through which a wavy pattern showed. He
cautiously touched the blade. His fingers went through it-just as they would
have passed through empty space.
He pressed his hand to his eyes.
"What's the matter?" Rita asked in alarm. She came up to him and
glanced at the bar. Her eyes widened.
No, she didn't know anything about the bar except, that according to an
old family legend a distant ancestor had brought it back from India. Her
father had treasured the bar all his life, and now she was doing the same.
No one had ever imagined there might be something inside it.
Benedictov held the bar as if it were a rattlesnake. He slowly closed
his fist over the blade. His fingers came together over emptiness.
Rita gave a start. "Wait a minute," she said. "There was another bar
just like this one, all covered with rust. We used it to prop up the old
wardrobe that had a broken leg." She ran into the next room, returning a
moment later to say, "It's gone. We must have thrown it out yesterday when
we carted all that old rubbish away."
The first few moments of astonishment gave way to curiosity. Benedictov
carefully examined the bar. Two lines of letters were engraved on one side.
Between the two lines there was something that looked like a crown. Or it
might have simply been a spot of rust. Benedictov noticed a fine line
running round the outside of the bar. The whole thing was obviously not a
solid bar of iron but a box with a cover.
After a long struggle Benedictov finally pried off the top. Inside the
box lay a knife handle, with a piece of cloth wound round it. The cloth must
have become loosened with time and when the box was shaken the blade dropped
out.
There was nothing extraordinary about the beautiful handle of yellowed
ivory. It could be grasped. He concluded that the section of the blade that
went into the handle must be made of ordinary metal too, otherwise it would
not remain attached to the handle.
But the blade itself! It passed freely through everything without
leaving the slightest trace, as though it were made of thin air.
The first glimpse of the mysterious knife marked a turning point in the
life of the Benedictovs. Anatole determined to get to the root of the
mystery.
"Penetrability. The ability to pass through matter. That's the goal,
Rita. You say this knife has been in your family at least two hundred years?
Well, if they could make a knife that passes through matter you and I can
certainly do the same."
Anatole painted glowing pictures of Altered Matter which man could
easily control. Rita became enthusiastic too. She helped Anatole to set up
experiments and kept a record of their results.
Weeks and then months passed. Benedictov turned his study into a small
laboratory where, more and more frequently, he worked through the night. He
grew impatient and irritable. Rita noticed that his behaviour had become
strange. At times he would be depressed and sullen, and then he would
suddenly become his cheerful, energetic self again, capable of working for
days on end without resting. He fell into apathy just as suddenly.
Rita grew worried. She now realized that Anatole had taken on a job
that was too much for one man. But when she tentatively suggested that he
ought to let the Academy of Sciences know about his discovery he declared
that he could not do this until he himself got to the bottom of it. With
great difficulty she persuaded him to take her on a holiday cruise on the
Volga.
We already know how disastrously their holiday ended.
When the doorbell rang, Anatole jumped up but Rita got to the door
first. She opened it to Nikolai Opratin, who looked his usual dapper self in
an elegant grey suit. Bending his neatly combed head, he touched his cold
lips to Rita's hand and inquired after her health.
"I am in perfect health," Rita said, enunciating the words distinctly.
"Goodbye."
"Hold on, there. Where are you going?" Anatole asked.
"To the pictures." The door slammed shut and the two men were left
alone in the flat.
"All the better without her." Anatole growled, leading the way into his
study.
Nikolai Opratin cast a critical glance over the equipment. Then he
removed his jacket, carefully pulled up his trousers at the knees, and sank
into an armchair. Benedictov sat down opposite him.
"First, Anatole, I want you to tell me in detail about the knife,"
Opratin began.
He listened closely to Benedictov's account.
"Indian magic. If I hadn't seen it myself I wouldn't believe it.
Penetrability ends near the handle, you say?"
"Yes, there's a sort of intermediate zone of about six millimetres. The
part that goes into the handle is ordinary steel."
"Did you weigh the blade?"
"Yes. The weight corresponds to the size."
"That's extremely interesting. It means the knife behaves like ordinary
matter in the gravitational field."
"It seems to me," said Benedictov, "that the bonds between atoms, or
perhaps within atoms, have been changed in some way in this knife.
I am convinced that the properties of living organisms, whose vital
functions are connected with the discharge of energy in the form of action
potentials, will provide the key to the riddle."
He went over to the round aquarium encircled by wire and launched into
a discourse, but Opratin soon interrupted him.
"I get the picture, Anatole," he said courteously but firmly. "You put
the fish between the plates of a capacitor in an oscillatory circuit and
look for a resonance in the bioelectrical frequency of the fish. I don't
think this avenue will lead you anywhere. You're right, though, about one
thing -that the inter-atomic bonds in the knife were altered. But how was
the energy of the intrinsic bonds of this substance overcome? If we only had
the knife now! By the way, you said it lay inside an iron box. You haven't
lost the box too, have you?"
Benedictov took a small iron bar from a drawer and held it out to
Opratin. It looked something like a pencil case.
Opratin sprang to his feet. "What the devil!" he exclaimed. "The same
letters!"
Engraved on the cover were the letters "A M D G". Below the letters a
crown had been engraved, and below that were "J d M" in smaller letters.
Opratin walked the length of the study and back again, his steps
ringing like the pounding of a hammer.
"What's the matter?" Benedictov asked, turning his head to follow
Opratin. "What's upset you?"
"Oh, nothing much. What do those letters stand for?"
"The upper four are the initial letters of a Jesuit motto but I don't
remember it. I don't know what the bottom ones stand for. It's unlikely they
have anything to do with our problem."
"Well, let's not lose time setting up our first experiment. When you
described your generator I got an idea. Was a crate of instruments delivered
to you today?"
"Yes. By the way, were you the one who sent that ape to this place
disguised as an electrician?"
"How could you ever think that? He's my laboratory technician.
Extremely useful, and not a bad fellow at all. But to get back to business.
I think we should begin with a minimum surface, with the point of a needle."
Opratin opened a case and took out a metal holder to which a long,
highly polished needle was attached. Then he briefly set forth the method of
the experiment.
The equipment lay on a small table, under a binocular magnifying glass.
The needle and the holder were placed in a screw-clamp with a micrometer
screw in such a way that the needle point was close to a steel cube. All
this was inserted in a coil between parallel plates and enclosed in a
thick-walled vessel. Wires connecting the apparatus with the electrostatic
machine and the oscillator ran through holes drilled in the glass.
"Now we'll see what your oscillator is capable of," Opratin remarked.
"Well, here we go. We'll try to make the electric field act on the intrinsic
bonds of the substance of this cube."
The disc of the electrostatic machine began to whirl, humming softly.
"Switch on the oscillator," Opratin commanded.
A tumbler clicked. Inside the glass vessel the little motor slowly
turned the micrometer screw, bringing the point of the needle closer and
closer to the cube.
Opratin and Benedictov kept their eyes glued to the magnifying glass.
A bell tinkled as the tip of the needle came into contact with the
cube. The automatic recorders were switched on. The point continued to move,
penetrating into the steel. But the sensitive instruments did not record any
force. The needle was entering the steel cube without meeting resistance!
That lasted only a moment.
The next instant Opratin and Benedictov were flung against the wall.
The glass chamber was shattered to smithereens.
Benedictov looked round. He was overwhelmed. Had it all been a dream?
Opratin rose to his feet. His face was pale. Blood trickled down his
forehead.
"The cube!" he cried. "Where is it?"
They found the cube in a corner beside fragments of the screw-clamp.
When they examined it under a microscope they could not find the slightest
trace of a hole made by the needle. But the automatic recorder, an impartial
witness, told them that the needle had penetrated into the steel to a
distance of three microns.
The two scientists sank into armchairs facing each other. For a time
they were silent.
"What," Benedictov finally said, "do you think of the whole thing?"
"I think it was a great moment." Opratin spoke in a calm voice and his
face now wore a somewhat detached expression. "We achieved penetrability for
an instant by weakening the bonds of the substance of the cube. But the
energy that created those bonds was released-and that was what hit us."
After a long pause he continued, his voice calmer than ever: "We've
made a start, Anatole. But we won't get anywhere working at home. Once we're
invading the structure of matter there's no telling what kind of blasts may
be produced. We must build a big installation. We'll need a Van de Graaff
generator without fail. We're going to conduct a great many experiments."
"What do you propose?"
"I can arrange matters so that I work by myself, without any outsiders
poking their noses in. But what about you? You aren't a member of our staff,
unfortunately." Opratin fell silent. Then he said bluntly: "You'll have to
join the staff of the Research Institute of Marine Physics."
Nikolai and Yura had been experimenting with mercury in the small
glassed-in gallery in Cooper Lane for several days. They had put together a
"mercury heart", an old-fashioned apparatus used to demonstrate how electric
current builds up surface tension.
The device was assembled on one pan of a laboratory scales. A large
drop of mercury was covered with a solution that would conduct electricity.
A screw with a needle lay so that the point of the needle touched the
mercury. The drop of mercury was connected by the conducting solution to the
anode of a storage battery and the needle was wired to the cathode.
A weight on the other pan kept the scales balanced.
The electric current increased the surface tension, making the drop of
mercury shrink and move away from the needle. But when the circuit was thus
broken, the drop of mercury spread out until it again touched the needle.
This "mercury heart" pulsated continuously.
The young engineers tried to act on the "heart" with high frequency
current by winding a spiral round the apparatus and linking it up with a
valve oscillator. They hoped a certain definite frequency of oscillations
would greatly increase the surface tension of the mercury and squeeze it to
such an extent that it would no longer touch the needle. Then, by adding
mercury and registering the increase in the weight of the drop, they could
measure the degree to which the surface tension had increased.
They tried different shapes of spiral and different frequencies but
nothing came of it. The "mercury heart" continued to pulsate with the same
calm, steady rhythm.
"We're not getting anywhere," said Yura, turning off the current.
"We're just wasting our time."
But Nikolai patiently continued to vary the experiment.
TO THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The rusty iron bar that Privalov brought home from the bazaar lay at
the bottom of the pantry for more than a fortnight. Privalov had not
forgotten about the bar but simply had no time to examine it.
Finally, one afternoon, he attached a vise to the kitchen table.
Humming a popular tune, he laid out his tools. His wife Olga, who was doing
up the dishes, frowned.
"I wish you wouldn't bring home so much junk," she grumbled. "What do
you want that dirty piece of iron for?"
Meanwhile, Privalov had put the bar into the vise and was removing a
thick layer of kerosene-softened rust with a sharp scraper.
"It's not iron," he said. "Don't you remember? I once told you that
iron is rarely met in its pure state. It is usually alloyed with carbon to
make steel. The element iron, or ferrum, is found in a pure state only in
laboratories. Incidentally, it hardly ever rusts. All the rust on this bar
means that it is steel."
"What about stainless steel?"
"Stainless steel is just a name. There is sometimes more chromium and
nickel in it than iron.
"I seem to be learning lots of new things in my old age," Olga said,
wiping a plate. Her eyes were amused. After a time she said, "Let's go to
the cinema, Boris. I know where 'The Sorceress' is on. It's an old picture,
but we haven't seen it."
"I have nothing against 'The Sorceress'," said Privalov as he scraped
away. "You know I've always stood up for witches, magicians and goblins. But
before we deal with the occult sciences I'd like to see what's inside this
little box."
"Box? Do you mean to say this little bar is hollow?"
"Exactly. The moment I picked it up at the bazaar I noticed that it's
too light for its size. But I didn't see any joints, and I wanted to learn
how it's put together."
"Be careful, Boris. It could be a booby trap."
"That's not likely. I don't see a single opening for a fuse or a safety
lock."
"But what if it really is one?"
Privalov grinned. "You remind me of the grandmother in Tolstoy's
Childhood. Remember? She refused to listen to an explanation of why small
shot isn't the same as gunpowder."
"A very flattering comparison."
"Don't fly into a huff. You see, the box was made very long ago, before
delayed-action mechanisms were invented." He set a frying pan on the gas
range and put the box in the pan.
"Are you going to fry it?"
"I'm applying the cleansing action of fire." Privalov turned the box
over. "We'll just warm up all these rheumatic old joints." Humming all the
time, he shook some tooth-powder into a saucer, poured water into it and
stirred the mixture, then dipped a cloth in it and smeared the sides of the
box. The chalk hissed as it quickly dried on the hot metal.
Next Privalov dipped a dry rag in kerosene and squeezed out the rag
above the box. The yellow drops were instantly soaked up by the chalk. Thin,
clear-cut lines forming a severe geometrical pattern showed up, as though
scratched on the box by a needle.
"It's put together with dowels, like a wooden box. The edges must have
been caulked, and then the whole thing was polished. Kerosene on chalk will
always show up a crack, no matter how tiny."
"You're not going to open it now, are you?"
"Oh, yes, I forgot. 'The Sorceress'." Privalov quickly tidied up the
table and went off to wash his hands.
Boris Privalov entered the laboratory towards the end of the day.
"Do you remember the rusty iron bar I picked up at the bazaar that
day?" he asked Nikolai and Yura. "Here it is, all cleaned up."
"Why, it's dowelled," said Nikolai, turning it over in his hands. "Must
have been made ages ago."
"Let's open it," Privalov suggested. He went over to the bench and put
the box into the jaws of a vise. With each tap of a hammer the dowels
loosened, one side of the box rising at an angle. Another blow of the
hammer, then still another, and one side of the box clattered to the floor.
Three heads bent over the open box. Inside lay a white roll of cloth. Yura
reached out to touch it but Privalov caught his arm. He cautiously unwrapped
the roll. Inside it were sheets of thin but strong paper.
The pages were covered with fine handwriting in letters that were
hardly connected with one another.
"It's in a foreign language!" Yura exclaimed. Privalov pushed his
glasses up onto his forehead and looked down at the manuscript.
"Black ink", he said. "It wasn't written in this century. Ink isn't
made out of nut-gall nowadays. From the way the letters are shaped they must
have been written with a goose quill. And it's in Russian, although in the
old-time spelling." "An old manuscript!" Yura exclaimed delightedly. "Boris,
we must get Val to read it for us. She's a philologist and her field is Old
Russian."
"Could it be a last will and testament, I wonder?" Privalov said
thoughtfully. He began to read, but it was slow work because of the
unfamiliar spelling. The manuscript began as follows:
"I commence this epistle on the second day of January in the year of
Our Lord 1762, desirous of passing on my thoughts and ideas to my beloved
eldest son, Alexander.
"My youth was spent in trials and tribulations and wanderings, similar
unto those of Homer's Ulysses. Upon attaining manhood I was often called
away from home by duty, so that I seldom saw you, Alexander. After you
entered the service I retired. Now I spend my days at home, and I see less
of you than ever.
"As I await my last hour I have chosen this time to set down an account
of matters to which I have given much thought, and I place my hopes in you,
for you are strong in the sciences.
"I shall put down my story point by point, from the beginning, lest I
should omit something. First, during the reign of our great ruler, Peter the
Great, son of Alexis, eternally blessed be his memory, I was despatched on a
long journey...."
Many the men whose towns he saw
whose ways he proved',
And many a pang he bore in his own
breast at sea,
While struggling for his life and
his men's safe return.
Homer -THE ODYSSEY
Lieutenant Fedor Matveyev of the Russian Navy had gone through the same
school as many another young nobleman who, by the will of Peter the Great,
was torn away from his placid rural life and cast into the maelstrom of
those turbulent times.
The School of Navigation in Moscow, instruction in carpentry, the wheel
wright's craft and shipbuilding in Holland, the Louis Quatorze Nautical
School in Marseilles, artillery training in Paris, and round-the-clock work
in the shipyards of the new, cold city of St. Petersburg had turned the
illiterate village bumpkin, pigeon fancier and church singer into a smart
naval officer fluent in foreign languages and inured to the deprivations of
a wanderer's life.
The indomitable will of Russia's extraordinary tsar had scattered these
young men of a new mould far and wide.
Fedor Matveyev was not the least surprised when he received orders to
join a hydrographic expedition on the Caspian Sea. He and young men like him
had no time to be surprised-they were too busy surprising others.
When Fedor reached the Caspian town of Astrakhan his ears were still
ringing with the roar of the battles on the Baltic Sea, and his right
shoulder ached from a wound made by a Swedish falcon bullet.
He was struck by the quietness here. In contrast to the steel-grey
waters and overcast skies of the Baltic, the Caspian Sea was green; it had
yellow sandy beaches, a dazzling blue sky and a merciless southern sun.
The tsar's instructions ordered the expedition, which was under the
command of Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky, "to search assiduously for harbours
and rivers where ships might be put in and scout-boats find a haven during
storms; to establish the location of sandbars and underwater reefs, and
enter all these and other things on maps; to cross the sea and note the
location of islands and shoals; to put the width of the sea on the map".
Fedor Matveyev enthusiastically set about mapping the unfamiliar sea.
There was an ancient mystery about those uninhabited, windswept shores.
Fedor knew that beyond the sun-baked yellow sands lay fabulous India.
He was unaware, as yet, that Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky's expedition
had another mission, a secret one.
Finding the shortest trade route to India had long been one of Peter
the Great's ambitions. He had heard much about that country's wonders and
unbelievable wealth.
Indian goods reached Europe through Persian and Arab merchants.
European goods flowed to India through the same hands. Yet, reflected Peter,
Nature herself had decreed that Russia should be a middleman in the commerce
between Europe and Asia.
On the route to India lay Khiva and Bukhara, troubled lands whose
rulers were constantly engaged in strife. In the year 1700 Shah Niaz, Khan
of Khiva, had expressed a desire to become a subject of the Russian tsar,
hoping with Peter's help to bolster up his shaky throne. But then new rulers
succeeded one another so rapidly in Khiva that it was impossible to keep
track of them.
Everything was a mystery in that sun-scorched land.
For instance, old maps showed the Amu Darya flowing into the Caspian
Sea. Herodotus, the Greek historian, and Arab historians also, said the Amu
Darya flowed into the Caspian. Yet it was rumoured that the fickle river had
shifted its channel. The rulers of Khiva, it was said, had built an earthen
dam which caused the river to flow into the Sea of Aral.
What sort of river was this Amu, river of the Bull, known to the
ancient Romans as the Oxus and to the Arabs as the Jihun? Peter the Great
was aware that it rose somewhere in India. If it could be turned back into
the Caspian, and if he, Peter, could be master of its banks, or at least
live in peace and friendship with those who held them, India's rich
commodities could be delivered down that river to the Caspian Sea, across
the Caspian to the city of Astrakhan, and from there up the Volga into
Russia-by-passing the Persian merchants. These Indian commodities would be
cheaper, and, besides, Russia's treasury would profit. Furthermore, Peter
had heard there was gold in that area, near the town of Irket.
All these rumours must be verified. The area must be explored by trusty
men.
Peter could not tolerate delay. Early in May 1714 he ordered Prince
Bekovich-Cherkassky, a lieutenant in the Preobrazhonsky Guards Regiment, to
set out for the Caspian Sea with the men he needed, "to search for the mouth
of the river Amu Darya". On May 19 he ordered the Prince, in addition, "to
proceed to Khiva and from there to Bukhara, to ascertain the possibilities
of trade, and under cover of that, to find out everything he could about the
town of Irket."
Before his conversion to Christianity Prince Alexander
Bekovich-Cherkassky's name had been Devlet Kizden Mirza. He came from a line
of Kabardian rulers. As a boy he had been stolen by Nogai tribesmen. He fell
into the hands of the Russians when Russian troops under Vassily Golitsin
besieged the town of Azov, and was taken into the home of Vassily's brother
Boris, one of Peter's tutors. In 1707 he was sent abroad to study. Soon
after, he married into the Golitsin family, taking Boris Golitsin's
daughter, the Princess Martha, for his wife. When Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky
joined the Preobrazhensky Regiment he attracted the tsar's attention. It was
to this strong, courageous, well-educated young man with a knowledge of the
East that Peter the Great assigned the difficult mission of finding a route
to India.
On his way to Astrakhan, which he reached in August 1714, Prince
Bekovich-Cherkassky stopped at Kazan, on the Volga. Here he took more than
1,500 soldiers and 19 cannon under his command.
The expedition set sail from Astrakhan for Guryev, a town on the
Caspian, at the mouth of the Ural River, on November 7 and nearly perished
at the very beginning of the voyage. A vicious autumn storm scattered the
twenty-seven light Volga boats and two schooners. The battered flotilla
limped back to Astrakhan one month later, at the beginning of December,
without ever having reached Guryev.
After wintering at Astrakhan and obtaining about two dozen new boats,
the expedition set sail again on April 25, 1715.
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky stood on the weather side of the
quarter-deck as his flagship emerged from the Volga delta into the expanses
of the sea. The green waters of the Caspian now gurgled beneath the
schooner's keel. The Prince stood there, lost in thought. He was only a
little Over thirty at the time, and the realization that he was responsible
for so many men and so many ships weighed heavily on him.
He gazed in silence across the green vastness, wondering what awaited
him beyond those deserted shores and the burning, shifting sands.
The flotilla cruised along the eastern coast of the Caspian until late
autumn. It stopped at Guryev, rounded the Mangyshlak Peninsula and sailed
southwards for a long time, mapping and describing in detail the strange,
deserted coastline. The sun blazed down on them. The barrels of water taken
on at Guryev became putrid; the men were tormented by thirst. But even
stronger than thirst was the yearning for distant Russia, for shady forests
and smoke rising from the chimney of one's own log cabin.
The flotilla sailed past a gap in the coastline through which the sea
rushed noisily. This was the mysterious Gulf of Karabugaz, eternally covered
with a dark haze of evaporation.
Then it sailed over a long, dangerous underwater spit that is now
called Bekovich Bank. After rounding the bank it entered Krasnovodsk Bay, a
place that slept the sleep of the dead amidst burning sands and hillocks.
In the autumn of 1715, one year after it had first sailed out into the
Caspian Sea, the flotilla returned to Astrakhan. The expedition had failed
to reach either Khiva or Bukhara, and it had not learned anything about gold
in that area. But it had confirmed the fact that the Amu Darya did not flow
into the Caspian and that its old channel had dried up. Also, it had mapped
the coast of the Caspian.
The expedition proved to be too small and unsatisfactorily equipped for
a long, dangerous overland journey.
On February 14, 1716, Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky was given a new
assignment. He was appointed Ambassador to the court of the Khan of Khiva
with instructions to proceed to Khiva along the Amu Darya, carefully
studying the river and examining the dam to see whether the river could be
turned back into its old channel instead of flowing into the Sea of Aral. He
was also to determine how many men would be needed to do that.
Rumour had it that Khan Shirgazy, who now ruled Khiva, was extremely
hostile to the local princes and was eager to consolidate his power. Prince
Bekovich-Cherkassky was instructed to persuade him to become a Russian
subject loyal to the tsar by promising to help him to unite his domain. In
return for putting a Russian regiment at his service the Khan would
presumably act in the interests of Russia.
The Prince was also instructed by Peter to send an intelligence agent
to Khiva disguised as a merchant to search for a water route to India.
By decree of the Senate the strength of the expedition was enlarged to
6100 men in three infantry regiments, two dragoon units, two Cossack
regiments, a marine detachment and a building crew. The building crew
included men experienced in the construction of fortifications. The
expedition also had scribes, interpreters, doctors and pharmacists.
The regiments and baggage-trains gathered at Guryev. Prince
Bekovich-Cherkassky set out for Guryev from Astrakhan, accompanied for a
short distance, as far as the Caspian, by his wife Martha and their
children. A fishing vessel followed the flotilla to take her and the
children back to Astrakhan.
Soon after they set sail the weather changed. A furious wind drove
heavy waves against the current. The Prince bade his wife and children
farewell, then stood for a long time watching the triangular white sail of
their boat grow smaller in the distance. As he observed the clouds gathering
above the Volga and listened to the wind howling in the rigging, he was
filled with foreboding.
Before long the news reached Guryev that his wife and daughters had
been drowned in the storm. Only his little son had been rescued.
When in the company of others the Prince tried to hide his sorrow. But
the sight of him sitting alone in his tent, gazing fixedly into space, his
face a picture of despair, was enough to wring the hardest heart.
At the end of May 1717 the expedition set out from Guryev for Khiva.
There was a good road, and they had an abundance of water as well as plenty
of forage for the horses. The expedition was able to make up to fifteen
kilometres a day across the salt marshes, and reached the Emba River in a
week's time. There the men and the horses rested for two days, then built
rafts and crossed the river.
Here the sands began. Following a caravan route, the expedition finally
reached the blue Sea of Aral.
The men were tormented by the heat and by thirst. All around them
stretched scorching sands. Time and again the expedition failed to reach the
next well by nightfall. Slowly but surely it was moving towards its doom.
Fedor Matveyev found the march difficult. Although he had a good
physique and endured the heat better than many of the others, a presentiment
of disaster kept nagging at him. Outwardly, however, he was composed. He
encouraged the weary and seemed to know just where to dig shallow wells
during bivouacs. The water brought up was brackish but potable.
Finally the expedition reached Lake Aibugir. Now Khiva was only a few
days' march away.
It had been assumed, when plans for the expedition were first laid,
that Khan Shirgazy was a weak ruler, fearful of his subjects, and would
eagerly accept an offer of Russian military aid. That was no longer the case
in 1717. Khan Shirgazy had brutally suppressed an uprising and was now
stronger than ever before. As the Russians approached Khiva he resolved to
show his enemies just how strong he really was.
One morning a band of Khiva horsemen galloped into view from behind the
hillocks along the lake shore. Brandishing curved sabres and filling the
desert with war cries, they charged the Russian camp.
The attack failed because the sentries were vigilant and the camp was
surrounded by a wall of carts from the baggage-trains. The attacking force
had to dismount and lie prone. The exchange of fare lasted until evening.
During the night the Russians fortified their positions. They dug
ditches on three sides of the camp and built an earthen rampart. The fourth
side was the lake, which was thickly overgrown with reeds. They tied reeds
into bundles and piled them together to conceal the batteries.
The next morning an army of 20 000 men-ten times more than the
expedition had-led by Khan Shirgazy himself, surrounded the camp.
The siege lasted two days. The Russian cannon pounded away steadily;
the men did not run out of either cannon-balls or vodka, and water for
cooling the gun barrels was at hand. Heavy losses were inflicted on the
attacking Khivans. Although the Prince's men were exhausted from their
gruelling march they fought gallantly.
When Khan Shirgazy saw that he could not take the camp by storm he
decided to resort to guile. To the astonishment of the Russians the
besieging troops vanished during the night. Silence reigned over the desert.
The next day passed in tense expectation. Towards evening a lone
horseman came galloping across the desert towards the camp. Wearing a
richly-embroidered robe and turban, and with his hennaed beard, he was a
colourful sight. When he reached the camp he introduced himself as Ishim
Hodja, envoy of the Khan, and explained courteously that the attack had been
made without the Khan's knowledge. The Khan, he said, had ordered the heads
of the guilty to roll, and now invited the Prince to a council of peace and
friendship.
The latter sent a Tatar named Useinov to tell the Khan that he, Prince
Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky, was an envoy of the white tsar, bearing
credentials and many gifts, and that it would be to the Khan's great
advantage to receive the Russian mission.
Khan Shirgazy received Useinov and asked him to tell the Prince that he
would reply after he had consulted with his advisers.
He did consult with his advisers. They said it had been a mistake to
withdraw from Lake Aibugir, for the Prince did not have many men and it was
too early to resort to guile.
Soon the curved blades of the Khiva horsemen again glinted in the sun
in front of the Russian fortifications beside the lake. Slender arrows and
clay bullets glazed with lead again flew towards the camp. Again clouds of
black smoke drifted across the desert as the Russian gunners, veterans of
the war against Sweden, took aim and fired. After beating off the attack
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky again sent his parliamentarian to the Khan to
demand an explanation of this perfidious conduct.
Khan Shirgazy insisted once again the attack had been made without his
knowledge. Again he declared that those to blame for the attack had already
been caught and punished, some by death and others by a fate worse than
death. The next day Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky himself rode over to the
headquarters of the Khan for a talk.
The Khan received him graciously. He promised to order his men to tear
down the dam on the Amu Darya. He promised to be a younger brother to Peter
the Great. He pledged peace and love and he kissed the tsar's scroll.
The day was clear, with a fierce sun beating down mercilessly. All of a
sudden the motionless air stirred, and a light breeze arose.
Dogs howled and horses neighed. The sheep which the Khan's men had
brought along for a feast huddled together, bleating piteously.
A black smudge appeared on the disc of the sun. It grew rapidly,
spreading across the sun. Darkness fell. Stars came out.
The Khiva men beat on tambourines and drums to drive away the demons
that were trying to swallow the sun.
Khan Shirgazy was alarmed. Could this be a bad omen, just when he was
about to sign a treaty with the white tsar?
An elderly mullah in a green turban stood on tiptoe, his goatee
tickling the hairy ear of tall Khan Shirgazy. He whispered, a crooked finger
pointing to the darkened sun, "Do you see the omen, oh mighty ruler?"
"I do," the Khan growled.
"The omen is shaped like a crescent. It signifies that the glory of
Islam will eclipse the glory of the infidels."
This reassured the Khan. When the eclipse ended he accepted the gifts
of the white tsar with a light heart. Examination of the gifts lasted until
evening.
Then the Khan and the Prince mounted their steeds and set out for
Khiva, riding side by side. They were followed by the Khan's suite and the
Russian expedition. The Russians, now in good spirits, sang as they marched
along.
A short distance from Khiva the Khan and his men set up camp on the
bank of a stream. The Russians pitched their tents nearby. Prince
Bekovich-Cherkassky and his companion, Prince Samonov, were the guests of
honour in the Khan's tent.
During supper the Khan explained to the Prince that it would be
impossible to quarter the entire Russian mission in Khiva because there
would not be enough food for them and it would take some time to bring in
more supplies. Unless the Prince had plenty of his own provisions, in which
case, of course-
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky had to confess that he was running short of
provisions. The Khan then suggested that he divide the Russian force into
five units, each to be quartered in a different town where, he promised, the
food and lodging would be of the best. Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky and his
companions would, of course, be offered hospitality in Khiva itself.
It is hard to understand why Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky ever agreed to
such a dubious arrangement. Perhaps he believed that Khan Shirgazy really
had been frightened by the Russian artillery during the skirmishes at Lake
Aibugir. Or he was so overwhelmed by his personal grief that he was unable
to think clearly.
The Russian foot soldiers, dragoons and gunners marched off from the
stream in five different directions, each group accompanied by Khiva guides.
The thick dust raised by the departing units hung for a long time in the
hot, still air. Slowly the strains of their marching songs died away in the
distance.
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky stood in front of the Khan's tent, gazing
after his men, oblivious of the Khivans who had crowded round him.
The units vanished from sight. The dust began to settle.
"You dog! Betrayer of Islam! You have sold your soul to the infidels!"
said Khan Shirgazy softly, laying a hand on the Prince's shoulder. "You dog!
You tried to deceive me with your miserable gifts!"
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky spun round. Although he had difficulty
understanding the Uzbek language he immediately grasped the meaning of the
Khan's words. All he had to do was read the Khan's face.
Khan Shirgazy drew out the royal credentials from the sleeve of his
robe. Slowly and solemnly he tore the paper in half, threw the pieces on the
ground, spat on them, and rubbed them into the sand with the pointed,
turned-up toe of his yellow boot.
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky took a step backwards. He reached for his
sword, then dropped his hand.
Smiling and chattering, the Khan's bodyguards drew closer, their swords
bared.
Khan Shirgazy turned away. "Don't spoil the face," he murmured as he
passed the bodyguards.
The heads of the senior Russian officers were brought to Khiva and
displayed to the public.
Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky's head was not among them. Rumour had it
that Khan Shirgazy had sent the head as a gift to the Khan of Bukhara, but
cautious, far-sighted Abul-Faiz had refused to accept the horrifying gift
and had sent it back.
The five Russian detachments were destroyed one after another. Some of
the men were killed, others were sold into slavery. A few managed to escape,
some during the fighting and others later, while in captivity. Only a very
few managed to make their way back to Russia by various routes after
enduring indescribable deprivation and dangers.
When Fedor Matveyev opened his eyes he found himself lying beside a
dusty road that ran through a tract of desert where only camel's-thorn grew.
He groaned as the memory of that frightful day came back to him. Had it been
yesterday, or the day before?
The pitiless sun, directly overhead, made his eyes ache. He felt weak
and nauseous. There was a sharp, constant pain in his right shoulder.
When Fedor awakened again the sand, soaked with his blood, was cool.
Enormous stars glittered in the black sky. His throat was dry.
Wheels creaked close by, accompanied by a monotonous, wailing song in
an unfamiliar language.
"If they capture me I'll be tortured and killed," Fedor thought. "I
must creep farther away from the road."
With an abrupt movement he turned over on his stomach, gave a sharp cry
of pain, and fainted once more.
During the night he recovered consciousness several times. Each time he
saw the same bright stars overhead and heard the creaking of wheels and the
plaintive song. Added to these sensations was the feeling of being jolted
and the acrid odour of sheep's wool and horse sweat.
Fedor had been found lying unconscious near the road by an Uzbek
peasant named Sadreddin, who put him in his bullock cart and took him home.
There he and his family nursed Fedor solicitously, using ancient remedies to
treat his deep wound. Fedor's collarbone was broken- but young bones mend
quickly. The wound was encouraged to fester and was not allowed to heal so
that the pus could carry away the small fragments of broken bone.
After the fever subsided Fedor began to recover. He was given
nourishing food and could feel himself growing stronger day by day.
What would happen next? Fedor could not but be worried. The peasant who
had taken him in was a kind man but he could not help wondering how he could
turn the presence of this infidel to advantage. The young Russian could help
him in the fields, and he probably knew some handicraft which he could
practise. But it would be impossible to hide a healthy young Russian for
long. The Khan's men would learn about him sooner or later-and that would be
the end of Sadreddin. Taxes were onerous as it was, and now he would be