Heptarch

Three days after the assembly I came to the Academy.

September fifteenth, Sunday, rain from afternoon, +8. On the highway — the usual September picture: trucks with Pskov and Ryazan plates, three or four migrants in each, hauling construction insulation to suburban building sites which by the plan “Housing for the Natural Cohort” were supposed to receive one hundred eighty thousand families by ’44. The Ministry of Construction’s plan of two thousand thirty-nine, number 443-R, is appended to order PP-23 as appendix 12; I read it out of professional curiosity, didn’t understand half (the specifics of housing financing through FRP are inaccessible to me), but the main thing I caught: housing will be, money allocated, the project’s architect — one of the Moscow workshops which in the public presentation promises “an environment conducive to correct homeostatic initiation.” The formulation is in the terms of reference. Reading it last winter made me sad; I sat by the window with tea for five minutes and decided not to read such terms of reference any more in summer, because for several hours after them my appetite goes.

I drove alone. I expected Karl and Lia home by the nineteenth. Kira had stayed in Moscow — on Wednesday she had a seminar with the first wave of twenty-year-olds; she was preparing in her working notebook.

The Academy met me with rain and Olga in rubber boots, in the same gray puffer (the puffer by this year was fifteen years old, and it’s in Olga a biological invariant: cannot be replaced; it’s a passport item). Olga said one phrase:

— Wei Lin is at Noma’s. Will return in the evening.

I nodded. Went up to his study.

---

In the study everything was as usual — the kettle in its place, Quinta back on her shelf, the desk waiting, the two chairs still set, as always, in a single diagonal line. Wei Lin’s cane wasn’t there: he’d taken it with him into the forest. Outside, an even rain was falling on the roof.

I sat at the desk. Opened the notebook. Wrote the date at the top: 15.09.41. Brewed tea. Waited.

(I knew it would happen today. Not supposed, not hoped — knew in the body, the same way that in September ’40 I knew that at night a trolley bus of the fifteenth route, canceled in ’21, would pass outside the window. It was the same knowledge: when in the world something is ready to happen, it sends ahead of itself a thin structural tremor, and with me since ’36 this tremor became readable. Today it was stronger than usual.)

At eleven twenty-seven the taste of copper appeared in my mouth.

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In the point of passage assembly began.

(I have observed this process over four and a half years a fifth time. The first — in February ’37. The second — in November of the same ’37, when Heptarch came for the first time after the cleansing, and we were silent for forty minutes; he was silent because he was testing the new sensation “I without Iero’s trace”; I was silent because he needed this silence. The third — in ’38, brief, one phrase from his side: “I see you better.” The fourth — in ’39, also brief; he asked then if I could describe to him how with our species the desire to know works; I described in words, badly, because with me this function lies deep and without documentation. Today — the fifth.)

Heptarch formulated. The same tall conditional figure, without face. Gaze. Looking at me directly.

— Daniil.

— Heptarch.

— I have come for the answer.

— I am ready.

Pause.

— Four and a half years, — said Heptarch. — By my count — a day and a half. That’s an admissible interval.

— I was assembling.

— I know. I was waiting.