Last updated on 2024-11-04
Chapter 23: Foundation’s Traveler
Rudy weaved alone up a highway through a mountain forest. Somewhere far ahead was Kyzyl, the capital of Tyva, a city large enough to support its own university, but the only university in an entire republic hidden behind these mountains, hidden from every main road in the world. Snow lingered under the trees and on the northern slopes he could see looming above the forest. His socks and boots were thick enough, but this climb called for another layer under his jeans and rain jacket.
Rudy stopped by a pond. The forest was still. He heard no one coming, no cabins or yurts in sight. His map showed no village for another 60 kilometers. In full sunshine, he pried off his boots and stripped off his jeans to tug his black fleece long johns over his pale legs. He shucked his jacket and shirt and put on the snug matching thermal top. Then he stood in the sunshine half-dressed, letting the dark underfabric absorb some sunshine.
For an instant, he felt the riverbank in Suzdal, the bathing platform, his friends crowded around him, soaked and in far skimpier clothing than his current layers, passing the soap and casually holding on to each other’s slippery shoulders and elbows to keep balance on the hidden deck, then plunging into the river, thrashing about to rinse, and swimming to shore to stand on the grass and dry in the sun.
He felt the memory merge into this moment, felt the impressions of his friends fade through the short forest and out toward the mountains, as if the world were bulging and stretching to carry them off and leave him ever farther away at this high altitude, by this snowmelt pond cupped just below the next pass. He’d shiver all day from a bath here.
Not quite three weeks he’d spent in Moscow and Suzdal, with Ken, Marty, Brenda, Lily…. They’d worked in monasteries in both places, one monastery working, one repurposed, and in both places, they’d stood like this, underclad and unashamed, released from bonds they didn’t know held them until a couple days of sweating under the Russian sun.
The Chechens, the damned Chechens, had taken that away, taken away all of his friends and their sun-blessed, stream-blessed moments.
Well, not all of them. Not Ksenia, Yulia, the other Russian students who’d worked with them in Suzdal. They were safe, he supposed, safe as anyone could be in jumble-tumble Russia. He thought of Yulia by the campfire, admonishing him with her last shred of sobriety that night to be careful. He thought of Ksenia… Ksenia… moonlight, Fanta, and the persistent impression of her body against his on the Captain’s motorbike.
He could write to Ksenia. He could visit her. Russia was a big place, but he had crossed Russia before; why not again? Why not take time off after the Kyzyl mission, ride to Galich, Suzdal, Moscow, wherever Ksenia may have ended up, find out how she was doing, ask about her parents, take Ksenia on the bike again, wherever she wanted to go?
The girls from Suzdal—women! Rudy thought, done with university now, adults, independent, but in Russian, they would be devushki, girls, from age 14 into their 30s or 40s. Ksenia would be stunned to learn Rudy had never gone home. Maybe she’d stun him with her own adventures. Maybe Ksenia never went back to Galich. Maybe Ksenia left her home country as Rudy had abandoned his, though she for much clearer, more comprehensible, practical reasons.
Or maybe he would ride all the way across Russia, to Galich, to the courtyard, to Pavel Pavlovich’s garage door, and he would freeze and run away. Maybe he would find it too hard to face her. She would connect him too much with that moment, with the people he’d lost, the death he’d cheated, the death she’d helped him cheat.
He was alive to enjoy the memories of Suzdal. His friends weren’t. Rudy couldn’t shake the unfairness of that. So before he could start mapping a grand detour west, he turned his thoughts back to this moment, this pond, to the mountains ahead and the unknown land he had to cross to reach Kyzyl before dark.
Tyva was more Mongol than Russian, far more so than Irkutsk and its surrounding towns, which were astoundingly Russian and white for standing so close to Mongolia. The Mongols had wrought their own bloodthirst across the continent for centuries, and the Russian colonizers had dealt with the great Khans’ descendants in the east as harshly as they had the Muslim Chechens to the south, yet the Tyvans never blew up buses or massacred theaters the way the Chechens did. Had the Mongols left their bloodthirst in the west?
Bandits could come up the road. The Chinese could come over the pass, finally on their way to cut Russia in half and claim Siberia for condos. But Rudy felt as safe here, alone on the road, as he had on the riverbank in Suzdal. He felt as safe, he supposed, as Ken and Constance had leaning against him for balance in the creek with three days to live. You never know, Rudy imagined he heard in Ken’s voice. “You never know,” Rudy repeated aloud to the pond, the forest, the mountains.
A tiny and ancient pickup truck came over the hill. The engine shut off, and the truck coasted all the way to the pond. A small Tyvan man and a large cloth bundle filled the cab. Behind a black barrel held by one ratchet strap to the cab, a black goat stood freely, no rope holding it to the truck bed, with strands of straw hanging from its mouth. More straw flew out over the six-inch-high rails. The goat Rudy him more attention than the man did. As the truck passed, the man popped the clutch. The goat jerked forward but kept its footing. The engine chugged back to life to drag the truck up the next slope. For a moment, Rudy was surprised to smell French fries; then he sorted out that the truck must be burning vegetable oil.
Follow those fries, Ken would have said. Rudy chuckled and hoped that wasn’t the only fuel available between here and Kyzyl. “Follow those fries,” Rudy repeated, to himself and the bike and the echo in his head, the echo he’d cheated.
The goat brayed at Rudy when he passed the tiny, laboring truck a kilometer up the road.
* * *
Rudy was not running away from Irkutsk or the Institute. He continued to enjoy his work as Galina Filipovna’s specialist in physical projects. He enjoyed the work even more now that it included travel like this expedition to Kyzyl.
Galina Filipovna had planned this travel as part of his work; she just hadn’t told him that during their long October walk around campus and their conversation on the steps of Fizika five years ago. She knew travel like this would be good for Rudy, would give him just enough highways and far horizons to keep him from leaving for good. She also knew his traveling would be good for the bigger plan she envisioned.
Galya’s Kremlin enjoyed great success with its ongoing “financial analysis”. Through Vitaly’s efforts, constantly upgrading software and hardware and identifying accounts and patterns of interactions among gangs across Siberia and western Russia, the Institute located and raided the hidden accounts of criminal gangs and corrupt officials, as well as documents that, leaked anonymously to the right authorities or rivals, neutralized the holders of those accounts, leaving their assets easier to expropriate. (Neutralize, expropriate… Galya, Vitaly, and the others in the know euphemized as freely as the old Soviets.) Financial analysis supported building and renovation on campus and built the reserves (all hard currency—dollars, deutsche marks, yen, and now the new euro—earning double-digit percentages in a carousel of offshore investments aggressively managed and concealed by two instructors under Vitaly’s supervision in the business school) that would soon build Galya’s great supercollider. But to keep on pace to launch excavation of the Ring in two years, to expand the talent pool and lay the groundwork for acquiring the faculty and support staff the Ring would require when it became operational five years after that, and to insulate the Institute’s personnel and operations even further from the mafia wolves, Galya decided the Institute needed to recruit allies. She needed to make the Institute useful to other organizations, tap their knowledge, and create more channels through which they could launder their finances and their data flows.
Galina Filipovna had already sketched this big picture when she spoke with Rudy that rainy October. But she needed to make sure it would work, all of it: Vitaly’s analysis, Rudy’s planning and repairs, the complicated investment schemes. So she let them do their work, and watched.
Rudy got plenty done on campus. His position remained unofficial: “specialist of physical projects” did not appear in any organizational chart or budget. He had no office with a name plate; his “office” was essentially anywhere he hung his NA REMONT sign. He tore out and rebuilt walls, installed new wires, cables, faster fiber optics, power plant upgrades, generators, security doors and lights and cameras.
She didn’t broach the subject of her broader plan with Rudy until one of their monthly updates over a year later. They walked for these updates, as they had when she’d created his specialist position, often through specific job sites so Rudy could show Galina Filipovna literal nuts and bolts (for all the abstractions of her particle physics, the director was very concrete in managing her Kremlin), but sometimes just around the campus for fresh air and the exercise that they both enjoyed. Outside one cold December day, when Rudy finished showing Galina Filipovna the locations where he thought he could sink geothermal lines to replace the unreliable boilers for heat, the director thanked him and completely changed the subject: “Do you know the writing of Asimov?”
“Isaac Asimov?” Rudy was surprised he could think of the name, which was connected to little other than a vague recollection of thick glasses and bushy grey sideburns on a talk show. “I don’t think I’ve read him.”
Galya began walking toward Fizika, and Rudy automatically followed. “Famous Russian science fiction writer,” she said, her breath turning to clouds in the freezing air. “He lived in America—his parents preserved for the world a treasure when they emigrated, before Stalin could crush them and their son—but he was clearly a Russian at heart, the kind of Russian we are fighting for, with his love of reason and science and learning.
“Asimov wrote a series of novels, the Foundation novels, in which he imagined scientists saving civilization. When the great Galactic Empire collapsed, the scientists gathered at the edge of the galaxy, far from the corruption of the decadent capital world, to preserve the humanity’s knowledge. Under the guise of the Foundation, established ostensibly to write an Encyclopedia Galactica, the scientists preserved technology and invented new machines. On this knowledge they built trade, influence, and a better, more humane society that spared the Galaxy 30,000 years of anarchy and barbarism and established a new Empire… or so went their plan.”
They passed the library frescoes, great Russian authors. Dostoevsky looked a little more interested in this synopsis of an American writer’s work than did Tolstoy and Turgenev.
“And this is your Foundation?” Rudy asked. “Saving Russia from its barbarians? Building a new empire?”
Galya smiled briefly. “Empire is beyond our reach. We shall not supplant Moscow and rule the continent from Irkutsk.” She paused, looking straight toward the gate just west of her building. “I want nothing more, and nothing less, than to build the Ring and do my science in peace. Everything I ask you and Vitaly and everyone else to do is toward that singular goal. But we cannot build the Ring if we do not push the barbarians, all of the mafia, the criminals on the streets and the criminals in the state, back as far as we can. And we can push them farther back if we expand our Kremlin.”
Rudy contemplated the ragged winter clouds that lurched overhead. “You’re talking about more than our brick walls.”
“Asimov’s Foundation expanded beyond its lonely world. We must expand beyond our walls, make ourselves useful to make ourselves stronger.”
Galya’s enthusiasm took over. In three brisk loops of the inner courtyard, the director sketched her blueprint for a benevolent protection racket run from her Kremlin. They would approach other academic institutions first, offering overhauls and upgrades of networks to maximize security and processing power as Vitaly, Kolya, and Rudy had at the Institute. They would identify threats to their partners from criminal elements and quietly offer to reduce those threats—very quietly, because advertising any such racket (join us and we’ll bankrupt the gangs troubling you in a week!) would incur immediate and lethal retaliation. Then Vitaly and his close-knit team within the Institute would wage a campaign of stealth protection, of unfortunate events befalling various gangs like the hit that wiped out the Dmitris: curious disruptions in finances, diversions of contraband, revelations of evidence leading to arrests and prosecutions, arranged by “analysis”—hacking, Galya could say now as the academic day was done and few students or faculty were left within earshot of their lengthy ambulatory meeting—conducted within the Institute’s impenetrable and expanding information network. Her plan would foster grateful partners, weaken the gangs, and secure resources. And played just right, her plan would work up a reputation, maybe just a superstition, maybe just an odd form of natural selection that would decimate troublemakers and favor mobsters who were already inclined to direct their energies elsewhere, that would protect the loose alliance that would quietly become known as the Ring Group.
The Institute would not use violence or coercion against foes or friends. Galya’s initiative would welcome partners but never punish decliners. Galya would not ask Rudy to use his fists or any weapon. She wasn’t sending him as an enforcer. She was sending him as a repairman, a practical consultant, a representative who could do good work and win trust. She would also expect Rudy to be their eyes and ears, to identify threats, and to embed in new projects in other cities the black-box hardware necessary for the Institute’s work—that is, the hacking tools necessary to allow Vitaly unrestricted access to computing resources around the country.
And occasionally, Rudy would need to bug a phone or data line to allow the Ring Group to collect data directly from parties identified as threats. That physical hacking would require a quick eye and quick hand, well trained by all of the experience Rudy had gained doing repairs and renovations on campus.
Numbed a bit by the cold as well as by the scope of what Galya was proposing, Rudy said, “Such a plan… is it safe?”
“it is safer than sitting here alone, waiting for the gangs to amass strength and surround and strangle us. And it is the surest path to building the Ring.”
Rudy always wondered if such single-minded focus on the Ring could somehow lead Galina Filipovna to miss something, to make some grave error, to overreach. But he had yet to identify any fatal flaw in her reasoning. He sighed heavily, making a wintry cloud from his mouth. “Well, if you think I am best suited—”
“Of course I do,” she interrupted. She gestured around to the academic buildings around them. “Your work speaks for itself.”
Galina Filipovna did not embarrass easily, but now a thought clouded her eyes, and she looked away. “Besides,” she said to the sidewalk, “among my most capable people, you are… the least tied down.”
It took Rudy a moment to recognize that Galina Filipovna was speaking of personal ties. She was not married—everyone assumed the formidable researcher would never seek such a distraction from her work—but everyone else in her inner circle was, except for Vitaly, and just a couple months ago he had taken up with Maria, the baker, a bundle of energy who Rudy was sure would sweep Vitaly away in matrimony and family bliss. Galina Filipovna kept her seemingly solitary private life very private, and she almost never intruded on the private lives of the people around her. But on this day, the day she spoke of traveling and Asimov, she asked him, “You aren’t… seeing anyone, are you?”
“No, I… no.”
Galina Filipovna had glanced at him to gauge his response. She turned her eyes back to the cold, snow-edged pavement. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. But… if you do meet someone…” Galina Filipovna finally had to shake herself out of her own awkwardness. She reared her shoulders back, rubbed her gloved hands together, and tried to restore the professional steel to her gaze. “Do not let my work demands interfere with your—” here that steel weakened again, and she struggled for the words “—personal pursuits. If you would rather not travel, if you need to step back from our work in any way, to make room for… someone, I will understand.”
For just a moment, Rudy wondered if he needed to explain to Galya the true state of his personal life. He and Vitaly went to bars and movies—fewer recently, with more of Vitaly’s time devoted to keeping up with Maria. He got along easily with his staff and nearly all of the professors he encountered—the academics particularly appreciated his attention to their needs, the time he’d spend asking them about how they used their classroom and office spaces and what he could do to help them work better. But in all his time in Irkutsk, he hadn’t really gone out seeking companionship outside of work. He didn’t want to complicate good working relationships, and blind dates were risky in Irkutsk with HIV running rampant while state officials insisted Russia didn’t have an AIDS problem.
Besides, Rudy was content, more or less, going back to his apartment, reading, cooking for himself and occasionally for Vitaly (who had come over just a week ago with Maria) and friends from work, running in the mornings, riding and camping alone on the weekends. Maria had suggested he come out with her and Vitaly to meet this friend or that of hers, lovely girls, Maria assured him, but Rudy had declined. He could go to work, he could negotiate prices with contractors and suppliers, he could ride the highways and the gravel and dirt trails all over the oblast, but… seeing someone… that felt like too great a risk, for whoever that someone might be.
And as it stood, his social life, his friendships, his commitments, all stood right where he wanted them, where he could balance them with what he wanted to do most of all, to do Galya’s work.
Rudy did not like seeing Galya in anything less than command of herself. He wondered if he could presume to set her back at ease. “Galina Filipovna, I very much would like to travel for you and do this new work. But may I ask you a personal question?”
She raised her eyebrows. “It is only fair. Ask.”
Rudy considered his words for a moment. “If you met someone—and perhaps you have, and you keep it to yourself well—would you step back from your work?”
“No,” she answered immediately, then caught herself. She realized and nodded at the contradiction between the latitude she thought Rudy might lack and the strict expectation she maintained for herself.
“No,” Rudy said, “you wouldn’t. Neither will I. Your work matters. I’m glad to help.”
Galya’s eyes were steady now. She showed no hint of regret, only eagerness. “We’re both strange people, aren’t we?”
“I don’t see anything strange in wanting to do good work.”
Galina Filipovna gave Rudy one small laugh. Then she straightened fully and pulled her fur-lined hood a little more snug around her face. “Thank you for the update. Price the geothermal equipment, installation, and operation; submit your project budget next week. And see Vitaly Wednesday for details on your first expedition, to Ulan-Ude.”
Ulan-Ude, Rudy thought as Galina headed for her office and he turned toward the shop. Maybe I’ll find some goat milk. Deep in memory, he heard Ken laughing.