Tanith Lee - All the Birds of Hell

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TANITH LEE

ALL THE BIRDS OF HELL

Tanith Lee's most recent books include Faces Under Water and a young adult novel

that's due out in England very shortly, Law of the Wolf Tower. Her last

appearance in these pages was exactly two years ago, with her retake on the

Cinderella fairy tale, The Reason for Not Going to the Ball." She returns now

with a very different sort of story, a dark and dazzling vision of a world

locked in winter for fifteen years...

ONCE THEY LEFT THE CITY, the driver started to talk. He went on talking during

the two-hour journey, almost without pause. His name was Argenty, but the

dialogue was all about his wife. She suffered from what had become known as

Twilight Sickness. She spent all day in their flat staring at the electric

bulbs. At night she walked out into the streets and he would have to go and

fetch her. She had had frostbite several times. He said she had been lovely

twenty years ago, though she had always hated the cold.

Henrique Tchaikov listened. He made a few sympathetic sounds. It was as hopeless

to try to communicate with the driver, Argenty, as to shut him up. Normally

Argenty drove important men from the Bureau, to whom he would not be allowed to

speak a word, probably not even Goodday. But Tchaikov was a minor bureaucrat. If

Argenty had had a better education and more luck, he might have been where

Tchaikov was.

Argenty's voice became like the landscape beyond the cindery cement blocks of

the city, monotonous, inevitably irritating, depressing, useless, sad.

It was the fifteenth year of winter.

Now almost forty, Tchaikov could remember the other seasons of his childhood,

even one long hot summer full of liquid colors and now-forgotten smells. By the

time he was twelve years old, things were changing forever. In his twenties he

saw them go, the palaces of summer, as Eynin called them in his poetry. Tchaikov

had been twenty-four when he watched the last natural flower, sprung pale green

out of the public lawn, die before him -- as Argenty's wife was dying, in

another way.

The Industrial Winter, so it was termed. The belching chimneys and the leaking

stations with their cylinders of poison. The rotting hulks along the shore like

deadly whales.

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"The doctor says she'll ruin her eyes, staring at the lights all day," Argenty

droned on.

"There's a new drug, isn't there --" Tchaikov tried.

But Argenty took no notice. Probably, when alone, he talked to himself.

Beyond the car, the snowscape spread like heaps of bedclothes, some soiled and

some clean. The gray ceiling of the sky bulged low.

Argenty broke off. He said, "There's the wolf factory." Tchaikov turned his

head.

Against the grayness-whiteness, the jagged black of the deserted factory which

had been taken over by wolves, was the only landmark.

"They howl often, sound like the old machinery. You'll hear them from the

Dacha."

Yes, they told me I would."

"Look, some of them running about there."

Tchaikov noted the black forms of the wolves, less black than the factory walls

and gates, darting up and over the snow heaps, and away around the building.

Although things did live out here, it was strange to see something alive.

Then they came down the slope, the chained snow tires grating and punching, and

Tchaikov saw the mansion across the plain.

"The river came in here," said Argenty. "Under the ice now."

A plantation of pine trees remained about the house. Possibly they were dead,

carved out only in frozen snow. The Dacha had two domed towers, a balustraded

verandah above a flight of stairs that gleamed like white glass. When the car

drove up, he could see two statues at the foot of the steps that had also been

kept clear of snow. They were of a stained brownish marble, a god and goddess,

both naked and smiling through the brown stains that spread from their mouths.

There were electric lights on in the Dacha, from top to bottom, three or four

floors of them, in long, arched windows.

But as the car growled to a halt, Argenty gave a grunt. "Look," he said again,

"look. Up there."

They got out and stood on the snow. The cold broke round them like sheer

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disbelief, but they knew it by now. They stared up. As happened only very

occasionally, a lacuna had opened in the low cloud. A dim pink island of sky

appeared, and over it floated a dulled lemon slice, dissolving, half

transparent, the sun.

Argenty and Tchaikov waited, transfixed, watching in silence. Presently the

cloud folded together again and the sky, the sun, vanished.

"I can't tell her," said Argenty. "My wife. I can't tell her I saw the sun. Once

it happened in the street. She began to scream. I had to take her to the

hospital. She wasn't the only case."

"I'm sorry," said Tchaikov.

He had said this before, but now for the first time Argenty seemed to hear him.

"Thank you."

Argenty insisted on carrying Tchaikov's bag to the top of the slippery, gleaming

stair, then he pressed the buzzer. The door was of steel and wood, with a glass

panel of octople glazing, almost opaque. Through it, in the bluish yellow light,

a vast hall could just be made out, with a floor of black and white marble.

A voice spoke through the door apparatus.

"Give your name."

"Henrique Tchaikov. Number sixteen stroke Y."

"You're late."

Tchaikov stood on the top step, explaining to a door. He was enigmatic. There

was always a great deal of this.

"The road from Kroy was blocked by an avalanche. It had to be cleared."

"All right. Come in. Mind the dog, she may be down there." "Dog," said Argenty.

He put his hand into his coat for his gun.

"It's all right," said Tchaikov. "They always keep a dog here."

"Why.?" Said Argenty blankly.

Tchaikov said, "A guard dog. And for company, I suppose."

Argenty glanced up, toward the domed towers. The walls were reinforced by black

cement. The domes were tiled black, mortared by snow. After the glimpse of sun,

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