Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road by Ken MacLeod

The funeral was the nearest thing to a State
occasion the republic had had since the Sputnik centenary. The
entire depleted apparat was there, and a good proportion of the
workers, peasants and intelligentsia was probably watching on
television. The distinguished foreign guests included the
Kazakhstani consul, the head of the Western United States
Interests Section, and David Reid, who was wedged between a
couple of Mutual Protection greps. Myra sat with the rest of
Sovnarkom in the front row, dry-eyed, as one of Georgi’s
old comrades – another Afganets – delivered the
eulogy.
    ‘Major Georgi Yefrimovich Davidov was born in Alma-Ata
in 1956. At school, in the Pioneers and the Komsomol, he soon
distinguished himself as an exemplary individual –
studious, civic-minded, with great athletic prowess. After
obtaining a degree at the University of Kazakhstan, where he
joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he completed his
national service and chose a military career. In 1979 he
qualified as a helicopter pilot, and later that same year was
among the first of the limited contingent of the Soviet armed
forces to fulfil their internationalist duty to the peoples of
Afghanistan.’
    A ripple of dissidence, expressed with indrawn breaths, or
sighs, or shifting of feet, went through the room. Myra herself
sniffed, compressed her lips, looked down. All those nights
he’d woken her by grabbing her, holding her, talking away
his nightmares; all those mornings when he’d said not a
word, given no indication that he remembered any interruption to
his sleep, or to hers.
    The speaker raised his voice a little and continued
undaunted.
    ‘His service earned him promotion and the honour of Hero
of the Soviet Union. In 1985 he applied for transfer to the space
programme, and after training at Baikonur he won the proud title
of Cosmonaut of the Soviet Union. However, many decades were to
pass before he was able to fulfil this part of his
destiny.’
    By which time it was a fucking milk-run, and there was no
fucking Soviet Union, so get on with it –
    ‘During the turbulent years of the late 1980s, Major
Davidov took some political stands about which his friends and
comrades may honesdy differ-’
    Nice one, he was a fucking Yeltsinite, get on with it
–
    ‘ – but which testify to his true Soviet and
Kazakh patriotism and the seriousness with which he took his
civic duty and the Leninist ideals of the armedforces, which in
his view proscribed the use of violence against the
people.’
    Myra was not the only one who had to choke back a laugh.
    ‘After the Republic of Kazakhstan became independent,
Major Davidov’s expertise in the areas of nuclear weaponry
and questions of nuclear disarmament gave him a new field for his
great political skill and personal charm…’
    Myra bit her lip.
     
    He was in front of her in the taxi queue outside the airport
at Alma-Ata. Tall, even taller than she was, very dark;
swept-back black hair, eyebrows almost as thick as his black
moustache; relaxed in a stiff olive-green uniform; smoking a
Marlboro and glancing occasionally at a counterfeit Rolex.
    Myra, just arrived, lost and anxious, could not take her eyes
off him. But it was the yellow plastic bag at his feet that gave
her the nerve to speak. Printed on it in red were a picture of a
parrot and the words:
    THE PET SHOP
    992 Pollockshaws Road
    Glasgow G41 2HA
    She leaned forward, into his field of vision.
    You’ve flown in from Glasgow?’ she asked, in
Russian.
    He turned, startled out of some trance, and looked at her with
a bemused expression which rapidly became a smile.
    ‘Ah, the bag.’ He poked it with his foot,
revealing that the carrier was bulging with cartons of cigarettes
and bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label. Toil’re a
stranger here, then.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘These plastic bags have nothing to do with Glasgow.
They’re used by every shop from here to China, God