Grinkov was tired and getting old - old enough to remember when all this around him had been the pride (albeit the secret pride) of the State and the Party. He glowered at a nearby pile of wreckage, the rusting remains of a Soyuz Epsilon capsule and a 3/4 scale prototype of the wing-in-ground transport his mentor, old Rodeneyv, had designed.
Rodeneyv had loved that transport, he remembered. There had been days in the design bureau where the man had stared out the window at the test facility, the peaceful, beaming look of a saint on his face. Grinkov and the other engineers knew Rodeneyv was imagining the new world, a world where the atmosphere was no barrier to space, where gravity was no shackle. A bright future - one that had never materialized. In his darker days, Grinkov thought that future was dead. But on days like today, days where he was tired, but not without hope, Grinkov thought that future was only sleeping like a seed in the ground.
Grinkov continued to walk towards the gate. The guards stared at him without care, wearing their boredom like heavy coats. In the old days, Grinkov would have had to show his papers three times already. Now, no one bothered to stop him. No one checked his satchel for what was inside. Grinkov smiled sardonically.
His satchel held the seed of the future. It had been Rodeneyv's last dream, before the old man had been retired back to Moscow. On his last day, he had called Grinkov into the office, closed the door and placed the device on the desk. The Golden Ring.
"Pavel," said Rodeneyv, "This is it. Guard it well. It is either the key to heaven or hell. I wish I could tell you more, but you are a good man. See that it is used properly." And for twenty-seven years it had been Grinkov's burden to bear, sitting quietly in his desk, as junior engineers had stopped coming to the design bureau, as a succession of apparatchik directors had stormed through, followed by reptile-eyed appointees who had systematically pillaged the secrets of the place. Grinkov held the Golden Ring in trust. His consolation was that if he died, the secret of the Golden Ring would die with him.
There was a car coming up the Hill Road towards the main gate. In the old days, the car's occupants would have been known hours before it had gotten to this point, its every movement shadowed by hidden, armed men. Now no challenges, nothing at all. Even tourists got through the main gate these days.
Grinkov sat in the bus shelter and watched the car pass through the main gate after only a superficial check of identification. The car pulled up next to the shelter, spattered with mud and the dust of Kazakhstan.
A man jumped lightly from the passenger seat.
"Grinkov? My name is Bews," the man gave a friendly smile. "I've come to speak to you about Rodeneyv's Golden Ring."
For a brief moment, Grinkov saw the future unfold like a green shoot from a seed.
05 November 2007, 10:05:10 PM