Ice

Moscow has been hit by a wave of brutal murders. The victims are of both sexes, from different backgrounds, and of all ages, but invariably blond and blue-eyed. They are found with their breastbones smashed in, their hearts crushed. There is no sign of any motive.
Drugs, sex, and violence are the currency of daily life in Moscow. Criminal gangs and unscrupulous financial operators run the show. But in the midst of so much squalor one mysterious group is pursuing a long-meditated plan. Blond and blue-eyed, with a strange shared attraction to a chunk of interstellar ice, they are looking for their brothers and sisters, precisely 23,000 of them. Lost among the common herd of humanity, they must be awakened and set free. How? With a crude hammer fashioned out of the cosmic ice. Humans, meat machines, die under its blows. The hearts of the chosen answer by uttering their true names. For the first time they know the ecstasy of true life.
For the awakened, the future, like the past, is simple. It is ice.

VLADIMIR SOROKIN was born in Moscow. He trained as an engineer, but turned to writing novels, plays, short stories, and screenplays. In 1992, his Collected Stories was nominated for a Russian Booker Prize. He was presented with the 2001 Andrey Biely Award for outstanding contributions to Russian literature, and in 2002, he wrote a libretto for an opera for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Sorokin is a member of the Russian Pen Club and his books have been translated into numerous languages. He lives in Moscow with his wife and twin daughters.