Garabedian approached with a tube of rations. Mirsky waved him aside. "We must eat," Garabedian said, "Comrade General."

Mirsky frowned up at him. "Why? What use is it? They will keep us here till we starve or become foxes raiding the farmer's coops. We're stuck."

Garabedian shrugged. "All right."

Mirsky turned away from his former deputy and held out his arm abruptly, making grasping motions with his hand. "Give it to me, you bastard. I don't want you eating it."

Garabedian grinned and passed him the tube.

"It's lousy," Mirsky said, squeezing the fish paste into his mouth. "Tastes like shit."

"In my hometown, we call shit sausage and fight over it," Garabedian said. "So why should you be depressed?"

"I liked Sosnitsky," Mirsky said "And then he goes and makes me a general."

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One

Lanier stood in the broad, clear luminosity of the library, face twitching. He hadn't actually sat down before one of the chromium teardrops for months. He didn't wish to, even now. The experience had not been physically unpleasant, but it seemed that all his present troubles had emerged from one of those seats—the one now festooned with inactive equipment.

Three Apple- and Uzi-armed marines stood uneasily behind him; Gerhardt had insisted they accompany Lanier, in case any of the Russian SPETSNAZ had this far infiltrated.

He walked between the seats. Like Patricia, he eschewed the cluttered seat. He stopped and turned around to survey the plaza, then sat down on the chair and flipped open the control box. At the press of his fingers, queries floating before him. The library still addressed him in clear twentieth-first-century English. Perhaps it remembered him; perhaps it knew who they were, even why they were here.

"I need to learn twenty-first-century Russian," he said. "Early twenty-first. Pre-Death. How long will that take?"

"Do you wish a reading knowledge, speaking knowledge, colloquial facility, or all of these?" the library narrator asked.

"I need speaking knowledge, colloquial, right away. I suppose the others as well, if it doesn't take much more time."

"You can be taught a command of spoken colloquial and technical Russian in two hours. An additional hour will be required to teach you to read and translate."

"Then give me all of it," he said.

"Very well. Please relax; you are a little tense. We begin first with the Cyrillic alphabet. . . .”

I am relaxing, he realized with some surprise. As the lessons developed, he slipped into the bath of knowledge with a deep mental sigh. I'm enjoying this.

He had never had a talent for languages. Nevertheless, within three hours, he spoke Russian like a native Muscovite.

Muscular, balding and florid-faced squadron commander Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Alekseivich Pletnev and his four crew disembarked the tethered heavy-lifter from the aft hatch and were guided into the first dock airlock. By the agreement negotiated several hours before, the remaining heavy-lifters maintained their positions outside the bore hole.