"Until now," Mirsky said.

"But you're the commander," the soldier said resentfully.

"No more," Mirsky said. "What's the fishing like here?"

"Not so good. You notice there are mosquitoes and flies everywhere, but they don't bite?"

"Yes, I've noticed."

"I wonder why?"

"Good design," Mirsky suggested.

"I wonder if it ever snows."

"I think it does, once every year or so," Mirsky said. "But it doesn't get very cold. Not like Moscow."

"I would like for it to snow," the soldier said. Mirsky agreed, and they met at one end of the lake and walked through the woods together, in search of a better fishing spot.

"The Americans would say we were Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer," the soldier observed as they dipped their threadlines into a stream. "You know, the Americans aren't as bad as they were on Earth. I thought about defecting before I decided to leave for the woods."

"Why didn't you?" Mirsky asked.

"I didn't want to be around anybody. But I'm not sorry you're here, General." The soldier bobbed the tip of his pole, hoping to entice a trout. "Restores my faith in humanity. Even a general wants to get away from it all."

The soldier, who never told Mirsky his name, had left the compound weeks ago, before Mirsky's death in the library. He knew nothing of what had happened, and Mirsky did not tell him.

He was beginning to feel like a normal human being again and not a freak or a ghost. Having the time to sit and admire a drop of water on a leaf, or the way water rippled outward from a fish rising for an insect, was wonderful. It no longer mattered who he was, simply that he was.

Two more days passed, and Mirsky began to wonder if anybody would come searching for them. High-power telescopes could spot them easily, and with infrared sensors, it wouldn't matter whether they were hidden under trees or not. By now, he suspected, the Zampolits were free again, consolidating their position of power—if Pletnev and the others hadn't acted on his warning.

He was only faintly curious about what had happened.

What he missed most of all was night. He would have given anything to spend a few hours in pitch darkness, to be able to close his eyes and see nothing, not even the faint brown glow of shadowy forest light through his eyelids. He also missed the stars and moon.

"Do you think anybody we know on Earth is alive?" the soldier asked one morning as they cooked trout in a flat press of stripped branches over a small fire.

"No," Mirsky said.

The soldier bobbed his head, and then shook it in wonder. "You think not?"

"It's not very probable," Mirsky said.

"Not even in the high command?"

"Maybe. But I never really knew any of them."

"Mmm," the soldier said. Then, as if it was relevant, he said, "You knew Sosnitsky."

"Not really."