“The Americans say, ‘There are no atheists in foxholes.’ You were never of the faith, Vaslav. You had a deathbed conversion, out of fear.”

“Is that why you want me dead now?”

“Not dead. You’re not much use dead.” Two more olive-drab agents have come in, and stand watching Tchitcherine. They have regular, unremarkable faces. This is, after all, an Oneirine haunting. Mellow, ordinary. The only tipoff to its unreality is—

The radical-though-plausible-violation-of-reality—

All three men are smiling at him now. There is no violation.

It’s a scream, but it comes out as a roar. He leaps at Ripov, nearly nails him with his fist too, but the others, with faster reflexes than he counted on, have come up either side to hold him. He can’t believe their strength. Through the nerves of hip and ass he feels his Nagant being slid from its holster, and feels his own cock sliding out of a German girl he can’t remember now, on the last sweetwine morning he saw her, in the last warm bed of the last morning departure….

“You’re a child, Vaslav. Only making believe that you understand ideas which are really beyond you. We have to speak very simply for you.”

In Central Asia he was told of the functions of Moslem angels. One is to examine the recently dead. After the last mourner has gone, angels come to the grave and interrogate the dead one in his faith….

There is another figure now, at the edge of the room. She is Tchitcherine’s age, and in uniform. Her eyes don’t want to say anything to Tchitcherine. She only watches. No music heard, no summer journey taken… no horse seen against the steppe in the last daylight….

He doesn’t recognize her. Not that it matters. Not at this level of things. But it’s Galina, come back to the cities, out of the silences after all, in again to the chain-link fields of the Word, shining, running secure and always close enough, always tangible….

“Why were you hunting your black brother?” Ripov manages to make the question sound courteous.

Oh. Nice of you to ask, Ripov. Why was I? “When it began… a long time ago—at first… I thought I was being punished. Passed over. I blamed him.”

“Now?”

“I don’t know.”

“What made you think he was your target?”

“Who else’s would he be?”

“Vaslav. Will you never rise above? These are old barbarisms. Blood lines, personal revenge. You think this has all been arranged for you, to ease your little, stupid lusts.”

All right. All right. “Yes. Probably. What of it?”

“He isn’t your target. Others want him.”

“So you’ve been letting me—”

“So far. Yes.”

Džabajev could have told you. That sodden Asiatic is first and last an enlisted man. He knew. Officers. Fucking officer mentality. You do all the work, then they come in, to wrap it up, to get the glory.

“You’re taking it away from me.”