“Yes,” the man said. “I know. But he isn’t here. Come with me.”

The man stepped across the threshold. Fishing a key ring from the pocket of his coveralls, he locked the door with a long brass key—the kind of old-fashioned key one might find in a junk shop.

Seeing Rustem looking at the key, he said: “Security is not in locks. You, of all people, should know that very well. Now come along.”

Rustem followed “Farhod” up the hill and across a few narrow streets, until they came to another doorway, nearly identical to the first. Rustem expected the man to fish the key from his pocket again, but he did not. He pushed a small black button near the frame of the door. Several seconds later a buzzer sounded, and the lock clicked open.

White tile inside. The atmosphere of a clinic. The smell of medicine. A man in a coat whiter than the tile drank coffee from a paper cup. He drank standing, reading something off a palimpscreen in his hand. He didn’t look up at them.

They walked past him, to a door at the end of the hall. “Farhod” gestured to Rustem to walk in.

“He’s expecting you. If he’s sleeping, sit and wait until he wakes up.”

Rustem stepped into the grotto-like half-light of the room. Machines pinged quietly, scattered diode constellations in the dark.

He recognized the hands first. One of them held a stylus over a palimpscreen on a tray—the same kind of industrial tray they serve cafeteria food on.

Near the head of the bed, there was a bandage-swathed mass around an oxygen mask. The bandages left a gap for one eye, but in the dimness Rustem could not see if the eye was open or not. Everything was still.

Sit and wait, then.

The hand wrote, “Welcome, Rustem,” on the palimpscreen. “Pull up a chair.”

Rustem did as he was told.

“You have something you want to say?”

“What happened to you?”

“Start with what you have to say.” The hand paused, then wrote, “You have been practicing it. Don’t waste it.”

“I won’t do it. I won’t make a weapon from a work of art. This isn’t a … thing to be manipulated. It is a temple. I won’t be a part of desecrating it. That’s why I am here.”

The hand wrote: “I heard they call you ‘Bakunin.’”

Rustem laughed. “Yeah. They do. They think I’m Russian. I’m a Tatar, but it’s all the same to them.”

“It’s a good nickname. Bakunin wrote God and the State. Have you read it?”

“No.”

“He was right about many things. And wrong about some things. But more right than wrong.”

“I should read it, I guess,” Rustem said. “I’m not much for books.”

“You do another kind of reading.”

“I suppose you could say that.”

“There isn’t time in life for everything.”

“No.”