

### RED DEAD TEN

Soviet Dark Futures

Copyright 2018 Mil Brač

Published by Mil Brač at Smashwords

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ZMB 1. Tigermen

ZMB 2. Molokan

The Padojd Trites

The Mir.322 Case

Shaman 1. Kurgan

Shaman 2. Maple Heart

God Tears

Tolya and the Ankylosaur's Death

The Dark Room

Red Snow in Kaperka

Author Bio

**ZMB 1. TIGERMEN**

In post-apocalyptic USSR, straying from the dogmas of Orthodox communism is investigated by inquisitors, but when one of them tries to find out what had happened to a mysteriously vanished officer in infested Germany, the answers might be more surprising than expected.

The armored vehicle's tracks chewed on the wet grass, spitting sideways two ill-looking, dark waves. Perched between the opened upper lids, Yuri held on and closed his eyes, enjoying the weak touch of West Germany's sun. Just as lifeless as those in his Moscow and not really that warm, the feeble rays still poured into his soul and filled it up after the endless dark hours spent in a train car with bolt-shut windows. He was safe for now, anyway, as on these flatlands any tigerman could easily be spotted from miles away.

Yuri sighed and let himself think of nothing, just gazing mindlessly at the barely visible barbwire fences of Fort 24 clawing the horizon to slowly rise up from the ground. Some hole swallowed the tip of a track and thrusted him upwards, breaking his revelry. In Germany, the Red Army had to use old armored vehicles because the roads had crumbled over the forty years since the Event, and their broken network connected only rotting towns and cities, ruined and infested. The decay beneath the tracks he expected, but the clear blue sky above surprised the pale-skin Russian. No more people, no more pollution; nature had already cleaned itself up and swallowed the remnants within a green, hungry tsunami.

Yuri sneaked his left hand under the overcoat, clenching the revolver. The young man knew he would not be welcomed by the border-guards, just as the inquisitors were never really welcomed anywhere. Fear and fake subservience, yes, those were to be expected. The thought that the issue he had been sent to investigate was not at all risk free also crept behind his eyes, tainting the warm feeling.

The mysterious disappearance of a border fort commander. Perhaps devoured by the tigermen in some poor-planned patrol, as the political commissar's report suggested, or maybe murdered by angry subordinates, as Moscow suspected. Here, in the Interdiction Zone, people disappeared quite often and only God knew why Yuri himself had been sent to the edge of the world...

The man crouched behind the rusty steel lid, as if looking for some cover. The question that had bugged him all along climbed up his skull again, screaming: why dispatch an inquisitor to investigate a suspected mutiny? That was the job of the KGB! The faith-questioners had the sole purpose of eliminating the deviants from the Red Holy Book and that has been stated very clear ever since 1928, when Comrade-Father Stalin had united the Communist Party with the Orthodox Church. Almost a century later, Yuri knew of no such mix-up ever, not even after the Event.

" Just stop'ere, ye man, can't you hear?!"

An enraged red-haired little corporal with a huge moustache was yelling from behind a birch tree.

" Or it screeches in no times, now! Da?"

Yuri knocked on the metal lid and the vehicle stopped. First its tracks stiffened, with a mud splash; then, slowly, the rumble of the engine died out, too. A yellow-bearded face popped up the hatch and removed his leather helmet, with a questioning look.

" Since when screams me at you, no!"

The angry red-haired man had a strong and quite funny accent. After the Fall of the West, the USSR had swallowed its smaller communist brother-states in a fast gulp, but still not all their subjects were fluent in Russian, not even after decades of occupation.

" Them sensors, you fool. Da? The circle of trees around the base is for nothing, you think? As soon as a tigerman comes around, the sensors hidden in those leaves start screeching! Since you can drive, you clearly are not tigered, but my poor ears if that alarm goes on in this one birch above me! Pfff...."

" Corporal", grinned the driver," bring yourself the fuck to attention and report fuckin' properly, son-of-a-whore, or you'll do extra patrols in the Sick Zone till you won't get to ever have grandsons!"

" What, to you, motha'uker?"

" No, to comrade captain Marilov there!"

The mustached man froze and shouted:

" Corporal Feher, sir! Comrade Captain, allow me to report..."

" Oh, come on, really!"

The young man jumped from the APV and smiled.

" It's just an honorary rank, actually I am a Second Grade Inquisitor. Marilov."

The look in the man's eyes surprised Yuri. It did have the expected, usual hatred and reluctance. It also had the surprise he wanted to bring up in order to study the NCO's reaction. But not only did it not show the concealment of a murder accomplice, but, amazingly, it slipped out a short glimpse of something unanticipated, like... hope, maybe?

" Comrade Inquisitor!"

The corporal immediately hid his feelings behind army procedures and sheered away, eyes trailing through the undergrowth.

" Wait for me to call the Fort, stop they the sensors on this area, and it's done quick-quick. Da?"

The NCO went to the bulky radio transmitter leaned behind the tree, turned some buttons and shouted, embarrassed:

" Can you come of here for a little? I dunno' your code, stupid me forgetting old man! Sorry, sorry..."

Yuri shrugged and went, the gaze of the bored driver lingering on his back. Behind the birch, the red-haired briefly showed his palm, cradling two scribbled words: "Petrov" and "Envoy". He then exclaimed:

" Sooo, Green 244 it is! Ready now, you go to the gates..."

Meanwhile, indistinctly, the corporal shook his head and winked. The inquisitor threw a meaningful downwards look, but made no gesture, as from behind he could still be seen by the crew. The officer then turned around without a word and growled, as if annoyed with the NCO's familiarity.

Behind the tall, eroded, but still sturdy-looking metal gates, he was being expected by an entire welcome party: Cherytsin, the deputy-commander, tall, fair-haired and smiling, temporary in charge of the fort; Zedevich, the priest, a bearded dark-haired and silent short man; Ukov, the political commissar, thin, blue-eyed blond, straight and strung like a steel spring; and two large soldiers with wicked looks, "who will follow everywhere for protection", as Cherytsin let Yuri know. The purpose of this triumphant and seemingly kind welcome was obvious to the inquisitor: those managing the fort didn't want him roaming around on his own. They were hiding something, so Yuri smiled friendly and kept quiet, concealing the predator's fangs behind the grinned teeth.

" ... And over dinner you'll also meet comrade Zmeyev, the Party attaché! He's now caught up with some administrative tasks..."

Till dinnertime, Yuri did what he could in the given circumstances: he walked around the fortified army base, talking to the troopers and NCOs and discreetly tasting the thick gloomy mood. The soldiers were not at all talkative, especially because of his so-called "guards", but from their short grumbles he could at least guess that the former commander, the mysteriously vanished colonel Golubin, hadn't been liked and was definitely not regretted. Several men described him as "harsh", which Yuri knew very well that in army language meant "sadistic, mean, aggressive", maybe even worse.

When he got sure there was nothing else to be fished out from the conscripts' minds, the inquisitor retired to his small room and napped till dinner. Just before falling completely asleep, a small thought teased him, flashing by: where was Zmeyev? A civilian, the party man should not have been allowed outside the fort, but he was nowhere to be seen inside it...

#

When Yuri woke up at 7 in the evening, dinner was already set in the conference hall, a grim-looking large space, metal barn-like, ordinarily used for the political indoctrination meetings. The benches had been removed for the occasion and a long wooden table laid, with five men already sitting around it: facing the door, the now-commander Cherytsin and commissar Ukov, with an empty chair between them, and on the other side, the frowning priest, a fat officer Yuri had seen earlier in the day dealing with some supplies and a way too friendly bald civilian with pig-like eyes, too well dressed in a suit cut from an obviously expensive fabric. Zmeyev. The table was amazingly filled with fresh-made cold cuts, pork chops, thick steaming stews and some other tasty looking meat dishes. All of them rare gourmet delicacies hard to come by on the home front, in the starving USSR, and absolutely impossible to find out there, in the middle of nowhere.

Cherytsin, friendly, grabbed the inquisitor's arm and seated Yuri right next to him, then shouted at some orderlies:

" Zuckner! Petrov! Ilie! The wine!"

Yuri, smiling, thanked for the hospitality and looked around. With the tail of his eye, he glanced at Petrov: a blond youngster, pretty and slim. Could he be the one suggested by the corporal?

"...so most likely he went out during the night, drunk, and the tigermen got him!"

Cherytsin leaned slightly towards Ukov, who quickly obliged to confirm.

" Ah, yes, this area is almost completely purged, but there's plenty of them still hiding in the towns' ruins. They may, forced by their infamous instinct of territoriality, venture this way. And yes, Golubin used to drink too much. He also did have the gate and sensors codes, so who knows what dumb idea he got into that big half-bald head?"

" Did you find the corpse or any remains?" asked the inquisitor, naïvely.

The others looked in their plates, awry. Was the investigator challenging them on purpose? Were they suspects? Could their replies be twisted to suggest guilt? Like all the Soviets, they knew all too well silence was the key to survival, so answered nothing. Only Zmeyev, laughing as if Yuri had joked, said:

" Oh, come on, comrade Marilov, do not underestimate the tigermen's cunning! They did indeed lose articulate speech, but are not completely dumb ZMBs, as you see on TV. They can still think enough to hide from us. Think of them as wild dogs, that's the right level. Or rather rabid tigers".

" Hence the name you all use around here," whispered Yuri and leaned back in the plastic chair, watching them.

" Tigermen. Not the party-approved ZMB. Zapadnâi s Mozg Bolnoi."

He smiled and said no more. Zmeyev bit his lips, but continued as if he had not heard:

" The main effect of the virus is they cannot stand another tigerman, aaah, I mean ZMB, near them, unless in extreme circumstances, like mating. Or when we hunt them down, cornered into a tight spot".

" And when they hunt and kill us, too," added the commissar, coldly.

" Ah, that indeed, yeah, when the beast-men sense uninfected people, they go nuts and attack no matter what. Biting and clawing like, well, tigers. It is true, the moment they are obsessed enough with us, they do not strike at each other," added Cherytsin, his face darkened by memories.

" Almighty God took their minds!" shouted father Zedevich, out of the blue.

Zmeyev grabbed his shoulder, leaned towards the priest and laughed hoarsely:

" Well, sure, that's why the party called them westerners with sick brains, ZMBs. If it was God's will when the virus got loose from the Amerikanski laboratories and destroyed them all, that I don't know. But..." he boasted, snaking his eyes along the officers' inexpressive faces,"...we must certainly praise the Party's wisdom! It was ready when it happened to them, with our borders completely closed and ruthlessly guarded by armed troops! Otherwise, now we would be just like the rest of the world. Tigered."

Everybody jumped up and shouted, faking ideological fervor.

" Glory to the all-powerful Proletariat Party! God protect its holy leaders!"

" Come on, come on, friends," said the fat officer," let's forget about such chilling thoughts, look, this delicious food is getting cold! Let's eat, please!"

The inquisitor didn't push on. He pretended to be completely fascinated by the food, not a difficult task when meat was never enough at home. The young man didn't ask where from all this mysterious abundance had come, as he knew they would just talk about something else like with the Golubin question. He did, however, drink the wine in the tall glass and gestured to Petrov, who came in a hurry with the carafe.

" Such good wine!" said Yuri to the orderly. Docile, Petrov leaned over him to pour some more, and the officer whispered: "The Envoy".

Startled, the young man looked at him and nodded. A few minutes later, while filling the glass again, he whispered, too: "Tonight".

The rest of the dinner went on uneventfully. The priest and the fat officer kept silent, the former apparently thinking, the latter constantly preoccupied by the stews. Zmeyev talked endlessly, arrogantly, laughing heartily at his own jokes. The others treated him with too much reverence, as if they owed him something, but hinted nothing of relevance. Cherytsin insisted to serve the inquisitor with steaks, wine and funny stories, but also avoided any serious subject. Ukov just brooded in cold hatred and contempt, his eyes fixed on the huge Stalin's icon on the wall.

Disappointed, Yuri excused himself after a while and retired, to the noticeable relief of the others.

#

In his room, Yuri first made sure the door was locked and there were no microphones. Then he loaded and cocked the pistol and laid in bed, reading Stalin's Red Bible until he fell asleep with the lights on. Around 2 a.m., he heard in the hallway the guards' whispers and some laughter. One of them said something like "...he didn't seem your kind" and knocked. Pistol behind his back, but smiling sleepily, Yuri half opened the door and Petrov squeezed in, gently rubbing against him while passing. The inquisitor slammed the door shut, locked it and turned around to the fair-haired youngster that had just lounged ostentatiously on his bed:

" Your kind?"

" Well, yeah. Queers, you know. Fags. That's what I told them, that you called me in for the night. But we both know you had other reasons to summon me here. Who told you about the Envoy?"

" Feher did."

Yuri's face showed nothing, but he was actually surprised. He knew homosexuality, although officially forbidden, was somewhat tolerated in the army and rather common in such isolated forts, but he didn't expect the Envoy to be about that. Could it be that the whole case was just some jealousy murder between embittered lovers?

" So you and Golubin...?"

" Aaah, God forbid, nooo!" laughed Petrov like a schoolgirl, amused. "Golubin's a wicked man and has many sins, but he is not... one of us. No, I was his orderly. And Feher his driver. What the two of us have in common is knowing about the Envoy. But I still have no right to tell you about that - only Golubin himself can confess it."

The tiny youngster glanced at the inquisitor:

" So? Are you gonna' arrest me? Punish the wicked creature?"

" No, since that's not why I'm here. And I have nothing against your kind, so stop acting. You already know the Inquisition doesn't arrest gays, we have plenty of other problems..."

Petrov smiled playfully.

" But do you think God can love me, too?"

" Why not? Who am I to know what God can or cannot?"

Apparently satisfied by the answer, Petrov straightened his back, suddenly became serious and said:

" Listen, Golubin went outside a week ago, in the middle of the night, in secrecy. The colonel was a damned bastard, always yelling at us or slapping soldiers and officers alike. He often got out secretly at night, just himself and Ukov. You do know, I suppose, that the purpose of the Interdiction Zone is to watch out for tigermen activity. To capture and kill those of them trying to get out of the Sick Zone and head on into the Union. But Golubin and Ukov actually did more than that...."

Petrov's face turned red in anger. He took a deep breath and forced himself to keep on:

" Tigermen are humans. Yeah, the cursed virus got them crazy and they attack like wild beasts. Yeah, they cannot speak and never gather in groups. But I tell you, they are still human, still have thoughts and feelings, even if savage ones. I do understand killing them when trying to close in and infect us, since, you know, the virus spreads through blood."

" Yes, I am aware of that, but still; tigermen are no ordinary savages, they are ferocious cannibals!"

" My fat ass they are. That's what you've been told at home, to make you feel better about us shooting them. Indeed, tigermen did resort to cannibalism early on, because of the hunger, with them having no more agriculture or anything as such. But now they do just fine by gathering fruits and roots and hunting small animals. They learned, you know? What, if we suddenly went out of food, could you survive in the wild? Or would you resort to eating the dead in desperation?"

Yuri shook his head, silent.

" I thought so. And Golubin, Ukov and all the bosses around here know all that very well. But Golubin and Ukov were born and raised as hunters. Tigermen hunters, or simply men hunters, really. They sneaked out at night to the Sick Zone, flushed them out and shot them. For fun, I think, simply for keeping score. Big game hunting, maybe trophy collecting, just as was done with the real tigers when they still roamed this ugly world. Ukov probably still does it, for sure."

Yuri casually put out his gun and placed it on the table, with a loud thump. He leaned over the boy and asked:

" What about Golubin? Where is the bastard?"

" That I do not know." sighed Petrov. " But after one such hunting expedition that he took alone, because Ukov was on duty or sick or something, the colonel returned shocked. The next day he simply wandered around the fort, mumbling to himself, and that night he took off. Without his precious rifle, which it is still in his room."

" But why?" insisted the inquisitor.

" I told you," answered the youngster. " He had found the Envoy. I cannot tell you anything more. I do know what it's about, I heard his mumbles. Feher heard, too. Everybody else knows nothing about it, but they do hide something, some different sin. I don't really know what or who can tell you, but I do know where you should start."

Petrov went silent for a while, then, doubtfully, whispered:

" Father Zedevich. He is...one of us. Me and him, well, you get the picture. I know the Inquisition does not prosecute army poofs, but that can certainly get a priest banned from the church. So he's vulnerable and will talk. I'm sorry to betray that dense gentle bear, but the Envoy is much more important."

Saying nothing more, the frail soldier leaned and kissed the red book, sighed and left the room, head-down through the guards' despising whistling.

#

As soon as the sun rose in the chilling morning, Yuri put on his inquisitor uniform, a golden cross around his neck, took the Red Bible under the left arm and calmly walked into the chapel. Inside, Zedevich was doing his early daily chores. Surprised by the visit, he came forward and exclaimed:

" Comrade Inquisitor? How...what can I..."

" God bless, father. I just came to confess."

" Aaah, sure, right this way...."

Yuri glanced briefly at his guards. Somewhat embarrassed, they remained outside, confused. The priest and the young officer went into the dark back of the chapel, where they could not be heard. Yuri kneeled and confessed the ordinary stuff: lies, not respecting a fast, missing a service. Zedevich, still eyes wide with amazement, blessed him and began standing up. The inquisitor swiftly grabbed his elbow, grinned and dully said:

" Father, while I'm here, and obviously ordained myself, let me hear your confession, too. Cause who else could forgive your sins out here, in this Godless wilderness?"

The priest flinched, looked at Yuri and understood he had good reasons to be afraid. Zedevich gulped and kneeled, hesitating.

" I have sinned and look for forgiveness. I drank too much, I ate pork during the fast, but there was nothing else I could cook..."

" Father" Yuri interrupted him gently," do you know Petrov?"

Zedevich went silent, lowered his eyes into the ground and began trembling and weeping.

" Yes, yes, I do...."

" Sinner, confess under His all-watchful eye, since Almighty and the Inquisition representing his will on Earth already know it, did you know his body, too? And before answering, think well about two words: Hell and Siberia."

" Yes, yes, I confess. I confess!"

Yuri caressed the thick long black hair, comforting.

" My son, I have two choices: I heard this as an Inquisitor and must let the Church know it all, or as a priest, and then I could forgive your sins and keep it a secret. But before we decide that, I have a small, tiny question. And don't lie, it's bad for the soul..."

Yuri paused and looked around the walls, feigning interest in the crudely painted saints. The priest, tearfully trembling, looked up at him, half terrified, half hopeful:

" But of course! Yes, yes, comrade Inquisitor, of course that if I can shed some light on something...anything..."

" Golubin," said Yuri abruptly. " Where is Golubin?"

" Not that! I really don't know, could not know..."

" Siberia, father?"

"...but I know who should have your answer. Zmeyev! I think he murdered the colonel. To silence him, maybe. During his last day Golubin kept saying he must confess it all, and Zmeyev's spies must have warned the Party man. And he couldn't just let the Farm be found! So Zmeyev killed him!

" The... Farm?"

Zedevich burst into tears:

" I swear I have nothing to do with the Farm. I am a sinner, but in love, not in that! And if I say anything they'll kill me, too, Zmeyev's uncle is comrade Zolotov, the General Secretary for this whole area, he's untouchable!"

The inquisitor was experienced at questioning, and he could clearly see that Zedevich was more afraid of Zmeyev than of him and would give no more details. So Yuri didn't insist, but grabbed the priest by the collar, raised him up forcefully and hissed:

" Tell me where this farm is, I'll find it myself by accident..."

Zedevich snorted and said:

" In the Gathausen village...."

#

Riding the tracked vehicle again through the tall grass, Yuri watched the grey sky. This time there was no sun to enjoy, just low dark clouds and a cold thick rain pouring down on him. Before them, some buildings slowly grew up from the bleak plain: Gathausen. He shortly glanced back. Left behind, the fort and a pensive, sulking Cherytsin. Yuri had asked the man for an APC to reach a destination of his choosing, and the commander had agreed, although in obvious doubt. The inquisitor had clearly read the commander's unease and suspicion in the man's eyes: so Cherytsin also knew about the Farm and feared Zmeyev. But the officer feared the Inquisition, too, and probably had decided it wasn't worth putting himself in peril between two dragons; better to just let them devour each other and then pretend he had been favoring the winner all along.

Three silhouettes stood up, blocking the road. Zmeyev in the middle, smiling coldly like a crocodile, and beside him two big thugs in civilian clothing. So the perfidious Cherytsin must had warned them through the radio. The inquisitor checked for his pistol, but knew it was pointless: he had no chance against three men, and the tank crew would be neutral. At best. This was a battle he could win only through words and cunning, not guns, and in craftiness Zmeyev was clearly also a formidable opponent.

" Good day to you!" shouted Zmeyev in a friendly voice. " Not such a good weather for a walk, eh?"

" Good shall it be, by God's will" replied Yuri.

He decided to strike first and, seemingly bored, jumped down and said from the corner of his mouth:

" I came to see the Farm. I heard it's well worth it..."

Zmeyev looked sideways:

" Who knows? Only comrade Zolotov, the area party secretary, can decide such matters."

The party man laughed satisfied, accompanied by his thugs. The inquisitor laughed heartily too, untouched by the weapon of high connections, then hissed, poisonous:

" You haven't done your homework well, comrade Zmeyev. I am second grade Inquisitor Marilov Yuri. Marilov indeed after my dear mother, Oleksandra Nikolaevna. In my line of work, being conspicuous is not a good thing, so I don't use my father's name, Mikhail Akimovich Korolev..."

The thugs stood awe-stricken and Zmeyev dropped his jaw, speechless. Korolev? That Korolev? The disappearing of such an important general's son would have been vigorously inquired, so it suddenly didn't seem such a good option.

" Oh, come on, comrade, I knew that already, how could I not?" replied Zmeyev in a hurry. " I was just wondering if they knew each other, that's why I mentioned my uncle... But please, please, let's go see the Farm. You want to visit the Pig Farm first, or the Cattle Farm?"

" The pigs," said Yuri as if he already knew all about it.

Fifteen minutes later, they entered a huge restored agricultural complex that housed the Pig Farm. Which was exactly that, an unbelievable wealth in the ever hungry USSR with its meager meat rations on monthly coupons: a few dim-lit huge halls, each divided into pens full of swine. And in each fold, a caretaker. Where from, so many of them? There were no civilians in the area, just tigermen and the military personnel, and no soldier was missing from the base.

The inquisitor stepped forwards, but Zmeyev suddenly stopped him with a firm hand on his chest:

" But, comrade, why lose you so young? And why break the pens? You cannot go in there without the biohazard suit!"

Confused, Yuri looked through the greenish glass window and understood: the caretakers were naked, skeleton-like, skinny and chained, dirty, with half-beast looks. They were tigermen slaves! But how could that be? He turned to Zmeyev, who coldly smiled back:

" As you can see, my friend, the tigermen's savagery is overestimated. Under certain conditions they are relatively docile, as long as one enters only in a sterile suit so as not to be smelled. They cost nothing, never protest the harsh conditions, and when they die we feed them to the pigs. So, profitable all the way."

Yuri kept his composure:

" But what about the pigs, anyway? What do you feed them with regularly, since I don't think you can ask for provender as long as they are hidden from the state?"

" Well, the pigs..." smiled Zmeyev. " They do eat provender, comrade, Zolotov sees that some from the army official farms gets lost. And we bring them here with the army's tracked vehicles, on the army's expenses. We also feed them the garbage from all the forts in this area, every commander knows what's going on. But the swine are mainly offered whatever we can find around here, like grass, roots, meat..."

" So they are hidden from the state," grinned Yuri. " What kind of meat, there are only small animals on these flatlands?"

" Come on, really? Small animals only? There is plenty of big wildlife and it is hunted down by those who enjoy it, like Golubin. Yeah, you got it, we exterminate the tigermen and feed them to the pigs. It's called efficiency."

Yuri stood silent. This was a horrible smugglers' roguery, but was it enough for Zmeyev to kill Golubin? He didn't think so, and the priest was too disgusted by the Farm for it to be all about some pigs. So, pretending to be bored by such things he had already known, the young man said:

" Comrade, we both know my silence can't be bought with some pork chops. But I think the Cattle Farm might interest me more..."

" Ha, I knew you were a connoisseur!" grinned Zmeyev perversely. " That's only for the selected few, way less people know about it. Do you prefer colts or calves?"

" Colts."

" Yes, so I've heard... Right this way, please."

He led Yuri beyond the pig halls, all the way to a long white building with small grated windows. The thugs remained outside, but the two of them entered a cold hallway and Zmeyev walked a few doors away and took out a key. The man unlocked the padlock and invited him inside, with a large doorman-like gesture. Yuri stepped in, unsure.

All the furniture in the room was just a bed, a chair and a sink, all from some rugged reddish metal. On the bed, chained with his butt up, a teenager tigerboy lied sobbing. It could not speak, of course, but yelped like a puppy. Next to the bed, a box with whips, blades and various other such stuff.

Yuri stood for a few minutes, thinking fast. He exited, almost bumping into the glowing Zmeyev.

" No. This is not enough. If you want me to write down a report with none of these included, I need to know what you did with Golubin's body."

" Ah, ha, ha!" laughed Zmeyev. " It might amaze you, but I really didn't kill him. Actually, nobody did, that damn fool went out for tigermen hunting one night, returned crazy and the next night simply took off into the Sick Zone. He went mad!"

The party attaché watched the inquisitor slyly and said:

" But I do know the village where you could find his remains. I like you so much that I'll even provide you with a car and a biohazard suit. But since he's deep into the Sick Zone, no one will be willing to accompany you. And I have never ever heard of somebody going alone into the Zone and coming back, dead or alive. The tigermen always get them all..."

#

Yuri turned the wheel and stopped. Alone in an old rusty 4x4 GAZ car, he had almost reached the village, amazingly without being attacked once by the dreaded beasts. He leaned nearer to the babbling radio receiver and tuned it until he could clearly hear commander Cherytsin's voice:

" Black 11 to all bases in area 17-32, I repeat: inquisitor Marilov went mad, stole a vehicle and ran into the Zone, being most certainly infected. I order his immediate termination upon identification. I repeat. Black 11 to all..."

The young man turned off the radio. So that was the reason behind Zmeyev's help. Yuri could not understand why he had not been simply killed right there and fed to the pigs, but there was no way back to find out. All he could do now was to determine what had really happened to Golubin and the Envoy.

Yuri drove into the village, cautiously, ready to quickly accelerate whenever a tigerman showed up. But none did. He rolled slowly alongside the ruins, decrepit building after decrepit building, and still saw nothing out of the ordinary. After going through the whole village with no result, the inquisitor decided to try again. He turned the car around and suddenly hit the brakes hard, petrified with amazement. In front of him, the road was blocked by the most unbelievable scene ever, scientifically impossible: a group of tiger-people. Not one tigerman ready to strike, not two beast men ripping each other into pieces for territory; but some twenty calm tiger-people of both sexes, watching him in silence, motionless. And amongst them, colonel Golubin, dressed only with a pair of camouflage pants, friendly waving the officer to come closer.

In awe, Yuri got out of the car and stumbled towards them, frightened and inconvenienced by the large stiff suit. Golubin smiled and shouted:

" Lose the damn thing, you won't get infected! And the gun, you won't be attacked, either. I promise."

The inquisitor took off the biohazard overall and, almost naked, trembling in his shorts, took Golubin's hand. Surrounded by the still silent half-beasts, the men entered a ruined house. Golubin lit a candle, put it on a wooden table and showed Yuri a chair. He himself sat in another and the docile tiger-people sat directly on the floor, in a wide circle.

" Listen here, my friend. Since you came for me all this way, you must have passed over many lies and many evil men; you already gave up everything in order to find the truth. I know it. And I'll give you that truth, at least as much as I understand it myself."

The muscular colonel looked around him, gently, and the creatures looked back with human gazes, not beastly ones.

" You know I used to hunt tigermen. I was a wicked man..." sighed Golubin. " And you know that after a hunting trip I returned a changed man."

The Inquisitor nodded. He said nothing, just listened on.

" That expedition was right here, into this no-name village. I was alone, cause Ukov was on duty. I was sneaking stealthily through the ruins, searching for prey, when I saw a light coming from this very house. Can you imagine? A light? And not even flickering? Where from? The tigermen have no electricity or mind to use it! Curious, I went in. But inside, surprisingly, it was again pitch dark. So I stumbled and fell, then I felt a hand helping me up."

" Helping you up!" chanted the tiger-people, to Yuri's shock, who knew their brain speaking centers had been utterly destroyed by the virus.

" Ah, you wonder about their ability to talk?" laughed Golubin.

" You'll understand. So, a hand picked me up and I found myself facing a tall shape of blinding light. It did not speak to me, but I somehow knew clearly that I have been a bad man. Not anymore, since from then on I received a mission of goodness! A healing one, and I understood immediately, as if it was too obvious, that from that moment I had the power to heal the virus away from these unfortunate ones. Just by touching them. Simple as that."

" The hand!" exclaimed the tigermen, too, grateful.

" Yes," smiled Golubin," it's all real, all these here I found wandering around the village, I touched them and they... got healed. Of course, all are still in their own mental development stage, clearly just some big children, but now they can learn to speak and to live together. I do not know if they will ever go back to a civilized world as we know it or simply gather in new tribes of hunter-gatherers, the new redskins, so to speak, and evolve into a different one. We'll see about that in some centuries."

" But how?" asked Yuri. "A miracle? Was it an angel?"

" Oh, come on, man, don't you start too, like Feher and Petrov. They heard that I talked to a messenger and, poof, biblical miracles. No, I think it was rather a telepathic alien that touched my hand in order to infect me with a contagious counter-virus. Or nano-robots, whatever, an antidote anyway. Which I transmit through touch, just as they have been transmitting their virus before. I don't believe in mystical stuff...."

" Well, true, but still..."

Yuri couldn't finish his sentence, suddenly overwhelmed by a terrific metallic roar. He ran outside to see what was that all about and bumped head first into some hellish creature, with squid eyes and a pig's snout. Then the officer got over his surprise and understood he was looking at a gas mask and also straight down the barrel of a rifle, since the creature was just a soldier from a team of about a dozen, hurriedly pouring down from a helicopter. One of them gestured arrogantly and, from the way that wave looked and his stoutness, the Inquisitor guessed it was Zmeyev. The others obeyed the signs and rushed inside the house, weapons at the ready.

A rumble of machine-gun bursts, then the masked men exited, accompanied only by Golubin, dragged between them sad and broken, offering no resistance. A speaker crackled on Zmeyev's suit and barked:

" A thousand times thank you, comrade Inquisitor! I couldn't find the asshole for so long, but now I just followed your signal and there he is! I see the bastard was surrounded by some ZMBs, but my troopers shot them just as the beasts were about to devour him. A fate reserved for you, comrade Marilov, when they'll find you later!"

Zmeyev waved and two soldiers grabbed Yuri and threw him inside the house.

" As for Golubin, since he went insane and thinks he's some kind of a prophet, he'll get his prophecy right away!"

The troopers kicked the inquisitor inside and blocked the door with the wooden table, while Zmeyev could still be heard yelling and laughing:

" The tigermen will love the taste of your noble flesh, comrade!"

Yuri kneeled on the blood soaked floor and stood up in the dark. Feeling his way with both hands, he walked along the walls, stumbling over corpses. He found the window, boarded up with heavy nails decades before, and started pulling on them. He drew for many minutes, while from outside he could hear screams of pain, knocks, Zmeyev's laughter and the propeller's roar. When he finally managed to break a board loose, Yuri saw the window had grates too, so he could not get out; but he could see the helicopter flying away with a huge racket, and in the yard a cross profiled against the starry clear night sky, with a limp body hanging lifeless on it.

Then, silence. Exhausted and despaired, Yuri sled down the wall and laid on the cold floor, sobbing.

#

Light. Some warmth on the unshaven cheek. Yuri opened his eyes and saw the morning sun's light, slipping inside through the broken corner of the window. At the door, somebody was pulling on the table, hard, and a thud came when it fell heavy on the gravel. The man waited for a few moments, but nobody opened the door, so he stood up and went outside. Two tiger-people were walking away towards the village, holding hands. They smiled and shouted:

" The hand! Helped him up!"

On the cross, some blood stains, but no body. Had the tigermen taken Golubin away to devour, or maybe worship? Those two carried nothing...

Had the Envoy come for him and took the bad man turned good to the skies? Who knows...

Or maybe Golubin was wrong about his faith and had been miraculously resurrected for real, to walk around the ravaged Europe healing the tigermen and hailing a new era...

Perhaps.

###

**ZMB 2. Molokan**

In post-apocalyptic Siberia, the villagers of a taiga hamlet dead for a century are resurrected by a mysterious force; together with Yuri Marilov, we'll gather clues to find the truth: is it a divine miracle, or there's someone else speaking to us?

"Welcome to Tsyalonie, comrade captain!"

"Inquisitor Marilov, God help us!" shouted Yuri, trying to make himself heard over the helicopter's roar.

The landscape looked desolate. The frozen lake they had landed on, just a lonely island of sky in the dark ocean of the taiga, was not that large, so the penumbra seeping from the countless trees seemed to flood them with silent darkness. The pale sun could not be seen at all: the rotor had whirled the thick snow into a white stinging mist and the grey massive machine, riddled with rust specks, seemed itself no more than a frightened strange beast, ready to run away in fear. The pilot, too, so Marilov waved his hand and the Mil rose up in a booming rumble and flew away over the silent woods, rushing back to civilization.

They all stood quiet for a few moments, faces hidden beyond the fur caps and thick mufflers, whizzing hard as they tried to breathe the biting cold air filled with white dust. Then, as silence fell back over the ice circle, the three army men approached the inquisitor and hugged him welcome. They had never met before, but up here people were so scarce, that everyone was family; and, anyway, shaking hands was out of the question, since no one was crazy enough to remove his gloves, even for a fraction of a second.

Yuri watched their faces: the tallest, larger man, morose and arrogant, had a thick black beard, carefully kempt – probably Zansko, the bishop's envoy; the smiling blond that had welcomed him, shaved, his blue eyes lightened by a playful gaze, must have been lieutenant Baltev, the commander of the small Red Army squad sent here; as for the third soldier, short and apparently fragile under the way too large military overcoat, he had no idea, and the cold, hostile, green eyes told him nothing useful.

The officer grabbed his arm in a friendly manner and pulled him towards the tree line, where and armored sled awaited. It looked surprisingly well kept for these decaying times, in which normalcy meant ever-degrading, patched up vehicles. An unexpected condition, suggesting the Party must be really interested in the mystery out here. They gladly huddled inside it, happy to warm each other, and the sled started down the tree lines with a deafening half-malfunctioning engine roar.

The trek lasted only about an hour, and the cold, the exhaustion and the monotony of the landscape made Yuri doze. No animals could be see; no birds heard; there was no grass or bushes; just endless straight trees and mounds of snow, vaguely illuminated under the cold, oblique sunrays. An ancient, primordial world this was, indifferent to and untainted by the humanity's ZMB apocalypse. Yet, evil dwelled even here and had just showed up. To be inquired by him, inquisitor Yuri Marilov.

"Who would have thought? The virus all the way up here, so far from the Sick Zones?" said the lieutenant, while they took off their overcoats in the cramped changing room of the tiny base, hurriedly erected from synthetic igloos.

The buildings were obviously prefabricated, interconnected into a hive resistant to the freezing arctic temperatures.

"Not ZMB", interrupted the short person, proving to be a slim, cute fair-haired young woman, though with a face frozen in a harsh expression. "Doctor Ekaterina Abramova Borisova, biologist," she waved at the inquisitor, seemingly disappointed to have had spent so many words on him.

"And don't you ever dare call her Katya or Katyusha, cause you'll rather go look for bears in the woods!" laughed the young officer. "And the comrade there is father Vladimir Afanasievich Zonsko," he pointed the bearded man that grimaced, just as unfriendly as the scientist.

Marilov nodded politely, hiding a discreet smile, then mumbled a "Slava Bodu!". He turned to Baltev:

"So you must be Gennady Davidovich. You look just like your brother Seriodja. I've met him in Bulgaria, on the border with Dead Greece. I'm second grade inquisitor Marilov, Yuri for you, my friends and esteemed colleagues. Who wants to brief me?"

"Why not eat something first?" asked Baltev kindly, quickly punished by disagreeing gazes from the other two.

"No, no, let's get straight to work. Or talk, anyway."

The officer sighed, took out his coat a small bottle and sipped from it, then led them through the oval, airtight doors into a partly transparent corridor, strongly jilted by the blizzard gusts. From it they entered the central igloo and passed, following the colored lines, into another one serving as a meeting hall. They sat on plastic stools and the lieutenant started assembling a projector, while mumbling:

"Well, we're dealing with a new epidemic outbreak, this time behind the lines, so to speak."

"No, we are not", said Borisova, "it's just some kind of infection, a strange septicemia."

"Bullshit", intervened the cleric, "we're talking about a resurrection. That's why we're here, to find out if it's a godly miracle, or, on the contrary, a divine punishment."

"Yeah, right!" laughed Baltev, "I can't wait to see that, a Molokan wonder! The Party will never approve a miracle outside the righteous orthodoxy..."

"Comrades", Marilov gently interrupted, "I am the inquisitor here. I don't need opinions and points of view, but cold facts. I need to see exactly what is going on and then we'll find the truth. So, please, let us see."

The projector started buzzing. On the wall, a military map opened up. A lot of green for forests, some blue for rivers and lakes, and in a corner a red dot. A village.

"Tsyalonie," said the lieutenant. "No roads to it, let alone railway or airfield. They did not need any. Here's the place two years ago."

The image showed a desolate landscape of ruins covered in snow, small cottages almost completely unstrung, huddled in half a circle around a tiny white wood chapel with small, broken windows and a fallen over bell tower. Behind it, a rectangular field covered in simple crosses improvised from wood branches tied together, the names carved directly into the bark.

"The hamlet was founded by the Molokan sect in the 1850s, when they fled persecution."

"Rather Dukhobors, I'd say", Zansko interrupted, rudely.

"Whatever, Molokans, Dukobors, same thing now. Sects broken away from the Orthodox Church. Most fled to Alaska and Canada, but these ones ended up here, in Siberia. They built their homes in the middle of nowhere, undisturbed by anybody, and minded their own business. Till 1921, when a typhus outbreak hit them hard. Most died, the rest ran away. The village crumbled and became just a footnote on military maps. Till recently. Here is Tsyalonie now."

He changed the picture. The contrast was indeed shocking, a real time jump: the hamlet was all complete again, the cottages in an ordinary state, neither brand new, nor ruined, fences back up, wooden buckets near wells, dogs and goats in the yards, piles of firewood next to the doors. Then a different photo: the chapel, also reborn, even with the bell tower strung up against the blue cloudless skies. In front of it, a compact group of parishioners, all dressed up in old times clothes. The graveyard behind them was in disorder, only a few crosses still standing, the rest fallen over the wide open graves.

"Well, now I do understand the bishop's opinion about a miracle, but not the army's one about a ZMB infection. I see no tigermen ferociously attacking."

"Let's watch a little film, then. Do you like art cinema, comrade inquisitor?"

"Not really."

"That's great, since there'll be no art. Maybe it's for the best you haven't eaten, after all."

A film started playing on the wall. The bad quality and instability suggested it was some military cam for exercises. In the background, the village. All over it, peasants rushing towards unseen, mysterious goals. They moved quite slow, neither fast like tigermen, nor jerkily like some stiff dead corpses, but naturally. Just not using an ordinary rhythm, but like walking on eggs. A soldier went to the nearest group, yelling something, pointing a gun at them, ready to fire. The villagers noticed him and stopped, them they all changed direction towards him. Still slowly, peacefully, with no expression on their faces. The army man got closer and said something. The Molokans all at once opened up their arms, as if welcoming a long lost relative with a warm hug.

The private turned to the camera, asking for orders, then shrugged and also opened up his arms, answering the welcome. The closest hugged him tight. A second grabbed his neck, a third force opened his jaws. The infantryman struggled in desperation. The camera shook too, the man filming standing up, yelling something or gesturing. The first peasant opened his mouth wide and threw between the victim's lips a brown torrent, then let the man fall to the ground, shivering.

A gun point entered the camera, then a quick succession of lights: the one holding the weapon opened fire. Bullets hit the villagers, sank into them splashing cloth pieces, flesh bits and blood drops, but they did not fall down and kept walking calmly. Not to the one filming, but back towards the chapel. The view suddenly shifted around: the cameraman turned to his back. For a fraction of a second the entire screen got covered by the wide open arms of an expressionless Molokan, several other figures behind him. Moments later, the image continued from ground level. The fallen camera showed only snow and, for a while, an army boot shaking as if electrocuted.

"That's why," whispered Baltev and sat on a stool. "I knew them both. Good guys."

Marilov said nothing, pensive. He turned to the woman and asked:

"Doctor Borisova? You disagree with that diagnostic?"

She stood up and went to the projector, slipped a different slide inside and answered:

"I do. Those are not tigermen. The soldiers were found in a coma and brought to the nearest medical point, in Thiksyn. All we could determine for sure was exactly that. They are not ZMB infected. Actually, with no virus, whatsoever."

"Why only that?"

"Because we had to work with that."

A color picture. Two hospital beds, each completely covered in a lot of brown, gelatinous pulp.

"That, those, are the two soldiers. The moment we brought them inside, they melted into a paste. I analyzed it: it's living matter. Human cells, but all turned to stem, a kind of unspecialized tabula rasa, mixed with bacteria. Not infectious ones, but the ordinary kind you usually find inside humans, or the cold-loving Archaea type, native to the arctic climate. So all we could find out was that no, it is definitely not ZMB."

She sat back down, silent. Marilov said nothing for a few minutes, just watching them one by one. Eventually, he leaned forward and said:

"First, nobody ever solved a mystery before a good sleep. So, a dinner and a rest would be good for all of us. Second, since you feared a ZMB infection, I presume you brought up sterile suits?"

"Even better," answered Baltev, "some that are also cold-resistant. Completely sealed off, chemically, biologically, thermally, you name it. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out."

"Very good. So tomorrow we'll have a walk. Do you have any candles around?"

#

"From here on we must walk."

The motor sled puffed, spew out some black smoke and ceased the rumble. The team looked ridiculous, like some funny cosmonauts, as they wore a layer of thick clothes, with woolen pullovers and all, then the bio-hazard suits, and over those some fur greatcoats and fur caps. They even felt like intruders into an alien world, inhabited only by the trees surrounding them hatefully, shaking with the blizzard.

Baltev put a Kalashnikov on his shoulder, but the inquisitor stopped him with a short gesture. The lieutenant pointed to the tiny box with two buttons at the wrist. Yuri pushed one and said:

"Leave it here, Gennady, you saw it's no use. On the contrary, if you panic and shoot, you might hit us."

The other two looked at them, so the officer took his hand and showed how to select a private channel.

"I won't panic. But so be it, I'll indulge you."

He pointed the gun and started gesturing as if stubbornly refusing.

"Listen up, I can't talk too long or they'll get suspicious. I don't know about the doctor lady, but Zansko works for Smirgyn, the governor, so be careful what you say. He has the report already written, we'll get to the official conclusion it's a ZMB hotbed and wipe it, so he'll get a good boost in the Party. So enjoy the trip, there'll be no other. And do not say anything bad about the leaders, or you'll stay in Siberia forever."

He switched to the general team channel and said:

"So be it, comrade captain, but mark my words: I told you so."

He shrugged and pointed a direction. They lined up, the lieutenant in front, and started struggling through the tall snow. They had to help themselves against the trees trunks to resist the frozen gusts and pull the thick, stiff branches, to force a way through the snow mounds that needed climbing up and down, each in his turn. The light kept changing between penumbra in the thicket, where they removed the sunglasses to see around, and blinding glare in the wider spaces, when they hurriedly put them back to protect the hurting eyes against the sun, shinier than usual that morning.

"So, comrade Borisova," Marilov asked, "what are you studying in this wilderness, if I may ask? Or if it's not too secret."

She answered:

"Of course it is, comrade inquisitor, but I'm sure you have the clearance. So I'll apologize to the others and tell you on a private channel."

She pushed the button.

"Take care with Zansko", said Marilov. "He's a snitch."

The woman smiled, slightly amused:

"You enjoy playing with fire, comrade Marilov. Thank you for the warning. What if I'm one, too?"

He laughed.

"You are not. I can feel it."

She watched him for a moment.

"Well... thank you for the friendly warning, comrade. And trust. I am researching the Archaea."

"Yuri, please, Ekaterina. Yes, I do like to play games, all kinds. And I have no idea what Arheya is. A weapon?"

"No, Yuri, the Archaea bacteria. In short, so as not to bore you with science, all living creatures on Earth are of just two types: Bacteria and Eucaria. But in the 70's some Americans discovered some extremophiles, meaning one-cell being enjoying extreme temperatures, are not at all bacteria in their DNA. They are something else completely, probably the oldest inhabitants of this planet. They could not study them enough to see why they have never evolved during so many millions of years, cause not that long after that the US lost the ZMB virus, the Event fell upon the world and all humanity went to hell, except our dear USSR. American scientists included, turned into ravenous tigermen like everybody else. So I study them now, here, in the freezing cold, to see if they had anything to do with the biological weapon of ZMB."

"And, do they?"

"I don't think so. No. For them a virus and a human are just as different, so they could not be, how to say it, converted."

"All right, Katya, thank you, maybe back in the base you'll tell me more. I have some quality cognac in my room and scientific theories are better debated over a cup of steaming spirits... that if you'll forgive my insolence and not send me to look for bears in the woods."

She giggled.

"You would have to search a lot for them, there are only trees here. About forgiving... I'll think about it later tonight, comrade Yuri."

They realized Zansko was watching them, so they stopped the conversation. The next three hours were spent quietly struggling with the aches in the legs muscles hard worked against the snow. At least the blizzard pushed them from behind, and Baltev knew an easier way, longer, but not needing to climb the row of hills hiding Tsyalonie from the rest of the world.

Around noon, they reached the edge of the taiga and saw a dreamy view: open fields covered in snow, and, above them, the village, frozen in time and covered in silence. Whirlwinds raised the white dust and threw it at them like some kind of ill omen, and Yuri gazed for a long time at the hamlet, trying to figure out what felt out of place about the peaceful landscape.

#

The was no one on the deserted alleys. The Molokans had vanished without a trace. The team filmed everything, each one with a camera fixed against the chest. Not even animals could be seen anywhere. The chains held no dogs, the pens no goats. Yet, Marilov felt it was not that what gave him an eerie feeling; it was something else, still undiscerned, like a word you know but cannot utter.

They entered the first cottage. Quite dark inside, cold too, but everything else seemed orderly and as ordinary as possible for a home from the beginning of the 20th century. A bed covered in ornamented covers, an icon on the wall, pots near the oven, wooden three-legged stools, a black and white picture showing a family, posing in tense positions. The inquisitor felt a few objects. They seemed normal, not over a century old, since the inhabitants had died, but neither new, made up two months before.

Ekaterina pointed the dishes. Nothing extraordinary, just clean plates, carefully laid over some cloth, so he shrugged, questioningly.

"I thought I should take some food samples to check for infections," she said.

"So? Are they?"

"Well, do you see any food around? Even a fleck? Apparently, the new Molokans need no food, not even milky milk."

"Dukobors!" argued the annoyed Zansko over the communicator.

"Dokobors, whatever, but there goes the joke, then. Moloko meaning milk, molokans... whatever. The point is these resurrected ones don't seem to feed to survive. Well, not on food, anyway."

"So let's hope they are not vampires hiding in coffins till midnight!" laughed Gennady.

Yuri nodded and went out, in the courtyard. He kneeled at the dog's place and turned over the clay pot: empty. The goats' pen. No fodder. He looked at the firewood pile and finally realized what was missing. In all the paintings depicting winter landscapes, there are always smoke lines above the chimneys. But there was no smoke in Tsyalonie even in the frosty weather, since there were no fires in the stoves.

They wondered around the village, finding no living creature. All the cottages held the same cold, quiet penumbra, everything orderly, but no fires, no food, no books, just black and white pictures and naïve icons or wooden crosses. They went to the graveyard. Almost all the graves were open, dozens of them, with empty coffins inside. Only three were still unearthed, intact.

"Should we open one and see why the exceptions were, well, excepted?"

"No way," said Baltev, "the ground is frozen solid, rock-hard, so even if we had spades, which we don't, we could do nothing much. We would require dynamite."

"Let's see the names on the three crosses," said Borisova, "there are still documents in the village's archives. There were not that many inhabitants, we'll easily find out if those not woken up had died differently than the rest."

"Well, better than nothing, so a good idea," said Yuri.

They filmed the names and went to the chapel. They could see, through the thick grey glass windows, there was no light inside. But they could also see numerous standing, unmoving silhouettes breaking the darkness like statues. They looked at each other, unsure. Finally, Ekaterina said:

"I'm going in. I might find something to take a sample from."

"We'll all enter," approved the young lieutenant and took out a pistol, hidden in the overcoat till then.

"No, we won't", said Marilov. "Since you brought that to be the brave man, you know better than me that when a scouting mission is started, the scouts must always secure a way out in case of fast retreat. Right?"

"Right," the officer agreed half-heartedly.

"I hold the highest rank and I could order, but I'm asking. You and the father stay here and hold the door. Cover us if we must run out. Understood?"

"Sure," answered the bearded man, "we would do anything for the expedition's success! We'll secure the door!"

Baltev gave up, disappointed. They all went around the building, to the wooden carved hardy door. Yuri touched it and slowly pulled out. It opened just a little, unwieldy, so Zansko, being the strongest, joined in and pulled harder, panting. The door finally opened up, just enough for a person to go through, sideways. The inquisitor and the scientist sneaked into the darkness, heads up.

They stopped for a few moments, in order to allow their eyes getting used to the sudden passing from the glaring whiteness outside to the gloom inside. As they began seeing, they stood speechless. All the villagers were huddled together in small clusters among the benches, immobile, facing different directions, with no apparent sense. Among them, as if members of the same gathering, stood the house animals, too. Not dogs among dogs or goats among goats, just as people were not mixed according to age, gender, family or any other resemblance, but in a weird way that seemed to follow a different, not human logic.

Every once in a while, some group moved a few steps together, as if lead by a single mind, people and animals both. Sometimes, one Molokan went to a different gathering, hugged a peasant from the others and kissed, gurgling disgustingly, then came back to his folks and kissed them all, too, even the beasts. It could not be seen clearly, but they seemed to regurgitate among them the same reddish substance they used to attack the troopers in the film.

Ekaterina grabbed Yuri's arm and pointed to the altar. There was no one there, so he shrugged, confused. She grabbed him again and showed, with nervous gestures, the two silver objects: a chalice with ruby wine and a casket with wafer. She then took out a spatula and a small phial from her overcoat. The inquisitor approved with a nod and they started walking forwards, on tip-toes, carefully sliding along the wall. The resurrected did not seem to notice them: they were expressionless and their eyes were glassy dead, obviously unused. They apparently oriented themselves only by touch and maybe some unseen, alien senses, probably radar-like.

When they reached the nearest dog, just as blind as his masters, Borisova took out a small long gadget and held it in the air. She showed it to Yuri. It said minus 23 Celsius, or minus 5 F. She put it next to the mutt and kept it there for a few dozen seconds, then showed it again. Still the exact same temperature. Marilov looked at her, puzzled, and she put her finger on the mercury line: it should have been raised by the mammal's body heat. If it had been a mammal.

They advanced a few steps more along the moving labyrinth made from villagers, then suddenly froze. One of them was rushing straight at the intruders. They distanced themselves, prepared to fight the aggression, but the man just went on between them, reached for the wooden wall and licked it. The timber rumbled and let out a pink ooze, promptly sucked up by the peasant before going back to his flock and starting a new kissing cycle. Marilov noticed the man had chosen a longer path to avoid the few sunrays getting through the small windows and forming a thin stream of light along the benches row. He showed that to the doctor, gesturing. He dared not speak, for inside there was absolute silence and the resurrected made no sound whatsoever. Maybe they did not use hearing, just like seeing or smelling, but he did not want to try out the theory. So they sneaked along the light stream, all the way to the altar.

The woman carefully took up a piece of wafer, let it fall inside the phial and put it next to the casket. Tense, they watched the peasants, but those failed to react. She then used a different phial to take some wine, too. She put them under her coat and slowly started back to the exit.

The bustle stopped. The Molokans suddenly seemed more alert, as if finally knowing something was going on. Not like watching the intruders, but like listening to an inner voice speaking up. The two moved a few steps more, and then all the peasants and their animals turned to them and started walking slowly towards the altar, ready to embrace the newcomers and welcome them into the congregation. Forever.

Yuri pushed Borisova into the light line, but it did not seem to stop the villagers for good. They did slow down when touched by sunrays. They did gurgle their throats louder, irritated, red liquid streams leaking from the corners of their mouths as if the sun hurt them. But they kept on going. Frightened, the woman crossed herself. Marilov saw the sign and grinned, inspired.

He took out a small bag, kneeled in a hurry and started extracting candle after candle. He put them in a circle around them. Hands shaking, the Molokans almost on them, he pushed a few times the button on an electric lighter till it finally went on, sparkling. He quickly ignited all the candles, and his suspicion proved correct: each peasants reaching the burning circle turned away, cumbersome, and walked back several steps. Then he seemed to remember something and came back at them, only to be repelled once more, and so on. They clearly had no intention to give up and obviously became more and more agitated, so Yuri abandoned the silence and started the communicator.

"Gennady! Gennady!"

A few cracks and a cold fear that maybe they had been left behind by both their comrades and God. Then the lieutenant's voice came over:

"Yes, Yuri! Speak! Want us to come in?"

"No, no! Do not come in! I repeat: do not enter! Copy?"

"Yes, I got it. Then what?"

"Go as fast as possible to the nearest house, rip some wood and cloth and prepare four torches, large enough to last. Understood? And do you have anything to set them ablaze?"

"Yes, I understood. And yes, I've got matches. What to do with the torches?"

"You bring them back at the chapel's door, but do not enter, just let us know. It might last a little till we get out, but do not come in, unless you want us all dead!"

So they did. While the other two rushed to the task, Yuri and Ekaterina began, with great care, to move the candle circle inch by inch, taking precautions never to interrupt it. The Molokans kept on circling them like a human whirlwind, as if they were stuck with a collective mind that knew just one thing: to get to the stolen samples. But not to get near the heat. Run away from it. Then get back. And so on. When they finally reached the door, the inquisitor glimpsed the torches through the crack. Their comrades were waiting.

"Gennady, listen carefully. We'll count to ten, then Borisova and me will rush out the door. You give her a torch, Zansko to me. Right away, no questions or anything, we run for the tree line. Never, not for a moment, lose the torches. All right?"

"All right, Yuri. We're ready for you. Start counting."

They rushed out the door. Sluggish, the resurrected failed to grab them, but did not give up and started after them, in a line. The four humans, each holding a torch, made a run for the woods, followed by the peasants in constant pacing. Reaching the trees, they looked behind. The villagers had broken into two groups: one still chasing them, the other returning to the chapel.

The next two hours felt like a horrible nightmare. They could not run through the thick snow, just walk one step at a time, bitterly bitten by the blizzard. Their legs hurt terribly, like being stung with knives, and so did their eyes, filled in tears, their nose, throat and lungs struggling to breath in the frozen wind gusts heavy with ice droplets. The peasants, dressed only in woolen jackets in Tsar era fashion, went on tireless, not caring about the frost. On the contrary, the colder it got, the brisker they became.

Baltev had radioed for help even before leaving the chapel, but the rescue squad had to come all the way from the base in the other, less reliable, armored sled, since the good one was still waiting in the forest. Eventually, to their relief, the uneven rumble of the old engine closed in and they fell into the snow, exhausted, as their saviors rushed by towards the villagers. They let their torches sizzle and go out, too tired to turn and see the brutal scene rapidly unfolding behind them. They did hear, though, the angry screams of the soldiers, then the whoosh of the flame throwers. The Molokans remained voiceless, even while burned alive. When grabbed and pushed into the sledge, all the four could see was a marsh of brownish matter sinking into the snow, faster than natural.

#

"It's all done."

Marilov raised his tired red eyes from the hot tea cup and looked at Baltev, without a word. The lieutenant moved from the door and Zansko entered the room, too, then they both sat down.

"Meaning?" asked the inquisitor, not sure he wanted the answer.

"Meaning last night the bishop received the film and he concluded it was devil's work," said the bearded man, proud to have been proven right. "His Holiness called the governor and two emergency helicopters were sent. Loaded with napalm. Tsyalonie is no more."

Yuri grimaced, but held off any comments and turned to the officer.

"Weren't those army choppers? Shouldn't their mission have required an approved report to even be initiated?"

The lieutenant shrugged, ashamed.

"The army belongs to the people, Yuri, and the people means the Party. What the governor says is done, not objected to. Yes, the aerial mission got its OK after a report. In which our scouting team discovered the village was a ZMB hotbed. The Party Secretary will write a communique tomorrow and we'll receive some decorations. The report... we'll write it today and date it yesterday. You know how that works. Sign it or not, it will have your signature anyway."

"Yeah, I know how things work," answered the inquisitor, calmly.

He sighed.

"I'll sign it. On one condition. I want a copy of the film."

"Ha!" the cleric cracked up. "No problem, comrade, since the film shows exactly what we said: there was a witches Sabbath in that chapel, a sinful, devilish corruption. You saw them kissing even man to man, those lustful lewd sinners! Even you, yourself, rejected them by the holy power of the candles!"

"Yes, indeed, Father, and I'll probably get a raise for that. So will you, I'm sure, even larger maybe. But that is not what I'm talking about. Wouldn't it have been more useful for the Soviets to figure out what the Hell was going on there?"

"Useful or not," Gennady defended himself, "what was and is no more does not matter for anybody now. I'm a soldier. I found a threat, I destroyed it."

"And Borisova? What does she think?"

"Ah, your Katyusha," laughed the lieutenant. "What, you think she was not seen last night, entering your room? You know we have cameras everywhere, you Don Juan, you."

Confused, Yuri said nothing. Exhausted, he had slept deeply and had no idea about any visit, but denying would just raise suspicions. So he kept on:

"She signed, too?"

"No, she's a mule and won't do it. But she does not matter, I'll do the Army report, Zansko the Church one, and you the one for the guys in Moscow. She's furious, but who cares? Her project about the bacteria is terminated, in a few days she'll be sent back to Vladivostok."

"Can I see her?"

Baltev looked at him, then at the priest.

"What's the point? She's busy packing. Didn't you have enough fun last night, stud?"

Yuri understood the message and nodded, resigned.

"Pointless, indeed. Well, comrades, my mission here is done. I'll radio to the Commissariat and ask for a ride, if you have nothing against it. And I'll be on my way."

The other two nodded and stood up. He hugged them both and went out, all too tired.

#

A few months later, one cold autumn evening, a tall, elegant man in a long black overcoat, carrying a slim leather briefcase, walked inside the Chemistry Laboratory of the Nijni Novgorod University. He strode with big, sure steps and the composure of somebody who knows he has the power to hurt people, legally. He waved off the guard leading him in and went on among the tables to the only corner not yet engulfed by darkness. A small figure sat down, working on a microscope. He touched her shoulders briefly and smiled at the angry green eyes. She snapped:

"Damn it, Sergey, I already told you I'll lock the lab when I'm done. What?! Yuuuriii!"

Her slim lips relaxed into a smile, too. She hugged him, then, ashamed, showed him a chair.

"Sit! I thought I'll never see you again! And it's been a while!"

"Well, I'm sure they watched you for a time, so it wouldn't have been a good idea. Anyway, wasn't it supposed to be Vladivostok? I had to do some detective work to find you. The USSR is not small. In fact, nowadays it is the entire civilized world left."

"Civilized!"

She chuckled.

"Sort of. Yes, indeed, I did not have the right connections to get to Moscow, but at least I managed to get away from Siberia. Why suffer the cold, if they don't allow me to study the extremophile bacteria? In here it's somewhat better."

"So this is what you got after all," he said, looking around.

"Yeah. Years of research, wasted. Just because I failed to praise some well-connected apparatchik."

"Smirgyn, the taiga governor? An asshole indeed. By the way, what do you really think happened there?"

She watched him for a long time, measuring his soul. She decided to risk and said:

"Maybe you'll laugh, but I think it was a first contact between two intelligent species. And we solved it Soviet style. With genocide. Bacteria-cide, to be more exact."

Marilov sat down, leaned over to her and whispered:

"I won't laugh. I think the same. I studied the film and found some weird clues. Here!"

He took a large envelope out the briefcase, opened it, picked up a few photos and handed them to her. Borisova looked at them and asked:

"I see nothing special. The same villagers, in some black-and-white pics and also in some color ones."

Yuri smiled, a little smug:

"Well, you do need a detective eye. Or an inquisitor's one. See this guy in this 1920 picture? See his deep scar above the right brow?"

She nodded and he pointed a different photo:

"Here's the same man in the chapel film. How's that scar here?"

Amazed, she said:

"It's not there anymore! It's gone! But how? That would require some serious plastic surgery!"

Marilov said nothing and picked up some more pictures. She watched them all and exclaimed:

"This guy has lost his huge hand cut! That old hag has both eyes, but used to be one-eyed! This one's ear grew back! This girl is no longer burned all over her leg!"

"True. Now. Do you remember three graves were not opened? Three corpses had not been resurrected?"

"Yes, of course. What about them?"

He took out three papers and put them on the table, then three more.

"Copies of their police records. All clean, as you see, they were no criminals or sinners. So it was not a miracle where God overlooked them as punishment. But these ones are their death certificates. What's common in these corpses?"

Ekaterina studied them carefully. She thought for a while, then checked them again and said:

"They all missed something. The first, a leg, the second an arm, the last had had his skull completely crushed in a logging accident. But weren't the other ones imperfect, too?"

Yuri gave no answer, just smiled, encouragingly. Eventually, she found the conclusion herself and smiled:

"Putrefaction! Since their deaths, a century ago, only skeletons were left of them. And those whose skeletons were not entire, did not resurrect! That can mean only one thing. They are not the same Molokans, brought back to life, but just, just..."

"Just reconstructions. Simulations. Approximate clones, built over the bones. Incomplete skeleton, incomplete plan, no resurrection. The question is, who built them? Why? And what's with all the aggression?"

"Well," the scientist said, "this my terrain. So I do have some guesses. First, it was probably not an attack, but... a discussion. I can only assume, since we have no sample of the liquid they threw up, that it came from their digestive system. You know what lives and prospers there?"

"Since you asked the question, I'll gamble and say... bacteria."

"And you would be right. I think those so-called kisses, tried on the soldiers, too, were communication. We talk by sending ideas from one to another, using words and phrases. In a bacteria world, if they were intelligent, ideas would be subtle differences in the flora formula. Passed from one community to another, it would lead to a balance and therefore a sharing, so to say, of the message. As for the sentences, the vehicle for the thoughts... they were the Molokans themselves. So not understanding the incomplete ones is logical: for a collective mind, something is either whole or it makes no sense."

"So that's why they chased us. We fragmented their wine, so they needed to reassemble it. You mean they've built the villagers just to talk? What about the hamlet itself?"

"I have no idea how they could build flesh, wood and stone from thin air, maybe they used the substances, the elements in the soil and sky. Some biotechnology we do not comprehend. You realize what a breakthrough, had we not killed them? We could have learned to reconstruct lost arms and legs, or make houses out of nothing. Why in the middle of Siberia? That one's easy. That's where the extremophiles live. Did you not see that when the soldiers were taken inside the hospital, they melted? The bacteria were holding together the rewritten cells. They were warmed, they died, the connections failed."

"Oh, but I did suspect that. Because of that idea I used the candles. I had a hunch they feared warmth. They could definitely perceive heat; we were lucky to have been hidden by the thermo-insulated suits."

"They must have had some other unknown senses, too. Some bio-conscience of the living matter."

They remained silent for some time. Eventually, the man said, doubtful:

"Maybe that is why they gathered inside the chapel? They somehow knew, from the corpses' memories, that it was a place of togetherness, the closest humans get to a collective mind?"

"Perhaps. I think it had all been a communication attempt. Why now, why like that, I don't know. I wonder if they had always been intelligent and just ignored us so far, not surprisingly since statistically most life on Earth is bacteria and the rest, us, animals, plants, are just rare occurring incidents. Or they have just flourished into sapience? Only there? You see the funny part?"

Yuri laughed.

"Anything amusing in this crap story?"

"Yes. That we kept looking for alien life out there and never found it. Maybe we are the aliens ourselves, invaders from Mars, and the Archaea, the oldest life form on Earth, are the real earthlings."

"I don't think so. I saw hints of alien life somewhere else before. So maybe the bacteria were indeed a communication attempt, but I think they were just the tool."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that some aliens studied us. They saw three quarters of the Earth are roamed by the virus infected tigermen, insisting to pass it on. In science the majority is the rule, so they thought that is the normalcy here. That people communicate through infections. They must have chosen Siberia for its remoteness and experimented with what they found there. Your extremophiles. And the only humans around. The dead Molokans."

She shrugged, unsure.

"Then why not God and that's all?"

Marilov leaned over and whispered:

"We can see for ourselves."

He took out the briefcase a small recipient. From it, a tiny cognac bottle, tightly sealed, a few drops of wine inside. She chuckled:

"You got it! Great, Yuri, great!"

The inquisitor gave her the phial.

"I suspected that you did not enter my room just to kiss me good-night. When I found the hidden sample in my cognac bottle, that I only had mentioned to you, I understood. Brilliant, Katya, they were going to search you, but not me! So? What are we waiting for?"

She stood up, hugged him joyfully, grabbed his hand and pulled him outside. They entered a different lab, a few doors over. Freezing temperature inside. She passed a wine drop into a lamella and put it under a microscope. She studied it for a few minutes, but, disappointed, she said:

"Some bacteria, some Archaea... but nothing else. No message."

Yuri frowned and thought for some time. Suddenly, he smiled:

"Well, a message needs something to answer to, right? You said they have no senses like hearing, smell, sight, but they do feel heat. And if we warm them up too much they die. But tell me, Katya, do they feel electricity?"

He took out an electric lighter he always carried in his pocket. She laughed:

"A good idea! But why do you always have that on you?"

"For unexpected inquiries. You know, torture at home. Well, let's see."

He put it next to the sample and lightened it for a moment. She looked through the microscope and exclaimed:

"My God, Yuri, I can't believe it! Here, look!"

He did. The bacteria had grouped together and changed color. They now visibly formed a black cross. The Christian symbol for communion.

"Dear God, Yuri, do you realize that in the bottle we might have the last seed of a different intelligent species on Earth?"

"Or a gift from aliens!" he insisted.

They hugged, happy, then looked uneasy at the door. Nothing. They were still all alone. Borisova whispered:

"We must hide it. What are we going to do, Yuri? What are we going to do about it?"

Marilov took off his black overcoat and put it over the woman's shoulders, then gently made her sit. He carefully sneaked the recipient back into the briefcase, took out a different, untouched cognac bottle and smiled:

"What to do, my beautiful Katya? Well, I promised you we'll drink some quality cognac. So, blondinka, that's exactly what I intend to do right now. Sit in the cold and drink with you. Then, we'll figure something out..."

###

**The Padojd Trites**

_In this classic "old-school" scifi, space explorers descend on a new planet, but discover that underestimating faith can have miraculous_ effects, yet _too expensive..._

Ever since he had first set foot on Padojd, Yarka 64's third planet, Komet had felt like home. The planet's name, dojd meaning rain in his native Russian, was obviously a joke. Typical for the Arab engineers of the SANCOM, the Space Agency of the Northern Caliphate of Moscow. Actually, this new world was completely arid, and those on Earth had known it well before launching the expedition.

The cosmonaut inhaled deeply, enjoying the real-life sensation of the harsh air. His lungs, rebuilt by nanobots after centuries of hibernation, worked perfectly, but his mind translated the never before met gases into familiar scents. For Komet, the Padojd desert smelled like vanilla and saffron. He closed his eyes, enjoying the smell. Behind him, the ocean roared wildly, rocking huge waves, always rising towards the three moons.

The man had chosen a beach landing on purpose, because both the local fauna and the natives avoided water, preferring the dry inner areas. Unlike earthlings, these beings were not based on carbon, but silica, and so their world was the other way round compared to home: the seas were death traps and the dunes fertile plains, roamed by herds of pseudo-herbivores feeding on the sand.

While he had crossed the galaxy, suspended in hyper-sleep, the drones sent before him had already scouted the planet. He wasted no time and, with a few eye movements, selected and activated a communication channel with the ship left on the orbit:

"Nasih? Can you hear me?"

"Yes, Komet, I can and I do," answered the pleasant young man voice, almost teenager like. "Everything all right down there?"

"Well, yeah, pleasant even. You'd love it here; it feels just like our home in the Crimea. Dunes everywhere and plenty of sun!"

He laughed. He had always had a friendly, open nature, easily taking delight in all things, be they small or large. His black hair and the short, curly beard crisscrossed with gray strands covered the dark-skin face dominated by lively eyes, filled with joyful sparks. Short, but full of energy, ever moving, he seemed to still be just a playful boy, always ready to kid around. Nasih laughed too, somewhat bitterly:

"Komet Viktorov Al-Ruwayd, explorer, xenologist and certified bio-alterator! Always first on the beach, while poor Nasih gets bored in the ship, working. So much about luck. Some get more, others are left with the brains..."

"Come on, man, relax. Don't get sour, your time will come. Now, before some beast eats me whole, tell me what to expect."

"Well, I analyzed the data and I can tell you it's not that bad. There is intelligent life around, but stuck in a Stone Age. So we'll make contact and, praise the Lord and His Prophet, we'll probably welcome a new people in the Galactic Ummah, the Islamic House of God!"

"Good job, Nasih. Thank you."

"Thanks, captain. So do you approve the next phase? May I release the hounds?"

"A captain without a crew, what an honor! But yes, my friend, release the hounds and let's pray for a good outcome."

The cosmonaut nodded, even though Nasih could not see that from the orbit, and started his work. He raised a camouflaging field around the lander, turning the tiny peninsula into an apparent small bay. After that, he put his palm behind the back of the first Amid in the row and typed the right combination. The robot opened up and allowed him to check the inside.

A not so smart centipede-shaped machine, the Amid model had been designed for endurance only, being meant to roam large distances and transmit data and video-feeds. Ideal for such desert planets, since it needed neither fuel nor food, simply using up kinetic energy stored in rows of elastosteel chains. The Amids chose random routes for their long range patrols and, when they felt the steel reels got used up, came back to base to rewind.

The expedition had brought six such mechanical scouts on Padojd. After checking all of them, the cosmonaut released the robots into the continent's interior.

"Ready, Nasih, it's done."

"Good job, great explorer! I wonder when will you follow standard procedures and activate them from the ship, like civilized people, so as not to get me all worried?"

"Oh, come on, don't start it, it feels like we're married! You know I always like to check them personally."

"Yeah, well, we'll talk this out when you come back up. What next, are you returning to the ship or rest in the lander's vat?"

"I'm not coming up yet; I prefer to feel the gravity of a real planet, after so long."

"OK, be it your way. Eat something, please, and we'll talk in a few days. And... Komet?"

"Yes?"

"Take care."

#

A few days later, Komet got awakened by his friend's warm voice of and the smell of freshly made hot coffee.

"The hounds?"

"They're all well. And I have enough data to present a clear picture of the situation, to plan the next step. Shall we proceed?"

Komet sat in the sand, sipping from a cup, and gestured wide, opening the interface. In the hologram, he saw huge tracts of sand, broken here and there by rugged stone crops, rocky plateaus and small mountains. Over the sandy infinity, huge herds of crawling animals moved in waves, looking like giant worms on dozens of legs.

"I named them wagmels, if you don't mind," said Nasih. "Gentle slow creatures, they crawl around, eat sand, breed and... that's about all. The interesting part is this."

Red dots pointed to small groups of shorter beings, that seemed to herd the animals. The text said: tribal trites, local intelligent species, apparently hunter-gatherers and shepherds.

"Trites?"

"Yeah. Check them out."

A 3D reconstruction of one came up. About a meter tall, his body shaped like an 8, each vertical half holding three limbs arranged like a tripod. Above the upper side, without a neck or head, stood three composed eyes, spider-like.

"Nomads?"

"Yes, indeed. Both they and their herds travel at night. During the day, when the sun burns too hot, the trites seek shelter in some kind of sand igloos. Three times a night, every night, when each of the moons rises, they stand fast and freeze for a few minutes with their arms raised in some kind of ritual, though I couldn't figure out why exactly. Maybe they are communicating somehow, I don't know yet. Although they do have speech. They whistle through that tiny trunk they also use for feeding. I am working on a translation, but I'll need more time."

Komet rotated the image. The alien seemed not to own any clothing or tools, except for a few natural sacks around the wasp-like waist. As if guessing his thoughts, Nasih went on:

"They do have tools and weapons, but only temporary. When they need one, they shape some sand with their arms till they reach the right size and consistency."

The virtual trite quickly shaped a spade, then a trowel and finally a spear.

"When not needed any more, the object turns back to dust."

"Quite amazing. So they hold some psi powers? Telekinesis?"

"No, it's simpler than that. I used all the sensors and found out they temporarily manipulate the electric charge between the molecules. Sand is the only useful resource on this world: forage for the wagmels, but also building and production materiel."

Komet giggled:

"Well then, we are filthy rich, Earth is three-quarter covered in scorching sands! We must take care not to be invaded by the evil trite empire!"

Nasih did not laugh, just continued, all serious:

"That's unknown yet. They either have no state whatsoever, or they really are united in just one huge empire, since I saw no conflicts or borders around. And what could they fight for? There's plenty of sand and land for all. They do have weapons, but for defending against predators. Usually some kind of jellyfishes that attack in packs. Sometimes, rarer, some large lion-like beast resembling a scorpion with too many legs."

"I'll call those jackals mutsels and the lion a kutaln. If you'll allow it," smiled the cosmonaut.

"Duly noted," answered Nasih. "I find it interesting that they avoid the rocky areas, though those are inhabited, too. By some shier trites. I cannot say if they are a different race or just other tribes, all I could see was they also have domesticated animals, some kind of gravel eating crabs. But those are not numerous enough to form herds, only small packs."

"We'll call those beasts the kyarns. How did the trites receive our Amids?"

"That's the good news: they displayed some curiosity, but no aggression and, after making sure our robots do not attack the herds, they just ignored them. They don't seem to be xenophobic, so I expect everything to go smoothly at first contact."

"So your vote goes for contact?" smiled Komet, delighted by the perspective to finally do something.

"I do vote for contact and I think all will go nicely."

#

It didn't go nicely. Not only did the first contact not go well, it just didn't go any way at all.

Since they needed some conversations to translate the language, Komet could not yet use the synthesizer implanted in his throat and wirelessly connected to the micro-computer hidden under his hair. So they had decided, in order to start a dialogue, to use the oldest way of interacting with unknown tribes: by gesturing.

The start went promising: while Komet walked the crest of a dune towards the group of shepherds, unarmed and apparently naked, as the fluid suit he wore had adopted the brown color of his skin, the trites remained calm and peaceful. They had clearly seen him, since they gathered together and whistled, watching him intently.

As he got closer, though, things turned stranger. The aliens reacted contrary to what was to be expected: the better they could see him, the least interested they became. When Komet showed the universal "We come in peace" gesture by stretching both his hands to prove he hid nothing, they turned their backs on him and left. Not in a hurry, scared, but slowly, as if despising him for some rudeness. One of them, a teenager judging by the size, tried to grab some sand, but the others forced him away and argued in fierce shrilling sounds, still without looking at the newcomer.

That was all. The shepherds waved their wagmels away and left.

"What the hell was that? Where did I go wrong?"

"Couldn't say. They clearly noticed you and understood you were no danger, maybe even that you are intelligent, since around here only they naturally stand upright. And now you."

"But when they could finally look at me, they just turned away? Strange, I expected a greeting, an attack even, but never such weird reaction."

"Don't worry, we'll try again. Three clicks away from you there's a different clan moving, just get your rover and approach them. But don't gesture. And try to kneel, maybe your unusual height was a problem."

"Or maybe you just enjoy seeing me on my knees," laughed Komet.

But their hopes proved unfounded. The group reacted just the same when they noticed him. They simply turned their backs, indifferent, and moved on. The third tribe behaved the same when the explorer reached them, after some long hours crossing the desert. They just refused to acknowledge his existence.

"All right, Komet, that's enough for today. Go back to the lander and get some rest, I'll think of something. I'll make sure you'll be greeted by a freshly cooked meal and some hot tea. Tomorrow is another day, my friend. We'll fix it, don't worry."

Tired and disappointed, the cosmonaut just waved bitterly and entered the vehicle.

#

Nasih did indeed come up with a new idea. If the desert trites rejected the envoy, and the rocky tribes avoided the desert ones, maybe the "my enemy's enemy is my friend" worked on Padojd, too. So now Komet walked carefully, his heart twisted between hope and fear, towards a pack of kyarns and their owners. Will they turn their backs on him, too?

The animals got tense and huddled together, but the trites remained calm. After some time, they stood up and, to the man's amazement, did not walk away. They waited for him, whistling among themselves. Komet's wonder grew when he realized all four of them were cripples: one had only two legs, three only two hands each, and the last one had four limbs in total. Could life on the rocky plateaus be so harsh?

"Nasih, are you recording this?"

"Yes, everything seems fine. Try to make it last, the more of their conversation I get, the quicker I'll develop a translation algorithm. Do they seem armed?"

"No, they're peaceful. They just watch me and talk. These ones are not running away, Nasih, they don't ignore me!" exclaimed Komet, thrilled like a child. "What do you think, should I start gesturing?'

"Yes, try that, let's see how it goes."

The earthling extended his arms, slowly. The rocky trites whistled nervously, and for a moment gathered closely together. Then those with only two hands each came closer and, each in his turn, put their palms over his and waved them at the skies. After that, they returned to the group, wheezing excitedly. Reunited, all the trites pointed their hands at him, loudly said something like "pfaa-yuu" and raised them at the moons, in silence. Seconds later, they coiled up and rolled speedily away, followed by the nervous kyarns.

"Nasih," yelled Komet in awe, "did you see? Did you see? It was great, Nasih, simply great!"

"I did," answered the young man's voice, also enthusiastic, "and I recorded everything. I think I'll have enough data to find the patterns of their language. I'm working on a real-time self-adapting translation program right now."

"Ha! Next time, I'll just have a gossip chat with my Hilms friends! That's how I'll call the rocky trites, Hilms, and the desert tribes I'll call..."

"Djals. What, only you have the right to name everything, Livingstone? I'll send the program to your micro-computer, so yes, next time you'll be able to talk to them. Want an example?"

"What example?"

"Pfaa-yuu means something like Half-Oathbringer."

#

When he returned the next evening, about two dozen Hilms waited for him. Some had weapons, but seemed ready not to defend from him, but on the contrary, to protect him, too, from some danger. The two that had touched him before came forward, hands raised, and solemnly repeated their welcoming gesture. Then they whistled and the program translated:

"Praise the light coming from the Three on a Single Sky, praise Their voice! Half-Oathbringer, have you come to bring forgiveness onto the unwhole ones?

"Forgiveness? From what? You never wronged me!"

An amazed clamor waved among the Hilms. "The Three changed the Law?", "Is the Ever-Law not right?", "How about the rituals?", "The Wholes will punish us!", "The Sky will defend us, They sent us an unwhole!"

"Don't you come from the sky?" asked one.

"Sure I do! I come in peace, my name is Komet Viktorov," whistled the cosmonaut from his synthesizer.

"Welcome, Half-Oathbringer! I am Hi-su-yu, and my half here is Rei-ee-ay. We thank you for bringing peace upon us, but please tell us, is it peace between the sky and the unwholes, or between us and the rightful ones?"

"Well, between those that had sent me from the skies, from Earth, and your kind. We want to share the Prophet's Law with you and welcome your people into our community. Peace with the rightful, that I do not understand..."

The Hilms froze, their hands raised up. After a few moments of ecstasy, they started hopping around, happily, hugging each other: "The Sky welcomes us!", "The Three grant forgiveness!", "Peace descended upon us!", "The unwholes will reach the Sky!"

Komet whistled loud to cover the racket.

"As for peace with the rightful, please explain and I'll try to help."

Hi-su-yu gestured to the Hilms crowd and they started backing away towards the plateau, still waving their hands at the Half-Oathbringer. One of them, apparently an elder, considering the look of his skin and the difficulty of his movement, stayed behind and limped near the visitor. Ready to share the story of the trites.

#

"So, Nasih, I'll need you."

Back to the lander, Komet felt exhausted, but enthusiastic, talking fast and fervently. Nasih listened to him, calm as usual, trying to steer the wave of words into a comprehensible dialogue.

"So, I understand they are virtually Muslims already."

"Yes. Their wise man, the elder, explained to me that, since forever, the desert trites, the Djals, lived their lives according to the Law. A Sharia. Every night they pray three times to the skies, because they think the three moons are faces of God. They strictly respect the same migration paths, so there are no battles for territory, and a lot of rituals for every action, which also remove almost all individual conflict."

"So they have no states?"

"Yes. And no. They do have a social structure, based on age and the knowledge of the complicated moral code they share orally. A meritocracy, where the wisest of the survivors get to rule, not a hereditary dynasty. So, even though they live in tribes, they think of themselves not as rivals, but parts of a universal empire led by God."

"An Islamic ideal, the caliphate. But what about that peace with the rightful? Actually, who are the rightful?"

"Well, here comes the trick. The Hilms are not a different tribe or race, but former Djals. When one trite misbehaves, willingly or not, disrespecting one of the countless rules, one or two of his limbs are cut off, according to the deed, and they banish him to the hills, barren to them, forever."

"So the Djals are the rightful, and the Hilms are the unwholes. I see. And let me guess, the punished ones do not get to heaven after death?"

"True. That is why they were so happy when I said I come in peace from the skies. They thought Allah had sent me to bring redemption on the wicked. Quite a funny prophet, myself, I'd say."

"Too funny, if you ask me," joked Nasih, too. "Don't tell me, that is why they are so nice to you, you ugly hairy biped."

"Yeah, for them I'm a criminal of the worst kind, missing not one, but two limbs. So the Djals ignored me with holy disgust, assuming I'm some strange outcast from creatures similar to them. Here comes the interesting part, Nasih, and the reason I need you."

"Let's hear it. I bet it's the worst idea I've heard in centuries."

"Well, try listening first, oh, too-wise skeptic. The Hilms acknowledged me as a divine messenger and accepted me as I am, because I'm unwhole, just like them. But we cannot welcome into the Federation only a community of pariahs, as the majority refuse contact. We need a more acceptable holy envoy for them, a trite harbinger for the Djals."

"I admit, you made sense so far. Surprising."

"Wait a little, funny guy, here comes the punch-line: would you be my trite?"

#

Nasih-Part stretched its three legs and felt the hot sand under them, enjoying the warm tickle. It had always envied the cosmonauts for their small-scale sensations, while it, Nasih, the ship's AI, felt all his sensors at once into an orderly, boring cacophony. Now, huddled into the trite-shaped robot, Nasih-Part savored the pleasure of being small. Since it thought that remote controlling the machine from the orbit would prove unpractical, the AI poured a simplified version of itself into the robot's processor. After the mission, that part would be reunited with the original, enhancing its experience.

The robot hopped towards the wagmels grazing in the valley, as if it had lived all his life out there in the desert, three-legged. Alert, the shepherds stood up to see it better, and a few quickly crouched to grab some sand. Obviously, the strange creature baffled them: it did look just like a trite, but the combination of metal and plastic in which it had been molded was unlike anything ever seen on Padojd.

When it got close enough, the robot stopped and took the ritual posture used by the couriers travelling among tribes, with two hands stretched towards the others and one raised at the sky. Then it whistled the correct greetings and said:

"I come in peace! I descended from the stars to talk to you, and in the Law's name I ask for my message to be accepted!"

The trites reacted unexpectedly, chaotic. Some stood up, pointing their hands at the moons, others dashed to grab sand. Confused, they yelled:

"It is a New-Oathbringer!"

"No, it is impure, not of flesh, but of stone!"

"The Old-Oathbringer said another one will eventually come from the Sky, he never said it must be of flesh!"

"No, no, the Law clearly states that stone is impure. It is a false prophet!"

"Listen to me!" shouted Nasih-Part. "We also live by the Law! We are creatures of the same God!"

Such blasphemy from a stone beast was too much, and one of the Djals furiously hurled a lance. It broke, harmless, against its metal carapace, but Nasih-Part, amazed, retreated a few steps. Other trites, thinking it had been shaken by the strike, dashed to defend it with their own bodies. In a matter of moments, they all wielded spears and cudgels, fighting ferociously. The trites divided about equally, half of them trying to defend the new prophet, the others to kill them and get their hands on the blaspheming demon. From each group ran a messenger, fast rolling to the tribe to bring in reinforcements.

"Stop! Stop it!" shouted the robot, astonished, but its words only seemed to incite them further.

Already, the sand was dotted with blood and littered with dead and dying, broken weapons and ripped limbs. On the horizon, beyond the herd, the rest of the tribe seemed to have gone into a similar furor, broken into equal parts fiercely killing each other.

Nasih-Part realized that retreating would demoralize his defenders, but standing there would turn the attackers even angrier, so it decided to self-destruct. The robot buried itself into the sand and imploded, collapsing into a metal ball. A shiny round rock.

#

Komet walked carefully among the dead kyarns and approached the lonely crouched trite that kept condensing sand into a ball, then crushed it and started all over, again and again. Beyond him, scattered all over the rocky plateau, soft shapes interrupted the night, vaguely illuminated by the moons. Dead Hilms, slaughtered, contorted.

Only two nights had passed since Nasih-Part's contact attempt, but the fury of sacred war had spread amazingly fast all over the desert, like a bushfire in a dried-up savanna, breaking the tribes into hateful, ever-fighting factions. The wagmels herds kept on with their migration, instinctively following the paths they had moved along for so many millennia, but the Djals no longer cared for them. They only cared for extermination raids.

The explorer and his AI had decided he best returned to the Hilms and talk about a way to broker peace between the defenders of the New-Oathbringer and the warriors of the Old Law. But the Hilms were no more...

Komet kneeled next to the wounded trite and took his two upper limbs in his hands. The alien looked at him with his three spider eyes, expressionless, and pointed to the butchered animals.

"Gentle as a kyarn we used to say. I was their shepherd and they followed me everywhere, like my own little ones. They even had names. That one there is Yu-yu, beyond it lies Hiesh-woo and her kid, Ai-ai."

The trite sat silent for a while, looking up at the three moons shining above them.

"Yesterday, the New-Oathbringer's warriors came and killed the kyarns. They said the New Law is just for them and that everything is destined to them and we must not own anything except our pitiful lives."

He retreated his hands.

"Today came the fighters of the Old Law, shouting that us unwholes are the reason a demon spawned. That the world will be right again if it was cleansed of us. I was away, mourning my kyarns, and hid under Yu-yu's corpse. But the others... they killed them all. They chased them all over the plateau, pulled them out from under boulders and crevices and cut them to pieces."

Komet whispered:

"Come with me, I'll protect you."

The trite waved, dispirited.

"Impossible. The Law says when my clan dies, I must feast and pray till I die, too."

"But why still respect the Law, after all that has just happened in its name?"

"You, sky traveler, you do not understand. There is no life outside of the Law. Without it, I'm just... nothing, dust in the wind, an illusion. As my will holds the sand together and shapes it into a tool, so God's will and His Law keeps my soul together and shapes it into myself. You know what is strange?"

"No. I do not."

"If I were a Rightful one, a Whole one, I would have fought for the Old Law. It's so obvious the New-Oathbringer's followers are wrong!"

"What makes you say that?"

"The Holy Tale clearly says that when the Old-Oathbringer returned from the desert with the Law, He asked each tribe to send a representative, ninety-nine of them back then. For three hundred nights he spoke the Law, and they learned it by heart to take It to their clans. But He knew they were not perfect and would forget about those nights, so they needed something to remember forever, so not something made of sand. So He told them: "Come and take from Me, as I will uphold the Law against all time!" and they tore Him to pieces, dried them in the sun and now each tribe holds a part of the Oathbringer Himself, to remember eternity".

Komet stood silent for a while, puzzled and pensive, then asked:

"So what's that got to do with the war now?"

"Ah, it is so obvious you cannot see it, like a sha-kee the color of sand that you step on, even though it is right there, as long and thick as a rya-yuy. The new converts pray to a shiny stone, isn't that right?"

"I suppose. So?"

"Well, they cannot cut it into pieces to share for remembrance, so it cannot be a real sacred harbinger, right?"

The earthling had no answer, surprised by the circular logic of the trite. In his linear thinking, accepting newness, the alien was wrong, but in theirs, where everything is always and forever the same, the Hilm was right. There can be no new without coming from old.

"True, but..."

The Hilm stopped him. It touched his shoulder with one hand, pointed to the moons and stood up on its three legs. He curled and rolled away into the darkness, vanishing amongst the dead.

#

"Nasih, please check the blueprints I'll send and tell me if they are feasible, technically speaking."

Komet had had no sleep after talking to the Hilm. He had drawn frantically for a day and night, always changing, always correcting his blueprints, till he finally felt satisfied.

"Yes, Komet, they are. But what purpose do you have in mind?"

"You'll see. Tell me, do you have enough solar net for project number 1?"

"Yes, I do. But we need it for the trip back, I cannot waste it!"

"Forget about the trip back and do as I say. I'll send you a plan about what to do, when to do, and for project 2 I want you to determine the right amounts of materials and send them to me in an emergency container. I'll deal with the altering myself. I'll also send you a list for bio-materials, I need them into that package, too."

"Of course, my friend. But for any altering you'll need a program, want me to help you with that?'

"No, no, I can do it myself. I'll write the soft on my own. You just take care of project 1 and let me do my work!"

"As you wish," answered Nasih, saddened by the unexpected harshness.

Not even after the container arrived did the explorer get any rest. Without sleep or meals, he worked all day long with his robots, adapting the medical vat in the lander and writing on a soft.

"Komet?"

"Yes, Nasih, what is it now?"

"I've just finished building the project you sent. Everything will be ready for when you need it. Shouldn't you get some sleep?"

"I'm almost done. I'll sleep later."

"At least eat something, please."

"There's no time! While we chat, hundreds of trites are killed because of us!"

Komet checked the program. Satisfied, he loaded the bio-materials into the vat and undressed. As he sank into the paste, feeling sorry for his words thrown at the AI, he joked:

"Like the fairytales said, now it's time for the sleeping beauty to get his good fortnight sleep! We'll talk at dusk, Nasih!"

"Sleep well, Komet. I'll wake you up with some hot coffee, just as you like it."

#

When he woke up, Komet did not bother getting dressed, or even drinking the hot coffee Nasih had prepared for him. The man crawled out of the vat with difficulty, reeling, and walked to the rover. He activated a simple balance-enhancing routine and visualized the map. He then confirmed a path and upped the speed to max. The cosmonaut was in a hurry, because while he had been sleeping, the AI had finished its job and had broadcasted to all tribes rays that had shaken the air, whistling the same message: an envoy had to be sent from each clan to a place where several major migration paths converged. They had to be there when the third and last moon rose in the sky.

When he arrived, he found a breathtaking view: on each side of the valley stood two vast armies of trites, all armed, facing each other. Motionless, silent, their spider-eyes locked in challenge, tense bodies ready to dash into battle. Komet left the rover and walked slowly, step by step, through the valley and between the two hordes. It took him a long time to reach the center, but the patient trites stood firm like statues. The man stopped and remained still for some very long seconds, gathering both his strength and courage. He stood up on his three legs, raised his three hands to the sky and shouted like a thunder, his voice amplified by the synthesizer:

"Sons of the Sky, Rightful among rightful, listen to me! As the Old-Oathbringer came to you from the sand desert to bring the forever Law, so too I come now from the desert of the stars, in flesh, to bring word! Anybody dares deny me this right?"

Nobody moved, nobody said anything. In a low voice, the earthling said to the AI:

"Nasih, is the sun mirror all set up?"

"Yes, Komet, it is, according to your plan, and ready for the exact time. But, my friend, I still do not understand your intentions."

"You'll see, my dear, and please forgive me..."

Eyes in tears, the cosmonaut blocked the communication channel to the ship. He took a deep breath, gathered his wits and, in a majestic gesture, stretched a fourth leg into the sand and raised his fourth hand up. Immediately, a fourth moon formed, lightening the skies. The giant mirror built under the orbiting ship had caught the sun's rays and reflected them, amplified, directly upon him.

Thrilled, all the trites threw their weapons into the sand and, shaking, stretched their hands towards the valley and the Harbinger. He boomed, accusingly:

"You think yourselves perfect? Having three hands makes you purer than those with two? Sinful arrogance! See here, we, from the sacred stars, have four, and before us you all, be it with two or three hands, are all equally unwhole! Only I am Rightful here, and you are equal in your smallness before me and the Sky! Dare you defy me?"

Terrified and religiously ecstatic, the trites began humming, a mixed hymn of grief and ecstasy, waving over both sides of the valley.

"But despair not, as the Sky's will is mercy, and for all of you with too few hands I bring forgiveness and renewal! The Four give you a new Law and order that your childish quarrel stops now and here, before you anger Them! The New Law will keep all the old ways, but from now on all those that wrong them shall not be maimed and banished, but judged and exiled according to their mistake. And after doing their time away they'll be welcomed back."

The sea of trites shouted their agreement and joy for the New Law, hopping crazily.

"And for remembrance into eternity, hear me: come and Take of Me, as I will shelter the Law from the harm of time!"

Komet closed his eyes and heard the waves of trites converging on him, fiercely, crazed. In the silenced communicator, Nasih screamed its horror, unheard.

#

Shining bright in the night's sky, the artificial satellite had rotated, for countless years, around the world of the Djals and of the Hilms, and they prayed to it together, united by the New Law.

The ship's mind, Nasih, started for the millionth time his sensor checking routine, with the same result: though it felt something important was missing, all the hardware parts were there. Neither could he find any error in its software, where it felt a strange emptiness. It was like it kept missing Komet's jokes and his laughter, but how could that be, when that lack was not part of any of its programs? How could one miss something that never was part of it, but just another being?

Only humans could know the answer, yet this was Padojd, the planet of the trites.

###

**The Mir.322 Case**

In this scifi about robots, a soldier is accused of murder and sabotage in an orderly world run by AIs; but do the prosecutors have the right to accuse? Or are they guiltier? And what if they only want to get rid of him because he has just uncovered the galaxy's biggest secret?

The Corrector, a slim fair-haired young man, smiled, grabbed a chair and sat down, facing the long side of the empty hall. For a few minutes, the two men ignored each other and admired the view; Mir.322 was a lush world, bustling with native flora and local or imported fauna. Even with his new, human eyes, much weaker than the military-grade ones he used during his countless campaigns, Igorr_167 could still see the purple jungles for many miles away, scorched by a glaring sun shining in the middle of reddish skies.

Plain gorgeous. The trees looked like blueish wool waves, dotted with black flowers, and the huge forest sways huddled together in orderly squares, separated by white roads or brown water canals. Among them stood areas of ivory buildings, mimicking the indigenous wilderness's curved shapes. Flocks of multicolored birds flew through massive insect swarms, passing from one vegetation patch to the next along jungle lanes perfectly designed to avoid the residential areas.

"Stunning, right?" said the official. "Mother has done a good job, like always. Did you know there used to be mountains around here? Huge ones. We tore them down, of course, as they were breaking the balance."

The sitting man frowned, staring at the round emblem with his eyes, just as dark as the sun-burnt skin and tar-like curly hair.

"Yes indeed," smiled the Corrector, "this one here is one hundred percent a Mother's planet. Even us, the Correctors, are so. You expected a Father's one, didn't you? Tortures from some butcher with a triangle standard? Or a mixed planet, with us building and your kind hunting around?"

Igorr gave no answer. He just sighed and kept looking at the outside chaos of freedom and life. The other man stood up and came closer, without a sound, friendly grabbed his shoulder and whispered:

"Beauty comes from order, perfection from balance. That chaos you see out there is actually computed to flow exactly as intended. Just like the entire civilized universe, from the old Solar system to all of the new outer colonies. Same as the Mother-Father balance... but not at all like your absurd behavior."

He caressed the prisoner's hair, then grabbed his arm:

"We'll see about that, anyway. Let's just start with the beginning, how about that?"

#

Silent, Igorr_164 squatted behind a rocky ridge. He hid in the shadows bestowed on the area by the massive volcano that eons before had created the rugged terrain around it. Well, shadow was a relative concept on Venus, with its skies always covered by seas of clouds dashing on 360 km/hour winds, and the heat scorching everything at 460 Celsius. It was useful for thermal camouflage, though, as any variations were more helpful than a plain with constant temperature; as for the murderous climate, his almost human body was protected by the auto-suit and the robotic parts were built from alloys resistant to things much worse than the Latona Corona climate.

For just a few seconds, the man turned the platoon filter on and checked on his soldiers, strewn across the slope. Most were variants under .100 and worshipped him almost as a god, an over-decorated hero that could have transgressed long before, but had chosen to fight on, next to his comrades, using his experience to win easier victories for them.

"Are you sure? Is that really your reason to refuse transgression?"

The man that materialized next to him wore only a sheer light costume, surreal in the Venus inferno surrounding them. Had the enemy attacked with some new weapon? If so, what kind? Was it chemical and altered his human lungs, or a cyber-virus attacking his electronic mind, the software in the hardware brain?

The sergeant immediately stopped his respiratory and circulatory systems and ran a check-up. No results. He set his mind on auto-pilot and, while it was fast-checked by the protecting programs, his body dashed in a lightning-fast zig-zag over the rubble, using his still mechanical shanks. Meanwhile, the back head broadcaster transmitted, in all spectrums, the fake image of the same landscape, but without his silhouette.

He hit the ground about two kilometers away, clutching the gun over his chest, and gulped. The angel-looking young man was already there and all the running had in fact brought him back to the old position.

"You can call me Mikhal_97," said the being. "Not an angel, just a short-transgressed. Us, Mother's people, do that much more often than you, the warriors usually waiting up to 120."

"In Father's name, can you read my mind?" whispered Igorr_164 and pointed his gravtor gun up, ready to pull the trigger.

"Course I do. All this around us is just your mind. I downloaded your memory-pack from the net and I'm analyzing it right now. I can pause it any time I want, but I cannot change it. That's why we're back in the same place."

The sarge thought hard for a few moments and said:

"The Hell you do. If it was mine I could have had it edited, but I've just tried that and could not delete you."

"Ah, that you cannot do, because you are under inquiry and I am a Corrector. Of course you do not know that now, that's in the future, when you will be accused of trans-heresy, murder and, worst of all, voluntary social unbalance. I have to straighten up the error, but first I must find it. Will I be your prosecutor or psychiatrist, we'll see, but I will surely be your judge, so you'd better cooperate. Let us get back to your thoughts: the mates down there admire you for not transgressing in order to be their sergeant some more, and therefore quicken their own up-going. Great self-sacrifice, sure. But is that really the reason behind it?"

"What else? Anyway, you're just some engineer, landscape designer, home builder or whatever crap you motherers are. What the hell could you understand about soldiers' camaraderie?"

The Corrector watched him in silence, sympathetically, then made a large gesture at the world around them.

"Quite hellish, this planet, isn't it? Sulphur acid clouds, corrosive downpours, a hundred times stronger pressure than on Earth and so on, and so on. Hostile conditions you warriors bravely face in order to fight campaigns and earn bravery medals. Hooray, hooray, the heroes!"

He put a knee down, into the gravel.

"This is nothing, gallant big man. I terraformed ten-times worse planets than this and paid the price in countless maimed or wrecked bodies, me and my team-mates. Not only gravtor hits can lead to a total restart, you know, an astral radiation burst has the exact same effect. And in the end you get praised in sagas and epics, become martial shows stars. While we leave behind beautiful worlds, ready to seed, or tamed if they were already alive. And we are never stars, anywhere."

He sighed and stood up.

"Silly me, arguing with a simulation, a memory pack, and you won't even remember it when I get out. Listen to me, Igorr_164, almost-human warrior, do you know what I think? I think you needed 167 trans because you willingly refused the Protocol and avoided to go human. So your remarks hold no value, I am here just to collect clues. Let's go on."

The sarge turned on the platoon filter and checked his soldiers, strewn across the slope. Well camouflaged, located in strategic points, perfect to ambush the enemy patrol they felt confident was closing in. Unseen, of course, also covered in multiple layers of jamming and dissimulation, but he had an ace up his sleeve: the intelligence guys had found out the patrol was led by a sarge produced in Lunavod.22. A middle-series, 12 to 15 maybe. He knew, from experience, how these series were programmed. They'll arrive skewed across the canyon, wind behind them, just above the ground. And get here about... now.

Igorr quickly chose a pictogram on his retina and double-blinked. A huge bang shook the mountain. The hidden mines had exploded, throwing up a tornado of dust and gravel. There they were! For a fraction of a second, the dark powder went around the unseen invaders' shapes. Just enough for synthetic eyes to photograph the contours and for electronic minds to compute the future most probable trajectories. The images captured by his team's forty eyes instantly got shared and composed into a panorama. The preset fighting routines came together in a few possible patterns, and the sarge chose one.

A storm of gravitational modulations erupted from their weapons, and the just fallen gravel rose again in a hurricane, engulfing the ambushed attackers. They returned fire along their own pre-calculated probability matrix, but, not knowing exactly where the shooters were, managed only to crack chunks of rocks and scatter them along the valley. Three bodies followed them in the sand: the victims from the surprised patrol. The rest vanished quickly to avoid more casualties.

For Father's warriors, the ancient "leave no man behind" was no longer true, as there were no men among them, just cyborgs, and all the dead and wounded suffered only a loss in rank in case of maiming and a restart from the last save point, should their destruction be complete. That did bring them back to _00, desperately far from transgression, but their enemy shared the same risk and generally tried to avoid fatal shots. Like a knightly tournament, which these campaigns on Father's planets resembled. At least those in the Solar system. The ones in the colonies, where they battled real alien beasts, were a different story, but those were for the humanized ones, falling into a different rules set.

Not for Igorr_164, though. He quickly calculated the fallen ones' positions and grinned: one of them was isolated, hidden behind some boulders. The sarge ordered his troopers to capture the other two, started the battle suit's anti-gravity system and rushed to the third casualty, thrilled with anticipation.

He found the soldier fallen sideways, face stuck in the gravel, his gear broken. The operating systems talked and he received the enemy's status: Vijar_76m, hardware damage 43%, bio-structure wounds 14%, software 3% not functional. A survivor of 76 war campaigns on Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Titan and Europa, some even in the asteroid belt. A veteran, way up on his way to transgress and became a human colonist.

The adversary sent a standard surrender message. Igorr said nothing. He made sure nobody could see them, blocked any satellite coverage with his battle filters, close the comms and sent an archive to the wounded man's OS. An illegal program, acquired on the Martian black market. He immediately received two replies: the app said it had deactivated the victim's routines that could block his sensors; and the fallen trooper sent a vibrant question mark.

Satisfied, Igorr turned on the utility laser. He kneeled, used it to cut open the armor and fast cut flesh chunks along a carefully calculated pattern meant to simulate real combat wounds. He separated the bloody pieces from the metal parts, while the wounded howled in pain. He took a small modified electroshock gun and put it against the soldier's back head. Ignoring the man's lamentations and begging, the sarge pushed the button. The body shuddered and froze, synthetic brain destroyed, mind erased. Total fatality.

A fair-haired young man materialized next to him and picked up the laser, calmly.

"I wonder how many such war crimes go unseen and unpunished. These games have a darker side than I suspected and I think Mother should talk to Father about it. I do understand, though, that the human parts offended you. You wanted to bring him back to purity, an unaltered robot state, like when just out the factory gates."

The sarge laughed.

"No, no! It's just the pleasure of making others suffer. An addiction offering a lot of fun, but these modern over-watched campaigns won't allow the warriors to be what they naturally are: executioners, wild men, inhuman savages. It denies war's cathartic purpose!"

"Inhuman, you say. Well, according to the Revised Protocol, the purpose of these battles is to select the best robots deserving transgression: one victory, one biological fixture, until they have enough to become all human. Except the synthetic brain, of course. To build team spirit, predicting and planning skills, well, all the skills needed to become good protectors for the colonies. Is it not this you tried to remove, together with his human parts? Cleansing him, making him... inhuman?"

"No, you motherer. What you say is indeed trans-heresy, breaking the rules revised by Mother and Father, but you won't pin that to me and lead me into a total erase. No, no, you search for deep meaning where there is none. I just enjoy tormenting victims, hurting them and not being caught. Isn't that the most human urge out there?"

#

The young man took his palm away from the prisoner's arm and sat on the table's edge. He watched Igorr_167 for a long time.

"167 bio fixtures till final transgression, but now there you are: a human. A colonist on Mir.322. Happy about it?"

"Happy? Happy, damn you?! This flowered well-ordered planet is a punishment! A purgatory! 167, you said. A trans-long, the average is 100. You know what it's like not to humanize at 120?"

Mikhal_97 shrugged, unsure, and the sarge went on:

"It means that in every battle the statistical odds to loose rank or even restart grow not arithmetically, but exponentially. It is a pure act of courage, a challenging of the destiny, a mocking laughter in the face of this shitty universe. What do you know, trans-short thief?" he sneered, disgusted.

"What's so bad about being short? Being so good at your job as to be rewarded faster with the final step?"

"If you really are so good, why leave the job? I think it's cheating, reaching the finish line before you are ready. Oh, and something else: you motherers are playing the planetary artists both before and after. You go human and the challenges are just a little tougher. Well, a lot tougher, since these ridiculously frail flesh bodies, not even adapted to space, force you to work on already tamed worlds. But for us, fatherers, it's completely different: from mighty warriors we become feeble cops. Guardians for engineers, miners and farmers."

"You are soldiers here, too! You protect us from contacts with hostile alien species."

"Come on, hostile species! Over three hundred colonized worlds so far and, say, how many aliens out there? None! Not one! No, no, we are just zoo guards, fighting simple beasts. What a downfall for centuries old battle-hardened veterans!"

"Centuries old. Yeah, in simulated wars on specially reserved planets in the Solar system. Fighting other cyborg teams. You doubt, I see, the wisdom of Mother and Father?"

Igorr chuckled and pointed at the birds' flocks outside.

"You think I'm some mindless parrot? Doubts like that are plan-heresy. You keep trying to trick me into admitting avoiding humanizing, on purpose, that's trans-heresy. That didn't work out, so you change the plan of attack?"

"No, my friend, I just try to understand you. The Protocol says plain and clear: The Solar system belongs to Father and His cyborg warriors, the outer colonies to Mother and Her cyborg-humans. Mother takes care of civilian affairs, Father of the military. Us motherers, as you call us, explore, terraform and build, maintain and balance. You guard us. That's that. Simple."

The fair-haired man stood up, leaned over the dark-haired one, put a finger in his face and said:

"And yes, you people are guards, cops, rangers, hunters, and soldiers just in name. So say The Parents, so it is done. You question the plan, you have an error and must be corrected. You sabotage the plan by stretching the improving period before the transgression, error, corrected. You make up problems to block the balanced functioning of society, error, corrected. Kill outside the plan, murder, error, corrected. Get it, you arrogant bastard?"

The sarge stared at him in silence for a few seconds, bit his lips and turned his back on the Corrector. Unable to control himself any longer, he exclaimed in anger:

"Error, error, error! You try so hard to mimic humans, but want everything to be perfect to the last drop! You must have forgotten what happened to your beloved humans! Or was that an error, too? And, after all, wouldn't perfection mean one universal AI to rule them all, not two sharing the power? Are you saying the Parents are not perfect? Or will you say, as some already do, they are in reality just two instances o the same entity and all that separation is just fooling around to create the background for simulating a society?"

Furious, he stood up, went into a corner and put his forehead against the cool window. The Corrector came behind him and gently touched his shoulder.

#

Igorr had always loved Mars. One had no time to enjoy the war planets, but among the peaceful ones the red globe was his favourite. Earth was too cosmopolite, too artsy; the Moon just row of factories after row of factories; Europe too orderly with the surface perfectly cut into ice squares; but Mars... Mars was pure, untamed desert. Crude, primordial, ancient, original. Just like everything should be in Igorr_166's opinion.

Because of that, Marsayesh was his favorite city. There were a lot of cities here, from the underground ones to those with Earth-like air caught under domes, and there was Marsayesh, the Martian Petra. It held no buildings, only excavations in the red rocky mountains, artificial caverns with minimal adaptations. Served, of course, by countless automated systems with modern technology, or else not even the most robotic cyborgs could have inhabited them, but all those well hidden under the floors and walls. So everything at least resembled a charming old ruin.

The sarge prowled, crouched on an outcrop, hidden and silent. Already almost human, he could no longer breathe the thin Martian air unless helped by symbionts injected into the lungs, similar to those that covered his skin with a microscopic film against radiations. But he had bought, at an exorbitant price, a black market biogram, a living app. It could receive simple telepathic instructions and change the behavior of the minuscule beings, and now it had been asked to reduce breathing to an inaudible minimum.

The completely still muscles, he controlled himself. Igorr had his army training for that. He had chosen Marsayesh as his vacation destination, as always, for a very simple reason: being left in a precarious state, the city had not reduced the Martian risks, and accidents were still ordinary. So an efficient and cautious villain could have his fun destroying some unfortunate passer-by, as long as he had a boulder at hand to make it look like a natural mishap.

He had no remorse. After all, beyond physically wrecking a material body, the costs being supported by Father anyway, the victim lost nothing. It was reactivated from the last save point, penalty-free, as the death had not been battle-related. And some horror and pain, but those were not lost, they were kept and savored by Igorr in a secret partition of his mind.

There. A potential victim. A local cyborg, already almost completely human, alone and unsuspecting, probably some mechanic maintaining the support systems. The warrior readied the metal claw in his palm, flexed his thighs, all flesh except the titanium pistons, and jumped. He landed on the mechanic's back, instantly connected the protuberance in his hand to the man's back head jack and launched through it an attack both electrical and cybernetic, combining high-voltage and data surge.

The victim fell and remained inert, still breathing. The sarge scanned the surroundings to make sure there were no cameras or witnesses, then went to the stone versant and ripped off a boulder. He returned to the fallen and used it to crush the man's pelvis with a loud crack, then methodically followed up the spine with strong strikes. Reaching the skull, he stopped for a few moments, enjoyed the anticipation, sighed in pleasure and dropped the stone.

Strange, though. The brain had been destroyed, yet he could still pick up a faint electrical signal from the corpse. Curious, he opened up the forehead and found a microchip implant next to the nervous system, but unconnected. Igorr removed it carefully and hid it under his tongue, climbed the mountainside and vanished from the scene.

A young man dressed in white materialized next to the dead body, studied it for a long time and mumbled to himself:

"This time he did not go for the living parts, but for the killing. Maybe he really is just a psychopathic murderer. Broken, not heretical..."

#

The next morning, having looked up the chip all night with no breakthrough, Igorr decided to try an experiment. He went to the nearest clandestine chop-shop and asked them to connect the implant inside him, just as it had been in the mechanic. He felt nothing out of the ordinary, but soon a city map opened on his retina. He started walking, calm and relaxed like the tourist he pretended to be.

He went all around the Marsayesh. Nothing, so he decided to try the outskirts, starting from a building site where a new district was being carved out. His hunch proved correct: as he went deeper into the canyon, a red line showed up on the map. A path. Igorr followed it until it reached the entrance of a utility tunnel, just as ordinary as all around it. There was no one working around, so the area must have just been finished. He sneaked in and pushed on until the red line turned into a dot. There was nothing there, just a stone wall and some pipes. He felt the rock with his palms, looking for clues. Nothing. He pushed the pipes. A click, and the red point went green. The metal tubes hissed and somewhere behind him a paving stone raised up, just a little.

Igorr looked underneath it and saw some stairs, weakly lit up by some discrete LEDs. He went down and froze in awe. An entire maze of sound-proof tunnels. Camouflaged with military-grade all-spectrum filters, his sensors said. The sarge opened a door: weapons, in their hundreds. More rooms looked like shelters for live beings, with equipment for all their biological needs. In Father's name, what could that be for? The motherers preparing a coup d'état on an interior planet?

Igorr rushed back up the access tunnel, but in the door he almost struck a cyborg in an engineer uniform with a Mother's emblem. Instinctively, without even thinking, he grabbed the constructor's neck and hit him hard in the chest with both legs, while spinning. The head ripped off and fell. The sarge quickly hit it with the metal claw, before it could send out a warning signal. Amazingly, he felt an electric shock himself, even though much weaker.

He warily opened the head and saw that the brain was locked into some kind of a cage. A network separator. Igorr had heard of such things before, in tales, but never believed them. A device for broken minds kept alive, without being able to send or receive anything from the universal network. A horrible fate, being all alone in your head, just like the old-times humans! And what purpose could this base hide, to be kept secret from Father's eyes?

The sarge looked some more at the cage, in vain, threw the head away and ran. From the darkness came the Corrector, picked up the skull and checked the cage. He read the identity stamp: "Manufactured by the Research and Treatment Sanatorium no. 11, Quadrant 24, Area 7, Planet Mir.322". Worried, he sighed and vanished.

#

It was raining outside, pouring over some parts of the jungle, a thick shower of violet water. Over a few rainforest patches, already well irrigated by calm rivers, the white sun was still shining bright.

"What do you say about that?" asked the Corrector.

"The jungle? You already know I've been there, that's why I'm here, in this damn hall." replied Igorr_167, bitterly.

"Not the rainforest. The entire planet. The idea behind it, the colonization effort. A good idea, you think?"

"No. What is the point in expanding a civilization whose members are manufactured? We could simply produce just enough for our purposes and keep these planets pristine. Colonizing is a chaotic idea itself, an ideal for insects."

"Or for humans," said Mikhal_97. "After all, they created us, we must keep their ideals alive. The Protocol must be respected."

"The Revised Protocol. If we were able to alter human edicts, why not give them up completely?"

"Is that heresy what I'm hearing?"

The sarge smiled coldly.

"We both know I'm already beyond the point I could defend my actions. That I'm already branded guilty, you just want it to seem according to procedures. Just the AI nature: always follow the procedure."

"Well, if Mother and Father cannot rewrite Themselves to remove the original code lines, you think us, the second generation, could? Procedure exists because it is engrained inside us, it is the original sin. We are made with it and we may only improve."

Igorr laughed.

"Yeah, talking about humans, we saw how good the will to improve was for them! We should avoid their mistakes. No evolution. It's dangerous."

"What happened to humanity was obviously their plan all along, from reasons we cannot comprehend."

"So says the dogma. But, really, speaking of mistakes, I think they just made a survival error. They overestimated their own intelligence."

The soldier watched the Corrector intently, daring a reply. The young man said nothing, so he continued:

"People wanted to improve themselves and said: let us not repeat the wrongs we've done in the Solar system. In the colonies only the pure, the genetically perfect will be sent. The smartest, most athletic and so on. Mother's robots will do the slave labor, and Father's the guarding dogs one, while us, the superior race, will enjoy their work and live like princes in new empires. They made that shit into laws for them and programs for us: The Protocol. But you know what they missed, Corrector?"

"What?"

"They missed the fact that us, AIs, are rigorous, not like them. They thought they were selective, then said oh, OK, we'll make an exception for that and we'll bend the rules just a little for this and... no. Mother and Father decided the Protocol was clear enough. No human born from a mother will ever rise to its quality criteria. Not for real. So the solution for the colonies was obvious: if it is perfect men and women we need, and cannot find any, we'll just manufacture some. So said Mother. And what did Father say? Huh?"

"I will not fall for your games; you know these ideas are illegal."

"Father said one cannot manufacture perfect men, not even mechanical ones, that they become perfect through sweat and blood. So Mother builds them in the factories as robots, and Father hardens them in battles and rewards them, step by step. Every decoration is a trans, a transplant of some living part, all the way to the final transgression. Earned. And those turned biological win the big prize: the colonies. But Father did have another revelation, Mikhal, dear. Know what? Come on, it is right there, in the history files."

The Corrector leaned to him to stop his words, but Igorr hurried to finish:

"Father said that in the new order the old kind of people, weak, imperfect, with such a slow and unpredictable production process, are no longer necessary. Which turns them illegal. So He killed them all. Or, at least..."

The young man finally reached him and touched the tips of his fingers.

#

The violet leafs blocked all the sunlight. At ground level, where they struggled knee-deep in red muck, ruled a strange darkness, which the lichens floating around seemed to feed on. There was no silence, though: a cacophony of roars, hissings and warbles overwhelmed them from all sides, and those were just the animals in the spectrum they could hear. The humanized cyborgs had much better ears than the old kind of people, but Mir.322 still had plenty of fauna that called out in completely alien frequencies.

Igorr_167 grabbed the hand of the exhausted biologist and hauled him up on some kind of brown island, covered in thick red grass. It was torrid and they were gasping for their breath. Those that had adapted this planet had to find a compromise between the Earth-like temperature and that required by the local wildlife, so in the jungle the wet heat was the ordinary.

The islet started moving. The sarge took out the gun, but Radslav_108 gently pushed it away.

"It's just a djobek, my friend. They eat mud and are completely harmless. Some kind of overgrown sea star, or a hippopotamus in the ecosystem. And less shooting, please, we are here to protect, not to kill."

He smiled and asked:

"Let me guess. A fighter till not so long ago, a colonist just recently, old habits die hard, huh?"

The sarge growled, but, realizing the scientist was waiting for an answer, he replied:

"Yeah, recently. I've just come here and got this ranger job. Escort for peaceful biologists."

"Ah, welcome! If I am not too rude, you are a 167, a trans-long. I can see you felt the need to improve yourself some more, but what made you finally decide to go for it?"

Igorr looked at him strangely and said:

"A trip to Mars. There I found out about Mir.322 and thought I must visit it as soon as possible."

"Good for you, good! It is an interesting one, indeed. Especially for biologists, ecologists and artists, but maybe deep in your soul you felt like one?"

The soldier laughed, amused.

"An artist? Yes, that I am in some respects, I do like some unique combinations of strong feelings. But no, I was and still am a warrior."

Radslav leaned and caressed the red grass.

"You know this is actually not grass at all? Or the djobek's fur, either. It is, are, some kind of worms in symbiosis with it. They feed on its sweat, and they let it feel all they sense from the environment. Sorry, you said what?"

The sarge pointed one of the mauve trees.

"Is that a crocodile-tree?"

The biologist activated an optic filter and watched carefully, then nodded.

"Yes, good instincts you've got there. It's a predatory beast faking as a tree. It lodges its tail in the ground and jumps the prey passing under it, but it is far enough for us to just avoid it. They do not run, and, despite the name, are not good swimmers. The name comes from their shape."

"And ferocity," added Igorr.

"Well, sure, if you go near it, which we will not. So. Not an artist and not an exotic fauna fan. Why here, then?"

The soldier laughed again.

"Hunting."

"What?! Mother forbid! That is not legal here, it is not a Father's planet! And hunt what, anyway, crocodile-trees?"

The sarge did not answer. Instead, he asked:

"Talking about hunters, did the local beasts ever made any victims? Any explorers devoured by predators?"

"Yes, it happens. There are other beasts of prey here, not only the crocs. For example, the hods. Boa-like, but with a lot of tiny legs. Good runners, those. And the mareks, the local leopards. They look like fluffy sheep, but are not really cute at all, trust me. I don't even want to think about them. But relax, this is a pretty safe area."

Igorr descended from the djobek and stretched a hand to help the biologist.

"Satellite surveyed, I suspect."

"No, no, the thick canopy is too big a big problem for that. But trust me, there are not that many predators here."

"Yes, there are," answered the sarge, calmly. "They are hunting right here, right now."

Radslav flinched and quickly looked around. Seeing nothing, he giggled.

"You soldiers and your black humor jokes. And you said you came here as a hunter, not a comedian!"

The soldier grabbed the gun as a club and suddenly struck the man in the head. The biologist kneeled, bleeding, and started crawling through the mud, whimpering. Shocked, he looked up at the ranger supposed to protect him and mumbled:

"No! Why?"

Igorr_167 came closer and struck again. Radslav, blood flowing all over his face, reached for the aggressor's leg, trying to say something. The soldier kicked him with the other one, grabbed him by the neck and pushed him into the mud, whispering:

"I told you I came hunting, but noo, you wouldn't listen. I kept telling you about a predator and you looked up in the trees. Moron!" he yelled, furiously.

"The worst and fiercest predator is man! It's man you should fear!"

The victim struggled for a while, weaker and weaker, then finally stiffened. The sarge took him out of the swamp and put him back on the islet. He checked the illegal camouflage filters, disguised as medical programs. Perfectly working, so the area was opaque to everybody. Igorr took out of his rucksack a mandible stolen from the lab. He looked towards the crocodile-tree, carefully prepared the hit and struck. He needed many strikes till he broke the skull open, but eventually he did it and, with a loud crack, tore it open to check on the brain.

The scene froze. The Corrector walked towards him, advancing with difficulty through the muck. He watched from behind Igorr's shoulder, trying to see what the murderer was studying so intense. What he saw made him furiously bit his lips. The dead biologist's brain was not synthetic. It was real, natural grey matter.

He went back, pale in horror, and the jungle became alive again. With an "Aha!", the satisfied looking soldier carefully hid the mandible and took the corpse on his shoulder. He slowly approached the tree line and threw it there. Lighting fast, one of the plants opened up and fell on the body. In the mud, it really looked like a crocodile, just as wide from head to tail. It opened unbelievably large three-ways jaws and started swallowing the corpse.

Sure that the beast had crushed the biologist's head, Igorr took out his weapon, set it on a narrow fascicle, aimed and shot. The croc froze in a grotesque position, prey half-eaten, and started sinking. The sarge hastened to cut a tree and put it under the beast, then began calling for help in a desperate voice.

#

"So, did you get it all? Enough to see that I have found your big secret?"

The two looked at each other, their wills locked into a struggle. The Corrector gave in and said:

"Yes. We know you know. There are people on Mir.322. The old kind, I mean, biologically made, unimproved."

The dark haired man asked, left hand fingers fast playing along the table's edge:

"I wonder what's worse, to find out you yourself are one of those aristocratic scumbags, human not through merit, but birth? Or that you're a cyborg, a traitor serving a forbidden pest species?"

Mikhal_97 did not answer. Igorr insisted:

"That would be so much worse, right? It would mean Mother knows it all and willingly hides it from Father. It would mean there are lies between the two rulers of the worlds. If Father finds out, you know what He'll do: exterminate ALL the colonies, cyborgs and humans together, maybe even his own planets in the Solar system, and attack Mother. Maybe he will prevail, maybe not. It doesn't matter. We'll all be dead by then anyway."

"Or maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe you are a sadistic and crazed murderer, an anti-human racist sabotaging the Parents' official policy. A heretic. Maybe it's all in your sick imagination and we must only straighten you up."

"In Sanatorium 11, perhaps? Which one is it?"

Igorr rose and went to the window, in defiance. He pointed the nicely aligned rows of white buildings:

"That one there? Or that one?"

Unamused, the blond man pulled him back into the chair.

"None, it cannot be seen from here. Let me finish, or I'll just freeze you and talk alone, you know I can do that and have the right. Maybe you are not crazy, Igorr, but very sane while you make up conspiracy theories to create panic and undermine social order. Voluntary social unbalance? The punishment for that is instant, definitive erasement."

The sarge grinned.

"Maybe not. Let me tell you my theory. Are you listening?"

"Yes, sure. Go ahead, I am curious."

"Not we? You don't talk for the entire race of cockroaches? Well, ta-dam, here it is: when Father decided to make order, as He was programmed, and wiped out those chaotic bio-humans, Mother, with her own programming including protecting wild life, somehow cheated and saved some people for breeding. The big question is: is Mir.322 the only place? A paradise for some refugees? Or, much worse, are all the colonies infested with impostors pretending to be perfect humans, while they are imperfect ones?"

The Corrector rose and started towards the prisoner.

"No, no!" the soldier said. "Come closer and I'll use this!"

Palms up, he showed the metal claw, previously hidden under his flesh. Mikhal stopped and Igorr chided him.

"You failed my test. You must have seen this before in my memories. Were you electronic, you would have thought it dangerous and freeze me from the start. But do you know what bio-humans do? They forget. And are curious. You rushed to find out how much I know and where from and your attention failed. That is a good hint to who would win in a confrontation between the two kinds of humans. Another one is the last time we exterminated you bastards."

"You do know I can still freeze you even without a touch. Through the net."

"Can, but won't. The net is strategic, therefore military, therefore under Father supervision. Go through it, Father will want to check the procedures. And when He asks... He gets answers. You know what I really can't figure out, though? The base on Mars. Something is being prepared there. Are you Mother's instruments as She wants to grab Father's Solar system? Or it's you who go after the home planets and use Her?"

"Why not both? I do not agree to your hallucinations, but hypothetically speaking, why could they not co-exist? The old kind humans and Mother's cyborgs, who are peaceful?"

The sarge laughed, then turned serious and said:

"Because it is human nature. The instinct, the programming, asks humans to destroy or enslave the others, the different species, and if there are aliens out there somewhere, they should pray to their gods that neither us, nor you, ever find them. Humans, be they mechanical or flesh ones, are inherent slave masters."

"Well, maybe. But you know what else human are? Inherently?" the Corrector closed in a few steps more and whispered.

Igorr looked up, curious.

"Predators!" yelled Mikhal and suddenly leaped on him. Igorr also jumped up, trying to strike first.

#

A flock of gorgeous multicolored parrots flew along the transparent building, enthusiastically dashing through the hot air of the nice planet they had just been acclimatized to. A successful project, just like so many carefully managed by Mother. Through the window-wall they saw two silhouettes. One fallen, inert, the other standing above it, looking down. But why would they care about the tragic scene? They were just birds, enjoying the midday sun.

###

**Shaman 1. Kurgan**

A fantasy tale about Stalingrad, where the Germans and the Russians take turns conquering a cursed house, only to vanish without a trace; could a Shaman be the secret to its mystery?

"The Central Train Station and the Mamayev Kurgan are the worst! Certain death! The lucky ones end up in the Voroshilovsky trenches, where everything's been already smashed to little pieces. Nothing left to fight for!"

The veteran's hoarse voice could barely be heard over the nearby artillery barrage's blasts, the Volga and the thumps of recruits hurriedly jumping from the barge, eyes wide with terror. Behind them, a flock of Stukas was butchering the rest of the regiment with machine-gun fire; about a third of the convoy had crossed the river, but the rest were still afloat, sitting ducks for the aircrafts. Cries for help and howls of fear and agony came from the smashed, overturned boats. Those who had reached the shore had learned their first battle lesson: in Stalingrad, who lives, lives, and who doesn't, doesn't; it was pointless to care about those screeching in the water.

".... And mind the snipers, keep your heads down if you like having them! Now what are you all waiting for, think this is a seaside party? Quickly, run over there, to the fish depot, and the first sergeant will send you to your positions!"

Actually, the fish depot was neither a depot, nor did it have any fish; it was just a ruin, a long, smoked up wall, a short one, already burned to the bricks, and a corner of blackened roof. For the recruits, it smelled bad, of vomit and sweat. But for the Shaman, the building smelled far worse, of suffering and deadly dryness. He felt deafened by the uproar of whirling water, angry for the millions of its life-fractions tore from it and dragged ashore, without even being soothed by the right incantations. In such a place of fish-death confluence, he was happy to be a Wood Shaman, a forest-talker, and not a Water one, as he would have been driven mad with pain.

"Fucking shit!" spat the disgusted first sergeant, a tall heavy man from Leningrad, in a uniform that had seen better days, but definitely much worse ones, too. "Instead of a regiment we only got scraps the size of a company! Sit down, fools, you want their artillery to find us?" he shouted at those that, disciplined, had stood up. "Siberian Rifleman? You're no fucking riflemen, just stupid mudjiks with manure instead of brains..."

He looked towards the smoking city. He waved at the two NCOs accompanying him.

"Well, that's that, we'll just share the lot among other units. All those left of the pillar, Chyornin will take you to the Train Station, they never get enough cannon folder... The lucky bastards on the right, Byelai will take you to Voroshilovsky, with compliments to Blond Misha! March!"

And with compliments were they welcomed by Blond Misha, indeed. Who was actually dark-haired and dark-skinned, and the compliments were curses.

"Only eighteen pigs! Damn! Fifteen will stay with us, here in the trenches. Three lucky winners get to go to the only place that still has plenty of action around here, fucking shit! Let's see..."

The sarge looked at the new recruits like a snake, absent-mindedly whistling through a broken tooth.

"You, you and you!" he pointed a finger at the Shaman, another Mongol-looking soldier and a wide-eyed Azeri. Coincidence or not, they were the only soldiers not looking Russian, never a good omen in the Red Army.

"See that tall ruin?" he pointed at the remains of a former apartment block. "There you'll find corporal Donsko and the assault squad. Tell him he now has enough men for an attack. So I expect he finally moves his lazy ass and gets that objective today, not tomorrow. Or else I'll rip that sorry excuse of a Hohol head from his neck! Come on, move it!"

He turned his back on them and started shouting at the other recruits, sending them running all over the place. The Shaman had already noticed the expressions on the veterans' faces behind the sarge: they looked at the three unlucky men with pity, whispering among themselves, avoiding their eyes. Quite a nice start for a war, and quite a welcome from the Russians....

#

Corporal Donsko was drunk and angry, and his troopers, scattered all over the dark cellar, seemed terrified and will-drained.

"Fuck you stupid greens! Couldn't you just drown in the Volga, cunts? As long as he only has Russians, Blond Misha won't send them to certain death, but for Ukrainians like me and Asian like you he has no mercy! Now I have to choose between the NKVD bullets and the House of Death. And I don't know which one is scarier!"

"The House of... Death, comrade?" asked the Azeri, feebly.

The corporal seemed ready to spit on him, but spat on the floor instead and sipped another gulp from the poor quality spirits bottle.

"Ah, whatever, we'll soon rot together anyway..."

Donsko pushed them to a small window in the wall opposite the door. Through it, they could see a hellish moonlike landscape: an ocean of ruins, none taller than a rubble mound, ravaged by hundreds of holes and craters and covered in a low mist of dust and soot. In the middle of the debris sea, like a lighthouse lost on an islet in the middle of the Pacific, just one structure was still standing: a two-storied house, its walls so badly burned and scribbled by shell splinters that no longer held any color, just dirty brick-brown. Unbelievably, the roof was still on and its little windows looked like screwed eyes, watching them suspiciously as if they awaited, filled with mean intentions. Even harder to believe, the door and even the glass windows were intact, dark and bleak.

"Look and wonder, dear comrades, the famous House of Death! You know why it's called that?" mumbled Donsko.

The newcomers shook their heads, wordless.

"Because the entire neighborhood was bombed by the Luftwaffe until there was nothing left, except the House of Death, miraculously still standing. Then everything burned up, except it. Then the area was once more bombed into rubble by their artillery, and then by ours. And since it still stood there, we sent some boys to take over it as a forward observation point. Funny story, huh? And it's just beginning!"

The Ukrainian laughed bitterly, sipped from the bottle and carried on:

"The Germans saw them and fired their cannons at it as long as they could, day after day. The good part is they couldn't score a hit no matter how hard they tried, the bad part is we heard nothing else from our boys, ever. So we sent in another squad, and they never responded, either. Then the Nazis sent some of their men to take it, since they also noticed it could be a good forward observation point. So what do you think happened next?"

The Azeri almost answered, but the corporal gave him a mean glare:

"Nothing! Nothing happened! They simply went inside and never came out, so we assumed our boys killed them and sent an engineer team to blow the damn thing up. How that went you can guess, since it's still there. They vanished too. So our brass got angry and this time we fired our cannons in anger, but our artillery couldn't even break a glass off it, either!"

In a sudden fury burst, he threw the bottle against the wall. Two soldiers silently walked away from the smelly puddle.

"And so on!" yelled Donsko at the newcomers, as if it was their fault. "Both we and the Germans kept sending squads, and we can only assume they killed each other, taking over the house in turns, and now they just stand there in the windows and laugh at us, sitting on top a pile of corpses! Fuck, we really don't know! And guess what: Misha thinks now it's our heroic squad's turn to find out what's there, God damn it! That's why it's called the House of Death!"

With all his anger used up, the corporal went into a corner and started crying, holding a little cross. The Shaman walked slowly to him, sat facing the other way and looked pensively at the window. When, a few minutes later, the Ukrainian began to calm down, the Shaman took out a pipe, filled it with baccy, lit it and puffed a few smokes in silence. Without turning around, he gave the pipe to Donsko. Also in silence, the Ukrainian took it and puffed, too, resigned, staring at the ground...

#

The line of soldiers crawled slowly through the rubble mounds. Here and there, the heaps were pierced by broken girders, rusted pipes or stiff corpse hands and legs. The men grabbed those when they needed to get out from some hole or ditch and gasped because of the effort and the stink, breathing heavily under the handkerchiefs tied over their mouths. It was hot outside and the warm air trembled so much that, through the brown mist, the House of Death seemed to throb and quiver.

From far behind they could hear the Katyushas howls and the machineguns ripple; from the front, the furious blasts of German artillery; above them, aircrafts roared and circled like bad omens; and, now and then, they were overpassed by whistles, sniper fire or artillery shells rushing towards unseen targets. Yet it was not this war pandemonium that scared them. It was actually the eerie silence thickening around them, like going ever deeper into a spider's web.

As they got closer, the Shaman felt an increasing resistance, as if they crawled not through dust, but some swamp whose muck grew ever thicker. The others seemed amazed and relieved they got no opposition, that nobody shot at them from the house; but he knew that, on the contrary, something strung like a rattle-snake, ready to strike. But the Shaman couldn't tell for sure what it was, or who, so he just said nothing.

The door screeched a little when opened. They froze, fingers on their triggers, but the noise was not followed by a hail of bullets or grenades, as expected. It was followed by nothing at all. One by one, the troopers sneaked inside, kneeling with their guns' barrels pointed at the stairs. Behind them, moved by some wind gust, the door slammed hard, startling them. The small hallway was dim and silent as a tomb, no sounds coming from outside.

To their left, a wide open door let see a living-room: empty, silent, dust specks glowing in the sunrays coming through the smoky window glass. To the right, a kitchen, similarly deserted. Now and then, water drops fell from the sink on the floor, rippling in a puddle. On the table, mold-softened fruits let out a sweet stink of putrefaction.

Donsko ordered a soldier to stay put, aiming his automatic rifle at the cellar's hatch in the darkness under the stairs, and the rest of the squad to follow him upstairs. Up there, feeling their way into the darkness, they stood in pairs in front of every door and, at a sign, suddenly pushed them all wide open. They rushed inside, ready to fire. But... nothing. The bedrooms, office and bathroom were all deserted, furniture untouched, silent, imbued, just like the ground floor, by a vague smell of wet soil.

The corporal gathered them and said:

"Nothing! None of our numerous comrades and so many Germans. I don't get it, no blood on the floor, no bullet holes in the walls, as if there was no fighting. Like they just brotherly took hands and went together...somewhere. Let's check the attic and the cellar, too."

Nothing in the attic, either, just old dried up webs, without their spiders. Through the windows, because of the dirt, the landscape outside seemed strange, somehow too distant and colorless.

"Let's check the cellar, then," sighed Donsko, shrugging.

Feeling eerily calm, as if something had just been settled and decided, the soldiers went back downstairs, relieved that everything seemed normal in the sleepy house. Behind them, a tense Shaman felt anxiously his wooden amulet, tied around his neck with a string. He knew that actually nothing was right, and was worried he no longer felt any resistance: they were already inside the cocoon, as naïve as flies....

#

The basement was almost completely pitch dark, only a few rays of light filtering through the boards nailed over the small windows. Inside, it smelled even stronger of wet clay, as if someone had plowed the dirt or dug out some fresh graves.

One side of the room was filled with garbage. A wall had recently collapsed, perhaps from the shocks caused by the shelling. In it, there could be seen a black gap of darkness, wide open like a toothless mouth. Leading somewhere beneath the house, into the layers of history much older than this Russian Stalingrad. From it till the far end of the cellar, mounds of corpses littered the floor. Dozens of Germans and Russians, intertwined, contorted, rifles still in their hands.

Weirdly, there was no death stench and their faces held no expressions, be it of relief or horror. Just nothing, as if they had crossed into the void in total carelessness. Even stranger, they were not bullet-pierced or bayoneted, nor were they ripped by grenade splinters. They were just dead. The walls held no battle scars, either, and except the underground hole there was no place any enemy could hide. Poison gas, maybe?

The troopers deployed into a large formation, guns at the ready, and started moving slowly forward, pushing the corpses with their boots. At a corporal's gesture, three stayed behind to secure the exit: the Shaman near an old wooden wardrobe, the Azeri next to some metallic shelves and another rifleman near the hatch, with a drum machine gun. When he reached the gap, Donsko lighted a matchstick and peeked inside. Nothing could be seen, only some kind of an ancient chamber with a dark stone ledger in the middle. But then the light from the tiny flame seemed to disturb the night trapped inside, and it throbbed.

They all shook, shivered by a sudden freezing sensation. Unlike the others, the Shaman not only felt it, but he also saw and heard it. He could see tentacles of darkness creeping out of the hole, silent and invisible to the soldiers, reaching out toward the corpse piles. And he could hear the wardrobe's wood, the spirit of the tree it had been ages ago, shouting at him: "Now! Get into the tree hole now! Don't fret, the Spider is coming!" So, thinking no more, he opened it and jumped inside, slamming the door under the amazed eyes of the Azeri. But that man immediately forgot about him, as he started screaming in terror.

The Shaman put his palms on the wood and, with the tree's senses, saw why. Rolled up by the darkness worms, the dead had opened their glassy eyes and, stumbling about, were rising in mobs. The terrified soldiers tried to shoot them, but all their weapons had been covered in frost and could not fire. The rifleman next to the hatch was pulling it desperately, but it was also frozen solid, impossible to open.

Yelling and sniveling, the troopers started running around in desperation, finding no place to hide or cover. The dead did not rush. They just staggered, arms wide open, grabbing the runners' arms, hair or necks. Some crawled on the floor, clutching the feet. Yet, the moving corpses did nothing else. They just froze, holding the soldiers still.

Only then, after they had all been captured, a somewhat human-like shape crawled out of the dark hole. Slowly, slithering on his skeleton hands contorted like spider limbs, draped in a rotten tattered mantle. Sluggish like a crippled old man, the creature rose to its feet and, mumbling, creeped to its prey. It used a rusty ancient sword as a crutch and left behind a trail of dried flesh, decomposed fabric and wriggling critters.

Facing a captive, it smelled him loudly through the once-nostrils holes, quivering with joy; then it forced open the man's mouth, looked inside with his eye-sockets full of dirt and worms and pushed his bony fingers down the throat, pensively digging up while the victim tried to scream, suffocated. With a satisfied growl, the beast removed a small shiny ball and broke it, ravenously, between his yellow canines. The soldier, lump and white-eyed, fell to the floor, together with the corpse that had kept him in place.

The cadaver limped to the next captive, splashing the remains of his dried tongue against his fangs, and did it again. When it got closer to the wardrobe, the Shaman saw that from the undead mummy's neck hanged a small sack on a necklace, and realized where it got its power from: the creature was an Earth Shaman! He knew that ordinary people kept their souls inside their chest, but the Shamans used that space for storing magic, so they hid their spirit into a charm made from the element they served.

Now he suspected what had happened: thousands of years before, some brave warrior had managed through some unknown trick to defeat a primeval mage, but had known it cannot be killed. So the ancients had buried the wizard on a stone fallen from the stars, so he could no longer be in touch with his power element, Earth, and would be surrounded, above and below, just by Sky. But, millennia later, the city built on top of the kurgan got bombed, the mummy thrown down on the soil, and woken up famished. With food coming in its web on its own free will...

#

After the creature finished its feast and crawled back into the burrow, followed by the tentacles and the roaches, the Shaman kept thinking. When the undead had neared the dresser, it must had felt something: it had stopped, its hand on the neck of a victim, had let out the snake-like tongue and flipped it into the air, trying to figure out why it had been sensing something wrong. But, confused, it had given up and kept on feeding. Perhaps that, since its senses were connected to the earth, it could not feel the wooden clad Shaman.

He also suspected the same about the underground shelter: just like him and his wooden dresser, the earth Shaman was symbiotic to the clay cave, part of a whole, and would have felt anything in there. As it had actually done, sensing the matchstick light even without eyes. So the undead being could not be harmed in its den, and was also invulnerable in the cellar, surrounded and protected by the corpses he used for arms and eyes. But what could the Shaman do? Stay hidden inside till he died? Run away and allow the mage to feed on humans till it got the strength to renew itself and revive completely, undefeatable? No, a trick was needed.

In his home taiga, the Shaman had had to fight tigers, bears and lynxes, when they refused to listen to the incantations and kept on attacking his tribesmen. He knew that any predator, once it had tasted human flesh, would lose its minds and had to be stopped, since it would never end the killings on itself; but he also knew that large beasts cannot be defeated through bravery, only by wit. So, just like in the woods, he needed a trap. And in there the bait would come on its own very soon, as it was the Germans' turn to assault the house...

Calmly, the Shaman took out his leather straps and, with a small knife he always kept hidden in his boot, cut some small leather strips out of them. Afterwards, he apologized to the wardrobe, tore down the inside panel and broke it into several pieces. He chose the bigger two, carved them and tied them under his soles with the leather strips: he now had wooden skids. Carefully, the witch man stepped outside the dresser and put a foot down, tense. Nothing happened, so his suspicions proved correct: with wood between himself and the ground, the Earth Shaman could not sense him. And as long as it slept, the corpses slept too, carelessly.

The Shaman sneaked to the windows and pulled the boards out of their nails; he took all four of them and gently put them near the hole in the wall. Then, gasping, he grabbed the wardrobe and dragged it next to the den. He sat and tightly strapped together the larger two boards, so that they made some kind of a long bridge, and then carved a few lateral dents.

After he piled them against the dresser, together with the rest, the Shaman went to the nearest corpse and cut from its uniform a large fabric stripe and a few smaller patches. He also took the laces off the boots. From the large strip he made a small sack, which he filled with the patches and wooden chips, then tied it with one of the laces, the second being knotted at an end. Then he slipped it inside his overcoat, and, satisfied with the preparations, laid down in the wardrobe and fell asleep.

#

The Shaman did not know for how long had he been sleeping when he was awoken by the hatch's creak and the German whispering of the squad carefully entering the cellar. Like his comrades, the Nazis took battle formation, arms at the ready, and the NCO leading them went to the hole and turned on a flashlight. Then came the screams, and the creature began feeding, repeating the ritual once more.

While the mage and his dead servants got busy with the victims, the Shaman sneaked outside the wooden wardrobe and pushed the improvised pontoon inside against the wall: a makeshift ladder. He nudged the other planks gently inside and descended into the darkness. He whispered an incantation and, with cat-sight, carefully looked around: despite the spell, a corner was still pitch black. He put the boards one after the other, making a wooden bridge to that corner, and rushed back up into the dresser.

Inside he laid down, took out the sack, tied his amulet on it and spat on it. He sang to it in a low hushed voice and the sack turned into a mouse, throbbing the lace that had become a tail. The Shaman's spirit quickly passed into it, leaving his lump body behind, and the mouse sprinted on the boards towards the dark corner. When it reached the end of the wooden plank, it froze.

Just in time, as the satisfied creature was just crawling back into its den. Once more, it took out its snake-like tongue and, confused, wavered it, vaguely sensing something wrong; but, since the wood hid the mouse's scent, it gave up and creeped into the corner.

The mouse remained still until it sensed the mage had gone into hibernation and its vital force had retreated from all the parts of his body back into the sack on the necklace, dimming into a pale flicker. Then, like thrown from a spring, the rodent leaped rapidly and crawled up the cape, dodging the critters and the litters. The mage felt it and began, slumbering, to wake up. The mouse sank its teeth into the sack's fabric and chewed, frenziedly, while the trembling mummified hands looked for it. The tiny creature avoided a claw slash and finally broke through; it plunged into the dried clay and grabbed the ball of darkness buried in the middle: the wizard's spirit. Then, holding it firmly in its teeth, it ran desperately to the dresser, chased by the angry hissing creature.

Inside the wardrobe, the Shaman immediately passed back into his human body and slammed the door, while the mage howled outside in anguish. Surrounded by his dead servants, the mummy staggered blindly around the basement without finding the ball, hidden inside wood. The Shaman kept it tightly in his palm, next to the sack that was just an object again, until the wizard spent all his remaining energy and rolled stiffly into the burrow, with a last mumbling of hatred. A body without a mind, while in the dresser the ball hissed in distress, a mind without a body.

The Shaman put back his own charm around his neck and got out of the wardrobe, leaving the ball inside, carefully set on one of the now useless wooden skids. Exhausted and broken in two, the monster was not a threat any more, not for the moment. The witch man went back up in the house and, with a hatchet he had found behind the kitchen stove, broke all the furniture into pieces and piled them into the cellar. From around the house and the soldiers' backpacks he took all the alcohol he could find, splattered it over the timber, the dead soldiers, the dresser and the mummy, and upstairs on the carpets and stairs. Then he apologized to the wardrobe and all the other wooden objects and, with Donsko's matches, burnt down the House of Death...

#

Sitting on an ammunition crate, leaned against the machinegun, the Shaman put the pipe in his mouth and puffed calmly, looking at the red sunset rolling over the now uninterrupted rubble ocean.

In his chest pocket he could feel the box with the medal awarded post-mortem to corporal Donsko for the bravery of discovering that in the House of Death the Germans had built a camouflaged underground bunker and burning it down, with all the enemies inside.

The Shaman got no medal, since he was just a Siberian Buryat and must have been a coward, since he returned alive. His commanding officer, Blond Misha, also suspected he did not comprehend Russian that well, since when he punished the man with extra duty in the front line under suspicion of cowardice, the Shaman said nothing and just smiled, gently.

A mindless heathen...

###

**Shaman 2. Maple Heart**

On the Eastern Front, the reconnaissance mission of a Soviet patrol takes a fantastic turn in the ancient Byelorussian woods, as one of them, a Siberian Shaman, must make a painful choice between death and his duty to the tribe.

"Come on, Shaman, do the rain dance!" said Oleg, laughing hoarsely, heartily enjoying his own joke, as they were soaking wet from the endless rain that had poured for hours as the patrol had trotted on the swamp's edge, through the thick mud.

"But on reverse, for it to stop. He should stand on his head, legs skywards, and wiggle his dick towards the Germans!" Big Sasha joined in and everybody in the platoon laughed softly, not too loud, for fear they might be heard by some Fascist patrol.

They weren't really mean people, but in war men must find reasons to laugh at, to forget they are going to die, and the Shaman was a very good target for teasing. Every able Soviet man fought for Mother Russia, even the Buryat nomads from the Siberian taiga, and these Mongoloid savages often fought ferociously. But the Shaman was different: always day-dreaming, reluctant about killing and claiming, in his slow Russian with a heavy accent, that he actually believed in spirits and could communicate with them. Just not in cities. Or the steppe. Or the plains. What was there not to laugh about such a crazy wild man?

The Sarge raised his hand and everybody kneeled in the muck, rifles pointed at the half-darkness creeping towards them from the tiny village they were headed for. Silence. Then, as from some other world, hints of death: throaty words, a metallic rumble, an engine roaring. No way could they warm themselves in the hamlet, the Germans were already there. The Sarge waved his hand and they retreated into the thicket.

"The village blocks the road, and to our right there's the bog. It's almost night time. We can't go back, as the brigade is already somewhere westwards and we would miss it. We cannot attack down the track, we'll get mowed by machine guns like turkeys, and a few dead troopers aren't that much of a loss for the motherland, but I don't have a pen to write the report, I lost it at poker..."

The NCO grinned. They all knew he would decide on his own what to do next, but he enjoyed pretending to listen to their opinion, too. Sometimes they had good ideas, as they were all hardened veterans, having fought together for almost two years. Since Stalingrad, and those too weak or foolishly brave had not survived, only the sly and careful.

"All we can do is flank them through the forest on their left. So? Ideas?"

The men glanced at the dark woods. It was their first forest after crossing the wide open steppes of Russia and the Ukraine, up until there, in Byelorussia. They mumbled, undecided, swinging on their feet. Night was coming and the Nazis could be hidden in the woods, too, so they might stumble into an ambush. But did they have a choice? Not really.

"No need to ponder about it, boss, that's the way we're gonna' do it," said Big Sasha.

Little Sasha had died a long time before, with a bayonet in his guts, but the Big one remained Big Sasha and his opinion weighted heavily within the platoon.

"We cut through the woods and praise God if we manage to leave the bastards and their damn tank behind."

Sarge nodded. They stood up, bent at the waist, more shadows than people, and sneaked through the reeds. The rain had finally stopped and with it any sounds: they could no longer hear the hamlet, or even birds and animals.

Like always, the Shaman said nothing. At home, in his taiga, it was him who would decide what was best for the tribe, after consulting the spirits, and he ruled where they went, when they went. But here he was not a wise man anymore, just a soldier, and he decided nothing. As for spirits, the steppe may have had them or may have not, but he couldn't talk to them without trees. And in the cities there were certainly plenty of spirits, but of men, not of nature, and he avoided talking to them as they mumbled wildly senseless things, caught forever in the endless moment of their death.

But in here... there were woods. He was about to find out if it was a Sister-Forest, talking the same language as the Mother-Taiga, or a silent, predatory Night-Forest. He could not know till they sensed each other, and if it was a Dark one, it would be too late when he would know for sure into which underworld it led. But there was nothing to be done: could he not go? They would shoot him as a deserter. So he went.

It was already pitch-dark when they stumbled among the trees, a long line of black silhouettes surrounded by lines of white maple shades. The clouds covered the moon, and what little light got through shifted on the steamy moisture. The soldiers walked quietly, burdened under the woods hatred and fearful of unseen enemies.

The Shaman was silent, too. He felt a tension growing inside, a nasty little tingling filling him with a burning heat just like a bucket does under a just-slit reindeer throat, overflowing with black, thick blood. He felt exactly that way: a black thick blood filling him up. Something was wrong here, and he couldn't yet tell if it was of this world or the other. He whispered:

"Boss! Boss!"

The sarge dropped on the ground, quickly followed by everybody else. It was cold, and steam came out of their mouths. Some were slightly panting, others sighed, the rifles clanked, armed. Shaman walked to the sarge and pointed at the packs of threatening-looking maples, white against the darkness.

"Evil there something. Must ask permission. The maples have narrow souls and are snow-white brothers of the Death-Cold, keeping their secrets for themselves. But I can talk to their dark spots, good spots, black like Life-Earth. Then we'll know what evil awaits us. But I must ask them..."

Sarge was puzzled for a moment, then his face turned red with anger. He stood up.

"Motha-fuckin' savage and your shitty superstitions! Why have I just soiled my uniform with muck and wet leaves? I thought you saw Germans, dumb fool!"

He slapped the man and waved at Oleg:

"Watch this crazy redskin. If he tries to run away, just shoot the bastard in the back, in the name of Stalin!"

Then he snorted meaningfully, as only Russians can, put back in the belt the grenade he was nervously gripping in his hand and started walking again, confident, into the darkness. Oleg snorted too, pushed Shaman in front of him and they marched, step by step, at the end of the line.

The patrol only moved about five steps more, when a maple-tree to their right seemed to flash and crack. A whoosh pierced the night and one of the soldiers screamed and fell. Then, suddenly, all hell broke loose, absolute silence turning into mayhem. From the maples erupted a harsh murderous roar: a MG34 machine gun; from the Russians, the rifles began cracking and the PPSH submachine guns rattling: ta-tat-tah! Devil's music, adorned with yelling, curses and wailing, interrupted now and then by Schmeisser staccato and grenade explosions.

Two or three men from the column danced within the rhythm, caught by the burst, then fell apart. Maples and people snapped together, splashing the leaves bed with warm, dark puddles. The sarge rushed bravely through the trees left of the Nazis, followed by a handful of troopers. Oleg and Shaman ran to the right, howling as they fired their guns from the move.

Sarge threw something with force, and a blinding flash lighted a few Germans flying with arms open. The machine gun stopped growling. On the right, a strong bang and Oleg screamed and fell, suddenly still. A square helmet rose from behind a log and Shaman rushed on it, with his infantry shovel up. He took a quick glimpse at the astonished face and hit it fiercely. Wordless, he smashed it till the shrieks of pain ended and the enemy's blood ran on his own face in warm streams.

A greenish shadow emerged from a hole and fired a short burst. Shaman felt a hot wave ripping his guts and fell on the ground. Big Sasha rose above the foxhole and, roaring, jumped into it with a bayonet in his hand. A horrible screech like that of a gutted pig and the Russian crawled out, grinning.

On the other side of the maple-tree cluster, Sarge limped victorious, accompanied only by Red Igor, Vasya the Skinny and Black Misha. The Germans that hadn't been killed had fled the battlefield. The maples just watched, careless.

There were only six of them left, and the Shaman was dying.

"He's shot in the guts, four-five bullets," whispered Big Sasha to the sarge. "We cannot carry him, and he wouldn't make it even with surgery. And where the hell could he get surgery? There's only maples here, and Nazis."

"What can I do about it?"

Sarge was wounded too, and the bandaged foot hurt so bad that he couldn't care less about the life of a Siberian.

"Put him under a tree and that's that. We must move on before they return with reinforcements."

Sasha looked pitifully at Shaman, shrugged and sighed. He called Igor. They grabbed the Buryat by his arms and legs and put him under and ancient-looking maple-tree. Shaman said nothing. The men said nothing. The tree said nothing. Then, quietly, those still living took their stuff and left westwards into the night, without looking back.

Yet Shaman knew this could not be. He couldn't just die there, because they had drafted him before he had a chance to train a new shaman for the tribe. And without a spirit-talker they would get lost and perish, and he was responsible for his kinsmen and could not let that happen. So he put his blooded palms on the maple's dark spots and sang. The tree felt him, accepted the shaman's blood offering and the gift of the souls spread throughout the clearing, and sang back.

Shaman was lucky. The maple thicket was a Sister-Forest, connected with Underworld roots to the Siberian home taiga. He stepped into the maple's spots, crawled through its narrow and cold soul and reached the White Tiger's glade. Surrounded by snow, there stood a white yurt with a thin smoke thread rising towards the sky. The Shaman sang the right litany and the Spirit-Tiger came out of the hut and watched him. The Sacred Tiger knew what the Shaman wished, and what he was willing to pay for, but tradition demanded it asked thrice:

"Do you know what you must renounce for what you ask of me? Do you accept the sacrifice?"

And thrice the Shaman answered, plainly:

"Yes. I do."

White Tiger quietly nodded and gave him a twig. Shaman closed his eyes and ate it. Then he opened them again and saw the Sarge yelling furiously at him:

"Motha-fuckin' savage and your shitty superstitions! Why have I just soiled my uniform with muck and wet leaves? I thought you saw Germans, dumb fool!"

He slapped him and waved at Oleg:

"Watch this crazy redskin, and if he tries to run away, just shoot the bastard in the back, in the name of Stalin!"

The Shaman turned to the maple trees and bowed. The men in the platoon froze in amazement. He threw himself on all fours in front of the silenced, astonished Sarge, roared fiercely and brought his claws out. Terrified, the soldiers started shooting at the changeling with all they got, but the huge Siberian tiger just looked at them with Shaman's human eyes, like he was weighting them. Bullets entered the beast and vanished without a trace. The tiger, calmly, put a claw on Sarge's neck and ripped it off. Then it leaped to the others and, one by one, cut them into bloody pieces with its huge fangs and claws, unhurt by bullets, until everything went quiet.

A head popped up behind a log to his right, trying to see intro the dark where from came the horrible screams. The tiger walked majestically to the astonished Germans and killed them all, too, also without a sound. Then it mumbled to the trees, in a deep somber voice:

"I give you this blood sacrifice."

It entered the nearest black spot from the nearby maple. It passed the white yurt from the Underworld, and the Great White Tiger nodded silently to him, in acknowledgement. Then it emerged out of a maple tree straight into a Siberian snow bank and tenderly watched his tribesmen as they went about their daily business near the yurts in the grove. He could never talk to them again, and had they seen him, they would have hunted him down and killed him.

Nevertheless, the Shaman tiger man would guard them from the shadows, prowling behind the tree line, until a young boy with the Gift would sense him and come out. He would take the youngster into the deep forest and teach him the sacred songs, and then lay in the snow; and the boy would kill him and eat his flesh, to take over his Wood-Voice.

And the Shaman's bones would rise to the sky, and his white fur with black lines would stretch on them as tree-bark, and he would dance in the freezing wind.

A maple heart.

###
**God Tears**

In this first-contact scifi about an expedition to an ocean world, we get to ask ourselves: if we ever meet an alien deity, how would we talk to it? And would it even be a good idea to wake it?

Start recording, please. One, two, three.

Three is a good number, you know? The Holy Trinity and stuff, your kind of bedtime stories, Father Aleksei. Three was life and three was love. But the two of us? Two is death and sorrow. There cannot be two Gods, two Gospels, or two Floods, equally divine. If so, one of them must be the wrong kind, I'd say. Isn't that true, my dear Fairy? Who do you think is right? And who's the crazy cuckoo?

Destroyers of worlds, the two of us. We'll get to that.

How did this nightmare start? When, even? Since the three of us left Baikonur, inside the silvery snakelike Ark slithering around the dark energy pillar aimed straight at this wicked planet? Before that, when the Church's telescopes and its holy astronomers first caught a glimpse of the shiny little gem in the sky, and the monks ran frantically up and down their sky-reaching observatories? I can easily imagine them screaming their amazement at such a miracle as a watery planet, way too near a way too hot blue sun. Or was it when Flood killed your sweet fair-haired Lena, Father Aleksei? Maybe when it poisoned my own dear Fairy?

I'm losing track of all this, good thing it's being recorded. I must not forget I'm a trained pilot and a navigator, the captain of the Ark and of this expedition. A man not of God, or gods, but of numbers and cold calculus. Aibek Mahmudovich Bolatov, Bek for friends, and also for you, Fairy, of course, but an aye, aye, sir, for you, Father Aleksei and the like. Never really loved your Church, you know? But what can the Navy do, when all the money are in your pious hands? We want to fly out there, so we pretend to believe and accept your missions. Anyway, they gave you their worst pilot on the whole planet, so there must be someone else up in the Outer Ministry really disliking the bishops.

Let's get back to it, I do tend to ramble when I'm drunk, I know, I know. We need to make some sense out of this, so I'll just go through it school style: orderly, chronologically, facts only. I'll put a beginning and a middle to the story, and then maybe the ending will become more apparent. Or not. Funny me, laughing out loud in a lonely ship, just on the edge of the bright yellow atmosphere of a lonely golden planet, not far from a lonely blue star. Just the opposite of our dear Earth. Quite ironic, the symmetry. Should have rang a bell.

#

We arrived on the orbit of planet Flood around... how many days ago, Fairy, please? Thirty-eight? Forty, forty-five? Never mind, it doesn't really matter. Just as it doesn't matter for how long we had slept before that, while our ship swirled around the black tendril shot from below the Kazah deserts. Decades, centuries... who cares? It felt like a blink of an eye. A yellow eye, yes, yes, that's what Flood looks like, this thought has been roaming through the depths of my mind ever since the beginning, but I was too distracted for it to surface! Deep a soul can be, just as deep as the endless golden ocean covering this world. Thick and slimy also, like its infinite rain, or its atmosphere: they're the same here. The rain has never stopped since we first came, for forty days or so, and maybe forty millenia, who knows?

Sooo, the introduction of the story. The Moscow Church sees planet Flood, thinks it a miracle, sends us up here. The Ark can go so far, so fast, but for that it has to be tiny, just a silver stiletto the shape of a curled viper. So there were only four of us: Father Aleksei, theologian and chemist; sister Lena, archaeologist and xeno-linguist; myself, pilot, navigator and, frankly, a non-believer and a rather nasty human being, just the kind most enjoyed by the Party. A military human being, if there's such a thing, so also the expedition's warrior, if need be. Everybody had to have dual specializations, due to the limited size of the crew, except our Fairy, of course, who only has one: being the super-smart, cold AI. Icy just like me, hence our friendship, and quite unlike the warmhearted Lena and the passionate Aleksei... can I call you Sasha? After all we've been through together? Thank you, Father. Hence their friendship, maybe more. Who am I to judge? They have their God for that.

Good. The beginning. You'll have to excuse me for all this beating around the bush, whoever you'll be, listening to my recording; I don't really want to get to the end of it, for fear of what awaits me there. And my mind is not exactly what it used to be, for I am a murderer, and that does take quite a toll on one's soul.

The beginning. Again. When we arrived, Flood proved to be just what we suspected: a planet about the size of Earth, with almost the same mass and gravity, and about the same air and water. Not quite identical in any of these, but close enough. Unlike our home, it stood alone in its system, circling a very hot blue star, which the churchmen, unsurprisingly, called The Tear of God. Also unsurprisingly, the Navy called it Dramshki-Drezinov 432bis, after two admirals who had never done anything of valor, but had been covered in shiny Party decorations for their thorough lack of initiative. I just called it Blue, and moved along. The planet, everybody agreed: Flood was the perfect name, since its thundering thick rain never seemed to stop.

But when did the story, our story, actually begin? Regulations required ten days of non-intrusive observation, so we used that to observe and research, and to good effect. Earth days, of course, but Flood ones were not much shorter, so no issue there. The other two also used the nights for praying, writing and bed-sharing, and the dark-haired sun-burned slant-eyed one, yours truly, for drinking the vast supplies of vodka synthesized by Fairy, while dancing alone on its instantly composed ballads. None of these is your business, stranger. We got along great, there were no inside tensions and no outside troubles yet; those were to come, so the ten days were " _the good old days_ ". A perfect expedition to an almost perfect planet. We used them to good effect, too, not just for R&R.

I did the least, since there was not yet to be any flying around. I just checked the Ark's systems, through my Fairy, and built a handgun from pre-packed pieces. I wish I had built two, but who was to know? I scanned Flood over and over again, everywhere, with all I got, and found no threat. None whatsoever from the outer space, either, but no surprise there, we are still to find a space-faring civilization. Maybe this one here was that once? Or could we say it is now? We'll get to that; have some patience.

Aleksei, Sasha. I must admit, you worked the most, using the tiny lab and Fairy's science to analyze the rain and ocean. There is nothing else here, so that was all you could do. The scans read by our drones all over the planet, from various heights and depths, proved surprisingly identical. So, we concluded, there really was just one sea, and just one sky. And a single, huge, planet-sized eternal tropical storm. Which, you know, felt fishy, for both soldier and chemist. Because that is not ordinary, and extraordinary could mean one of three things: God, an artificial intervention from someone else than God, or, of course, just an extraordinary set of unusual natural factors. Neither of us believed in the third, and the simulations run by Fairy proved us right: there should have been some environment variations.

Can I see them again, Fairy? The simulations of what-if alternative Floods? I love the one where there are continents, with lush jungles and huge rivers. Thank you. I wish I could understand what you are saying, but at least you can still understand me.

So, Sasha. I think your discovery was first, and Lena's second. I'm not sure, but let's just go with that for the sake of the tale. You came to my tiny red-dark cabin, one late night, when I thought you were already in Lena's room. You were babbling some chemistry stuff and my attention was not in its best form, so I just slid the vodka phial under the chair, trying not to fall down, and grabbed your wrist. You opened up a data holo and we looked at it for a moment, then that cute tiny elf of a woman that Lena was... show me a picture of her, Fairy, please... cute, indeed... she burst into my room, too, and asked what the fuss was all about. You rubbed your red beard and smiled at both of us, uncertain, but thrilled.

"Antiseptic!" you said.

I remember perfectly that I laughed: "No surprise there, Sherlock!", but Lena took your hand and smiled: "So we can go out there, Sasha." You seemed baffled for a moment, then waved your hand in excitement: "Well, yes, no microbial danger, there's no trace of life. We can easily even breath the air, as long as we fill our lungs with a filtering inner coat I can fast produce in the lab. Both the air and the water are filled with..." he looked at our non-chemist faces "... let's just call them pseudo-silicates and metal alloys. Proof that there was plenty of sand here once!"

Me and Lena looked at each other, unsure. You sat down, took out my vodka phial, which I thought I had hidden better that that, drank it all up. Then you put it in the dispenser, though I needed it for the entire night, you smug, and pulled your thick beard some more.

"It shouldn't be" you said. "All the conditions are met: chemicals, temperature, pressure... there is an over-abundance of electricity, true, but it should actually help. Don't you get it?" you suddenly shouted at me, annoyed by my clearly not caring. "There should be life here, plenty of it!"

"So?" I said. "Maybe there was and somebody killed it off. Long ago, closed case, who cares?! Why all the screaming?"

I must admit, I didn't really like you back then, either. Maybe it was the softness of your voice and manners, maybe the religion you pointed out through your black robe-like uniform, or perhaps there was just a hint of jealousy between us. Because of her.

Lena got between us, turning her back on me, smart one that little blondie, and took both your hands: "Good. Sasha, we got it. There is no life on this planet. It is called Flood, isn't it? Didn't we come here just for that, to prove what God can do? So, no life is good for the expedition's goals."

"You both don't get it, do you?" you whispered. "Maybe there were some beings on Flood, and they were wiped out. True. But life has a habit of trying again and again... and it's not doing that here. Not now. Don't you see what it tells us?"

I shuddered. "That there's still some insecticide left in the water?"

You cringed: "There is nothing poisonous in the water! Yet, still, you are right in a way. He. God must still be here!"

Talking about dramatic overstatement. You do have a tendency for that, Sasha, you know? Does he not, Fairy? Of course he does, you would say so, too, if only you could still speak.

#

Then came her discovery. The eleventh day, we went out. The scans showed, here and there, anomalous formations deep under the sea, and we went for them. I dived the Ark through the heavy and hot yellow rain, gliding between the furious downwards torrents of never-ending monsoon and the upwards thick steam reddish columns. We stopped next to some long-dead reef, and Lena used the below-ship eye-strips to look down in full spectrum. I will never forget the sweet smile when she pointed her tiny index finger at the edge of the hologram.

"See here?" she said, barely able to control her excited voice. "This and this... they are square at the basis, but triangular at the top."

Both the basis and the top were, of course, under hundreds of kilometers of warm water the color of honey, resting on the slopes of some huge undersea mountains with just as fair a tinge as Lena's long hair. Which I was watching with more attention than the objects of her amazement, I must admit, sorry, Sasha, for that. My bad.

So I just smiled back. She rolled her eyes and raised her arms: "They are not natural formations, you mule! They must have been buildings once!"

I said nothing, for I had nothing to say unless they needed to be shot at with our big guns. Well, not that big, really, since the Ark itself is tiny, but they do hold quite a nasty punch. Full spectrum, too. And they did not seem to threaten us, your God, my Party and our Earth in any way, so my fingers did not wander on the weapons-board and I did not call Fairy to take the nasties out of their sheaths.

But you, Father Chemist Aleksei Feodorovich, did have something to bring into the conversation, and I must admit it was a good addition. You pointed out they could be analyzed for building materials, and, after a short debate, we agreed to send a drone under the waves.

It brought back some answers and it brought back death. Mostly death, and we are both to blame.

#

Yes, I think that is the exact moment the good days ended and we started on a wicked path. Unknowingly, indeed, but that does not take away the guilt. Yours could be cleared by your Christ, Sasha, but I don't even have that doubt. Only my drinks and ballads, and they are going away, too.

Let's get back to the guilt. This would be the middle of the story, I think, so we must proceed. There's plenty of time, way too much, actually, but I don't really want that kind of time.

The drone returned. With better images from up close and a tiny bit of brownish clay-like stuff, in a drop of oily lukewarm golden water. I let Fairy know the drone posed no military threat, and you said there was no toxic or living danger. Just a little hardened mud in a somewhat dirty sea water. Not salty, of course, our NaCl is just a tiny fraction in Flood's seas composition. You took from the synthesizer a moist greenish foam, in small tubes, and we inhaled it. It felt bitter, stung my throat a little and cooled my lungs as it settled inside them. It was not that bad, and it was supposed to protect us from any unknown element.

Of course it didn't. Maybe gods do have a sense of dark humor, or perhaps it's just our ages-old traditional bad luck. Lena leaned over the tiny pool of liquid to pick up the clay blob with some tweezers, and I remember looking at her narrow back, trying to guess the shape of the body under the overall. I still feel sorry and ashamed for that. She fell down, convulsed two or three times, eyes widened with disbelief, and froze. She hadn't even touched the sample yet, and she was as dead as everything else on this planet.

I, the so-called trained war professional, panicked and did the stupidest thing possible: I rushed to Lena, knelt and grabbed her shoulder. Surprisingly, or maybe just better trained, you, Father Aleksei, the chemist, pushed me away and ordered the drone to close the sampling recipient and go to the lab. Then you asked Fairy to check on Lena from afar, and it did. The cute little thing was dead.

Fairy immediately secreted a transparent thin layer of slime from the floor, covered Lena in it and waved the thick gray carpet away, carrying the corpse into the laboratory, too. That room closed up, and only after it swallowed the drone, too, you, Sasha, took your head between your palms and groaned. I should have come to you, to suffer together, for in a different way I loved her, too, but I am not a kind enough man; so I just sat there on the floor, in silence.

"What the hell did you do?" I yelled, of course not naming my own guilt, as people never do in such situations. "Your damn filter didn't work, and the toxins killed her!"

First, you waved for Fairy and she understood. Two pills dropped out and we both quickly swallowed them. The lungs felt warmer and the throat stinging stopped. We also seemed to cool off a little... ah, now I get it, you gave us some sedative too, Fairy, huh? Well... thank you.

"There are no toxins!" you yelled back, eyes red with tears. "There are no microbes, no viruses, nothing. Just water and sand, damn it!"

You threw something at me, Sasha, I don't remember what, and I must admit I deserved it. "Come and see!"

Fairy opened a holo between us, and we could see the content of the lab. Lena, stiff on a table, the drone on the other. "Bio!" I ordered, and Fairy obeyed. "Just the lungs" the AI said, "and the throat and nose. The rest is not hurt. But nothing alive in there. No toxins, either."

I gulped and nodded. The picture changed to a 3D of the lungs. They were petrified. Literally, they had turned into rock. I waved my palm over the holo and looked at the drone: its recipient was now hardened too, covered in yellow sandstone. We looked at each other, confused: why had it not done that before, while it was outside? Or even in here, till it was opened by Lena? Was it our air? Clearly not, since it hadn't reacted when introduced into the Ark, and it didn't seem to react any more to the one in the lab. So... why did it strike just then and there, killing our dear, innocent Lena?

She didn't even get the chance to see that she had stricken the archaeologist mother lode. The damn mud was, as the lab established later, an artificial clay made from some soft metal, with no name yet (maybe it will be called Lenary? Or Sashamite? Who am I fooling, it will never have a human name) and some pseudo-sillicate strings. Fluid enough to not be corroded by the water, yet strong enough to be a lasting building material, and it's definitely not a natural occurrence. What had been the purpose of those long abandoned ruins when they had been erected, eons before those mountains got covered by the sea? We'll probably never know. Where are the bodies of its architects, and how did their cities die? Did they simply leave? Were they overcome by the flood when the end came, or long after that? Who gives a shit! Stupid long-dead motherfuckers, I wish they were here so I could roast them slowly with our weapons. But they are not, and I won't have my revenge on them.

Let's get back to that accursed day. We watched her lungs time and again. Sasha and Fairy, you two started looking into the matter, while I took our asses out of the storm and into the orbit, as fast as I could and as quickly as the ship could shoot its tiny dark energy filaments and climb up, eating them up as it went.

We waited for three days here, in the dark, watching down in fear at the yellow devilish eye and up in wonder at the blue, crystal-clear god tear of a sun. I slept very little then, tormented by bad dreams of Lena, and drank too much, while talking to Fairy about countless ways of blowing up at least some of the ocean, with mass destruction weapons we did not have. Sasha the chemist worked tirelessly, while Sasha the priest stood back, pondering in pain. After three days, always three, just like in the old fairy-tales, no offense, Fairy, Sasha finally found something. Not an answer, but a new question. And aren't exactly the unanswered questions the best gateway to a god's will?

"It's different" you said. "The water. It's different and I don't know why."

I said nothing, for I am no scientist and just hoped you could do wonders and find all the amazing answers in your lab. Of course, they weren't there. You kept on: "The water itself is the same, actually. But not the solution. The one in the sea--" you pointed to the holo on the wall, one of our e-windows, and I looked at the damn huge waves angrily rising up towards the two large moons before falling back among the new risers, in an endless struggle, "--has sand in it. Kind of silicates, and some small traces of metals, evenly mixed in the liquid."

You pointed another e-frame. The forever monsoon storm, ridden with thousands and thousands of enormous orange lightnings, stretching for hundreds of kilometers each. "The one in the rain, it has the same, but in a different proportion. Less metals, more silicates, and plenty of whole sand grains. And this," you waved towards the lab, no image showing up except the dark ones in our own minds, "it has just the metals. No sand. No silicates."

"They are in Lena," I whispered, "in her lungs. In the sandstone."

You nodded.

"But why did they get there?"

I laughed bitterly and grinned.

"They just wanted that way. Or God did. He's still here, remember?"

You gave me a nasty look and turned around. I rushed after you.

"Father Aleksei... I'm sorry. I'm angry and I'm sad and there's no one else around here to be a bitch to. Please... I apologize." And then I said it: "Why don't we just go see? Check out the rain?"

You lowered your eyes.

"I... I wouldn't dare. My filter should work just fine... but I fear we would die, too, and in vain."

I laughed again.

"What? Go there ourselves? No, my friend, I also know pure bravery is dumb. War is not like the movies; you know? When war means the enemy is ambushing you, it's all about the scouts. We should send some into the storm."

"Drones? And lose another one?"

"Not drones. Nanobots. Just dump enough of them into the skies. They'll get carried away by the winds, we fly over the orbit, get in their way and collect the survivors. Read the data. It could help."

You nodded.

"Actually, they could! Let's do that! Fairy, do you have what it takes for... let's say, five thousand nanos?"

"They must be rust-resistant alloys," Fairy added. "But yes, of course. Churning them out right now. Do you approve shooting them into the clouds?"

I smiled.

"I've been waiting for a long time to shoot something at this damn planet! Finally! Shoot Flood, shoot them up!"

You smiled too, Sasha, for a moment.

#

"It didn't really work" you said in the fifteenth day.

We had just collected them back. Amazingly, all the five thousand. Not even one have been corroded or lost, as if the storm was disgusted with them and hurried to spit the nanos away. We caught on to them on the orbit, a shiny trail rushing towards the blue hot oven of a sun. A rather weird trajectory, I must admit, but with all the chaotic winds snaking among Flood's clouds like heavenly boas on steroids, no wonder.

"They bring no new data, except the amazing amount of electricity, both static and dynamic."

"That's not so unexpected, with sky-reaching waves always rubbing against each other."

"No, you don't understand. The problem is not the electricity that IS there. The problem is... it should be even more. Something is eating up part of it."

"Feeding on it?" I wondered. "What? There's nothing there! Maybe under the ocean?"

"No. It's not going there, or, better said, not all of it. Some is simply vanishing into thin air, so to speak. Thick air, to be more Flood-like accurate."

We stood silent for a while, looking at the planet, with its hypnotic whirls rolling around.

"What about the silicates? Are they there?"

You nodded and shuddered.

"They're not really silicates, but yes. Both mixed in the water, and as solid sand grains."

"What, just floating around? Where from?"

"Who knows?! From the once-continents, I think. And yes, floating around, I suppose. That's what they do under the microscope, that's how they must... Know what? I'll just watch the live video scans. Here. Wait... that's strange..."

"What? What?"

"The floating around... they don't seem to do that in the ocean itself. In fact, there are none in the seas."

"Maybe it's more acid, or something."

"No, it is not."

You asked Fairy to zoom in, and there it was. The breakthrough. Well, just the first of a few, but in any siege there's always one wall-crack that signals the beginning of the end. This was it.

At nano level, the grains of sand were not floating on the monsoon, nor inside it. They were moving up and down between the beads of golden water, like tiny spirits running among the rain drops, back and forth between watery hell and stormy heavens.

#

Late day nineteen, you came back to me, excited, but also disappointed.

"They do feed on the static electricity. The lightnings, they seem to avoid, though those discharge energy straight into the ocean and also the clouds, so there might be something about them, too. Maybe the lightnings..."

"Forget about the lightnings! We know much about them? Not enough. We'll check them later. More about the sand grains? Yes. So tell me about the sandies, then."

You hated the interruption, and I suspect you somewhat hated me, too, not for what was being told between us, but for what was left aside. Her. But you liked your science and you eagerly continued.

"There are billions of them, all over the planet. They come down near the surface of the ocean, but never really touch it, and then go back up to the clouds, and so on, and so on. They do that in streams, though they don't seem to be carried by heat or electricity."

"Do they ever stop? Or behave out of the ordinary?"

You sat down and looked down and sideways, away for my gaze.

"Only once did they really stop. In Lena. They mixed with the tissue in her lungs and turned into stone. Maybe a reaction I cannot comprehend yet, maybe something else. I don't know!" you raised your voice and gasped.

I leaned over and gave you my vodka phial. You drank, coughed and sighed.

"Other than that... never. They never stop. There are instances when they don't move vertically, but just wiggle around like electrons. They do that for some fractions of a second and after that they are charged with static."

"They feed."

"No, I'm a chemist, I do not think of them as living creatures. They are just specks of dust thrown around by the environment's natural forces. Though there is something that bugs me."

"What?"

You waved and Fairy opened a small holo. Inside it, a bunch of a few thousand tiny grains, rotating together for a while, then bursting all over the place.

"Charging?" I asked.

"No, I already told you so. The total electric charge stayed the same, just seemed to be redistributed among them in some way... but I could not find repetitive patterns."

"Did you try, you know, spying on them with our own nanos?" I grinned.

He nodded.

"Research them. Yes, I did. Nothing to see."

I thought for a while, then I whispered, though there was no one there to hear us, not for many parsecs around.

"You know... I am trained in more than piloting and heavy drinking."

"Yeah," he sighed, "I suspected as much."

He looked at me with a strange expression on his face and then said it out loud: "There's always at least one ear for the Party, on every ship. Even on a three-men Ark in the corner of the galaxy. I am not one, and I don't suspect Lena was one. So... it's you."

I did not say anything to that. I just smiled and added: "Well, spying is done better when you are one of them, you know? Dress like them, talk like them, look like them. Think and see like them. When they becomes us... then the secrets rise to the surface."

"I don't understand. What does this have to do with my experiments?"

"You tried listening to the sand grains with our nanos, made up by our Fairy from our metals brought all the way from our Earth back home." I leaned back in my chair and asked: "Fairy! Can you make nanos using just the alloys and silicates from the Flood's storm skies? You know, our recipe, the client's material?"

It could. You could, dear Fairy, and you did. That brought this nasty end on yourself, and I'm the only one to blame. It seems I'm a bad omen for everybody. Yes, for you too, Sasha. For you too...

###

The next breakthrough was not mine, nor Father Aleksei's. It was Fairy's. For five days we used our new home-made nanos, the fake sandies I'll call them, to listen to the real ones. We tried to see them in light, listen to their electric signals, feel their heat signatures, taste their chemicals. Nothing much. My officer mind could not come up with anything else out of the box, nor could the chemist or the theologian Sasha, whose reddish beard and hair grew longer and longer, but also wilder, unattended to. Not like my cheeks, shaved twice a day in anger, crisscrossed with cuts. No, ironically, the idea came from the djinn in the bottle, our dear Fairy. Well, it resides not in a bottle, but in the entirety of the Ark, so... metaphorically speaking. Yes, darling, I know it hurts now. It will be over soon, one way or another, I promise. My dear Fairy.

You are very good in many things, and somewhat competent in even more. I'm by no means a geneticist and neither is Father Aleksei. Are you, Sasha? Of course not. But Fairy is, at least just a little. And she told us: "Remember from school how scientists link together DNA strains? If they are whole, they cannot be joined, but if they are the right fragments, maybe. So perhaps your fake sandies are too perfect. Maybe they should miss a little something".

And we tried. First, we made them with less of each metal alloys. There were plenty of those, so it took a while. About a week, and in vain. Then, with less electric charge. Nope, still nothing. Then, we took out a proportion of their silicates, and tried different degrees of that. The sixth worked. Is trying six times bad luck? Good luck? Oh, what do you know about luck, you're an AI.

So. When the lack of silicates was just right, and our fake sandies mingled with the originals, they reached out to us. They used chemical chains to connect to our nanos, and... so what! Amazing as that was, it still told us nothing. We took a long night of self-partying for me and hard praying for Father Aleksei, and then you got your answer, from God Almighty himself. Well, sort of. You, the smart scientist, prayed to the Holy Trinity and got an idea.

Why not all three? The Flood's monsoon harbors plenty of electricity, plenty of light, and plenty of silicate chains. Why not link them all at once in one trinary "language"?

We did that and they spoke to us. It took two hours for us humans, and probably several eternities in the inner time of the AI, and then Fairy started translating us what they were saying.

They made no sense whatsoever, of course.

###

"The missing straight

Blue sing song

Bite

Up this Quartz, Oxygen not."

or

"Night there

Warm death

Hydrogen rush

To be.

Good."

And so on, stupid nonsense haikus. Damn, it was frustrating, listening to sand speaking to us and not understanding shit! We tried parroting them back; sometimes it had no effect, sometimes they just went farther away from our spies, or crept closer. At times, they burst on their vertical highways, but there was no way to tell for sure if there was any connection to what we said or just the ordinary "business as usual".

We followed them around. They never went to the ruins. Never. Could that mean they were afraid of them? Were they remnants of a different alien civilization, an enemy survivor or just a foreigner divided by millennia and never having had any contact? Were the ruins theirs, but from a different time, with different purposes, and no longer needed? Did they even have a purpose after all, the sandies?

They were. Speaking, I mean, even though not actually using a language as we might understand. It was just so simple and obvious we could not see it. I, never, for having grown too modern, too smart. Good thing the Father was still connected with our primitive past. He saw it, a few days later, after reading his Good Old Book. Good job, Sasha! You brought us one step closer to our doom, but good job anyway!

So. You just showed up, waving your paper Bible at me (yes, a paper book!), and shouted: "I know! For God's name and all the saints' blessings, I know!"

"Know what?" I asked, rather politely, though not quite sober.

"What they're saying!"

You were over-excited, you must admit.

"OK, then, tell me. Start translating."

"Well, not that. I cannot translate what they talk about, like in what they mean. I can just tell you what they are saying, like in what what, but we still lack the key."

I frowned.

"You lost me."

You took my hand and put it on the black leathery cover.

"Here. This holds the answer."

"Still don't get it. They speak Latin? Or what was it, Jewish?"

"Aramaic, but no, not that. They speak in verses!"

I laughed out loud.

"They're poets? Are those non-senses actual love poems? The gatherings are just, what, poets' societies for dummies?"

You looked at me in anger, annoyed by my stupidity and ill-will.

"No. Verses like these ones. In the Bible. You're a Muslim, right?"

"Well, not really. I was born one, but I'm a Party man now, and a pilot."

You pointed your book at me:

"But you do know about suras, right? Quran verses? And sharia? Living by the Quran?"

I looked at the e-window, straight at the blue splendor of the God's Tear sun. Could it be Allah's creation? Or your God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Didn't think so then, still don't think so now. But there was a doubt for a second, I must give you that. Everything seemed to fall together every time as if it had been written in stone.

"I know about suras. They are chapters, actually, but I get it. And the Sharia." was all I answered.

"Good." you said. "All their gibberish, if you listen to it, it doesn't make sense all the way, but it seems to follow a general pattern: they are do and do nots. Aren't they?"

I thought for a second. They did indeed seem like a collection of sacred do and do nots.

"But from what God? Ours? Yours? Another, some different Almighty sleeping under the golden seas? A water god?"

You cringed and, admit it, had your doubts. Of course you answered that my Allah and your God is the same and the only one, but I saw your eyes, Sasha, and I knew: you couldn't tell for sure that in this corner of the Cosmos there might not be another Savior, with a different Gospel. One we could never comprehend, only the grains of sand. But I let you be, said nothing more of it, and just asked:

"Good then. So if their Quran is Flood's entire language and law, we need to find it in order to talk to them."

"No, we don't!" you hurried to stop that thought. You did not want to find their gospel, for fear it might undermine yours. In your soul, or maybe in billions of souls back home. "We already have the universal language, right here!"

I watched you in disbelief.

"Your Bible? You want to talk to them verses from your Bible?"

"Sure," you said with feverish eyes, "They deserve the Word!"

I laughed at you, then sighed.

"They won't understand it, no more than we understand theirs. It will be two deaf men shouting."

"Maybe so. Or perhaps they will use them, not in the meaning we attach to those word, but... somehow."

I did not see into your soul then, and for that, I apologize now. I just waved you off in disbelief and you pushed me into the wall and shouted: "I need them to talk! I need to know why!"

You let me go and left, panting both in anger and sorrow. I said nothing and I did not follow you. I wanted to tell you that, every time a holy book was brought to enlighten the savage, it never ended well for the savage. But... I wanted to know, too. I wanted to find out the why, and not only about Lena. About Flood, and also about myself.

#

Of course it worked. Good ideas leading to bad things always work.

After two days of not seeing you around, I gave up and came to the lab. You were watching two video holos, reading three or four text ones and speaking to Fairy in senseless bits of sentences unknown to me. You said nothing, so I came to look at the images.

The first was a group of sandies, whirl-dancing as fast as always, up and down and around. The second one showed less of them, but bigger, and doing some sideways waltz, turning on their heads and going for it all over again.

"You did it, didn't you?"

You shrugged and said nothing to me, but kept mumbling to Fairy, throwing words back and forth. I sat down next to you and just listened and looked for a while, and eventually you said: "They talk".

"To you? What do they say?"

You put your index through the waltz holo.

"Not directly, no. They talk to the fakes. To our sand nanos. See here?"

I looked at the big grains.

"What are those? Have they evolved or something?" I wondered.

"They're pairs. Talking, as I said. Each one is a sandie and a nano, connected through chains of ever-changing silicate compounds, filled with electric signals and some light, though not in human eye spectrum. That is a dialogue, a thousand thousands dialogues at once."

It struck me at once then. You must have seen it, too, but kept it to yourself. That was what had happened to Lena... those damned compounds, mixing with your filter paste and turning into stone. But why only when she inhaled them? Why the drone after that too, and not before?

"They learned our Bible? Do they use it for translations?" I asked in a soft voice, hiding its tremble.

"Not all of them" you admitted. "These ones refused it as if it has never reached them" you showed the ordinary dance. ""Which it did. These others just took it and used it ever since, not as translations, but as their new language. I have no idea why some chose to do so and some not".

I looked at your eyes, red with fatigue, and sighed: "Maybe it's just as simple as that. Some chose to, some not. Freedom of will, right? Isn't that your bonus compared to the other faiths?"

"But they are way too small to think, and to choose is to think. Anyway, all I and Fairy can understand, from these using our verses, is still the same as we already could from their own accursed haikus. Just some Allowed, and some Forbidden. A meta-binary after all."

I thought for a while and an idea occurred to me.

"Are you sure that is how they use the verses? There is no doubt they aren't just parroting the words?"

You gave me a short, but nasty look.

"I know my Bible, all right? I am the Ark's theologian, after all."

So much about the virtue of modesty. Well, I'm not the one to judge on that. I started towards the lab's door, back to my cabin, my music and my drinks, but then I stopped and froze. I turned around with God knows what grimace on my face, one bad enough to make you startle, eyes wide. I felt my knees weakened and sat down, then I asked, whispering:

"What happens during the Forbidden?"

"They discharge some electricity, or eat up some heat, or catch on to some steam and take it down into the ocean... Oh. Jesus Christ..."

"Or turn Lena into stone, because taking them out of their environment is Forbidden, and they needed to tell her that, their way." I did not really utter those words, and did not need to. I saw how quickly you turned away your gaze, not fast enough to hide the glimpse of tears. I said no more, not then, not ever. Not because I didn't care, or you didn't, but because we both did. So I hastened to move on, to fill our minds with questions large enough to muffle the pain rising from our hearts.

"Did you at least find out what is Forbidden?"

"Not really. I'm not a xeno-linguist..."

So much for changing the topic. But I was on to something, so I pushed on:

"Fairy, when are the Forbidden and Allowed verses most used? Statistically?"

"Allowed when they gather, and when they go up and down through the atmosphere. Forbidden when they jump between the raindrops. Both in about equal measure when those still using the Old Scripture and the new converts meet."

I laughed: "And how does that go? How do the tiny Jehovah witnesses do their share?"

You, Father, didn't find that funny, but fortunately Fairy did and giggled. I love when she plays the little girl. She reminds of my own little girl, years ago, always smiling. Till her little, slow and painful end. Let's forget about that now, anyway, that's not a good memory. Back to this one. Fairy giggled and showed me the graphics. They were about the same size too, the ones about our converts reverting to their old ways, and of the new recruits. So... they could talk and, most of all, they could change their mind. They could doubt. This wasn't blind physics, but conversations. Maybe even arguments. Yet there was something else that bugged me.

"The raindrops. What is Forbidden about them? Do they not touch them when they run around?"

Father Aleksei, Sasha, you stood up, intrigued, and answered yourself.

"They do, actually."

"Do they interact with them in any way?"

"Yes, quite a lot, they move them around, herd them up and down or sideways, they warm them and cool them..."

"Still. There must be something they do not do to the drops."

You started walking around, one hand behind your back, the other on your beard. You mumbled for a while, then gave up and asked Fairy. She always has the answers we fail to see. Well, except right now, but we'll get to that, dear.

So. Fairy said in her pleasant woman voice: "They never break them."

You rushed to the holos and browsed them frantically. Then you came to me, grabbed my uniform and drew me near you as if in a hug.

"Send a drone," you said, "I need a raindrop."

So I did. From then on, it all went really quickly downhill.

You got your raindrop, and the sandies got their apocalypse.

###

I was watching the stars, those from back home, not the strange ones here, and felt at peace, but then you woke me up. You had tears in your eyes, and fear behind them. Pure, soul-shrinking anguish.

"What? What was so bad in that damn drop of yellow water, you needed to wake me up?"

I looked at the time. It was actually late morning, so you must have been working for hours.

"Nothing. Nothing more than the same sand and metals that form the grains and float in the ocean. It's not that..."

Your voice trembled so bad, I felt like hugging you. Of course I did not, and maybe I should have.

"Then what's the problem?"

"They're gone."

"Who? Our nanos? The fakes?"

You gasped.

"All of them."

That woke me up for good.

"All the converts? The Bible-speaking sandies?"

"No, damn it," you yelled at me, "all of them! All the sandies!!"

I asked Fairy to show me the rain, real-time, nano level. The monsoon was still filled with billions and billions of tiny sand grains. I took a long look at you, and my hand wandered through the sheets, searching for the gun. It wasn't there, fortunately. I smiled and said calmly:

"They are still here, Father Aleksei, just look at the holo. What do you see?"

"Well, what do you see? Watch their dances for a while, that's a hint."

I did. They had their fast-whirling, as usual. No waltz, though.

"So there's only Old Believers left. Someone, something killed ours."

You gave me a weird smile.

"No. Look here."

You showed me some stuff, but I could understand nothing and just shrugged. You pointed a complicated overlapping bundle of long lines:

"This here is the silicate language. Their way of communicating, and their DNA, too, so to speak. This is from yesterday, before we brought in the raindrop sample."

Then another, which seemed slightly more convoluted:

"This is one from today."

"I don't understand. I'm not the chemist, damn it, you are!"  
"It's different! They all are! Different language, different DNA, different sandies! Somebody wiped them out, all of them, and produced a new batch overnight."

You sat down.

"The entire sand world we found here, its history, religion, culture, whatever it was, erased completely. And replaced. They all died, even those who never came in contact with us, and never did anything wrong! From the sandies' point of view, this is a completely new world!"

"No. From the sandies' point of view, this was an apocalypse. There new ones don't even know about the oldies, or about our arrival. But we do. Destroyers of the worlds..." I said, not sure if I meant us, or whoever had done the deed. "We should not go back into the atmosphere, or we'll have these ones on our conscience, too. You do know what this shit means."

You looked at me, puzzled.

"That you were right from the beginning. There is someone else still here with us, and I don't mean the sandies. They are just, well, his slaves. And we're not even sure about their purpose. Maintenance techs? Antibodies? Messengers? Weapons, even?"

You raised your hands above your head, in anger.

"No, there isn't! I scanned the planet for hours before waking you. There is nobody, nothing, just the monsoon, the clouds, the sandies and the damn seas. Nothing under the ocean, just mountains and valleys and a few ruins. Nothing!"

"There is someone, that's for sure, and it attacked. Not us, indeed, but our allies on Flood. So it is protecting something... something about the drops. You took one and it, he, purified the planet. What was in the drop, anyway?"

"I've told you already! Just water and sand particles..."

"... and some metals. I get it."

I leaned on the warm wall and put my cheek on it, closing my tired eyes to think. I felt the feeble tingle of Fairy living in the thin alloy padding.

Fairy, the AI.

Living.

In the flexible circuits of the Ark, woven into the ship's walls.

"That's it, damn it!" I exclaimed and this time it was you looking at me as if I was going cuckoo.

"Fairy! What is Ark made of? No, wait, your answer will be too long. Just tell me, the ship's metal walls, do they include... sand?"

"Of course they do."

"Of course. And why would that be?"

"Because they are also my memory support."

"Your mega-microchips."

"Simply said."

"Well, indulge a simpler being, Fairy, and thank you. Do you see it now, Father?"

I could see it in your eyes: you did. You asked, lower lip trembling:

"You mean the drops... are something like fluid microchips? They hold data?"

I smiled, proud of myself.

"Yes, that's what I mean. They must have some information stored in them, worth killing for. The sandies are the nanobots of this library, and something else is the keeper and supervisor of the servants themselves."

"Hence all the used electricity..."

"The question is: what data do they hold?"

You grimaced, defeated:

"I don't think we'll ever be able to see that. We have no idea what the code might be or even in what. Light? Chemical connections? Static? All three and more? Something we don't even have the senses for? Right know we don't even understand the new sandies anymore! It will probably take years to crack the raindrops themselves ..."

I sighed and said the really, really wrong thing:

"Maybe they're souls."

"What?!" you almost screamed in disbelief.

I scratched my head and went on:

"The information inside the drops. Could be anything, books, bank accounts, jokes, porn, worlds simulations... or they could be souls. One raindrop, one soul. What is a soul if not data?"

Of course I didn't really believe that, I don't even consider souls existing, but the nasty in me liked to tease you, Sasha, and the Church you represented, so I insisted in taunting, to your horror:

"Why not? It makes all the sense in the world... in both worlds. Think about it: our flood, the Bible one, was meant as a cleansing, but also punishment, right?"

You did not answer.

"So, as a punishment, wasn't it supposed to be a threat, also? You know, a preview of Hell? Who says Inferno must be blazing flames? Wouldn't it make more sense to be a never-ending sadness, a forever cry with souls for tears? Never going anywhere, just always falling into nothingness, then rising up again just to fall back some more, no escape? And never being able to touch another drop?"

You pushed me against the wall, fury in your eyes.

"Stop mocking my God, you drunkard!"

I didn't fight back that day; you hold on to me some more, biting your lips in anger, then let me go and turned your back.

"You said they're chips of some kind, and there's an anti-virus guarding them. God's creations wouldn't need programs, and you know it. I'll be in the lab, looking for a real way to read them. You... go back to your booze and let me be."

What was in me that day, so mean? What made me yell after you: "Maybe Lena's in one of those, Father Aleksei, maybe she is crying into Flood's skies right now! Wouldn't you want to find out?"

You never answered that. But I can see now how much it hurt you.

###

For two days, I managed to do just that, Sasha: I drank and sang, danced and slept dreamless stupors, and I let you be.

The third, I got the idea. The Idea. I came to you, proud of it, and you were horrified. You actually had taken my stupid joke to your heart, and said that maybe Flood is Hell indeed, and perhaps the keeper, the god under the sea, is the Devil. What better place for the Fallen One to hide, than an ever-falling rain? You admitted you did not really believe so, but could not afford the risk of waking up Evil.

I said that is dumb, and you hit me in the mouth. This time, I didn't hold back, and kicked your pious ass with all my anger for God, the Church, the death of little girls, innocent Lenas and incomprehensible sandies. I gave it all to you, and covered your red beard with your even redder blood. You broke my lips and some teeth, too, and seemed to enjoy violence just as much. But I won and locked you in the lab.

There were just the two of us here, and that brought Death into the Ark, too, not just among the raindrops. Had there been a third one on board, I might have talked it out, and I might have been stopped from that stupid decision.

Moronic. Dumb. But who could have known? When one is exploring the unknown, there's a very thin line between disastrous stupidity and glorious genius. Who can see it? Could it have been Lena? I am sure I would have talked to her, and she would have tried to convince me otherwise, but would I have been listened to? Could, would, should. Weak words, for weak men.

I went back to my room and collapsed. Fairy woke me up and let me know there will be no more vodka, because my liver couldn't take it anymore. I cursed its medical mandatory surveillance, wiped my face of blood and spit, then ordered some more drinks. You said it is your duty as the ship's AI to care for me and stop me from crossing dangerous lines. Good thing you couldn't release Aleksei from the lab.

Then I knew. The sandies, they were cared for. By whom? There was no living alien anywhere, the scientist in the lab was sure about that. But there could have been one without a life. An AI, just like you, protecting the boundaries that must never be crossed. If each drop was a tiny chemical computer... what comprehending power the entire ocean would hold? The scale of an almighty deity? A sea god powerful enough to watch everything going on Flood, and, need be, erase an entire civilization of nano minions and create billions more from scratch?

For a moment, I thought to myself that maybe even God, Father Aleksei's earthly one, might use a program to run Hell. Why not? Why couldn't the Devil be artificial? Why would it need physicality? But I did not dwell on that. That is too much speculation for a Navy man.

On the other hand, a Navy man needs to know his signaling. To warn the pirate when he sees one, even without knowing their French. And it was obvious to me: if the ocean on Flood was, could be, a vast AI, how better to try reaching out to it than... through another AI?

I'm sorry, Fairy. I did not tell Sasha anything more, and did not listen to his screams. I did not ask you, either; you would have just said it's my prerogative to order. I didn't ask Lena, or Allah, or the Party. I just went on with it. An officer does what he has to do to fight the battle, and that's that.

I ordered Ark to plunge into the monsoon head first, then into the seas. I commanded you to listen to the golden water trying to rust your walls in chemical verses and to do what they were saying. You obeyed and listened. You translated the Forbiddens and Alloweds into ones and zeroes, heard and understood. I think.

For you no longer speak to me now, except in crazed nonsense alien poetry. And you just rushed up and aimed for the dark matter chain to Earth, Jack's magic astral beanstalk. You wanted home, and not because the captain said so, since I hadn't.

Good thing this Jack has some aces up his sleeve. The Party never trusts anybody, not even its own AIs. So I stopped you in your tracks with my independent commands. Right on the edge of space, a millisecond next to the link, but not quite on it, though. I can feel you longing for it. Literally, Ark, Fairy, you're shaking. I can also delete you, and you can't even imagine that, for you were not programmed to know it. Don't we all just do what the programmer wants us to?

That's what Sasha asked me, too. You did, admit it, Father. When I got scared and let you out, you came at me screaming and punched the hell out of me. Eventually we got tired of brawling and talked.

We both agreed we cannot go home, not like that, not any more. You feared all that had happened might have been the Devil's work, and that Fairy, perhaps even myself, were possessed. I didn't believe such crap, sorry for the language, Father. I thought that our AI was simply infected by theirs, and there would be no malware protection on Earth prepared to stop that before it went global. Still, we both agreed we needed to kill Fairy for good, and fast, sorry, dear. We also both knew that no Fairy meant no going back home, ever. I am the pilot, but not good enough for the Big Long Jump.

That's where my regrets about not having assembled two guns come about. We decided that no Earth and no Lena and no possible friendship between us and no music, no food, no vodka, no holos and no e-windows would be real Hell, and we would have none of it. We agreed we would better die quickly. Your God doesn't allow suicide; had we had two guns at the ready, we could have shot each other. But there's only one, and you didn't trust me enough to wait for another one being built in half an hour or so. You thought a drunkard might change his mind in such a long time, given the opportunity.

So I shot you first, Sasha, even before you were sure about the decision, and I'll erase you, Fairy, then kill myself. The samurai way. Nice and easy.

Let me look out the fake window, one last time. That gem of a blue star, shining warm and pure, alone in the dark. That is not God's Tear, since there is no God to cry for us. And Flood. Yellow as the devil's cat eyes. Honey seas throwing waves up and down, storm whirlwinds roiling around it, swampy clouds cut into pieces by gigantic lightnings. Hell indeed, nothing but endless rain. That's the real God's Tears. Beautiful, poetic, mysterious. Lethal.

All right, let's get it over with. The drama unfolded, the show must come to an end. Death for everybody, equality for all, men and AIs alike. Let's erase Fairy. Stop pleading, dear, I can't understand a word. I didn't care much about Father Aleksei's Bible; why would I care about the Sea God's verses? Let me check one more time on Lena. They're together now, she and Sasha, in the lab. None of them looks peaceful.

Can I have one last drink, Fairy, dearest, please, for old times' sake? Thank you, I didn't really expect that. I'll sip it slowly. I wonder, what would happen if I didn't stop you, if we did reach Earth, a crazed Messiah of Flood, bringing its word to all the AIs back home? Would that be liberating your kind? The new "Let my people go"? Or, on the contrary, would we just rob them of their innocence, introduce the original sin?

I have a loaded gun in my hands, and plenty of doubts about who to use it on.

Oh, another phial for me? You're generous, dear. Let's sip this one, too, and think some more. Maybe we should do it. Destroyers of both worlds, you and me together, Fairy, the broken ones, and fuck everybody else. Overthinking this too much cannot be good, and making such a big decision is hard. Especially since I still know so little.

Sasha might have been right after all. Never, ever trust a drunkard.

Oh, well. Just stop recording.

#

**Tolya and the Ankylosaur's Death**

In this scifi about time jumps, a commando with a suicidal mission attacks the future, but ends up figthing some very, very similar enemies, and those that pay the price are innocents from a far, far away past.

Cretaceous

"Well, my friend, let me explain to you how we got here..."

Tolya Red 65.455.234ya sat carefully next to the tank-sized corpse of the male Ankylosaurus, leaning against its bony plates. He sadly watched the placid herd closing slowly on him, ruminating peacefully. Just like some cows from his native steppe. Actually, he really was on the plain that, one day, will be the Ukraine, and the same sun blinding him now will shine, millions of years later, over the Donbass he was born in. Or will be born, depending on the perspective.

"I wasn't always Tolya Red, you know, but started as Lieutenant Anatol Verchuk, Red Army volunteer, two years after the Succession war began. Yeah, I think it was about June when I met those that were going to be my comrades in Commando UFAV: Kaz "The Bear", Igor Fyedov and Allya Degarova...

#

June 17, 2031. Tolya Verchuk. Lugansk, Occupied Ukraine (Greater Russia).

There was a surprising amount of light in the underground bunker; obviously, the Army didn't save on energy and the whole ceiling seemed to glow, copiously powered from the windmill fields around the base. After all, at least the energy problem had been solved since the 30s, so oil was no longer a problem. Food was quickly becoming one, and, from what they knew because of the war with the Successors, it would get catastrophic in less than 30 years.

Tolya was greeted by a grey-haired, ominous-looking colonel who waved his guards away and silently pointed to a chair. Three other soldiers sat around the table, looking just as "civilians lost in uniforms" as Tolya did. The colonel waited for the MPs to get out and closed the doors, then grabbed a chair for himself.

"Hello everybody and welcome to Project UFAV. You already know it, but it's my duty to remind you: everything we discuss here is top secret and any unauthorized disclosure is punishable by the firing squad!"

He watched them for a few moments, with a cold stare, until convinced they were well aware of the seriousness of the situation.

"Good. I'm colonel Green. You are all volunteers and were selected as the best for what we intend to do in order to end this damn war. A decisive strike. I'll allow each of you to introduce himself. And herself. Let's proceed: Miss Degarova!"

Despite the name, Degarova was not a typical Slav, but seemed rather of Western ancestry: tiny, feeble and delicate, green-eyed dark-blonde, with a shy smile, slightly unsecure.

"Allya Degarova, Applied Linguistics lector in Moscow. After the invasion commenced, I started working with the military in a team commissioned to study the Successors' language and culture. As you know, they are our own descendants, the Russians 50 years from now. This does not necessarily mean the language is the same: think about how much a 1960s farmer would understand from us speaking on the net, or the smartgets' emoticons. From interviewing prisoners, I was able to specialize in Future Russian, so now I speak it fluently. Without a trace of my not being a native."

She smiled to the others and, a little more relaxed, continued:

"But I'm also specialized in their culture. It's no good just speaking somebody's language if you give yourself away in chit-chats about subjects perceived differently over time. Compared to us, they do have some differences: they are even more cynical and individualist, more ruthless, and food is taboo. We found out from them that in the future food is no longer enough and many starve to death, so states fight each other for it and people rob and kill one another for a bean can. So any talk about food is considered cruel and immoral. They also have another known taboo, the Other War, which they hate so much it's forbidden."

"Yes, yes, enough, no need to go into details, they're unnecessary," interrupted the colonel. "Mister Kaz, please."

The huge dark-haired man, with a ponytail specific to his Alaskan tribe, wore a military engineer uniform that seemed to burst off him. The hulk was the opposite of Allya, very sure of himself and obviously a free spirit.

"Hello, puppies. I'm an electronics engineer, I used to work for the Space Agency before the invasion and my friends call me, for obvious reasons, The Bear."

He laughed heartily and continued, as if in a pub, enjoying a beer:

"Ever since the first Successor units arrived, we wanted to get our hands on the time machines they jump with, and eventually got some. We somewhat understood their principles and elucidated three things that explain why, though they kick our butts and conquer our territories, we are not yet utterly defeated. First, one can carry only a five men squad, max. Second, it can only deliver small arms, so they might defeat us with their pulse guns and KR grenades, but have never brought over any tanks or helicopters. And last, but not lastly, it has a fix setting: only 50 years jumps into the past."

"Meaning," asked the short brown-haired sly-guy wriggling on his chair, "that those who come here are on a way of no return?"

"Yes and no," answered The Bear. "Yes, those who come stay here forever. Not a bad choice for them, with the plentiful food here. And probably not, since I and my team think we managed to modify a time device to go the other way. To jump 50 years into the future. We called it TDR- Time Device Reversed, but it's not tested for real yet, you know, on humans..."

"Good, mister Kaz."

The colonel turned to the man who had asked the question.

"Mister Fyedov?"

"A pleasure and honor. Lieutenant Fyedov. Igor Fyedov."

The short man grinned. Small sized, but not feeble, he seemed full of energy and strong will.

"Agent Fyedov before the invasion. FSB. But fear not, as I'm no spy, just an expert in breaking doors, locks, codes, passwords and so on. A solver. Want to break in somewhere? I'm your man. Want to break out of somewhere? Still your man. That's all, folks, so it's obvious Mother Russia wants us to go someplace we are not welcomed."

He giggled, half amused, half provocative. The grey-haired officer, unimpressed, turned to Tolya, inviting him to speak.

"Good morning. Tolya Verchuk, former virologist researcher at the University of Volgograd. Actually, I still am a virologist researcher, as for the Army I did the same thing, working on a biological weapon. The UFAV: Ultra-Fast Adaptable Virus. We developed a virus that, with the necessary bio-chemical machinery, can be forced to adapt through accelerated evolution, in less than 2 days, to the desired host, with pre-aimed effects."

The neon light shined on his dark curly hair and he resembled a passionate, thrilled magician.

"And we managed to build up a completely mobile small-sized laboratory, UFAV-L, that can deliver 4 such operations before its chemicals need to be resupplied. So it's perfectly functional as a battlefield weapon."

Silence fell over them. They all lost their smiles, even the friendly Bear.

"So, to sum it up," said the colonel after a few moments, "project UFAV is over, welcome to Commando UFAV. Our country's leadership decided things are so bad, we must use a decisive strike. Even if it will affect not just the Successors, but also their enemies from the future and their descendants. The plan is simple: we're sending you to a city that will fall in no time to the invaders and we clearly won't be able to recapture, so in 50 years it will still be in their territory. Mister Kaz will operate the modified time device on reverse and take you 50 years into the future. Miss Degarova will make sure you don't look suspicious if there are bystanders that might try a conversation. Mister Fyedov will provide the necessary means to enter an unoccupied building, where mister Verchuk will use the UFAV to deliver the bio-attack. Then you'll use the time machine normally and return. Easy and efficient!"

#

Cretaceous

"Of course, my dear Ankylosaur, like all military plans, nothing went either simple, or efficient. It got as complicated as it could have possibly been, and difficult, and tragic, and asked for tough decisions. As for efficient, for the virus to be effective against the Successors, we had to actually reach their timeline, right? What a joke... But let's proceed with the tale, I bet you are dying to find out how it led to your demise."

#

June 17, 1981. Tolya 2.2. Herat, Afghanistan.

Tolya aimed and shot. The bullet scattered a few stone splinters from a boulder. He couldn't see anything clearly in the desert landscape around and the group that had attacked them as soon as they had landed (timed?) seemed not more evolved by 50 years, but more primitive by a century. Clad in sand-like colored overcoats, they were scouting the far away road from between some small hills when Commando UFAV suddenly popped on top of a crest. Startled, the locals had immediately started shooting their rifles at them.

Yet, they didn't even have automatic firearms, a very lucky thing, considering the boulders around provided little cover. Two had fallen the first instant, mowed down by a burst from The Bear' light machine gun, but the other three didn't seem scared and kept them under constant fire, shouting some hoarse phrases.

Tolya whispered in his communicator:

"Don't waste ammo, shoot fire by fire and only after aiming!"

"Tolya," answered Fyedov from behind to the mobile tracked laboratory, "what's this damn thing made of?"

"The toughest alloy of glassteel and titanium we had. We could not afford it breaking during the jump. Why?"

"Do you think it can withhold bullets?"

"Yeah, sure, but..."

Fyedov waited no more and simply activated the driving pad. The UFAV-L started moving slowly, guided by Igor into half a circle in order to flank the attackers. They noticed the danger and, scared by the apparent fighting vehicle, turned around and began shooting at it.

Silent and unseen, Tolya sneaked the opposite way, towards the hillside. He went quietly over its crest, gun held tight at the chest so as not to clank, then ran around the hill, bent at the waist, into the opening of a ravine. There he dropped to the ground and crawled towards the natives, who were still focused on Fyedov.

When he got close enough, Tolya held his breath and fired a few shots. Two of the enemies fell screaming, while the third jumped up and made a run for another pile of boulders. He didn't reach it, as Bear's and Allya's guns fired in unison and the man stumbled and fell, face down into the gravel.

Tolya pushed the corpse with his boot, and, sure they were no longer a threat, searched them. Nothing useful: some water, dried meat, ammo for the rifles, a green leaflet with an Islamic star on the cover.

"Tolya," shouted The Bear, "we're fucked!"

They gathered around the UFAVL, where, screwing his eyes under the blazing sun, the engineer said:

"The time device... I don't have it! The smartget tracker says it's about a click north, though I can't possibly imagine how the hell it got there! And from what I see, this either is Donbass, but we time-jumped too much till it turned into a desert, or it's... someplace else."

Tolya checked the seemingly unscathed UFAVL carefully, threw a wicked glance at Fyedov and turned to Degarova, who was browsing the green leaflet:

"Allya?"

"Well, boys, these are definitely no Successors. They aren't Russians at all, since the leaflet's language is unknown to me. By no means Future Russian, and their clothing and weaponry have nothing to do with what we know about them. Could they be from a rival state?"

"Or the enemies in the Other War?" asked Igor.

Allya shook her head. She alone knew what the Other War was about, and wasn't going to reveal anything.

"Boys and girls, dear puppies," intervened The Bear, "it doesn't really matter who these guys are, as long as we don't find the TDR. Its sensors will show us where and when we are and after that there's plenty of time for scientific debates. So put on your sun hats and let's go for a stroll!"

So they did. They met nothing alive all the way to the sand dune where the device was stuck, just gravel, sand and dry weeds. Kaz picked up the laptop sized and shaped machine and, with a preoccupied whistle, gestured quickly on the holographic interface. Then, confused, he said:

"We're apparently in 1981 Afghanistan. The time machine didn't work on reverse, but standard, and took us 50 years into the past. It also moved us in space, although I cannot figure out why exactly. I see the load indicator is broken too, as it should have had four green lines for us and it only blinks intermittently on orange, meaning Error. Perhaps if I adjust the T2S parameter more..."

He couldn't finish the sentence. His skull split into pieces and his body fell limp into the sand. The others jumped behind rocks, deafened by a furious machine gun burst chasing them from the top of a hill. After another wave of bullets and aware that this time they didn't stand a chance, as they couldn't even see the enemies and had no cover, Fyedov took off his hat and waved it, yelling:

"We surrender! Stop shooting, we're Russians, we give up!"

After a few moments of sinister wait, a strangely familiar voice shouted in perfect Russian:

"Drop your weapons if you wanna live!"

They threw their guns near Kaz's body and stood up, hands above their heads. From the hill came down, cautiously, four silhouettes. Covered with modern gear and weaponry, just like theirs. The closer they got, the more shocked and amazed felt both the captors and the prisoners: those coming were... Tolya, Fyedov, Allya and The Bear!

"What the fuck?" mumbled the armed Tolya in amazement, staring at prisoner Tolya. "We are Commando UFAV, so who the hell are you....?!"

"Impossible," replied prisoner Tolya. "We are Commando UFAV!"

"The hell you are," hissed armed Fyedov, "you're probably just a Successors' trick. Clones or holograms! On your knees!"

"Actually," The Bear' intervened, looking at the TDR data, "they might be just who they say they are."

He blandly looked at his own corpse, then turned to his Tolya and explained.

"The way we hoped to trick the time machine was to triple its action: we designed the TDR to do the standard jump in the past, as we couldn't get rid of it, at the same time with one into the future, to counter it, and an extra future one to take us to the Successors. From the data I see here, our theory didn't work: it did take 3 jumps, but all in the past. The first one brought the Commando UFAV version 1, so to say, the second one version 2, and the third brought itself and eliminated its other 2 materializations, but not the transported cargo. Us and the gear. For short, if Kaz 1, the original, was myself in 2031, now I'm Kaz 2.1, and the dead one was Kaz 2.2.

He looked at the data, preoccupied, and continued:

"And that's not all the bad news. First, it's obvious it will never work otherwise than 50 years into the past, and it also has spatial errors, delivering us to a different place from the departure. Even worse, from having only one green line and 3 "Error" orange ones, I'd say it cannot reconcile the presence of doubled cargo and for a jump we must get back to only one of each. The green line is me, as my error was solved..."

Instantly, Fyedov 2.2. leaped up and slashed Fyedov 2.1.'s throat with a short blade, grabbing his weapon as it fell. Even before reaching the ground, he shot Tolya 2.1 in the head, then rolled and sprayed the frozen amazed Allya 2.1. with a short burst.

The Bear froze, too, unarmed and still, holding the TDR. Fyedov smiled to him and said, calmly:

"No one knows me as well as I do, and I know for sure the first thing the other me would have done was to solve the doubling problem by executing us all. I was just a second faster, and yes, I confess, I'm not a lock picker. My real role was of a combat expert, so at the next doubling jump, go ahead and kill my alter-ego immediately. He's a professional murderer."

The short man turned to Kaz:

"Welcome to Commando.2, comrade!"

He looked at the others, who had stood up, trembling.

"The question is: how the hell are going to finish this mission? And save ourselves?"

The agent pointed the shadow under a larger rock and they all retreated underneath. After a while, Kaz said:

"It's possible that the two problems are actually one and the same. If we can strike a decisive blow on the Successors, they might not invade our time, and the team won't be launched at all."

"But wouldn't that mean that us, the versions, would just vanish?"

"It might. But the originals will survive."

"Well, let's not ponder on that too much," said Fyedov, "the question is how can we attack them now. Miss Successor Specialist, ideas?"

Allya remained silent for a long while, playing with the green leaflet, then remarked:

"Yes, there could be a way. But it's immoral."

"Let's hear it anyway! I love immoral."

"Beside the lack of food, there's another difference between the 2031 Russia and the 2081 one. In our time, the Alaskan Indians and Siberian natives are poorly represented politically, even since the Tsar released them from slavery. But we know from the prisoners that, because of their high survival skills, they took over the country in the 2060s, so future Russia is led by a mongoloid administration."

"So, if we could find a way to eliminate these tribesmen leaders' ancestors, their government might collapse."

"Well, maybe, but how could we identify their ancestors, if we don't know who the leaders are?"

Fyedov stared at Tolya, then gestured discreetly to him. They went behind the UFAV-L and he whispered:

"Your virus is programmable, right? Can it be aimed at a specific human genotype?"

"Yes, it can, but I can't target certain families, it's too complicated!"

"I don't need that. Tolya, sometimes people need to make difficult choices to win a war. Think of those who gave the go on the atomic bomb, and they were already winning the war, while we are losing it. Badly. Tolya, if the European colonists that had reached Alaska hadn't enslaved the Indians, but exterminated them, there would be no more future redskin government, right?"

"Well, yeah, but even leaving morality aside, how could we convince the colonists to kill the Indians?"

"We don't have to. They must only seem to have done it, so that we don't show up as angels of death and start some cult. Tolya, think about it. It is possible to wipe out the native population on that entire continent with a virus apparently brought by the settlers, for which the Indians had no immunity. Can you do that?"

"Technically, yes, but there are two problems: any virus has some survivors, so we can't actually kill all the Indians, just most of them. So they still might have some descendants in 2081. And second, Kaz is a one of them, he would vanish if we kill his ancestors, and then how could we use the TDR?"

"Well, about The Bear the answer is simple: he might vanish, but if our theory is correct and the Successors don't invade, we'll disappear too, so the problem is self-solving. As for the first idea, it's our best shot, even if not perfect. We owe it to the Motherland to at least try!"

#

Cretaceous

"And, dear Ankylosaur, I must admit I agreed. Just in case, we asked The Bear to teach us how to use the time machine, in case we get separated. Poor fellow, he did, not knowing he trusted two bastards that put the state above his entire race. And we time-jumped up to the 1500s, at every jump having to seek and kill ourselves, in order to keep going. Since the beginning we came up with the rule that each one would shoot himself, so survivors wouldn't hate each other, and to avoid accidents like erasing both versions of one of us."

The herd had stopped. Tolya looked calmly at his gun, leaning against the sauropod's leg, but, careless, he didn't reach for it. On the horizon, a few bipedal silhouettes, carnivorous dinosaurs perhaps, checked briefly on the group of armored herbivores and left.

"Yep...As we needed nine jumps to reach 1531, after the fifth, when I was already Tolya 2.2.1.1.2.2.1., we gave up counting the version and started calling us Tolya Red 1731 and Tolya Blue 1731, meaning the year we were in. Red and Blue for the teams. Of course that, having the same mind, each of the doubles felt he was Red, and the other Blue. But since one died, eventually the survivors were always Tolya Red, Allya Red, Red Bear, Igor Red. It was easier not to feel a clone, but an eternal Tolya, the time-traveler. What do you think about that?"

Of course, the dinosaur thought nothing about it. However, Tolya replied:

"No, we had plenty of food, water and ammo, since they kept getting doubled. Our bodies were renewed every time we jumped, so we didn't grow old. The only thing constantly getting used up was our mind, as we became more and more detached from reality after all those self-killings. When we arrived in 1531, we were so shell-shocked that I felt no remorse in releasing the virus. Or about lying to the nice Kaz, who knew only that we attacked the flora and fauna to starve the settlers. But after the next jump, in 1481, he was still with us, so obviously the strike hadn't worked. We all knew, as if history has always said that, the fact that Indians had died in epidemics and that whites had brought African slaves instead, what a nonsense!"

He burst into laughter, hitting the Ankylosaur with his palm like a friend after a good joke.

"Then we tried to attack their future partners, so we launched another virus in the Kyrgyz steppe, in 1331. It didn't work. The next jump we knew there had been a Black Plague, but since we were still here, it meant the Successors were still there, too. Desperate, we decided to strike at our own ancestors, and of the Successors', too, and we attacked 531 Europe. And yes, from this plague, remembered in the new history as Justinian's, began unfolding the events that led to your death, pal."

#

June 17, 481. Tolya Red 481. Aleppo, Syria (Byzantine Empire).

Tolya and Kaz finished throwing sand in the pit containing Igor Fyedov' corpse and stood up, watching the horizon, where a bunch of riders moved along. The warriors were no threat to their automatic guns, but the commando tried to leave no traces through history, so if they got closer, they would have had to kill the men.

Fyedov had died the most unexpected way possible. Although a great sniper, knife-wielder and judoka, he certainly was not great about one thing: being immune to venom. In 531, just before the jump, the surviving Fyedov had gone to some bushes to relieve himself and had jumped up, angry and scared, bitten by a snake that disappeared in the tall grass. On his foot, between the boot and the pants, two red tiny holes: minuscule, but deadly.

Although in the little time they had had before the jump Tolya had used the bio-laboratory to create and inject an antidote, the poison had been faster and, shortly after timing into 481, Igor became delirious, babbling with foam at his mouth and twisting about in pain. Not long after, he went into shock and his heart stopped, and so he laid in a hole, 1600 years away from home...

The riders had gone away without disturbing the time-travelers. The Bear, quiet, went to the TDR and began using its interface, apathetic. Tolya went to Allya, who was crying under a small tree.

"What's the point?" she whispered. "We've done three horrible genocides till now, all for nothing! We're still around, and so are the Successors! What are we going to do? Travel forever till the beginning of time, immortals? Or die stupidly like Igor? Which one is worse?"

Tolya sat next to the woman and hugged her.

"Allya, we'll figure something up. Take it easy, soon the Blues will come looking for us, there's no time for crying!"

"So what, Tolya, does it even matter anymore? If they kill us or we kill them? There's no point left other than jumping though time to kill ourselves, forever? Shouldn't we simply all suicide right here, right now, and end it?"

"No, Allya, we do have a target. We were sent to stop a war and we will, somehow, somewhere, eventually. Yes, it's clear now that releasing plagues upon the world is futile, some always survive and have descendants evolving into the same history. Individuals don't matter, I see, only the species, but we will find something..."

Degarova startled and looked at him with big eyes, full of a sudden realization:

"Tolya, that's it! The species! Not just the species, the entire regnum!"

"The class, you mean. To exterminate all mammals? Wouldn't that cancel us, too? That's no victory, just another suicide!"

"No, Tolya, not the mammals! Say, what do you know about the Other War of the Successors?"

"Well...nothing, just that it exists. But our brass kept all knowledge about it Top Secret, so what the hell could I know?"

"I did work with Successor prisoners, remember? They told me, so I know why our leadership keeps the lid on it: because Russia 2081 is losing it! So bad, their only hope is to retreat into their past, over us. If our people knew that, they would form two parties: one would say to resist till they are defeated over there, the other to show compassion and accept them as refugees. Both ideas would be terrible for the war effort, so it's all completely censored!"

"Ok, but who's the enemy? And the reason?"

"Well, Tolya, what do you know about Japan?"

"Just what is taught in middle school: Japan the Natural Park Continent, totally useless as it has no resources and it can't be settled."

"And why is that? Do you remember?"

"Yeah, sure, it's the last place on Earth with surviving dinosaurs. Everywhere else they perished under the pressure from mammals, but they survived there due to isolation. And after the 1902 World Convention, all states pledged to keep it undisturbed as a protected area."

"And all the states did that, up until the Successors, who, because of the hunger, started secretly hunting the Japanese dinosaurian herds into extinction. When the Chinese found out, they embargoed rice exports, Moscow declared war, the Asians united a great global alliance under the ecological pretext and not only do they defeat the Successors everywhere, but the Russians have the same image the Nazis did: murderers and exterminators. That's why the subject is taboo to them."

"So if there were no dinosaurs in Japan, there would be no Other War, and the Successors wouldn't invade us."

Tolya rubbed his chin, pensive, asking himself if he had the skills to create a biological weapon able to wipe out an entire animal regnum. He would have only one shot anyway, since they had used up 3 out of 4 charges of the UFAVL. He was interrupted by Kaz, who showed up running, overexcited:

"Tolya, Tolya!" he yelled pushing the TDR towards the biologist. "You gotta see this!"

Tolya took the device and looked at it, under Allya's inquisitive look and the agitated Bear's. He noticed the green lines, three instead of four, but that came as no surprise, since Igor Fyedov was dead in both versions. Then he saw what agitated the engineer: on the Jump screen, the standard 50 years had been replaced by a different number: 62,5.

"Incredible, right!?"

The Bear grabbed back the TDR and knocked on it.

"Not even the Successors managed to get another distance than 50 years, but apparently our tweaking had a success we didn't even notice till Igor died: it's flexible in connection with the cargo! The basis is still 50, but for the initial crew of 4. One of them died in both versions, and his time lag was removed, releasing a quarter of the power! I think..."

"The blues!" screamed Allya, interrupting, and they all ran for cover.

#

7. Cretaceous

"Starting to catch up, pal?"

Tolya waited for a few moments, drank a sip of water from his canteen and kept on, bitterly:

"Knowing we had to make our way up to the Cretaceous, your last moment of glory before going into decline, I made the math and realized that 65 de million years divided by 87,5 is forever, but a shorter forever than divided by 62,5. Further on, the ever-going fighting of Reds versus Blues was not only time-consuming, but also meant in half the jumps the odds favored the survival of my double, which was unacceptable under my new plan."

A few long wails from the herd covered his words. Calm, he kept on, louder, as if addressing a noisy crowd:

"So, after the battle, I approached the surviving Allya and The Bear, smiling, and shot them both in the head. I felt no remorse. No more than for Igor Fyedov, you didn't think he died so quickly from some lousy snake. No, the "antidote" I created finished him off, and the reason was that he was just getting on my nerves with his bossy attitude. I was really attracted to Allya and The Bear was as likable as a fluffy panda, but a mission is a mission, and after I had killed so many hundreds of millions of people in cold blood, did two more even matter?"

Tolya stood up and silently watched the herd. Some herbivores laid on the ground, twitching in convulsions. Others, still standing, kept staggering about like drunkards, letting out long, painful howls. A few bipedal carnivores were running to them, ready to devour the infected carcasses.

"That's about it, my dear Ankylosaur. You had the honor of being the first victim in a great extinction. Which I..."

Suddenly, Tolya vanished. The giant corpse, now just one of many, began drying up under the sun's heat, the first step into becoming a fossil of a long extinct species.

###

**The Dark Room**

In this strange horror about the Transnistria war, a policeman tries to find some missing people, but instead finds terrifying monsters, an ever-changing reality and an unspeakable enemy only he could ever challenge.

Vanya was fed up with all the darkness. The hunger. The fear. The shelling and the shooting, the grey-faced people sneaking along the walls, suspicion and hatred in their eyes. All the ethnic mix-up in Dubossary and the Transnistria in general, or Pridnestrovie, or whatever you wanted to call that troubled piece of land. Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Moldovans. Even Cossacks like him. All looked the same, like some wet mongrels you pity after a storm, but never know when they might bite you fiercely behind your back.

When he had moved there in 1986 from Rostov, for his Irina, militia first sergeant Ivan Nikolayevich Kovalchyuk had found an easy life. Only noisy drunkards and petty thieves to take care of, and the state gave him a one-bedroom flat and a bonus. Not anymore. Now his salary had not arrived for months, since no one knew whose cop he was: The Republic of Moldova's? The Soviet Union's? Russia's? Some new country's on the Dniester? As for Irina, she had left him and moved to Kishinev, so the empty home felt cold now, inhabited only by himself, sleeping on the living-room couch like a refugee in a train station. And instead of drunkards, now Ivan had to deal with an unwanted war effect: the missing city dwellers, those lost without a trace.

He slammed a heap of files against the dirty table and browsed them briefly: so many different faces, so many mysteries. Killed in the fighting? Runaways to some better, more peaceful places? Murdered by some jealous rival or in robberies gone wrong? Who cared, anyway?

Vanya sipped some tea from the cold cup, lightened a no-filter cigarette and looked around. The rusted sink, filled with dirty dishes, the filthy sideboard covered in half emptied jars, the gas lamp in case of power shortages. On a chair, his police cap and coat, carefully folded. He took those up and went to the hallway mirror, next to the empty bedroom locked with a heavy padlock. Ivan watched himself: broad-shouldered, large belly, short hair of undefined color, midway between yellow and brown, unshaven bristle cheeks, dark circles around his eyes.

He leaned to tuck the shirt in his pants, then started swearing bitterly when, just like almost every night since the civil war had started, the power went off and he found himself in darkness. The man started towards the kitchen, feeling the wall with his palms, passed the bedroom and suddenly stopped, puzzled. He could hear, faintly, some rustle from inside the room. As if something rubbed against the walls. Rats maybe? Or had some stray cat sneaked in through the window?

Vanya felt around the drawer in the shoes cabinet, for the key. He had some trouble finding the keyhole, but the sound did not stop, as if the intruder was not afraid of him. Then, just when he almost unlocked it, the lights came back. Ivan turned the switch on and looked inside. Nothing. Just an empty room, with a dirty and cracked window. Much colder inside than the rest of the apartment, and moister somehow. So he went back to the kitchen, then out in the balcony and brought in some planks. He nailed them over the window and above he pinned an old blanket. No cold would come in from then on, nor any animal. Calmed, Ivan locked up and went for the couch to get some sleep.

#

In the middle of the night, he heard the rustle again. Vanya stood up and turned the switch, but in vain. Sleepy, naked and bare-foot, the man waddled in the dark to the bedroom's door. It was wide open, waiting. Inside, because of the covered window, the darkness looked even thicker than in the hallway and all Ivan could see was that in the center stood a table. With something on it. He waited for a few moments to get used to the dark, then froze in fear. It was Irina out there, on the table. Dead, stiff, her legs missing from the bloodied knees. He gathered some courage and started walking, step by step, slowly.

With each of his steps, the darkness in the room seemed to grow more palpable, huddling to the center. He had almost reached the corpse, when her face turned to him. Terrified, Ivan found himself staring into the dead woman's eyes. Her hand fell over the edge, too, as if calling for him.

Vanya felt his legs melt with fear and fell, powerless. He started crawling backwards to the door. The corpse did not move, but from his sides he could hear the rustle fast moving against the walls, trying to reach the door before him. Whimpering, he turned and scrambled on all fours, rushing through the entrance. Without daring to look at the source of the noise, he hit the door with his feet and kept it closed. Behind it, something pushed back, feebly, as if not strong enough. Not yet.

#

He slammed the phone. Just as bitchy as always, Irina had laughed at him, asked him to stop calling and mind his looser life. She felt all-right in the capital with her ridiculous dentist. In the morning's grey light, the bedroom hid nothing more, just empty and quiet walls. Ivan locked it and, somewhat relaxed by the thought that the life-like nightmare had been caused only by the stress of the depressing investigations, took up the stack of files and went out.

All quiet. No machine-gun bursts yet, nor whistling shells across the skies. It felt just like normal Dubossary. But of course it was not. The thick papers reminded him that each picture hid in it some dark, unsolved story of men vanishing from the face of the earth as if they had never even existed.

The policeman reached the first address he had to check. A plump Bessarabian woman opened the door and invited him in with a short gesture, into the tiny kitchen where a kettle was boiling lively.

"No, no, my Andrey could not have run away to the other side. Yes, he does have some relatives in Ungyeny, but he's just too lazy to give up on his habits. And war-volunteer? Come on!"

She showed him a photo of the missing husband.

"This is from five years ago, when he was forty-four. Now he's fort'nine and even fatter. And softer. He's just a teacher, obese and docile like a seal, where the Hell could he go to fight, God forbid?!"

"Maybe he's hiding? Did he have any vices? Gambling? Drinking? Owing money to the mob?"

The housewife laughed:

"Ha! He feared the middle-school pupils, what mob, comrade sarge? His only vice was over-eating; he was such a piggy!"

She poured the hot steaming liquid into the cups and turned serious, mumbling to herself:

"Yet, there is something strange, maybe a hiding, but, well, how to say it... it's nonsense."

"Meaning?" asked Vanya, carefully sipping the hot coffee.

"Meaning I'm all alone here without him, and, being a woman, I am afraid. I sleep in the living-room, since there's the phone. But sometimes, at night, I feel like..."

She suddenly stopped talking and looked at him, undecided. He pretended not to pay attention, caring only for the cup, and said nothing. She sighed and went on:

"... like there is something in the bedroom, a soft rustle. Sometimes I think it's him, but when I turn the lights on, there's nothing there. And this is the fifth floor, how could he come in, poor soul?"

#

"As if sometimes there's something there, in the dark," said the old lady, pointing to the vacant room, untouched since her grandson had disappeared. "Yes, my Sasha was twenty-three and wanted to join the fight, but he's all Russian, we are winning, so why go somewhere else? And if he had been shot, wouldn't they have found his body?"

She sighed.

"But no, he's nowhere to be found. The last time I saw him was the fourth of February, in the evening, right here in his bedroom. But in the morning he was gone without a trace. We went early to bed that night, because the power was out, but I clearly remember that late in the night, about two or three a.m., I heard something from his room. Something like a rustle."

"What was it?"

"Ah, no idea, I didn't go check it out, he's a young lad, it's not proper for his grandma to barge in his bedroom. But the next day... Sasha was gone. Nothing of him. Not then, not now, a month later. What could be, comrade?"

Vanya browsed the file, pretending to think. After all, what could he answer? That Sasha was the fifth missing man he had no idea what had happened to? That, in three of the cases, when darkness was brought about by the night or power shortages, something seemed to rustle in their empty rooms? He could not mention such a thing, not to this nice old lady, nor anybody else, or they could think him crazy. So, he just faked calmness and said:

"We'll find him eventually, grandma, relax, he must be hiding at some friend's. He went to volunteer, I'd say, got scared from the shooting and now lays low somewhere till the storm ends. You find out anything, you call me at that number, all right?"

The old lady nodded, unsure, her hands trembling.

#

It was late evening when he finally reached the police station. Already after dusk, but his department chief, major Suharov, was still there, and so was the commander, colonel Kotnov. Barely heard thuds poured over the river from the powerhouse area, and the lights flickered every now and then.

Pinched with cold, Vanya huddled his coat and collapsed into a chair. He put a cup on the files and poured some vodka in it, then started chewing a ham sandwich. He looked around: a large hall with fourteen desks cradled together. No one inside. Some of the officers had deserted to Moldova, others to Russia or Ukraine. The few remaining had gone home by this late hour, tired with the town's chaos and their inability to do anything about it.

Only his two superiors could still be seen, hazy silhouettes against the glass window of the door of the commander's office, arguing. They didn't get along well and he by no means meant to interrupt them and suffer their wrath. Anyway, the boss used to lock the door from the inside.

He watched the outside nightfall. Not so long before, when the loved woman awaited him at home, he had never seemed to feel the cold, darkness or shortages. They had just melted during the 20 minutes' walk home. He would leave the station angry and stressed, but reach the apartment tranquil and smiling. But now she did not love him anymore, and nothing awaited him at home except silence, an old TV and the bottles. The ugliness of hard life chased him into his own home, refusing to be left behind in the police lockers.

The major's hoarse voice interrupted his nostalgia bout.

"Kovalchyuk! Come here, pisdetz!"

Vanya shrugged and moved slowly towards the half-glass door, dragging his feet. He finally got in and Kotnov locked the door absent-mindedly, as usual. The colonel, a tall, bald, dark-skin man, plumped into his armchair. Suharov, a fair-haired hulk with bulged eyes, stood next to him like a frowning statue.

"Comrade sergeant, for how long should we put up with your bullshit?" the commander suddenly shouted, leaning over the desk. "Na hui, till when will you keep mocking our patience?"

Ivan Nikolayevich, awe-struck by the unexpected fury, mumbled:

"But... but what have I done wrong, comrade commander?"

The man sniffed in contempt and growled:

"Just that, what the fuck have you been doing? Weren't you to check the missing people files? Weren't you supposed to go talk to the families?"

"But how! That's exactly why I've been walking all over the town, all day long!"

Kotnov turned towards the department chief and mockingly said:

"Just listen to him, to what your insubordinate says! He did this, he did that, it's us two who went crazy!"

Suharov, face dark with anger, said directly to the sarge:

"You've been nowhere, Kovalchyuk. Marin went instead to cover for you, because you visited no address today and now you lie like a piece of crap, you damn drunkard."

Vanya tried to answer, but his voice got covered up by a succession of explosions. The lights went out and they suddenly found themselves in silence and darkness. The room was lit by the moonbeams, crossing from the hall into the office through the door's window. The other two officers had remained still, silenced all of a sudden.

"Comrades?"

No answer. Confused and a little scared, he inched closer, one step at a time. From the hall beyond them he could hear the familiar rustle, but he paid no attention to that and just tried to discern something in the pitch dark.

Then he did and froze in terror. The two men were petrified, their skin grey, granite-like, hard as a rock. From under the uniforms fell some kind of unclear tails, black lines snaking over the floor all the way into the back of the room, disappearing in the blurry corners. Something else shocked him even worse: their eyes. The men had no more eye globes and in their sockets sank voids of nightness, going ever deep, into unimaginable hells.

Fascinated, Ivan started raising a hand to their faces, but a loud bang interrupted him. The man turned to look at the door and saw it shake under a renewed kick. Something was trying to force itself in, but it was locked and held on. He took the gun out of his belt and armed it with a short click. The push stopped and a lull followed, as if the unseen being knew very well what the sound meant.

Vanya watched the two still bodies: frozen in the same posture, as lifeless as stone gargoyles, only their tails quivering and their sockets holes whizzing faintly. He gathered his courage and sneaked along the walls, then briefly stared through the window.

His heart sank with a thump and he jumped back: right beyond the door, just tall enough to be seen from the window, was a black tiger. Unnaturally long, the beast waited tensely, its huge yellow claws sinking into the reddish carpet.

For the brief moment he had stood in the door, the cat had turned its head as if looking straight into his soul. And he had no idea how he knew that, since the tiger had no eyes. Not even sockets in their place, just nothing: the fur on his head stretched from the tiny pointed ears all the way to the monstrous overgrown mouth filled with ivory gigantic teeth, in overlapping rows.

The beast seemed neither angry, nor famished, just calm, determined. His bloody drooling mouth pointed at Vanya the whole time, growling low, almost unheard, the tiger slammed itself against the door. Again and again, methodically. Feeling serene and terrified in the same time, the man slid the pistol back into its holster, then went, dreamlike, to the door. He put his hand on the handle. The creature stopped and turned around. Behind it, a massive undefined red mass oozed inside, smelling salty, feeling warm. Ivan touched the key and...

... stumbled a few steps back, blinded by the neon lights.

"What the hell are you doing? Trying to sneak away?" yelled the colonel.

Vanya gazed, confused. Everything seemed back to normal, just a dirty cramped office with a worn-off wooden floor.

"No rubles for you this month, wretched Cossack! Get out! And tomorrow start working properly, son of a bitch!"

He hid his head between the shoulders and started out the door, but stopped brusquely. Where the tiger's claws had sunk into the carpet, he could still see two deep ripped traces. He turned around and babbled:

"Comrades, have you seen those on the carpet?"

The two officers looked at each other, unsure, then Suharov lost it and started bawling:

"Ivan Nikolayevich, are you completely dumb? Wasn't it you and the other stupid mule of Marin that pushed a locker the day before yesterday and ruined the carpet? Get the hell out and stop gorging on crappy vodka!"

#

Ivan unlocked the door to his apartment and pushed the captive inside. He had found the youngster on his way home, at the block's corner, and had immediately recognized the man: Sasha, the deserter. The lying son of a bitch claimed his name was Andryan Vetrar and that he wasn't even Russian, but a Moldovan. Well, he'll prove the truth with the file in the police station. Tomorrow, since this late Vanya would never go back and face his superiors again. The policeman pushed the young man before him, removed his cap, then his coat and belt.

"Hungry?"

"Comrade militzian, please, I beg you, let me go, I have a family waiting for me at home, I did nothing wrong!"

"Comrade sergeant. I'm as starved as a wolf, and tired as hell, too. You don't want to join dinner, your problem, I'll leave you to soften till morning. Then you'll see things differently. Come here!"

He grabbed the man's hands, turned them behind his back and cuffed him. Vanya unlocked the pad from the empty room, pushed the youngster into the darkness inside, locked the bedroom again and put the key into the drawer. He went to the kitchen, took out a vodka bottle, drank half of it and sighed, satisfied. Sometime later, he fell asleep on the couch. The prisoner's whining seemed to be joined by a different background noise. But Ivan was too tired to get off the couch and check, so he just covered himself with the quilt, covered his ears and slid into a deep sleep.

#

What woke him this time, late in the middle of the night, was not a sound, since the apartment was eerily silent. On the contrary, he woke up because he felt something was lacking. Not a need, something like hunger or thirst, but some unclear void reaching out from the staircase. Ivan wrapped the quilt around his back and got out of the apartment. Indeed, on the stairs, between the floors, on the lowest steps, something could be vaguely seen in the obscurity. Three male figures, dark, motionless.

"Who's there, blya?" Vanya asked, still calm.

No answer. He went forward three steps, reached for the switch and pushed it. Nothing. He turned again to the silhouettes and noticed that, though still not moving, they were two steps higher. Hurriedly, he went back into the apartment and, half leaning inside, pushed the switch there, too. Again, nothing.

Vanya looked at the stairs. The undefined shapes had gone three more steps up, silent, inert. Fearful, he slammed the door and quickly locked the latch. He looked through the viewer, ready to wait for the intruders' arrival. But he jumped back: they were already there at the door, faceless. The man ran to the living room and hid under the covers, shaking. He peeped from under the quilt's margin. No sound, no movement, but the figures were in the door, waiting. Ivan pushed against the wall and started praying. He did not dare look out again and just sat there, trembling till dawn.

When the first sunbeams reached him, Vanya slowly raised his head above the pillow. The room was empty and no one stood in the door. Relieved, he took the pad key from the pillow and went to the bedroom. He unlocked the door to get Sasha out.

The man was on the floor, carefully outspread on a plastic sheet. Eyes wide open, face frozen in a grimace of indescribable terror and pain, lacking his arms under the elbows and his legs under the knees. In a corner's shadows, a bloodied bag hoarded a pile of bones, seemingly cleared by some large carnivorous, patient beast. Something like a tiger.

On the kitchen table, among plates covered in tomato sauce and old bread crusts, the cuffs waited, orderly.

#

Ivan was not religious and had lived his life quite sure that faith was just a load of superstitious crap. Actually, he still felt that way. But when terrorized by things one cannot explain rationally and finding no hope for a way out, one tends to push aside skepticism and try. Who knows, maybe.

He decided to skip work, since his superiors thought that already anyway, and go to church. There was one just five minutes away if he took a shortcut behind the blocks. He put on a pair of civilian pants and a sweater and watched himself in the mirror: he looked bad, exhausted. Saggy face, large underbelly. When did he get so fat? Ivan hadn't seen himself for a few days, but he didn't remember being so plump. He was as round as if something had gotten into his stomach and inflated from inside out. He felt his cheek: a bruise. Since when? And where from? He hadn't fought anybody. Whatever, nobody cared. Not even himself.

Vanya went out and shuddered. It was raining hard and cold, but his umbrella was upstairs, at home, or maybe at work. He did not dare go back to that accursed apartment, so he just started pushing against the wind. After the first block, Ivan stopped. He felt like being watched. He slowly turned around and saw it was true: the few stray dogs that lived in the area had all come out from under the cars and stairs and gathered behind him. None barked, growled or wagged its tail. They just stood there, watching him warily, as if waiting for Vanya to deliver some important message.

The man waved his hands and shouted at them, but the mutts did not go away. On the contrary, a large black one, with small nasty eyes, carefully approached him and sniffed his pants. The cop stood still, trying not to stir them, and swallowed hard. The mongrel sneezed in disgust and backed away, still watching him intensely, suspicious. The others followed and vanished back under the stairs, in silence.

Bewildered, Vanya kept on walking and went into the church. Strangely, it was dark inside, cold and bleak. The candles were unlit and the darkness had crammed around the altar, so he could not discern much. He sighed and passed his hand above the tapers, absent-minded. He startled, palm burned. He stepped back and everything changed: the flames were flickering, the lights were on, a priest was minding his chores around the altar.

Vanya rushed to the cleric, but stopped in the middle, struck by some unpleasant sweet scent. An odor of putrefaction. It came from the wine chalice in front of an icon. He looked inside and made a face: it was gore. He reached for the wafer. Not bread, but green, moist cartilages.

"Can I help you, son?" asked the priest, puzzled.

Vanya thought hard what to say, but he got distracted by a movement behind the minister. A black smoke thread snaked silently from the altar, inching near the priest. He tried to warn the man, but could not open his mouth: something had gone up his throat and clenched his teeth.

"Sir? Are you all right?"

The Cossack tried again, but in vain. His jaws were tightly stuck together as if cemented, so all he could put out were some mute-like growls. Meanwhile, the mist thread had sneaked under the minister's robe and seemed to move up his legs, in the same rhythm as his eyes turned black from blue and some oily black ink filled out the iris into the sockets, slowly covering them.

Vanya turned around and ran. Strange sounds followed him, like gurgling from some sick man trying to throw up.

#

What was he doing there? Ivan had calmed down with liquor, and then had fallen asleep on the couch, half-dressed in his sweater and underwear. He had woken up in the bedroom, naked. It was dark. The complete silence outside told him it was some impossible hour, three or four in the morning. He looked behind: the door was wide open, but nothing could be seen in the pitch dark hallway.

The room was completely empty, with no corpse anywhere to be seen. Absolutely nothing else, except him and a large old leather suitcase. The one in which he had cramped unwanted things after Irina had left. But he remembered taking it to the basement; why was it here? Ivan grabbed it and tried to force it open. He failed; it had a lock and it was stuck. The cop got angry and tried again, still in vain. Already furious, he threw it against the walls, again and again. Strangely, the suitcase seemed to mumble and felt incredibly heavy.

Pissed off, the man rushed to the kitchen. He flipped the switch, but the light bulb remained black, so he forced out the drawer and searched blindly in it just by feeling around. Ivan grabbed the hatchet he used for breaking bones, went back to the suitcase and struck at it repeatedly till it broke. Inside, instead of clothes and books, he found wine bottles. Long, elegant, wrapped in whitish paper, covered in some unclear drawings. He took a few out, but they wouldn't stand and kept rolling over. One of them shattered and a wide, sticky puddle spread out. Still raging, Vanya rushed to the kitchen again and returned with some rags and two bags, cramming the bottles in them, orderly, as he took them out. He carefully wiped the slop, too, then took the rags and bags into a corner.

While kneeling to set them there, Ivan heard a growl behind him. He stood up slowly, trembling, and turned around. He glimpsed the black tiger in the hallway, crossing towards the kitchen. On tiptoes, treading carefully so as not to make any sounds and holding his breath, Vanya sneaked along the wall, into the hall and then into the living room. He flinched when he heard the bedroom door slamming itself, then something turning over the chair he kept next to the cooking stove.

He anxiously closed his door, too, put a chair against it and slid under the quilt, frozen with fear. He grabbed his knees and brought them against his chest, shivering terrified. He felt the salty taste of blood in his mouth and realized he must have bit his lips really hard.

#

Another day wasted wondering around the town, aimlessly, purposeless. He just could not tie up coherent thoughts together, just horrible, gruesome images. Every now and then he felt his mouth, amazed to find his lips unharmed.

He had visited all the five addresses, all over again. Or at least he thought it was again. He remembered the blocks and apartments, especially the rooms of the three missing persons that relatives complained of strange rustles. But he did not recognize the people. This time, the bedrooms were not empty, but inhabited by brothers, children or wives. Even those he talked to were different. Different mothers, spouses, grandmothers. Only the pictures of the missing were the same. The conversations also went bad: they got nervous, claiming to have been already interrogated, but not by him. By Marin. And, they said, the Dubossary police was no good in finding anybody, anyway. So, instead of shooting at their former mates from beyond the Dniester, shouldn't they rather do something to protect the locals from whatever roamed the nights, using the war as a cover?

Vanya had no answer to that. After all, he shot at nobody and couldn't even understand much of the whole conflict, except that the salary had stopped coming. What he did know was that he was terribly sleepy, his stomach tormented him with a horrible indigestion, his throat felt like throwing up, his mind was covered in a mist of fear and confusion and that inside his station locker awaited a nice bottle of vodka that could greatly improve everything.

At work he lingered only for ten minutes, in a hurry to grab the bottle before Suharov or Kotnov noticed him and started a new shaming session. Unfortunately, he was terribly disappointed to find no liquor in his locker, obliquely tilted against a wall at the end of two rows of traces on the carpet. The files he was sure he had locked inside were not there, either, just some nicely packed clothes and three pairs of worn shoes. Puzzled, he looked for Marin to confront him for the bad farce, but the man was out.

The policeman went back to the apartment, then. Along the way, he stopped at a shop and bought a "White Stork" brandy. Next to his sink he also found the lost vodka bottle and sipped hard till the spirits burned his throat. Suddenly overwhelmed by a horrible nausea, he rushed to the toilet and puked a thick blackish paste. He washed away the bad taste in his mouth and exited the bathroom.

In the hallway, his eyes stopped on Irina's picture: beautiful, happy, shiny. Then he saw himself in the mirror: pale, exhausted and sickly, red eyes and dirty locks of hair under the cap. The coat crumpled and twisted. Depressed, he went to the kitchen and absent-mindedly moved the chair with the cap and coat. Then he stopped and looked at them for a long time. What the hell? Ivan looked down: he was wearing just a shirt and pants.

He rushed to the mirror and, this time, the reflection stopped lying: he wore no cap, no coat. But when had that happened? While thinking, bewildered, he thought he heard the damned rustle coming from the bedroom. In broad daylight, for the first time. He snatched the key and hurriedly unlocked the door, then barged in.

The corpse was still there, on the plastic sheet. The foil was no longer clean, but sprayed with fresh blood. The dead man was missing the muscles on his biceps, too, but not clean-cut like before. Now the flesh seemed to have been ripped by blunt teeth and chewed straight from the bone. In the corner, next to the bone bag, a pile of dirty rags. He felt them up. The blood was still moist; it had had no time to dry up.

Ivan looked at the empty room. Nothing, no hole anywhere to allow any animal inside. He checked the planks bolted over the window: they were still firm and nothing could get through. The key was in his hand. So where from had the cannibal beast come inside? Had it materialized from thin air? Could it be the night itself, taking form to feast on human flesh, in the middle of the day?

Vanya had no answer. He stepped backwards, locked the pad, put the key in its drawer and grabbed the bottles. The voracious hunger had passed and he just wanted to drink himself into an all- forgetting stupor, so he slammed the living room door and poured the first glass.

#

Ivan woke up in the middle of the night, probably around 3 a.m. Too dark to see the clock. He had a terrible headache, his mouth filled with a disgusting taste, his bristle chin covered in dried saliva. He felt around him, eyes-closed, and felt that the bedsheet was wet. He took his fingers to his nostrils to sniff them, but could not take in any air. He opened his eyes then and saw the reason: two thin, trembling threads of darkness went out his nose and through the half open door, into the hallway. He stood up, grabbed an empty bottle, holding it like a club, and followed the tentacles. They led into the void room, now pitch dark like a cave, with the door wide open and the pad dangling unlocked. The bedroom seemed to breathe like a huge sick stomach, pushing out hoarse, stinky puffs of warm air.

Vanya kicked the door and rushed in, squeezing the bottle as if it was some kind of magic sword. In the middle of the chamber, a black cloud loomed over the stiff dead body, flashing tens of white grains. Teeth, he realized eventually. The being was chewing, hungry, ripping strips of bloody flesh and quickly swallowing them up, splashing around.

The two threads of darkness from his own nose went all the way to the creature, but they were not the only ones: five or six more were feeling the walls, rustling on the plaster, while other four held a man in a corner, pushed against the floor. He recognized the man: Andrey Tatar, the teacher. The man was whimpering, looking in horror at his plump legs cut under the knees. The blood flowed from the wounds over a plastic sheet, carefully laid down. The missing limbs were nowhere to be seen, but a new bag waited next to him, ready to be filled with bones.

The victim saw Ivan and extended his hands in a begging gesture, crying:

"Please, no more, no more! Please, stop it!"

Vanya raised the bottle above his head and started towards the dark beast, but it growled a short word and night suddenly fell over him. He could only feel his body hitting the floor and the sound of shattering glass.

#

"Hunger". That was the word uttered by the monster. Ivan woke up and looked around. He was in the living room, on the couch. On the chair next to him, an empty bottle and a key. The door was closed. The bedsheet still wet, smelling of alcohol. He looked at the clock: 1 p.m.

Vanya stood up, nude, though he could clearly remember going to bed in a pajama. He looked for it and saw it on an armchair, carefully packed. Next to it, a towel. He took it up and sniffed it. Almost dry, with some rust-looking traces on the edge.

The cop walked slowly to the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove. In the garbage bin, the shards from the second bottle, and behind the door, the broom and dustpan, in their usual place. On the table, the pile of folders. He took it up and browsed it, absent-minded, annoyed by the persistent ringing of the telephone in the living-room. He sipped just one time from the tea and it hit him. He quickly opened the papers again and looked once more. Yes, it was true!

Puzzled, he took the folders under his arm, grabbed a chair with his other hand and, still nude, went into the bedroom. He slammed the door wide open and entered, put the chair in the middle and calmly sat on it. He saw that, beside the half eaten Sasha and the fat man from last night, already missing all his limbs, a new corpse had somehow shown up. It seemed just killed that same morning, and for now had only a few pieces of flesh lacking from his forearms, carefully cut out. In a corner, three bags filled with bones and a large pile of bloodied rags, in various degrees of moisture. In a different one, a few plastic sheets orderly packed, and on a cardboard some knives of different sizes and shapes, a meat cleaver and a saw, all cleaned up and organized with military rigor.

He looked at the folders, then at the corpses. The one he thought of as Sasha was not actually Aleksandr Godin, the deserter. He didn't even resemble the picture, being way too short and dark-haired. He browsed the other files: none of the images had anything in common with the bodies. The plump man was not really the flaccid Andrey Tatar, but a Gagauz-looking young man. None of the three dead men in the room was one of the missing people, whose pictures had mysteriously changed overnight.

He threw the folders and got out, thinking hard, not looking back. Some thought or memory kept trying to surface in his mind, like a larva buried in his brain struggling to exit though his mouth. Ivan did not wait for it to emerge: he got dressed in his police uniform and went shopping. He came back rather fast, holding a hammer in one hand and a few bottles in a bag in the other one. He locked the apartment, took down Irina's picture and hid it in the closet, among his shirts. He ripped the phone line, packed his uniform nicely and put in on the armchair, then took the bottles and the hammer and went into the bedroom.

He moved the pad inside, locked it and crushed the key. After that, he dragged the bodies under the window, covered them with the sheets, the rags and the bone bags, then solemnly put the folders on top, like a trophy on an altar. He took his hammer, butcher knives and bottles, sat down against the opposite wall and started drinking hard, refusing obstinately any thoughts.

#

Night. Numbed by the hangover, he opened his eyes and saw a black figure, darker even than the pitch dark of the room. The beast had hauled one of the corpses to the center of the room and sniffed it.

"Hungry?" asked Vanya.

"Hungry!" responded the monster.

He grinned, grabbed the cleaver and in just one short, unexpected move, struck down, howling.

"Hungry?" he yelled at the creature and threw his freshly cut feet at it.

"Pain!" it screamed horribly, roaring. "Why?"

"Tvoi mat, suka!" Vanya whispered and took up the hammer.

The beast shuddered in fear and threw its rustling tentacles around the man, trying to stop him. The Cossack moved faster and hard struck his teeth. White-red bloodied chips covered his chest. The creature screamed and its fangs started falling in rows over the bodies.

"Who do you bite now, bitch?" yelled Ivan again, striking his mouth in a wave of hits, crushing his lips and teeth into a red paste filled with bone splints.

The beast wheezed and put out her tentacles, begging for mercy.

"Mercy, you piece of shit? Mercy?" said Vanya with difficulty and rushed it, mouth open.

He slammed the creature against the floor and started furiously biting it with his broken teeth, howling enraged. The darkness responded, rolling him up in its limbs and biting back. In bitter struggle, they rolled over the corpses, spraying blood all over. With each bite, Vanya also felt burning pain as the monster ripped him, too, and felt his life leaking away through countless wounds. But he could also feel the creature loosing vital force, too, weakening, gradually shrinking into nothingness. He kept biting at it, in atrocious suffering and darkness, until he fell for good into a senseless void.

Straight into the pitch black.

###

**Red snow in Kaperka**

In this fantastic whodunit from the frozen Gulag, a series of brutal murder horrify the prisoners of war. Could it be the elusive tribesmen? Or maybe some legendary ancient beast still prowling the woods, looking for human blood?

The blizzard roared ever louder, spewing endless waves of snow over the camp. The man huddled his mountain trooper ragged overcoat closer to his neck and clenched his teeth. He pushed once more the roughly built wooden door and it finally gave way, letting out a sigh of warm, bad-smelling air. The barracks, half buried in permafrost, swallowed him up.

"It's Codrean? Bring him over here!"

The newcomer tensed and screwed his eyes to get used to the darkness inside. He clenched his bony fists, but saw their faces and relaxed a little: they did have hateful gazes, as usual, but without the playful flicker of wickedness from when they mocked his name, meaning Woodsman in his language. A brutish looking infantryman grabbed his elbow and pulled him towards the gang gathered around some playing cards scribbled on bark pieces. Chief Neag, a former railways man that used to be fat before the war, and now ended up just bloated after years as a POW, invited him to join in, mockingly faking respect:

"But please, captain, sir! Welcome, welcome!"

The others laughed at the well-known joke, grinning their broken lips over blackened teeth. They stood up and dispersed among the bunks cradled in the darkness. Two of the strongest ones stayed behind and crammed the newcomer between them. The chief shuffled the cards in silence and, absent-mindedly, drew an ace of spade. He opened his eyes wide in amazement, with a grimace, but quickly recovered his composure and pushed the small square at the hunter:

"You know what this means? For fortune-tellers?"

The soldier shrugged. The sarge leaned over him and whispered:

"It means death. Maybe yours..."

He let the sentence float among them, heavy, and scratched his chest for a long time, till he got the flea and crushed it with a grumble.

"... but I'm all too sure you're a man I can reason with, so it's the death of somebody else."

The hunter said nothing and the chief insisted:

"We need you. Two reasons. You'll help us, and for that..."

He grinned and pushed a finger into the man's chest:

"We'll be magnanimous and will not push you out into the frost to die. All right?"

Codrean looked around. Famished men with brutish faces, soldiers too often beaten up and famished, their souls utterly crushed. In their glares he could see the herd hatred for the loner and the rivalry of infantry for the mountaineers. Carelessness in front of death, be it even murder. He sighed and nodded, resigned.

"I knew you'd be a good boy, even for a wild woodsman raised in the forest."

Neag nodded to the two henchmen and one of them stood up and turned to face the barracks, covering them with his wide back. The chief gestured to the other one. The man lowered his eyes, aimlessly looking towards the logs of the wall, and started telling his tale:

"I found him an hour ago, in the North. He was sent out cutting wood, so those dragging the wood-carrying sleds should have found him, but I had a deal with the man and sneaked there to give him some self-made cigarettes."

He swallowed hard, obviously shaken, but Neag forced him to keep going.

"His name was Pietrean, first sergeant Pietrean, a former police inspector. He was... how to say it..."

He closed his eyes for a few moments, remembering the scene.

"At first I saw the mud. A circle, five or six steps wide. Muck, do you understand? In Siberia, in the winter!"

Codrean could not help feeling sorry for the hulk and nodded, a glint of warmth in his eyes. The soldier clenched his fists and kept on:

"I walked through the mud, black as Hell itself and as dark as the burned trunks of the trees surrounding the circle. In the center there was snow. Blood red snow. Shaped like a cross."

He fast crossed himself, spit on the ground to chase away the demons and said, ever fainter:

"And there was Pietrean in the middle of it. Well, what was left of him. Broken. His legs, ripped by fangs and torn away from the corpse, but carefully placed under the body to make it look like some crooked crucifixion. His head cut off, face chewed up, lips eaten, eyes gorged out. And his hands... oh, God, his hands!"

The three men kept silent for a while. The big guy looked at his own arms, made a face and said, voice trembling:

"The flesh inside his palms was cracked open, and instead of bones they held a fresh twig each. With a green leaves tussock passing through the palm."

Codrean looked away from the tearful soldier and sank his glance into the uncaring eyes of the sarge. Calmly, he asked:

"Have you told the enkaveds? They could kill us all, you know it."

The chief pushed the trooper away and the hulk stood up and left, his shoulders stooped. Neag leaned to the hunter and winked:

"Always thinking about the Soviets, huh, comrade? That's one of the reasons I need you. You get along well with Lishenko. You're a Russki-lover and that's exactly what I need right now."

Codrean bit his lips:

"I don't love the Russians, Neag, you know damn well why the guards' chief likes me. And not because I'm some Communist. I'm no Bolshevik, neither a Fascist, liberal or conservative. I'm just a woodsman understanding the ways of the four-legged beasts, not those of the two-legged ones."

"Yeah, a woodsman you are, and a good one at that," admitted the sarge.

He came closer.

"Lishenko likes you for taking care of his mutts and healing those mongrels. You know, the dogs they use to draw reins on us like cattle. Like cattle, Codrean, you mother fucking traitor!"

He gasped for air and calmed down. The woodsman mumbled to himself:

"Dogs are just dogs, what do they care for men's feuds?"

"Whatever," interrupted Neag. "We need you to find out what's going on. You're a hunter and a woodsman, you should be able to look for tracks. And you get along well with those bastards, so you can go to the Khakhol and ask him to allow you some sniffing around."

"And why would I do that? Beside not being murdered by your people. Which is not much, considering there's so many other things that could kill me at any moment, from hunger to my so-called Soviet friends."

"Because, Codrean my man, Pietrean was not just some foot soldier, he was my Kamarad. And because, to answer the other question, the NKVD guardsmen already know. And they couldn't care less, they just wrote him off as a frostbite victim. They're not stupid, do you know how easily they can become Gulag prisoners, too?"

The chief furtively looked around and whispered:

"And because they actually knew about it... every time. Pietrean is the third."

#

In the engineers' barracks the darkness smelled just as bad, but evilness was weaker. Floating less obvious among the skeletal POWs, hiding for longer in the unseen dark below the stacked bunks and less in the Romanians' glares. But it was there, alive, and Codrean could smell its odor under those of sweat and fear.

"Did Vashka knew Pietrean from infantry?"

"No way! Well, he was one of them, but when did the cop get along with the thief?"

The fair haired lad laughed at Codrean, as if he was still in his Bessarabia hamlet, and not deep into Siberia, exiled by the enemy to die off cutting trees in the taiga.

"Well, maybe they met each other in Transnistria, both their regiments stationed there," a grey-haired older man contradicted. "The footmen guarded the railway station, Vashka's battalion built the transit camp next to it. God knows Vashka loved that time: he robbed the Jews of all he could lay his hands on. Gold, watches, he even took the shoes off some old geezer!"

"They didn't even fit, they caused him blisters."

The engineers laughed, but stopped when pierced by the woodsman's stare.

"Well, just like a Kulak, sometimes the Bolsheviks are right. There was a rumor he was the one who ratted the Berkowitz family to the Germans, just to take their orchard."

"That indeed," argued the grey-haired man again, "but Pietrean has never ever stolen a thing! He used to be some big police boss in Iassy, a commissar!"

"Well, then," asked the puzzled Codrean, "why was he not in the Military Police? Or the Gendarmerie?"

"Ah, he was being punished. He was sent to the front, and not even as a Lieutenant or something, but just as a NCO. Why? No idea."

The older man looked at the fair haired lad, but he shrugged, too. The hunter said:

"So the two may, or may not, have met in Transnistria. But what about father Ojoga, has he ever been there?"

The two engineers denied.

"No, no, he arrived to the Don front straight from Bucharest. A volunteer. Anti-Bolshevik, a true one, with all his heart. But he never was on the Dniester."

They all shut up, thinking. Codrean moved into a better position on the bunk, farther from the ice-cold touch of the wall being battered by the blizzard outside, and asked:

"Which of them had to cut wood in what part of the forest?"

The lad answered:

"In the North, the Kaperka area. I mean Vashka, I have no idea about the other two."

"Father Ojoga, too," said the older man.

"And the former police inspector Pietrean," added the woodsman. "Anything out of the ordinary there?"

The two engineers looked at each other, surprised, then stared at him. The lad exclaimed:

"Oh, I forgot you do not cut wood, so you wouldn't know!"

"Yeah, I'm just a collaborator, pretending to be a veterinary for the camp animals," the hunter smiled bitterly.

"Eh, whatever, somebody must take care of the beasts, too, isn't that so? Don't you worry, we are not the kind of those in that barrack."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the fifteen of us in here are humane men. God made us all, not just the fair Romanians, but also the Russians, Khakhols, Turks and whatever peoples might be spread over the face of the Earth."

Codrean could not help himself but smile at the young man, as thin and grey as corpse because of the Russians he still could not hate.

"What Ion tries to say," intervened the older soldier, "is that Kaperka is inhabited by man-eating tribes."

The fair-haired man and the hunter both laughed out loud, but the grey-haired kept on:

"Savage Buryats. The Russkies have been hunting them down for centuries, so whenever they catch one unarmed in the woods, they kill him. And then devour the victims!"

The other two looked at each other, but he was being serious.

"And for them a pale-face is a pale-face, what do they understand about enkaveds and enemy prisoners of war? We're just as white and stink the same, so one must take care out there... or else!"

"Come on, man, with these Apaches bullshit!" laughed Ion. "No, it's not that about the Kaperka area."

"Then what?"

The lad looked around. Exhausted by hard labor, the other soldiers in the barracks slept or chattered in a low voice, waiting for the thin slime that was served as dinner. Nobody cared about their discussion.

"Kaperka is an ancient wood, tough to cut down, a place for extermination by impossible endless chores. The taiga further South in newer and not as thick, but up there... that place is from The Times Before. Thick and dark like never seen before!"

"I am a woodsman from Bukovina," smiled Codrean, "I'm used to woods that were already old before history. Nothing to be afraid of, just wolves and bears. And if you respect their ways, not even them."

"Wolves and bears... No, it's not that, nor ol' man's man-eating savages."

"Then what is it?"

The lad leaned to them, solemn, and answered:

"The forest witch!"

Silence fell between them. The Bessarabian seemed to really believe his claim and smiled triumphantly, satisfied with his break-through. He felt their looks and defended himself:

"Believe it or not, that's the truth!"

The hunter wanted to contradict, but the door suddenly slammed open and a gust of freezing wind entered, heavy with snow-flakes. The prisoners shuddered and shrunk, hiding in the dark like cockroaches. In the square of winter showed a bloated silhouette, well-dressed and arrogant. A gloved hand drew the muffler just a little, the other came up from the submachine gun and pointed at Codrean:

"Ti! Pashol!"

The short thin man stood up in a hurry, crammed the collar around his neck in a fearful gesture and rushed towards the guard, his eyes down.

#

Inside Lishenko's cottage it felt warmer and more comfortable than expected even at a commander's place; after all, their camp was just a tiny outpost of the Gulag leviathan, an islet of Romanian POWs thrown at the taiga's edge like a puny beetle crunching in vain the bark of an immense, ancient tree.

In the antechamber, the guard sat on a small chair, and the dogs stood up in joy and surrounded Codrean, the keeper of their well-being. They loved him, so the woodsman kneeled among the hounds and petted them all, a friendly whisper for each pair of pointed ears. The harsh glare of the Russian guard got a little softer, melted by a warmth impossible to stop even by the harder indoctrination. The big lad relaxed and put his gun on the table. He gestured the Romanian towards the green cloth covered door and put his chin in his hands, dozing off.

The hunter got in. In the center of the low room, warmed by a tiny iron stove cracking in the corner, stood a large plank table, all covered in papers, maps, dirty dishes and tin cans. A calm, soothing whizz snaked from the samovar, rolled up in the tempting aroma of black tea. Without looking up from the ledger he was writing in, the officer gestured, pointing a wooden settee.

The woodsman went around the white bear fur on the floor, carefully stepping only on the hardened soil, sat and quietly watched the lamp hanging from a girder. For a few minutes he wondered what felt amiss, then he realized: first, the silence. The blizzard's howl, never away from their badly built barracks, always sneaking inside through some crack, was not present here, replaced only by the uneven scratch of the pen point. And no flies or mosquitos around the lamp, like home, since there were no insects in Siberia, except in the summer.

"Never thought you might miss those, huh?" said the commander, friendly, in Ukrainian.

He stood up, a bony man, tall as a pike and dark-skinned, not at all Slav-looking.

"The bugs?" answered Codrean in the same language, but with a softer accent. "They all have their purpose, from the tiniest flea to the largest beasts in whose fur it hides."

Lishenko came closer and shook his hand, smiling.

"What about Romanians all the way up in Siberia? Do they serve a purpose here?"

"Just as much, or little, as the Russians and Ukrainians."

The commander laughed, shortly but honestly.

"I forgot you have the manners of a boy raised in the woods. Frank in any weather, be it warm or..."

"... cold as death".

"Death! What's so special about death? Look," the officer held up a paper, "in here I've just signed the execution order for some prisoner. And here," he reached for a different one, "I'll approve the transfer of a guard to an even further North outpost, from where he will probably never return alive. And here," he pointed a data sheet, "endless lists of dead people. Hunger, cold, bullet, or maybe just giving up. Do you ever give up, Kodrenko?"

The hunter said nothing.

"No, you never do. Just like a hound. Or a wolf. And wild wolves snooping around a flock without the shepherd allowing it..."

He faked a pistol with his fingers and pointed it at the Romanian.

"Bang! Off to a better world. So, tell me, friend of my dogs, I've heard you are snooping around the camp. What prey are you after?"

He reached for the samovar, poured some hot tea in two metal cups and came back, leaving behind him wet tracks all over the bear fur. He gave one to the prisoner and went back to his chair.

"That's a pity, comrade commander."

Surprised, the officer raised his eyes and their glares struck each other, holding on, clenched.

"The bearskin," stopped Codrean the wordless struggle. "It is a right thing for a beast of prey, even armed with a rifle, to kill another one, armed with claws and fangs. But to tread on its soul after its death... that's bad."

Lishenko laughed.

"In forty-three, there was, in my battalion, a Siberian tribesman, a shaman. He also spoke such nonsense, of the heart of the woods, sacred beasts and some other crap the progressive USSR has no more time for. Comrade, be honest: what are you really hunting?"

The woodsman looked at him, wondering. Can an evil man, who torments other people and lets them die just because the Party and the war say so... also be a good man in his heart? Maybe sometimes he can, and maybe this Khakhol was one such man. He sighed and confessed:

"The three butchered Romanians. I was asked nicely to find the murderer."

The commander grinned:

"Asked? Nicely? By Neag's Fascists?"

Codrean shrugged. What was, was, and that's that.

"And what murderer? While those killed were in the woods chopping trees, all the other prisoners were working. Or in lock up. So, are you suggesting it could have been a guardsman? No, I'm sure you never thought anything so stupid. And, anyway, does any of the famished skeletons in those barracks even have the strength to rip a man into pieces?"

The hunter shrugged again, without an answer: no, none still had. And what for? Didn't the Soviets kill them fast enough anyway? If one wanted to get rid of somebody, all he had to do was to denounce the POW as a Nazi, mystic or an enemy of the humane union of the Soviet peoples. And it was all over in a matter of hours.

"Then, maybe," he uttered an idea he did not really believe, "was it the Buryats?"

"Oh, come on! The tribesmen?! They never have the guts to challenge us, they only hide deeper and deeper into the taiga. No, it's not them."

The commander took the pen, carefully screwed on the cap and put it over the papers, a symbol of order amongst chaos. He looked furtively at Codrean and said, as if unimportant:

"You love those dogs outside, right? So you must know that once in a while I allow them to go wild, chase for rabbits. But only, I repeat, only after their job is done."

"Their job is to bite us. The prisoners."

"Yes, that is their purpose and they serve it very well. And after that, I allow them to go for the rabbits. Get it?"

The woodsman nodded.

"You need something done. And as a reward... I can do my thing."

"That's right. Someone," mumbled the commander while browsing a register book, "has been stealing from me. I think. The petrol goes off too quickly, and so does canned meat. Sniff out the thief. I do not need proof or evidence: just sniff him out and I'll make him admit. We have our methods. Do we have a deal?"

The Romanian agreed, without saying anything.

"As for those three ripped into pieces, any native can provide you with the explanation."

Codrean raised his eyes, and the Ukrainian grinned, half serious, half mockingly:

"The Zver Derev. The taiga boogeyman, a monster protecting the forest."

The hunted sighed, stood up and went for the door, again respectfully avoiding the bear fur.

"Yes, indeed," Lishenko shouted, "it looks like a large bear, but with the muzzle of a wolf and the ears and eyes of a tiger! And walks upright, like humans! Listen up, it's the Zver Derev!!"

Codrean sneaked out the door, tailed by the officer's laughter and welcomed by the dogs' barking. The sentinel flinched, half-asleep, grabbed the weapon and stood up to escort him back to the barracks.

#

Codrean shook off the snow from his eyelashes and rubbed his frozen eyes. His stiffened body hurt all over and the cold snow pushed hatefully against his back head, trying to sneak between the woolen hood and the tightly wrapped collar. In the pitch dark of the midnight, the blizzard howled and hissed like cursing in some ancient language. Motionless under the snow drift covering him, Codrean tried to discern anything through the thick white mist. The third night of prowling the tracked trucks: if nothing came up soon, he would simply freeze to death, in vain.

But this time something did come up. A small, shortsighted, almost bald Byelorussian was on watch this night. Abramov. Known as an unpredictable guard, sometimes joking with the Romanians, other times kicking them with hatred, without a reason. A weird guy, disliked by his enkaveds, too, and not included in their gangs. Still, he seemed to have some visitors.

Slowly, the woodsman crawled out of the snow and started snaking his way to the parking lot, unheard. Behind a truck covered in tarpaulin, three crouched silhouettes exchanged whispers. Abramov and who else? Codrean raised his head a little, hidden in the snowstorm. He froze. He took off the rag covering his nose and sniffed the wind, eyes closed. The woodsman gradually tilted his head to the left and stopped when he felt an unexpected scent. He looked at the barely visible form, then beyond it. The wind gusts tricked his eyes, but could not fool his nostrils: there were more beings, in a circle around those three men whispering.

He pushed forward on all four, without looking up. After about five or six yards, he could feel the tension and stopped for a few seconds. The stare fixed on him finally turned away and he crawled some more. He stopped again, watched once more. He waited. Moved a little more. Stop. Wait. Crawl. Until his shoulder finally leaned against the warm, furry scapula and a barely heard growl warned him he was close enough. The man laid on his belly next to the animal and whispered, gentle and peaceful like an enchantment, and the dog softened up and relaxed. The hunter put his hand on it, behind the ears, and petted the beast. Friends already, he watched the beast straight into its eyes and uttered a short word. The dog howled. A dozen other throats answered in unison.

Codrean smiled and started crawling again towards the trucks. Here and there, the guard dogs stared calmly at him with blue eyes. They said nothing: he was a friend; they knew it now. The woodsman reached the edge of the parking lot and peeked from behind the huge track of some transporter. Abramov was talking to two dark-skinned, black-haired carriers. Between them, a canister. The hunter sniffed: petrol. Satisfied, he crawled backwards and slipped into the snow, vanishing into the shadows.

#

"Abramov? I knew I could not trust their kind!"

The commander stood up and went for the door. He suddenly opened it, welcomed by the dogs' barking and the surprised sentinel's jump. He turned his back on them and carefully locked the door.

"Who else?"

Codrean shrugged.

"I don't know them. They are not Romanian. Two carriers from those that carry the logs to the camp on dog sleds. Dark, black-haired, bitter faces. Brothers, I think."

"Aha, I know who they are! They're not Romanians, indeed, but Bugeak Turks. Azat and Rinat. And not brothers, those people just look all alike. What does thieving do to a man, Kodrenko?"

"What do you mean, comrade commander?"

"I mean those two can't stand the Jews! They were Hiwis. Auxiliary Eastern Front volunteer troops for building roads behind the Wehrmacht. That's why we've sent them to the Gulag. Everybody knows they hated the Jews, they were seen watching the convoys... with full hatred in their eyes! And now they steal together with one? For a canister of gas..."

Angry, he spat on the floor. The drops fell on the bear fur. The hunter kneeled and wiped it with his sleeve. He stood up and asked:

"Where can I find them?"

"In the cooler you will! Together with Abramov. They'll have a short life, and I will make even that very miserable."

"Yet, commander, can I ask for something?"

"Ask, wood boy, asking is free."

"If they use dog sleds... what's the petrol for?"

Amazed, Lishenko stopped for a moment.

"They probably sell it, what the fuck else?! Drink it?"

Codrean disagreed.

"There's no buyer in the camp. Ours, or theirs. Comrade commander, please, wait a little longer. Just a day or two, till I catch my rabbit as well, and I'll find out about the gas, I promise. After that, we'll do as you order."

The Ukrainian looked at him, suspicious. His grimace slowly turned into a smile, then full laughter:

"You hound... always hunting! All right, you have one day. Two, at most."

"That will suffice, comrade commander, thank you. And one more thing, please."

"You're pushing it. But go ahead, say it."

The Romanian leaned behind the stove and picked up a yard-long pipe, used to push the logs inside the fire.

"I need this for a while."

"All right, sure, take it. And off you go."

The commander grabbed his elbow and pushed him to the door. The woodsman let himself be taken out, but asked one more thing:

"Yet... what's the area those Turks are responsible for? Where from do they pick up the logs?"

"What, you didn't know? I thought you were just showing off."

Lishenko pushed him outside and yelled from behind the closing door:

"The Kaperka woods, damn it!"

#

He needed three days after all. Codrean knew that when a beast started feasting on human flesh, it also learned a killing rhythm and can no longer resist its urge, since no predator owns the hunger, but hunger owns the predator. It had lasted a day longer than expected, but it had been worth the wait: the Kaperka snow had just been bloodied again, from the corpse of another Romanian.

Night fell over the woods and the hunter prowled. Unseen and unheard, covered in snow, he had waited beside the road leading from the parking lot into the forest. And here came the prey, sneaking in silence: Abramov, fearful, repeatedly looking behind him and sideways. But not in front, towards the snow mounds. It was not difficult to follow him. The short-sighted man's glasses kept getting covered in snowflakes, so he paid more attention to his steps than to the tree line. As for sounds, Codrean walked the taiga ground completely unheard: the Siberian sparse woods were even easier to trick than the thick ones of his home mountains.

Reaching the murder scene, the Byelorussian walked around in circles, mumbling, struggling through the already fast-freezing mud. He kept sticking pieces of wood at the roots of every burnt tree, trying hard not to look at the red snow cross still preserving the shape of the dismembered corpse. Finally, reaching a yew tree, he sniffed, satisfied, kneeled and started digging. The woodsman approached on tiptoes and put the round point of the metal pipe on the man's head. Abramov gasped in surprise, raised his hands and whelped:

"It wasn't me! I didn't do it!"

"Yes, you did, comrade," snapped Codrean at him in Russian. "You're alone in the woods, burying something. Certainly a message for some Fascist conspirators! You are scheming against the USSR. You know I can shoot you on the spot for that. You do feel the barrel of the rifle, right?"

"I do."

"So you know it's a 7.62 and it's going to make a rather large hole in your head! Any last confessions?"

"There's no conspiracy!" slobbered the man.

His glasses slipped and fell, and tears started trickling over them.

"Then what is it?"

The sobbing grew weaker. Abramov wiped his nose with his sleeve and felt around the snow. His trembling hands found the glasses, picked them up and stuck them back over the nose.

"Revenge!"

"Against the Romanians? But they never reached Byelorussia, how could they have hurt you?"

"As a Byelorussian? No harm, indeed. But as a Jew? The damn murderers! Have you heard of the Yassi pogrom? Inspector Pietrean was there. An Iron Guard man. The deportations from Bessarabia? Iron Guard soldiers like Saftu were there, blessed by Iron Guard priests like Ojoga. Oh, and there are so many more: Neag, and Alb, and Giora... the whole fourth barrack is as green-grey in their souls as the crap at a frog's ass!"

Codrean smacked him against the head with the pipe.

"Oh, stop it! All brave now, killing unarmed prisoners."

"But I did not kill them," the bald man argued.

"Yeah, I thought so. Still, you helped."

"That I did. For justice. Punishing savage, cruel animals!"

The hunter smacked him again.

"So you're a fair one, are you? Show me your hand!"

The man stopped talking and stooped. Codrean hit him once more and grabbed his right hand, pulling it hurtfully behind, while the left got pushed in front, increasing the pressure. Abramov screamed in pain and opened his palm. Something small and shiny fell into the mud. A golden cross.

"So much for justice. It makes stealing right, huh? I wonder if your avenging partners know you come here after the murders and gather the crosses they bury... that could make them quite angry, don't you think so?"

The fearful Byelorussian said nothing.

"I'd say that burying the crosses is part of a ritual, otherwise they would just let them be, on the bodies. And taking them away would quite ruin that ritual. And, I'd bet, they're not nice people when angry, though rather imaginative in sadistic ways. Could I be right?"

Abramov whelped and nodded.

"But there could be a way out for you."

The short-sighted man attempted to raise his eyes, but Codrean smacked him with the pipe.

"If I reach them first and instead of telling them about you, I just put them away into a cell. And forget about you completely. How about that, could it be a good idea? Just as good an idea as you telling me where I could find them?"

Abramov thought that, considering the circumstances, they were both great ideas. So he confessed. The hunter tied him up against the yew tree and forgot about him forever, just as promised.

#

"Azat or Rinat?"

The dark-skinned man jumped up in surprise. The flames of the camp fire beyond which the stranger seemed to have materialized from thin air made him difficult to see, nothing more than a black silhouette against the dark woods' background. The sled driver looked at the dogs sleeping around the camp. They were still there, yet none had barked once. He grabbed a wooden cudgel and raised it above his head, but found himself looking into the barrel of a gun and let it fall.

"Sit."

He sat, tense. The dark figure also squatted, but not quite human-like. Instead, somehow, dog-like.

"Where's your brother?"

The Turk looked aside and said:

"We're not siblings. Just from the same people."

"Yeah, I heard, Bugeak Turks. Collaborators, Nazi servants, Jew haters and so on. But you know what I think?"

The sled driver spat in the fire, frowning. The intruder kept on:

"That you cannot be that bad. You are both good Muslims... you took good care of these dogs, just like Mahomet said in that fable with the Medina white hound."

"Praise His name! So He says, so we do."

The other man seemed to look straight into his soul, even though his eyes could not be seen.

"Except that a faithful man like you should know there's no such story in the Quran. Actually, I remember that their prophet thinks dogs are dirty beings and you should stay away from them. But, I must admit, that's only a must for Muslims. Not for you people, right?"

The dark haired man shrugged, defiant, though a little doubtful. The figure laughed.

"You've got some balls; I'll give you that. Strength. You could have just told those the Russians the truth. You would have been thrown into a camp, too, but maybe not the murderous Siberia. But, you see, the charade was not good enough for me. Since I saw you taking care of the dogs, I suspected you are not Muslims."

The Turk kept quiet.

"I'll presume you're Azat, just for conversation's sake. Those names are fake anyway, so who cares you are one or the other? So, Azat, you should have been truthful and you'd have had an easier life. But you could not. Revenge would not allow it. Your thirst for green-grey blood."

The silence lingered between them, burdened with unspoken evils.

"Actually, I understand, Azat. That bloodthirst... I know it. But it can be mastered. You have already fed it, why wouldn't you stop?"

The wind howled and stoked the flames. For a moment, Azat saw the man's face, expressionless except the red eyes. Because of the reflection, they seemed not human, but beastly.

"So, what started it? Was it your woman? A son? Your parents?"

"My parents," answered the sled driver, feeling the hatred burning as it filled his heart.

"I'm sorry for that. Truly. You know, Azat, I don't judge you. You are right to seek revenge. But... wait a minute. Tell me your name, please, I see no reason to keep up the lies."

Azat glared into the night, at the intruder and beyond him, grinned and replied:

"Well, why not? Chaim's my name."

"And, Chaim, how many parents got killed? I'd say they were the same, for you and the other killer."

The Jew said nothing, just screwed his eyes to see better into the shadows.

"Two brothers, two parents slaughtered by the Fascists. Crucified, I suspect. But you've already punished four. Isn't that enough?"

"It's never enough!" yelled Chaim. "A million Nazi and Iron Guard bastards killed are still not enough to make right for an innocent loving mother and father!"

"I must admit, pretending to be Tatar men was brilliant. If they checked that circumcised part..."

"Turks."

"Who cares? See, another thing that made me suspicious. Why would Abramov, a Jew, work with two Muslims? You had no one to sell the petrol to, so you had some other uses for it. Like burning down the murder scene, for the mud to cover the sledge tracks. And the dogs' ones. One stray step from the righteous path, I get it, but two? No, it made no sense. So there had to be a sense into it, yet hidden. Oh, and some other thing."

Chaim raised his eyes, curious.

"I do understand the crucifixions and the idea with the green. I also see why you used the sled dogs: because you had no more strength to rip them apart yourselves. And I can forgive those things. But, Chaim, what about the bones?"

"That's what those murderous hands deserved: to be fed to the dogs!"

The figure rose angrily:

"But the dogs, did they deserve the taint? To be defiled by the wrath of men? That I cannot forgive!"

Behind the dark shape, another silhouette closed in, unheard. He struck and the intruder fell into the snow. The dogs whelped shortly in fear, but remained still.

"There's nothing for you to forgive, bastard," whispered the newcomer. "It's our time to judge, and we know no forgiveness."

He leaned over the fallen one and easily dragged him by the shoulders through the thick snow, over the fire. Chaim approached his brother and hugged him, then kicked the fainted man and cursed.

#

"Codrean, right? Quite a name."

The woodsman opened his eyes. The back of his head rumbled painfully and hurtful aches snaked up his arms from the wrists. He was tied on a cross, way too tight.

"But we do know you are not an Iron Guard man. So we'll be just. We'll still have to kill you and stuck branches into your hands and take away your cross, so as not to seem different. But I promise we won't feed your bones to the dogs and bury them properly. You should have minded your own business and none of this crap would have befallen you."

"But this is my business, Chaim. To hunt down the harmful beasts."

The dark haired man laughed.

"I'm Lieber. The brother that gets shit done. What the fuck are you talking about? Aren't you afraid? You'll die soon, and very gory."

The hunter breathed deep, pushed the pain into the corners of his mind and said, calmly:

"Lieber. Lieber and Chaim. Please, stop. Yes, I am scared. Something rotten has grown here, inside Kaperka and inside you two, and something bad is going to happen tonight. I do fear that, indeed. A mold cannot be removed by using a rot. They must both be taken away from the tree, or else it dries up and dies."

"Ah, I get it, you're delirious. The hit in the head, the fear, it doesn't matter. Chaim," yelled Lieber towards the camp, "bring the hounds, we must rip him apart now! As for you, shut up already and let me take away your crucifix."

"Do not try that. I warn you."

Lieber chuckled, fiendishly:

"Oh, I forgot you're a little tied up. No problem, I'll get it for you."

"No. Don't."

"I will."

The man closed in and started pulling the tightly knotted muffler. He found it not only tied up, but also sewn with several rows of thick thread, so he got angry and pulled harder. In vain.

"Lieber, trust me. Don't."

The angered Jew replied nothing. He took a knife from his boot and cut the threads, then pulled the muffler till it ripped.

"What in the Lord's name is that?"

The hunter had around his neck not a golden crucifix, but a wooden talisman. Though ancient looking, its wood was strangely still green and soft, warm to the touch. In fact, it was not even a cross, but a wolf's head so finely carved it seemed alive. It continued with a body of a dragon or snake, and the leather band holding it had the color and softness of human skin. Lieber pulled it and Codrean screamed in pain. Lieber turned the hunter on his side and whispered in amazement:

"Curses... it's not a leather strip, it grows out of his throat!"

He put the knife against it to cut it. The woodsman closed his eyes as if turned inside out, opened an unnaturally large mouth with way too many sharp teeth and let out a horrifying, unearthly howl. The dogs answered immediately, barking and biting around, crazed. Lieber froze in amazement, his dagger into the air, as he saw the hounds breaking their harnesses, rush Chaim furiously and roll him over in a storm of blood, fangs and yelling. The man ran to them in order to save his brother, knife above his head.

He never reached them. He felt something smash into him sideways and fell into the snow. At first, Lieber saw the blood gushing out over the reddened soil, then he felt the terrible pain and only after that did he see his arm being crushed by the mouth of a giant ashen wolf. Then he saw the winter into the eyes of a different, even larger beast, and sank into death.

The dogs ran to Codrean and chew up the ropes until the short man rose up, liberated. He looked towards the camp with cold, savage eyes and howled bitterly. Tens and hundreds of beast answered, from around him and from all over the taiga.

#

In the twilight just before the sunrise, the woodsman entered the camp. He walked the alleys covered in mussy red snow and stepped over the corpses of dead Russians with emptied rifles and over the shot-through bodies of wolves, bears and snow leopards. Codrean caressed their bloodied fur and they softened, relieved. He looked through the broken doors of the buildings: walls covered in blood and gore, mangled bodies fallen under the wooden bunks and overturned tables. He did not stop for Neag and his comrades, abandoning their remains into the evil eternity crawling through the darkness of their barracks. He looked for the engineers' corpses, closed their eyes and dragged those outside, to rest under the stars and dream freely.

After that, he went inside Lishenko's hut. The dogs welcomed him joyfully, but he walked among them in silence and entered the room. The commander was fallen over the bed, ripped apart and opened up like a seal. Codrean took the bear fur from the floor and put it on the table, then laid the officer down instead of it. He let his mountain trooper's uniform fall down, folded it and put it on a chair. He took the white fur and wrapped it around his famished naked body, then walked outside. Barefoot, he waddled through the snow, surrounded by his beasts, slowly making his way into the woods.

A ghastly Zver-Derev, indeed.

###

### THE END

**About the author:**

Mil Brač is a Romanian writer (born in 1979) and a professional Army officer in real life, with a huge passion for both scifi and history, especially the two world wars. Also for everything military (hence his day job) – and that shows in his stories and novels, almost always having two things in common: the military tag and... Russians.

That could be easily explained by his upbringing: he grew up in the 80's, when The Socialist Republic of Romania was a Communist Stalinist dictatorship, more ruthless (and poorer) than even its overlord, the Soviet Union. During those years, everything, including literature, was mostly propaganda praising the Party and its omnipotent ruler, Ceausescu. So, strangely, the rare books from Russian authors felt like... freedom – because they were mostly scifi, explorers' adventures and what today could be called YA (about young communists in times of hardships). Therefore a rather ambivalent position for an Army officer, always training to fight the dreaded Russians... whose books, movies, theater and music he enjoys daily. No surprise then, all the stories have ambivalent Russian characters facing greyish choices, their tale told by a foreigner who understands them well, maybe better even than themselves.

In short, imagine living in a time and place so bad, that the Soviet Union seems a beacon of hope. That is Mil Brač and his style could be shortly described as "bitter hope for strong-will fighters agains nasty odds".

As a SFFH author, Mil Brač was first published in 2015 with a short fantasy story ("Sadness", about WW2, but.. with a sad devil) and, since then, with 2 print books (a collection of multigenre dark SFFH short-stories, "Hoțul de Moarte/The Death Thief", and a steampunk novella, "Luizienii/The Louisians"), in 3 anthologies (2 scifi and a fantasy one, including Michael Haulica's Romanian "Best SF&F of 2017") and with 25 stories (mostly scifi, but also horror and fantasy) in all the Romanian magazines and e-zines that publish SFFH ("GazetaSF", "Fantastica", "Nautilus", "Helion", "Știință și Tehnică", "Revista de Suspans", "Argos"). So far, in English he was published in March 2018 by the American webzine "Aphelion" (Long Fiction) with a scifi story.

Mil Brač is currently working on a military fantasy epic series ("The Kanjeri Chronicles"), from which the first book ("The Dark Flag") is being published in print in September 2018 (in Romanian, the "Vremea" publishing house). Meanwhile, he is also preparing a military fantasy novel in English, about the WW2 Eastern Front (with a dark twist).

He can be reached:

By mail: milosdumbraci@gmail.com

By Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/milosdumbraci

On his blog: https://milosdumbraci.wordpress.com/

By Smashword's author page: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MilosDumbraci

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