Brainfire Read Online Free PDF

And for a moment she was afraid of him, afraid of the man she had come to think of as her only ally—because she could not trust Andreyev, who was weak, who was even more of a prisoner than she, or his frigid assistant. There was only Domareski and she could not afford to be afraid of him. She gripped his fingers and looked directly into his eyes. Where did this fear come from?
    â€œI’ve got to go to them,” she said. “Do you understand what it means to long for something so badly that each time you feel the longing you bleed? Do you understand that?”
    â€œYes,” he said.
    â€œNo. No, you don’t understand.” She took her hand from his arm: her pain was bad, spreading, now a sensation no longer confined to hands and wrists but carried deep into her center. And she found herself weighing the death of the Chinese soldier, weighing that grief, against her own terrifying desire for these people in the collection of snapshots. Trapped: how could you live a life in such a trap? Trapped by a country, imprisoned by your own wretched gift? But it wasn’t a gift, was it? It was a part of being doomed, of belonging amongst the damned.
    She watched Domareski rise and go to the door. He turned once and smiled, a smile pale to the point of nonexistence, a mere distension of lip.
    â€œAn increased dosage of what?” she asked. “Of what?”
    He looked puzzled. “I don’t follow you.”
    She lay back down, watched him a moment, saw the door slide open and then close; and he was gone.
    4.
    â€œHe said he would kill her.”
    Andreyev heard his own sentence, his own thick voice. He watched the snow fall against the window of Katya’s compartment, aware of an aroma trapped in the enclosed space, a scent he could not quite place.
    Katya was silent. Watching her, he was reminded of Domareski’s attitude in the corridor, and he felt the same old conflicts begin anew—it was reasonable and unreasonable, simultaneously logical and absurd. Domareski was both right and wrong at one and the same time. How did you deal with that?
    Katya sat on the edge of her bunk, smoothed her skirt with a steady movement of her hand. “Do you think he will?”
    Andreyev looked at her: he felt an unaccustomed sense of desire, a strange need to slide the bolt on the door and cross the room to her, throw her back across the bunk—a rape, not a communion; a violation in which he could dissolve conflicts.
    He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
    â€œWhy are you so sure?”
    â€œHe wouldn’t have told me, would he?”
    Katya clasped her hands on her knees. “He’s a risk.”
    â€œA risk?”
    â€œTo all our work,” she said.
    She smoked a cigarette, fitting it into a holder. Andreyev watched the smoke drift to the cold window. The moon was up somewhere, smothered by cloud. A suggestion of silver, a hint of frosted metal. Domareski—he felt a sudden affection for the man, a sympathy with his disenchantment, attuned to his disillusion. He also resented the Physician’s strength because it reflected, like a savage mirror, what he considered his own weaknesses.
    Katya got to her feet, ejected the cigarette, stamped it into the floor. “You’re prepared to ignore it?”
    â€œYes,” Andreyev said. Why not? Why not indeed? “He’s going through …” His voice trailed off; he watched Katya as she waited for him to finish.
    â€œA phase?” she asked. “A stage? Some misgivings? There’s no fool like a humanist fool, Victor.”
    An accusing edge to the voice: Andreyev could hear the slice of a razor blade slip through a thin substance. Who was the fool here? Himself or Domareski?
    â€œYou’ve worked very hard,” Katya said. “Don’t underestimate how hard, Victor. Don’t misjudge anything. Do I make myself plain?”
    He listened to the train, the roll of wheels