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dammit, it’ll save time.”
    He tossed the spindly 4715 a guard’s wool coat, something that weighed so much it almost crushed the poor man, who was used to rags stuffed with newspapers as a barrier against the cold. 4715 found the strength to wrap it about himself, wished he had shoes of leather instead of wood, and, escorted by his protectors, stepped out.
    Cold of course. The eternal wind, the eternal pelting of pieces of grit and ice and sand and vegetation; a gloom that was endless, a landscape that, beyond the wire, was itself an eternal flatness of snow and scrub vegetation giving way in a distance too far to be measured to leaden, lowering skies.
    It was spring in Siberia.
    The party trudged against the blistering wind across the compound to its one well-constructed building, a headquarters house, of stout timber, with actual smoke escaping a chimney to signify the presence of fire and warmth within. Immediately the clever 4715 spied the anomaly.
    Camp 432’s motley of vehicles, consisting mainly of old trucks that had somehow survived the war, were drawn up in formation outside the headquarters building. These were the ancient contrivances that hauled the prisoners’ food out to them, and brought back the bodies, as the road headed farther and farther toward the Pole, a foot or so a day. Success was expected in 2056. But parked immediately before the building was something astonishing: a black, gleaming Zil limousine, well-waxed and showing only mud spatters on the fenders and a thin adhesive of dust after the drive from the railhead.
    But 4715 hadn’t time to conjecture on the meaning of this strangeness; he was inside and felt absolute, pure, quite beautiful warmth for the first time in many a month, or year, whatever.
    â€œThis way. You must be clean, of course. Important men can’t be offended by your stink and filth. Really, it’s sad how you’ve let yourself go.”
    â€œTrue, I missed the morning bath. I decided on a second glass of tea instead, and a strawberry blintz with cream,” said 4715.
    â€œSee, men, how 4715 has kept his wit? Not like some I know. All right, 4715, there it is. Have fun and be quick.”
    4715 stood before a shower stall in the guards’ quarters. He stripped quickly, stepped inside and turned on the blast of hot water. It scalded blissfully, grinding off years of filth. He shivered in pleasure, found a rough bar of soap and lathered. Possibly they were readying him for his own hanging; it didn’t matter. This was worth dying for.
    Â 
    â€œSpeshnev, Speshnev, Speshnev,” came a voice familiar to 4715 from a thousand or so years ago. 4715 blinked hard in the newness of it all; yes, his name. His name spoken publicly, loudly, affectionately, when to utter it had been forbidden for so long. It was a weirdness so profound he had no idea how to comprehend it, but that drama was dwarfed by the next, when he encountered the speaker himself, large and blustery, but with shrewd eyes and glossy hair that only partially softened the brutality of his features.
    It was his mentor, his teacher, his sponsor, his betrayer, his interrogator, his most reluctant torturer, his sentencer, the famous wizard of the service, one P. Pushkin, once a university professor and chess champion, then a secret soldier in the wars of Red conquest. P. Pushkin was the warrior incarnate, a kind of natural cossack who saw all opponents as manifestations of pure evil, fit only for obliteration. Though brilliant and even charming, his flaw and his genius was that he was without moderation in all things. He wore the dress uniform of a senior general of NKVD, and a chestful of ribbons that dwarfed even Senior Sergeant Koblisky’s.
    â€œHow are you, my good man?” Pushkin inquired warmly, giving the spindly prisoner a bearish hug, as if Speshnev had just returned from a week in the country.
    â€œWell, I am fine,” said the man named Speshnev.