Rustaveli scowled. Unfortunately, that sounded all too much like Lopatin. And Katerina had been down to Tsiolkovsky lately; she and Voroshilov had just come back to the environs of Hogram’s town. The chemist probably knew whereof he spoke.
“What will you do?” Rustaveli asked.
“Give him a taste of his own when he rotates up here next week. I was hoping you would join me-on the left, of course.”
“A blackmarket beating, eh?” Though not a native Russian speaker, Rustaveli understood the slang expression; everyone who lived in the Soviet Union dealt on the left, some more often, some less. Had the Georgian caught Lopatin cuffing Katerina around, he was sure he would cheerfully have pummeled him. Doing it in cold blood, planning it well in advance, was not the same thing. “Lopatin is a pig, da, but should we not see first if Tolmasov can bring him to heel?”
“A pig and a snake both,” Voroshilov growled. “Not only does he abuse Katya, he paws through my cabin and types my poems into his computer file for evidence. Evidence of what I do not know-perhaps only that, no matter how I try, I am no Akhmatova or Yevtushenko.” The chemist’s broad, fair face darkened with anger. His gloved hands folded into fists; had Lopatin been there at that moment, he would have had a bad time of it.
Rustaveli knew that the chekist snooped. Anything he wanted to keep to himself, he wrote in Georgian-let Lopatin make what he could of that! But then, snooping was part of Lopatin’s job. “Let us talk to Tolmasov,” Rustaveli repeated.
Voroshilov gave him a sour look. “You southerners are supposed to be men of spirit. So much for folk legends.”
“You Russians are supposed to be steady and unflappable,” Rustaveli retorted; he did not add “and boring,” as he might have. “If we go home, we will be heroes, so nothing may happen to us, but what of our families? I, for one, do not care to have the KGB know I assaulted one of theirs. Or do you think we could disguise ourselves as Minervan hooligans?”
He had hoped to make the chemist laugh, but Voroshilov was still scowling. They walked on a while in silence. Finally Voroshilov grunted, “Very well, we will speak with Tolmasov. Once.”
As always, Rustaveli rejoiced at the warmth inside the tent. As always, his valenki squelched on mud; keeping the tent heated to a temperature humans found bearable meant that the frozen ground underfoot thawed out.
By luck, Tolmasov was there and Katerina was not. The colonel glanced up from the report he was writing. He set aside his pen at once. “Why the long faces, comrades?” he asked. Rustaveli nodded to himself; he might have known Tolmasov would notice something was wrong.
Voroshilov did the talking. He was more fluent than Rustaveli expected, more fluent, in fact, than the Georgian had ever heard him-just as he had been all day, come to that. Anger lent him words he could not normally command.
Tolmasov held his face impassive as he listened. Finally he said. “I have seen the mark you mean, I think: the bruise that runs close by her left breast and along her ribs?”
“De, Sergei Konstantinovich, that is the one,” Voroshilov nodded.
“Katerina said it came from a fall.” Tolmasov’s features clouded. “If that is not so-”
“Yes, what then?” Rustaveli deliberately made his tone mocking. “What do you dare to do to a man with such, ah, influence?” The only way he saw to make Tolmasov take real action was to suggest he could not.
“I command here, not Lopatin.” The pilot’s words might have been graven in stone. Rustaveli made sure he did not smile. “I shall inquire further of Dr. Zakharova, and shall take whatever action I find appropriate,” the colonel went on. “Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention.” He turned his eyes back to the report, in its way a dismissal as formal as were his last couple of sentences, spoken for the record.
“He will do nothing,” Voroshilov predicted as soon as they were far enough from the tent to speak without Tolmasov’s hearing.
Rustaveli shook his head. “Tolmasov disdains to use his strength against the weak, but I should not care to be in his way after having done so myself.” He rubbed his gloved hands in anticipation of Lopatin’s comeuppance.
But the comeuppance did not come. Rustaveli waited for Tolmasov to travel down to Tsiolkovsky, for Lopatin to be peremptorily summoned to the tent, for orders or warnings to come from Earth. Nothing happened. Day followed day, busily, yes, but otherwise routinely.
Voroshilov waited, too, with growing unhappiness. He was always quiet. Now he turned downright taciturn-dangerously so, if Rustaveli was any judge. He tried to draw out the chemist and failed. Voroshilov answered only in grunts. Those were more than he gave either Tolmasov or Katerina, but they were not enough.
Fearing a brewing explosion under that silent mask, Rustaveli finally did what he had told himself not to: he talked with Katerina about the trouble. “Yuri worries about you,” he said as they walked through the marketplace of Hogram’s town.
“Why?” she asked. “I am a grown woman, Shota Mikheilovich, and quite able to care for myself.”
That gave the Georgian the opening he had hoped for. “Can you?” he countered quietly. “What of your ribs?”
She stopped so suddenly that a Minervan behind her had to swerve to keep from running into her. The male angrily waved arms and eyestalks as he went past. Katerina paid no attention. “Not you, too!” she said. “Sergei was after me about that last week. They’re almost healed-why make a fuss now?”
“Because I worry about you, too, Katya.”
Her eyes, challenging a moment before, softened. “Sweet of you, Shota, but truly, no need. I’m hardly even sore anymore.”
“A bruise is a bruise,” Rustaveli shrugged. “Where it comes from is something else again.”
“Sergei went on the same way.” Katerina tossed her head. “It came from my own clumsiness, nowhere else-I tripped over my own feet and fell against the edge of a lab table. Lucky I didn’t break a rib.”
If she was dissembling, Rustaveli thought, she had talent to go on stage. “I begin to think I have made a fool of myself,” he said slowly. He grinned. “Not for the first time, I fear.”
He did not win an answering smile from Katerina. “Will you please talk sense?” she snapped. “Did you think we would go through the whole mission without accidents? Even if you did, hasn’t Valery’s arm taught you better?”
“Without accidents, of course not. Without other things-“ “What other things?” She was starting to sound angry.
Tolmasov, Rustaveli realized, must have been so circumspect that Katerina had no idea what he was driving at. That made sense, in case Voroshilov’s accusation happened to be wrong. Rustaveli had not thought it was; it fit too well with what he knew-well, what he thought he knew-of Lopatin.
The Georgian sighed. He wished he had been more discreet himself. Actually, he wished he had kept his mouth shut. But since he hadn’t, he had to ask it straight out: “Then the chekist truly did not hit you?”
Her eyes widened-suddenly, he saw, all the roundabout questions fit together. “Oleg? No. He is…” Her grimace made her lack of enthusiasm plain, but she went on. “In his own way, he has discipline, too, Shota Mikheilovich. What he might like to do, I would sooner not think. But he values the mission, and holds himself in; one can tell such things.” She spoke calmly, dispassionately, then grew more urgent. “I value the mission, too; I want no trouble rising over me. Do you understand, Shota?”
“Da,” Rustaveli said, a little regretfully. “But you’d better let Yuri know. He is not thinking kindly thoughts of Oleg Borisovich Lopatin.”
“Yuri? He is so quiet, one never knows what he thinks. If he were to let loose of his temper-and isn’t Lopatin due up here tonight? Yuri!” she said again, in an entirely different tone of voice. “Bozhemoi!” She turned and ran in the direction of the tent as if she had forgotten Rustaveli was beside her.
And so, he thought as he watched her sidestep Minervans, she likely had. He supposed he should have felt virtuous, having saved the mission from what might well have been serious trouble. He did not feel virtuous. He was thinking of his grandfather instead. The old bandit was dead now, but he would have boxed Rustaveli’s ears if he ever found out his grandson had saved a KGB man a beating.