"Count your blessings, Ster Aston," she told him severely.
"Oh, I will!" he assured her.
"Good," she said, but she also frowned and combed a strand of hair out of her eyes with her fingers. "Ummm," she said slowly. "This is 2007, so ... My God, you're only six years from the Soviet Succession Wars!"
"Soviet Succession?" he repeated. A chill breeze blew down his spine, and it was his turn to frown. "Can't say I like the sound of that very much, Milla. We've got more than enough trouble brewing in Europe without having that blow up in our faces!" He grimaced. "It wasn't all that long ago I figured all those people who were singing loud hosannas over how the collapse of the Soviet Union was going to make everything all better were unmitigated idiots, but I'd started to hope I might have been wrong-that we were going to get a handle on it this time after all. I know the situation in the Balkans and Greece is going straight to hell all over again, and I don't like the confrontation the new Belarussian and Russian governments seem to be headed for now that NATO's turned into a debating society. But I'd thought that was mostly rhetoric, not that they were going to take it seriously! The Russian Federation's been shaky from the get-go, especially economically, and there's always been an element that's wanted the old Soviet Empire back, but I'd hoped Yakolev's new reforms were going to pull things together and get the Federation around the corner at last." He paused as she met his eyes levelly. "I take it they aren't?" he asked finally, his voice quiet.
"Well, they didn't in the history I remember," she said in the voice of someone trying to be gentle. "As well as I can recall, you had good reason to think Russia was about to turn the corner, if that's any consolation. The initial flash point was a fresh flare-up in the Balkans sometime in the first decade of this century, not in Russia or Belarussia-or not immediately, at any rate-and things got out of hand when someone used bioweapons." Aston winced, and she squeezed his forearm. "I'm sorry, Dick. I didn't mean to distress you."
"It's not your fault." He held her closer against his side and shook his head. "It's just- Well, we've all tried so hard, and President Yakolev seems to really be trying. I just hate to think about its all going down the tubes anyway ... and the thought of 'wars of succession' inside the territory of a nuclear power ..."
His voice trailed off, and she shrugged unhappily.
"I'm sorry," she repeated. "I know it's probably no comfort, but if my memory's right, the current president didn't have anything to do with it. Western Europe panicked-not unreasonably, I suppose-when the effects of the bioweapon spread beyond the Balkans. With the benefit of hindsight, it's pretty clear that whoever used it genuinely was one of the splinter terrorist groups, but a lot of people believed at the time that Serbia was the true culprit, and Russia was still committed to its role as the Serbs' main international supporter. So when France talked Germany and Romania into threatening joint military action against the Serbs and accused the Russians of having secretly supplied the bioweapons in the first place, Yakolev found himself in an almost impossible situation. He couldn't possibly come up with a policy which would satisfy everyone, and then he was assassinated-by someone from Belarussia, according to the Russian nationalists, and that changed the entire nature of the confrontation. The extremists in Moscow managed to take control of the country in the name of 'national security' and start rattling their missiles at everyone in sight, and-"
She shrugged again, and he nodded sadly.
"I've heard similar scenarios described." He sighed. "And truth to tell, relations with the Russians haven't been all that good since Yeltsin's fall. Watching NATO unravel over the last two or three years hasn't been a good sign, either. Bringing the old Warsaw Pact nations into it was supposed to generate a continent-wide sense of mutual security, but instead the entire thing's turning into some kind of 'lead by drift' herd of lemmings that's been trying to come up with a workable solution for the Balkans for over ten years now! Not that the US did a lot better," he admitted grimly. "When we got tired of pretending that we could provide a quick fix and pulled our troops out unilaterally, the whole situation went straight to hell. We're still trying to recover from that little misstep."
"I don't know if anyone could have done better," Ludmilla said. "I know there's a tendency to argue-after the fact-that any catastrophe was 'inevitable,' but in this case, I think it may truly have been just that."
"Um. Maybe." He frowned out at the ocean for a long, brooding moment, then shook himself and drew a deep breath. "But the point right this minute is that you don't have a passport, and even if I tried to pass you off as a shipwreck victim, they'd want to know which embassy to contact. The Brits are reasonable people, but you'd never guess it from their daily newspapers. There'd be bound to be a three-ring media circus when news about the 'mysterious foreigner' got out."
"So how are you going to get around it?" she asked, and he was flattered by the confidence in his abilities her tone implied.
"I have my ways, but it requires a little course change. There's one place-in Scotland, not England-where I think I can get you ashore without anyone talking to the press. I've got friends there."
"Good." She relaxed and rested her head on his shoulder. Her hair blew around his face, tickling his nose gently, and his heart swelled. He'd become more or less inured to surprises where she was concerned, but the mad things which had happened to him had changed something deep inside him, as if some of his childhood wonder had reawakened beneath the years which had buried it. He supposed that was inevitable from the events themselves, but he knew Ludmilla had strengthened it just by being who she was.
The exuberant way she made love had astonished and delighted him, yet now it seemed as inevitable as his own heartbeat. He'd seen himself settling into late middle age without a struggle-partly, he suspected, in reaction to his impending retirement and the tacit admission that the challenges and triumphs of his life now lay behind him and not ahead-but Ludmilla was an astounding alloy of age's wisdom and the playfulness of youth. She seemed to expect him to be the same, and so, inevitably, he'd become the same. It was a giddy sensation, and he was almost as grateful to her for restoring him to himself as he was for her trust.
But the truly remarkable thing about her was that she was always herself. She could be as cold-blooded as the most hardened combat vet he'd ever met, or squeal like a child when he tickled her, but she was always the same person. She was whole, comfortable within herself, all of her apparent contradictions resolved into coherency at her core. He'd never known anyone else quite like that, and, in a way, he found that even more extraordinary than her technology or the strange, war-torn future from which she sprang.
"Hey," he said gently, "wake up, sleepy head."
"Hmm?" She'd been napping again. She still dozed off at the drop of a hat.
"Are you sure you're all right?" He looked down at her as she yawned her way back to full awareness.
"Oh, cert." She sat up and stretched like a cat. "I told you-I put my symbiote through a lot. We're still getting over it. Don't worry. I can stay awake if I need to, but it's not a bad idea to get as much rest as I can before we have to explain to anyone else, you know."
"If you're sure."
"I am." She gave his chest an affectionate pat. "But now that I'm awake again, what can I do for you?"
"Had any more ideas about our Troll?" he asked, and her eyes darkened.