Boxes. Bales. Bundles. Bushels.

Dust. Decay. Dehydration. Death.

All around Zakh, the block-constructed walls, draped in clinging webs and the cloying miasma of abandonment, shone in his lampwand---which gave no visible light of its own, nor cast a shadow, but made the plastic about him glow from within---exuding moisture of disquieting color and viscosity.

Zakh's pet glob, Zero, bumbled underfoot, following in front of him, weaving between Zakh's ankles, collecting cobwebs and dust bindles in his long, luscious fur, never venturing beyond the safe locus of the soft light excited by the lampwand.  Almost, the boy regretted bringing him.  Never before this had he been able to persuade the glob to accompany him upon such an exploratory foray.  Maybe his recent illness had made a difference in the animal's attachment to him.

Legos: the architectural style was still referred to by its legendary name.  Much the commonest method it had been, of building in precolonial times, with their primitive machines and less-sophisticated spreighformers.   In retrospect it made perfect sense, yet what a shock it had been to early explorers, who should have known better, that petroleum was everywhere abundant, even upon those planets which had never known life, formed, as it was, in the process of each planet's condensation from a disk of primordial gas rich in carbon molecules.  It was a method of construction still in universal employ because it was so cheap and simple, and because it worked.

The great translucent blocks had been extruded, fresh and new, from spreighformers the estate still used, where they had been assembled in vacuo a molecule at a time.  Each block, a measure upon a side, had been molded with deep locking grooves and matching ridges. Each had been slid into place and welded, using ultrasound, to its neighbors, forming a solid mass, indestructible by time or the elements.  Never had Zakh been able to scratch or mar one such, nor separate it from adjoining blocks.  But here, deep within the Holdings' foundations, their once-polished surfaces were dulled, their once-sharp edges softened---"rounded" would have been understating it---by the weight of centuries and the punishing load they bore.  Zakh noticed that the faces of the blocks bulged outward.  Those which made up the walls of his tower bedroom, many stories above, otherwise identical in every respect, were concave, carrying, as they did, a lighter burden.

He had wandered these passageways before, where dust and mildew alternated, chamber to chamber; where small, multilegged things---some not so small, from the sound---scurried away at his approach.  All 4 of Zero's eyes bulged with comic tension, trying to look everywhere at once as unsavory creatures of an even more unsavory darkness fled the alien influence of his master's lampwand.  Some were native to Genrich, others man-brought by miscalculation or intention, altered in subtle detail by the stressful voyage or by subsequent exigencies, and which nature---or his imagination---now endowed with poison fangs or tail-barbs, glowing eyes of variable size, number, and arrangement, slime-tracks smeared behind them upon the floor, or other, even grosser, habits and attributes.

Each time he passed beneath a low-curved dripping arch, brushing rachnid weavings from his face, he dreaded that something finger-sized and brittle-bodied, with countless needle-pointed appendages, would drop down on his undefended collar.  Yet Zach was drawn, despite vague terrors of the place, by a comforting surety that no adult he knew of had come here since he'd been born.  Therefore, he would not be bothered, nagged, or interrupted in his explorations.  He felt a certain gratitude towards Zauri Vasifsoy, whose recent injury made him the estate's new "sick-boy" to be fussed over and watched, leaving Zakh free to pursue important boyish business.

Today it seemed he had never before seen what these ill-lit tunnels stored.  He had taken, he thought, the dust-covered crates and barrels which surrounded him, in many chambers piled to the low-groined ceilings, to be one with the walls and beams of what he enjoyed believing was a dungeon.

Twice each day the past week, upon walks Terrible Yvan had intended to help the recovering boy get exercise---walks which at first, had Zakh been willing to admit it to the elderly Genrichian or himself, had been exhausting---his self-chosen mentor had pointed with mixed pride and sorrow to coats-of-arms which decorated the Sorokin family Holdings.  Over fireplaces, propped in niches, strewn about the great hall where Zakh's father had been wed, ancient---now useless---weapons, once owned by vanquished foes, could be seen upon the walls:  steyraugs, remwins, arpeegies, smithwessons.

Dauntless pioneers those first men upon Genrich must've been, the old man had often whispered to the boy, boiling up, as they had, off a used-up mother planet, the now half-mythical "Earth," seeking fresh opportunity and new adventure.  Nor---Terrible Yvan always peered about them to see he was not overheard---when men began to ply the spaceways, were their liberties at first circumscribed by the whims and vagaries of the imperia-conglomerate.

Many a great war had it taken to achieve that in a time of legend long before Zakh's father had been rewarded for his prowess upon behalf of Genrich with elevation to the Oligarchate.  Long before a previous Oligarchate-Hereditary, bitterly stalemated with Genrichian rebels, had died without distinction or heirs. Long before these ancient Holdings had lain vacant for a century of neglect by the faraway and, at the time, preoccupied Cosmopolity.  Long before, despite the stalemate they had won (or as its price), Genrichians had been reduced to a state of ignorant and fearful serfdom or the brutish existence of Holdouts running wild through woods and mountains, robbing travelers and raiding villages during the harsh Genrichian winters.  Even long before the sons and daughters of those dauntless pioneers Terrible Yvan spoke of had been surprised and nearly overwhelmed by whom they considered looting second-comers.

And, to appearances, it'd taken something more than war.  The trappings of the torture chamber were all about him.  Chains rusted in reptilian coils upon the gritty flags.  More hung stapled to thick plastic walls, bleeding red-orange oxide into the interstices.  Or pigments, maybe, more sinister. Iron-plaited archways leered as he passed, age-tarnished interwoven bars whispering of lifetime after hopeless lifetime of imprisonment and obscene abuse.  Welded square-stock gratings swung to his reluctant touch upon shrill hinges, everywhere partitioning room from room and hall from hall.

Or maybe this was nothing more than his imagination, fired by Terrible Yvan's stories and by dramafiles.  So unfamiliar was young Zakh with the clumsy, complicated precolonial machinery all around him that what he took in pleasant, grisly fancy for a spiked persuader or body-stretcher could, he admitted to himself, have been a lady's hobby-loom, a printing press, some arcane contrivance for producing vodka.  Metal baskets hung with the remains, corroded to near-anonymity, of what might once have been tongs and irons designed for the wringing-out of confessions.  Yet they may with equal ease have been implements of (to Zakh) far humbler and far less romantic utility.  Even at his age, he was sophisticated and introspective enough to detect within himself a tendency to see what his imagination would have him see.  This facility within him thirsted for adventure, for escape from what seemed---as home does to every boy---a drab, mundane existence.  In a manner which would have surprised most of the adults who thought they knew him, he made appropriate allowances without abandoning his fancies.  Nor was he wholly conscious of the complex process by which he kept his impressions balanced.

Now, however, Zakh ignored the rooms themselves, along with their dubious furnishings.  He had a purpose.  His mind fastened upon their contents, the discarded bag and baggage of an earlier era, stored in these dim hallways, for the first time separating it from the walls which supported it in towering piles, sorting it into various categories of possibility.

Anything might be found here. All this moldy rejecta, poots of it, was already here when his father had taken formal possession of the Holdings or had afterward been hauled down.  Zakh appreciated with wry humor, against some hypothetical day when some hypothetical someone should discover time and inclination to dirty his hands, rid himself of the unquestionable rubbish, and restore what might be useful---or just interesting---to the upper floors, daylight, and fresh air.  Like all such resolutions concerning cluttered basements, memento-choked attics, bulging storerooms, and crowded outbuildings, the day of redemption was unlikely to ever arrive.

Nonetheless, these mountains of offcast trivia, the impediamenta of another century (to Zakh their mystique would have been quite as strong had they been but the leavings of another decade), presented to the bright and curious boy a vast and promising frontier.  He might never fathom its fullness.  Its inexhaustibility being an attraction in itself, it might never cease providing him with something interesting to see and do.

The useless weapons hanging everywhere above had come from here.  Rather, they were among the few articles not relegated to subterranean darkness.  But Zakh, today, was intent upon another quarry. The book with which Terrible Yvan had gifted him---in which he was starting to make gradual progress, sounding out each painful syllable with frequent reference to the phonetic key the old man had barcoded for him upon a flyleaf---was of the same vintage as most of this refuse.  Maybe he could ferret out another of its kind which had survived the vicissitudes of abandonment.  Would not Terrible Yvan be surprised?

Thus this was no occasion for mere idle poking about, Zakh reminded himself.  He was here to a purpose.  Eugene was to be wed in a few more days, and to Mistress Maria, whom the boy loved full as well as his brother.  In his sickness, he'd missed his father's wedding, missed gifting that union with something from his own heart, his own mind, maybe even his own hands.  He would not be deprived of the honor and pleasure now.  His energies, those of a recovering boy, and thus his time, were limited.  To say nothing, he thought, of the capacities of his sun-powered lampwand.  He shuddered with imaginary chills at the idea of being stranded down here in the darkness.

Now, to business.  But where to start?  Everywhere he looked, everything he saw was covered with dust, draped in cobwebbery, coated with mildew. Some of the things down here, he knew, had been moldering away down here for centuries.  Attempting to be of assistance, Zero gave each item they encountered a cautious sniff, making curious noises, often backing up in sudden, disgusted retreat, straightaway into Zakh's legs.

The strange pair's random footsteps carried them at last into a low-arched vault no bigger than Zakh's bedchamber.  Here a few things had been stacked against a wall and covered with a sheet of plastic, now dark and brittle with age. Watchful for he knew not what slithery horror to jump out at him, he pulled the disintegrating plastic away. Dust and musty odors welled up in his face as he spied a dozen large plastic boxes in a somewhat better state of preservation than most of what he'd seen thus far.  One of these, a solid-looking chest, mottled green-brown, was maybe half an arm's length upon a side.  Rounded corners it had and was guarded against intrusion by two heavy black clasps, also made of plastic.  An efficient sealing ridge thick as Zakh's index finger wrapped about its circumference.  

At sight of such a chest, many another child of Zakh's time would have seized upon thoughts of desperados of the Deep. Of treasure.  What caught the boy's eye was a detail of the lid.  At no small effort it had been incised in careful, artful strokes, with the selfsame riding-animal design he knew from those several objects in his bathroom which also bore it.  Countless years had filled the deep-scribed lines with grime, enhancing, with a certain irony, the contrast of the well-executed carving.  This chest, if Terrible Yvan's surmise was right, had belonged to the same unknown individual who'd once occupied, and maybe loved the tower room centuries before Zakh had made it his own.

Hesitating, wondering whether he should open the chest here or upon on upper floor where cleaner air and better light were to be had, Zakh lifted an edge of the thing where it rested upon the half-collapsed crate which brought it to the level of his waist and let it down again, not wishing to crush the supporting container further.  It was too heavy for a small, recuperating boy to carry up hundreds of steps into the inhabited area of the Holdings.  Nor did he relish asking for adult help and getting a lecture about being down here in the unhealthy dust and dampness.

Arriving at a decision, he turned a knurled ferrule in the middle of his lampwand, doubling the amount of warm yellow light it caused to be spilled into the little room.  This made him feel a deal more comfortable.  Zero, too, made noises of appreciation.  However, at this level of output, the light would not last many more minutes.   The wand would have to rest a good long while, soaking up sunlight upon his windowsill.

As curious as the boy, the glob tensed its short trio of legs and hopped up onto the crate, threatening to topple everything.  Absorbed with his find, Zakh gave it scant notice.  He nestled the wan in a fold of crumple plastic sheet and pried up the first of the clasps upon the carven chest.  It gritted with the sound of dust, made a loud clacking noise, and snapped open.  The second clasp gave way, and with this the chest gave a sigh, releasing or taking up air----Zakh was unsure which---to equalize pressure between its interior and the exterior world.

The lid, deep as the bottom, hinged back.  Zakh was disappointed.  Inside lay a litter of decaying scraps.  Something that had once been a book was now an evil-smelling stack of flaking debris.  Most of the contents were beyond identification.  He thought some of this mess might be the remains of various articles of clothing and was about to give up when he remembered the weight. Its sides and top were thick, but something in the chest besides the ashes of slow-motion oxidation must account for its mass.

Sifting with careful fingers, he found something soft and yielding at the bottom, withdrew his startled hand---it had felt much like a lump of flesh---then realized it'd been a cushion of plastic he'd touched.  He placed his lampwand in the chest-lid, which began to shed a better light than the walls, gulped, and searched again until he retrieved a rectangular pouch no bigger than both his flattened hands.  Along one side it had an odd kind of sealing edge and was heavy for its size.

The seal parted. Contrived, it'd been, with cleverness.  A ridge in one sheet comprising the pouch fit into a matching groove molded into the other.  From its appearance, the pouch might once have been transparent, the dark strip along the sealing edge a brilliant cosmic blue.  Now the plastic was cloudy, yellowed to near opacity. The invisible influence of his lampwand brought no glow from it, as though whatever it had to give in the way of light had long ago been used up.  The strip had faded to a nondescript blue-gray.

Inside, to his shock, Zakh encountered yet another pouch, thick and yielding black plastic this time, almost triangular, with yet another kind of sealing edge, one fashioned from alternating teeth set along most of the circumference.   This was old. Recognizing the fastener from history texts and period dramas, he pulled its tab with elaborate care past metal tooth after interlocking metal tooth until the pouch split apart.

What he found within, coated with dusty traces of what was once a colorful plush liner, was older still.  It was, he knew, a weapon, much smaller, and in far better condition, than the trophies upstairs.  Fine markings, visible through a reddish-brown patina thinnest along the wear-polished grip surfaces and sharper edges, were not altogether incomprehensible thanks to those others within the pages of the book Terrible Yvan had given him:

****TOKAREV****244Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfv5yuWsq48
Fedor Tokarev Tula Arms Plant, Tula Oblast/RUSFED244Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW7ydMwqcDC
Model TT Cal. 7.62×25mm

He sounded out the first word, startling Zero.  The creature flailed about, almost falling off its precarious crate perch.  It was the first the boy had spoken for a while.  The word had been engraved with the stylized outline of a kind of banner.  Beyond being simple to pronounce, it was quite meaningless.  The remainder of the ancient writing lay nearby in two neat lines upon the metallic upper portion of the weapon.  The banner word was repeated upon each of the black plastic handle surfaces, with their subtle curves, which were otherwise filled with decorative knurling.  Upon the frame, just ahead of one of these plastic panels, were stamped the additional words:  "Manufactured in Russia."  This was a great deal more satisfactory to the boy.  Zakh wondered where in the planet Russia might be.  He had never heard of it.  In the corresponding location upon the other side of the weapon was a five-digit number, followed by the marking "LR."

Pleased with himself that he could read this much, he noticed several minute markings which seemed to be birds or bats, spreading their wings over the letter "N".  In another place, upon what would be called the "axis" of a kinergic quickblade, beside another miniature bird, something like the leaf of a lawn-shrub appeared, along with the number "78".

Having used up the newfound object's literary merits, Zakh turned to its mechanics.  Upon one side was a round, check-patterned button and a small, striated lever.  Who knew for what?  In the midline were two more levery things.  One, forward of the handle, was a simple curve within a large, protective ring, an obvious fit for the index finger. The other, a small ring in itself, serrate about most of its circumference, sat high at the back.

Additional irregularities and projections which he could not begin to fathom interrupted the artifact's eye-pleasing contours.  Moreover, several smaller objects, arcane supplies and accessories, odd-shaped and mysterious in themselves, occupied space within the cushioned pouch.  He would have liked to examine the weapon further but realized it must wait.  These things could be dangerous, he understood, obsolete as they might be. They were rumored to be capable of retaining their power charge for centuries.

He would wait until Terrible Yvan could help.  But maybe, after all, he had found a fitting wedding gift for---the light excited by his lampwand flickered in warning.  Zero emitted a low, terrible moan.

And by these presents, did Zakh know it was time to climb back up into the weary, totalitarian world of the adults.