Zakh's knees got wet again.  Here in the deep, untenanted forest, the ground was carpeted, as everywhere within a hundred versts of this man-forsaken place, with a thick, moisty, springy covering of moss.  Nowhere could naked soil be seen except among the upturned roots of an occasional windfallen tree, and that wouldn't last long.

Undoubtedly, the warm yellow sun of Genrich shone bright somewhere overhead.  Between the eternal overcast which dragged drizzling skirt hems over the forest, and the lichen-encrusted trunks and black-needled foliage of the close-spaced cronsettos themselves, it seemed to Zakh, where he crouched in the miserable shelter afforded by those upturned roots, as twilit as a sickroom in which thick curtains had been drawn.

For the tenth time that misty morning, Zakh exhaled, expecting to see the pale vapor of his breath hanging cloudlike before his frozen face.  That he did not see it continued to amaze him.  It felt cold enough. For the hundredth time he wished he and his brothers could risk lighting a fire.  The dense, damp forest, the rain (if it could be called that) tormenting him, the thickness of gravel-studded clay lining the underside of the fallen forest giant which made a half cave about him, all of these together should provide ample shielding against the instruments of which, the three of them believed, they were being searched for.

Still, Zakh decided with a shrug which, despite his firmest intention, transmuted itself into a shiver, he was warm enough.  If truth be told, he suffered no real peril of freezing to death, no matter how it felt.  That his hands were stiff and awkward, his nose red and sore, were trials he could endure because, at the moment, no likely alternative presented itself.

Behind him, huddled into the rearmost corner of the shallow cavity beneath the roots, Adam emitted the first syllable of a snore and was awakened by it.  In the few days that had passed---less than 1 week, Zakh realized with astonishment (it seemed like much longer to him) --- changes had swept through their lives like the winds of a great hurricane.

For the first time in his brief memory, Zakh had failed to get a single decent night's sleep.  This deprivation had by now begun manifesting itself as an odd, tranquil, detached feeling, engendering clumsiness, forgetfulness, sudden temper, nervous tics, odd aches and itches, brief visual hallucinations, chills and hot flashes.  It was much like suffering a mild viral infection, something he feared inevitable in any case.

But another change, somehow even less welcome, was that he had discovered he could fall asleep anytime, anywhere, in any contortion of the body, as fatigue-tortured flesh attempted to make up in brief, unsatisfying snatches at oblivion what it could no longer depend upon receiving in unbroken intervals at night.  The border between reality and unreality had blurred.  Like Adam, like their eldest brother Eugene, at present foraging for food not far away, the slightest sound, even the cessation of normal noise, could snap out of deep sleep into terrified alertness.  Zakh was ungrateful for the education.

These and many other things learned hard in recent days were skills he'd never thought to acquire. The edification was worth far less to him than what he'd given up for it.  The trouble with trouble, he was beginning to realize, noting the redundancy without humor, was that it sought you out whatever you wanted, and never asked you for your feelings or opinions.

Zakh shifted where he sat to a less uncomfortable position and balanced his antique pistol across his knee.  Since he'd used it to buy their escape, neither of his older brothers had ventured to take it from him nor so much as dispute his possession of it.  Of the ten little cartridges in the magazine, he had used five upon the Cossack---he'd killed a man, he thought with wonder again, or at least a sort of man---pumping each one of the lead projectiles into the creature's eye-socket which had funneled them to its brain.  With one more in the chamber, this left six, until he took precaution of changing over to the spare.  Its half-depleted counterpart now rested in a left trouser pocket of his tattered wedding finery----this thought led him to one which, at last, he found humorous.  If fugitives they were, his brothers and he, homeless, friendless, futureless, they were the best-dressed fugitives he'd ever heard of.

Rustling in the nearby undergrowth brought the blade-sight of his pistol up without a conscious thought upon his part, while his index finger, living its own life, rested light upon the fine-grooved curve of the trigger-face.

"Peace!" came a harsh whisper.  "Do not blade, little brother!" Eugene emerged from between a pair of cliffberry bushes, head-high and regrettably out-of-season, arms laden with what he had found deeper in the forest.

Zakh had been in hiding long enough to understand something important.  Those who had found themselves lost among the endless cronsettas of Genrich---and this sort of pointless tragedy had been reported more than once in his brief lifetime, oftenest when village-living peasants wandered off upon picnics---and were afterward discovered dead of hypothermia (more frequent in summertime than otherwise) or starvation, were obviously award-winning fools. Life was easy in untraveled and uncultivated places, as long as one took caution to stay warm and was unparticular how the many things which could sustain him tasted.  As Eugene approached the cavelet where his brothers awaited him, Zakh observed that the greater part of his burden consisted, as he'd anticipated it would, of wild sirleafs which grew in abundance everywhere upon the planet but its antipodes.  This kind, as he recalled, felt, smelt, and tasted like fried bacon.

In this, he was forced to admit, they were lucky fugitives as well as well-dressed.  Moisture-rich Genrich afforded home to hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of varieties of edible fungus, constituting the sole profitable item among the Holdings' exportables.  Some---valued elsewhere for pharmaceutical properties, and which they believed they had thus far avoided---had strange effects upon the mind, but not a solitary species was toxic to man or any tame beast, alien or native.  Zakh knew this was not the case on other planets, though he had heard of worlds where no poisonous reptiloids or insects lived.  This was not so on Genrich.  Whatever cornucopia of textures and flavors was available, their good fortune (as is fortune's habit) was limited.  Sirleafs consisted of little more than water, carbohydrates, and minerals.  They could not live long upon them; did they consume bites of the things each day.

Where fortune failed them, intelligence sufficed.  As Eugene knelt and spread his discoveries upon the moss a measure from where his youngest brother sat, it became apparent he had not limited himself to sirleafs.  Several multicolored handsfuls of berries---cliffberries being just one species in the great forest----Zakh recognized.  They were tart, sweet, and doubtless carried within them disease-preventing vitamins they all needed.  At this thought, his ears started itching somewhere deep inside, and he sneezed.

Eugene had used a cutting tool from one of the purge-riders' kits to cut and peel the inner bark of a cronsetta.  As long as they were among trees they would not starve, no matter how jaded their palates.  The white, stretchy stuff he had harvested was tart like the berries, bitter but filling.  It would soon dry, even in this climate, to a light, crumbly, self-preserving food, heavy in complex sugars, the boy guessed.  Zakh's mouth watered at the sight, and, catching himself, he shook his head in wonder and mild self-pity.

Protein continued to represent a problem.  The youngest Sorokin, at least----still growing, and, to a certain extent, still recuperating---was starting to feel the effects of deprivation. None of the brothers was desperate enough as yet to essay the bill of fare available beneath any rotting, phosphorescent log or largish stone they might care to turn over. However, in the baffling absence of big animals---which, at their father's insistence, Eugene and Adam had hunted, but never without proper weapons, guides, and beaters----Zakh never entertained the slightest doubt they would come to it.  Having been raised upon domestic meat, with a bit of wild game as an infrequent variation in their diet, the brothers had no knowledge about methods of trapping smaller animals, or even that it could be do ne.  Nor did it occur to them that their very presence here was what had driven away the bigger animals.

Earlier, Zakh had considered expending some of his remaining precious cartridges.  Terrible Yvan had proved in the most graphic manner that they had small value for self-defense except in a rare, unrepeatable instance such has had recently preserved their lives and liberty.  But the boy appreciated all too well that he and his brothers were hunted animals themselves, and one of many instruments bent to the purpose would be sensitive to noises far less conspicuous than the ear-stabbing roar of a pistol-blade.  Zakh pondered what had happened to Terrible Yvan.  With effort now becoming reflex, he suppressed a thousand answerless questions about life and death, along with the pain they brought.  Without consciousness or volition, he transferred his curiosity to a safer topic, wondering whether the kinergic quickblade might have been invented for no better reason than to eliminate inconvenient noise.

He felt his older brother stir behind him.  "Leave it to Adam," Eugene's grin belied his words, "to sleep until the prospect of eating arises."230Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV6YMtBQ7Zs

The jest, they all knew, wasn't fair.  Adam had kept watch throughout the rainy night while the other two slept.  What Eugene and Zakh didn't know was that it was also inaccurate.  The truth was that, curled up in his burrow all morning, Adam had been faking sleep while his mind raced.  Now, sliding from his muddy, makeshift bed, he yawned, brushed at his torn and soiled attire, and kneeling, began picking at the products of Eugene's foraging.

"Da," he answered Eugene.  "Lucky one among us understands life's priorities, which I refrain from listing for fear of embarrassing an elder brother with my erudition and a younger with knowledge he's not ready for.  This is terrible stuff you've brought; what have you been up to, otherwise?  Do they still speak of us at home?"  He nodded towards the brush in which the purge-riders, their charges nearing exhaustion by the flight to this place, had been hidden to replenish themselves.  After the lengthy, high-velocity escape, they would be at it a while.  Still, they were not altogether useless:  each possessed a low-powered transceiver similar to the 'com damaged aboard the droilodka.  This was somehow known, for the whirling mirror of the Holdings' emergency lasercaster had been active every moment since they'd left, by turns gloating upon Zaytseva's behalf, screaming demands of them and the rest of the planet, and offering bribes.

Eugene shook his head.  "It took most of the morning finding something to eat---I wonder if we get back from our food what we put in looking for it---and didn't listen.  Why?"

Adam arose from his crouch.  "Let's do it now."  It cost him a moment's effort to clear the brush away, the better to receive glimmerings of the invisible coherent light they knew permeated the air they breathed.  In one respect, the purge-riders represented a danger, as all three thought it likely that metal detectors would be used to search for them.  Once recharged, they would provide means for swift flight.  In the meantime, they offered certain conveniences.  This one lay upon its side, no longer able to maintain an upright position, thanks to switches thrown once they had arrived in this place.   Thus Eugene had conserved power in order to keep a figurative ear pointed backwards whence they'd fled.  Adam's brothers arose and joined him beside the broken machine.

"----desperados in hiding, cold, friendless, hunted, and miserable," it began at once, with uncanny accuracy describing their condition as it had for uncounted repetitions since it was first enfiled and lasercast, "Give no thought to what you once believed was your inheritance.  You are foredoomed, the same as the Old Sorokin, to be hunted and executed, unless, in return for your prompt public acceptance of the legitimacy of...."

"His usurpation!" Zakh now knew that his father, who the smug, vile 'casts named "Old Sorokin," as was customary with the death of an Oligarch, had been dragged off in power-restraints and had died, he suspected, more of anger and humiliation than any torture he had suffered at Zaytseva's hands.  Through bribery transparent even at this remove, through blackmail, lies, and outright threats, the Sorokin had been convicted, in the convenient absence afforded by his death, of crimes which the brothers were confident Zatseva himself was guilty.  This turnabout must have given the second son of Chychak immense satisfaction.  He had had this revenge, and at the same time enhanced his already-great power and wealth, all in one daring swoop.  Even now, although the lasercast voice was his, he must be cackling over it with his evil daughter.

Adam waved Zakh to silence.  "But...." Both his brothers shushed him.

"----necessity of the actions of the designated representative of the Cosmopolity of Romanova, and thereby earn an amnesty, full freedom, and immunity---and, of course, your lives---which I, your lawful ruler, Aidos Zaytseva, Oligarch-Protempe of Genrich, promise you."  The lasercast ended.  It would start repeating itself withing five minutes' time.230Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG4doQL2x95

Excitement filled Adam's voice.  "I have been thinking on this!"

"You have been thinking, this morning," Eugene growled, "of nothing but the insides of your eyelids!"

Realizing that his enthusiasm had almost betrayed him, the middle brother took caution.  Life, as he had lived it, had taught Adam never to let anyone see into his thoughts or feelings.  For a moment he had believed, not altogether consciously, that this tragedy sweeping into their lives might have changed things between his brothers and himself, but now he saw he had been mistaken.  The old, unrufflable shrewdness crept back into his voice.  His brothers, although they realized it not, had been disturbed by the alteration of his character, however positive and healthy it might have been.  They were calmed now, just as subtly and unconsciously, by a return to the familiar in him, however sinister.

"Go easy on him, Eugene."

"What?!"  Of all the changes he had witnessed in the past days, this, in Zakh, was most amazing to Eugene.  That it was not a change at all was something he had never been in a position to appreciate, the difference in their ages being so great and he having to be preoccupied with his own affairs.  

"I said, go easy.  Between bad food and worse sleep, we are all in a failing way.  Maybe he has been thinking the same thing I am."

"What," Adam asked, peering with suspicion and alarm at one who claimed to know his thoughts, "might that be, baby brother?" Had Zakh's kind and spirited defense come but seconds earlier, at Adam's unguarded moment, it might have fostered yet another change in their lives.... something none of them, not even Adam, was ever to know.

Zakh turned to Adam first and afterword to Eugene. "We have no choice but to accept the bitchspawn's offer."