"Tokarev is it?" Squint-eyed and straining every muscle in his wrinkled forehead to achieve focus, Terrible Yvan Dragomilov peered at the shallow-graven lettering on the weapon Zakh had discovered.  "That is a word of which I know nothing. Historical ancient lingo.  We'll have to find a dictofile, after we finish here, and look it up."

Outside, summer plasma lightning flared, blue-white and blinding, followed by a rumble of thunder from one of the nearby forested hills.  The air was tainted with ozone, thick with anticipation of the rain to come.  Inside--the two were in the spreighformery, a low, modern outbuilding not far from the Holdings proper---light emanated warm and steady from the walls.  This illumination required no lampwand to excite it, though one such could have been used, had power failed, which, in Zakh's memory, had never taken place.

The obscuring film of orange rust which had covered the object of their present attention had given way to a cursory swipe with an offcast rag saturated in aromatic spirits. (Otherwise, Zakh's constant companion, Zero had departed in olfactory disgust, preferring to brave the fury of the natural elements.)  Terrible Yvan had observed, for Zakh's benefit, that six ventilate capsules, filled with moisture-absorbing crystals and placed in the pouch with the weapon, had done their work well, even over what must have been a period of 811 years.

In the end, just wiping down the weapon had not satisfied the meticulous old man.  He had taken it apart, piece by minute piece, guided by Zakh knew not what arcane knowledge, examining the condition of each component, cleaning it with a little brush, reassembling everything as though he had always known how it should be done.  The number and variety of pins and springs and levers had been bewildering.  The process had consumed an hour, impressing Zakh once more with how complicated the ancient people's artifacts had been, and how clever Terrible Yvan was to fit dozens of odd-shaped puzzle pieces back together in anything resembling the original arrangement.

For his part, though he did not say so (opinions might have varied as to the wisdom of this course), Terrible Yvan was impressed with Zakh's display, during the prolonged process, of an observant patience many an adult he knew, Genrichian or Romanovan, could never have demonstrated. He had been more impressed that the otherwise independent-minded boy had waited for his help rather than initiating any dangerous experiments on his own.

"That would be my guess, anyway.  I take this '78' to be the date, likeliest in the 19th, 20th, or 21st century.  I can guess no closer."

"But---"

The ceiling was low overhead. Along 2 outer, intersecting walls, the windows were grime-filmed, dusty-silled, always the case in a utility building not occupied for continuous periods, where the infrequent occupant's attention is upon tasks other than housecleaning. Workbenches lined the windowed walls.

Zakh's face contorted as if agonized.  Terrible Yvan could see he was in the throes of a painful struggle against preconceived notions.  It was clear that he did not enjoy the sensation, though the old man entertained hopes the boy would someday come to relish this most bitter of conflicts.

"Another language?" Zakh demanded at last.  "But---there is no other language but the language."

Terrible Yvan suppressed a chuckle.  "Were you born a'speaking the language, young master?"

Zakh was unsure that this constituted a logical answer, although proving it was, for the present, somewhat beyond his abilities.  Staring sightless across the room, he strained his faculties to recall what seemed to him the remotest past, a time even he realized must feel like no more than yesterday to his elderly companion.  What he was looking at, without seeing, was an inner wall, holding bins of raw materials: soil, wastage from septic tanks and a dozen of the Holdings' crops, ores from various locations upon Genrich, valves for an underground reservoir of petroleum.  Spreighformers could be made to fabricate any object their memories held plans for, but cost and complications varied.  Nor could they fabricate from nothing.  In practice it was easier to begin with complex compounds, readily available, than to build these things one tedious transmuted atom at a time.

"Indeed, I do not think so, Yvan," he answered after a time, "I seem to remember having to learn, to ask the words for things.  I recall once asking someone....maybe my mother....about the decorative scroll-work carven upon the edges of a secretary.   She---whoever it was---mistaking my meaning, told me 'desk.' I remember the frustration of not being able to ask properly.  The answer caused me much confusion for a time."

"Good," Terrible Yvan was pleased by Zakh's reasoning and his open, healthy memory.  "And suppose, if you can, some other place, some other time, other people using different words for things like 'secretary' or even 'mother'?"

"But why," Zakh protested, "would they want to, when perfectly good words already exist for....oh.  I believe I see what you're getting at. They would feel the same about our choice of words, would they not?"

Terrible Yvan laughed, knowing it was time to express pleasure with the boy's achievement.  "Much lifeblood has been spilled over such trivialities to fill every lake and spillet upon Genrich.  It's a pity most folks are not as quick as you."

The final wall consisted of the spreighformers themselves, a pair, each the size of the fireplace in the great hall, indeed somewhat resembling giant ovens.  The ultimate accomplishment of the ancient ulsic art, everything young Zach had ever possessed, every item except maybe the book Terrible Yvan had given him and some of the precolonial artifacts he had salvaged---including, it was to be assumed, this tokarev-weapon they were examining---had come from these or other spreighformers. Between them lay the purge-field annihilator in whose unreal heart naked atoms danced to different laws, reversing their identities to immolate themselves in the presence of normal matter.  This process generated light and heat for the Holdings proper, for dwellings in the countryside roundabout, as well as providing occasional rare but needed elements the spreighformers needed.

For the most part, the annihilator was a simple machine, as were the spreighformers.  Unattended, it performed its several tasks without the dubious benefit of moving parts.  As with all products of the ulsic, any sophistication in the machinery's character no longer lay in mechanical complication, but in a thousand years of careful thought directed towards its gradual simplification.  To Zakh's knowledge, indeed to Terrible Yvan's as well, nobody knew how to build such devices anymore.  They had themselves been created in even larger spreighformers which in turn had come from spreighformers even larger.  The regression must have had an ending somewhere, but neither of them had ever thought about it.

The two were silent for a time. Despite Terrible Yvan's commendation, Zakh had missed the happy pride in the old man's voice.  But no matter.  The ancient Genrichian knew the boy would give him reason again to praise him soon enough. Another flash was even more dazzling than the one which had come before. Another muffled rumble, and rain began falling in fat drops upon the courtyard flagging outside.

"So this...." Zakh stumbled over the unfamiliar word. ".....this 'toe-ka-rev' means something sensible in the---our language?"

"Da," Terrible Yvan nodded, "likeliest the name of the man who made it, I am thinking." 'Fedor Tokarev' must have been a famous maker back in his day. We'll find out.  Meantimes, I'll teach you to make sure this toy is safe before you begin to play with it."

His gnarled thumb pressed the checkered button upon the left side, behind what he had told Zakh was the trigger-lever. A black plastic projection at the bottom of the handle, constituting the end of a section within the grip itself, slid out, falling into Terrible Yvan's ready palm.

"Charge cassette," Terrible Yvan offered, "what they used to call a 'magazine.'  It holds the makings for more thrusts after the first is gone.  This one is empty though, it seems."  He winked at the boy, who realized well this had already been established, indeed had been the 1st priority, when Terrible Yvan had cleaned the weapon.

"And the first thrust?" Zakh's eyes were bright with piqued curiosity.  Never had it occurred to him that the ancient weapon might be made to function, that, unlike all other precolonial artifacts he was familiar with, this might serve a purpose other than to hang upon a wall and be wondered about.

Terrible Yvan tapped the section of the axis---"barrel" he insisted---showing through a kind of window in the upper portion of the weapon.  "Never take anything for granted about weaponry.  We haven't looked for a while now.  There could be a charge lurking in here and it would still be dangerous if so.  Shall we now take a look?"

With these words he replaced the empty magazine, held the grip in one hand---keeping his finger off the trigger---with the front of the weapon pointed away from both of them.  He placed the other forefinger and a thumb upon the shallow serrations at the rear of the upper portion and drew it towards him.  The upper half slid backward until it locked in this position, all the beauty and symmetry of its flowing lines lost.

"Is it broken?" Zakh asked, unable to suppress a disappointed quaver.

"No, young master.  Merely stone-cold empty and telling us so, in its own way.  It'd be very important should your life ever depend on this toy.  You'd know it be past time to slap in another cassette and be ready to thrust again or be thrust."  Indeed, a second "magazine" object lay within the pouch, along with the crystal-containers and a few other, less recognizable objects.  "Now this," Terrible Yvan poked a flat, colorless finger at one of the unidentified objects still in the black pouch which lay upon its once-transparent wrapper upon the oil-stained bench before them, "is a testing of our luck."

"What is it?" Without waiting for the old man's answer, Zakh reached an eager hand towards a small rectangular solid of a crumbling material he had never seen before and yet which looked familiar.  It was covered, every line squared, with lettering, once bright-colored, now dirty and faded.

Terrible Yvan brushed his hand away.  "Take care, young master.  It's pasteboard, as they used to call it, same as books are made of, and never intended to last a single century, let alone six or seven."

Indeed, the box had begun to crumble at the boy's touch.  Neither had its condition much improved by his handling of the pouch in the cellar.  Where it had been tucked into the box, Terrible Vvan pried a fragile end-flap away.  Inside, within an unprinted, lidless half box, was visible a row of five green-brown metallic cylinders, each at least two lines long and half again the diameter of a file.  Zakh realized they were analogous to the larger cylinders which hung upon his bedroom wall with the steyraug, yet half of the objects visible in the box were topped with elongated domes of an unfamiliar, frosty, almost mildewed-looking substance.

"Our luck is holding, young master.  These are power charges for the antique weapon.  Hmmm---aged, I think, beyond using."  He gave the boy a broad wink and laid a finger beside his nose.  "Still, with a bit of adjusting, we may obtain some good from them."

With elaborate care the old man took a pair of forceps from the bench and lifted one cylinder out.  Zakh could see that all five in the end row, maybe all 50 or so in the box, were identical, being stacked top-to-bottom, alternating with bottom-to-top.  The end opposite of the mildewed-looking tip had been flattened in some fashion, like the head of a nail.

Terrible Yvan took the object across the room, opened a metal-framed window in the face of the right-hand spreighformer, and placed it inside, careful afterwards to seal the window.  He placed a palm over a light-sensitive area, touched a colored grid with his forefinger, and waited as the colors changed. Then he nodded, whether to himself or to the machine Zakh could merely guess.

Crossing to the row of ore-storage bins, Terrible Yvan pushed a small hand-scoop into one of them, retraced his steps and emptied it into a hooper low in the spreighformer face.  He checked the readings again and added a cup of petroleum and a scoopful of odd-colored dirt from a different bin.  The spreighformer hummed awhile, aferward falling silent.

What Terrible Yvan afterward removed from the manifesting chamber bore only the most superficial of resemblances to what he had first placed in its analyzing window.  In place of the dull-surfaced and corroded brown-green cylinder from the faded pasteboard box, an object of metallic gold appearance now glittered in th e proffered hollow of his wrinkled palm.

"It's brass," Terrible Yvan explained as they examined the object.  Zakh observed how, like almost every artifact he had seen from this period of antiquity, the thing bore lettering.  How the ancients loved to write and read! this time it was fine, eye-straining scratches upon the flattened head.  "Alloyed copper and zinc. Aluminum-titanium likely would have done quite as well, or many other blends I can think of, but maybe they didn't have the know-how for that in ancient times, or else it became too expensive for them."

The great wonder to Zakh was that the floury tip of the tokarev-charge---"They called them cartridges...."---was also golden, dull of luster, and waxen to the touch.  "Da, but it is the thinnest plating that was once called 'wash', though I can't tell you why.  Underneath is nothing but the purest drozt.  Buttery-soft lead 'twas taken to rifling---I'll explain that eventually----and expand upon contact with the target to make for larger wounding."

It was this moment Zakh realized, with a wonderful, delicious sense of shock, that he was looking across time towards an incredibly primitive era when, rather than the pure kinetic energy which quickblades generated, weapons had been simple devices (theoretically, at least, he was still learning the difference between simplicity in principle and practice) for hurling tangible physical objects at people, animals, and objects. For him the contrast between this idea and tools of hand-knapped flint was less considerable than it might have been for someone of an earlier century.

Terrible Yvan retrieved the original cartridge from the window of the spreighformer and replaced it in the pasteboard box among its venerable fellows.  Now he took the fresh cartridge and, retracting a spring-loaded follower with his thumb, slid the shiny object into place in the top of the magazine he had removed from the tokarev-weapon.

"Now we'll see how successful we've been," Terrible Yvan told the wide-eyed boy.  "Neither brass nor lead is the hard part, but what's inside, priming and propellant powder, is the hard part.  There's a lot of complicated organic molecules that make them up.  Also, we'll see why this toy, as dangerous as it might be under certain circumstances, is little more than a toy, compared to quickblades, why those who had brandished lesser weapons lost to the dreaded Romanovans."

He slammed the magazine into the grip, pulled back its upper half, let it return under spring-pressure with a metallic, ringing snap.  With a nod to Zakh, he flicked a lever upward, pulled down another and backwards, and turned the thing upon himself, its muzzle resting light against his solar plexus.

Something flashed!  This time it was not from the plasma lightning outside.