Terrible Yvan had thrust himself!

Zakh's ears sang with the ear-splitting roar of the tokarev discharge.  His mind reverberated with shock.  Plasma lightning glared outside the workshop's grimy windows, drowning shadows, searing images upon his brain in a hard-edged black and white.  A crack of thunder followed instantly, not one decibel louder than the pistol, which seemed to mock the frightened boy.

"Yvan!"To all appearances unharmed, Terrible Yvan puckered his face into an evil and self-aggrandizing grin.  Adding a wink for Zakh, and casting his wrinkle-shrouded eyes down, towards his midsection, he laid the tokarev-weapon aside---the top half was locked back again---upon the oil-stained bench.  A thin curl of bluish smoke drifted from its muzzle and the window in its side.

'It was a tad louder than I would have expected."

An unfamiliar, and, it seemed to Zakh, pleasant tang filled the air was Terrible Ivan began picking with scientific preoccupation at a small, dark-button-shape of distorted metal which, centered in a scorched patch of his tunic front, seemed to cling to the fibers there. The old man shook his head, waggling his jaw and swallowing as if to clear his ears. He freed the spent projectile from his clothing, upturned Zakh's wrist, and placed the bit of lead, still hot to the touch, upon the boy's damp palm, where it danced from line to line in time to the shaking of his head.

Residual noise in Zakh's ears had by now become a thin, steady whine. It would haunt him for several days, heterodyning when he essayed to whistle, until it seemed to fade and vanish.  In certain frequencies, in particular in the ear he'd had turned towards Terrible Yvan at the crucial moment, he would never hear as well as he had again.  Beyond, a great exhalation of damp wind blew wet leaves and shreds of nondescript debris across the window, presaging violent change in the already savage weather.  The heretofore ignored hiss of raindrops upon the courtyard flags dropped in pitch and rose to a roar as the summer storm became a torrent, whipped by their impact into a froth which seethed across the stones.

Still stunned by what had happened, Zakh nodded at his mentor with a certain absence of awareness.  Thoughts foamed odd-shaped across his mind like the rain outside upon the flags.  He stared in disbelief at the distorted object in his hand.  To him, it presented the appearance of a miniature bog sirleaf, complete with broad, rounded cap and a short, hollowed-bottom stem.  The cap, the portion that had struck Terrible Yvan, was imprinted with the coarse texture of the fabric whereupon it had come to a sudden halt.

Terrible Yvan winked again, seized the abused material of his peasant's tunic (the same sort Zakh wore, speaking volumes of the Sorokin family) between both thumbs and forefingers, working it until the blemish, a stretching of the warp and weft where the projectile had struck, vanished.  The garment would require washing to remove the powder stain.  Grinning, he pulled the tunic up and inspected his naked abdomen with mild curiosity.  Upon his belly---with its thin covering of snow-white hair, yet smoother and firmer than Zakh might've expected in one so up in years----a thumb-sized reddening, scarcely more than a rash, had already started to fade away.

"I might have tried that toy against my unguarded flesh," he observed, "but you never know. Still, it's everything and all I expected.  I'll have you know, Zakh, though it was after being the very least of ancient weapons, this twennyfive was still considered a lethal instrument in the correct circumstances."

Confused, Zakh placed the expanded projectile beside the weapon upon the bench.  He glanced outside. The courtyard had become a temporary, shallow, boiling lake, cratered by giant drops and what might be hail.  He wondered for an anxious minute where Zero had gotten himself off to.  It failed to occur to him that, long before the coming of mankind to Genrich, a million generations of the animals had proven able to take care of themselves.

"I understand. That is, I believe I do. Those old charges in their box were too far gone for replication.  Or did the spreighformer fail...."

"No, young master, it did not fail.  The cartridge worked just like it was supposed to. The ancients---bigger than us, their children, they were, were more than head-height.  Still, they were that much softer."

"What?" That his ancestors might have been different in their material beings, from himself and people he knew, was something Zakh had never heard in his history lessons.  He absorbed it as a metaphysical blow, much in its effect like having watched Terrible Yvan thrust himself.  "Do you mean to tell me that what failed even to harm you would have killed one of them?"

"It likely would." The old man shook his silver-thatched head. "In fairness, we might allow that our clothing has improved.  Ordinary kefflar well stiffen itslef against any blow, but it was after being an expensive drygood, used for armoring warriors on yoredays.  Now we don't use anything else for clothes, and, some say, it was kefflar and nothing else that put an end to the ancient art of weaponry called ipsic by some practitioners, and by others gunski." Zakh nodded in the beginnings of comprehension, but offered nothing in reply, as he knew Terrible Yvan well enough to understand that more was in the offing.  He was correct: "Even had unleashed the weapon upon my bare old ribs, without my tunic to stunt the blow, I would likely have drawn a drop of lifeblood or two and not much else."

They paused, noticing as the light in the room brightened.  Outside, the sky was purple-gray and dark as night.  Inside, not for the first time since Terrible Yvan had "adopted" him, Zakh's grasp upon the universe had been shaken to its foundations.  Satisfied with the effect, as he believed shaking anyone's foundations was healthy exercise for all concerned, Terrible Yvan shifted where he sat and gave Zakh a light punch upon the upper arm.

"We're harder, Zakh, perhaps from nothing more than centuries of thrusting one another for personal reasons and in service to Premier, Cosmopolity, and Empire-Circuit. Those who die of it will die.  They who survive make families.  We get tougher, though we deeply regret the selection process.  Thus, upon firmer flesh do bullets, blades, even lasers, have less effect than might have been expected by our ancestors.  Their weapons can't be called useless---I suppose a bullet in the eye would reach the brain---but close as it might be."

Zakh nodded again. "Presumably our healing arts are better, too."

Terrible Yvan shook his head.  'Such things don't always improve with time.  Had I used methods approved by the latest poison-merchants, bone-breakers, and ray-burners at Droom, you would be ailing still, for all that they work miracles in other ways.  Take this Petrovka fellow, your father's friend.  There's no reason for him to be all bundled up in a wheelie-chair if he doesn't want to be, deep down inside. But cancer---I used what I had of ancient knowledge, and here you are now."

Thunder boomed.  Somewhere beyond the margin of the Holdings a cronsetto fell in the forest, barkless and steaming.  Nobody heard it fall, but it would be lying there in the morning, all the same.  The torrent hammered upon the workshop rooftop. Hearing the old man was tough enough.  Terrible Yvan shifted again, clearly not comfortable with what he'd say next.

"In any case, healing arts work for individuals, against species. Not bad, you understand, for it helps the weak survive to breed.  When they've got the time, mind you. Men came blazing up from Earth-of-Legend, thrusting his way off their mother planet, and have never known moment's peace after.  Romanova's been fighting off-and-on with the Valerian Empire-Circuit for more than 1,000 years.  It's bad for individuals, but good for species.  Horrible as it may be to contemplate, it's what made us tougher than our forebears."  The old man narrowed his eyes, looked this way and that before continuing, caught himself in this precaution, and winked at Zakh.  "The one way medicarts might've helped, aside from sometimes slaughtering the weak as easy as any beam or bullet.  It could be that a few errant chromosomes, by accident or design, sneaked out of labs where the dreaded Cossacks wait to be born or bred.

Cossacks.  Again, Zakh found his head whirling as the parts inside seemed to rearrange themselves. He knew next to nothing about the giant, unkillable warriors created by the Cosmopolity and the Empire-Circuit, among others.  He wasn't alone in his ignorance, nor was it just that of a small boy growing up on an isolated planet.  It was claimed no one knew much about them.  What was known was whispered or unspoken, although his father had commanded a battalion of them in the most recent flare-up of the Thousand Years' War.  He caught Terrible Yvan grinning that teacher's grin of his, and, for the briefest moment, wanted to kick him in his skinny shins.  Why, he had always believed his civilization to be the most advanced, the most humane, the most....

The Genrichian watched as confusion wrote itself across the boy's features.  "Why, you ask, do I put a burden on myself telling you these things?  Don't deny it, I see it upon your face.  It's your heritage and birthright, Zakh, for the blood of conqueror and rebel alike flows through your veins, as you are the child of Eugene Sorokin and Gabdrakhimovishin Bogandov.  Mistress Petrovka teaches Romanovan part of you, and I teach the part that's Genrichian."

"Why?"

"Because in memory of your mother, out of respect for those with whom he made Great Bargain, your father requested it."

Zakh blinked, shocked to the bone for the 3rd time this rainy afternoon.  Terrible Yvan always acted as if things he passed along were secrets of the imperium-conglomerate, information suppressed by the Cosmopolity as treasonable, in any case leading to the most mundane fact a delicious feeling of sedition.  Now, to be informed that he was told these things at his father's specific bidding....the thought tapered off unconcluded and unsatisfying, as thoughts often did when Terrible Yvan had provoked them.

As far as what Terrible Yvan had asserted----Zakh shifted his thoughts (unaware of the potential vice it represented) to a more comfortable and less-confusing subject, the fabled art of ipsic.  The personal weapon of the present age, Zakh knew, was the self-collimating kinergic quickblade.  Utilizing purge-physics---the same forces harnessed in the estate's power generator, and, indeed, which allowed starships to ply the Deep between the systems---the quickblade generated a focused pulse of pure, recoilless energy, rated in measure-keys of destructive force per square line.

Strapped to the upper surface of the forearm, with its dangerous end out past the knuckles, such a weapon had a thin "yoke"---grip-safety and thumb-trigger---which lay in the user's palm, connected by a bridge between the first and second fingers to the "axis":  what another age would have called the barrel.  The power supply was an ergonomic cluster located near the elbow.  Target sighting was accomplished by means of a built-in, low-power laser.

Possession of quickblades was forbidden to all but members and retainers of the aristocracy.  They were expensive and, upon this account as well as others, rare by comparison with other artifacts.  Most bore the mark, rather than the brandname of a mass-producer like this tokarev-weapon he'd found, of famous artisans.  Despite the fact that he was entitled by virtue of his birth, Zakh had examined such weapons only once or twice at his father's whim.

Unaware that he was now eschewing the same vice of evasion which he'd earlier begun to embrace, he resolved of a sudden to think the rest through----the part about his father and his mother---when he was alone.  As good teachers do, Terrible Yvan had an idea of what was happening inside the boy's head and let him alone to puzzle over it.  When the time came for more information, more foundation-shaking, Zakh would come and ask.  He always did.218Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNoKExlBcGn

Now, thoughtful and gazing into the obsidian darkness, Zakh noticed a flicker of motion. Plasma lightning burned onto his retinas the jerky movements and human angularities of what had been a mere shadow staggering across the storm-lashed space between the holding hall and the outbuilding.  In a moment, a disorganized clatter manifested itself, a dust-stirring freshet of damp cold.  Zakh's brother Adam stood shivering in the doorway, thin hair slicked down upon his scalp and water sluicing from his clothing.218Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNf9UvRUe3d

"Zach, my friend!" he gasped, slamming the door against the storm and wiping his streaming face.  He grinned, and excitement---a passing rare thing with him---filled his voice.  "We'll sit this hurricane out a few more minutes until it abates.  You're wanted at the house.  We've just received word.  Father's ship's within the system!  He's come back a few days early so he might help prepare for Eugene and Maria's wedding!"

Zakh's face lit up in a manner even Adam could be sure of.

"It's true, little brother! And by all accounts, he's fetched back clowns, musicians, sages, mages, half the fools, professional and otherwise, of the Romanovan Droom!"