1985 A.D.

Here, where the Bear stars wheeled too low, night struck cold into blood and bone. By day, mountains closed off every horizon with stone, snow, glaciers, clouds. A man’s mouth dried as he gasped his way over the ridges, rocks rattling from beneath his boots, for he could never draw one honest breath of air. And then there was fear of the rifle bullet or the knife after dark that would spill his bit of life out on this empty land.

To Yuri Alexeievitch Garshin, the captain appeared as an angel from his grandmother’s Heaven. It was on the third day since the ambush. He had tried to head northeast, generally down though it always seemed most of his steps were upward, the weight of the earth upon them. Somewhere yonder lay the camp. His sleeping bag gave him small rest; again and again terror snatched him back to a loneliness just as cruel. Careful with what field rations were in his kit, he took few bites at a time, and hunger pangs had now dulled. Nevertheless, little remained to him. He found plenty of water for his canteen, springs or the melt of remnant snowbanks, but had nothing to heat it. The samovar in his parents’ cottage was a half-remembered dream—the whole collective farm, larksong above ryefields, wildflowers to the world’s edge, he walking hand in hand with Yelena Borisovna. Here grew only lichen on rock, thinly strewn thorn scrub, pale clumps of grass. The one sound other than his footfalls, breath, pulsebeat was the wind. A large bird rode it, well aloft. Garshin didn’t know what kind it was. A vulture, waiting for him to die? No, surely the vultures feasted on his comrades—

A crag jutted from the slope ahead. He changed course to round it, wondering how much more that threw him off the proper track to his company. All at once he saw the man who stood beneath the mass.

Enemy! He grabbed for the Kalashnikov slung at his shoulder. Then: No. That’s a Soviet outfit. A warm blind wave poured through him. His knees went soft.

When he could see again, the man had come close. His garb was clean, fresh-looking. Officer’s insignia glittered in the hard upland sunlight, yet a pack and bedroll rode on his back. He carried merely a sidearm, yet he strode unafraid and unwearied. Clearly he was no Afghan government soldier, wearing issue supplied by the ally. His body was stocky, muscular, the face beneath the helmet fair-skinned but broad in the cheekbones and a bit slanty in the eyes—from somewhere around Lake Ladoga, perhaps, Garshin thought weakly.

And I, I’m just serving out my hitch, just waiting out this miserable war till I can go home, if I live. He made a Shalten salute.

The officer halted a meter or so off. He was a captain. “Well,” he asked, “what are you doing, private?” The Finnish eyes probed like a sunset wind. However, the tone was not unkindly and the Russian was Moscow’s, the dialect you oftenest heard after they drafted you, except that his was better educated than usual.

“P-p-please, sir—” Sudden, helpless trembling and stammering. “Yu. A. Garshin, private—” Somehow he identified his unit.

“So?”

“We were … a squad, sir—reconnaissance up the pass—Blasts, gunfire, men killed right and left—” Sergei’s skull a horrible spatter and his body flung bonelessly aside, then a crash, smoke and dust, you sprawled with ears ringing so loud that you couldn’t hear anything else and a medicine taste in your mouth. “I saw … the guerrillas … no, I saw, one man, a beard and turban, he laughed. They d-didn’t see me. I was behind a bush, I think, or they were too busy—bayoneting?”

Garshin had nothing to vomit but bile. It hurt his throat.

The captain stood over him till he was done and the headache that followed had lessened. “Take some water,” the captain advised. “Swish it around. Gargle. Spit. Then swallow, not too much.”

“Yes, sir.” Garshin obeyed. It helped. He tried to get up.

“Sit for a while,” said the captain. “You’ve been through a bad time. The mujahedin had rocket launchers as well as rapid-fire weapons. You crept away when they’d gone, eh?”

“Y-yes, sir. Not to desert or, or anything, but—”

“I know. There was nothing you could do on the spot. Rather, your duty was to return to base and report what had happened. You didn’t dare go straight back down the pass. That would have been reckless anyway. You slipped uphill. You were still dazed. When you recovered, you realized you were lost. Correct?”

“I think so.” Garshin raised his glance toward the form above him. It reared dark against the sky, as alien as the crag. He was regaining his wits. “What about you, sir?”

“I am on a special mission. You are not to mention me except as I order. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. But—” Garshin sat straighter. “Sir, you talk as if you know … a good deal about my squad.”

The captain nodded. “I came by a while afterward, and reconstructed what must have occurred. The rebels were gone but the bodies were left, stripped of everything useful. I couldn’t bury them.”

He refrained from speaking of honored heroes. Garshin wasn’t sure whether he was grateful for that or not. It was amazing that an officer explained anything to an enlisted man.

“We can send a party to retrieve them,” Garshin said. “If my unit gets the news.”

“Of course. I will help. Do you feel better?” The captain offered his hand. Clinging to its strength, Garshin rose. He found himself reasonably steady on his feet.

The foreigner eyes searched him. Words hit slow, like the hammer of a careful workman. “As a matter of fact, Private Garshin, this is a fortunate encounter for both of us, and others besides. I can direct you to your base. You can take something along that badly needs taking, but which my mission doesn’t allow me time to deal with.”

Angel from Heaven indeed. Garshin snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!”

“Excellent.” Still the captain looked at him. Afar, clouds eddied around two peaks, now hiding them, now baring their fangs. Underfoot, twigs snickered in the wind. “Tell me about yourself, boy. How old are you? Where from?”

“N-nineteen, sir. A kolkhoz near Shatsk.” Emboldened: “If that means anything to you, sir. The closest real city is Ryazan.”

Once more the captain nodded. “I see. Well, you seem both intelligent and faithful. I believe you will appreciate what I want of you. It is simply to deliver an object I discovered. But it may be quite an important object.” He hooked thumbs in his pack straps. “Here, help me with this.”

They got it off, set it on the ground, and hunkered above. He opened it and took forth a box. Meanwhile his unofficerlike talkativeness continued, though almost as if to himself, peering beyond anything Garshin could see:

“This is a very ancient land. History has forgotten all the peoples who held it, came and went, fought and died, to and fro, century after century. We today are but the latest. Ours is not a popular war, at home or in the world at large. Never mind the rights or wrongs, it is hurting us in the same way their war in Vietnam hurt the Americans, when you were a kid. If we can retrieve a little honor out of it, a little credit, is that not good for the motherland? Is that not a patriotic service?”

The wind walked along Garshin’s backbone. “You talk like a professor, sir,” he whispered.

The other man shrugged. His tone flattened. “What I am in civilian life doesn’t matter. Let’s say I have an eye for certain things. I came on the scene of the ambush, and among the … objects that lay there, I saw this. The Afghans must not have noticed. They were in a hurry, and are primitive tribesmen. It must have lain a long time buried, till a rocket shellburst tossed it up. Some fragments were with it—pieces of metal and bone—but I couldn’t stop to do anything about those. Here. Take it.”

He laid the box in Garshin’s hands. It was about thirty centimeters long by ten square, gray-green with corrosion (bronze?) but preserved by the highland dryness for (how many?) centuries. The lid was wired shut and sealed by a blob of pitchy material that had formerly borne some kind of stamp. Traces of figures cast in the metal were visible.

“Careful!” the captain warned. “It’s fragile. Don’t tamper with it, whatever you do. The contents—documents, I suspect—might well crumble away, unless this is opened under strict controls by the proper scientists. Is that clear, Private Garshin?”

“Yes … yes, sir.”

“Tell your sergeant, immediately when you get back, that you must see the colonel, that it’s vital, that you have information for no ears less than his.”

Dismay. “But, sir, all I have to say is—”

“You have this to deliver, so it doesn’t get lost in the bureaucracy. Colonel Koltukhov isn’t a brainless regulation machine, like too many of his kind. He’ll understand, and do what is right. Simply tell him the truth and give him the casket. You won’t suffer for it, I promise you. He’ll want my name and more. Tell him I never told you because my own mission is so secret that anything I said would necessarily be a lie, but of course he is welcome to notify GRU or KGB and let them trace me. As for you, Private Garshin, you convey nothing except a little casket, of purely archaeological interest, which you might have stumbled upon as easily as I.” The captain laughed, though his eyes stayed altogether level.

Garshin swallowed. “I see. That’s an order, sir?”

“It is. And we’d better both get on with our business.” The captain reached into his pocket. “Take this compass. I have another. I’ll explain how to find your unit.” He pointed. “From here, bear north by northeast … so—

“—and when that peak there is exactly south-southwest—

“—and—

“Is this clear? I have a notepad, I will write it for you.

“—Good luck, boy.”

Garshin groped down the mountainside. He had wrapped the box in his bedroll. However slight the weight, he imagined he felt it on his back, like the weight of boots on his feet, the drag of the earth upon all. Behind and above, the captain stood, arms folded, watching him go. When Garshin glanced rearward, a last time, he saw sunlight from behind the helmet make a kind of halo, as if on an angel who guarded some place mysterious and forbidden.