The War in 2020

behind her. She felt her body slipping out of her control. Then a foot kicked her very hard in the small of the back.

She moaned. A heel ground her into the concrete floor. Then her tormentor kicked her in the rump. The force slid her across the cement. But the boot followed her. The officer kicked her again. And again. In the spine. In the meager fat of her buttocks. Kicking through the fabric. Wet fabric. The hard toes hunted at her sex.

Above her, the officer grunted. She recognized the sound. She had heard it before. Under the weight of so many men.

'Slut,' the officer said. He was so short of breath he could barely produce single syllables. 'Tramp. Whore.'

Yes, Valya thought dreamily, waiting for the next blow. Yes. I'm a whore. And Yuri. Where was Yuri?

Her American was going to take her away.

She was late for dinner.

Suddenly, a big hand gathered her hair and yanked her upward. She thought her neck would break, almost wishing it would. The interrogator dragged her across the floor like a dead game animal, hurting her badly. His other hand grasped her, briefly passing over her breast. Then he had her from behind, by the hair and and upper arm.

He dragged her back to the table where the photographs lay. He ground her face into them, then lifted her by the hair, just far enough so that her eyes might focus. He released her arm so that he would have a free hand to peel away the layers of snapshots.

'Look,' he gasped. 'Look. At this one. And this one. Look at yourself.'

Valya began to cry. It was not he weeping of a grown woman. Nor even tears of physical pain. It was the helpless crying of a child. She sensed what was coming now. She sensed it in his hand.

'Please,' she moaned. 'Please. Please, don't.'

The interrogator tossed her back on the floor as though discarding and empty wrapper.

'You piece of filth,' he said. 'Is that all you ever think of?' He strode over to her and spit on the side of her face. She had curled up like and infant, and she wept.

'I wouldn't dream of dirtying myself with a creature like you,' the officer said.

'I'm sorry for my comrade's excesses,' the beautifully groomed young officer told her. He reached across the table toward her face. She shied. But he was quick. He ran his fingertips along her cheek. 'Here. Just let me have a look.'

Valya whimpered.

'Now, that doesn't look to bad. Nothing to mar our girls beauty,' the officer continued. He was handsome, obviously atretic, and Valya sat before him in great shame. She felt destroyed. As though she belonged in a heap of garbage.

'He's been overworked lately,' the young man explained. 'What with the war and all. Moscow hasn't been a quiet place. I'm sorry if he hurt you.' The young man withdrew his easy fingertips. 'I’m sorry things got out of hand.'

Valya sobbed into the lateness of the hour.

'We’re not fools,' the young officer said brightly. 'We know you’re not a spy. It was ridiculous for my comrade to imply anything to the contrary. Valya, would you like a cup of tea? Or anything at all?'

'No.'

'All right. I just want you to try to understand. It’s a very complex situation. To the careless observer, some of your actions might take on an ambiguous meaning. And I think you’ll admit that, now and then, you’ve been indiscreet.'

Valya stared down into her sorrow. She was contrite. No Magdalene had ever felt so deep and genuine a contrition.

'If anything,' the polished young man continued, 'we want to help you. Now, obviously, the fact that you were married to an officer who betrayed his trust to the People— obviously, that complicates things. And then there’s the brief encounter with this American spy. Well, he’s not exactly a spy. That’s a slight exaggeration. And he’s gone now, anyway — left the hotel right after you did. Off to the wars,' he said blithely. 'But it’s still a difficult situation. And, of course, there’s the matter of simple criminal law. Some of your adventures with Citizen Naritsky, for example. I’m afraid that, even without the slightest hint of espionage or the like, well, I’m afraid the law demands a certain level of satisfaction.'

The young man stared at Valya as though waiting for her to help him out. She sat there trying to feel a better, truer sorrow at the news of Yuri’s death. But it would not come. Yuri had been nothing but a tool to her. She recognized that now. She had been bad. But she was sorry. She was sorry for all of the things she had done. She was sorry for every scrap of joy she had ever felt. But she could not feel sufficiently sorry for Yuri.

'Valya,' the young man said almost tenderly, 'I simply can’t bear the thought of sending you to prison.'

Valya looked up.

'Simply couldn't bear it,' the officer went on. 'Why, by the time you were done sitting out your sentence, those lovely looks would be gone. Long gone, I'm afraid. And it would be a shame to waste them on the sort of women one encounters in our prison system. I'm afraid we're a bit behind the West in prison reform. Are you sure you wouldn't like a cup of tea?'

Valya shook her head. Infinitely fatigued.

Prison?

'But don't worry,' the young man continued. 'I think I see a way out of this. Valya,' he said gently, flattering her with his eyes, 'you really are a lovely woman. Even now, like this. I'm certain that you could be very helpful to us.'

Valya looked up into the young officer's eyes. They were deep and glittering. The sort of eyes with which she would have been delighted to flirt once upon a time. Now they filled her with a horror she could not confine in words.

'I just… I just wanted to have some sort of life,' she said meekly.

The young man smiled warmly.

'You do want to help us, don't you?'

21

3 November 2020

Noburu shut his eyes and listened. Even through the bunkered thickness of the walls and bulletproof glass, he could hear them out there in the night. The people. Gathering in defiance of the outbreak of plague that had begun to haunt the city. Tens of thousands of them, there was no way of counting them with precision. Inside the headquarters complex, his staff continued to celebrate the success of the Scramblers, undeterred. While, out in the darkness, men who answered to another god chanted their fates in an opaque desert language.

Noburu looked at his aide's neatly uniformed back. Akiro sat dutifully at the command information console, sifting, sifting. Noburu had unsettled the younger man with a remark made an hour before. He knew that Akiro was still trying to find an innocent interpretation for his general's words. But Noburu also knew that the aide would not look in the right places.

The rhythmic chanting echoed relentlessly through the walls.

'Death to Japan,' they cried.

Noburu had not understood the words at first. That had required a translator. But he had understood the situation immediately. He had been waiting for it.

* * *

The demonstrators had begun to gather even as the Scramblers did their work. His staff counterintelligence officer reported that the rally began in the old quarter, in the shadow of the Virgin's Tower. A flash outbreak of Runciman's disease had begun to gnaw its way in through the city's windows and doors. Yet, the Azeris had gathered by the thousands. They came as if called by animal instinct, by scent. How would Tokyo explain it?