The War in 2020

for the waste of frightened men.

At times, the officers were not even kept separate during their interrogations. Babryshkin's first taste of the questioning began when he was thrust into a room where his political officer was already seated. The political officer's eyes were unbalanced, and he recoiled from the sight of Babryshkin as if from the devil himself.

'It was him,' the political officer cried. 'It was all his doing. I told him to obey the order. I told him. And he refused. I told him and he refused. It was his fault. He even carried a woman on his tank for his personal pleasure.'

'And why didn't you take command yourself?' the interrogator asked quietly.

'I couldn't,' the political officer answered, terrified. 'They were all with him. I tried to do my duty. But they were all in it together.'

'He's a liar,' Babryshkin said quickly, breaking his resolve not to speak out until he better understood what was happening. 'I take full responsibility for the actions of my officers. The actions of my unit were the results of my decisions and mine alone.'

The interrogator struck him across the face with a calloused hand that wore a big ring. 'No one asked you anything. Prisoners are only to speak when they are asked a question.'

'They were all in it together,' the political officer repeated.

But the interrogator's focus had shifted. 'So… a commander who even carries a woman with him for his pleasure. It must be a fine war.'

'That's nonsense,' Babryshkin stated coldly. 'The woman was a refugee. With a baby and a little boy. She was at the end of her strength. She would have died.' The interrogator raised an eyebrow, folding his arms. 'And you decided to rescue her out of the goodness of your heart? But why this woman, out of so many? What was special about her? Was she an agent too? Or was she merely pretty?'

Babryshkin thought of the dreadfully emaciated woman, remembering her screams when she emerged to see the devastation of the chemical attack. Well, at least she was safe now, deposited at a refugee collection point with her starving infant and the louse-ridden, broken-armed boy. And, as he thought of her, he found that her ravaged face grew indistinct, becoming Valya's fine, clear, lovely features. Valya. He wondered if he would ever see her again. And, for a moment, she had more reality for him than any of the surrounding madness.

'No,' Babryshkin said flatly. 'She wasn't pretty.'

'Then she was an agent? A contact you were to meet and evacuate?'

Babryshkin laughed out loud at the folly of such a thought.

The KGB officer did not need any underlings to do his dirty work for him. He landed a square blow on Babryshkin's mouth that knocked in his front teeth. Unlike in films, where men fought forever without really harming one another, this man's fists did real damage each time they landed. First on the mouth, then on the side of the head, on the ear, beside an eye. In a flash of confusion, the chair toppled over, and Babryshkin found himself lying sideways on the floor. The major kicked him in the mouth. Then in the stomach. It was at that point that Babryshkin realized that he was, indeed, going to die, and he resolved at least to die as well as possible.

Through blood-clouded eyes he looked up at the cringing political officer. And he smiled slightly through his broken lips, almost pitying the weaker man in the knowledge that they would soon be together on the growing heap out in the courtyard, that nothing would save either one of them. The system had gone mad. It had begun eating itself like a demented animal.

Another kick left Babryshkin unconscious for an indefinite period, and when he awoke, he was alone with his interrogator. They were all wrong. Babryshkin decided. There is a God. And this is what he looks like.

Babryshkin had been set upright on his chair, and his hands had been rebound behind its straight back so that he could not slump and fall. The questions began again, insane, twisted questions, beginning with the truth and butchering it beyond all logic, making out of it a sinister new calculus that was so perverse it was almost irresistible.

When did you first think of betraying the Soviet Union? Who were your earliest coconspirators? What did you hope to accomplish? Did you act out of ideology or for material gain? How long have you been plotting? With how many foreigners did you have contact? What are your current orders?

There was never any attempt to establish guilt or innocence. Guilt was assumed. Babryshkin had heard stories about such things happening back in the old days, in the darkest years of the twentieth century. But he had never expected to encounter such a thing in his own lifetime.

He sought to tell his tale honestly, in an unadorned, believable manner. He tried to clarify the simple logic of his actions, to explain to this starched creature from the rear area what combat was like, how it forced men to act. But his words only met with more blows. Sometimes the KGB major would hear him out before attacking him. At other times he would squeeze his swollen, ring-speckled fingers into a fist and bring it down hard at the first words out of Babryshkin's mouth.

Babryshkin tried to maintain his focus. He set himself the goal of ensuring that no blame passed to any of his subordinates, of establishing that each action had been the result of his personal decision. But it became harder and harder to form the words. And the intermittent shooting outside tripped his thoughts. As the questions were repeated to him again and again, he found it ever more difficult to focus. And the interrogator exaggerated the smallest grammatical inconsistencies in his story.

When the beating was at its worst, he tried to close his mind to it, to think only of the thing he loved the most in the world. He had long thought that it was his military service, but he knew now, with utter mental clarity, that it was Valya. Not even his mother, who had died in the plague years, had meant so much to him. Dying was terribly frightening. And yet… he knew it was really nothing. There had been so much death. But it seemed needlessly cruel, unbearable, that he would die without ever seeing his wife again.

He was grateful that the questions posed to him were all of a military nature. The KGB major never once asked about his family or about his nonmilitary friends. Babryshkin guessed that those questions were for more leisurely peacetime interrogations. Now there was only the war. And he was glad. It would be all right to die. He would have preferred to die in combat, being of some use. But the manner of dying had come to seem increasingly a matter of accident. Perhaps, really, one death was as good as another. As long as Valya wasn't dragged into it, as long as nothing hurt her. He even knew — and remembered without malice — that she had been unfaithful to him once. Perhaps she was being unfaithful to him now. But it did not matter. She was such a special girl. And because he believed that she had been unfaithful that time out of spite, only to hurt him, it had not hurt so much. It was not as if she had really loved another. And he knew he had broken many promises, that he had failed her again and again. It was a country, an age, of broken promises. And he suspected that Valya was far, far more helpless than she realized.

He made a deal with God. Not with the brief, small god whose fist hammered him over and over again, but with the other God who might be out there after all, who should be out there. He would die willingly, so long as Valya was not harmed. So long as he became only another corpse and the affair ended at that. He thought of Valya: the smell of sex and lilacs, a woman always ready with a little lie, imagining herself to be so strong, and he filled with pity for her. He could not leave her much else. If only he could leave her safe from all of this.

He could not keep his thoughts under control any longer. Under the torrent of blows, Valya became the refugee woman, gaunt with beginning death. Everyone was dying. It was a dying world. Chaos. A woman shrieked across the death-covered steppes. All who were not dead were dying. To the music of a scream.

Babryshkin came to again. He raised his head, feeling as though his skull had grown huge and he were a small creature within it. Only one eye would open now. But he noticed that other men had joined his interrogator in the room.

Uniforms. Weapons. His soldiers. They had come to rescue him. He would see Valya again after all. And they would walk across the river and up into the Lenin Hills, through the university gardens. And gray, sad Moscow would look beautiful in the sunlight. Valya. She was very close to him now.

He saw his interrogator bend over the desk, then right himself and hand a piece of paper to one of the soldiers.

'Enemy of the People,' the officer said. 'To be shot.'

Ryder lay guarding one of the woman's small breasts with his right hand. His head reached high up on the