Prisoners of Tomorrow (26 page)

“And that can be a crime?”

“A potential threat to the regime—the ultimate crime. But surely it’s the same everywhere. Isn’t religion used in America for the same purpose—to instill obedience and stifle questions?”

Paula shook her head. “No—it’s just there if people want it. In fact, you can’t mix it with education, by law.”

Tanya looked at her curiously. “Really? That’s interesting. I didn’t know that. I haven’t met many Americans. They don’t give you permission to travel to other countries very easily over there, do they?”

“You don’t need any permission. Anybody can just get on a plane and go where they want.”

“I hadn’t heard that before. . . . You
are
being serious, I suppose?”

In the next bed was Anastasia, from Khabarovsk on the Pacific side of Siberia, who said her brother had been convicted of passing secrets to the Chinese. “I hope it doesn’t affect my son’s career,” she told Paula. “He’s such a bright boy. At school they’re teaching him to program computers. Do American boys ever get to see a computer when they’re only fifteen?”

Paula was told she would be moving back to her cell after the evening meal. As the afternoon wore on, she grew quieter, and became inwardly nervous to the borderline of being fearful. She tried to read and rest to recover her strength as best she could, but the emotional strain was draining energy out of her faster than it was recharging. She even toyed with the thought of staging an accident—anything to put off the moment of having to return to the kitchens and the cell.

And then, when there was less than an hour to go before the evening meal was brought in, she heard a voice that she recognized remonstrating loudly in the corridor beyond the ward door, which was open. “I don’t care if you are a doctor. It isn’t doing her any good, I tell you. It isn’t of medical knowledge, it’s a matter of common sense.” Paula looked up sharply. The Russian woman with fiery, shoulder-length hair had stopped just outside. She was wearing a light-green two-piece tunic and talking to a gray-bearded man in a knee-length white coat. Paula caught a glimpse of her firmly defined, high-cheeked features and determined chin as she half-turned and raised a hand to make her point. The man said something in a lower voice that Paula couldn’t catch, and then they moved on. “Then, I’ll make sure that somebody in higher authority is informed. If you won’t sign a simple . . .” The orange-haired woman’s voice faded away.

Suddenly Paula was seized by uncontrollable desperation. “Anna!” she called out.

The blond orderly came out of the instrument room at the far end of the ward. “You wanted something?”

“Yes, look, somebody I know just went past, out there in the corridor. She went that way, with a doctor. Please catch her and tell her I have to talk to her, would you? It’s very important. She has red hair, and she was wearing a green suit.”

Anna nodded and hurried out into the corridor. Paula lay back against her pillow and found that she was trembling. But she couldn’t let the chance pass by. Slowly she calmed down. Chance? . . . Chance of what? Now she didn’t even know what she was going to say.

Footsteps sounded outside, and a moment later Anna came back in. “I found the lady,” she announced, looking at Paula oddly. “She doesn’t know an American woman called Paula Shelmer. But she will come and see what you want. She’ll be here in a minute or two, she says.” Anna disappeared back into the room at the rear.

Paula looked around. Tanya was sleeping, and Anastasia was sitting at the table at the far end of the ward, writing something. Of the other three from the nearby beds, two were away undergoing therapy, and the other was at the table with Anastasia. So it would be possible to speak with some privacy at least. She lay back, trying to force herself to breathe normally and relax.

The orange-haired woman reappeared in the corridor outside, entered, saw Paula without showing a flicker of recognition, and continued looking around. Eventually her eyes wandered back. Paula nodded and mustered a smile. The Russian woman came over to the bed and stood looking down with a puzzled expression on her face. “You are the American?” she said in excellent English. “Do I know you? . . . But yes, your face does seem familiar.”

“Turgenev six weeks ago—the Security Headquarters. You were giving two officers a tough time. I was outside. You came out and spoke to me.”

Comprehension flowed into the Russian woman’s face. It was an amazingly expressive face. “Yes, of course! The nervous girl in the corridor. I was trying to place you somewhere here, not back there. So, we both wound up in Zamork.” She waved a hand briefly. “But why are you in here?”

“Food poisoning, they said. A bug or something. . . . I don’t know.”

“You are an American, so. And your name is Paula. I am called Olga. But the girl said there was something important. What is it?”

Paula looked over her shoulder and then back. “It’s not really something I’d want to make public knowledge . . .”

Olga moved closer and sat down on the edge of the bed. She looked at Paula questioningly. “Well?”

“You said not to be intimidated.”

“That’s right. They will try, but you mustn’t let them. Once they find a crack, they have you. Then they keep hammering in wedges. But strength, they respect. It’s all they respect. If only America had understood that sixty years ago.”

“The place they’ve put me in is dreadful. And the people there . . . It’s not so much intimidation as degradation.”

“Yes, that is another of their nasty tricks. I sympathize. Make a fuss until they change it. You Americans are like the British and try to compromise to please everybody. It can’t be done. You just end up pleasing nobody. That’s not the way to deal with Russians. They all shout, and whoever shouts the loudest and longest gets his way.” Olga patted Paula’s arm affectionately and started to rise. Paula caught her by the sleeve.

“I heard you telling those officers that you are a scientist.”

Olga hesitated, then sat down again. “So, what of it?”

“And that’s how you come to speak English so well?” Olga nodded but didn’t reply. Paula went on, “What does a scientist do in a place like this? I mean, are there opportunities to use your mind, to think? Are there others you can communicate with?”

“Naturally there are. This is a space habitat. Resources are limited. They don’t ship people this far to open doors and count heads.”

Paula took a long breath. “I am a scientist, too,” she said. She’d decided before Olga came in that she could hardly do any damage by revealing no more than Protbornov and his interrogators had already established.

“Well, that’s very good, and I respect you as a fellow professional. But I still don’t see what—”

“You have influence. You can persuade people. Look, I scrape grease off dishes in a stinking kitchen and scrub floors, day after day. Can you talk to someone who might get me moved out? I can do more good somewhere else—better for me, and better for the colony.”

Olga frowned. “Are you saying you want to work for them?” Paula noticed she said “them” and not “us.”

“I’m not talking about changing sides,” Paula said. “I just want to work as a person—on something that has no military value. There must be such things here. You just said yourself that resources are valuable here. Why waste any? There are children in the colony—I could teach science, maybe; or there might be something connected with medicine, agriculture . . . anything.”

Olga looked dubious. “Well, I really don’t know what I can do. . . .” She caught the imploring look in Paula’s eyes, but that only seemed to make her more defensive. She got up and began turning. “My own problems are one thing—I can shout at them about things like that. But interfering in policy on something like is different. I am sorry, but I’m sure it will all straighten itself out in good—” she stopped as if a new thought had just struck her, and turned back. “What kind of scientist are you?”

“Communications electronics. Computers . . .”

“Where did you learn that?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Hmm . . .” Olga regarded her with what seemed like a new interest. “You know something about communications-system protocols and operating software? Encryption routines and hardware microcode?”

“Some,” Paula replied cautiously.

“What about Russian systems?”

“I’ve dealt with them.”

“I see.” Olga brought a hand up to her chin and stared at Paula for what seemed a long time. Then, abruptly, she seemed to make up her mind. “I can’t make promises, and I don’t do miracles,” she said. “So don’t hope for too much. But we’ll see.” With that she turned away again and left the room.

The women who were attending therapy returned a short while later, and Paula did her best to match their chatter through the evening meal. When it was over, the same two guards who had escorted the work detail arrived to collect her. Anastasia and Tanya gave her a bag of candies to take back, which they had put together between them. “To show how Russians and Americans ought to be,” Anastasia told her. Tanya smiled and patted Paula’s arm. Paula kissed both of them and found that her eyes were watery.

“They would be, if only they were left alone,” she said. Then, with a sickening feeling of dread rising in her stomach, she went back to her bed and picked up the bag into which she had already put her things, while the guards waited stone-faced just inside the door.

At that moment hurried footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and Dr. Rubakov, the senior physician, came in, waving some papers. “Ah, good, she’s still here.” Rubakov turned to the two guards. “The order has been rescinded. The American woman is to remain here for a further three days’ rest and recuperation. Here is the countermanding order and papers, all signed and approved. You may go.” He showed the papers to the senior of the two guards. The guard took them, scrutinized the top sheet carefully, turned it over, and nodded finally to her companion with a shrug. They left, closing the door behind them.

The reprieve had been so sudden and so overwhelming that for a moment Paula thought she was going to collapse again. She sat down shakily on the end of her bed. Rubakov looked pleased. “I’m glad they changed their minds,” he said. “You need more time to get over it.” He moved closer and studied Paula for a few seconds, at the same time stroking his mustache with the knuckle of his forefinger. “So perhaps we can do a deal, eh?” he murmured in a lower voice. “I can get good cosmetics—French brands, no less. Make you feel and look a new person. Interested, maybe?”

Paula closed her eyes and sighed. “What kind of deal?”

Rubakov looked suddenly alarmed and embarrassed. “Oh no! You misunderstand.” He shook his head and spread his hands. “I just want lessons to improve my English!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It was like a reprieve from a death sentence. Paula couldn’t be sure that the last-minute change of plan had anything to do with Olga’s intervening somewhere, but for the moment she was content to make the best of the opportunity to regain her strength, and leave the question to answer itself in due course. But secretly the hope was there, though she tried not to admit it to herself consciously because of the risk of a greater disappointment later. She became brighter and more cheerful toward everyone around her.

Dr. Rubakov appeared the next day with the ultimate luxury in the form of a box of milk bath salts, with some lotion and even nail polish for her hands, and a lipstick to add some color for her face—tawny pink, just right for her complexion. After a breakfast of poached eggs and ham with a spiced potato-onion hash, buttered toast, and real coffee, she kept her side of the bargain by giving an impromptu one-hour English lesson before he went on duty. He came back for another hour during his midday break, and again in the evening.

“I never realize is so, so . . .
uzasno?”

“Terrible.”

“Da,
terrible!” Rubakov threw up his hands and shook his head despairingly at the pieces of paper that he and Paula had accumulated between them on the table. “Here words are spelt the same but sound different; those ones have same sounds, all written different. Where is sense? How can anyone know ever what to write? But children, they learn this?”

“I didn’t invent it. I’m just telling you how it is,” Paula said. “Maybe that’s why your guys and our guys have had such a hard time getting along.” They both laughed.

“It’s all a result of ancient vernaculars, you know,” Tanya, who had been listening, said in Russian from her bed behind them.

“What do you mean?” Rubakov asked, turning.

“Ever since long ago, back to the time of the Greeks and Romans, people had the problem of trying to talk to the slaves that were brought back from conquered nations,” Tanya explained. “So ‘vernaculars’ emerged between household members and servants—simplified mixtures of languages which combined all the oddities from the originals. Over the centuries that followed, waves of successive migrants from religious and political persecutions, and so on, came to Britain, all bringing their own languages with them. They landed at different places, and by the time they all met in the middle, all the conventions were firmly established and nobody was going to change. So, you see, English came out of it as
the
vernacular of all the vernaculars of Europe.”

“And now America has continued the process by mixing in Yiddish, Negro, Hispanic, Amerind, and heaven knows what else,” Paula said. “It’s a superset of English.”

“Russians have never had the problem,” Anastasia commented from the far side. “Nobody is clamoring to get in. They all want to get out.”

The next morning, Rubakov told Paula that General Protbornov would be arriving later to talk to her. The announcement jolted her back to reality, and for the next couple of hours she became subdued, viewing her prospects with a mixture of excitement, which she didn’t dare let herself dwell upon, and trepidation. Protbornov appeared shortly before lunch, accompanied by Major Uskayev. They collected Paula and went into the duty nurse’s office, just inside the ward door. Protbornov took the chair behind the desk and motioned Paula to sit opposite. Uskayev sat by the wall to one side.