Brainfire Read Free Page A

in a gesture that was in part intimate, in part intimidating, prodded the Colonel’s chest. “You’re sitting on a fence, friend.”
    The Colonel shrugged, a gesture of uncertainty. “I’m only a soldier. An observer. I’m not qualified to say.”
    The Politician, who had no interest in this conversation, watched the condemned man move to the fence. He dropped his flask, which sank into the soft new snow. He went down on his hands and knees to dig for it. When he found it he had difficulty getting to his feet, perpetrating a comedy of errors in the snow—fumbling, slipping, sinking. The KGB man gripped him by the elbow and helped him to stand.
    Hua Tse-Ling was being roped to the wire fence; his face, from a distance of several hundred yards, suggested the smooth surface of a balloon, totally without feature. He had not been blindfolded, a generosity, an etiquette of assassination that in the circumstances would have been absurd.
    The guns popped like last year’s fireworks and what might have been a noise of reverberating viciousness was muffled by the falling snow; and the echoes, such as there were, were sucked away beyond the wire fence and the clump of trees in the distance. Hua Tse-Ling hung against the wire, his face tilted to one side in that unlikely loose way of death.
    â€œWell,” said the KGB man. “End of experiment.”
    â€œOr the beginning,” said the Colonel.
    Pale smoke from the rifles was beginning to disintegrate in the wind and the snow as if nature, in one of her many conspiracies, were secretly erasing the traces of death.

2
    1.
    She could hear the Physician’s voice coming to her through the drift of consciousness, meaningless clusters of words: soon warm everything well warm don’t worry don’t . And she was aware of motion, of the wheels of a locomotive running over rails. Clackclacketyclack . But wherever was she going? And what was the Physician, Domareski, trying to tell her? Her eyelids were heavy, half-moons of some dense metal. She couldn’t look, she couldn’t get her eyes open. Aaron, she thought—where is Aaron? He had to be in the garden, walking between the pines, the baby held in his strong arms. She wanted to call his name but knew there wouldn’t be an answer. Why wouldn’t he answer her? Aaron, beloved Aaron. Soon the pain will be gone be gone gone —Something sharp entered her arm and, even with her eyes closed, she could see the glint of Domareski’s needle. A slight incision: no more pain .
    She was a young girl, eyes clear, hair gold. She was a young girl and Aaron was her husband—but why was she panicked, thinking about him now? There were shadows, shadows within shadows, as if whatever feeble light fell was made to pass through barricade after barricade, obstacles. It was the panic, thinking of her husband, wondering where she was moving and why: it came down to fear. And even Domareski’s voice— relax I’m with you nothing bad can happen to you now —even that soothing voice she so trusted did not diminish her feelings. Why would a young girl be traveling on a railroad? And why was Domareski afraid too?
    Something in his voice. Something she caught . It was a thing he was trying to conceal in the deeps of his mind: a darkly moving fish sliding through murk and silt. But she caught it. Relax relax relax no more fear no pain . She could hear him sigh, she could hear the clasp of his bag close: click. The sound of his feet on the floor. Then he touched her, his fingers cold upon the back of herhand. Don’t leave me alone, she thought. Don’t leave me. She felt the tips of his fingers between her knuckles. Then the pain was gone and when she opened her eyes, conscious at first of some blistering white light in the compartment, she gazed down at her hands—claws, knuckles distorted by arthritis, flesh tight and polished with age: the hands suggested