The Sebakar Sword - The Redhead

The campaign around the eastern reaches of Kenzank Oblast had started with an easy victory, the easy capture of Ikaphoghar, but the job of pursuing the rebels who fled from there proved to be impossible in the limited time available to the expeditionary force. They just kept fading into the desert, breaking up into small detachments to elude their pursuers and increase their mobility, whenever a column of Russian troops approached. The inhabitants of Ikaphoghar, meanwhile, slowly drifted back to their homes as word spread that the Russians were not, after all, intent on reprisals against their persons or property.

The provisional brigade's activities thus became an expensive and exhausting diversion absorbing the efforts of too many men to be continued. The order came from Korosun within one month after Ikaphoghar was captured to abandon the campaign and return all troops to the camps around Korosun. Not even a corporal's guard stayed behind to garrison Ikaphoghar.

The army had decided to concentrate around the main body of Rakllama's forces in northern Kenzank rather than scatter its energies on sideshows. Around headquarters in Makhan-e-Maroun Palace, there was much talk among the staff officers, who relished such forceful terms, of a "quick knockout blow."

To bring a quick end to the fighting in Kenzank, accordingly, the Czar had ordered a caravan of dragoons, wagons crammed with military cargo, and wagons loaded with food, medical supplies, and schoolbooks for his new subjects.

Turania, as European editorial writers were addicted to saying, was being "Russianized." The more imperialist-minded even referred to the country, in an excess of racial pride, as "Oriental Russia."

The process of Russianization, of course, could not even be started without the presence of the Russian female. Weren't women of the hardier sort trekking over the Ural mountain passes to Siberia? Hadn't women, after all, tamed the Cossacks?

So the ladies came that spring and summer, by train and wagon, many of them eager for the mem-sahibhood as described in the works of Rudyard Kipling and anticipating the establishment of their new homes in the palaces and mansions pre-empted from the previous masters. These were the officers' ladies and the wives of officials in the new civil administration. The former felt they had endured enough privation on frontier posts back home; the latter, as consorts of jumped-up minor noblemen, were wearing of scraping along on government pay in Moscow boardinghouses. They soon learned that there weren't enough palatial dwellings to accommodate all comers.

Along with the wives came women little concerned with physical comfort or luxury. These were the dedicated, the idealistic, the obsessed women with a mission. they had pledged themselves to educate the Turanians, save them from disease and malnutrition, and rescue them from the medieval embrace of the Muslim holy men. they were teachers, nurses, missionaries, and uplifters of all kinds.

Between these two groups, as the trains from Moscow disgorged them, there was little commingling and less sympathy. The lady missionary and the officer's lady may have been sisters under the skin but they both preferred not to think so.

As they descended on Korosum by the scores and then by the hundreds, the whole atmosphere of the capital underwent a softening and gentle process. What had been a vast military camp became, in the space of a few months, a Russian city (now renamed Korosumska) with as many Slavic virtues as could be hastily superimposed on a subtly resistant "Oriental Russia."

Urvan Spravtsev's regiment settled down in its camp north of Korosumska near the old Muslim cemetery at Sinkmek and awaited orders for the northward drive. Dimitri's battalion, including his brother Alexei's company, was bivouacked on high ground at the western end of the camp. The men were kept busy at drill and in regimental maneuvers designed to fit them into brigade-scale attacks along a wide front, which suggested to the younger officers that the senior generals were still thinking of the Crimean War and the broad vistas of Sevastopol and Balaclava.

The younger officers were sternly discouraged from thinking along such tactical lines as preparing to fight along narrow desert trails, over mountains, or in tiny forest clearings. Such thinking was "unsoldierly." Their seniors could only envision climactic battles in which the massed forces of the Russian army and Rakllama's irregulars faced each other in a fight to the finish. But the younger officers knew that this was no country for brave banners and grand assaults, and were disheartened by their elders' nostalgia for the war that had ended forty years ago on the other side of their vast nation.

To alleviate the sense of futility that hovered over the encampment, the inactivity and boredom, Dimitri and Alexei often drove into the city. Usually, they went their separate ways and sought their separate friends. Korosumska that spring and summer became the site of a grand reunion of the Imperial Army. Long-separated comrades met for the first time in years. Imperial Military College classmates, separated since graduation by the exigencies of the service, gathered to carouse and reminisce. And there was the growing attraction of the newly-arrived womenfolk.

Dimitri usually managed to spend Saturday and Sunday in Korosumska, putting up at the Hafrar Inn overnight and returning to camp late Sunday night. Early one Saturday afternoon he was strolling along the Fahar when he heard his name shouted above the hum of the carriage wheels on the wide boulevard. Out of the scrambling of traffic, a radizmal emerged and made for the curb, with a lanky civilian waving his arms and shouting. The 2-wheeled carriage nearly capsized under the stress of its passenger's frantic attempts to attract Dimitri's attention, and its driver was strenuously engaged in trying to control his excitable little horse in cursing the destiny that brought him into daily association with lunatic Russians. The driver began beating his horse with the whip. It was then that Dimitri saw there was a second passenger in the radizmal, a young woman who also rose to her feet and began berating the driver and pounding his shoulders with his fists. Between the rearing horse, the beleaguered driver, the gesticulating man, and the woman flailing away at the driver, it seemed sure that the carriage would be shattered and all four would be caught in a tangle of wreckage. Dimitri was reminded of a scene in a Harrigan & Hart show he had seen as a cadet, low comedy at its best, and burst out laughing. All of a sudden the occupants of the carriage quieted down, the coachman regained control of his vehicle, and the radizmal made its way towards him while the other drivers shouted denunciations at this disruption of the traffic.

Dimitri then observed that the male passenger was a familiar figure out of the recent past---Dr. Milorad V. Elmpt, who had been a contract surgeon at Fort Torchinovich until several years ago. Elmpt had left his post to become a ship's doctor, and Dimitri had never expected to see him again, although they had been close friends at Torchinovich. But there was no doubt it was Elmpt; no one else could cast his dignity to the winds with such disjointed enthusiasm as his old friend.

The native driver brought his carriage to a halt a few yards away and Dimitri hurried over to greet Elmpt, who had propelled himself out of the radizmal with a clumsy leap.

"Dimitri, you old bastard, I've been wondering when I'd run into you," Elmpt exclaimed, pumping his arm with needless violence. "I knew the 4th Regiment had been sent out here, but apparently they've scattered you all over the Korgay."

"Milo, Milo, you haven't changed a bit, still the same old madman," Dimitri said.

There were few people Dimitri was fonder of, despite their many disagreements and dissimilarities, despite Elmpt's crossgrained, iconoclastic and argumentative disposition. His friend towered over Dimitri by 3 or 4 cadaverous inches. Milorad V. Elmpt was a beanpole of a man, topped off with a spiky red thatch. His green eyes were habitually bloodshot--often from alcohol, at least in the old days--and he had the dead-white skin that usually goes with flaming red hair. His forearms, jutting out of a rather-badly cut white duck suit, were more like buggy whips than human limbs. He was a good ten years older than Dimitri and looked even older than that. Elmpt, although he often referred to himself with mock pomposity as a "sobersided man of science," had not a whit of scientific detachment. He was a man of wild enthusiasms and deep black depressions, with odd energy which he stored, during long spells of laziness, like camels store up water for use when he needs it.

Elmpt insisted on pounding Dimitri on the back for several moments and uttering almost unintelligible cries of rejoicing at their reunion.

".....Good God, boy, I just noticed that you're wearing oak leave," Elmpt said finally. "Mustn't despoil the dignity of a full-blown major, eh?"

"I don't recall that you ever had any fawning respect for rank, Milo."

"Still don't, still don't. All a lot of nonsense and you know it, Dimitri, whether you'll admit it or not. Now look here, you've got to come along to the inn with us. Drop whatever you're doing, dammit, and come along."

"I'm not doing anything at the moment."

Elmpt dragged him towards the carriage, where a young woman---much younger than Elmpt---was waiting and struggling to compose herself.

"This little one," he explained with a casual wave of his hand, "is my sister Chloe. Chloe, you've often heard me speak of Lieutenant Karamozov, Dimitri Karamazov, who shared a bachelor's set with me back at Fort Torchinovich. He's a major now, and here he is in all his martial glory."

"How do you do, Major," Chloe Elmpt said with a formality that did not seem natural to her. "I hope you will forgive the scene. My brother, as you must know, is an idiot. He got all excited when he saw you. Consequently, the driver got excited and beat his horse. I can't stand cruelty of any kind and did my best to make the driver stop."

"I wondered why you were thumping him on the back."

"Chloe often forgets she's a lady," Elmpt said cheerfully.

"Being a dragoon by trade, I hate to see horses beaten myself," Dimitri said. He climbed into the radizmal beside the young woman while Elmpt went around to the other side. Then the driver shook his reins and the gaunt but hardy little horse set off at a brisk pace along the Fahar.

Chloe Elmpt could pride herself on a number of physical improvements over her older brother. She had red hair and green eyes, but her hair was a darker and richer shade than the fireweed that sprouted out of Milorad's skull and her eyes were a deeper, less angry, and violent green and her skin had a creamy texture, totally lacking in the fish-belly pallor of Milorad's face. Dimitri's first quick impression of the young woman was of sturdiness and sensibility also lacking in Milorad, a balance, and practicality unknown to her quixotic brother. He recalled that Milorad had told him of a younger sister just starting to teach school in Belenko Oblast, and while there was little of the schoolmarm's starchiness about her, he could imagine her calmly keeping control over a roomful of louts resentful of learning.

"I think it's disgusting the way these people treat their animals," Chloe said, tilting her parasol to glance at Dimitri. Her face was squarish, with wide cheekbones, eyes slightly tilted, mouth firm and full. The gesture with the parasol, in most women, would have been provocative. Chloe merely wanted to look at him and did so with no suggestion of playing peekaboo.

"People who live in misery," her brother said, "rarely feel they can afford to coddle their beasts of burden. This pony probably lives almost as well as his master.

They crossed over the Sultan's Bridge spanning the Ilburz and entered the walled city through an ornate gate embossed with the Sultan's emblem. Here in the old city south of the river, the streets were narrow, with overhanging balconies and dim archways. This quarter, three centuries old, was there the traders---not nearly so grand as the fruit and nut barons established in the Ihdeti and Onurmer districts---had shut out the native swarm and the blinding sun behind latticed windows and thick stone walls and had fortified themselves here for generations. Occasionally they drove through a plaza with its pink domed mosque and wide dusty spaces. The walled city maintained its air of exclusiveness against all comers; its streets were quiet, clean, and dignified, although denied the bleaching sunlight by roofs and balconies that were almost interlocked. The whole quarter seemed to have been designed to shed the heat, noise, and filth of the new city that surrounded it.

They came to one of the small inns near the western wall, entering a stone courtyard surrounded by pony stalls. Milorad paid off the driver and led them into its dark passages, where young houseboys skated along the corridors with kerosene-soaked burlap wrapped around their feet to polish and disinfect the floors. Milorad and his sister had three rooms, a bedroom for each connected with a sitting room fitted out with the somber discomforts of Oriental furnishing.

"I suppose you're wondering what we're doing out here," Elmpt said when they had settled themselves in the sitting room and Chloe had sent down for a tray of coffee and black bread. Elmpt stretched his storklike legs and waited to be begged for enlightenment. Dimitri, however, just grinned, knowing his friend was bursting with enthusiasm over something, probably the reason for his presence in Korosumska.

"Public Health Service!" Elmpt blurted out. "Yes, Dimitri, despite my vows on leaving Fort Torchinovich, I'm still back on the government payroll. As you know, I was a ship's doctor for a year or two in the Bering Sea. I've traveled all the way to India, by God!"

"Yes, I received one or two postcards from there in answer to a dozen letters," Dimitri said.

"Oh hell, you know I'm a rotten unfaithful correspondent."

"Out of sight, out of mind," said Dimitri.

"He only wrote me one letter in two years," Chloe Elmpt said, "and that commanded me, 'Drop everything and meet me in Bombay in six weeks."

"All right, now let me explain," Elmpt said. "You'll remember, Dimitri, how restless I got at Fort Torchinovich. Drank too much, and let myself go to seed because there was nothing for me to do. Oh, it would have been all right for some old pill-pounder who just wanted to take it easy. But I spent six years there and treated nothing but an occasional typhoid infection, an occasional broken leg, the odd gunshot wound now and then. I used to drive the farrier sergeant half-crazy prowling around the stables and looking for a sick horse to cure. There wasn't enough scope for a man ambitious to take on an epidemic singlehanded, or some such feat.

"I found out that being a ship's doctor, while it cured my restlessness, was just another goddamn bore. You can get mighty weary of looking at the Indian Ocean week on end, with nothing more to occupy your mind than the boils on the captain's butt---beg your pardon, Chloe---and heat prostration, seasickness or two.

"So I dropped off the ship one day and set up a practice in Bombay. Beautiful city, but somehow I couldn't think of looking after the British colonial liver---a mighty delicate organ, by the way---as a life's work. So when we Russians decided to save the Turanians from themselves, or whatever phrase His Majesty, the Czar favored, I saw my chance. Signed on with Public Health through the Russian consulate in Bombay. I had already made several trips to the heart of Central Asia and fell in love with these lands at first sight. Pearl of the East, indeed. It's the only real estate out here with grabbing, trust me, although I don't care much for the way we've gone about it, gobbling it up pious as an Orthodox priest at a church supper. but, man, there are a thousand nameless diseases to cope with, a millennium of neglect and ignorance to make up for. You must have seen it, Dimitri. Diseases that turn a man into a lump of grotesque flesh, and begging to be wiped out, only nobody's ever given a damn before. Just like Africa and China, although the white man still doesn't give a damn there. Let the beggars rot in front of their eyes, none of their business, that's the ticket over there. Well, by God, we're not going to behave like that in Turania---we'll clean up every pesthole in this place before we're through!"

Elmpt slammed the arm of his chair so violently the dust came out in a puff like a smoking cannon.

"Now, now, Milorad," Chloe murmured. "Don't take it out on the chair."

"After joining the Public Health Service," Elmpt continued less violently, "I decided it was time Chloe stopped wasting her time in a Belenko whistle-stop, and, as her brother and an only surviving relative I told her to meet me in Bombay and prepare to take up teaching in Turania."

"I might have come anyway, without any big-brotherly urging," Chloe said. "The newspapers back home are crowded with advertisements to recruit teachers for Turania. I quote: 'Visit this desert oasis at Mother Russia's expense. Adventure and romance await you under starry skies. Go to Turania where life is easy, help is plentiful, and every date palm is a free-lunch counter.' Yes, that's an exact quotation, Major Karamazov. Not very dignified or scholarly but you can imagine its effect on a schoolteacher for whom a trip to Yalta is the height of adventure. Even without a suggestion from Milorad, you couldn't have kept me away from here."

"Will you be staying in Korosumska?" Dimitri asked.

"Unfortunately for Chloe, no," Elmpt said.

"Unfortunately for me?!" Chloe exploded in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"Most of your female colleagues came out here hoping to land a husband," Elmpt said. "I've even had a few offers myself. The hunting would be better in Korosumska."

"Liar! Nobody'd have a gawk at you. That's why you wanted me to come out---to look after you in your rapidly encroaching old age."

"It's good she's resigned herself to spinsterhood and looking after her senile brother," Elmpt told Dimitri. "We've both been assigned to the Sebakar region of Kenzankian Plains, not far from the Cteldun Oblast. Ah, those are summer lands, always a breeze, never a thunderstorm. I've visited the Karamheb Valley and Dharpar Pass. Professional visits, tell you about them later. The most serene place in all Asia, in these lands, provided you don't annoy the locals.

"Chloe will set up a school in the territory while I take up cudgels against disease, ignorance, backwardness---bring this place out of the Dark Ages."

"It won't be serene much longer," Dimitri said, "with you rampaging around the place."

"Yes," Chloe said, "the people will be miserable but healthy."

"And educated until their skulls ache," Dimitri added.

"Thank you, but I'm not the fanatic my brother is. I'll be content if I can teach the children to read and write."

"Paskov's Reader on the march," Elmpt snorted. "We'll be leaving as soon as we can draw supplies and arrange passage to Sebakar on the first southbound train."

"In that case," Dimitri said, "I hope you can have dinner with me tonight at the Hafrar. I want to see something of both of you before you leave Korosumska."

"By God," Elmpt said to his sister, "I believe you've captured the major's fancy."

This was true enough, Dimitri thought, observing Chloe as she blushed with the becoming splendor of the redhead. He felt at ease with her. She seemed a simple and forthright young lady, with an uncomplicated sense of humor that owed nothing to malicious wit. Dimitri admitted to himself that he resented women who specialized in clever remarks which invariably sank their barbs in someone else's skin, that he had no idea of how to deal with such women.

When he took Chloe's hand on departure-she returned his grip with an unaffected warmth, not at all the dainty handshake of a young Russian lady.

On the long walk back through the walled city and along the Fahar, Dimitri recalled the ties of affection and gratitude that bound him to Milorad V. Elmpt. Few at Fort Torchinovich had approved of their close friendship. Elmpt not only drank to great excess during fits of boredom and depression but did not trouble to conceal his distaste for army tradition and army society. A contract surgeon, unlike a regimental surgeon, was quite often a know-nothing civilian. His drinking was quite forgivable because the drunken medic was a familiar figure on Russian frontier posts, but Dimitri's fellow officers could not overlook his near-renegade attitude towards their activities, his insistence on maintaining close friendships with the Buryats and the Jukagirs, and his frequent proclamations that Siberian ethics and morals were "vastly superior to those found in Moscow society, in the Czar's Palace, or even in the Kremlin."

Through sharing quarters with Elmpt, Dimitri inevitably acquired something of his outlook, learned to speak the languages of the Siberian peoples, and spent much time in their villages. On at least one occasion a Buryat outbreak that might have flared up through the whole of the Irkutsk Oblast was averted because of Milorad V. Elmpt's tutelage. Down at the Irkutsk agency a blockheaded teacher had whipped two of his young pupils so severely that they fled from the agency school and subsequently were drowned in a creek. The Buryats converged on the agency from their villages up and down the Yenisei. For the first time in years, the lines of helmeted and fur-clad horsemen surrounded a government post and threatened massacre. They demanded that the teacher who had whipped the dead boys be turned over to them. A message was sent over the wires to Fort Torchinovich just before the telegraph line was cut. Dimitri and his troop, accompanied by Elmpt, pounded down the road to Irkutsk all night and arrived at the agency just before daybreak. On the outskirts Elmpt persuaded Dimitri to leave the Cossack troop on the other side of the Yenisei from the agency; otherwise, he argued, there'd be a "fight for sure" and likely an uprising throughout the Irkutsk Oblast. So, Dimitri and Elmpt rode along to meet the Buryat chiefs. An all-day parley followed, endless harangues and repetitious soliloquies, impassioned recitals of the wrongs done to the Buryat people for the past forty years. But Dimitri had learned patience and the virtue of (as Elmpt put it) possessing a stone ass in his dealings with the tribesmen. When they had exhausted their grievances, they agreed quickly enough to trust Dimitri to see that the teacher was punished for his brutality, and dispersed to their villages. Dimitri was promoted to 1st lieutenant as a result of his handling of the situation, but Elmpt was as much an outcast as ever on the post. Elmpt stubbornly refused to make any concessions to what he referred to as "the beauty and chivalry of Fort Torchinovich," went on occasional sprees, littered the two rooms of their bachelor's set with medical books, and studied for the day when he might make use of his learning and his sympathy for the peoples who had been bypassed by Western civilization and then suddenly caught up in its spreading designs.

In a way, Dimitri could see, Elmpt's whole life had been shaped toward the end now foreseeable in South Central Asia. He couldn't help wondering, though, whether Chloe Elmpt deserved to be hauled along in the wake of her brother's irascible, often erratic, and wayward progress towards his goal.137Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8ynXyhvoLD
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That evening Milorad and Chloe, the latter in an emerald gown well suited to her hair and complexion, dined with Dimitri at the Hafrar Inn. The dining room was crowded, particularly by army officers' wives whose husbands were out on the various stations of the new Russian Asiatic presence, but they were shown a choice table overlooking the plaza. In the middle of the plaza was a large fountain whose leaping waters sparkled brilliantly under the hidden lights. Faintly in the background was the music of a piano and a sitar, playing something in a minor key, something Turkish or Persian or maybe Turanian.

Four women seated at the table next to them talked rather loudly about their difficulties. All had recently come west from Moscow to join their husbands, who were stationed at the Simheb army base. The burden of their complaints was that housing was in charge of the quartermaster's department, which was slow about finding them "suitable quarters." One rather florid middle-aged lady, obviously the wife of a senior officer, wailed to her companions, "I just won't feel safe until Kazimir persuades those people to find us a decent house with reliable servants. There's not a night I don't fall asleep praying that one of the servants here doesn't break down the door and murder me in my bed. The floor boy, just by the way that he looks at me when I ask him to do the simplest little chore, I just know he's meditating something foul..."

Dimitri and his friends couldn't help overhearing the ladies' complaints. Milorad, dissecting half a broiled partridge with surgical precision, grinned widely at the recital of their fears of the "natives."

"The northern Turanians are a gentle folk, by and large," Milorad said. "Treat them right and they're dead loyal. But the Seraris, down where we're going, they're another breed altogether. Buryats on camels, they are. They'd really give these ladies something to fret over."

Dimitri thought of Fenuldhun, the Serari he'd released at Ikaphoghar, and quietly agreed with Milorad.

"When I visited Karamheb a while back, they told of how a tribe of bear hunters from one of the other villages traveled on horseback to Karamheb to do a little hunting. The Seraris greeted them in a friendly manner, took the visitors to their village, and prepared a feast for them. Just before the roast lamb was served the Seraris fell on their guests with their toumbars and hacked every last one of the hunters to bits. I mean that literally, tiny little pieces of flesh and bone."

Chloe dropped her fork on the plate with an indignant clatter and said, "Must you tell people that grisly little story every time we sit down to dinner?"

By the time they had finished dinner and were lingering over red wine and coffee, the dining room had been cleared except for a few other tables of late diners. Something of the brooding darkness outside the tall windows seemed to have invaded the large and luxurious room, a feeling heightened as the Turanian servants went from table to table snuffing out the candles. All of a sudden, the lights playing on the fountain in the plaza also were extinguished, leaving the wide square in darkness except for street lamps at the entrances to the plaza.

Far off there was measured drumming which could be dimly heard or sensed, even through the Hafrar Inn's massive walls and foundation. The few remaining diners stared around in puzzled alarm. Chloe Elmpt looked at her companions questioningly. Coming closer, a thousand footfalls beating against the cobbled street leading into the plaza from the south had the sound of muffled thunder.

A regiment of infantry was marching through the city towards the camps on the northern edge of Korosumska, where Dimitri's battalion was posted.

A dark and flowing mass of men, quiet except for the cadence of their foot beats, passed beneath the window where Dimitri and his friends were seated. Occasionally there was a glimmer of light on a naked bayonet, but the men themselves were faceless, anonymous, like figures in a nightmare. There was something spectral and disturbing about that silent passage of men under arms as if they were marching into some dark void.

The eeriness of that march-past so affected Dimitri that he called out the window. "What regiment are you?"

There was no answer. The last segment of the long column passed under the window and was swallowed up by the darkness.

Dimitri felt foolish for having called out to them, and muttered, "They seemed unreal, like ghosts somehow."

"Like a procession of martyrs," Milorad V. Elmpt said.

"Just ordinary Russians boys, I suppose," Dimitri said, shaking himself out of the mood. "One night soon my regiment will be marching out to the north."

He noted with a sneaking satisfaction that a kind of shadow fell across Chloe Elmpt's ordinarily bright and cheerful face.

In the next few weeks, Dimitri saw much of Milorad and Chloe; particularly Chloe since Milorad was strenuously engaged in prying supplies out of the Army Medical Corps and arranging transportation to Sebakar. He spent the weekends and an occasional evening during the week in Korosumska. Sometimes, just before dusk, they drove out along the Fahar to listen to an army band concert or to watch a soccer match between rival army teams at the terminus of the drive at the desert's edge.

Occasionally they attended a reception of which Dimitri's appearance was more or less mandatory, although Chloe could not pretend to enjoy these functions where Turanians seeking to integrate themselves with the new rulers, wealthy natives clinging to some of their former privileges by the grace of their conquerors, and the Russians of rank and status met, mingled and tried to understand one another.

Chloe, he observed, was not at ease with the ladies of any of these two groups, who occupied themselves mainly with trying to outdo each other in hauteur and the exhibition of Paris fashion, the Russians, naturally, having readier access to the Paris fashion houses. The Turanian women, however, outshone the Russians with their native grace, and the brilliant fabrics and flowering designs of the garments they wore were much more attractive than the whalebone and heavy satin in which the Russian women encased themselves.

In this covert feminine competition, Chloe could only be a wistful onlooker. "If only you knew how popular I was considered at quilting bees and the like," she said. "But where I come from nobody ever taught their daughters just to stand there looking beautiful and talking nonsense. I just never learned to chatter---there was never time. Back home at a party like this the women would be gathered at one end of the room and talk about babies, recipes, and so on. How I envy these women, and how dowdy I must look beside them!"

In that kind of mood, Dimitri realized, there was little a man could say to reassure a woman. It was purely a feminine matter, too much involved with womanly pride for clumsy male comment. Nevertheless, Chloe did not compare as poorly with the others as she thought. Maybe she was too healthy to pose as wanly as a delicate-little-flower type and not nearly fleshy enough to fit into the Lillian Russell pattern, but she was a very nicely fashioned young female, ruddy good health and all. Her eyes were so clear and vivid, her complexion so unblemished, that the other women looked waxen and lifeless beside her. Fortunately, she was a good foot shorter than her lanky brother, and she had no one of his disjointed angularity. Something was appealing about her attempt at assuming the schoolmarm's authoritative manner. She was truly a gentle creature, with none of the malic that broke the polite surface of so many women's social behavior. Dimitri had found himself taking a constant silent delight in her company.

At once reception that they attended at Makhan-e-Maroun Palace Dimitri suddenly became aware of the fact that Alexei, smiling speculatively, was observing them from a corner of the vast chamber.

A moment later Dimitri could see his brother pushing through the throng towards them. There was no polite way of avoiding an encounter.

Dimitri realized, with a slight shock, that he had never mentioned Alexei to Chloe or even the fact that he had a brother. The introduction was somewhat strained and awkward.

"I didn't even know you had a brother," Chloe said with a hint of reproach.

"Oh, Dimitri keeps me hidden as much as possible," Alexei said. "I steal all his girls, you see."

"I can see why," Chloe said flatly.

"Give me a chance and you'll see," Alexei said, showing his white teeth and directing the full candlepower of his dark eyes on the girl. "Dimitri, I dare you to leave us alone for five minutes."

Dimitri remembered how many times that air of overpowering self-confidence had worked in the past with impressionable girls. "Why should I?" he asked. "I'm not in the mood for silly games."

"A dare, that's why. When you return, I wager you'll find us both missing."

"What an amusing and audacious idea," Chloe trilled in a tone of artificial gaiety he had never heard her use before. "Why don't you take the dare, Dimitri?"

Dimitri, trying to stifle the unpleasant feeling that he was being sent down the garden path, announced somewhat stiffly that he would get them all a glass of punch.

"Yes, why don't you do that, old sport?" Alexei said with a laugh.

Instead of heading for the punch bowl, however, Dimitri doubled back through the throng and slipped behind a marble column to watch what passed between Chloe and Alexei.

Chloe was looking up at him with a smile on her face, not at all displeased by his attentions, Dimitri gathered. There was no reason why she shouldn't be as vulnerable as 99% of her sisters. That rooster's strut and chortle had swayed smart women as well as stupid women, impressionable girls and women of the world. there was a kind of lawlessness about Alexei that appealed to women. The female might school herself to search for some security, emotional and otherwise, but she was always perversely attracted to the rakehell who offered her nothing but a moment of his time.

Dimitri saw that Alexei was holding the girl's elbow and urging her towards the nearest exit. Chloe was still smiling but her jaw was set in stubborn lines. Alexei's challenging smile, during this little tug of war, assumed a slightly desperate aspect; it was very important to him apparently, that he scored one more point against his brother.

Alexei tugged at the girl so hard that she nearly fell.

A moment later, still smiling evenly, Chloe kicked Alexei sharply in the shins, and his expression changed from urgent charm to brief anguish. He dropped the girl's arm and started limping away.

When Dimitri confronted him a moment later in the crowd Alexei's face was clouded with rage and frustration.

"No joy, Alex?" Dimitri enquired with a show of sympathy.

"She's a coarse little beast and stubborn as a mule," said Alexei, tugging at his tunic and looking over Dimitri's shoulder, as if surveying the field for worthier targets. "The two of you should get along just fine. You can have that one."

Dimitri, laughing, returned to Chloe's side.

Her encounter with Alexei left Chloe quite unruffled. Looking a little more doughty than ever, in fact, she told Dimitri, "Your brother isn't quite as overpowering as he imagines. From the look on your face when you left us, I think you thought he'd manage to sweep me off my feet. In five minutes! I may be a school teacher from the hinterlands, but your brother isn't so rare a specimen as he fancies---just a little better looking than the drummers who sit in hotel lobby windows and call out to every passing female under 60."

"I admire you for standing your ground," Dimitri said, "not to mention your fancy footwork."

"I suppose most of the ladies here would have tapped him with a fan, but I don't happen to have one. A kick in the shin isn't very ladylike but I couldn't think of anything else at the time."

"A tap with a fan would only have encouraged him."

"And besides I couldn't have carried off the gesture," Chloe said ruefully. "I'd have looked as natural as an elephant taking up toe dancing. It's something else that takes practice."

"Why don't we clear out of here?" Dimitri suggested. "I've done my duty, and I don't think they'll miss us."

"By all means, let's!"

They had just turned to go when a brilliantly clad figure appeared before them, temporarily blocking their withdrawal. It was Fenuldhun, the Serari who'd been a prisoner in Dimitri's compound in Ikaphoghar. The wiry little man wore a bright green turban the size of a bushel basket, a lilac-colored tunic, and red and white striped pantaloons. He clasped his hands and bowed before Dimitri.

"I bid you good night, Major," Fenuldhun said.

Dimitri extended his hand but Fenuldhun kept his hands clasped to his breast and murmured, "It is not one of our customs, the handshake; it is too intensely personal, and we are an austere people, Major."

"I thought you would be returning home before this," Dimitri said.

"There is more here which I wish to see. I am fascinated by the manner in which you have transported your soldiers, your food and equipment, and even your manufactories across the mighty desert. You have brought your cities with you and planted them in our midst. It is a remarkable thing how you Russians manage to transform the most alien country into your own."

"I'd never thought of it, but I suppose it's impressive."

"It is not merely impressive, but frightening," Fenuldhun said. "I am not referring, please understand, to the destruction, the killing, which this enormous machine of yours might perform. What frightens me is the changes you are able to perform in such a short time in our neighboring lands and peoples. These Turanians are becoming Russians! But like all monkeys, of course, they possess a talent for imitation."

"May I present Miss Chloe Elmpt," Dimitri said, unable until then to break into Fenuldhun's dissertation.

Fenuldhun bowed again and looked Chloe over with great interest.

"Miss Elmpt," Dimitri said, "is going to teach school in the southern oblasts, the Sebakar region, to be exact. Do you know it, Fenuldhun?"

"I do indeed, Major. I was born there."

"Miss Elmpt's brother is also going to the Sebakar. He's with the Public Health Service."

Fenuldhun sighed. "Even in our ancient Sebakar, then, you Russians intend to spread your schoolbooks and medicines. Have you been bidden to come?"

"No, Mr. Fenuldhun," Chloe said in a low voice.

"No honorifics, if you please, my lady," Fenuldhun said. "The title of Mister holds no meaning for me. You may address me simply as Fenuldhun."

"I didn't mean to annoy you," Chloe said. "I know as little of your ways as you do of ours."

"Oh, my lady, I know more of your ways than you give me credit for. That is why it distresses me to learn that you and your brother are journeying to Sebakar. You will not find it a friendly place. My people, in the highlands, are not eager for your school or your hospital. I cannot speak for the lowland people, who are of a different sort, a servile, and peace-loving people."

"I don't understand," Chloe said with asperity, "how you can object to education and better health for your people. You are obviously educated and healthy yourself. How can you forbid it for others?"

Fenuldhun turned to Dimitri with a pained smile. "Among my people, Major, it is not customary for men to dispute with women. There can, in fact, be no dispute. We may be backward in your eyes, but there is peace beneath our roofs."

There was an uncomfortable silence among the three of them until Fenuldhun spoke again.

"I am returning to Sebakar soon myself," he said. "I must ready my people for what is to come. You have a saying that 'trade follows the flag.' It is also true that your regiments follow the doctors, teachers, and missionaries."

"And you intend to oppose this?" Dimitri asked.

"With all my might, Major, and with every sword blade that I can muster among my people. The Serari is a fighter such as you have never encountered. If you have any regard for your woman, Major, you will persuade her not to leave Korosumska."

Fenuldhun bowed, turned, and then left them without another word.

Dimitri put his hand on Chloe's arm to guide her towards the door and felt a shudder pass through her. "Is he out of his mind, Dimitri? The way he looked just then...."

"He's a fanatic. I doubt whether he's certifiably insane. I think he's more of a talker than a doer....a politician, we'd call him back home, with oriental refinements."

As they started towards the door Dimitri noticed the huge mosaic portrait of Turania's former ruler, Sultan Amajam Mohammed XIII still in its place on the stone walls of the main salon. Dimitri gestured towards them and remarked, "In spite of what Fenuldhun said about the changes we bring, there's evidence to the contrary. Nobody's thought to replace it with a portrait of Czar Nicholas II showing his reticent smile."

The following Sunday Chloe and Milorad boarded a small, filthy, and rusty riverboat bound for Sebakar. Milorad, oddly sensitive to the atmosphere, said goodbye to Dimitri on deck and announced that he must go below to make sure their supplies had been properly stowed away.137Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9IGnjBcQQ4

Dimitri took Chloe by the arm and drew her around to the other side of a hummock of cargo lashed to the deck under canvas. The sense of imminent loss was almost overwhelming. He had become accustomed to spending all his free time with Chloe and felt more strongly attached to her than to any woman since Raisa; more than to Raisa, maybe, for he had instinctively trusted Chloe from the moment they met. Maybe it was more than friendship that was developing between them. He knew that when he was with her he didn't think about Raisa Milekhina and the fact that she would soon be coming to the new territory with her father, who had been ordered to Korosumska a fortnight ago. Yet she was more than an anodyne, and somehow had made him feel better about all women. Until he met her, he now realized, he had been in danger of assuming the sterile and witless role of the woman-hater.

"I'll miss the hell out of you," he told her when they were secluded from the noisy goodbyes of the others on deck. "I want to kiss you goodbye."

Without a word she reached up and put her arms around his neck and kissed him with a fervor that exceeded the requirements of a friendly farewell. It was a very businesslike kiss, and Dimitri returned it with interest. They were both breathless and a little shaken when they stepped back from each other.

"Don't forget me," she said. "Leave me now. I guess I'm going to cry a little and I don't like to blubber in public."

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