Facts Relating to the Arrest of Dr. Kalugin

Thus the case never came to trial, and I was left under a sort of half-hearted house arrest that nobody bothered to enforce. And, you know, the rest of my time there was extraordinarily happy! I became accepted, respected, liked. Apparently a man who can deliver babies with one hand and kill dybbuks with the other was just what people wanted on the frontier. I stayed on at the Ross colony until it was sold to Mr. Sutter ten years later, though I didn’t go home with my fellow Russians right away: but that’s another story.

I can’t say it’s a comfort to think that Courier is still out there on the road somewhere, in endless transit like an orbiting moon. It’s likely enough that at some point in the next thirty thousand years our paths will cross again, so I’m grateful he won’t remember me.

But, think about it: you may well have seen him yourself. In some city, on some tourist boat or in some railway carriage, there is always a stupid young man in the happy morning of his life, chatting with perfect strangers and exclaiming over the scenery; and he is always alone.