Facts Relating to the Arrest of Dr. Kalugin

So it was a calm place, Ross, and I could sit calmly in the orchard outside the stockade. There I liked to work on my field credenza (resembling a calfskin volume of Schiller’s poems), and if a naked Indian ambled past with his fishing spear over his shoulder we’d merely wave at each other. On the day the Courier came I had been idling there all morning, typing up my daily report in a desultory way and watching the russet leaves drift down.

“Vasilii Vasilievich!” someone roared, and looking up I beheld Iakov Babin striding through the trees. He was one of the settlers, a peasant who’d worked as a trapper for a time, settled down now with an Indian wife. A tough fellow with a nasty reputation, too, and he looked the part: stocky and muscular, with a wild flowing beard and ferocious tufted eyebrows, and a fixed glare that would have given Ivan the Terrible pause.

“Hey, Vasilii Vasilievich!” he repeated, spurning windfall apples out of his way like so many severed heads as he advanced. I closed my credenza.

“Good afternoon, Babin. How is your wife? Did the salve help?”

“I wouldn’t know, Doc, I ain’t been home yet. I just come back from the Presidio.” He meant the handful of mud huts that would one day be San Francisco. “Jumped off the boat and been five hours on the trail.” He loomed over me and fixed both thumbs in his belt. “You know an Englishman by the name of Currier?”

“Currier?” I scanned my memory. “I don’t believe so, no. Why?”

“Maybe he’s a Yankee. I couldn’t tell what the polecat was, nohow, but he comes on board the Polifem at Yerba Buena and says he’s looking for Dr. Vasilii Kalugin, which is you. Says he’s from some Greek doctor. You ain’t sick, are you, Doc?”

“No, certainly not!”

“No, me and the boys reckoned it was pretty unlikely you’d caught something from a whore!” His hard eyes glinted with momentary good humor, and I was uncomfortably aware of the contempt in which he held me. It wasn’t personal: but I could read and write and wore clothes made in St. Petersburg, which made me a trifle limp in the wrist as far as he was concerned. “So anyway, he’s on his way here now. I got to warn you, Doc, watch out for him.”

“Currier,” I mused aloud. Then I remembered my requisition. Of course! He must be the courier Dr. Zeus was sending with my access code. I improvised: “You know, I do have a maiden aunt in Minsk who put me in her will. Perhaps she’s died. Perhaps that’s what he’s here about. Not to worry, Babin.”

Iakov Dmitrivich shook his bushy head. “He ain’t from Minsk, Doc. More likely from Hell! Me and the boys about figured he’s a dybbuk.”

“Why on earth would you say that?” I frowned. Mortals who can detect the presence of cyborgs are rare, and in any case we’re all trained in a thousand little deceptions to avoid notice.

“He ain’t right somehow.” Babin actually shivered. “The Indians noticed first, and they wouldn’t go near him, though he was real friendly when he come on board. But when we had to sit at anchor a couple days, ’cause the captain took his time about leaving, well, he took on about it like a woman! Sat in his cabin and cried! Brighted up some when we finally lifted anchor, but the longer we were on board the crazier he acted. By the time we finally dropped anchor in Port Rumiantsev we was damn glad to be rid of him, I tell you.”

“Dear me.” I was at a loss. “Well, thank you, Babin. I’ll watch out for the fellow. Though if he’s bringing me a legacy I don’t suppose I’ll care whether he’s a dybbuk or not, eh?”

Babin snorted at my feeble attempt at humor. “Just you watch him, Doc,” he muttered, and departed for the stockade.

I signed off on my credenza and stood, brushing away leaves. Wandering out from the orchard, I looked up at the hills where the trail from Port Rumiantsev came down. Yes, there he was! A pale figure striding along, really rather faster than a mortal would go. Gracious, why hadn’t he taken a horse? I squinted my eyes, focusing long-range.

He looked pale because he was wearing a suit of fawn linen, absurd at this season of the year, and tall buff suede boots. The whole cut of his clothing was indeed English; though he had somehow acquired one of our Russian conical fur hats and wore it jauntily on the back of his head. He was bounding down the trail with a traveling-bag slung over his shoulder, looking all about him with an expression of such fascinated delight one felt certain he was about to miss a step and come tumbling down the steep incline. Had he been a mortal he certainly must have fallen.

I thrust my credenza in a coat pocket and transmitted: Quo Vadis?

Huh? He turned his head sharply in my direction.

Are you the courier?

That’s me! Are you Kalugin? He was speaking Cinema Standard.

Yes.