brandy, motioned with his cigarette. The man on his left passed the ashtray; half of the 
hot ash found its target, the rest fell to the floor. In a moment or two the carpet began 
to smoulder and a curl of acrid smoke rose up. The flanking men sat still, deliberately 
ignoring the burning. They knew how the older man hated fussers and fidgets. But at last 
their boss sniffed, glanced down at the floor from beneath bushy black eyebrows, ground 
his shoe into the carpet, to and fro, until the smouldering patch was extinguished.
  Beyond the screen, preparations of a sort had been in progress. In the Western World it 
might be said that a man had been 'psyching himself up'. His method had been simple... 
startlingly simple in the light of what was about to occur: he had cleansed himself. He 
had stripped naked and bathed, minutely and laboriously soaping and scrubbing every 
square inch of his body. He Iliad shaved himself, removing all surface hair from his 
person with the exception of the close-cropped hair of his head. He had defecated before 
and after his bath, on the second occasion doubly ensuring his cleanliness by washing his 
parts again in hot water and towelling himself dry. And then, still completely naked, he 
had rested. His method of resting would have seemed macabre in |he extreme to anyone not 
in the know, but it was all part ||of the preparations. He had gone to sit beside the 
second occupant of the room where he lay upon a not quite I horizontal table or trolley 
with a fluted aluminium surface, I |and had lain his head on his folded arms where he 
rested them upon the other's abdomen. Then he had closed his eyes and, apparently, had 
slept for some fifteen minutes.There was nothing erotic in it, nothing remotely 
homosexual. The man on the trolley was also naked, much older than the first, flabby, 
wrinkled, and bald but for a fringe of grey hair at his temples. He was also very dead; 
buteven in death his pallid, puffy face, thin mouth and dense grey inward-slanting 
eyebrows were cruel.
  All of this the three on the other side of the screen had watched, and all had been 
accomplished with a sort of clinical detachment and with no outward indication of 
awareness from the-performer?-that they were there at all. He had simply 'forgotten' 
their presence; his work was all-engrossing, too important to admit of outside agencies 
or interference's.
  But now he stirred, lifted his head, blinked his eyes twice and slowly stood up. All 
was now in order, the inquiry could commence.
  The three watchers leaned forward a little in their armchairs, automatically controlled 
their breathing, centred all their attention on the naked man. It was as if they feared 
to disturb something, and this despite the fact that their observation cell was 
completely insulated, soundproof as a vacuum.
  Now the naked man turned the trolley carrying the corpse until its lower end, where the 
clay-cold feet projected a little way and made a 'V, overhung the lip of the bath. He 
drew forward a second, more conventional trolley-table and opened the leather case which 
lay upon it, displaying scalpels, scissors, saws-a whole range of razor-sharp surgical 
instruments.
  In the observation cell, the man in the centre allowed himself a grim smile which his 
subordinates missed as they eased back fractionally in their chairs, satisfied now that 
they were about to see nothing more spectacular than a rather bizarre autopsy. Their boss 
could barely contain the chuckle rising from his chest, the tremor of ghoulish amusement 
welling in his stocky body, as he anticipated the shock they had coming to them. He had 
seen all of this before, but they had not. And this, too, would serve as a test of sorts.
  Now the naked man took up a long chromium-plated rod, needle sharp at one end and 
bedded in a wooden handle at the other, and without pause leaned over the corpse, placed 
the point of the needle in the crater of the swollen belly's navel and applied his weight 
to the handle. The rod slid home in dead flesh and the distended gut vented gasses 
accumulated in the four days since death had occurred, hissing up into the naked man's 
face.
  'Audio!' snapped the observer in the middle, causing the men flanking him to start in 
their chairs. His gruff voice was so deep in its range as to be little more than a series 
of glottal gurgles as he continued: 'Quickly, I want to listen!' And he waggled a stubby 
finger at a speaker on the wall.
  Gulping audibly, the man on his right stood up, stepped to the speaker, pressed a 
button marked 'Receive'. There was momentary static, then a clear hiss fading away as the 
belly of the corpse in the other room slowly settled ; down in folds of fat. But while 
yet the gas escaped, ; instead of drawing back, the naked man lowered his face, closed 
his eyes and inhaled deeply, filling his lungs!
  With his eyes glued to the one-way screen, fumbling and clumsy, the official found his 
chair again and seated himself heavily. His mouth, like that of his opposite number, had 
fallen open; both men now perched themselves on the front edges of their chairs, their 
backs ramrod straight, hands gripping the wooden arm rests. A cigarette, forgotten, 
toppled into the ashtray on the table to send up fresh streamers of perfumed smoke. Only 
the watcher in the middle seemed unmoved, and he was as much interested in the 
expressions on the faces of his subordinates as he was in the weird ritual taking place 
beyond the screen.
  The naked man had straightened up, stood erect again over the deflated corpse. He had 
one hand on the dead man's thigh, the other on his chest, palms flat down. His eyes were 
open again, round as saucers, but his colour had visibly changed. The normal, healthy 
pink of a young, recently scrubbed body had entirely disappeared; his grey was uniform 
with that of the dead flesh he touched. He was literally grey as death. He held his 
breath, seeming to savoir the very taste of death, and his cheeks appeared to be slowly 
caving in. Then - He snatched back his hands from the corpse, expelled foul gas in a 
whoosh, rocked back on his heels. For a moment it seemed he must crash over backwards, 
but then he rocked forward again. And again, with great cure, he lowered his hands to the 
body. Gaunt and grey as stone, he stroked the flesh, his fingers trembling as they moved 
with butterfly lightness from head to toe and back again. Still there was nothing erotic 
in it, but the left-hand man of the trio of watchers was moved to whisper:
  'Is he a necrophile? What is this, Comrade General?'
  'Be quiet and learn something,' the man in the middle growled. 'You know where you are, 
don't you? Nothing should surprise you here. As for what this is-what he is-you will see 
soon enough. This I will tell you: to my knowledge there are only three men like him in 
all the USSR. One is a Mongol from the Altai region, a tribal witch-doctor, almost dead 
of syphilis and useless to us. Another is hopelessly mad and scheduled for corrective 
lobotomy, following which he too will be... beyond our reach. That leaves only this one 
and his is an instinctive art, hard to teach. Which makes him sui generis. That's Latin, 
a dead language. Most appropriate. So now shut up! You are watching a unique talent.'
  Now, beyond the one-way window, the 'unique talent' of the naked man became galvanic. 
As if jerked on the strings of some mad, unseen puppet-master, his burst of sudden, 
unexpected motion was so erratic as to be almost spastic. His right arm and hand flailed 
towards his case of instruments, almost tumbling it from its table. His hand, shaped by 
his spasm into a grey claw, swept aloft as if conducting some esoteric concerto-but 
instead of a baton it held a glittering, crescent-shaped scalpel.
  All three observers were now craning forward, eyes huge and mouths agape; but while the 
faces of the two on the outside were fixed in a sort of involuntary rictus of 
denial-prepared to wince or even exclaim at what they now suspected was to come-that of 
their superior was shaped only of knowledge and morbid expectancy.