you know? Ozone, maybe? And after that we heard their sirens."
  "Sirens?" Jazz had been especially interested. "From the Projekt?"
  "Of course, where else?" Kazimir had answered. Their alert sirens, their alarms! 
There'd been an accident, a big one. Oh, we heard rumours. And during the next two or 
three weeks . . . helicopters flying in and out, ambulances on the new road, men in 
radiation suits decontaminating the walls of the ravine. And the word was this: 
blow-back! The weapon had discharged itself into the sky, all right-but it had also 
backfired into the cavern that housed it. It was like an incinerator; it melted rock, 
brought the roof down, nearly took the lid off the whole place! They took a lot of dead 
out of there over the next week or so, since when it hasn't been tried again."
  "Now?" Yuri had had to have the last word. He shrugged his massive shoulders. They run 
the turbines now and then, if only to keep "em in trim; but as my father says, the 
weapon's been quiet. No more testing. Maybe they learned something from that first trial, 
and maybe it was something they'd rather not know. Myself, I reckon they know they can't 
control it. I reckon they're finished with it. Except that doesn't explain why they're 
still there, why they haven't dismantled everything and cleared off."
  At which Jazz had nodded, saying: "Well, that's one of the things I'm here to find out. 
See, a lot of very important, very intelligent men in the West are worried about the 
Perchorsk Projekt. And the more I learn about it, the more I believe they have good 
reason to be . . ."
  One night when they gave Jazz his pills, he didn't take them. He pretended to, stuck 
them in a corner of his mouth, drank his water without washing them down. It was partly 
an act of rebellion-against what amounted to physical, even mental imprisonment, however 
well-intended-and partly something else. He needed time to think. That was the one thing 
he never seemed to have enough of: time to think. He was always either asleep or taking 
pills to put him to sleep, in pain or dopey from the needle that killed the pain and 
helped him talk to the Debriefing Officer, but never left alone to just lie there and 
think.
  Maybe they didn't want him to think. Which made him wonder: why didn't they want him to 
think? His body might be a bit banged-up, but there didn't seem a deal wrong with his 
brain.
  When he was alone (after he'd heard them go out of his room and close the door) he 
turned his head a little on one side and spat the pills out. They left a bad taste, but 
nothing he couldn't live with. If the pain came he could always ring his bell; the button 
was right there beside his free right hand, requiring only a touch from his index finger.
  But the pain didn't come, and neither did sleep, and at last Jazz was able to just lie 
there and think. Better still, in a little while his thinking grew far less fuzzy; 
indeed, in comparison to the mental slurry he'd recently been accustomed to, it became 
like crystal. And he began to ask himself all over again those questions he had been 
asking, but which he'd never found the time to answer. Like:
  Where the hell were his friends?
  He'd been out of Russia . . . what, two weeks now? And the only people he'd seen (or 
rather, the only ones who'd seen him) were a doctor, a DO, and a nurse who grunted a 
little but never spoke. But he did have friends in the Service. Surely they would know he 
was back. Why hadn't they been to see him? Was he that banged-up? Did he look that bad?
  "I don't feel that bad," Jazz whispered to himself.
  He moved his right arm, clenched his right fist. The hole through his wrist had healed 
and new skin had knitted over the punctures front and back. It was pure luck that the 
point of the ice-axe had slipped between the bones and managed to miss the arteries. The 
hand was a little stiff and out of practice, that was all. There was some pain, but 
nothing he couldn't survive. Come to think of it, there wasn't much of pain in anything 
right now. But of course he couldn't move everything-could he? Jazz decided he'd better 
not try.

  What about sight? Would his room be in light or darkness? The "snow" of his bandages 
was thick and dark. They said they'd saved his sight. From what? Had his eyes been 
hanging out or something? "Saved his sight" could mean anything. That he'd be able to 
see, for instance -but how well?
  Suddenly, for the first time since he'd been there, he knew real panic. They might have 
kept something back until he'd been fully debriefed, so as not to discourage or distract 
him: where there's life there's hope, sort of thing. How about that? What if they hadn't 
told him everything?
  Jazz got a grip of himself, gave a derisive snort. Huh! Told him everything? Christ, 
they hadn't told him anything! He was the one who'd been doing all the-
  Talking . . .
  His new clarity of mind was leading him in a frightening new direction, and it was all 
downhill going; the more he considered the possibilities, the faster he went and the more 
frightening it got; bits of a puzzle he hadn't known existed until now were starting to 
fall into place. And the picture they made was one of a clown, a puppet, with his name on 
it. Michael J. Simmons: dupe!
  He bent his right elbow, lifted his hand to his bandaged head, began picking at the 
bandages where they covered his eyes. But carefully; he only needed a peephole, nothing 
more than that. A narrow gap between strips of bandage. He wanted to see without being 
seen.
  In a little while he believed he'd succeeded. It was hard to tell with any degree of 
certainty. The snow was still there, but if he narrowed his eyes to slits the light 
(there wasn't a lot of it) became more nearly natural. It was like when he was a child: 
he'd used to lie in bed with his eyes slitted, simulating the slow, regular breathing of 
sleep. His mother would come in and put the light on, stand there looking at him, and she 
was never quite sure if he was asleep or awake. But now, with these bandages swathing his 
face, it should be so much easier.
  He straightened his arm again, found his button and pressed it. Now his nurse would 
know he was still awake, but the principle would be the same: when she came in he'd be 
able to look at her and she wouldn't know it. He hoped!
  In a little while soft, unhurried footsteps sounded. Jazz pressed his head back into 
his pillows, waited in the near-darkness of his room. Around him the air-conditioning 
hummed faintly; the air had a mildly antiseptic smell; his sheets felt somehow coarse to 
those parts of his body which were exposed. And he thought:
  It doesn't feel like a room in a hospital. Hospitals feel artificial, unreal, at best. 
But this one feels like fake artificial . . .
  Then the door opened and the light came on.
  Jazz squinted straight up; only the fact that his eyes were shuttered saved them from 
dazzle from the naked light-bulb where it hung on its flex from the ceiling. As for that 
ceiling itself: that was of dark grey stone, pocked from blasting and patterned with 
folded, tightly-packed strata. Jazz's hospital room was a man-made cave, or at least it 
was part of one!
  Too stunned to move, he lay there frozen as his nurse came to the side of his bed. 
Then, fighting the anger and revulsion he felt welling inside, he slowly turned his head 
to look at her. She scarcely glanced at him, merely reached down to feel his pulse. She 
was short and fat, wore her hair straight and short-cropped, like a medieval knight, also