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By Root 375 0

that church, how the famous cosmonaut who couldn't go anywhere without being recognized was embarrassed to go out. How finally, on the night Colonel Rossky-- not his influential father-- had smoothed the matter over with the academy and gotten Nikita reinstated with just a week of double turns on the extra-duty post, his father had come to the academy barracks and lectured him about the infamy of hate and how great nations and great citizens have been destroyed by it. The other cadets had been silent, and when the great man left, someone came up with the Nikita and Sergei game, which the soldiers-in-training played for days: "Sergei" had to guess where in Moscow his son was painting hate slogans, while "Nikita" gave him hot-cold clues.

Nikita could still hear their voices, their laughter.

"The U.S. Embassy?"

"Cold--"

"The Japan Air Lines terminal at Sheremet'yevo Airport?"

"Very cold--"

"The men's dressing room at the Kirov?"

"Warmer!"

"Nikki," said the elder Orlov, "I've wanted to call, but I only seem to make you angry. I'd hoped that time would rid you of some of your bitterness--"

"Has it rid you of your arrogance," Nikita asked, "this celestial idiocy that what we ants do down here on the hill is petty or dirty or wrong?"

"Going into space didn't teach me that a nation can be destroyed from within as well as from without," Orlov said. "Ambitious men taught me that."

"Still full of piety and naivete," said Nikita.

"And you're still brash and disrespectful," the General said evenly.

"So now you've called," Nikita said, "and we've discovered that nothing has changed."

"I didn't call to argue."

"No? What then?" Nikita asked. "Are you trying to see how far the transmitter at your new television station can reach?"

"Neither, Nikki. I'm calling because I need a good officer to lead his unit on a mission."

Nikita sat up straight.

"Are you interested?" the General asked.

"If it's for Russia and not for your conscience, I am."

"I called because you're the right officer for this job," the General said. "That's all."

"Then I'm interested," Nikita said.

"Your orders will come through Captain Leshev within the hour. You'll be seconded to me for three days. You and your unit are to be in Vladivostok by eleven hundred."

"We'll be there," he said, rising. "Does this mean that you're back on active duty?"

"You know everything that you need to know for now," the General replied.

"Very good," Nikita said, puffing quickly on his cigarette.

"And Nikki-- take care of yourself. When this is over, perhaps you'll come to Moscow and we can try again."

"That's a thought," said Nikita. "And perhaps I can invite my former comrades from the academy. Seeing you just wouldn't be the same without them."

"Nikki-- you wouldn't have heard me out in private."

"And you couldn't have cleared the Orlov name unless it was public," Nikita said.

"I did that so others might avoid making a similar mistake," the General said.

"At my expense. Thank you, Father." Nikita ground out his cigarette. "You'll excuse me, but I must get ready if I'm to be on the mainland by eleven hundred. Please give my regards to Mother and to Colonel Rossky."

"I will," the General said. "Goodbye."

Nikita hung up the phone, then took a moment to look at the half-risen sun. It annoyed him that so many others understood what his father did not: that the greatness of Russia was in its unity, not its diversity; that, as Colonel Rossky had taught, the surgeon who cuts out diseased tissue does so to cure the body, not to hurt the patient. His father had been selected as a cosmonaut because, among other things, he was even-tempered, brave, charitable, and an ideal figure to present to schools and international journalists and young fliers who wanted to be heroes. But it remained for trench fighters such as himself to do the real work of the new Russia, the rebuilding, purging, and undoing the mistakes of the past decade.

After informing the duty officer where he was going, Nikita grabbed his hat and left the outpost, feeling sad for his father but curious what