The Third Section Part 2

'Has Leontiy Vasilievich told you otherwise?'

Tamara shrugged. Dubyelt had said nothing on the subject, but she knew well enough the internal politics of the Section to understand that it was best to keep everybody guessing.

'Then I won't contradict him,' said Yudin. He pushed an envelope towards her. 'Here are details of the place and its employees. The only other one of our people in there is Raisa Styepanovna Tokoryeva. You can speak freely to her, but she's under your command.'

He said nothing more and Tamara took it that the interview was at an end. She stood up to leave. 'Thank you, Vasiliy Innokyentievich,' she said. 'I'll be in touch.'

She was almost at the door when he spoke again. 'Oh, and you'll need this.'

She turned. His arm was held out across the desk, proffering a sheet of paper a yellow sheet of paper. She took it from him, but did not need to look closely to see what it was: the yellow ticket that identified a woman formally as a prost.i.tute. She guessed that one of the girls had not yet been issued with it; perhaps Raisa Styepanovna.

'Who's it for?' she asked.

Yudin said nothing, but nodded his head towards the ticket. Tamara looked. The name on it was her own: Tamara Valentinovna Komarova. She had never needed such a thing before, despite meriting it, but this made things seem official. Yudin had been toying with her earlier. She looked questioningly at him.

'Even senior officers have to pitch in with the troops sometimes,' he said, 'particularly in time of war.'

She cursed herself for thinking things might be any different, then turned and left.

CHAPTER II.

DMITRY FELT ENTOMBED. The snow surrounded him, filling his nostrils, las.h.i.+ng against his eyes and inveigling its way between his lips. It was as if he had been buried in it, but he had not. It was merely a flurry within a storm that would soon die down again and then he would be able to see. Somewhere out there in front of him, across the river, stood the enemy. It might be the French, or the British, or the Turks. It could even be the d.a.m.ned Sardinians, now that they'd chosen to join in, sucking up to the French in the hope of support in their own war. Dmitry could not see to tell. He couldn't even see the river, but he knew it was there.

'Major Danilov!'

Dmitry turned. A young poruchik was standing beside him, a dispatch clutched in his gloved hand. Dmitry could only guess how the youth had managed to find him in the blizzard. He took the paper from him and tried to read it, holding it away from him so that he could focus. The driving snow flickered between his eyes and the scrawled writing, but it was not difficult to make out. There were only two words.

Save ammunition.

Dmitry screwed the paper into a ball and was about to throw it to the ground when he thought better of it. He slipped it into his pocket. What would the French make of it if they found orders like that?

'Any reply, sir?'

Dmitry smiled to himself. Had he been both wittier and more reckless he might have sent a response that expressed his true feelings. 'No reply,' he said. The poruchik saluted and dashed away, disappearing in an instant behind sheets of falling snow.

It was the enemy's first a.s.sault of the year, and a foolish one. The allied lines were to the south of Sevastopol, stretching inland from the coast. The city was their target, but it was well if hastily defended. Dividing it like a jagged wound was the harbour, wherein were anch.o.r.ed the remains of the Black Sea fleet the whole reason that the British and French were here. The harbour was fed by the Chernaya river, continuing the natural line of defence out to the east. To cross it was the enemy's best hope of encircling the city. But they had chosen the wrong day to attempt it.

Dmitry mounted his horse and trotted down the Russian lines. The wind had dropped, and although the snow was still falling, it was now possible to see a little further, almost to the far side of the river. The enemy weren't making much progress. Their attack had begun with a bombardment. The intent had been to drive the Russians back from the north bank of the river, but while it had achieved that goal, it had also warned them of the impending advance. Some might question why Dmitry was even here. He was a staff officer, deemed too senior in more senses than one for service in the field; it was an a.s.sessment that sickened him, and when the attack had come he'd been among the first into action. He had the desire neither to die nor to kill but either was better than remaining at headquarters, reading reports of both.

He didn't bother to forward the orders he had been given. The men knew that ammunition was short as well as he did, and knew that it was down to the rotten supply lines from Moscow. Even the enemy, sailing through the Mediterranean, could get supplies quicker than the Russians. And now the English had built a railway up from the docks at Balaklava. There were no locomotives for it yet the wagons were pulled by horses but it meant that food, ammunition and even artillery could come all the way from the factories of England to the red-coated British infantrymen on the front line without ever travelling along anything so primitive as a road. If Tsar Nikolai had chosen to build a railway from Moscow to Sevastopol, or Simferopol or even Odessa, then the enemy wouldn't have got a toehold on the peninsula. But the line from Moscow to Petersburg had more prestige and that's what mattered to a tsar.

On the far riverbank Dmitry could just see French sappers trying to control the segmented pontoon bridges that they hoped would allow their fellow troops to march straight across. They made easy targets, but the weather was as effective a hindrance to them as any bullet. Even as he watched, one of the ropes that they were heaving on broke loose, whipping across the pontoon and knocking a man into the river. His comrades reached down for him, but then the blizzard blew up again and Dmitry could see no more. He remembered his father's stories of the Battle of the Berezina, when Napoleon had desperately organized the bridging of the river so that he could lead his remaining troops out of Russia. His father had not attempted to hide his admiration for the sappers then, who stood chest deep in the freezing water, constantly shoring up the construction they had built from scavenged wood. But Dmitry could not feel a similar sympathy for his enemy. They at least came here by choice, whereas the Russian soldiers the men, if not the officers were serfs; owned either by the tsar or by other rich n.o.bles and obliged to do their masters' bidding, be it to die of exhaustion toiling in the cornfield or to die from a bullet in the field of battle.

'Boat coming!'

Dmitry could not tell which eagle-eyed spotter had made the call, but as he looked out over the river, the prow of a landing craft began to emerge from the cascading snow. Dmitry was about to shout an instruction, but the captain of the company beat him to it.

'Muskets only!' he shouted. 'Fire at will!'

'Hold fire!' Dmitry countermanded instantly, raising his hand in the air. 'Let them get close.'

The captain corrected his instructions without the slightest complaint, just as Dmitry would have each of them was merely a link in the chain of command. The corrected order was pa.s.sed down the line. The men on the boat began to fire, and a number of the Russian infantrymen fell. Dmitry felt a bullet whistle past close to his ear and was surprised that he did not flinch. At least half the British and almost as many of the French had shtutsers, which reloaded faster and were more accurate than muskets. In the Russian army, they were almost non-existent. Dmitry remembered the discussions about introducing them, decades before, and recalled one senior officer's opinion that faster-loading guns would only encourage the men to use up more ammunition instead of relying on their bayonets. That point of view had won out. It was the same att.i.tude that encouraged men to deliberately loosen the ramrod and the keeper-rings on their muskets so that they rattled during drill. It was a fine thing for five hundred guns to sound together in perfect time on the parade ground, another to see that not one of them could hit a man in the field.

Still Dmitry held his hand in the air, like the conductor of some orchestra, holding off for as long as possible the delicious resolution of a suspended chord. When the boat was close enough close enough for the men on board to dream that their a.s.sault might be successful he dropped his hand, and accompanied the motion with a shout of 'Fire!' Again the order was echoed down the line, followed eagerly by the report of gunfire. At that range, not even a Russian musket could miss its mark and there were far more muskets than there had been men on the boat.

With a slight thump, the vessel hit the northern bank of the river, but no one was able to disembark. They were fools to have attempted a landing in this weather. For all his faults, Tsar Nikolai understood how Russia fought a war and had expressed it very clearly. 'Russia has two generals in whom she can confide Generals Janvier and Fevrier.' It was true, even as far south as this. It was the Russian winter that had defeated Napoleon, and the same winter that, so far, was holding off this new French a.s.sault. But January was over, and February was the shortest month, and then there would be ten more when the Russians would have to fight alone, without the a.s.sistance of Nikolai's two favourite generals.

Another shout came from further down the line. Dmitry spurred his horse and rode on to see what was happening. This time it was a minor success by the pontoniers they had managed to lash together two sections of a bridge, spanning perhaps a tenth of the total width of the river. Russian artillery fire quickly saw off the attack, destroying in seconds the work of many hours, along with most of the workers. Dmitry sat and watched impa.s.sively. The snow was stopping now, but it had done its work. It would soon be dark, and the enemy would not attack at night. Sevastopol was safe; until tomorrow.

The storm had settled down overnight and the following day was calm and clear, though it was still cold and the ground remained blanketed in snow. There had been no word of a further attempt to cross the river the enemy had lost enough men and equipment to make them think twice about trying that route of attack again. Today Dmitry was off duty, back in the centre of the city. He sat in the mess at the Nikolai Barracks, trying to write a letter.

Dear Papa, That was as far as he got. He knew precisely what he wanted to express. The problem was he had written the same thing in a hundred different ways before, and always with the same response: no response at all. He rested his head back against the chair and tried not to think too hard. As ever, when he relaxed, music came to him. It had been so since he was a child, whole orchestras playing in his head, music that was familiar and yet strange. The harmony was harmony that he knew. The rhythms and counterpoints were all of a kind that would be accepted as correct by a professor of music, though perhaps frowned upon for being a little too avant-garde. But it was all original. Certainly Dmitry could summon up a well-known tune, but when he simply let the music flow through him, it was a creation of his own, something that neither he nor anyone else had ever heard before. In the whole of his forty-seven years, he didn't believe it had ever repeated itself. But neither in that time had he ever managed to write a single note of it down on paper.

Perhaps one day it would happen, but he wouldn't attempt to force it. Today it was with words that he was trying to express himself. The last time he had heard from his father had been in 1847. Neither of them had corresponded with enormous frequency, but it had been common for there to be one or two letters in each direction every year. Of course, 1848 had its significance. That was the year Dmitry's mother had died. Many people in Petersburg had died, when both famine and cholera had struck the city. Marfa Mihailovna had been wealthy enough to have no concern over the famine, but disease was no respecter of status. Dmitry had not even been at home to comfort her, or to bury her.

But it was hard to see why that should have stopped Dmitry's father from writing. Marfa had not been his wife in any real sense for years. It was his mistress, Domnikiia Semyonovna, who had followed him into exile after his partic.i.p.ation in the Decembrist Uprising, thirty years before. Dmitry had loved his father for his stance against the tsar, but hated him for choosing his lover over his wife. But as the years had pa.s.sed, the heroism of the former had eclipsed the human failing of the latter. And in truth it was Marfa who had made the choice, in not following her husband to Siberia. Long before her death she had forgiven her husband his infidelity, and urged Dmitry to do the same.

And so Aleksei's distant silence made even less sense. There was the possibility that it was down to censors.h.i.+p. Dmitry was well aware that the Third Section read all letters to and from exiles; and a few more besides, he would guess. But he'd always been careful not to write anything that would cause them to be intercepted, and his father had been wise enough to do the same. Neither of them ever made mention of military matters, or politics, or mentioned Tsar Nikolai without expressing the deepest and sincerest affection for him and without any hint of irony.

Dmitry looked down at the paper again, but still could not think of a way to express himself. It was simple enough; he just needed to say, 'Please write, however little you put, however you wish to insult me, just to let me know you're alive.' But Dmitry already knew his father was alive. If he had died, Dmitry would have been informed. He knew other sons of Decembrist exiles who had been. By his reckoning, there could only be a score or so of them left alive but his father was undoubtedly one of them.

He tried to stop thinking and listen again to the music in his head, in the hope that it would help him. Instead, all he heard was a vaguely familiar gypsy melody, played on the mess's out-of-tune piano. He did not need to look round to know that Prince Galtsin had come into the room and gone straight to the instrument. The rivalry between them was unspoken. Dmitry was convinced he was the better pianist, but Galtsin had the more popular repertoire; around here at least. Dmitry had seen the appeal of peasant music in his youth, but as he had grown older it had struck him as increasingly trivial. But Dmitry's tastes did not chime with those of the common or even the n.o.ble soldier. He found his playing more in favour among the ladies of Saint Petersburg.

Eventually Galtsin finished the piece and a round of applause broke out through the mess. 'Bis! Bis!' cried a voice that Dmitry did not recognize, but he did not look round for fear that he might seem to agree with the sentiment.

'Perhaps Mitka would like to play for us,' said Galtsin, raising his voice to be sure Dmitry would hear him.

'The regiment seems spoilt for talent,' said the unknown voice.

'Come on, Mitka,' said Galtsin. 'You know you want to.'

Dmitry stood and turned, his eyes immediately fixing on the figure standing beside Galtsin at the piano. It was a naval lieutenant of perhaps thirty-five years. What many would immediately note in him was his height, but as Dmitry approached, he realized that their eyes were on the same level. Dmitry was a tall man, and this newcomer matched him exactly. What struck Dmitry was his leanness. He was thin, but not skinny, as though every limb was composed solely of muscle, from what Dmitry could judge through the uniform. Certainly on his neck and jaw the flesh was sculpted as though part of some ancient statue.

'Anatoliy Vladimirovich Tyeplov,' said Galtsin, introducing them. 'Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov.'

They shook hands. Tyeplov's grip was as firm as Dmitry had expected.

'Danilov?' said Tyeplov. 'Son of Aleksei ...'

'Son of Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov,' Dmitry completed. 'The Decembrist.' n.o.body had ever held Dmitry's father's actions against him. For all his faults, the tsar had been scrupulous in announcing that no stain should attach itself to the innocent relatives of any of the conspirators, however close the relations.h.i.+p might be.

'Of course,' said Tyeplov happily. 'I knew I'd heard the name somewhere.' As he spoke, he fiddled with the fingers of his left hand, as if toying with a ring that he evidently did not possess. 'Play for us,' he added, indicating the piano as Galtsin vacated the seat.

Dmitry sat down and considered. He was not going to pander to the crowd, as Galtsin had. There was one composer whom Dmitry loved above all others, and over whose early death he still sometimes felt the desire to weep. The officers in the mess would be bored with his work, if they knew enough to recognize Dmitry's obsession. Even so, Chopin it would be. But what piece? He let his hands fall to the keyboard, his left little finger and right thumb falling on two low Cs, an octave apart. Then his hands wandered upwards over the keys, always with the same interval between them, before the piece settled into the slow, sublime six-four of Chopin's first ballade.

He lost himself in the music, enjoying the fast, complex arpeggios and the huge, understated main theme, letting it flow into him as well as out of him. The music seemed to tell him a story of mystery and joy, of adversity and victory, that he could never quite remember once it had ended, like the details of a dream. It was a story of which he was the narrator, but as with his own music, he could not both create it and consume it at the same time. He felt as though he had scarcely begun when he heard that the music had come to an end. His hands were still, sustaining the final low Gs. He breathed deeply. He had lost any sense of time, but he knew that the piece usually took him about ten minutes. He resisted the urge to move on to the second ballade, hearing the pa-pom, pa-pom of its opening notes only in his head. Galtsin was standing over on the far side of the room with a gla.s.s of vodka in his hand, chatting in a low voice. Others were displaying the minimum of polite interest that they could get away with.

Only Tyeplov remained, leaning on the piano and staring at Dmitry with a look of surprised rapture that would only be expected from a man who was listening to Chopin for the first time in his entire life.

Dmitry paced angrily through the slush-filled streets of Sevastopol. Winter was departing, sooner than he had expected, but then he was used to the weather in Petersburg, far to the north. When the siege had first begun, the previous autumn, he had wondered whether in winter the harbour itself might freeze over, making the journey between the north and south of the city easier. But it was a foolish idea, now he knew the climate. He'd even imagined the possibility that if the harbour did freeze then the enemy might be able to march across its icy surface and into the city. He'd soon dismissed the fear. A few well-aimed cannonb.a.l.l.s would break up the ice and send the troops fleeing back to land.

His mind went back, as so often, to 14 December 1825. He'd not seen it but he had heard how many of the fleeing rebels ran out on to the frozen Neva to escape, only for Nikolai to order just the same tactics. The ice over the river was broken into pieces, and many brave men froze or drowned. For months Dmitry had believed that his closest friend had thus perished. Vasiliy Denisovich Makarov had been like a second father to Dmitry, often understanding him better than his own father did. After the uprising Vasiliy had gone into hiding and written to both Dmitry and his mother from Prussia. And when he finally returned to his homeland, it had been under a different name: Vasiliy Innokyentievich Yudin. Tsar Nikolai had a long memory, and was not likely to forgive anyone who could be identified as having stood in Senate Square that day. Dmitry was lucky not to have been so identified he had both his father and Yudin to thank for it, but in saving him, they had made him a coward.

Today Dmitry was heading to the Severnaya the northern part of Sevastopol, a region of the city which held no real danger, not for the moment. When the Allies had first landed, they had come at Sevastopol from the north, but believed the defences were too strong and so circled round to the south, only to be met by Lieutenant-Colonel Totleben's improvised but utterly effective fortifications. Now, it was Russian troops that occupied the territory here and all the way to the isthmus at Perekop, the narrow link to the mainland. But things could change.

There were many boats waiting on the harbour sh.o.r.e, eager to transport both soldiers and civilians across to the north. Dmitry stepped into the nearest and sat down on the thwart. Without a word, the oarsman cast off and began the slow, short journey. There had been talk of a.s.sembling a pontoon bridge to make the crossing easier, but nothing had come of it yet. There was more than one general who suspected the men would fight with greater bravery if they knew there was no prospect of retreat. Even so, desertions were commonplace, as was demonstrated by Dmitry's duty today.

The water was calm, and the only sound was that of the oars as they dipped in and out of it. It was a moment for Dmitry to relax. He looked out across the water. To his right the harbour split. The main part the Sea Harbour stretched out east, while pointing south there was a smaller branch known as the Military Harbour. The British, so he had heard, called it the Man-of-War Harbour.

But it was to the west that the real interest lay. Out to sea, only versts away, the British and French fleets stood, waiting. It was from them that the real threat came; their guns that had caused the severest damage during the first bombardment back in October. There were big guns on land too, but they were as nothing compared to what the s.h.i.+ps had. The fleet had remained quiet, mostly, for months now, but in the spring they'd be heard again. At least they couldn't simply sail into the harbour and land marines. Two narrow strips of white, breaking waves stretching across the water were testimony to that, one only a little way from the dinghy, the other at the very boundary between the harbour and the Black Sea.

The breakers gave only a clue to what lay beneath sunken s.h.i.+ps, anything that the navy had been able to get its hands on to float out there and scupper. Occasionally, when the sea was calm, as today, a mast or the line of a bow could just be seen breaking surface, enough to act as a reminder that to sail into the harbour would result in serious if not terminal damage to any craft that attempted it.

Dmitry stepped on to the northern sh.o.r.e, handing the ferryman a few copecks for his trouble, then continued on foot towards the Star Fort. This was the other thing that kept the enemy fleets out of the harbour, and the reason that their armies had chosen to attack from the south. At a guess the building occupied almost a quarter of the entire Severnaya; an eight-pointed star of solid stone and brick far more forbidding than any of the rushed fortifications in the south. It loomed out over the land and the harbour itself, threatening the annihilation of any force that dared to approach from the north or from the sea. But it could do no more than threaten. The structure was almost forty years old; under-maintained, undermanned and under-gunned. If the Allies had chosen to attack, they would have occupied the Severnaya within days, but thankfully the fort's reputation had deterred them that and a little disinformation spread through the local populace.

Dmitry followed the ramparts around anticlockwise, noting that what had seemed imposing at a distance was so obviously decrepit now he was close. He came to the gate. 'Major Danilov,' he said to the guard. 'Here to see Captain Shulgin.'

It took some time to track down Shulgin. When he eventually arrived, he seemed fl.u.s.tered. Dmitry noticed how dirty his hands were, with soil under his fingernails. He led Dmitry across to the northern corner of the fort.

'So you've had a couple of desertions, Captain,' said Dmitry as they walked.

'I think the word I used in my report was "disappearances".'

'It amounts to the same thing.'

'Perhaps among your men, Major,' snapped Shulgin, seeming to forget the difference in their ranks, 'but not mine. These were engineers some of the best-trained men in the army. They're not the sort to absent themselves at the first whiff of cannon smoke.' Dmitry could only admire the captain's faith in his men, but he knew it was misplaced. He knew that fear could affect any man some just learned to hide it better than others.

They had come to a wooden doorway on the inside of the thick outer wall of the fort which towered above them, fragile and decaying. The sense that it might topple inwards and crush them was not entirely fanciful. Shulgin opened the door and indicated that Dmitry should lead the way. Inside, a narrow flight of wooden steps led down within the wall.

'Anyway,' continued the captain as they descended, 'they're not absent any more.'

'But I don't suppose I'd be here if they'd been discovered safe and sound.'

'No,' was Shulgin's brief response.

At the bottom of the steps a low tunnel headed north, out of the Star Fort. Even Shulgin had to stoop, and Dmitry was virtually bowing. He felt instantly trapped. In general he had no fear of enclosed s.p.a.ces, unless the enclosure came from above as it did now, giving him an unnerving sense of being buried. The tunnel was built like a mineshaft, with walls of loose earth and the fewest possible boards of wood used to sh.o.r.e up the sides and roof. He had been inside similar earthworks beneath the bastions.

'Why are you building this?' he asked.

'Partly in the hope of undermining the enemy more so we can listen out for them digging to undermine us.'

Dmitry had been in the army quite long enough to know that much. He tried not to show his annoyance. 'I mean why here? The enemy's nowhere near.'

'Oh, we dug this long before we knew where the French would attack,' explained Shulgin. 'And once they're dug, we have to maintain them.'

'Or else this happens?'

'Exactly.'

They had been forced to halt. In front of them the tunnel was blocked by a pile of earth and rocks. Such clear evidence of how real his fears of entombment could become made Dmitry even more uneasy, but also revealed just how close to the surface they were. The tallow lamps that had lit their way so far now became quite unnecessary as daylight shone through the gaping hole that the cave-in had created. Fresh air blew on Dmitry's face. He breathed deeply and relaxed, though he still felt the oppression of the tunnel's roof, undamaged above where he stood, forcing him to bend.

Two sappers as many as could be fitted into the narrow s.p.a.ce were digging at the pile of debris, and Dmitry could already see what lay within. The pink hand and forearm of a man lolled incongruously from the dark earth.

'So they were killed when the tunnel collapsed,' said Dmitry, squatting down so that at least his torso could be upright.

'I think not,' said Shulgin. 'They'd already been missing two days when it happened.'

'Are you sure it's them?'

Shulgin shouted at one of the sappers, who stopped his work and pulled back a tarpaulin that was draped at the edge of the mound. Beneath it lay the upper half of a soldier's body the remainder still buried. The figure revealed beneath the tarpaulin was caked in mud, but enough had been cleaned away from his face to make his ident.i.ty clear to anyone who knew him.

'So they deserted and hid down here,' suggested Dmitry, 'and then the cave-in got them.' A better fate than to be shot by their own comrades, as Dmitry would have been obliged to command.

'There was a man working down here when it happened. He got away, thank G.o.d. He swears there was no one else here.'

Shulgin gazed up at the hole in the ceiling. Dmitry looked too, judging how far it was to the surface.

'They fell through?' he asked.

'Then they'd be on top.'

Dmitry thought for a moment, though only one conclusion remained. 'So the bodies had been buried, just above the tunnel.'

'I reckon. Whoever did it wouldn't have expected them to be found for years and then they'd just be taken for casualties.'

Suddenly the two sappers stepped back, standing up as best they were able. Another arm had been revealed. The men took hold of one limb each and hauled at the body. Slowly at first and then with a sudden collapse as the earth around it gave way, the corpse spilled out. Dmitry took a step back, fearful of further damage to the tunnel and another cave-in, but all seemed steady.

The body lay on its back on the mound of earth, its feet still buried in the loose soil. The arms lazed on either side of the head, where the sappers had dropped them, as if the dead man were surrendering. Dmitry looked into the mud-covered, upside-down face, out of which a pair of blue eyes, sparkling and clean, gazed back.

Water splashed on to the face and Shulgin's hand began to rub the dirt from it, like a brutal nanny cleaning up her charge ready for tea. When this face was as clean as the other one, Shulgin stopped and stared, twisting his head to see it the right way up.

'That's him,' said Shulgin. There was nothing in his voice to suggest that he'd ever doubted it.

'What killed them?' asked Dmitry.

Shulgin shrugged.

Dmitry reached out and took the bucket of water that Shulgin had used to clean the man's face. He tipped more over the chest and neck and began to clean off the rest of the mud, trying to show a little more deference than had Shulgin, but knowing that circ.u.mstances could give the dead man no great hope of dignity. Around the throat the encrustation of dirt was particularly thick. Dmitry managed to get his fingernails beneath silently acknowledging the reason for Shulgin's dirty hands and pulled it away. It came easily, only to reveal another layer of mud.

Dmitry stared at what he saw, and then looked up at Shulgin, whose face revealed the same confusion that Dmitry felt. The surface of the mud on the man's neck, smoothed by Dmitry's fingertips, was now concave, dipping below the level at which the skin should show and yet no skin was visible. Dmitry reached forward again and sc.r.a.ped at the soil with his fingers, pulling more away as though cleaning out a crevice in a rock, except that the distinction between earth and rock would have been easier to discern than that between earth and flesh. Shulgin poured on the remainder of the bucket of water, was.h.i.+ng all but the last few grains of dirt away.