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Natalya appeared to be making an effort to pretend she hadn't heard that.
He let it pass, and added: "And if you're seriously planning to take to the
woods, you're going to need help. From the little I've seen, you're not all
that good at living out in the open, off the land."
Her eyes flashed. "Other Russian women do! I can also."
"I bet you can. But maybe there's a couple of things you ought to learn, like
building fires, and not leaving a big trail, and not getting lost. You said we
should go north, and then you weren't sure which way that was. I'm pretty good
at all those things. I want to stay with you or for you to stay with me."
"On what terms?" She still sounded ready to strike.
"I haven't got that far in my thinking. Remember, I'm the man who just&
became& well, you saw that happened to me. Damn it all, I turned into a bear!"
At last he snapped out the plain blunt words defiantly, as if daring Natalya
to dispute them.
"I saw," she breathed. For the moment her voice and her eyes held a mixture
of fear and something like reverence.
There was a brief silence while Sherwood groped in vain for useful words on
that subject. But there was nothing he could do about it, and life had to go
on somehow. He would have to cope with bearishness as he went along. Other
problems needed attention, too. At last he said: "Let's get back to Greg. What
is it exactly you think we can do for him?"
Natalya too was ready to put aside the overwhelming fact, the crack in the
universe, which they had tried repeatedly to talk about so far without really
getting anywhere.
She spent a minute in renewed concentration on Gregori's problem, which, by
comparison, seemed more manageable. Then she said: "First of all, are you
ready to agree that simply getting a lawyer, as you might do in America, is
utterly hopeless? Useless!"
"Okay, no lawyers for Greg. Not now anyway. Then what?"
"There are other ways of setting people free."
"Yeah? Bribery?"
"Yeah!" She imitated the word with a mocking intonation. "Bribery is a way of
life here. Even in remotest Siberia, money can be very useful for other things
than starting a fire. That is probably our best chance, but not the only one.
Yes, really, Sherwood. If Gregori is exiled after only a short term of
imprisonment, as it seems may be the case, then he would be sent to live in
some Siberian village, comparatively without restrictions. Probably. Once he
is in exile, he will only need to report to the local police every day or so.
And even while he is still a hard-labor convict, I am told that for a young
and active man, simply getting away from a prisoner convoy, or even from a
prison, is far from impossible. The hardest problems come after one has
escaped, trying to survive, on the tundra or in thetaiga  the forests and
avoid recapture. There are natives, Siberian tribesmen, who hunt the
prisoners how do you say it? for bounty."
He thought for a couple of minutes. This young girl might not know as much
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about the prison system as she thought she did but she sure as hell knew more
than he did.
At last he said: "You're saying that wherever Greg has been sent, prison or
the mines or exile, we ought to have a good chance of arranging an escape, or
buying him out. If we can only find out where he is, and get there."
"Yes, I think so." Natalya nodded. "I can tell you stories. But it won't be
easy. Understand, Sherwood, most of the prison mines and camps are as far east
from where we are now, as your New York is from your San Francisco. And some
are very much farther than that. Siberia goes on a long, long way."
"In my time I've made a couple of journeys even longer."
In America, heading west had been the traditional route of those who for one
reason or another no longer fit into the settled part of the country. In
Russia, the seekers of greater freedom or a new start went east.
And Natalya still insisted that the best forger of identity documents known
to the revolution was to be found in Nizhni Novgorod.
Sherwood had money, but it was hard to find a way to use it. Natalya decided
that their best chance of being able to ride a train to Siberia lay in
adopting the guise of volunteer settlers. The government had been trying for a
long time to encourage population movement to the east, and peasant volunteers
were allowed to travel at one-quarter of the regular railroad fair. They also
stood a good chance of being allotted government land, provided they were
willing to settle in some of the more remote regions. Hundreds of thousands of
such people were now thronging east every year, many by railroad, and
thousands more in wagon trains. Some established themselves in the east.
Others failed. Listening to Natalya's account of such treks, Sherwood was
reminded irresistibly of what he had heard of the settlement of the American
West.
Here the geography was reversed, but otherwise the similarities were
considerable. The farther east one got, apparently, the more open the society
and the greater personal freedom if one were not in prison or exile.
Even without special orders, the trains and stations would be watched for
fugitives and theOkhrana could be very efficient when they put their minds to
it. Still, it sounded worth considering. While Sherwood struggled to learn the
language, he could continue to pose as a slightly brain-damaged man, and
Natalya as his wife or sister who spoke to him in simple, soothing Russian,
whispering English only when no one else was listening.
"All right, east it is, then. It ought to speed things up if we could knock
off a thousand versts or so by rail."
Natalya hesitated. "Yes, possibly. But of course, there is something else we
ought to talk about before we undertake any course of action. Your condition."
"The fever's gone. I'm healing. I feel strong." Tenderly he touched the claw
marks on his forehead.
"That's not what I meant."
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He paused, looking down at his hands. "Yeah, I know," he said at last.
"What I meant was, naturally I would like to know, if you think you are going
to, once more& ?"
So of course they were going to have to talk about it. He would have to do
his best to find the necessary words. He drew a deep breath. "If I'm going to
change into a bear again. Yeah, I expect I am. It's too bad that wasn't all a
dream a couple of nights ago."
"Certainly it was not."
Natalya's answer was quite calm. Both of them had been preparing themselves
inwardly for this discussion, and now it seemed they were as ready as they
could be.
"I I think the question is notif I will change again, but when." Sherwood
realized that such an answer was inadequate, and tried again. "I've been
thinking it over, and I'm pretty sure it's inevitable. When the bear& when
Maxim& when he drew my blood& it brought on some kind of permanent
transformation. But it seems to me that I do have at least a certain amount of
control." He looked at Natalya to see how she was taking this, and sighed.
But still he persisted. They had to reach an understanding. "This
changing theobaraten business is still with me. I think it will be, from now
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