lon of Comrades,
more frightened but showing it less, who would love the beauty of her
breasts and loins but not herself for you never love anything but the
Stalinimage and Mother Russia herself, not those terrified
martinet-marionettes who would love the parts of her if she permitted
but not her or any other person for that matter.

Wrong with the Stalintrek was its name alone, a name one associated
with everything else in Russia for an obvious, post-Stalin reason. But
everything else about the Stalintrek shrieked mystery and adventure.
Where did you go? How did you get there? What did you do? Why?

A million questions which had kept her awake at night and, if she thought
about them hard enough, satisfied her deep longing for something
different. And then one day when stolid Mrs. Ivanovna-Rasnikov had said,
"It is a joke, a terrible, terrible joke they are taking my husband Fyodor
on the Stalintrek when he lacks sufficient imagination to go from here to
Leningrad or even Tula. Can you picture Fyodor on the Stalintrek? Better
they should have taken me. Better they should have taken his wife." That
day Sophia could hardly contain herself.

As a party member she had access to the law and she read it three
times from start to finish (in her dingy flat by the light of a
smoking, foul-smelling, soft-wax candle) but could find nothing
barring women from the Stalintrek.

Had Fyodor Rasnikov volunteered? Naturally. Everyone volunteered,
although when your name was called you had no choice. There had been
no draft in Russia since the days of the Second War of the People's
Liberation. Volunteer? What, precisely, did the word mean?

She, Sophia Androvna Petrovitch would volunteer, without being told.
Thus it was she found herself at 616 Stalin Avenue, and thus the
balding, myopic, bull-necked Comrade thrust the papers across his desk
at her.

She signed her name with such vehemence and ferocity that she almost
tore through the paper.

CHAPTER II

_Three-score men sit in the crowded, smoke-filled room. Some drink
beer, some squat in moody silence, some talk in an animated fashion
about nothing very urgent. At the one small door, two guards pace back
and forth slowly, creating a gentle swaying of smoke-patterns in the
hazy room. The guards, in simple military uniform, carry small, deadly
looking weapons._

FIRST MAN: Fight City Hall? Are you kidding? They took you, bud.
Don't try to fight it. I know. I _know_.

SEC