AFTER VALENTIN LEAVES with Kruzenko, Misha, and Ivan to follow the scrubber’s trail, I settle into the parlor, desperate to numb the hyperawareness coursing through me, the receptors hungry for the taste and feel of Valentin. I can’t think about him, or the fact that even now he might be too close to the scrubber, getting his memories stripped away. I let the bland KVN skits on the screen wash over me, the heavy genetics textbook anchor me, and Masha’s rant floss through my ears.
“It’s just not fair,” Masha continues. “We don’t get any respect, do we, Sergei? I don’t think Kruzenko understands the importance of remote viewing because she isn’t a remote viewer herself. I mean, you’re kind of weak, but I’m mastering telekinesis, too—”
“She respects us just fine. If a project doesn’t call for us, she doesn’t take us.” Sergei’s knee tap-tap-taps beside mine. Up and down as he stares at KVN on the TV screen.
Masha slings herself over the back of the couch. “But they can always use us. We’re the best anyway, aren’t we, Seryozha?” She wedges her shoulders between Sergei and me and I’m more than happy to lean away to make room. “I guess I have to try to run away if I want to choose what projects I get to work on.”
Most mutations are recessive, but in a capitalist society that perverts Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” to control their citizens, mutated specimens may eventually gain dominance as the individuals lacking the advantageous mutation die out.
I keep reading. I do not think about Masha’s words. I will not let any anger bubble up in my head, or let my musical barrier warp and distend as it tries to contain that luscious bow-shaped curve of Valya’s lips—
“… and even though it’s Ivan’s specialty, I’m probably better at reading thoughts than he is, he’s so weak—”
“Masha?” Larissa mutters. “Go walk on a dick.”
Masha slithers off the couch’s back and narrows her eyes at Larissa. Their angry thoughts bounce back and forth, practically tangible in the air. “Poshol na hui yourself,” Masha manages to spit out, and storms away. The guards know better by now than to get in Masha’s way, and practically trip over themselves giving her room to pass.
I turn to Larissa to thank her, but instead of smirking at her success, she’s glaring at the television as if she means to telepathically turn the dial. “Lara,” I whisper, trying to catch her eye. “What’s the matter?”
Red stripes from dried tears still run down her face from her fight with Kruzenko this morning—I’ve never seen Larissa so eager to use her powers. Screaming, pounding on doors, guards dragging her away. “I should be there instead,” she says, shaking her hair forward to cover the cut on her temple. Her Vysotsky folk song keeps starting and stopping, stumbling over itself.
“They need you here, predicting what’s coming next. Sergei’s right,” I say. He snorts beside me; I force my gaze to stay on Larissa. “Not everyone is most effective out in the field.” With a twinge, I realize that I am needed most out there, yet I couldn’t be happier to be far, far away from the scrubber’s sound.
“Bozhe moi.” Larissa’s hand goes to her mouth.
I follow her gaze to the comedy sketch on TV. A frumpy comedian, dressed like Secretary Khruschev, is arguing with a man in a mouse suit. He offers the mouse a fistful of ration cards—the mouse shakes his head, and the audience giggles nervously. Something is not right in their laughter. They sound too guilty.
Khruschev tries a bottle of vodka; the mouse denies him again. Khruschev holds up a miniature Sputnik satellite—a round silver globe, ringed in spikes flying away in one direction as if swept by the wind. Enormous laughter. The mouse looks tempted here, and he almost reaches for the Sputnik, but stops himself and shakes his head furiously.
Khruschev reaches down, pulls off his loafer, and starts beating the mouse with it—really wailing on him. The audience is howling now, the kind of unselfconscious laughter when you realize your worst fears have not come to pass, that you are not crazy, that you are right to laugh, and saxophones bleep and blurt as Khruschev gives the mouse chase, and we all three stare slack-jawed at the screen until the image is abruptly replaced with a sickle and hammer and “Technical Difficulties”—
“I—I don’t understand.” I look at Larissa and her glassy eyes. “What is the mouse supposed to be?”
“Mickey Mouse. Because Walt Disney wouldn’t let the secretary onto his roller coaster rides when he visited America—”
“What’s a Mickey Mouse?” I ask.