It was a makeshift glider. When he was finished he walked back to where Russilov knelt. Stripped of his uniform, his rank, he seemed to have shrunk in size. Like many military men, he very nearly had ceased to exist without the armor of his command. “Good-bye, Russilov,” Nicholas said, bending down and touching the juka, one of the kyukon, the nine organ meridians. This one was just beneath the ears. Russilov immediately collapsed, unconscious. Then Nicholas mounted the hito washi. There was a fair wind blowing from the southwest, gusty and unpredictable. He shrugged mentally. Karma. He was enormously tired and he wanted to sleep badly. Soon, he thought. Be careful now. He mounted the stone parapet. There was no moon and his chronometer had been taken from him. It was deep into the night, the early hours of morning. It was not yet that peculiar time of predawn when a special tinge of nameless color comes into the world, but he did not know how long dawn would be in arriving. Two good gusts came while he was still working out the vectors.
