Sunshine in an Icy Land

When I woke, I saw her face over me, and her hair hanging down.

"This isn't real, is it?" she asked between kisses.

I said that it was.

She shook her head. "No! And you aren't real either," she added.

I nodded to that. "I am a traveler from a place far away," I said. "I was born on Gamma Point Eight of the Alpha Centauri system."

"What?" she grinned. "But go on!"

"Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years distant from the earth towards the morning star on a mid-December day. It has three suns, locked together in a gravitational bond. One is very large and immensely bright, the other is more orange in color, and the third, the smallest of the three suns is the coldest, it glows a bright red. You might name the three suns Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. And the Point Eight," I explained, "indicates that my planet's relative gravity is eight tenth that of the earth."

I stroked her hair gently while we talked. A faint morning glow was on the horizon, outside.

"Can you imagine three suns in the sky?" I asked her. "Alpha looks sometimes blue from Gamma Point Eight. And as the day changes, the light shifts to orange and later to red. Gamma Point Eight also has seven moons. It is without doubt the most romantic planet in the universe."

I talked to her, looking deep into her eyes.

"On Gamma Point Eight the air changes daily from misty morning hues that become intensely bright like a snowstorm at mid day. Then the weather clears when the orange sun comes up, followed by the red one and three brightly glowing moons. It's a planet for lovers," I said. "We make love there all the time."

"And now you are come to teach me," she interrupted.

"Teach!" I repeated, "I don't like the word, teaching. The concept of teaching has become distorted. The teacher to student relationship has become a hierarchical one in the world, in which one person is assumed to be greater than another, while it really should be a lateral relationship where everyone is equal. I would never suggest that there is anyone greater among us. I rather think that we are both perfectly complete and equal."

She didn't answer to that.

We cuddled up to each other again in a caressing embrace. We almost missed breakfast, too.

Breakfast was served at the top floor of the hotel with a view away from the airport but open to the morning sun. There were no blinds to block the sunshine. The sun was welcome there.

The place wasn't at par with the New York Hilton, of course, but who cared? There was plenty of freshly baked bread, butter, and several kinds of preserves. Even the coffee tasted like coffee. Could one ask for more? Everything was perfect, and much of it, no doubt, appeared that way simply because Anton was there with me. Her love, her smiles, her gentle gestures of caring, altogether shone brighter than the sun, and the night that we had shared added to this brightness. Nicolai's generosity, too, added to this wonderful light that had begun to envelop us, that made us feel secure.

I had to confess to Anton that I had felt like a traitor the night before, for a brief moment.

She smiled across the table, "you mustn't feel like that. In fact we must make an effort to keep on being as close to each other as we were in Caracas and in Queensland, and this in every possible way, including sex. The privatization of sex has ended. That door is closed. Nicolai knows this as well as we do. I don't ever want to loose us being as close to one another as we are now. It means too much to me. You are my heart and in my soul, just as you had said about me when we first met, which I didn't understand. So you must never feel like that ever again, Peter. Also, there really is no cause why you should feel that way. Nicolai knows that I would never be married to him behind a tiny wedding ring. He is a human being, you know. He knows that sexual interaction is a part of being alive, a part of the passion for living. We are all sexual beings and wouldn't exist without sex. But we are also human beings, with a wonderful mind, so that sex means an a whole world more. It's a powerful thing. Nicolai understands that. He respects that. And besides that, why should you feel like a traitor anyway? Nothing happened, or could have happened, that violated the principle of universal love. Our being together in Caracas hadn't established anything that hadn't already existed before. We merely opened our eyes to it. The principles that we acknowledged there and in Queensland, still apply today as they did then. Nor do these universal principles change in any respect with Nicolai coming more fully onto the scene."

She asked moments later, "What would your friend Helen say?"

"I think Helen would say: What have these little things got to do with anything?" I replied and laughed. "Do they change the principle involved or invalidate it? That's what she would ask."

"Universal principles don't change with the winds of circumstances," Anton replied in acknowledgement. "To be honest, I enjoyed being treated by you like a woman, and always will, and this for more than one reason. The truth is, I can fully understand your appreciation of women as I had been able to experience that myself."

"You, in Caracas?"

"Of course, in Caracas. Remember, you said yourself that we must always go forward. And Peter, Sylvia is such a beautiful person in every respect, not just physically. I can appreciate why you fell in love with her, and with Heather, also. I can appreciate why you are fascinated with the beautiful female nature of women, because I am, too. And why shouldn't we be? It is a part of our humanity to appreciate the beauty of one another, just like a gardener appreciates the beauty of a rose. Only we have it in our heart to do this much more so in respect one another; because we are infinitely more beautiful and complex, and worthwhile than any rose."

"We really did open the door to a new world in Caracas," I replied, smiling, "and we stepped through it into this new world, and in Queensland we moved forward. Heh, didn't I promise you that night in Caracas, that something like that would happen as you asked the question, 'Where do we go from here?'"

"It also looks like that the sexual aspect isn't the main part of it either, not by a long shot," said Anton. "It somehow unfolds in the stream of things as barriers fall all around us, and boundaries vanish, as we are becoming closer to one another. It also seems to me that one can't just jump from A to Z in a single bound in real life. It's like your dream of the four rivers where you couldn't get past the draw gate of the first river unless you cycle through all of them and become a more complete individual. As the gatekeeper warned you, if you jump the gate you cannot survive in the more challenging environment that you'll be in. Isn't that what the gate keepers have told you over and over?"

"I must have known this, to have dreamed it," I replied, "even though I didn't understand then why it is so. Maybe it was my relationship with you that inspired the dream in the first place, considering the care I had to take to build a foundation for every step forward."

Anton fell silent for a moment, evidently searching for something that didn't come easily. "Nicolai is grateful that you exist," she said quietly, "and so am I. Without our close relationship I would never allow myself to join hands with him. I would be in danger. Nicolai is a powerful man. But now that I am certain that our door will remain open, I will gladly embrace him and 'marry' him in a great celebration, as he wants, since we are married already, inextricably. I respect him for his assurance that I won't be stuck behind any closed doors. In fact, my being here with you would not have been possible without this commitment. So, my friend, you are not a traitor. You are a part of the family, as much as I am."

"Nicolai may be a rare genius," I replied, "but is he one of those even more rare individuals who can live up to such a promise, without pulling back?"

"He is," she nodded in acknowledgement. "He understands the universal principle involved, which is greater than any of us. He is beginning to understand what moves the universe."

"Still Anton, many a man has changed once the bond was forged," I said quietly.

She shook her head, "Nicolai won't be one of them. That door is closed, because the principle involved has become extremely important to him. He told me when I came back from Caracas, that unless this same principle becomes established in the larger sphere of the world, there will never be another bond possible on the scale of the Soviet Union. He also understands, that without this bond, no development will take place throughout much of the Eurasian continent, and without this development the continent will collapse into a new Dark Age. People will die. He also predicts that the great nations that still exist at the present time, will allow themselves to be broken apart, unless they recognize that principle universally, which they know exists, and recognize it more universally. There is nothing that can hold them together without a deep-seated acknowledgement of this universal principle. Nicolai is fully aware of that, Pete. He is deeply ashamed, in fact, that the Soviet Union had not forged that gentle, cooperative bond while it had a chance to do this, focused on a widely based universal support of individual development throughout the union akin to the general welfare principle that your country has been founded on. Instead, the Soviet Union had been held together by an iron curtain and an iron fist, even an ironclad and heavily defended boundary. The Soviet Union became a bond forged in iron and enforced all too often by often-brutal domination. The Soviet Union became a trap that the republics could not escape from, nor could continue to live in. People won't tolerate this again. The age of the shotgun marriages is over. Nicolai knows that the only platform on which a collection of tribes, ethnic groups, and even entire republics can unite, is that of an honest commitment to enrich one another's existence. That's the only natural platform that unites people. And that, one can't force. It has to enforce itself in a community of principle. Remember, Steve had asked you and Ushi if you wanted to stay overnight that evening, back in Leipzig, sharing the bed together? Remember, he had asked you both a simple question. Nothing had been coerced. Nothing had been forced. And even when you couldn't accept at first what you had wanted most, he gently helped you to overcome your barrier against what you really wanted. Nicolai told me that this should have been the operational model for building and maintaining the Soviet Union."

"Heh, how did Nicolai know about that?" I asked and grinned.

She nodded and smiled. "By talking to Steve, obviously, but this isn't important, Pete. The important thing is, that this can work as a universal platform. Nicolai understands that this must work."

Anton told me later, after we had a few bites to eat, that Nicolai is fully aware that large-scale economic development is no longer an option for humanity. It's a must! It has become indispensable for its existence. He also knows that this can't happen without an exhaustive effort to develop the same kind of bond on the individual level. He said to me that this has become a vital necessity on the global scale. "We can't have the one without the other. That's what he said. This means that he is absolutely committed to the principle involved, and to yield to its imperative in every possible respect, sexual and otherwise."

Anton told me that those were his very words.

"But does this mean that Nicolai is committed to establishing the principle in his own life?" I asked.

"Yes, Pete. That's what he meant when he said we can't have the one without the other," she grinned. "He said that the development of unity has to start at the grass roots level where we live. He said that we have to start building our lives on this principle at the home gate before we can uplift the whole world up to it. That's what he told me. He knows that the overturning has to start there, long before we can even hope to utilize the newly discovered principle as a higher platform for international unity. I know that Nicolai is fully committed to this. You know yourself that Nicolai never implements anything superficially. He is committed to what he believes in, and this passionately. This means that he is also prepared to follow the social dimension of the principle of universal love to its logical conclusion. The question is, are you so prepared?"

I said that I was.

She smiled. "Are you sure?" she asked. Her smile became a grin.

"Yes," I said. I was sure I could match whatever Nicolai would do.

"Remember, Nicolai invited you here," she replied, "and send us off together. Just look at your invitation card. He made a commitment, and this commitment is beautifully presented there. He made a fully conscious commitment to bring us here together, formally, and he has put it down in his own handwriting. He even signed it in a formal manner."

I was ashamed all of a sudden, because I had left the card carelessly in my pocket where it got wrinkled. When I brought it out and looked at it, it came to light as a precious document that should have been framed.

"Look at the face of it again," Anton said, "you will find both of our names there, Nicolai Vasily and Antonovna Valentina Berendeyev Lisitov. It's all finely printed."

Indeed, so it was. Everything was there, printed in fancy letters like a landscape across the card.

"And what does it say inside?" she asked.

"We warmly invite you to join us!" I read. Nicolai wrote the card in his own handwriting. It was an invitation for you to join.

"Join what?" I asked. "Join for a celebration?"

Way down the page the invitation say something about dinner, and this in a much smaller writing. "Please meet us for dinner at 5PM at the restaurant of the TV tower," it said. I continued to read, "with my best regards, Nicolai."

"Did you notice that the invitation and the request to meet for dinner has been separated? Note the gap in between. The style of the writing is different. These are two separate issues. Can you see that?" she asked.

She said, she hadn't noticed the separation herself until Nicolai had pointed it out. "The point is, he invited you with the full understanding that the invitation would involve our being together as intimately as we were in Caracas. As a matter of fact, he invited you because of it, as if he was saying that his love would not close any doors, but open them wider. There is a wider sphere unfolding from this promise than you can imagine, Peter, and this not because that's the kind of man Nicolai is, but because Nicolai understands what is demanded by the principle that is involved. There will be a marriage celebration forthcoming out of this. The celebration will be between Nicolai and me, and it will most certainly include you too, should you wish to be included. That certainly would be my wish, and it would be the right thing to do. You said yourself that good is the outcome of divine Principle, a universal principle that can only be manifest universally, that cannot be divided, that must encompass all. Remember, you told me in Caracas that any attempt to isolate good, and to privatize it into a small sphere, is a slap into the face God. Nicolai understands this; I do too. But are you committed to live by what you understand to be true? We are committed. Are you? You are invited by both of us, me and Nicolai. You are invited to join us formally in celebrating the uniting bond that we can't escape even if would want to. As you said in Queensland, the universal marriage of humanity is something we've been subjected to from the moment of conception, because of our common humanity. It is a reality that we have to learn to run with. Nicolai suggests that we go one step further and celebrated it; that we celebrate it openly, profoundly, in a huge celebration that matches the profundity of the discovered principle."

"What are you saying?" that was all I could reply.

"Nicolai proposes something akin to a triple concerto, which, as you said yourself, is an extremely rare composition."

"Are you suggesting a triple marriage celebration of two men acknowledging that they are joined to a single bride?" I asked astonished. "That comes from Nicolai?"

Anton nodded quietly.

"But doesn't he know that an artificial marriage institution denies the reality that we are already married to one another as human beings? It denies a universal principle, wanting to create something that already exists."

"You are thinking of the 'old' Nicolai, Peter, the privatizer. That Nicolai no longer exists." Anton began to laugh. "He grew up just as we all did. He recognized the principle of the universal marriage of all mankind as human beings, and that it is greater than all of us and exempts no one. That changed him. One he recognized the principle he had no choice, as he had put it, but to respond to its imperative. They way he sees his triple wedding proposal, it wouldn't create a unique bond as the conventional weddings intend do, but would merely acknowledge the bond that already exist. He sees it as a celebration that brings together three people committed to the universal principle of our all-embracing humanity, an acknowledged community of principle, a base for further development."

"Wow! Nicolai really has changed, and you with him," I said astonished. "And here I thought you were proposing a triple polygamy of two men married to a single bride."

Anton shook her head. "Nicolai would have never proposed that, not the old Nicolai or the new. So it isn't a marriage to a single bride," she added and laughed, "but an acknowledgement of a profound reality by all three of us to one another in a unity that reflects the community of principle that already unites us. If love were a vertical affair reflecting the Byzantine model, then a triple marriage would be impossible. It would become a polygamous orgy and end in chaos before it even got off the ground. But with love unfolding into a lateral flow out of the resources of everyone's own self-love, the impossible becomes possible because the reality already exists by which we are one, and needs only to be acknowledged. In a lateral flow we can easily connect up multiply, in any way we choose and support one-another and cherish one-another. In fact we cannot avoid that. The triple 'wedding' wouldn't create a boundary, it would signify an enduring celebration of the principle involved that everyone will need to acknowledge at some point in the continuous development of civilization. Civilization needs to become a celebration instead of being just a foundation for survival, precariously upheld in the face of countless conflicts. Nicolai proposes to start building a foundation for a real civilization. That is what he is inviting you to become a part of. Who else would he invite, but you? You are the one that came foremost to his mind when the question arose. Don't you agree that he chose wisely? He loves you. He loves what you stand for. He fell in love with you way back in Suchumi on the boat on the Black Sea when you discussed the 'dimensions of civilization,' as he put it, and how the Soviet Union might be saved."

"Wow! And Olive was part of that scene back in Suchumi. We had long discussions about everything from depopulation to universal love. She was also working extensively with Nicolai during the conference there. I met Olive only for one day. We talked all night through and had ice cream and wine along the way at three in the morning in a drab place across from a gas station on a highway in the middle of nowhere. And then we talked some more until the sun came up. And it wasn't all talk."

"Maybe that's what got Nicolai curious about you, Peter. Olive has a great talent in brining people together and bringing the best out of them. So it wouldn't have been too hard for her to predict what this might lead to."

"Well, she war right, Anton. What is happening now is more or less what Olive had predicted about you and me," I said to Anton. "She predicted this several times already. She kept saying that she would be at our wedding feast. She said that last summer. And I think she knew what kind of wedding feast that would be, a feast of celebration of something that she recognized already existed."

"How could she have known all that?" Anton asked.

"If one understands the principle involved, it is easy to make accurate forecasts," I said her quietly. "This means that she understood us better than we did ourselves. Of course once the principle is recognized, a certain outcome is inevitable. She could have forecast on this basis that the triple wedding would be recognized as a kind of minimal platform that metaphorically represents the entire sphere of Helen's lateral lattice in which we find our universal humanity."

"She must have seen this result as natural and inevitable," said Anton. "Indeed, if it is natural, its unfolding must be inevitable."

"In Caracas you said to me that we shouldn't seek just beautiful mornings," I said to Anton. "You demanded that this idea should be expanded to: always! That jump was tremendous, Anton. It turned our dinner dance that night into a rich sexual affair. Now you are adding a whole new dimension again, with no limits in sight. If you had said this a long time ago back in Moscow when we had dinner together at the Sevens Heaven restaurant, what you are proposing now, I might have fainted for joy, though it wouldn't have been possible then."

"No, Peter, you would have been puzzled. You wouldn't have understood enough to see the foundation for this joy. You would have been scared." She began to laugh. "We were both too ignorant for any of that, like two blind leading one another into a land we knew nothing about, that we could barely see through all the fog."

"Even if you had said the same in Caracas when we first met again, I would have thought I was dreaming. But then after Caracas, if you had made the proposal in Queensland, I would have congratulated you. I also recognized in Queensland that would never loose you again. So, yes, a celebration is in order as an acknowledgement!"

"Isn't that exciting, Peter?" She paused and grinned. "Now let me add one more dimension above that," said Anton. "The added dimension is quality, the sublime."

"You are saying that the triple wedding represents a qualitative advance to a higher level," I replied, "and that any advance beyond that would have to involve a qualitative advance once again that uplifts the whole platform to a still higher level? In other words, it would not be an open-ended free for all. It would be something that is boundless in form, but rigorously bound to an escalating attention to the principle that constantly ennobles the universal union of mankind as it should be reelected in us and in all people, as we begin to understand more and more of this principle. Do I make sense?"

Anton nodded again.

"And you are inviting me to become involved in that?" I added. "What an honor! But what about Sylvia, and Heather? Suppose that they would want to become a part of this formally acknowledged union that is but symbolic of a larger reality. What would happen then?"

"What about it?" said Anton. "Would their joining in that acknowledgement in celebration not produce a qualitative uplift? In Caracas we were all married to each other for all practical purposes, were we not? And look, what a qualitative jump came out of that? Isn't that what a union of hearts is all about? A marriage celebration, therefore, represents a commitment to a qualitative increase without end. As you said, we have to learn to run with that. Isn't that also what defines your marriage with Olive and with Sylvia, individually? And then there is you're your marriage in India that is already uplifting the life of countless people, more than anyone might know. Those are just a few bonds that you have acknowledged so far in a profound celebration. I am sure that countless other such marriage bonds exist that love has forged, that have not been acknowledged in celebration, but which have produced the same kind of qualitative uplift in your life and their life, which you merely haven't bothered to acknowledge, not even to each other. And yes, sex may be involved in all of them as an aspect of being alive, in the passion for living by which we are all enriched in our self-love. Still, the sex and the passion won't be the defining factor. The defining factor involves an element of the sublime."

"Do you want me to tell you about my marriage in India?" I asked. "Something sublime unfolded there."

She put a finger over my lips. "No, not now. That's not important right now. What is import right now is acknowledge our union, to celebrate the fact that we are one, even though we all are."

"Of course we are one," I replied.

She nodded in agreement. "The unity that we have discovered and that binds us must find expression, Peter," said Anton. "Nicolai told me that you of all people should understand the meaning of community of principle, but where is the proof if it isn't expressed in celebration?"

"The proof of the pudding lies in the eating, it lies in celebration," I said quietly. "That's what proof is, isn't it? The expanding movement, this stepping forward towards the sublime, should become a model for the whole world. wouldn't this change the world and make it a brighter place? Is that what Nicolai is hoping for?" I said in awe. "Is that that the core of his proposal?"

Anton simply smiled.

I moved the jam pot and the sugar out of the way, and reached out my hands to her, just to touch her face. I closed my eyes and opened them again. "This isn't a dream," I said, "Is it?"

She just kept on smiling.

"Oh my God, Anton," I added as the realization began to unfold as to what a profound thing was really happening here. That was all that I could manage to get out before the first tears came, "I am so deeply honored by your proposal that I really don't know what to say," I stammered suddenly. This wasn't theoretical anymore.

"It's Nicolai's proposal and mine," she replied, "but why should you be astonished by it? What we are proposing is nothing new to you."

"No Anton. When it come to a new unfolding of love, that's always something new. It is as new as if it happened for the first time in an eternity. And the ceremony that Nicolai wants, that's something new likewise that has never been seen on this planet in its entire history, on the platform on which it is proposed, designed to uplift society for all ages to come. And you will be a part of it for all the days to come. If that is not enough to bring tears to one's eyes, what would be?"

While we talked, a waiter refilled our coffee cups, and later came back with a small potted plant with blossoms similar to a violet. He placed it on our table that was flooded with sunshine. He smiled, but didn't say anything.

"He should have said, happy honeymoon," Anton suggested. "He probably sensed that something wonderful was in the air. As a human being, he would have been touched by this, too."

"On the other hand he might have heard us talking, and may have realized that something was happening here that has never happened before, that may have historic implications like a new step for mankind."

"This sounds to me you are comparing our triple celebration proposal to man's landing on the moon," I commented. "A small step for a man, a giant step for mankind."

"Yes," she agreed. "That's a perfect analogy. When you come to the point that all those lower aspects that create boundaries, dishonesty, isolation, domination, and so forth, are invalidated, then the number of people involved in a union of hearts has no real significance. It could be a celebration of three, seven, or even ten. The qualitative improvements are then the real factor. Think about that."

"The number is seven," I interjected.

"Seven what?" she asked.

"My marriage in India; we are seven altogether," I replied.

"That's wonderful, Peter. Maybe we will be seven one day soon, too. That's a challenging prospect, isn't it? But for starters, let's begin small. A triple marriage celebration would be a good starting point for building. That gets us to take the first giant step of acknowledging the universality of the principle of love. It breaks the barrier so to speak. Anything after that is no longer revolutionary. Nicolai thinks of this as a perfect starting point for transforming the axioms of society which determine the way people relate to one another. He equates three with infinity."

"In other words, you want us three to become truly the leaders for a brave new world?" I asked. "Wow, what an invitation! How can I refuse? I am honored. You want me to be a part of this leading edge dynamic movement. And Anton, what a beautiful initiative it is with you playing a central role in it." I stood up and embraced her.

She responded with a kiss.

"Except, what about property rights?" I asked, jokingly.

Anton laughed. "I never thought I would hear you bring up that questions, you can't be serious. I know you hate the very idea of property rights. We wouldn't be sitting here together if you didn't. From the moment on that one thinks about property, and property related rights and obligations, one doesn't think about love. Those who get trapped into this spend their entire life fighting, and not just in the courts. Love has to be more than a commitment to enrich one another's existence. Commitments can be broken. Love has to be something greater, and it is. It is something sublime, as you say, that we are born with, that we have to learn to run with."

Here I had to laugh, too. "Of course you are right, Anton. Please, forgive me for bringing this up, but I had to hear your answer, not to test you, but to test the structure of unity that you are proposing."

Anton grinned and nodded. "I am talking about a celebration of a recognition of an aspect of our humanity, an aspect of the reality of our being, that exists far above all of that."

"You are right," I agreed. "What we mean to each other is not something that is here today, and gone tomorrow. It will remain for as long as we will live, I am certain of it, but I had to hear you say it. Now that you have said it, I feel like celebrating already, right now!"

"Celebrating is good," she replied, "let's start today, right now." She began to grin, suddenly. "Actually, did you know that we have been celebrating already, ever since we came here. Maybe this truly is our honeymoon. It could be, if we wanted it to be. A honeymoon in Siberia, doesn't this sound romantic?"

"Yes, why not? Lets keep on celebrating for the whole duration of the mission, and beyond, I suggested. "But let's devote the rest of the time we have here, to dancing."

Anton agreed that this was a wonderful idea. When we talked about dancing, Erica's story came to mind about the freedom to move on the Autobahn in Germany. The original design was that a person had the freedom to drive on the autobahn at any speed desired, except this required a responsible obedience to the underlying principle for safe conduct. When this requirement was not fulfilled, artificial limits needed to be imposed. Erica had hinted that a tremendous commitment to an underlying principle must be achieved in order to support a larger bond that is reflected in expanded freedoms, which can only exist in an atmosphere of expanded integrity and honor. "This freedom," Erica had said to me, "demands so much more in terms of love than is normally committed to towards one another."

Erica should have added that the lower level framework offers actually little security since woman are all too often raped, beaten, and exploited within the lower level marriage framework, and their families are torn apart in games of jealousy, even to the point that spouses are murdered. None of this is possible at the higher-level marriage union where the primitive aspects that divide and isolate people are no longer a factor, where the union can only be founded on a commitment to a higher principle.

Anton nodded and smiled.

As soon as the breakfast was paid for, we left. We got ourselves ready to go dancing.

"Just look at us," I continued our conversation back at our room, "it took us twelve years to prove to ourselves that the results do outweigh all the efforts that must be made to develop an understanding of the platform for expanding love. It seems as if those lean years never existed. Does this have something to do with sublimity?"

"In this case we have to upgrade the symbol CSB once again," said Anton in reply. "I promised you a still higher definition when we said good bye in Caracas, remember? So, here it is: The letter 'c' stands of 'children,' the letter 's' for the 'sublime,' and the letter 'b' for the 'betterment of humanity.'"

That motion, of course, was accepted with a kiss and a long lasting hug. That hug reflected once again the slow moving, long drawn out soft melody, of the great horn passage of Johannes Brahms' Symphony Number One that now received a new meaning as our wedding symphony.

As it was, time was running short if dancing was to be on the agenda. To save time, we doubled up in the bathroom. I didn't think much of it, but Anton remarked that she felt that were acting like any long married couple would, when pressed for time. The beauty of this was that it confirmed for her a reality that she was slowly beginning to grasp. We felt that we had been married for more than a dozen years already, since that day we first met at the tower in Moscow. For me, our being together seemed quite normal. I asked Anton if she felt the same way.

Anton just nodded and grinned, but then shook her head. "It seems more beautiful now," she added

I reasoned that she should have compared our larger marriage commitment to us having earned an advanced degree in science, except that it is something even bigger than this.

"Nicolai, certainly is excited about the possibilities that this larger marriage commitment opens up," Anton continued after a few moments of silence, getting herself ready in front of the mirror. "Nicolai said that the triple wedding idea must be modeled after the principle of the sun, for it to work. The outflow of the sun's light and warmth brings life to the world. We are the suns of brilliant white light, that contains within itself all the colors of the rainbow, locked into a single bond of white. Common marriages rarely reflect this model. That is why the larger marriage platform appears so illogical at first, because it reflects a model that is not understood, and therefore implemented."

Anton assured me, when she asked me to help button up her blouse, that she would be proud to have children with both of us, and that she meant both of us, if either of us wanted that. She said that the very idea may seem irrational, but it shouldn't be, because those children, whose ever they may be, would have a greater base of support in affection that other children may be blessed with.

I embraced her for this wonderful offer. I said that it doesn't seem irrational on the basis of that love that we share, and of our commitment to enrich one another. Why shouldn't we have children together as a reflection of this commitment? "In fact it seems natural and lawful, even ideal to do this," I added.

"Look at what happens to society in times of war," she said. "The opposite happens. The best men are sent to the front to fight, where they are killed, and the very best become the officers who lead the charge, who are the first to be killed. Afterwards, when the fighting stops, the unfit remain to propagate the nation."

She said that no farmer would operate on such an idiotic platform. She added that she understood the need for sending the best men to war, to assure the survival of the nation, and she understood that the genius in man is not so much a hereditary quality than the result of education and care.

"In spite of all this, it still seems rational for one to want to have children with the very best men the world has, whom I both love dearly" she said with a smile, "who, I am sure, will provide the very best care for those children, and the best possible guidance and education."

I agreed. "It seems illogical, really, that a family be limited to just a single father," I said. "The whole of society should care for one another as one large family bound to each other in love, don't you agree? Instead, people are in a competition to steal from one another."

"That's why Nicolai wants a big wedding," Anton said moments later. "It is needed for all the world to see the legitimacy of it."

As so often in my life in profound moments, I didn't know what to answer. I knew that everything she had said was correct, totally, and scientifically so, but why did it seem so unbelievably magical? This wasn't new, and yet it was.

Here, the NutCracker ballet came to mind again, especially Nicolai's description of it. I suddenly realized what Nicolai had been talking about. He had been taking about himself. The frozen ice bound dessert that he described was his own soul, the soul of a cold and barren scientist and security officer who had lived a lone existence of self-enforced exile from the world. That's probably why it took years before we finally met. I remembered Steve telling me that Nicolai couldn't meet the demands that he felt we would place on him. But, somehow, in this ice-crusted wilderness he came upon a profusion of life and warmth, a human dimension that appeared too magical at first to be real. Except, this wasn't the real magic, the real humanity. This unfolded later, at a different level of consciousness which was no longer anchored in time and space, but which was real, nonetheless. Was I the prince in his nutcracker ballet, who had invited him there with Anton at my side, both of us standing at his side?

My dreams in Caracas, of the four rivers that demanded completeness, were they also his dreams? Indeed, we appeared to have shared more in this silent way than we probably ever had dared to talk about. We were bound by an undeniable unity of the soul. Should this unity be denied, or should it be given acknowledgement and expression? There was no question in my mind as to what the answer would have to be. I had answered Anton with a kiss in my dream.

I remained silent for a while, while we got our coats on, pondering over what she had said and how I had responded to my own enquiry. Then, suddenly, Heather came to mind. Anton, evidently thought about her, too.

"You should have been more loving to Heather," she broke the silence as if she could read my mind. "How many times did the two of you meet intimately in all those years after Ross came onto the scene, prior to Caracas? A dozen times in a dozen years?"

I nodded, and said that it was actually less than that.

"I wonder how you survived living behind closed doors like this?" asked Anton gently. "You shared a house on many occasions, but not your touch. You were in love, but didn't dare to be honest about it. You introduced Heather to me as a dear friend, while you had rejected her love for all those years. You kept yourself isolated by force, knowing full well that Sylvia would thereby be obliged to isolate herself, too. But I don't blame you. We are all like that. This is what Nicolai has committed himself to get away from. He is certainly aware of the hypocrisy we have committed in the name of honor. Believe me, I speak from experience. I was the champion of it. I had rejected your love, and now I wonder why I did. Some of the blame I had put on Nicolai who always loved me. He wanted me for himself as some kind of possession, and I wanted him to be proud of me. My problem was, I didn't want to be anyone's possession. Not his, not yours. That's why I couldn't move. Now tell me your excuse, about Heather."

I shook my head. "There are no excuses. Being in love with Heather was a force that made one infinitely more sensitive to the loveliness of this world. We have always been in love, but this love had drifted away from the physical domain into something else. She is a catalyst for the sunshine. I love her for this, and that appeared to be quite enough for all those years when we were stuck in a rut towards one another and nothing was moving anymore.

I said to her that it appears that each one's love unfolds in a different form, and survives under the severest circumstances, and so fulfills its purpose to whatever degree we allow. "My love for Heather had drifted into this direction even before the impasse at the Sand Castle, so it continued afterwards the same way until a real foundation for it was built. It actually became stronger after Ross came unto the scene, even though we were moving apart physically. I'll never forget that afternoon when we went shopping for glass sculptures in Venice. Just seeing Heather there together with those sculptures, added something magical to the moment. There was a blending of something that belonged together, and all that was also linked to myself, and beyond myself to Ushi, Steve, Sylvia, Ross, and Tony. Her flowing dark hair, her radiant smile, her eyes, were all brought into focus by the magic of the crystal glass and its shape that transposed one and all into the larger frame in which we exist as one single undivided whole, made up of stars and rays of light that reflected our individuality. As for sexual intimacy, there were a precious few over the years; far too few."

Then I shook my head. "I suppose I should invite Heather once again, to come to Mexico with me for a two week tour. I should do it right when we get back, and this time not for business as in the past, but just for a private tour through the country? When I made this proposal once before, the foundation for it had not been fully established. She had turned me down," I said to Anton. "Maybe it will be different this time around. Heather loves Mexico. I think, this might still be the logical continuation of our love, a stepping stone for moving forward."

"Why wouldn't you do that?" Anton replied. "What would hinder you?"

"Nothing, really. Perhaps it never seemed really possible before, though she was like a dream come true in many other ways. We human beings have so my many different wants and needs, and the infinite unfolding of love that manifests itself in so many ways, satisfies all of them when we become sensitive to the riches that we share with one another," I replied. "Life and love have so many dimensions."

I told Anton that I had noticed an enriching satisfaction when Tony and I were invited to a strip joint, way back during the beach project days, when Tony served with the Air Show team in Vancouver. Right there, in the strip joint, over a beer, a specific need was satisfied that made me feel glad we had come. It was a satisfaction born out of a different kind of love and generosity. In the same manner, the love that you and I share here, between us, fulfills a different need again in a manner that nothing else in the world can satisfy. What we have here is unique and precious, there can be no duplicate of it, anywhere. And with Nicolai, it's all different again. Just being in the presence of this wonderful man makes me feel warm and secure. It is a real treat to be touched by his generosity and his love that encircles the whole world. We are so rich, Anton, to have found all of each other. In fact, every time we meet, the world becomes brighter. Isn't this a wonderful world in which to live?"

Anton had gone into the bedroom by then. Her voice sounded quieter now, and sweeter.

"Indeed it is," Anton agreed, speaking louder now, "our love has unfolded into something tremendously rich because of our commitment to it, and now the door has been opened still wider, and not just ours. In fact, I can see you becoming involved in a triple wedding with Heather and Ross, or all of us together, if this should become appropriate."

I shook my head. "Are you sure you are ready for that? You are moving too fast."

"No, I am moving too slowly. We have been moving too slowly for centuries, or haven't been moving at all. We are in a state of crisis in the world, because humanity has been moving too slowly for too long. This may be the real underlying reason why we are on this mission. Humanity has been moving too slow in embracing each other on a platform of enriching one another in love, on which we can build some form of universal unity. This hasn't happened. Now we must deal with the consequences, and those consequences appear grim, indeed. That's the price we now must pay for having moved too slowly, or not at all."

When I came to the bedroom Anton was almost fully dressed. I had to hurry to catch up.

"I know what you said is true, Anton," I confirmed. "Still, I feel there is something missing here that supports this universal unity, something without which universal unity will remain but a dream."

I knew what Anton had said made sense, but it didn't seem right. There was something we had both omitted. Her demand for unity, noble as it was, was still fundamentally a demand, and demands are not the outcome of love. Something was missing. Love can't be a demand. Something else was needed, something to resolve the paradox, but what is it?

"Name me one reason why the principle that enriched us should apply only to us and not universally," Anton answered, sitting on the bed, waiting for me. "What we discovered has the potential to enrich the world. It reflects a universal principle. Principle is universal by its very nature, isn't it?"

I shook my head again. "I know this," I said. "Still, we are missing a vital point, Anton. Perhaps we don't fully understand yet what the nature of the principle is."

She shook her head as if she was about to give up.

I sat down beside her and put my arm around her. "Would we be sitting here if I had made any further advances towards you when we first met during the conference in Moscow?" I asked her. "Remember, I had messed things up so terribly between us that it was a miracle we got back together again."

She became quiet after that. "It wasn't a miracle, Pete. What healed our situation was your integrity. Your integrity caused you to stay away from me. You stayed away from me contrary to everything you must have felt deep inside. Pete, this was the greatest offer of love any man has ever extended to me. I felt honored by it, though I couldn't respond. Afterwards I kept this love so deep in my heart and soul that it remained with me for all those years that followed. It nourished me. It made me feel worthy. It made me feel like someone precious. You must realize that for my entire life men have been attracted to me. It can become a curse to grow up as an attractive woman, did you know that? Men have fought relentlessly to possess me, or to use me for whatever purpose they may have had in mind, subjecting me to their crude and often despicable little games. It started in own family when I was still a young child. While no one ever touched me, I could feel the tensions that were there. I came to hate men, because of that, I feared them, even when I wanted to love them. I allowed myself to be touched by you, only because I felt that someone who is so deeply committed to the welfare of humanity would have the same commitment on the individual level. I didn't realize that you were struggling yourself to sort things out in this uncharted territory. I valued your honesty, however, when you shared with me the agonies of your own struggles and your deep concerns about my feelings. This was the greatest expression of love you could have offered, or anyone else for that matter. This is what the flower had signified that I gave you at the airport before your departure. I was sure you understood that."

With all this deep reaching exploration going on I was slow in getting ready. On the other hand, why would we want to hurry. Were we not 'dancing,' already?

I told Anton that I had been so deeply in love with her in Moscow that I had just wanted to be with her, simply because of the way she was. I explained, that after I had messed things up so badly that we couldn't talk anymore, when I had to resort to writing letters, that I sudden realized I had cherished her for nothing more than being herself. I explained that I became ashamed I had tried to invade her life. I told her that all I could think of during those last days before the end of the conference, was, that I had to get things back to the way they were. "And that's the honest truth," I added. "I had realized by this painful process that I had no right to alter the platform that you had been happy on, even if my motive might have been to raise that platform higher, in order to make your life a bit richer."

Two small tears came to Anton's eyes as I spoke.

"I think I learned a lesson about sovereignty during this conference, because you cherished your sovereignty above everything else," I concluded.

"Oh my God, Pete, this must be what has been missing!" she responded with a burst of great excitement. "Sovereignty is a vital element. It is essential for establishing unity. Without it unity cannot be established, much less be maintained. Without sovereignty, unity becomes slavery, a trap. Without it, no one is free." Anton grinned now as she spoke. "That's what Nicolai once told me, too," she added. "He said that without a strong commitment to the sovereignty of nations, no nation in the world is free. Nations can only be united as a community of principle, which means a community of sovereign nation states bound together by a common commitment to enrich one another."

She smiled as she spoke. "This is what Nicolai is proposing for us; something that you may wish to propose to Heather, too. I can feel that you want to remain close to her forever, and she to you, but maybe you can't reach each other without a demonstrated commitment that guarantees each other's sovereignty no matter what. This has been the problem between Heather and you from the beginning, hasn't it? What had happened at the SandCastle was the inevitable result of not knowing what was needed as a foundation. Every person needs to feel cherished, but without a commitment to sovereignty, love hasn't the ring of a true metal. If you had focused on this principle right from the beginning, the SandCastle impasse might not have happened. That's what Nicolai had said to me some time ago when you told him about your experience on one of his visits."

"Isn't that what I told you, too?" I said to her. "Love doesn't reflect itself in the form of demands. Respecting another's sovereignty means, one doesn't impose. I have never imposed anything on Heather. I have never imposed anything on you either. I didn't need to, our love has been greater than the force of caution that urges self-isolation. And so it will always be."

Here something strange happened. I couldn't find my shoes. "Did I slip then off at the restaurant?" I asked. "Maybe I left them there."

I explained to Anton while searching for my shoes, that what I had felt in regard to Heather was beautiful, too. It wasn't a complete isolation. The remaining barrier wasn't as dense. My love should have guaranteed her sovereignty. Then ether would have been no barrier. Still there was happiness in this union. I said to myself that one doesn't need to go through an open door seven times a day to know that the door is open. One doesn't need to do this in order feel the unity that spans all boundaries. "Once in a decade should be enough to test the validity of it," so I thought.

"But was it really enough?" she asked. "Why shouldn't you have cherished your love more intimately once or twice a week, instead of twice in a decade," she said and grinned. "Whatever is right, is right universally. Have you ever thought about sharing your most intimate thoughts and feelings with Heather in the kind of letter that you had written to me during the conference in Moscow, composed with the same deeply drawn honesty and affection, and concern? That's all a part of establishing intimate relationships, and the lack of it may be the reason why you never had the kind of intimate relationship that you could have had."

"Yes," I replied, "I was a fool, but it is so hard not to be a fool. Didn't the same shallow relationship develop between us, too? We had sent a few post cards to one another until we met again in Caracas. Nothing more than this happened. Those post cards were nice, but they didn't convey what could have been said."

Anton seemed to agree with what I had said.

My shoes were eventually found, with us both looking for them. She didn't even comment on my having been so stupid as to have placed them under the bed so that they were pushed far under it with the carpet at the bedside.

After this bit of hassle was over, I told her that my relationship with Heather had nevertheless been as full throughout the years as it had been when we first met, maybe not as full and deep as it could have been. "Sure, we didn't share a bed for years," I said to her with a smile, "but this does not mean that we didn't have an intimate kind of relationship. What we shared included a lot of what had mattered the most right from the start. This had never ceased. The most valuable of what we had cherished had continued to enrich our lives. In a somewhat remote sense, Anton, one could say that Heather and I had really been married to each other all along, without either of us wanting to acknowledge it. That's the beauty about being human and in love, Anton. We keep on loving one another no matter what. There exists really no standard against which one can measure life and love. Life unfolds in countless ways, with each aspect having the potential to be as rich as the other. It's really impossible for one to make any judgments at all. Just think of how dull the world would be if all life could be measured with the same meter, and all love in the world could only have one single expression? Thank God, life and love are individual in their infinite unfolding. This makes the human sphere infinite, too."

Anton grinned in response, or perhaps in response to me putting my tie on the wrong site out, which I hadn't noticed until after I had put my coat on.

Evidently I wasn't really there. My head was spinning. Talking about the grand offer that she had made, seemed to help. It was a way of responding and exploring, except it put me even more into a tizzy, and what was worse, I loved it. This promised to be like India all over again, only better. Indira never talked about children, but Anton did. Heather wouldn't dream, of it. Ushi perhaps, but she was too far out of my life, and had been for so long. "You are right, maybe I should invite heather for a vacation to Mexico," I broke our moment of silence.

"There no reason why your association with Heather could not change tomorrow into something still better," Anton suggested, as though she hadn't noticed me correcting my tie without taking the coat off. "Anything can change," she added. "As you said yourself, there are countless facets to infinity. Our life and love should be new and fresh every moment with new experiences of love. It must never stop to grow. It must never dim and go out. This should also reflect itself in enriching one another's existence. Maybe your love for Heather should be fresh every day, as is ours, as all love should be, as your love for Sylvia is probably, too. Shouldn't love be always fresh to have any meaning at all?"

We paid for the hotel room on the way out and asked at the desk about a place for dancing.

"Go two blocks to the right from traffic sign. You can't miss it," we here told.

On the way I remembered how Steve and Ushi had treated me right from the beginning. I told her what had happened on the first day we met.

"Ursula and Steve are beautiful people," she replied and smiled. "You were fortunate to have met them."

"This means, I have a new problem, now," I replied. "How do I explain to Heather why I have remained so stupid for a dozen years against the background of that rich experience in Leipzig that really started everything?"

"My advice is," Anton smiled back, "that you don't worry about this. Don't look back at what might have been, and lost opportunities. Look forward. It is far more important that you extend the invitation to her that opens up a whole new world, and that you do it with the kind of love that is rich with your commitment to respect her sovereignty. Then, don't be surprised if this ends with a triple wedding, styled after our own, which would become a liberation from isolation for both Heather, you, and Ross. If this liberation had happened earlier, the three of you would have had a wonderful family by now with oodles of little bambinos in the wings."

It turned out that all this grand contemplation had a very tangible and immediate effect on us. We both felt evermore like dancing now. Thanks to the influence of tourism, the city was able to oblige us, even at ten in the morning. We both felt that dancing was a great way of celebrating the deeper commitment to each other that had just become cemented. This day had become a bright day for us, in this land of sunshine and brilliant white snow, and this far beyond the physical sense.

The people at the hotel were right, the place they told us about wasn't hard to find. It was a big indoor market that had a dance floor in the middle to attract customers to the shops, especially the tourists. And as we were told, there was continuous dancing.

Anton loved the fast Russian dances. I even got her to try them disco style where no rules applied. Oh, she was a fast learner in the art of dancing without rules, and quick when the music got wild. Indeed, there were times when one would swear that her feet never touched the floor.

All too soon, we had to leave again. The departure time for the flight to Bratsk was three PM.

It turned out that our memories of this bright day in Novosibirsk had to last us for quite some distance. But why shouldn't it. It was after all, our own, special, private honeymoon. And why should it be limited to just one day? I suggested to her that our celebration was just beginning.

The sky turned dark after our departure. The weather was even colder and foggy when we descended into Bratsk. Bratsk is a typical Siberian city. Its backbone is the country itself. It is also the site of Russia's second largest hydroelectric station. From Bratsk onward, Rostislav would be our official guide, one of Koldunov's men. He met us as we arrived, even though we arrived late at night. He was a man bound to protocol. Also, Rostislav was the strictest soul on social conduct, as strict as the land was cold.

Bratsk was his city. He was proud of it. He told us, that as a boy, he had worked on the construction of the great dam that feeds the generating plants. However, there was no time for him to give us a tour. As far as he was concerned, we were on a mission, a piece of inventory of the Russian State to be used as needed and precisely in the prescribed manner. No deviation was allowed. This attitude was left over from a time, which he called the golden days.

By noon the next day we flew further north in a twin engine Antonov-24 turbo-prop that had seen better days. Beneath us, the rolling hills, covered with forests, occasionally gave way to the open taiga. The flight that we were on was the milk run, the only air service that extended civilization into the great northern wasteland that had once been under intense development. Pioneering had been the watchword.

The airports along the way consisted mostly of snow covered fields and primitive wooden buildings covered with plump pillows of snow four feet thick. At most of the airports bush planes were standing by, mounted on skis, parked near the 'terminal.'

Occasionally one could see a river from the air, stone frozen, brilliantly white, with boats pulled out unto the banks until spring. But mostly there was nothing to see except the endless horizon of a white landscape that blended into the sky in the far distance. Vast spaces rolled by beneath us without the slightest sign of habitation. Nicolai's description of the Nutcracker Suite came to mind as a perfect description of what we saw.

We were on the "Northern Service," as they called this flight. The aircraft was an old twin engine tin goose that vibrated and rattled as loudly as she was cold inside. We were told before boarding that one of the heating systems for the cabin was defective, and that it would be repaired later, along the way. For the meantime, they had handed each passenger a gigantic fur-lined coat in which Anton almost disappeared.

Beneath us, soon, lay nothing but snow, snow that blinded the eye, that reflected the sunlight that had come through the clouds again. In the sunlight the landscape became painted in deep patterns of blue whenever shadows where created by the low sun that barely stood above the horizon.

Rostislav had been a high-ranking officer in the Communist Party in earlier days. He was polite, but devoid of personal feelings. The personal life in Russia had been suppressed. It had ended with the revolution. The state had defined the people's feelings according to the needs of the state. The state was God, the party the mediator, the people mere followers; a perfect order for a population with a peasant mentality. He allowed no cuddling, not even when we were bundled up in our heavy fur coats crossing the icy plateau of northern Siberia, shivering in an inadequately heated plane. However, he wasn't sharp enough to catch our looks. Maybe looks hadn't been covered in the rulebook. In all other matters, however, he was forceful and precise.

No doubt he was proud of his position of authority, and a status which didn't really exist anymore, but was respected anyway. His spotless uniform was obviously a part of the brainwashing package that told him that he was a superior human being. The aristocrats had used this trick, bestowing on themselves fancy titles and fancy clothing, and the doctors and generals had played a similar game later on. He was still called Comrade General, while the decorations he carried on his uniform zeroed in on that old myth of a superior being that set him apart from the masses that called him Comrade. The old Byzantine convention could not be so easily shed, so it seemed. Adding Comrade to his official title hadn't changed anything. The myth of the superior human being was in control of his heart. It had been in control of him throughout the Soviet era and had simply remained so.

His uniform was so highly important to him that he denied himself the comfort of wearing the warm parka that everyone else wore. Judging by his decorations, he had worked his way up through the ranks. This success, evidently supported the myth.

"Have you ever noticed how arrogant an accomplished idealist can be?" I whispered to Anton when Rostislav strutted through the icy cold to the terminal building on one of the stops, in nothing but his uniform. He was a model 'prisoner' of the bureaucracy state; a perfect puppet. He always used the royal 'we' when he should have referred to himself and his own personal feelings. Still, he helped us whenever help was needed. The very fact that he was with us, spoke of his love for his country. He just hadn't learned to extend this love also to the people that were the very essence of his country.

Fortunately for us all, he was mostly quiet. Whenever he did speak, I always got uncomfortable as though I was being addressed by a royal potentate in whose sight I was nothing. He was speaking from a great distance, not man to man. I tried to change that. I asked about his family, and about the impact of his job on his family. Still, the ice could not be thawed. Every aspect of our conversation was translated by him into the cold language of state relationships, ism to ism. He was like a machine, rather than a man. That's what scared me about him, I realized there were probably others like him in command centers of nuclear missile bases. He was a model servant bound to an ideal with blind loyalty. I also felt a great pity towards him.

When I had dared to ask about his private life, whether he was married and how many children he had, he replied that in the communist society these things had not been significant, nor were they now. He said that the Russian society is quite unlike the American society, where controlling people has become a national obsession, which he said was reflected in America's determination to control the whole world.

I couldn't believe my ears when I heard this answer. Still, to some degree he was right. Of course he couldn't see perfidious Albion standing behind him with the baton of a conductor, determining his every response, just as America responded to the same baton of the same conductor. I couldn't blame him for not realizing that.

I was going to say something to him in rebuttal, pointing to earlier genocide by his beloved Soviet Union that no longer existed, but this would have been rude.

Since it was obvious what kind of game Rostislav was playing, it was no task to actually please him. Still, playing such games didn't produce a very satisfying association. It would have been easier to have a satisfying association with a lifeless machine.

"Maybe I am overstating the case," I said to Anton when I spoke to her about him when he was not on the plane, at one of the many stops.

"I don't think so," was her reply. She was fully aware of his strange character. "People were once selected for this very characteristic," she said.

Since there was no meal service on board the aircraft, we stopped for dinner at Lensk. Lensk looked no different than any of the small places enroute where the plane sometimes stopped long enough for us to get off and get warmed up. We needed these stops for more than one reason. Rostislav was one of them. In this pioneering land, people were still beautifully human, with a practical, down to earth touch that was reflected in their ability to get the plane's heating system repaired. The food was also down to earth, honest and simple. No junk food could be found, but hot steaming sausages, cabbage, potatoes, with milk to drink, or coffee, even beer. Everyone we met was friendly. One of the pilots approached us and asked if we would like to join the crew at their table. Anton said yes. She introduced us, and then chatted and joked with them. It was a time for laughter. Since my cover was that I was an American tourist, Anton did her best to translate everything that was being said, except not everything was translatable when it came to the jokes. The subtlety of humor is so easily lost in translation. Still, she did her best as far as I could tell.

An hour later, the bell rang. It was time to get rolling again. Nicely warmed up now, the belly satisfied, and the soul filled with laughter, we ventured back out into the icy world. There remained only a faint hue now on the horizon where the sun had set. In the dark, the frost crusted entrance of the terminal building had all the appearance of an ice tunnel leading out of an igloo, while we looked more like Eskimos than city dwellers. The only one who stood out as a misfit was Rostislav. His fancy uniform was woefully inadequate for the extreme cold. The night was clear. Minute fragments of ice crystals shimmered in the bitter cold, reflecting the light from the terminal building. It was -70'F. The rapidly falling temperature, after the sun had set, was freezing the last bit of moisture from the air, creating dazzling displays of ice fog. I felt rather sorry for Rostislav.

"He is a man of principle!" Anton whispered.

"Yes, but in a dangerous way," I whispered back. "His obedience will kill him some day if he doesn't watch out."

The girls that followed him out of the terminal building looked at him and started to giggle. Embarrassed, one of the pilots stopped them.

We didn't talk much after the engines started to roll again. The heating system, now repaired, brought a touch of warmth to the cabin. Comfortable and rested, engulfed by the noise of many vibrations and the unending drone of the turbo-props, we dozed off. I had strange dreams about this epic land of ice and snow, mixed with dreams about our days in Caracas. I saw the golden glow of the mountainsides that I had admired each evening at sunset.

At one evening in Caracas, our friend Augustin had invited us to the top of the IBM tower from where we had watched the air traffic going in and out of the city airport, which handled everything from small aircraft to sleek personal jets. They came in flying along the slopes of the valley, then turned quickly and landed. Others took off. Afterwards, all seven of us had gone to 'Mr. Ribs' for dinner, a fast food place that served giant steaks, ribs and beer. To get there, required a lengthy excursion across an ocean of cars parked on sidewalks, and dodging motorcycles that used the sidewalks whenever possible.

I remembered fondly that most of the restaurants were open to the outside, and that the air had always been moist and wonderfully warm. Also, there had always been music and laughter wherever we went. The steaks at Mr. Ribs had been as big as the plate they came on, and with dessert and beer included, they barely cost the equivalent of what would have been four dollars. This price had even included entertainment, except there was no room for dancing provided. But then, who expects to go dancing at a fast food restaurant?

We arrived in the black of night in Yaktusk. I awoke when the turbo-props grew silent. According to a sign on the wall of the terminal building, we had landed in Yaktusk all right. The temperature had dropped to eighty-three below zero according to the official thermometer. Rostislav had a taxi waiting for us at the terminal. It was shaped more like an armored truck than a taxi. It was equipped with a flat, double-pane windshield that constantly froze up. The rest of the vehicle was crusted over. The ice must have been an inch thick. I had to laugh when the taxi driver made some remark that it was cold that night. He couldn't get his cargo hatch to open.

"...it's because of the wind," he added.

I didn't figure out what he meant by that. I was too amazed that there was someone in this remote wilderness that spoke English.

The hotel, for its part, tried to make up for the bitter cold. Behind triple pane windows and double storm doors, the radiators vibrated with steam. I couldn't remember ever being as hot in Caracas as I was that night in the hotel at Yaktusk, two floors above the permafrost in the coldest parts of all of Russia. I wondered if Anton managed all right, in her separate room.

The night was short, though. The wake-up call was arranged for seven. It consisted of someone knocking the door down. Breakfast wasn't at all like in Caracas. I looked out the window. The world was still dark, milky with fog surrounding the lanterns; the cars that drove by had their headlights on. A street-sweeping machine came with special equipment to claw up the ice. Only one type of breakfast was served, consisting of freshly baked bread with butter and preserves, and real coffee. No eggs.

The breakfast was barely over when we were hurried back into the taxi that returned us to the airport to board another plane. During the drive I noticed bricklayers at work with steaming mortar. Most people were walking to work, regardless of the cold, wrapped in heavy coats, their heads hidden under large fur-lined hats that come all the way down over the ears and neck.

"Life goes on!" commented the taxi driver as I mentioned the bricklayers. It was the same driver who had picked us up the night before. "Life must to go on," he added. "Yakutia is a rich land," he said proudly. "Our products are needed. We have immense deposits of iron ore and coal, and natural gas..."

"...and diamonds," said Anton in English.

"Ah, you know your country well," the driver grinned at her.

Moments later he pointed to a woman on the sidewalk selling frozen milk in open containers that had wooden sticks frozen in them to serve as a handles. He honked three times and waved. The woman waved back to us.

"You didn't know about this one, I bet," he said to Anton.

She agreed.

Rostislav didn't realize that this interesting tourist adventure was building upon what we had created before, that bought us still closer to one another, and this with nothing more than just looks and smiles and simple words, like: "See here! Look there!"

The Yaktusk airport was slightly larger than all the others we had seen enroute, but it was still just an open field of hard-packed snow. I soon realized the advantage in this. Our next plane was an old Antonov-12, mounted on skis, and outfitted for supply runs into remote areas.

"It can carry tons," Rostislav explained proudly.

For our trip, however, the plane was half-empty.

"How far are we from our destination?" I asked Rostislav before we were airborne again. By then we were worlds away from Bratsk, which itself was but an outpost. Yaktusk appeared to be the final point of civilization in this ice-crusted emptiness. Rostislav simply nodded and smiled after Antonovna had translated the question.

I was puzzled by his answer. Perhaps he didn't know. At that moment the engines drowned out what he might have said, and in no time at all we were airborne again. Soon the sky became clear.

"The fog over the city must be generated by people," Antonovna supposed.

"That's how you can spot a heard of reindeer," said one of the crew. "Their breath generates a cloud of fog around them."

We flew lower now than on the previous run. Occasionally we came upon ice-crusted forests that nestled between small mountains and frozen lakes. Occasionally, there was also an isolated herd of reindeer visible. Just like the crewman had said, a group of black spots could be seen that were enveloped in a thin fog that shone brilliantly in the reflection of the slowly rising sun over the timeless snow that covered everything.

"Did you realize we are over seven and a half thousand kilometers east of Moscow?" Antonovna asked excitedly, From here we could go another four thousand kilometers to the east and still be in what used to be the Soviet Union. And all of this country is as beautiful as this. Don't you love this land?" she said and smiled.

We looked down through the small window of the plane; "It's so untouched, so rich, so wild, so beautiful," she said.

"Yes it is beautiful," I agreed. Still, the thought became stronger that we hadn't come here to look at the open taiga. I whispered something like this to Anton.

"Nicolai has arranged everything with the commander of the Reindeer Research Station," she whispered back. "The commander and a couple of scientists, know what we are coming for. The rest of the people know only our cover story. Even Rostislav knows nothing more. Nevertheless, he has been instructed to keep our destination and our visit a secret. He can be trusted with this."

Moments later Anton pointed to the ground again where she had spotted another herd of reindeer. "Did you know that there are two million reindeer in Siberia," she asked, while I had taken over the small window that we shared. "We have 80% of the world's reindeer population in Siberia. They are bred mostly on collective farms now, and on feed lots, which is far more efficient for raising them, than shepherding herds across an icy land. The wild herds that we see are not harvested anymore, they belong to the land."

Her face radiated with a great pride whenever she spoke about Siberia. This pride seemed totally justified. What I saw was a beautiful land, a land of blue shadows, white trees, and a deep blue sky. Except her pride in it was more beautiful than the land itself.

"It is a free land, for free people," she remarked. Watching Antonovna, I instinctively sensed that this was her land, something she owned as a citizen, something she identified with, that provided her an immense satisfaction.

It was altogether a lovely experience flying with Antonovna. We had our faces glued to the window. It was amazing the things she knew and noticed. She talked about trappers and prospectors who had pioneered this land, and about today's communities serving the Soviet era infrastructure projects. Everything was exciting to her, even the shape of the mountains, as well as the bright future that this land signified to her.

In her company, the two-and-a-half-hour flight seemed like a short jump. We landed on a frozen river or lake between three hills that formed a triangle. Landmarks are scarce in this endless wilderness of ice crusted trees, and apparently, so are good landing sites. The chosen site was perfect. We came in smooth, with a gentle approach and an almost unnoticeable landing. Everything in sight was clean and brilliantly white, unmarred by the least sign of civilization. There weren't even footprints in the snow where the aircraft came to rest. By all accounts we had landed in the middle of nowhere. Nor did anyone get off. The pilots kept the engines idling. Still, the captain did say that this was the end of the line. There was the occasional chatter on the radio, except there was no one around. As far as I could see, there weren't even animal tracks in the area. It looked to me as though nothing had stirred in this part of the country for thousands of years.

Suddenly, as out of nowhere, a huge tracked vehicle appeared. It lumbered down over a snow bank. Antonovna gestured that we should step outside. One of the crew handed us snowshoes. The snow appeared far from being solid enough to walk on. The plane, on its wide skis, had carved deep furrows.

Uh, was it cold, though. The sun was bright, and quite warm behind the window of the heated aircraft, but what a deception this had been! The wind carried tiny ice crystals that stung like needles in the face. But who cared? I was in the Siberian wilderness that few in the world had ever set foot in. It was exciting.

"Welcome to Oymyakon International Airport," shouted the driver of the snow cat in English. He looked down on us from his huge snowmobile, something out of a science fiction movie, and grinned. "Come on up." Then a side door opened.

"Thank you!" I shouted back, waving at him.

"Your taxi is waiting," he replied.

We hobbled over the loose powder like some cowboys whose legs had grown to match the contour of a horse's back. As we reached the snow cat, the driver came out and greeted us. The plane's cargo doors opened just then. We turned back and helped the driver and one of the plane's crew transfer the cargo. Our cargo consisted of wooden crates, some cardboard boxes and several heavy canvass bundles. The plane even carried a sleigh to transport the stuff to the snow cat. The cat with its massive weight might have overburdened the ice of the river or the lake. I had remained at the edge of the 'runway.'

As we boarded the cat, we handed the snowshoes and parkas back to the aircrew and waved to the pilots. Rostislav must have taken this as his cue, or maybe he had to wait until we had handed our snowshoes back. That's when he appeared at the door of the aircraft once more as if he would dive headlong into the snow. But he announced that his assignment was done, he would fly back with the plane. We had arrived safely. His mission was completed. After this little speech, and an official farewell, the aircraft's door was shut again.

For the rest of the journey, we drove, apparently aimlessly, across the taiga. There were no roads, trail markers, nor any landmarks that I could make out. We now had a close up view of the country we had seen for hours from the air. The snow cat drove for another three-quarters of an hour through empty spaces and sparse forest of towering snow sculptures that were leaning slightly with the wind, casting bright blue shadows on the snow. At one point, on top of a bare, wind swept hill the driver stopped. He asked us to come forward and pointed towards the slope of another hill. "Look, there is a rare sight for your photo album," he said and handed the binoculars to Anton and me.

What I saw was a rare sight indeed, which however, we soon found echoed in so many ways in everything that happened up there. The hurried rush of time was swallowed up by the vastness of the place. We saw a man on the opposite slope dragging a sleigh up the side of a hill.

"That's professor Humbold," said the driver jokingly. "He works in an area where he can't afford to bring the dogs into, lest they spread diseases. Nor does he like to bring the snow cats in. You'll probably meet him tonight," said the driver while I got the camera set up.

The driver explained later, after we were on our way again, that he had made a considerable detour to show us this sight, in the hope that the professor would still be working there. "I hope that this will give you a feeling for the vastness of our land," he added.

Eventually we came upon what looked like a small village of aluminum-covered utility buildings and one lone single high-rise. These, altogether, made up the Reindeer Research Station.

From: The Lodging for the Rose - Episode 7: Sword of Aquarius