Elizabeth Íkrat awoke to find herself lying on the floor, face to the ice-cold wall, someone tapping, if lightly, her back with an irritating persistence. Her mouth was dry, her eyes hot and watery; her bones ached, and she wanted nothing more than to return to sleep. But the tapper would not stop - the tapper went on incessantly - and so sleep was, already, a lost cause; there was no point in even so much as closing her eyes.
Elizabeth Íkrat was thus forced to turn over, to move away from her lovely wall, and discover the young Colonel-Minister Kuldar Loime kneeling at her side, face pale and pained, shirtless.
"Put on a shirt," said Íkrat, voice low and raspy. "You look disgusting." He was not, in fact, disgusting - he was, after all, a young-ish military man who was as close to Western celebrity as was possible in Istkalen - but it was not appropriate, could not be condoned; and in any case, he was the most dangerous sort of thing in Istkalen, a likable reactionary, and so had to be reminded of his place as often as as possible to keep him in check, to prevent him from getting any real ideas.
"The Czechs have arrived," said Loime, tone measured. He seemed entirely unperturbed; a shame, really. But what else to expect from the type of man insane and resilient enough to be popular and power-hungry in Istkalen? Nothing, nothing at all...
"More reason to put on a shirt," Íkrat complained. "You were in one when we got here. Why did you take it off?"
"Get up," Loime said, reaction still, somehow, absent from his response. "You'll upset them if they find you here sleeping. Imagine, you write them an apology, invite them here so as to deliver it in person, and then they find you lying down in the corner of the room, half-asleep..."
"Imagine, they come here and find you shirtless."
"I'll put something on."
There was nothing left, then, for Íkrat to do but to sigh, rouse herself, and wander out to go and find the Czechs. She had not quite managed to make the Colonel bow, but she had gotten him to do something, or at least say that he was going to do something, and that was perhaps prostration enough - enough to keep him subdued a day more, enough to keep reaction at bay, at arm's length.
Surrounded by corruption, she muttered bitterly, allied with reaction, playing these strange, paranoid mind-games; she was dead, really, and carrying on as a corpse simply out of mechanical duty (ritual?)
But put it aside, she thought; yes, you are a corpse. Thinking is not your province; thinking is for the living. So go on, go on; going on is all that's left to you.
Four turns down hallways she barely recognized brought her to the Czechs - a strange man in stranger clothing, dignitaries in suits she did not recognize, and then, then, the dearest mother, the Paramount Leader, the President for Life - !
She screamed in anguish, looking up to the heavens as her knees trembled violently, in fear and awe and shame, before giving out entirely; she fell to the ground, prostrating herself before her superior, sobbing profusely. She perceived, dimly, Loime bursting through (in suit and tie again, praise be to God), stumbling, gasping, but it was of no matter, no matter in comparison to the terrible need to confess and to repent bursting so violently in her heart as the radiant light of the woman before her singed and scorched her slimy, fallen flesh....
"Forgive me!" she yelled, her voice shrill, already hoarse. "Oh, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me...."
