Two hundred years after civilization ended in an event known as the Blast Benedikt isn’t one to complain. He’s got a job—transcribing old books and presenting them as the words of the great new leader Fyodor Kuzmich Glorybe—and though he doesn’t enjoy the privileged status of a Murza at least he’s not a serf or a half-human four-legged Degenerator harnessed to a troika. He has a house too with enough mice to cook up a tasty meal and he’s happily free of mutations: no extra fingers no gills no cockscombs sprouting from his eyelids. And he’s managed—at least so far—to steer clear of the ever-vigilant Saniturions who track down anyone who manifests the slightest sign of Freethinking and the legendary screeching Slynx that waits in the wilderness beyond.
