Only the men fight, but they're running out of people to draft. I'm 36. [ By military standards, old for anyone other than an officer. And he wasn't even the eldest in his unit. ] The women handle everything we left behind. The children who aren't old enough to fight, the factories, the fields.

[ A beat. Yakov starts to reach for the cigarette case in his pocket, then remembers the warning he was given about the use of elemental oxygen in the wards and returns his hand to his side. It's more of a social inclination to light a cigarette than any real need, anyway; he'll smoke later. ]

What is the Fold?