Snail on the Slope Read online

  Snail on the Slope

  Arkady Strugatsky

  Boris Strugatsky

  Chapter One

  From this height, the forest was like foam, luxuriant and blotchy, a gigantic world - encompassing porous sponge, like an animal waiting in concealment, now fallen asleep and overgrown with rough moss. A formless mask hiding a face, as yet revealed to none.

  Pepper shook off his sandals and sat down with his bare legs dangling over the precipice. It seemed to him that his heels at once became damp, as if he had actually immersed them in the warm lilac fog that lay banked up in the shadows under the cliff. He fished out the pebbles he had collected from his pocket and laid them out neatly beside him. He then selected the smallest and gently tossed it down into the living and silent, slumbering, all-enveloping indifference, and the white spark was extinguished, and nothing happened - no branch trembled, no eye half-opened to glance up.

  If he were to throw a pebble every one and a half minutes, and if what the one-legged cook, nicknamed Pansy, said was true and what Madame Bardot, head of the Assistance to the Local Population Group, reckoned, if what driver Acey whispered to the unknown man from the Engineering Penetration Group was untrue, and if human intuition was worth anything at all, and if wishes came true once in a lifetime, then at the seventh stone, the bushes behind him would part with a crash, and the director would step out onto the soft crushed grass of the dew-gray clearing. He would be stripped to the waist in his gray garbardines with the lilac braid, breathing heavily, sleek and glossy, yellow-pink and shaggy, looking nowhere in particular, neither at the forest beneath him nor at the sky above him, bending down to bury his arms in the grass, then unbending to raise a breeze with his broad palms, each time the mighty fold on his belly bulging out over his trousers, while air, saturated with carbon dioxide and nicotine, would burst out of his open mouth with a whistling gurgle.

  The bushes behind parted with a crash. Pepper looked around cautiously, but it wasn't the director, it was someone he knew, Claudius-Octavian Haus-botcher from the Eradication Group. He approached without haste and halted two paces away, looking Pepper up and down with his piercing dark eyes. He knew something or suspected something, something very important, and this knowledge or suspicion had frozen his long face, the stony face of a man who had brought here to the precipice a strange, alarming piece of news. No one in the whole world knew what this news was, but it was already clear that everything had altered decisively; what had gone before was no longer significant and now, at last, everyone would be required to contribute all he was capable of.

  "And whose might these shoes be?" said he, glancing about him.

  "They're not shoes, they're sandals," said Pepper. "Indeed?" Hausbotcher sneered and withdrew a large notepad from his pocket. "Sandals? Ver-ry good. But whose sandals are they?"

  He edged toward the brink, peeped cautiously down and stepped back smartly.

  "Man sits by the precipice," he said, "next to him, sandals. The question inevitably raises itself: whose sandals are they and where is their owner?" "They're my sandals," said Pepper. "Yours?" Hausbotcher looked doubtfully at the large notepad. "You're sitting barefooted, then? Why?"

  "Barefoot because I've no choice," explained Pepper. "Yesterday I dropped my right shoe and decided from now on, I'll always sit barefoot." He bent down and looked between his splayed knees. "There she lies. I can just drop this pebble in.. "

  Hausbotcher adroitly seized him by the arm and appropriated the pebble.

  "It is indeed just a pebble," he said. "That, however, makes no difference as yet. Pepper, it's incomprehensible why you're lying to me. You can't possibly see the shoe from here - even if it's there, and whether it is or not is another question, which will be gone into later - and if you can't see the shoe, ergo you can't hit it with a stone, even if you possessed the necessary accuracy and actually did wish to do that and only that. I mean hitting... But we'll sort all that out presently." He hitched up his trousers and squatted down on his haunches.

  "So you were here yesterday as well," he said. "Why? For what reason have you come a second time to the precipice, where the other Directorate personnel, not to mention temporary staff, only come to obey the call of nature?"

  Pepper slumped. This is just plain ignorance, he thought. No, no, it's not a challenge, nor is it spite, no need to take it seriously. It's just ignorance. No need to take ignorance seriously. Ignorance excretes itself on the forest. Ignorance always excretes itself over something.

  "You like sitting here, seemingly," Hausbotcher went on insinuatingly. "You like the forest a lot, seemingly. You love it, don't you? Answer me!" "Don't you?" asked Pepper.

  "Don't you forget yourself," he said aggrieved and nipped open his notepad. "As you very well know, I belong to the Eradication Group and therefore your question, or rather your counterquestion is entirely devoid of meaning. You understand perfectly well that my attitude to the forest is defined by my professional duty; what defines your attitude to it is not clear to me. That's bad, Pepper, you need to think about that. I'm advising you for your own good, not for mine. You mustn't be so unintelligible. Sits on the edge of the cliff in bare feet, throwing pebbles... Why, one asks? In your place I'd tell me everything straight out. Get everything sorted out. Who knows, there could be extenuating circumstances. Nothing's threatening you anyway. Is it, Pepper?"

  "No," said Pepper, "that is, of course, yes." "There you are. Simplicity disappears at once and never comes back. Whose hand? we ask. Whither the cast? Or, perhaps, to whom? Or, as it may be, at whom? And why? And how is it you can sit on the edge of the cliff? Is it inborn or have you done special training? I, for example, am unable to sit on the edge of the cliff, and I can't bear to think why I might train for such a thing. I get dizzy at the thought. That's only natural. Nobody needs to sit on the cliff edge. Especially if he doesn't have a permit to enter the forest. Show me your permit, if you please, Pepper." "I haven't got one." "So. Not got. Why is that?"

  "I don't know... They won't give me one, that's all."

  "That's right, not given out. This we know. And why don't they give you one? I've got one, he's got one, they've got one, plenty of people have them, but for some reason you don't get one."

  Pepper stole a cautious glance at him. Hausbotcher's long emaciated nose was sniffing, his eyes constantly blinking.

  "Probably it's because I'm an outsider," suggested Pepper. "Probably that's why."

  "I'm not the only one taking an interest in you, you know," Hausbotcher confided. "If it were only me! People a bit higher up than me are taking an interest. Listen, Pepper, could you come away from the edge, so we can carry on. I get dizzy looking at you."

  Pepper got up and began leaping about on one leg as he fastened his sandal.

  "Oh dear, please come away from the edge!" cried Hausbotcher in agony, waving his notepad at Pepper.

  "You'll be the death of me someday with your antics."

  "That's it," said Pepper, stamping his foot. "I shan't do it again. Let's go, shall we?"

  "Let's go," said Hausbotcher. "I assert, however, that you haven't answered a single one of my questions. You pain me, Pepper. Is this any way to go on?" He looked at the bulky notepad and placed it under his armpit with a shrug. "It's very odd, definitely no impressions, let alone information."

  "All right, what should I answer?" said Pepper. "I just wanted to have a talk with the director here."

  Hausbotcher froze, as if trapped in the bushes. "So that's how you go about it." His voice was altered.

  "Go about what? There's no going about..."

  "No, no," whispered Hausbotcher, gazing about him, "just keep silent. No need for any words. I realize no
w. You were right."

  "What've you realized? What was I right in?"

  "No, no, I haven't understood anything. I haven't understood, period. You may rest absolutely assured. Haven't understood a thing. I wasn't even here, I didn't see you."

  They passed by the little bench, climbed the crumbling steps, turned into an alley strewn with red sand, and entered the grounds of the Directorate.

  "Total clarity can exist only on a certain level," Hausbotcher was saying. "And everybody should know what he can lay claim to. I claimed certainty on my level, that was my right and I exercised it fully. Where rights end, obligations begin..."

  They passed the ten flat cottages with tulle curtains at the windows, passed the garage, cut across the sports ground, and went by dumps and the hostel, in whose doorway stood a deathly-pale warden with motionless pop-eyes, and by the long fencing beyond which could be heard the snarling of engines. They kept quickening their pace and as there was little time left, they began to run. But all the same, they burst into the canteen too late, all the seats were taken. Only at the duty table in the far corner were there two places, the third being occupied by driver Acey, and driver Acey, observing them shuffling in indecision on the threshold, waved his fork at them, inviting them over.

  Everybody was drinking yogurt and Pepper took the same, so that they had six bottles on the crusted tablecloth, and when Pepper moved his legs a bit under the table, making himself more comfortable on the backless chair, there was a clink of glass and an empty brandy bottle rolled out between the little tables. Driver Acey swiftly grabbed it and thrust it back under the table; more glass clinked.

  "Careful with your feet," he said.

  "I couldn't help it," said Pepper. "I didn't know."

  "Did I know?" responded Acey. "There's four of them under there. Prove your innocence later if you can."

  "Well I, for instance, don't drink at all," said Haus-botcher with dignity.

  "We know how you don't drink," said Acey. "That's how we all don't drink."

  "But I have liver trouble!" Hausbotcher was growing uneasy. "Look, here's the certificate." He pulled a crumpled exercise-book page out from somewhere; it had a triangular stamp. He shoved it under Pepper's nose. It was indeed a certificate written in an illegible medical hand. Pepper could only make out one word "antabus." "I've got last year's and the year before that as well, only they're in the safe."

  Driver Acey didn't look at the paper. He drained a full glass of yogurt, sniffed the joint of his index finger, and asked in a tearful voice:

  "Well, what else is there in the forest? Trees." He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "But they don't stand still: jump. Got it?"

  "Well?" asked Pepper eagerly, "what was that - jump?"

  "Like this. It stands still. A tree, right? Then it starts hunching and bending, then whoosh! There's a noise, crashing, I don't know what all. Ten yards. Smashed my cab. There it is standing again." "Why?" asked Pepper.

  " 'Cos it's called a jumping tree," explained Acey pouring himself more yogurt.

  "Yesterday, a consignment of new electric saws arrived," announced Hausbotcher, licking his lips. "Phenomenal productivity. I would go so far as to say that they weren't electrosaws but saw-combines. Our saw-combines of eradication."

  All around they were drinking yogurt out of cut glasses, tin mugs, little coffee cups, paper cones, straight out of the bottle. Everybody's legs were stuck , under their chairs. And everyone probably could show his certificate of liver, stomach, small intestine trouble. For this year and for the last several.

  "Then the manager calls me in," Acey went on, raising his voice, "and he asks why my cab's stove in. 'Again,' he says, 'sod, giving people lifts?' Now you, Mr. Pepper, play chess with him, you might put in a little word for me. He respects you, he often talks of you, 'Pepper,' he says, 'he's a character! I won't give a vehicle for Pepper and don't ask. We can't let a man like that go. Understand, all you zombies, we couldn't carry on without him!' Put in a word, eh?"

  "All right," Pepper brought out in a low voice, "I'll try."

  "I can speak with the manager," said Hausbotcher. "We served together. I was a captain and he was my lieutenant. He greets me to this day, bringing his hand to his headgear."

  "Then there's the mermaids," said Acey, weighing his glass of yogurt. "In big clear lakes. They lie there, get it? Nothing on."

  "Your yogurt's putting ideas into your head," said Hausbotcher.

  "I haven't seen them myself," rejoined Acey. "But the water from those lakes isn't fit to drink."

  "You haven't seen them because they don't exist," said Hausbotcher. "Mermaids, that's mysticism."

  "You're another mysticism," said Acey, wiping his eye with a sleeve.

  "Wait a bit," said Pepper, "wait a bit. Acey, you say they're lying ... is that all? They can't just lie and that's all."

  "Maybe they live underwater and float up onto the surface, just like we go out onto the balcony to escape from smoke-filled rooms on moonlit nights and, eyes closed, bare our face to the chill, then they can just lie. Just lie and that's all. Rest. And talk lazily and smile at each other..."

  "Don't argue with me," said Acey, looking obstinately at Hausbotcher. "Have you ever been in the forest? Never been in there once, have you, to hell."

  "Silly if I did," said Hausbotcher. "What would I be doing there in your forest? I've got a permit into your forest. And you, Acey, haven't got one at all. Show me, if you please, your permit, Acey."

  "I didn't see the mermaids myself," repeated Acey, turning to Pepper, "but I entirely believe in them. Because the boys have told me. So did Kandid even, and he was the one who knew everything about the forest. He used to go into that forest like a man to his woman, put his finger on anything. He perished there in his forest."

  "If he did," said Hausbotcher significantly.

  "What do you mean 'if'? Man flies off in his helicopter, three years no sight or sound. His obituary was in the paper, we held the wake, what more d'you want? Kandid crashed, that's for sure."

  "We don't know enough," said Hausbotcher, "to assert anything with complete certainty."

  Acey spat and went to the counter to order another bottle of yogurt. At this, Hausbotcher leaned over and whispered in Pepper's ear, his eyes darting:

  "Bear in mind that touching Kandid there was a sealed directive... I consider it right for me to inform you, because you are a person from outside."

  "What directive?"

  "To regard him as alive," said Hausbotcher in a hollow whisper and moved away. "Nice, fresh yogurt today," he announced loudly.

  Noise increased in the canteen. Those who had already breakfasted were getting up, scraping chairs, and making for the exit, lighting up and throwing match-sticks on the floor. Hausbotcher surveyed them malevolently and said to everyone as they passed: "Strange behavior, gentlemen, you can surely see we're having a discussion."

  When Acey returned with his bottle, Pepper spoke to him.

  "The manager didn't really say he wouldn't provide me with a vehicle, did he? He was just joking, wasn't that it?"

  "Why should he? He likes you, Mister Pepper, bored without you and it's just not worth his while to let you go... Well if he lets you, what's in it for him? No joking."

  Pepper bit his lip.

  "How the devil can I get away? There's nothing more for me to do here. My visa's running out, and anyway I just want to get away."

  "Anyhow," said Acey, "if you get three reprimands, they'll sling you out in two shakes. You'll get a special bus, they'll get a driver up in the middle of the night, you won't get time to collect your bits of things... Here the boys work it this way. First warning, a reduction in rank; second, you're sent to the forest to expiate your sins. Third reprimand, thank you and good night. If I wanted the sack, for example, I'd drink half a jar and sock this guy in the jaw," he indicated Hausbotcher. "They'd take away my privileges and transfer me to the crap-wagon. Then what do I do? Drink another half-jar and give him another o
ne - got it? They'd take me off the crap-wagon and send me out to the biostation to catch some old microbes. But I don't go. I drink another half-jar and give it to him across the chops for the third time. Well that's the end of it. Sacked for hooligan conduct and deported in twenty-four hours."

  Hausbotcher waved a threatening finger at Acey.

  "Misinformation, misinformation, Ace. In the first place, at least a month must elapse between the actions, otherwise all the misdemeanors will be regarded as one and the transgressor will simply be put in jail without any further steps being taken within the Directorate. Secondly, following the second misdemeanor, they send the convicted man to the forest at once under guard, so that he will be deprived of any opportunity to carry out a third offense at his own discretion. Don't pay any attention to him, Pepper, he knows nothing about these matters."

  Acey took a mouthful of yogurt, frowned, and wheezed out a confession.

  "True, enough. I really ... well. I'm sorry, Mister Pepper."

  "Doesn't matter, what the..." said Pepper sadly. "I still can't hit a man in the face whichever way you put it."

  "It doesn't have to be the ... jaw," said Acey. "You can make it the ... the behind. Or just rip his suit." "No, I can't do it," said Pepper. "Too bad, then," said Acey. "That's your trouble, Mister Pepper. Here's what we'll do. Tomorrow morning around sevenish, come around to the garage, get in my truck, and wait. I'll take you." "You will?" Pepper was overjoyed. "Well I've got to take a load of scrap metal to the mainland. We'll go together."

  Somebody suddenly gave a terrible shout in the corner. "What do you think you're doing? You've spilled my soup!"

  "A man ought to be simple and straightforward," said Hausbotcher. "I don't understand, Pepper, why you want to get away from here. Nobody wants to leave,just you."

  "I'm always like that," said Pepper. "I always do the opposite. Anyway, why should a man always be simple and straightforward?"

  "A man ought to be teetotal," announced Acey, sniffing the joint of his index finger, "what d'you think, eh?"