Snail on the Slope Page 17

  "I don't understand," said Kandid, cheerlessly. "My dear, what are you asking him? How could he be protected?"

  "In this world all things are possible," said Nava's mother. "I've heard of such things."

  "Just talk," said the pregnant woman. She inspected Kandid carefully once more. "Now, you know," said she, "he could indeed be more use here. Remember what the Teachers were saying yesterday?"

  "Ah, yes," said Nava's mother. "Indeed yes ... let him... Let him stay."

  "Yes, yes, stay," said Nava suddenly. She was no longer asleep and also felt something untoward was taking place. "You stay, Dummy, don't you go anywhere, why should you go anywhere? You wanted to go to the City, didn't you, and this lake is the City, isn't it, mam? ... Or are you offended at mam? Don't be hurt, she's really kind, only she's in a bad temper today. I don't know why... Likely because of the heat..."

  Her mother caught her by the hand. Kandid saw that a familiar little lilac cloud had condensed over the mother's head. Her eyes glazed for a second and closed. Then she said, "Let's go, Nava, they're waiting for us now."

  "What about Dummy?"

  "He'll stay here... There's nothing for him to do in the City."

  "But I want him to be with me! Why can't you understand, mam, he's my husband, they gave him to me for a husband, and he's been my husband for ever so long..."

  Both women grimaced.

  "Let's go, let's go," said Nava's mother. "You don't understand things yet... Nobody needs him, he's superfluous, they all are, they're a - mistake... Come on now! Well, all right you can come to him afterward ... if you want to then."

  Nava was putting up a struggle, doubtless feeling what Kandid was feeling - that they were parting forever. Her mother was dragging her by the arm into the reeds, while she kept looking back and shouting:

  "Don't you go away, Dummy! I'll be back soon, don't you think of going away without me, that wouldn't be right, that would be dishonest! All right, you're not my husband, they seem not to like that, I don't know why, but I'm your wife all the same, I nursed you, so now you wait for me! Do you hear? Wait! ..."

  He followed her with his eyes, waving his hand feebly, nodding agreement, and trying hard to smile. Good-bye, Nava, he thought. Good-bye. They were hidden from view behind the Reed-beds, but Nava's voice could still be heard, then she went quiet, the sound of a splash came back, and all was silent. He swallowed the lump in his throat and asked the pregnant woman:

  "What will you do with her?"

  She was still examining him closely.

  "What will we do with her?" said she thoughtfully. "That isn't your worry, lambkin, what we'll do with her. At all events, she won't need a husband anymore. Or a father... But what are we going to do with you? You're from White Rocks, after all, you can't just be let go..."

  "What do you want of me?"

  "What do we want ... at all events, husbands we don't need." She intercepted Kandid's look and laughed scornfully. "Not needed, don't worry, not needed. Try for once in your life not to be a sheep. Try to imagine a world without sheep..." She was speaking without thinking, or rather, thinking of something else. "What else are you good for? ... Tell me lambkin, what can you do?"

  There was something behind all her words, and her tone, behind the casual indifferent authority, something important, something unpleasant and frightening, but it was hard to pin down and Kandid, for some reason, kept remembering the square black doors and Karl with the two women - just the same, indifferent and imperious.

  "Are you listening to me?" asked the pregnant woman. "What can you do?"

  "I can't do anything," Kandid said limply.

  "Perhaps you know how to control?"

  "I did once," said Kandid. Go to hell, he thought, why don't you leave me alone? I ask you how to get to White Rocks, and you start bothering me... He realized suddenly that he was afraid of her, otherwise he'd have gone long ago. She was the master here, and he was a pitiful, dirty, stupid lambkin.

  "Did once," she repeated. "Tell that tree to lie down!"

  Kandid looked at the tree. It was a big solid tree with a luxuriant topgrowth and shaggy trunk. He shrugged his shoulders.

  "Very well," said she. "Kill that tree, then... Not that either? Can you make the living die at all?" "Kill, you mean."

  "Not necessarily kill. An armchewer can do that. Make the living die. Compel something living to become dead. Can you?"

  "I don't understand," said Kandid. "Don't understand... What on earth do you get up to on your White Rocks if you can't even understand that? You can't make dead things live either?" "No."

  "What can you do then? What did you do on White Rocks before you fell down? Just guzzled and denied women?"

  "I studied the forest." She regarded him severely.

  "Don't dare lie to me. One man can't study the forest, it's like studying the sun. If you won't speak the truth, just say so."

  "I really did study the forest," Kandid said. "I studied..." he faltered. "I studied the smallest creatures in the forest. The ones you can't see with your eyes."

  "Lying again," said the woman tolerantly. "You can't study what the eye can't see."

  "It's possible," said Kandid. "Only you have to have..." he faltered again. Microscope ... lenses ... instruments... That wouldn't get across. Untranslatable. "If you take a drop of water," he said, "if you have the necessary things, you can see thousands upon thousands of tiny animals..."

  "You don't need any 'things' for that," the woman said. "I can see you've got corrupted by your dead things on your White Rocks. You're degenerating. I noticed long ago the way you've lost the capacity to see what anybody can see in the forest, even a filthy man... Wait a minute, were you talking about small creatures or the smallest ones? Perhaps you're referring to the constructors?"

  "Perhaps," said Kandid. "I don't understand you. I'm speaking of the small creatures that make people ill, but which can cure as well, they help in food production, there's very many of them and they're everywhere... I tried to find out their constituents here in your forest, what sorts there were and what their function was..."

  "They're different on White Rocks, of course," she said with sarcasm. "All right, anyway, I've got what your work was. You have no power over the constructors, of course. The veriest village idiot can do more than you... What can I do with you? You came here unasked, after...

  "I'm going," Kandid said wearily. "I'm going. Good-bye."

  "No wait... Stop, I said!" she cried and Kandid felt the burning hot pincers gripping his elbows from behind. He struggled, but it was pointless. The woman was meditating aloud:

  "He did come of his own free will. There have been such cases. If we let him go, he'll go off to his village and be completely useless... There's no point in rounding them up. But if they come voluntarily... Know what I'll do?" she said. "I'll hand you over to the Teachers for night work. After all, there have been successful cases... Off to the Teachers, then, off to the Teachers!" She waved her hand and unhurriedly waddled off into the Reed-beds.

  Kandid then felt himself being turned about onto the path. His elbows had gone numb, it seemed to him that they were charred through. He strove to break free and the vice gripped tighter. He hadn't grasped what was to become of him and where he was to be taken, who the Teachers were and what this night work was, but he recalled the most terrible things he had seen: Karl's specter in the midst of the weeping crowd and the armchewer screwing up into a multi-colored knot. He continued to kick the deadling, striking backward in blind desperation, knowing this could never work twice. His foot sank into soft heat, the deadling snorted, and relaxed its grip. Kandid fell flat in the grass, leapt up, turned and cried out - the deadling was advancing on him once more, opening its incredibly long arms. There was nothing to hand, no grass-killer, no ferment, no stick or stone. The squelchy warm earth was giving beneath his feet. Then he remembered and thrust his hand in his blouse; when the deadling loomed above, he struck it with the scalpel somewhere between the ey
es, then leaned his whole weight forward, drawing the blade downward to the ground and fell once again.

  He lay, cheek pressed to the grass, and gazed at the deadling, as it stood, swaying, its orange carcass slowly swinging open like a suitcase; it stumbled and collapsed flat on its back, flooding the surrounding earth with a thick white fluid, gave a few twitches and lay still. Kandid then got up and wandered off. Along the path. As far as possible from here. He vaguely recalled that he had wanted to wait for somebody, wanted to find something out, there was something he was intending to do. Now all that was unimportant. What was important was to get as far away as possible, though he realized that he would never get away. He wouldn't, and neither would many, many, many another.

  Chapter Nine

  Discomfort awakened Pepper, sadness, and an unbearable, as it seemed to him, weight on his mind and all his sense organs. Discomfort reached the pain threshold and he groaned involuntarily as he slowly came to.

  The burden on his mind turned out to be despair and exasperation, since the truck was not going to the Mainland; once again it was not going to the Mainland - in fact it wasn't going anywhere. It was standing with its engine switched off, icy and dead, doors open wide. The windshield was covered in trembling droplets, which now and again coalesced and flowed in cold streams. The night beyond the glass was lit up by the dazzling flashes of searchlights and headlamps, nothing else could be seen but these continual flashes that made the eyes ache. Nothing could be heard either and Pepper initially even thought he'd gone deaf only realizing after a while that his ears were oppressed by a steady deep chorus of roaring sirens. He began flailing around the cab striking painfully against levers and projections and his blasted suitcase, tried to scrub the windshield, stuck his head out of one door, then the other. He simply couldn't make out where he was, what sort of a place it was and what was going on. War, he thought, my god, it's war! The searchlights beat into his eyes with malicious pleasure, he could see nothing apart from some large unfamiliar building in which all the windows on all the floors were flashing on and off in unison. He could also see an enormous number of patches of lilac mist.

  A monstrous voice calmly pronounced, as if in complete silence: "Attention, attention. All personnel to stand by their posts according to regulation number six hundred and seventy-five point Pegasus omicron three hundred and two directive eight hundred and thirteen, for triumphal reception of padishah without special suite, size of shoe fifty-five. I repeat. Attention, attention. All personnel ..." The searchlights stopped racing about and Pepper was able to make out at last the familiar arch and the legend "Welcome," the main street of the Directorate, the dark cottages lining it and various individuals in underwear standing by them with paraffin lamps in their hands. Then he noticed quite close at hand a line of running men in billowing black capes. These were strung out across the whole width of the street as they ran, towing something strangely bright. Looking more closely, Pepper realized they were dragging something like a cross between a fishing net and one used in volleyball, and at once a cracked voice began screaming by his ear: "Why the truck? Why are you standing here?"

  Swaying back, he saw next to him an engineer in a white cardboard mask marked on the forehead in indelible pencil "Libidovich," and this engineer crawled straight across him with his filthy boots, jabbing his elbow in his face, snuffling and stinking of sweat. Then he collapsed into the driver's seat and scrabbled for the ignition key; not finding it, he screamed hysterically and rolled out of the cab on the opposite side. All the street lamps went on and it became light as day, though the people with paraffin lamps went on standing in the cottage doorways. Everyone had a butterfly net in his hand and they waved these nets rhythmically, as if driving something unseen from their doors. Along the street toward and past him rolled four grim black machines one after another, like buses only without windows, their roofs were equipped with latticed vanes. After that an ancient armored car turned out of a side street and followed them. Its rusty turret swung around with a piercing squeal as its machine gun's slim barrel rose and fell. The armored car had trouble in squeezing past the truck; the turret hatch opened and a man in a calico nightshirt with dangling ribbons stuck his head out and shouted angrily at Pepper: "Now what's this, my dear? I've got to get by and you're stuck here!" At this Pepper dropped his head on his hands and closed his eyes.

  I'll never get out of here, he thought dully. Nobody here needs me, I'm totally useless but they won't let me go even if it means starting a war or causing a flood...

  "I'd like to see your papers," said a leisurely old man's voice. Pepper felt himself clapped on the shoulder.

  "What?" said Pepper. "Your little papers. Got 'em ready?" It was an old man in an oilskin coat with an obsolete rifle slung across his chest on a worn metal chain. "What papers? What documents? Why?" "Ah, mister Pepper!" said the old man. "Why aren't you carrying out the procedure? All your papers should be in your hand, open for inspection, like in a museum..."

  Pepper gave him his identity card. The old man placed his elbows on his rifle and studied the stamp closely, checked the photograph against Pepper's face, then said:

  "Looks as if you've got thinner, Herr Pepper. Your face has lost a lot. You're working hard." He handed back the card.

  "What's going on?" asked Pepper. "What's happening is what's supposed to be happening," the old man said, suddenly becoming sterner. "Regulation number six hundred and seventy-five point Pegasus is what's going on. That is, escape." "What escape? Where from?"

  "Whatever escape the regulation states," said the old man, commencing to climb down the steps. "Anyway they'll be banging I expect, so protect your ears by keeping your mouth open."

  "All right," said Pepper. "Thanks."

  "What are you doing here, you old sod, creeping about?" came a bad-tempered voice below. It was driver Voldemar. "I'll give you your little documents! There you are, smell them! Right, got it? Now shove off, if you got it..."

  A concrete-mixer was towed by amid a general racket. Driver Voldemar, disheveled and bristling, scrambled up into the cab. Muttering curses he started up the engine and slammed the door. The truck shot forward and roared down the street past the people in underwear waving their nets. To the garage, thought Pepper. Oh well, what difference does it make? But I'm not touching that case again. I just don't want to lug it around, to hell with it. He kicked it hatefully. The truck swerved sharply off the main street, slammed into a barricade of empty barrels and carts scattering them in all directions, and sped onward. For some time a splintered droshky board flapped about on the radiator, then whipped off, and crunched under the wheels. The truck was now traveling along narrow side streets. Voldemar, scowling, with his extinguished cigarette on his lip, bending and twisting his body, manipulated the enormous wheel. No, it isn't the garage, Pepper thought. Or the workshops. Or the Mainland. The side streets were dark and empty. Just once, cardboard faces with names, hands outstretched flickered in the headlights and disappeared.

  "Hell's flames," said Voldemar. "I wanted to drive straight to the Mainland. I look, and there you are asleep, well thinks I, let's just drop by the garage, play a bit of chess... Then I came across Achilles, the fitter, ran off for some yogurt, brought it back, set up the pieces... I offer the Queen's gambit, he accepts, so far so good. I go P-K.4, he goes P-B6... I tell him: well now start praying. And then it all started... Haven't got a cigarette have you. Pepper?"

  Pepper gave him one.

  "What's this about an escape?" he asked. "Where are we driving?"

  "The usual escape," said Voldemar, lighting up.

  "We get them every year. One of the engineers' little machines got away. Order for all, catch it. There they are at it over there..."

  The habitations fell away. People were wandering around over open country, lit by the moon. It looked as if they were playing blind-man's buff as they went about on bent legs with their arms spread wide. Everybody was blindfolded. One of them went full tilt into a post and p
robably uttered a cry of pain, for the others at once halted and cautiously began turning their heads.

  "Every year the same game," Voldemar was saying. "They've got photoelements and acoustics of all sorts, cybernetics and layabout guards stuck up on every corner - all the same, every year one of their little machines gets away. Then they tell you: drop everything and go and look for it. Who wants to do that? Who wants to get involved, I ask you? If you just catch sight of it out of the corner of your eye - that's it. Either you get drafted into the engineers or they send you off into the forest somewhere, to the advance base to pickle mushrooms so's you can't talk about what you've seen, for God's sake. That's why the people get around it as best they can. Some of them blindfold themselves so's not to see what's going on. , ... The brighter boys just run around and shout as loud as they can. They ask people for documents, search people or just get up on the roof and howl as if they're taking part, no risk involved..."

  "What about us, are we trying to catch anything?" Pepper asked.

  "I'll say we are. The public here are out hunting and we're the same as everybody else. Six hours by the clock we'll be on the hunt. There's a directive: if in the course of six hours the runaway mechanism is not detected, it's blown up by remote control. So everything can stay hush-hush. Else it might fall into unauthorized hands. You saw what a mess-up there was in the Directorate? Well, that's heavenly peace - you see what it'll be like in six hours time. See, nobody knows where the machine's got to. It might be in your pocket. And the charge they use is pretty powerful, just to make sure. Last year, for example, the machine turned up in a bathhouse, and there were plenty of people packed in there - for safety. They think a bathhouse is a damp sort of place, out of the way... Well I was there as well. A bathhouse, that's the place, thinks I... So I was blown out of the window, nice and smooth like being on a wave. I hadn't time to blink before I was sitting in a snowdrift, burning beams flying by overhead..."