Snail on the Slope Read online

  The land around was flat sickly grass, fitful moonlight, a tired white road. On the left stood the Directorate where lights were racing madly about again.

  "What I don't understand," said Pepper, "is how we're going to lay hands on it. We don't even know what it is ... big or small dark or light-colored."

  "That you'll see soon enough," Voldemar assured him. "That I'll show you in five minutes. How the clever lads do their hunting. Hell, where's that place... Lost it. Went left, didn't I? Aha, left... Yonder's the machine-depot, we need to be right of that."

  The truck veered off the road and went bumping over the hummocks. The storage area was on the left - rows of enormous pale containers, like a dead city on the plain.

  ... Probably couldn't stand it. It was tested on the vibrostand; they set their minds to tormenting it, dug about in its innards, burned the subtle nerves with soldering-irons, it suffocating from the smell of rosin. They made it do stupid things, they created it to do stupid things, they went on perfecting it to perform stupider things, and in the evenings they left it, tortured, drained of strength in a hot dry cubicle. Finally it decided to go, although it knew everything - the pointlessness of flight, and its own doom. And it went, carrying within itself a self-destruct charge, and is now standing somewhere in the shadows. Softly picking about with its jointed legs, and watching, and listening and waiting... And now it understands with absolute clarity what before it only guessed at: that there is no freedom, whether doors are open before you or not, that everything is stupidity and chaos, there is loneliness alone...

  "Ah!" said Voldemar, pleased. "There she is, the little beauty..."

  Pepper opened his eyes but all he saw was a black pond of considerable extent, a swamp in fact. The engine roared, a wave of filth rose and crashed onto the windshield. The engine managed another crazy howl and died. It was very quiet.

  "Now that's more like it," said Voldemar. "All six wheels spinning like the soap in a bathtub." He stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray and opened his door a little. "There's somebody else out here," he said, then a shout. "Ho, mate! How's it going?"

  "Okay!" from somewhere outside.

  "Caught it yet?"

  "All I've caught is a cold!" from outside. "And five tadpoles."

  Voldemar firmly shut his door, and switched on the light; he glanced at Pepper, gave him a wink, retrieved a mandolin from under the seat and commenced to pluck the strings, his head tucked into his right shoulder.

  "You just make yourself at home," said he hospitably. "Till morning, till the tow gets here."

  "Thank you," Pepper said meekly.

  "This doesn't bother you?" asked Voldemar politely.

  "No-no," said Pepper. "Don't mind me..." Voldemar leaned his head back, began rolling his eyes and singing in a sad voice:

  I see no limit to my many woes. I wander here alone bereft of sense. Please tell me why you do not want my love. Why trample down a love that's so intense?

  The mud was slowly slipping down the windshield and the swamp could be seen gleaming beneath the moon; a car of odd design was sticking up in the middle of the swamp. Pepper switched on the wind-shield wipers and after a while, to his amazement, he discovered that, sunk up to the turret in the quagmire, was an ancient armored car.

  Another holds you in his arms tonight;

  I stand here anxious, weary, and alone.

  Voldemar struck the strings with all his might, sang falsetto, and started clearing his throat.

  "Hey, mate!" a voice from outside. "Got a bite to eat?"

  "What if?" cried Voldemar.

  "We've got yogurt!"

  "There's two of us!"

  "Out you come! There's enough for everybody! We stocked up - we knew we'd have a job on!"

  Driver Voldemar turned to Pepper.

  "What d'you think?" he said, delighted. "Let's go, eh? We'll have yogurt, maybe a game of tennis ...eh?"

  "I don't play tennis," said Pepper.

  Voldemar gave a shout: "Okay we're coming! We'll just inflate the boat!"

  Quick as a monkey, he clambered out of the cabin and set to work in the back of the truck, metal clanked, something dropped and Voldemar whistled gaily. Then came a splash, a scraping of legs along the side and Voldemar's voice calling from somewhere below: "Okay, Mister Pepper! Hop down here, and don't forget the mandolin!" Below, on the brilliant liquid surface of the mud, lay an inflated dinghy, and in it, legs wide apart, stood Voldemar like a gondolier with a sizeable engineer's shovel in his hand; he smiled delightedly as he gazed up at Pepper.

  ... In the old rusted armored car of Verdun vintage, it was sickeningly hot and stank of hot oil and gas fumes. A dim lamp burned over the iron command table scarred with indecent messages. Underfoot, squelching mud chilled the feet; a dented tin ammunition rack was packed tight with yogurt bottles, everybody was in pajamas and scratching their hirsute

  chests with all five fingers, everybody was drunk, a mandolin was droning. The turret-gunner in a calico shirt, not finding room below, was dropping tobacco ash from up aloft and sometimes fell backward himself, saying each time: "Beg pardon, I took you for someone else..." and they propped him up again in an uproar...

  "No," said Pepper. "Thanks, Voldemar, I'll hang on here. I've got some washing to get through... I haven't done my physical exercises yet either."

  "Aha," said Voldemar, respecting this, "that's a different matter. I'll drift across then and as soon as you've finished your washing give us a shout and we'll come over for you ... just give us the mandolin."

  He floated off with it and Pepper remained sitting and watching him trying at first to row across with his shovel. This just made the dinghy go around in a circle; after that, he began to use the shovel as a pole and all was well. The moon bathed him in its dead light; he was like the last man after the last Great Flood, sailing among the roofs of the highest buildings, very much alone, seeking rescue from loneliness, still full of hope. He poled up to the armored car and banged his fist on the carapace; somebody stuck his head out of the turret, guffawed cheerfully, and dragged him inside upside down. And Pepper was left alone.

  He was alone, like the only passenger on a train at night, trundling along with its three battered carriages along some decayed branch line, everything creaks and sways inside the carriage, the smell of locomotive cinders wafts in through the shattered warped windows, cigarette butts leap about the floor along with screwed-up bits of paper. Somebody's forgotten straw hat swings on its hook, and when the train pulls into the terminus, the sole passenger steps out onto the rotting platform and nobody is going to meet him. He's certain nobody's going to meet him, and he'll wander home, brown himself a two-egg omelette on the stove along with a bit of sausage three days old and going green...

  The armored car suddenly began to shake and was lit up with convulsive flashes. Hundreds of brilliant multi-colored threads extended from it across the plain, and the glare of the flashes and the moonlight showed circles welling out from the armored car across the smooth mirror of the swamp. Someone in white poked out of the turret; in a strained voice he proclaimed:

  "Dear sirs! Ladies and gentlemen! Salute to tthe nation! With the most humble respect, your Excellency, I have the honor to remain, most respected Princess Diko-bella, your obedient servant, technical supervisor, signature indecipherable! ..." The armored car once more started shaking and emitting flashes, then subsided.

  I will afflict you with vines to cling to yo"u, thought Pepper, and your accursed race will be swept away by the jungle, your roofs will crumble, the beams will fall, your houses will be grown about with wormwood, the bitter wormwood.

  The forest was moving in closer, climbing the hairpins, scrabbling up the cliff overhang preceded by waves of lilac fog, and out of it came crawling, gripping, and crushing, myriads of green tentacles, cesspits gaped open on the streets and houses tumbled into bottomless lakes, jumping trees got up on the concrete runways in front of packed airplanes, where the people lay in piles, anyhow,
with their yogurt bottles, slate-gray document-cases and heavy safes, and the ground beneath the cliff yawned and sucked it d'own. That would be so natural, so much to be expected, that no one would be surprised. Everybody would be afraid simply and accept annihilation as a vengeance long feared and expected. Driver Acey would be running like a spider between the swaying cottages looking for Rita, to get what he wanted at last, but be wouldn't have time...

  Three rockets went soaring up from the armored car and a military voice bellowed: "Tanks on the right, cover on the left! Crew, under cover!" Someone at once added thickly: "Dames to the left, bunks to the right! Crew to your b-bunks!" Came sounds of neighing and stamping, quite unhuman by now, just as if a herd of pedigree stallions were kicking and thrashing about in that iron box searching for a door to liberty, to the mares. Pepper swung his door wide and peered out. There was swamp beneath his feet, deep swamp, since the truck's monstrous wheels were more than hub deep in the mire. The edge wasn't far off, however.

  Pepper crawled onto the back and made the long walk to the tailboard, thudding and clanking as he strode the length of the immense steel trough in the rich moon-shadow. Once there he climbed onto the tailboard and descended by way of endless small ladders to the water. He remained suspended for a time over the icy slime, screwing up his courage, then, as a burst of machinegun fire once more came from the armored car, closed his eyes and jumped. The bog gave way beneath him and continued to do so for a considerable time, it seemed endless, and by the time he touched bottom, the mud was up to his chest. He pressed his whole body down onto the mud, trod with his knees, and used his palms to push off. At first he could only struggle on the spot, but he got the hang of it after a while and began making progress; to his surprise he soon found himself out of the wet.

  It'd be a good idea if I could dig up some people somewhere, he thought, just people would do for a start - clean, shaved, considerate, hospitable. No high-flown ideas necessary, no blazing talents. No stunning ideals needed, or self-hatred. Just let them clap hands on seeing me and somebody can run and fill the bath, somebody else provide clean sheets and put the kettle on. Just don't let anybody request documents or demand signatures in triplicate with twenty pairs of fingerprints, let nobody spring to the telephone to report in a meaningful whisper that a stranger had appeared covered in filth, calling himself Pepper, but this could hardly be the truth since Pepper had left for the Mainland and a directive about it had already been issued and would be made public tomorrow... No need either for them to be supporters or opponents of anything in principle. They wouldn't have to be principled opponents of drinking as long as they weren't drunkards themselves. Nor would they have to be supporters of truth at all costs so long as they didn't lie or say spiteful things to anybody's face or behind their backs. They shouldn't demand that anyone conform fully to any set of ideals, just accept and understand him as he was... Good god, thought Pepper, is that too much to ask?"

  He emerged onto the road and wandered for a long time toward the Directorate. Searchlights flashed on unremittingly, shadows flitted, clouds of multi-colored smoke continued rising. As Pepper walked on, water gurgled and squelched in his boots, his drying clothes hung like a tent and slapped together like cardboard; every now and again lumps of mud fell from his trousers and slopped onto the road, every time deceiving Pepper into thinking that he'd dropped his wallet and papers causing him to snatch at his pocket, panic-stricken. When he had almost reached the machine depot the frightful idea seized him that his papers had got wet and all the stamps and signatures had run and were now indecipherable and irretrievably suspicious. He came to a stop and opened his wallet with icy hands, he pulled out all his identity cards, passes, certificates, and chits and began examining them under the moon. It turned out that nothing terrible had happened; water had done some damage only to one prolix document on crested paper, certifying that the bearer had undergone a course of inoculations and was passed for work on calculating machines. He put the lot back in his wallet, inserting banknotes neatly between each, and was about to proceed on his way when he suddenly pictured himself coming out onto the highway and people in cardboard masks and beards stuck on anyhow grabbing his arms, blindfolding him, giving him something to smell.

  "Search! Search!" they would order. "Remember the smell, employee Pepper?" "Cherchez, mutt, cher-chez" setting him on. Imagining all this; he turned off the road without checking his pace, and ran, stooping, to the machine depot, dived into the shadow of huge, pale containers, got his legs tangled in something soft, and fell full tilt on a pile of rags and tow.

  Here it was warm and dry. The rough sides of the containers were hot, something that pleased him at first, but after a while caused him to wonder. Inside the cases all was silent, but he recalled the tale about the machines crawling out of their containers by themselves; he realized that another life was going on inside there and he wasn't afraid. He felt secure even. He eased his sitting position, took off his old boots, peeled off his wet socks, and used the tow to wipe his feet. It was so pleasant here, so warm and cosy, that he thought: Odd if I'm alone here - surely somebody's realized it's far better sitting here than crawling about the waste lands blindfold or hanging around some stinking bog? He leaned his back up against the hot plywood bracing his feet against the hot plywood opposite and felt a strong desire to purr. There was a tiny crack over his head through which he could see a strip of sky pale with moonlight, complete with a few dim stars. From somewhere came rumbling, crashing, the roar of engines, but all that had no connection with him.

  Marvelous to stay here for always, he thought. If I can't make it to the Mainland, I'll stay here. Machines, so what? We're all machines. We are the failed machines, or just badly put together.

  ... The opinion exists, gentlemen, that man will never come to terms with the machine. We shan't argue that, citizens. The director feels the same. And in addition, Claudius-Octavian Hausbotcher takes the same view. What is a machine, after all? An inanimate mechanism, deprived of the full range of feelings and incapable of being cleverer than a man. Moreover its structure is not albuminous. Moreover life cannot be reduced to physical and chemical processes, therefore reason... Here, an intellectualyricist with three chins and a bow tie climbed to the stand, tore mercilessly at his starched shirt-front and sobbingly proclaimed:

  "I cannot bear it ... I don't want that... A rosy babe playing with a rattle ... weeping willows bending over a pond ... little girls in white pinafores... They are reading poetry ... they weep ... weep! Over the poet's beautiful lines... I don't want electronic metal to quench those eyes... those lips ... these young modest cheeks... No, a machine will never be cleverer than a man! Because I ... because we ... We do not wish it! And it will never be! Never!!! Never!!!"

  Hands reached out with glasses of water, while two hundred and fifty miles above those snow-white curls, silently, deathly, passed an automatic sputnik-interceptor, keen-eyed and unbearably brilliant, stuffed with nuclear explosive...

  I don't want that either, Pepper thought, but you don't have to be such a stupid fool as that. You can, of course, announce a campaign to abolish winter, do a bit of shamanism after eating mushrooms full of drugs, beat drums, screech curses, but all the same, it's better to sew yourself a fur coat and buy warm boots... Anyhow, that grizzled protector of timid cheeks will have his little shout from the platform, then steal an oil can from his lover's sewing-machine case, steal up to some electronic giant, and start oiling its pinions, glancing at the dials and giggling respectfully when it gives him a shock. God preserve us from grizzled old fools. And while you're about it, God, save us from clever fools in cardboard masks.

  "In my opinion, it's your dreams," someone announced up above in a kindly bass. "I know from experience that dreams can leave a really nasty feeling. Sometimes it's as if you were paralyzed. You can't move, can't work. Then it all wears off. You should work a bit. Why not? Then all the aftereffects disappear in the pleasure of it."

  "Oh I can't b
ring myself to that," returned a thin fretful voice. "I'm sick of it all. Always the same:

  metal, plastic, concrete, people. I'm fed up to here with them. I get no pleasure out of it anymore. The world's so beautiful and so full of different things and I sit in one place and die of boredom."

  "You should have upped and transferred to another job," creaked some peevish oldster.

  "Easily said - transfer! I've been transferred already and I'm bored stiff all the same. And it was hard getting away, let me tell you!"

  "All right, now," said the bass judiciously. "Just what do you want? It almost passes understanding. What can one want if not to work?"

  "Why can't you understand? I want to live life to the full. I want to see new places, have new experiences, it's always the same old around here..."

  "Dismissed!" barked a leaden voice. "Idle chatter! Same old around - good thing. Constant aim. All clear? Repeat!"

  "Ah, to hell with you and your orders..."

  There could be no doubt it was the machines conversing. Pepper had never set eyes on them and couldn't imagine what they looked like, but he had the feeling that he was hiding under a toyshop counter and hearing the toys talking, toys he'd known since childhood, only huge, and by virtue of that, frightening. That thin hysterical voice belonged of course to a fifteen-foot doll called Jeanne. She had a bright-colored tulle dress on and a fat, pink unmoving face with rolling eyes, fat, foolishly spread arms, and legs with fingers and toes stuck together. The bass was a bear, an enormous Winnie the Pooh bursting out of the container, gentle, shaggy, sawdust-filled, brown, with glass-button eyes. The others were toys, too, but Pepper couldn't place them yet.

  "All the same, I suggest you ought to work a bit," rumbled Winnie the Pooh. "Remember, my dear, that there are creatures who are a good deal less fortunate than yourself. Our gardener, for instance. He really wants to work, but he sits here thinking day and night, because he hasn't worked out a plan of action properly. But nobody's heard any complaints from him. Monotonous work's still work. Monotonous pleasure's still pleasure. No reason for talk of death and stuff like that."