Noon, 22nd Century Read online

  “Sharks,” said Kondratev. “There they are.”

  “Sharks are nasty customers,” Belov said hoarsely. “But this squid… It’s a shame—such a specimen! You’re a barbarian, Kondratev. What if it was intelligent?”

  Kondratev remained silent and turned on the light. Akiko was sitting hunched up to the wall, with her head tilted over on her shoulder. Her eyes were closed, her mouth half-open. Her forehead, cheeks, neck, and bare arms and legs gleamed with sweat. The dictaphone lay under her feet. Kondratev picked it up. Akiko opened her eyes and smiled with embarrassment.

  “We’ll start back now,” Kondratev said. He thought, Tomorrow night I’ll dive down here and finish off the rest.

  “It’s very stuffy, Comrade Captain,” said Akiko.

  “You said it!” Kondratev replied angrily. “Cognac and perfume and…”

  Akiko lowered her head,

  “Well, never mind,” said Kondratev. “We’ll come back tomorrow. Belov!”

  Belov did not answer. Kondratev turned around and saw that Belov had raised his arms and was groping at the hatch fastener. “What are you doing, Belov?” Kondratev asked calmly.

  Belov turned his gray face toward him and said, “It’s stuffy in here. We have to open up.”

  Kondratev punched him in the chest and he fell over backwards, his Adam’s apple thrust out sharply. Kondratev hurriedly opened up the oxygen valve, then got up, and, stepping over Belov, inspected the fastener. It was all right. Then Kondratev poked Belov under a rib with a finger. Akiko watched him with tear-filled eyes,

  “Comrade Belov?” she asked.

  “Roast duck,” Kondratev said angrily. “And depth sickness to boot.”

  Belov sighed and sat up. His eyes were bleary, and he squinted at Kondratev and Akiko and asked, “What happened, people?”

  “You practically drowned us, glutton,” said Kondratev.

  He lifted the nose of the submarine toward the vertical and began to ascend. The Kunashir must already have arrived at the rendezvous point. It was becoming impossible to breathe in the cabin. Oh, well-it would all soon be over. When the light was on in the cabin, the bathymeter needle looked pink, the numbers white. Six hundred meters, five hundred eighty, five fifty…

  “Comrade Captain,” said Akiko, “permission to ask a question?”

  “Granted.”

  “Was it just luck that we found ika so quickly?”

  “It found us. It must have been trailing us for ten kilometers, looking us over. Squids are always like that.”

  “Kondratev,” moaned Belov, “can’t we go a little faster?”

  “No,” said Kondratev. “Be patient.”

  Why doesn’t it do anything to him? thought Belov. Can he really be made of iron? Or do you get used to it? Good lord, if I could just see the sky. Just so I see the sky, and I’ll never go on another deep-water search. Just so the photos come out. I’m tired. But he’s not tired at all. He’s sitting there practically upside down, and it doesn’t do anything to him. And for me, just one look at the way he’s sitting is enough to make me sick to my stomach.

  Three hundred meters.

  “Kondratev,” Belov said again. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  Kondratev answered, “Han Choi and Valtsev are arriving tomorrow morning with their submarines—in the evening well comb the depression and finish off the rest.”

  Tomorrow evening Kondratev was going down into that grave again. And he could say that calmly, with pleasure.

  “Akiko-san.”

  “Yes, Comrade Belov?”

  “What are you going to do tomorrow?” he asked in English.

  Kondratev glanced at the bathymeter. Two hundred meters.

  Akiko sighed. “I don’t know,” she said.

  They fell silent. They remained silent until the minisub had surfaced.

  “Open the hatch,” Kondratev said.

  The submarine rocked on a small wave. Belov raised his arms, turned the catch of the hatch fastener, and pushed on the hatch cover.

  The weather had changed. There was no more wind, nor storm clouds. The stars were small and bright, and a sliver of moon hung in the sky. Small shining waves lazily swept the ocean. They splashed and murmured at the hatch turret. Belov scrambled out first. Akiko and Kondratev climbed after him. Belov said, “Nice. It’s nice.”

  Akiko also said, “Nice.”

  Kondratev too affirmed that it was nice, and added, after some thought, “Just wonderful.”

  “Permission to go swimming, Comrade Captain,” said Akiko.

  “Swim, please,” Kondratev conceded politely, and turned around.

  Akiko stripped down to her swimming suit, laid her clothes on the edge of the hatch, and stuck a foot in the water. Her red suit looked almost black, and her arms and legs unnaturally white. She raised her arms and slipped noiselessly into the water.

  “I think I’ll go in too,” said Belov. He undressed and climbed into the ocean. The water was warm. Belov swam to the stern and said, “It’s wonderful. You were right, Kondratev.”

  Then he remembered the violet tentacle as thick as a telephone pole and he hurriedly scrambled back onto the submarine deck. Going over to the hatch on which Kondratev was sitting, he said, “The water is as warm as soup. You should have a dip.”

  They sat silently while Akiko splashed in the water. The black spot of her head bobbed against a background of shining waves.

  “Tomorrow we’ll finish them all off,” Kondratev said. “All of them, however many are left. We’ve got to hurry. The whales will be arriving in a week.”

  Belov sighed and did not answer.

  Akiko swam up and grasped the edge of the hatch. “Comrade Captain, may I go with you again tomorrow?” she asked with desperate audacity.

  Kondratev said slowly, “Of course you can.”

  “Thank you, Comrade Captain.”

  To the south, over the horizon, the beam of a searchlight rose up, jabbing into the sky. It was the signal from the Kunashir.

  “Let’s go,” said Kondratev, getting up. “Come on out, Akiko-san.”

  He took her by the arm and easily lifted her from the water.

  Belov said gloomily, “I’ll see how the film came out. If it’s bad, I’ll come down with you too.”

  “But no cognac,” said Kondratev.

  “And no perfume,” added Akiko.

  “Anyhow, I’ll ask Han Choi,” said Belov. “Three’s a crowd in one of these cabins.”

  13. The Mystery of the Hind Leg

  I didn’t like your first book,” said Parncalas. “There is nothing in it to stir the imagination of the serious person.”

  They were sitting in lounge chairs under a faded hot awning on the veranda of Cold Creek Post—Jean Parncalas, biotechnician of the Gibson Reserve, and Evgeny Slavin, correspondent for the European Information Center. On the low table between the lounge chairs stood a sweating five-liter siphon bottle. Cold Creek Post was on the top of a hill, and an excellent view of the hot, blue-green savanna of western Australia opened up from the veranda.

  “A book should always rouse the imagination,” Parncalas continued. “Otherwise it is not a real book, but merely a rotten textbook. In essence, we could put it thus: the purpose of a book is to arouse the imagination of the reader. True, your first book was intended to fulfill another, no less important function as well, namely to bring to us the viewpoint of a man of your heroic era. I expected a great deal from that book, but alas, it is obvious that in the course of the work you lost that very point of view. You are too impressionable, Evgeny mon ami!”

  “It’s simpler than that, Jean,” Evgeny said lazily. “Much simpler, mon ami. I had a great horror of appearing before the human race as a sort of Campanella in reverse. But anyhow, you’re quite correct. It was a mediocre book.”

  He leaned over in the lounge chair and filled a tall narrow glass with foaming coconut milk from the siphon bottle. The glass instantly started sweating.

  “Y
es,” said Parncalas, “you had a great horror of being Campanella in reverse. You were in too much of a hurry to change your psychology, Evgeny. You wanted very much to stop being an alien here. And that was wrong. You should have remained an alien a little longer: you could have seen much that we do not notice. And isn’t that the most important task of any writer—to notice things that others do not see? That is, rousing the imagination and making people think?”

  “Perhaps.”

  They fell silent. Profound quiet reigned all around, the drowsy quiet of the savanna at noon. Cicadas chirred, vying with one another. A slight breeze rose up, rustling the grass. Piercing sounds arrived from far off-the cries of emus. Evgeny suddenly sat up and craned his neck. “What’s that?” he asked.

  Past the post, darting through the high grass, rushed a strange machine—a long vertical pole, evidently on wheels, with a sparkling revolving disk on the end. The machine looked extremely ridiculous. Bobbing and swinging, it went off toward the south.

  Parncalas raised his head and looked. “Ah,” he said. “I forgot to tell you. That’s one of the monsters.”

  “What monsters?”

  “No one knows,” Parncalas said calmly.

  Evgeny jumped up and ran over to the railing. The tall, ridiculous pole was quickly receding, swaying from side to side, and in a minute it had disappeared from view. He turned to Parncalas.

  “What do you mean nobody knows?” he asked.

  Parncalas drank his coconut milk. “No one knows,” he repeated, wiping his mouth. “It’s a very amusing story—you’ll like it. They first appeared two weeks ago—these poles on one wheel and the crawling disks. You often see them in the savanna between Cold Creek and Rollins, and the day before yesterday one pole got as far as the main street of Gibson. My emus trampled one disk. I saw it—a big scrapheap of bad plastic and the remains of a radio installation on perfectly disgusting-looking ceramic. Like a schoolchild’s model. We got in touch with the people at Gibson, but no one there knew anything. And, it became clear, no one anywhere knows anything.”

  Parncalas again raised the glass to his lips.

  “You’re discussing this surprisingly calmly, Jean mon ami,” Evgeny said impatiently. Pictures, were forming in his imagination, one more fantastic than the next.

  Parncalas smiled. “Sit down, Evgeny. There is no reason to be alarmed. The monsters haven’t hurt anyone—even the emus and kangaroos aren’t afraid of them—and anyhow, you didn’t let me finish: the comrades in Jakoi are already investigating. They—Where are you going?”

  Evgeny was hastily making ready. Into his pockets he stuffed dictaphone cartridges, microbook cases, and his tattered notebooks. “Jakoi—that’s the Australian cybernetic center, right?” he said. “They’ve built some interesting computer there, haven’t they?”

  “Yes, the CODD computer,” Parncalas said in an offended tone. He was very disappointed that Slavin was leaving so soon. It was pleasant to converse with the correspondent-he very much liked listening.

  “Why CODD?”

  “Collector of Dispersed Data. A mechanical archaeologist, I’ve heard.”

  Evgeny stopped. “So these monsters could be from there?”

  “I already told you—no one knows,” Parncalas said crossly. “No one knows anything. Not in Jakoi, not in Gibson, not in the whole world… At least stay for supper, Evgeny.”

  “No, thank you—I’m in a big hurry. Well, mon cher Jean, thank you for the hospitality. We’ll see each other again.” Evgeny drained his glass in one gulp, nodded cheerfully, and, jumping over the railing, ran down the hill to his pterocar.

  The scientific settlement of Jakoi stood in the shade of monstrous black acacias with crowns forty or fifty yards in diameter. A little way off, on the shore of a deep lake with clear, dark blue water, the ruins of some ancient settler’s farm gleamed white. The rectangle of the landing pad stood out clearly between the settlement and the ruins. There were no vehicles on the pad, and no people either.

  But the pterocar did not need a landing pad, and Evgeny flew around the acacias looking for a place closer to the settlement. A third of a mile from the settlement he suddenly noticed unusual activity. At first it seemed to him that there was a game of rugby on. A heap of intertwined black and white human bodies rolled and heaved in the grass. Up from the heap echoed heated cries. Wonderful! thought Evgeny. Well played! At that instant the pile broke up, exposing something round, black, and shiny, and one of the players spun like a top off to one side, and fell. He remained lying, contorted, holding his arms to his stomach. Or no, thought Evgeny, it’s no game after all Another three people darted out from under the acacia branches, throwing off their jackets on the run. Evgeny quickly headed for a landing.

  As he jumped out of the pterocar, the man who had been twisted up with pain was already sitting up. Holding his stomach as before, he was shouting loudly, “Watch the hind leg! Hey! Watch the hind leg!”

  Evgeny ran past him at a trot. Out of the heap of swarming bodies came shouts in Russian and English:

  “Get the legs down! Push the legs to the ground!”

  “The antennas! Don’t break the antennas!”

  “Help, guys! It’s digging in!”

  “Hold onto it, damn it!”

  “Hey, Percy, let go of my head!”

  “It’s digging in!”

  Into Evgeny’s head flashed the thought, They he caught some sort of lizard, but here he caught sight of the hind leg. It was black, shiny, with sharp notches, like the leg of an enormous beetle, and it was clawing its way over the ground, leaving deep furrows behind it. There were also many other legs there-black, brown, and white, and also fidgeting, jerking, and dragging—but all these were ordinary human legs. Spellbound, Evgeny watched the hind leg for several seconds. Time after time it contracted, digging deep into the earth, and then with effort it straightened out again, and each time the shouting crowd moved another five feet or so.

  “Ha!” Evgeny shouted in a blood-curdling voice, and, with both hands, he seized the hind leg by a joint and pulled it toward him.

  A distinct crunch rang out. The leg tore off with unexpected ease, and Evgeny fell backward.

  “Don’t you dare break it!” thundered a wrathful voice. “Get that idiot out of here!”

  Evgeny lay there for a while, holding the leg in his embrace, and then he slowly got up.

  “A little more! Just a little bit, Joe!” boomed the same voice. “Let go of my arm… Ha! Ha!… Now we’ve got you, my pretty!”

  Something gave forth a plaintive ringing sound, and then silence set in. The heap of bodies froze, and only a heavy, intermittent breathing could be heard. Then everyone at once started talking and laughing, getting up, wiping their sweaty faces. A large, motionless black mound remained in the torn-up grass.

  Someone said in a disillusioned voice, “The same thing again!”

  “A tortoise! A septipede!”

  “You’ve really got yourself dug in, you bad girl!”

  “A little more and it would’ve gotten clean away.”

  “Yes, it gave us a hard time.”

  “Where’s the hind leg?”

  All glances turned to Evgeny. He said boldly, “The hind leg is here. It tore off. I never thought it would come off so easily.”

  They surrounded him, examining him with curiosity. An enormous half-naked fellow, with a shock of tousled red hair on his head, and with a ruddy orange beard, extended a powerful, scratched hand. “Give it here, will you?”

  In the other hand this brawny lad carried a fragment of shiny wire. Evgeny happily handed over the leg. “I’m Evgeny Slavin,” he said. “Correspondent for the European Information Center. I flew out because they told me things were interesting here.”

  The redhead flexed the black toggle lever of a leg several times, with a thoughtful expression. The leg gave a cheep. “I’m Pavel Rudak, deputy director of the CODD project,” said the lad. “And these”—he poked the lever in the direct
ion of the others—”these are other servants of the Great CODD. You can meet them later, after they’ve taken the tortoise away.”

  “Is it worth the bother?” asked a small curly-headed Australian aborigine. “We already have two just like it. Let it sit here.”

  “The other two are similar, but not exactly the same, Tappi,” said Rudak. “The hind leg on this one has only one joint.”

  “Is that so?” Tappi grabbed the hind leg from Rudak and flexed it several times too. “Yes, you’re right. Too bad it’s broken off.”

  “I didn’t know,” said Evgeny.

  But no one was listening to him any longer. Everyone had gathered around Tappi, and then they moved in a group to the black mound in the grass, and bent over it. Rudak and Evgeny were left by themselves.

  “What’s this about a septipede?” asked Zhenya.

  “It’s one of the monsters of the Great CODD,” Rudak answered.

  “Ah,” said Evgeny, disappointed. “So they are your monsters after all.”

  “It’s not so simple, Comrade Slavin, not so simple. I didn’t say they were our monsters, I said they were the monsters of the Great CODD.” He bent over, felt around in the grass, and picked up several pebbles. “And we go hunting for them. Within the last ten days, all we’ve done is go hunting. Anyway, it must be said that you’ve made a most timely appearance, Comrade Correspondent.” He began very accurately dropping the pebbles on the unhappy tortoise, which was being dragged back to the settlement. The pebbles banged resonantly against its hard armor.

  “Paul Rudak!” shouted one of the draggers, “Our burden is heavy! Where are thy strong arms?”

  “O thoughtless ones!” exclaimed Rudak. “My strong arms are carrying the hind leg! Tappi, where did you put it?”

  “In the grass! Look in the grass, Paul!”

  “Let me carry the hind leg,” said Evgeny. “I broke it off, so I should be the one to carry it.”

  “Go ahead,” Rudak conceded cheerfully. “I’ll help the others.”

  In two bounds he caught up to the “thoughtless ones,” pushed them aside, crawled under the tortoise, grunted, and lifted it on his back. “Catch me if you can!” he thundered in a strained voice, and he started to run at a gallop toward the settlement.