The Inhabited Island Page 22

  He picked up the phone. “Koch, what was that about an attack on a convoy?”

  “Fourteen days ago,” the secretary immediately sighed gently, as if he were reading a text prepared in advance, “at eighteen hundred hours and thirty-three minutes, an armed assault was carried out on police vehicles transferring the suspects in cases 6981–84 from the courthouse to the municipal jail. The assault was beaten off, and during the exchange of fire one of the attackers was seriously wounded and died without regaining consciousness. The body was not identified. The investigation into the attack was discontinued.”

  “Who did it?”

  “That was not determined.”

  “Meaning . . .”

  “The official underground had nothing to do with it.”

  “Your observations?”

  “It is possible that the attack was carried out by members of the left wing of the underground, attempting to free the accused Dek Pottu, a.k.a. General. Dek Pottu is a high-level, experienced HQ staff officer, known to have close ties with the left wing—”

  The prosecutor dropped the receiver. Well then, it could all really be so. And it could all not be so. Right, let’s skim through it again. Southern border, idiotic cornet . . . Pants . . . Runs with a man on his shoulders . . . Radioactive fish, 77 units . . . Reaction to A-radiation . . . Chemo-processing of nerve ganglia . . . Stop! Reaction to A-radiation. “His reaction to A-radiation was zero level in both senses.” The prosecutor pressed his open palm against his pounding heart. Zero in both senses!

  He grabbed the receiver again. “Koch! Immediately prepare a special courier with an armed escort. And a private railcar to the south . . . No! My electromotive . . . Massaraksh!” He hastily thrust his hand into the desk drawer and turned off all the recording devices. “Get on with it!”

  Still pressing his left hand to his heart, he took a personal dispatch form out of a writing case and started rapidly but legibly inscribing:

  National importance. Top secret. To the Commandant-General of the Special Southern District. For urgent and rigorous implementation, on your strictly personal responsibility. Immediately transfer into the custody of the bearer of this dispatch the educatee Mak Sim, case no. 6983. From the moment of such transfer the educatee Mak Sim is to be regarded as having disappeared without a trace, concerning which the pertinent documents shall be kept in the archives.

  —State Prosecutor

  He grabbed another form:

  Instruction. I herewith order all officials of the military, civil, and railroad administrations to provide assistance under the category EXTRA to the bearer of this instruction, a special courier of the state prosecutor’s office, and also to his accompanying escort.

  —State Prosecutor

  Then he finished his glass of water, poured himself some more, and started writing on a third form, but this time slowly, pondering every word: “Dear Wanderer! Things have turned out rather stupidly. It has only just come to light that the subject in which you are interested has disappeared without a trace, as quite often happens in the southern jungles . . .”

  13

  His first shot shattered one of its caterpillar tracks, and for the first time in more than twenty years, it abandoned its well-worn rut, in the process wrenching up chunks of concrete, then smashed its way into the thickets of the forest and began slowly slewing around on the spot, crunching heavily through the bushes with its broad forehead and brushing aside the shuddering tree trunks. When it displayed its immense, dirty stern with a sheet of iron dangling on rusty rivets, Zef fired neatly and precisely so that he wouldn’t—God forbid!—hit the atomic boiler, sending a blast charge deep into the engine, into the muscles, sinews, and nerve ganglia, and it gasped in an iron voice, belched a cloud of incandescent smoke from out of its articulated joints, and stopped forever. But something carried on living in its vile, armored belly. Some nerves or other that had survived continued to transmit meaningless signals; emergency response systems kept switching on and immediately switching off, hissing and spitting out foam. That something continued flaccidly palpitating, feebly scrabbling with its surviving caterpillar track, and up on top of the dying dragon the peeling latticework barrel of its rocket launcher continued rising up and sinking back down in meaningless menace, like the abdomen of a splatted wasp.

  Zef watched this death agony for a few seconds, then turned and walked into the forest, dragging the grenade launcher along by its strap, and Maxim and Wild Boar set off after him. When they emerged into a quiet clearing that Zef must have spotted earlier on the way here, they all collapsed into the grass. “Let’s have a smoke,” said Zef.

  He made a roll-up for the one-handed man, gave him a light, and lit up himself. Maxim lay there with his chin propped on his hands, still watching through the sparse trees as the iron dragon died, pitifully jangling some final gear-wheels or other, and whistling as it released jets of radioactive steam from its lacerated innards.

  “That’s the way—that’s the only way,” Zef said in a patronizing tone of voice. “And if you do it any other way, I’ll box your ears.”

  “Why?” asked Maxim. “I wanted to stop it.”

  “Because,” Zef replied, “the grenade could ricochet into the rocket, and then we’d be dead meat.”

  “I was aiming at the caterpillar tread,” said Maxim.

  “But you have to aim at its butt,” said Zef. He stretched. “And in general, while you’re still a greenhorn, don’t go sticking your nose anywhere first. Not unless I ask you to. You got that?”

  “Yes,” said Maxim. He wasn’t interested in all these subtle points of Zef’s. And he wasn’t really very interested in Zef himself. He was interested in Wild Boar. But as always, Wild Boar remained indifferently silent, resting his artificial hand on the scruffy housing of the mine detector. Everything was the same as it always was. And nothing was the way Mak would have liked it to be.

  When the newly arrived educatees were lined up in front of the bunkhouses a week earlier, Zef had walked straight up to Maxim and taken him into his 134th Sappers’ Unit. Maxim had been delighted. He immediately recognized that massive, fiery-red beard and the square, stocky figure, and it gave him a good feeling to have been recognized in that stifling crowd of check coveralls, in which nobody gave a damn for anybody else and nobody was even interested in anybody else. In addition, Maxim had every reason to suppose that Zef—the formerly famous psychiatrist Allu Zef, an educated, cultured individual, and a total contrast with the semicriminal riffraff crammed into the convict car—was here because of his politics and was connected in some way with the underground. And when Zef led him into the bunkhouse and pointed to a place on the bunks beside one-handed Wild Boar, Maxim thought that his fate here had definitely been decided.

  Very soon, however, he realized he had been wrong. Wild Boar didn’t want to make conversation. After listening to Maxim’s hastily whispered story about what had happened to his group, the demolition of the tower, and the trial, he mumbled through a yawn, “Stranger things than that happen,” and lay down, turning his face away. Maxim felt cheated. And then Zef clambered up onto the bunks. “I’ve just gobbled a real gutful,” he informed Maxim, burping loudly with his stomach gurgling, and then attempted, in a crude, pushy style, to drag all the names and meeting places out of Maxim. Maybe he had once been a famous scientist, an educated and cultured individual. Maybe—and even probably—he used to have some kind of connection with the underground. But at that moment he produced the impression of a run-of-the-mill stooge with an overstuffed gut who, for want of anything else to do, had decided to work on a stupid greenhorn before turning in. Maxim only managed to shake him off with a serious effort. After Zef suddenly started snoring and snorting in a satisfied, well-fed tone, Maxim lay there for a long time, unable to sleep, recalling how many times he had been deceived by people and circumstances here.

  His nerves were at the breaking point. He recalled the hideous, fraudulent trial, thoroughly rehearsed in advance,
arranged in detail even before the group had received the order to attack the tower, and the written denunciations of some bastard who knew everything about the group and maybe was even a member of the group, and the movie that was shot from the tower during the attack, and his own feeling of shame when he recognized himself on the screen, blazing away with his automatic rifle at those spotlights—no, at those movie floodlights illuminating the set for that appalling production . . . It was repulsively stifling in the hermetically sealed bunkhouse, the parasites were biting, the educatees were deliriously raving, and down in the farthest corner the privileged inmates were playing a passionate game of cards by the light of an improvised candle, abusing each other in harsh, vehement voices.

  And the next day even the forest deceived Maxim. He couldn’t take a single step there without running into iron: dead, rusted-through iron; iron that was just lying in wait, ready to kill at any moment; iron that was furtively stirring, taking aim; iron that was moving, blindly and senselessly plowing up the remains of the roads. The earth and the grass gave off a smell of rust, radioactive pools had accumulated at the bottoms of gullies, the birds didn’t sing but hoarsely lamented, as if bewailing their death agony, there weren’t any animals, and there wasn’t even any sylvan repose—on their right and on their left explosions erupted and rumbled, grayish-blue fumes swirled and eddied among the branches, and gusts of wind brought the harsh roaring of exhausted engines . . .

  And so it went on, day and night, night and day. In the daytime they went out into the forest, which wasn’t a forest but an old fortified area. It was literally crawling with automated combat devices—self-propelled guns, rockets on caterpillar tracks, flamethrowers, and gas projectors—all of which still hadn’t died yet after more than twenty years. It was still living its own unnecessary mechanical life, still taking aim, vectoring in, and belching forth lead, fire, and death, and all of it had to be strangled, blown up, and killed in order to clear a corridor for the construction of more radiation towers. At night Wild Boar remained as taciturn as ever, while Zef pestered Maxim with questions again and again, switching approaches between stupidly forthright and incredibly subtle and cunning. And there was the coarse food, and the educatees’ strange songs, and the Guards beating someone’s face in, and twice a day everyone in the bunkhouses and the forest writhed in agony from the radiation attacks, and hanged fugitives dangled in the wind . . . Day and night . . . day and night . . .

  “Why did you want to stop it?” Wild Boar suddenly asked.

  Maxim hastily sat down. This was the first question the one-handed man had asked him. “I wanted to take a look at how it was made.”

  “Did you want to escape?”

  “No, not that. But it’s a tank, after all, a battle machine . . .”

  “What would you want with a tank?” Wild Boar asked. He spoke as if the red-haired stooge weren’t there.

  “I don’t know,” said Maxim. “I still need to think about that. Are there a lot of them here?”

  “Yes, a lot,” the red-haired stooge butted in. “There are lots of tanks here, and there have always been lots of fools here too.” He yawned. “The number of times it’s been tried already. They climb in, rummage around and rummage around, and then give up. And there was one fool—someone like you—who simply blew himself up.”

  “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t have blown myself up,” Maxim coolly said. “It’s not a complicated mechanism.”

  “But still, what would you want with it?” the one-handed man asked. He was smoking, lying on his back, holding the roll-up in his artificial fingers. “Let’s suppose you get it going. Then what?”

  “A break-out across the bridge,” Zef chuckled.

  “And why not?” asked Maxim. He had no idea at all how to behave. This redheaded character didn’t seem to be a stooge after all. Massaraksh, why were they suddenly pestering him like this?

  “You’d never get as far the bridge,” said the one-handed man. “They’d gun you down thirty-three times over. And even if you did reach it, you’d see that the bridge has been demolished.”

  “How about across the bottom of the river?”

  ‘The river’s radioactive,” Zef said, and spat. “If it were a decent sort of river, now, you wouldn’t need any tanks. Just swim across it anywhere at all—the banks aren’t guarded.” He spat again. “But in that case, they would be guarded. And, so, young man, stop kicking up dust. You’re stuck here for the long term, so get used to it. Adapt and things will work out. But if you don’t listen to your elders, you could even find yourself beholding the World Light this very day.”

  “Escaping’s not difficult,” said Maxim. “I could escape right now—”

  “Well, aren’t you something!” Zef admiringly exclaimed.

  “. . . and if you intend to carry on playing the conspirator . . .” Maxim continued, pointedly addressing only Wild Boar, but Zef interrupted him again.

  “I intend to fulfill the daily norm,” he declared, getting up. “Otherwise they won’t let us feed our faces today. Let’s go!”

  He walked off ahead, striding between the trees with a waddling gait, and Maxim asked the one-handed man, “Is he really a political prisoner?”

  The one-handed man cast a quick glance at Maxim and said, “Come on, how can you ask that?”

  They set off after Zef, trying to tread in his footsteps. Maxim brought up the rear. “What’s he in here for?”

  “Crossing the street at the wrong place,” the one-handed man said, and once again Maxim’s desire to talk evaporated.

  Before they had gone even a hundred paces, Zef gave the command “Halt!” and work began. “Get down!” Zef roared. He flung himself down flat on the ground, and the thick tree ahead of them revolved with a long screech, thrust a long, slim gun barrel out from inside itself, wiggled it from side to side as if taking aim, and started droning; there was a click, and a little puff of yellow smoke lazily crept out of the black muzzle. “It’s defunct,” Zef said in a brisk tone, and got up first, dusting off his trousers. They blew up the gun tree.

  After that there was a minefield, then a hill with a machine gun trap, which wasn’t defunct and kept them pinned down on the ground for a long time, setting the forest ringing with its roaring. Then they ended up in a genuine jungle of barbed wire and barely managed to scramble through it, and when they finally did get through it, something opened fire on them from above, and everything on all sides started exploding and burning. Maxim couldn’t understand a thing, the one-handed man calmly lay there facedown, and Zef fired his grenade launcher up into the sky and suddenly yelled, “Follow me, move it!” They ran, and flames suddenly flared up where they had just been. Zef swore terrible oaths and the one-handed man laughed. Then they clambered into a dense thicket, but suddenly something started whistling and wheezing, and clouds of greenish gas with a repulsive smell started billowing down through the branches, and again they had to run, scrambling through the bushes, and Zef swore again, and the one-handed man agonizingly vomited . . .

  Zef eventually got tired and announced a break. They lit a campfire, and Maxim, as the junior comrade, prepared to cook lunch by boiling up soup out of canned food in the old, familiar cooking pot. Zef and the one-handed man, both grubby and tattered, lay right there beside him, smoking. Wild Boar looked worn out; he was already old and found all of this harder going than the others.

  “The mind boggles,” said Maxim. “How did we manage to lose a war with so much weaponry per square yard?”

  “What makes you think we lost?” Zef lazily asked.

  “Well, we didn’t win,” said Maxim. “Victors don’t live like this.”

  “In modern war there are no victors,” the one-handed man remarked. “You’re right, of course. We did lose the war. Everybody lost this war. Only the Unknown Fathers won it.”

  “The Unknown Fathers have it tough too,” said Maxim, stirring the soup.

  “Yes,” Zef said in a serious voice. “Sleepless nights and
agonized pondering on the fate and fortunes of their people . . . Weary and benign, all-seeing and all-understanding . . . Massaraksh, it’s a long time since I read any newspapers, I’ve forgotten what comes next . . .”

  “Faithful and benign,” the one-handed man corrected him. “Totally dedicated to progress and the struggle against chaos.”

  “I’ve grown unused to words like that,” said Zef. “Around here, there’s more of ‘lousy mug’ and ‘ugly snout’ . . . Hey, kid, whatever your name is . . .”

  “Maxim.”

  “Yes, right . . . You keep stirring, Mak, keep stirring. If it burns, you’re in trouble!”

  Maxim kept stirring. And then Zef announced that it was time, he couldn’t bear to wait any longer. They ate the soup in complete silence.

  Maxim could sense that something had changed, something would be said today. But after lunch the one-handed man lay down again and started looking up at the sky, and Zef muttered unintelligibly as he took the pot and started mopping the bottom of it with a thick crust of bread. “I feel like shooting something . . .” he muttered. “I want to really gorge myself, it’s like I haven’t eaten at all . . . just aggravated my appetite . . .” Feeling awkward, Maxim tried to strike up a conversation about the hunting in these parts, but no one backed him up. The one-handed man lay with his eyes closed and seemed to be sleeping. After hearing out Maxim’s comments, Zef merely growled, “What kind of hunting can there be here? Everything’s polluted, radioactive,” and he also collapsed onto his back.

  Maxim sighed, took the cooking pot, and plodded toward a stream that he could hear somewhere close by. The water in the stream was clear; it looked so pure and delectable, it made Maxim really want to take a drink, and he scooped up a handful. Unfortunately, he realized he definitely couldn’t wash the cooking pot here, and it would be a bad idea to drink the water too—the stream was distinctly radioactive. Maxim squatted down, placed the cooking pot beside him, and started pondering.