The Inhabited Island Page 23

  First he thought about Rada for some reason, about how she always washed the dishes after a meal and wouldn’t let him help, on the absurd excuse that it was a woman’s job. He remembered that she loved him and felt proud, because no woman had ever loved him before. He wanted very badly to see Rada, and then immediately, with supreme inconsistency, thought what a good thing it was that she wasn’t here. This was no place for even the most obnoxious of men; they ought to herd a thousand cyberjanitors in here. Or maybe just atomize all these forests with everything in them and cultivate new, cheerful ones—or even gloomy ones, but pure with the gloominess of nature.

  Then he remembered that he had been banished here in perpetuity, and felt amazed by the naïveté of those who had banished him without making him promise anything, who had imagined that he would voluntarily live here and even help them set up a line of radiation towers through these forests. In the convict car they had told him that the forests stretched southward for hundreds of miles, and the war technology was still there, even in the desert . . . Ah no, I’m not going to hang around here. Massaraksh, only yesterday I was knocking these towers down, and today I’m supposed to clear the sites for them? I’ve had enough of this nonsense.

  Wild Boar doesn’t trust me. He trusts Zef but not me. And I don’t trust Zef, but apparently I’m wrong about that. Probably I seem as suspiciously nosy to Wild Boar as Zef seems to me . . . Well, OK, Wild Boar doesn’t trust me, so I’m on my own again. Of course, I could hope to run into General or Hoof, only that’s just too unlikely; they say there are more than a million educatees here, and this is a vast region. No, no, there’s no point in hoping to meet anyone like that . . . Of course, I could try to cobble together a group of strangers, but—massaraksh—I have to be honest with myself: I’m not suited to that. I’m not suited to that just yet, that is. I’m too trusting . . .

  But hang on, let’s define the goal first. What do I want? He spent several minutes clarifying his goal. It turned out as follows: Overthrow the Unknown Fathers. If they’re military men, let them serve in the army, and if they’re financial experts, let them deal with financial matters, whatever that might mean. Establish a democratic government—he had a more or less clear idea of what a democratic government was, and he was even aware that a republic would be bourgeois democratic at first. It wouldn’t solve all the problems, but it would at least make it possible to put an end to lawlessness and eliminate the senseless expenditure on the towers and preparations for war.

  However, he honestly admitted that he only had a clear idea of the first point of his program: the overthrow of tyranny. His thoughts were pretty vague on what came after that. And what was more, he wasn’t even certain that the broad masses of the people would actually support his idea of overthrowing authority. The Unknown Fathers were absolutely obvious liars and scoundrels, but for some reason they enjoyed unchallenged popularity with the people.

  OK, he decided, let’s not look so far ahead. Let’s stick with the first point and take a look at what stands between me and the fat necks of the Unknown Fathers. In the first place, the armed forces—the excellently trained Guards and the army, about which all I know is that my Gai is serving in a penal company (what a strange expression!) somewhere or other. In the second place—and this is more substantial—the actual anonymity of the Unknown Fathers. Who are they? Where do I look for them? Where do they come from, where do they reside, how do they become Unknown Fathers? He tried to recall how things had been on Earth in the age of revolutions and dictatorships . . . . Massaraksh, all I remember are the main dates, the most important names, the most basic alignment of forces—but I need details, analogies, precedents . . . Take fascism, for instance—what were things like then? I remember how horrible it was reading about it and hearing about it. That Himmler was some repulsive kind of bloodsucking spider . . . But hang on, that means it wasn’t an anonymous government . . . Yeeeah, I don’t remember much. But it was so long ago, wasn’t it, and it was so abhorrent, and who could have known that I’d end up in a mess like this?

  They ought to send the guys from Galactic Security or the Institute of Experimental History here—they’d figure out what’s what soon enough. Maybe I should try to construct a transmitter? He sadly laughed, remembering that he had already thought about building a transmitter here—and right here in this very area, somewhere not far away . . . No, I’ll obviously have to rely on nobody but myself. OK. There’s only one weapon against an army: another army. And the weapon against anonymity and mystery is intelligence work. It all turns out to be very simple . . .

  In any case, I have to get away from here. Of course, I’ll try to get some kind of group together, but if that doesn’t work out, I’ll go on my own . . . And a tank is a definite must. The weapons here are worth a hundred armies. They’re a bit battered after twenty years, it’s true, and they’re automated, but I’ll just have to try to adapt them . . . Does Wild Boar really still not trust me? he thought, almost in despair, grabbed the cooking pot, and ran back to the campfire.

  Zef and Wild Boar weren’t sleeping, they were lying with their heads together, quietly but passionately arguing about something. Catching sight of Maxim, Zef hastily said “That’s enough!” and got to his feet. Jerking up his ginger beard and glaring wide-eyed, he yelled, “Where did you get to, massaraksh! Who gave you permission to leave? We have to work, or they won’t give us any chow, thirty-three massarakshes!”

  At that point Maxim blew his top. “You go to hell, Zef! Can’t you think about anything else except gorging on chow? That’s all I’ve heard from you all day long: gorge, gorge, gorge! You can gorge on my canned stuff, if it tortures you so badly!”

  He flung the cooking pot down on the ground, grabbed his backpack, and started threading his arms though the straps. Zef, who had crouched down in the face of this acoustic onslaught, gazed at Maxim with a stunned expression, his mouth gaping like a black hole in his fiery ginger beard. Then the mouth snapped shut with a gurgling, snorting sound, and Zef started roaring with laughter, setting the forest ringing. The one-handed man joined in, although his laughter could only be seen, not heard. Maxim couldn’t help himself, and he started laughing too, rather awkwardly. He felt embarrassed at his own rudeness.

  “Massaraksh,” Zef eventually wheezed. “You got some voice! . . . Yes, my old buddy,” he said, turning to Wild Boar, “just you remember what I said. And by the way, I just said ‘That’s enough’ . . . Get up!” he yelled. “And move it, if you want to . . . hmm . . . gorge yourselves this evening.”

  And that was all. They yelled a bit, laughed a bit, turned serious, and set off again—to risk their lives in the names of the Unknown Fathers. Maxim furiously disarmed mines, smashed twin-barreled machine guns out of their nests, and unscrewed the warheads of surface-to-air missiles jutting out of their open hatches. Once again there was fire, stench, hissing jets of tear gas, and the repulsive odor of the decomposing corpses of animals shot by the automatons. They all got even dirtier, even angrier, even more ragged and tattered, and Zef wheezed to Maxim, “Move it, move it! If you want to gorge yourself, move it!”—and one-handed Wild Boar was finally exhausted and could barely drag himself along far behind them, leaning on his mine detector as if it were a staff . . .

  In the course of those hours Maxim grew thoroughly sick and tired of Zef, and he was actually glad when his ginger-bearded companion suddenly bellowed and disappeared under the ground with a bump. Wiping the sweat off his dirty forehead with his dirty sleeve, Maxim unhurriedly walked over and stopped at the edge of a dark, narrow crevice hidden in the grass. The crevice was deep and pitch black, with a chilly, damp draft blowing up out of it; he couldn’t see anything, and all he could hear was a kind of crunching, fluttering sound, as well as unintelligible swearing. Wild Boar limped up, glanced into the crevice, and asked Maxim, “Is he in there? What’s he doing in there?”

  “Zef!” Maxim called, leaning down. “Are you down there, Zef?”

  A rumbling r
eply surfaced out of the crevice. “Come down here! Jump, it’s soft.”

  Maxim looked at the one-handed man, who shook his head. “That’s not for me,” he said. “You jump, and I’ll lower a rope down to you afterward.”

  “Who’s there!” Zef suddenly roared down below them. “I’ll fire, massaraksh!”

  Maxim lowered his legs into the crevice, pushed off, and jumped. Almost immediately he sank up to his knees in some kind of crumbly mass and sat down. Zef was somewhere close by. Maxim closed his eyes and sat there for a few seconds, getting used to the darkness.

  “Come this way, Mak, there’s someone here,” Zef boomed. “Boar!” he shouted. “Jump!” Wild Boar replied that he was dog tired and would be quite happy sitting up on top for a while.

  “Suit yourself,” said Zef. “But I think this is the Fortress. You’ll regret it later.”

  The one-handed man replied in a feeble, indistinct voice; apparently he was feeling nauseous again, and he had no interest in any Fortress. Maxim opened his eyes and looked around. He was sitting on a heap of earth in the middle of a long corridor with rough concrete walls. The gap in the ceiling was either a ventilation duct or a shell hole. Zef was standing about twenty steps away and also looking around, shining his flashlight.

  “What is this place?” asked Maxim.

  “How would I know? Maybe some kind of hideaway. Or maybe it really is the Fortress. Do you know what the Fortress is?”

  “No,” said Maxim, and started clambering down off the heap of earth.

  “You don’t know . . .” Zef absentmindedly said. He was still looking around, running the beam of his flashlight over the walls. “Then what do you know? Massaraksh,” he said. “Someone was here just now.”

  “A human being?” asked Maxim.

  “I don’t know,” Zef replied. “He crept along the wall and disappeared . . . And the Fortress, my friend, is the kind of thing that could allow us to finish all our work in a single day . . . Aha, tracks . . .”

  He squatted down. Maxim squatted beside him and saw a line of imprints in the dust along the bottom of the wall. “Strange tracks,” he said.

  “Yes, my friend,” said Zef, looking around. “I’ve never seen any tracks like these before.”

  “As if someone walked by on his fists,” said Maxim. He clenched one fist and made an imprint beside the tracks.

  “Looks like it,” Zef respectfully admitted. He shone the flashlight into the depths of the corridor. Something in there feebly glimmered, reflecting the light—either a bend or a dead end. “Should we go and take a look?” he asked.

  “Quiet,” said Maxim. “Don’t talk and don’t move.”

  The underground vault was damp and silent, but the corridor wasn’t completely empty of life. Someone was there, up ahead—although Maxim couldn’t make out exactly where or how far away—standing there, pressing himself against the wall, someone small, with a faint, unfamiliar smell, observing them and displeased by their presence. The creature was something entirely unfamiliar, and its intentions were unfathomable.

  “Do we really have to go that way?” asked Maxim.

  “I’d like to,” said Zef.

  “What for?”

  “We ought to take a look—maybe it is the Fortress after all . . . If we found the Fortress, my friend, then everything would suddenly be different. I don’t believe in the Fortress, but since they talk about it, who knows . . . Maybe not all of them are lying.”

  “There’s someone there,” said Maxim. “I can’t figure out who.”

  “Yes? Hmm . . . If this is the Fortress, the legend has it that either the remains of the garrison live here . . . you know, they’re still sitting in here, not knowing that the war is over—you know, at the very height of the war they declared themselves neutral, locked themselves in, and promised to blow up the entire continent if anyone came in after them . . .”

  “And can they?”

  “If this is the Fortress, they can do anything . . . Yeeeah, up on the surface there are explosions and shooting all the time. They could easily believe the war hasn’t ended yet . . . Some prince or duke was in command here—it would be good if we could meet with him and have a talk.”

  Maxim intently listened. “No,” he confidently said. “That isn’t any prince or duke. It’s some kind of animal or something . . . No, not an animal . . . Or . . .”

  “What do you mean, ‘or’?”

  “You said, either the remains of the garrison, or . . .”

  “Aah . . . That’s just nonsense, old wives’ tales . . . Let’s go and take a look.”

  Zef loaded the grenade launcher, held it aimed roughly ahead, and moved forward, lighting his way with the flashlight. Maxim set off beside him. They trudged along the corridor for a few minutes, then came up against a wall and turned to the right.

  “You’re making a lot of noise,” said Maxim. “Something’s going on up there, and you’re wheezing so loud . . .”

  “What am I supposed to do, not breathe?” asked Zef, instantly getting his back up.

  “And your flashlight is bothering me,” said Maxim.

  “What do you mean, it’s bothering you? It’s dark.”

  “I can see in the dark,” said Maxim, “but with that flashlight of yours I can’t make anything out . . . Let me go ahead, and you stay here. Or we’ll never find out anything.”

  “Weeell, have it your way . . .” Zef said in an atypically hesitant tone of voice.

  Maxim squeezed his eyes shut again, took a rest from the unreliable light, ducked down, and set off along the wall, trying not to make any noise at all. The unknown creature was somewhere close by, and Maxim was getting closer to it with every step. The corridor was endless. Doors appeared on the right, all made of iron and all locked. A faint draft was blowing toward him. The air was damp, filled with the odor of mold, together with that unfamiliar, living, warm scent. Zef moved after Mak with noisy caution; he was feeling uneasy and afraid of falling behind. Sensing that, Maxim laughed to himself, letting himself be distracted for literally only a second, and in that second the unknown being ahead of him disappeared.

  Maxim halted, perplexed. The unknown creature had just been ahead of him, very close, and then it had seemed to dissolve into the air and appear behind his back, still very close, all in a single instant.

  “Zef!” Maxim called.

  “Yes!” his ginger-bearded companion responded in an echoing voice.

  Maxim imagined the unknown creature standing between them, turning its head toward the voices by turns.

  “He’s in between us,” said Maxim. “Don’t even think of shooting.”

  “OK,” Zef said after a pause. “I can’t see a damn thing,” he declared. “What does he look like?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Maxim. “Something soft.”

  “An animal?”

  “It doesn’t seem like it,” said Maxim.

  “You said you could see in the dark.”

  “I don’t see with my eyes,” said Maxim. “Be quiet.”

  “Not with his eyes . . .” Zef growled, and fell silent.

  The unknown creature stood there for a while, crossed the corridor, disappeared, and after a while appeared ahead of Maxim again. He’s curious too, thought Maxim. He tried hard to rouse a sense of fellow feeling in himself for this creature, but something prevented him—probably the unpleasant combination of a non-animal intellect with a semi-animal appearance. He moved forward again. The unknown creature retreated, maintaining a constant distance.

  “How are things?” asked Zef.

  “Still the same,” replied Maxim, “Maybe he’s leading us somewhere, or luring us.”

  “Will we be able to deal with him?”

  “He’s not planning to attack,” said Maxim. “He’s feeling curious too.”

  He stopped talking, because the unknown creature had disappeared again, and Maxim immediately sensed that the corridor had come to an end. There was a large space around him. It
was too dark here, though, and Maxim could see almost nothing, although he could sense the presence of metal and glass, there was a smell of rust, and there was high-voltage current somewhere in the space. Maxim stood there without moving for a few seconds and then, having determined where the switch was, reached his hand out to it, but then the unknown creature appeared again. And not alone. There was another one with him, similar but not exactly the same. They were standing by the same wall as Maxim, and he could hear their rapid, damp breathing. He froze, hoping that they would move closer, but they didn’t approach, and then, constricting his pupils as hard as he could, he pressed the switch.

  Obviously there was something wrong with the circuit—the lamps flashed on for only a split second, a circuit breaker blew somewhere with a sharp crack, and the light went out again, but Maxim had time to see that the unknown creatures were small, each about the size of a large dog, and they stood on all fours, were covered with dark fur, and had large, heavy heads. Maxim didn’t get a chance to examine their eyes. The creatures immediately disappeared, as if they had never been there.

  “How are things up there?” Zef asked in alarm. “What was that flash?”

  “I turned the lights on,” Maxim replied. “Come here.”

  “But where’s that creature? Did you see him?”

  “Only for an instant. They look like animals after all. Like dogs with big heads . . .”

  Shimmers of light from the flashlight started flickering across the walls. Zef spoke as he walked. “Ah, dogs . . . I know dogs like that live in the forest. I’ve never seen them alive, though, but I’ve seen plenty that had been shot . . .”

  “No,” Maxim said with a doubtful air. “They aren’t animals, all the same.”

  “Animals, they’re animals,” said Zef. His voice echoed hollowly under the high vault. “We needn’t have gotten freaked out. I almost started thinking they were ghouls . . . Massaraksh! But this is the Fortress!”