The Inhabited Island Page 7

  They walked to the end of that poorly lit side street and turned into an even more poorly lit side street, with crooked little wooden houses along the sides of a dirty road that was unevenly paved with cobblestones, then they turned another corner, and another. The crooked little streets were empty and they didn’t meet a single person along their way, lampshades of various colors glowed behind curtains in the weak-sighted little windows, and every now and then they heard muted music—choral singing in poor voices.

  At first Rada chattered away in a lively fashion, often repeating the name Gai, and Maxim kept confirming that Gai was good, but he added in Russian that you shouldn’t punch people in the face, that it was strange and he, Maxim, didn’t understand it. However, as the streets became narrower and narrower, darker and drizzlier, Rada’s chatter broke off more and more often. Sometimes she stopped and peered into the darkness, and Maxim thought she was choosing the driest route, but she was searching for something else in that darkness, because she didn’t see the puddles, and every time Maxim had to gently tug her over onto the dry spots, and where there weren’t any dry spots, he took her under his arm and carried her across. She liked it, and every time she swooned in delight, but then immediately forgot about it, because she was afraid. The farther away they went from the café, the more afraid she was; at first Maxim tried to establish nerve contact with her, in order to transmit a little courage and confidence, but it didn’t work, just as it hadn’t worked with Fank. And when they left the slums behind and came out onto a completely muddy, unpaved road, with an endless, wet wall surmounted by rusty barbed wire running along on the right, and a pitch-black, foul-smelling wasteland without a single light on the left, Rada’s courage failed her and she almost started crying. In order to lift the mood at least a little, Maxim started singing the most cheerful songs he knew one after another at the top of his voice, and that helped, but not for long, only as far as the end of the wall, and then there were rows of buildings again—long, yellow two-story buildings with dark windows that gave off a smell of cooling metal, organic lubricant, and something else stifling and smoky. The sparse streetlamps glowed nebulously, and there were men in the distance, sullenly loitering under a tawdry sort of blind archway. Rada stopped.

  She clutched Maxim’s arm and started speaking in a fitful whisper, full of fear for herself and even more for him. Whispering, she tugged him back, and he complied, thinking it would make her feel better, but then he realized it was simply an unreasoning act of despair, and dug his heels in. “Let’s go,” he gently told her. “Let’s go, Rada. Nothing bad. Good.” She obeyed him like a child. He led her on, although he didn’t know the way, and suddenly realized that she was afraid of those wet figures, and he was very surprised, because there was nothing terrible or dangerous about them—they were just ordinary members of the indigenous population, huddled up under the rain and shivering from the damp. At first there were two of them, then a third and a fourth appeared from somewhere with the little glowing lights of narcotic sticks.

  Maxim walked along the empty street between the yellow buildings, straight at those figures, and Rada pressed herself closer and closer against him, and he put his arm around her shoulders. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps he had been mistaken and Rada was trembling not in fear but simply from the cold. There was absolutely nothing dangerous about those wet men, and he walked straight past them, past those hunched-over, long-faced, chilled-through men with their hands stuck deep in their pockets, stamping their feet to warm themselves up, those pitiful men poisoned by their narcotic, and they didn’t even seem to notice him and Rada, they didn’t even raise their eyes, although he walked by so close that he could hear their morbid, irregular breathing. He thought that now at least Rada would calm down, now that they were already under the archway—and then suddenly another four men appeared out of thin air up ahead of them, as if they had detached themselves from the yellow walls, and stood across the path, blocking it; they were as wet and pitiful as the others, but one of them had a long, thick cane, and Maxim recognized him.

  Under the flaking dome of the grotesque archway a naked lightbulb dangled, swinging to and fro in the draft. The walls were covered with mold and cracks, and the cracked concrete under their feet bore the dirty tracks of innumerable feet and car tires. There was a sudden hollow tramping behind them, and Maxim looked back—the first four men were pursuing them, breathing fitfully and irregularly, keeping their hands in their pockets and spitting out their repulsive narcotic sticks as they ran. Rada gave a muffled cry and let go of his arm, and suddenly the space was crowded: Maxim was forced back against the wall, and the men were standing just a hair’s breadth away, but they didn’t touch him, they kept their hands in their pockets, they didn’t even look at him, they just stood there, not allowing him to move, and over their heads he saw two of them holding Rada by the arms, and the man with the mustache strolled over to her, unhurriedly transferred the cane to his left hand, and in the same leisurely style lazily slapped her on the cheek with his right hand.

  This was so barbarous and impossible that Maxim lost his sense of reality. Something shifted out of kilter in his consciousness. The men disappeared. There were only two people here, himself and Rada; the others had all disappeared. Their place had been taken by fearsome, dangerous animals, trampling in the mud with clumsy, terrifying movements. The city disappeared, together with the archway and the lightbulb above his head. This was a region of impassable mountains, the country of Oz on Pandora; this was a cave, an abominable trap set by naked, spotted monkeys, and the blurred, yellow moon was indifferently peering into the cave, and he had to fight in order to survive. And he started fighting just as he had fought that time on Pandora.

  Time accommodatingly slowed down and stretched out, the seconds became very, very long, and in the course of each one it was possible to make very many different movements and strike many blows while seeing everything at once. They were heavy-footed, these monkeys, they were used to dealing with different quarry, and they probably simply weren’t quick thinking enough to realize that they had made the wrong choice, that the best thing for them would have been to run, so they tried to fight . . . Maxim grabbed one wild beast by the lower jaw, jerked up the yielding head, chopped the edge of his hand hard against the pale, pulsating neck, and immediately turned to the next one. He grabbed, jerked, and chopped, then grabbed, jerked, and chopped again—in the cloud of their stinking, predatory breath, in the hollow silence of the cave, in the yellow, weeping semi-darkness—and filthy talons tore at his neck and slipped off, yellow fangs sank deep into his shoulder and also slipped off . . . There was no one near him any longer, and the leader with the club was hurrying toward the exit of the cave—because, like all leaders, he had the fastest reactions and had been the first to realize what was happening—and Maxim fleetingly pitied him, because his fast reactions were so slow. The seconds stretched out, becoming even slower, the fleet-footed leader was barely even moving his legs, and Maxim, slipping between the seconds, drew level with him and chopped him down as he ran, and immediately stopped.

  Time returned to its normal rate of movement, the cave became an archway, the moon became a lightbulb, and the land of Oz on Pandora turned back into an incomprehensible city on an obscure planet that was even more incomprehensible than Pandora . . .

  Maxim stood there, resting, with his itching hands lowered. The leader with the mustache was laboriously crawling around at his feet, and blood was flowing from Maxim’s wounded shoulder. Then Rada took him by the hand and sobbed as she ran his palm across her own wet face. He looked around. The bodies were scattered about like sacks on the concrete floor. He instinctively counted them—six, including the leader—and thought that two of them had gotten away. Rada’s touch felt pleasurable beyond words, and he knew he had acted as he had to act, and done what he had to do—not a jot more and not a jot less. So let the ones who had managed to get away, get away. He didn’t pursue them, although he could hav
e caught up with them—even now he could hear the panic-stricken clattering of their shoes at the end of the tunnel. As for those who had not managed to get away, they were lying here, and some of them would die, and some of them were already dead, and now he realized that they were men after all, and not spotted monkeys or armored wolves, although their breath was rank smelling, their touches were foul, and their intentions were predatory and hideous. Nonetheless, he had a certain feeling of regret and sensed a loss, as if he had forfeited some kind of chastity, as if he had lost a small, integral part of the soul of the previous Maxim, and he knew that the previous Maxim had disappeared forever, and that gave him a slightly bitter feeling, which roused an unfamiliar kind of pride in him.

  “Let’s go, Maxim,” Rada told him in a quiet voice.

  And he docilely followed her.

  “You Let Him Get Away . . .”

  “In short, you let him get away.”

  “There was nothing I could have done. You know yourself the way things happen—”

  “Damn it, Fank! You didn’t even have to do anything. It would have been enough just to take a driver with you.”

  “I know it’s my fault. But who could have expected—”

  “That’s enough about that. What measures have you taken?”

  “As soon as they let me go, I called Megu. Megu doesn’t know anything. If he comes back, Megu will inform me immediately. Beyond that, I’ve put all the insane asylums under observation. He can’t get very far, he simply won’t be allowed to, he sticks out like a sore thumb. He doesn’t have any documents. I’ve given instructions that I must be informed about everyone who is detained without documents. He doesn’t have any chance of hiding, even if he wants to. In my opinion, it’s a matter of two or three days . . . A simple matter.”

  “Simple . . . What could have been simpler: get into a car, drive to the telecenter, and bring a man here. But you couldn’t even manage that.”

  “I’m sorry. But a set of circumstances like that—”

  “I told you, no more about the circumstances. Is he really like a madman?”

  “It’s hard to say . . . He’s like a savage more than anything, I’d say. Like a well-washed and well-groomed Highlander. But I can easily imagine a situation in which he would appear to be insane. And then there’s that perpetual idiotic smile, and that cretinous babbling instead of normal speech. And in general he’s some kind of simpleton.”

  “I see. I approve of the measures you’ve taken. But there’s one more thing, Fank. Get in touch with the underground.”

  “What?”

  “If you don’t find him in the next few days, he’s bound to turn up in the underground.”

  “I don’t understand what a savage would be doing in the underground.”

  “There are plenty of savages in the underground. And don’t ask stupid questions, just do as I tell you. If you let him get away again, I’ll fire you.”

  “I won’t let him get away a second time.”

  “I’m glad for your sake . . . What else?”

  “A curious rumor about Blister.”

  “About Blister? What, exactly?”

  “If you don’t mind, Wanderer . . . If you’ll permit me, I’d prefer to whisper it in your ear . . .”

  5

  When he had completed the briefing, Cornet Chachu gave the following instruction: “Corporal Gaal, remain behind. The others are dismissed.”

  After the other section commanders had filed out, each with his nose to the nape of the man in front, the cornet examined Gai for a while, swaying on his stool and whistling the old soldier’s song “Cool It, Mama.” Mr. Cornet Chachu was nothing at all like Mr. Cornet To’ot; he was stocky and swarthy, he had a large bald patch, and he was much older than To’ot. In the recent past he had been an active duty officer, a tankman, and had been involved in eight coastal incidents; he held the Fiery Cross and three badges “for fury under fire.” He had told them about his fantastic duel with a white submarine, when his tank took a direct hit and caught fire but he carried on firing until he passed out from his terrible burns; they said he didn’t have a single patch of his own skin anywhere on his body, nothing but transplants from other men, and he had three fingers missing on his left hand. He was direct and coarse, like a genuine old war dog, and unlike the reticent Cornet To’ot, he never felt it necessary to conceal his mood from either his subordinates or his superiors. If he was in a jolly mood, the entire brigade knew that Cornet Chachu was in a jolly mood today, but if he was in a sour mood and whistling “Cool It, Mama” . . .

  Looking into his eyes with a regulation glance, Gai felt despair at the thought that in some manner as yet unknown he had managed to anger and upset this remarkable man. He hastily ran through his memories of his own actions and the actions of the guardsmen in his section. But he couldn’t recall anything that hadn’t already been brushed aside with a casual gesture of that hand with three fingers missing and the hoarse, testy phrase “All right then, this is the Guards, after all. To hell with it.”

  The cornet stopped whistling and swaying on his chair. “I don’t like idle talk and scribble, Corporal,” he declared. “Either you recommend the candidate Sim or you don’t recommend him. So which is it?”

  “Right you are, sir, I recommend him.”

  “Then what am I to make of these scraps of paper?” The cornet extracted two folded sheets of paper from his breast pocket with an abrupt, impatient movement and unfolded them on the desk, holding them down with his mutilated hand. “I read, ‘I recommend the aforementioned Mak Sim as a loyal and capable . . .’ weeell, and then there’s all sorts of idle blather . . . ‘to be confirmed in the exalted station of a candidate private in the Battle Guards.’ And here is your second little screed, Corporal: ‘In connection with the above-mentioned, I consider it my duty to draw the attention of the command to the need for a thorough review of the previous life of the designated candidate for the rank of private in the Battle Guards, M. Sim.’ Massaraksh! What exactly do you really want, Corporal?”

  “Mr. Cornet!” Gai exclaimed in an agitated voice. “But I really am in a difficult situation here! I know candidate Sim to be a capable, competent individual who is devoted to the goals of the Guards. I am sure that he will be very useful to us. But I really don’t know anything about his past! And as if that weren’t enough, he doesn’t even remember it himself. On the assumption that the Guards is a place for only those of unassailable integrity—”

  “Yes, yes!” the cornet said impatiently. “Unassailable integrity, wholehearted devotion, to the very last drop, heart and soul . . . Let me put it in a nutshell, Corporal. You will retract one of these pieces of paper and tear it up this very moment. You have to think straight. I can’t report to the brigadier with two scraps of paper. It’s either yes or no. We’re in the Guards, not a college of philosophy, Corporal! Two minutes for reflection.”

  The cornet took a thick folder of work documents out of the desk and flung it down in front of himself with an air of loathing. Gai bleakly glanced at the clock. This was an appallingly difficult choice to make. It was dishonorable and unguardsmanly to conceal from the command that he didn’t know enough about the recommendee, even when it was a matter of Maxim. But on the other hand it would be dishonorable and unguardsmanly to dodge responsibility by saddling the cornet with the decision; he had only seen Maxim twice, and that was in the company formation.

  Well, all right. One more time. Pro: He has passionately embraced and accepted the goals of the Guards to liquidate the consequences of war and eliminate the intelligence network of the potential aggressor. He passed the medical examination at the Department of Public Health without the slightest hitch, and after Cornet To’ot and the HQ medical officer Zogu sent him to some kind of secret department, clearly for assessment, he successfully passed that check too. (Of course, that’s Maxim’s own testimony—he lost the documents—but how else could he possibly have turned up, entirely free of all surveillance?) And f
inally, he’s brave, a born warrior—he single-handedly dealt with Rat Catcher’s gang—and he’s amiable, easy to get along with, good-natured, and absolutely unselfish. All in all, he’s a person of genuinely exceptional abilities.

  Con: We have absolutely no idea who he is or where he came from; he either can’t remember anything about his past or he doesn’t want to tell anybody . . . and he doesn’t have any documents. But is all of this really so very suspicious? The government only controls the borders and the central region. Even now two-thirds of the country’s territory is rife with anarchy, famine, and epidemics; people flee from those places, none of them have any documents, and the young ones don’t even know what documents are. And there are so many of them who are ill, or have lost their memory, or are even degenerates . . . In the final analysis, the most important thing is that Maxim isn’t a degenerate.

  “Well, corporal?” the cornet inquired, leafing through his papers.

  “Right you are, Mr. Cornet, sir,” Gai said in a despairing voice. “With your permission . . .” He took his own statement about the need to check on Maxim and slowly tore it up.

  “A corrrrect decision!” the cornet barked. “That’s the guardsman’s way! Scraps of paper, ink, checks . . . Combat will check everything for us. When we get into our trucks and advance into the zone of nuclear traps, we’ll see soon enough who is our man and who isn’t.”

  “Yes indeed, sir,” Gai said without any real confidence. He understood the old war dog very well, but he also saw very clearly that this war veteran and hero of coastal incidents was rather deluded, like all veterans and heroes. Combat was one thing, and unassailable integrity was another. But then, that didn’t apply to Maxim. Maxim’s integrity was crystal clear.

  “Massaraksh!” the cornet exclaimed. “The Department of Health passed him, and everything after that is our business.” After coming out with this rather mysterious proposition, he gave Gai an angry look and added, “A guardsman has absolute trust in his friend, and if he doesn’t trust him, then he’s not a friend and he should be sent packing. You surprised me, Corporal. All right then, quick march to your section. There’s not much time left . . . During the operation I’ll keep an eye on this candidate myself.”