The Inhabited Island Page 8

  Gai clicked his heels and went out. Outside the door he permitted himself a smile. The old war dog hadn’t been able to hold back after all, and he had taken responsibility. Well, what was good was always good. Now Gai could consider Maxim his friend with a clean conscience. Mak Sim, that was. His real surname was unpronounceable. Either he had made it up while he was delirious, or he really must be one of those Highlanders . . . What was it that their ancient king was called . . . Zaremchichakbeshmusaraili?

  Gai walked out onto the parade ground and looked around for his section. The indefatigable Pandi was driving the guys through the upper window of a mock-up of a three-story building. The guys were streaming with sweat, and that was bad, because there was only an hour left until the operation.

  “Aaas you weeere!” Gai shouted from a distance.

  “Aaas you were!” Pandi yelled. “Fall in!” The section quickly formed up. Pandi gave the command “Attention!” strode over to Gai in quick time, and reported, “Mr. Corporal, the section is engaged in negotiating the assault course.”

  “Fall into line,” Gai ordered, trying to express dissatisfaction with the tone of his voice, in the same superlative way that Corporal Serembesh always managed to do it. He walked along in front of the formation with his hands clasped behind his back, peering into the familiar faces.

  Those gray, light blue, and dark blue eyes followed his every movement, expressing a readiness to carry out any command by slightly bulging. He felt how close they were to him, and how dear, these twelve great hulks—six active privates of the Guards on the right flank and six candidates on the left, all wearing smart black one-piece coveralls with brightly polished buttons, all wearing gleaming boots with short tops, all wearing berets dashingly tugged down to the right eyebrow . . .

  No, not all of them. At the center of the formation, on the right flank of the candidates, the candidate Mak Sim towered up above the others, a really fine, well-built figure of a man, Gai’s favorite, deplorable as it was for a commander to have favorites, but . . . hmm . . . Those strange brown eyes of his weren’t bulging. Well, never mind that, he would learn in time. But that . . . hmm . . .

  Gai walked up to Maxim and fastened his top button. Then he went up on tiptoe and adjusted Maxim’s beret. That seemed to be all . . . Maxim was grinning from ear to ear in formation again. Well, never mind. He’d get out of the habit. He was a candidate, after all, the most junior man in the section . . .

  In order to preserve the appearance of fairness, Gai adjusted the buckle of the man next to Maxim, although there was no need to do it. Then he took three steps back and gave the command “At ease.” The section stood “at ease”—moving their right feet slightly to the side and clasping their hands behind their backs.

  “Guardsmen,” said Gai, “today we and our company go into action in a regular operation to neutralize the intelligence service agents of the potential enemy. The operation is carried out in accordance with format number thirty-three. No doubt the active privates among us remember their assigned functions under this format, but I consider it useful to remind our candidates who forget to fasten their buttons. Our section is assigned one entrance. The section divides into four groups—three groups of three men and an external reserve. The groups of three, consisting of two active privates and one candidate, go around the apartments in sequence, without kicking up a racket. On entering an apartment, each group of three acts as follows: the candidate guards the front door; the second private, allowing nothing to distract him, occupies the back entrance; and the senior private carries out an inspection of the premises. The reserve of three candidates, led by the head of the section—in this particular case by me—remains downstairs in the entrance, with the aim, first, of preventing anyone from leaving the building during the operation and, second, of immediately rendering assistance to any group of three that requires it. You know the composition of the groups of three and the reserve . . . Attention!” he said, taking another step back. “Into groups of three and the reserve group—divide!”

  A brief multidirectional movement occurred and the section rearranged itself. Nobody took the wrong place, nobody got their automatic rifles tangled together, no one slipped, and no one lost his beret, as had happened in previous drills. Maxim towered up on the right flank of the reserve, still grinning from ear to ear. Gai suddenly got the wild idea that Maxim regarded all of this as just an amusing game. That wasn’t the case, of course, because it simply couldn’t be the case. Undoubtedly that idiotic grin was to blame . . .

  “Pretty good,” Gai growled, imitating Corporal Serembesh, and cast a benign glance at Pandi as if to say, Well done, old man, you drilled them into shape. “Attention!” he said. “Section, fall in!”

  Another brief multidirectional movement that was splendid and quite beautiful in its impeccable precision, and once again the section was standing there before him in a simple, single rank. Good! Simply wonderful! That actually gave him a chilly kind of shudder inside. Gai clasped his hands behind his back again and started walking up and down.

  “Guardsmen!” he said. “We are the state’s buttress and its only hope in these difficult times. The Unknown Fathers have nobody but us on whom they can unhesitatingly rely.” This was the truth, the simple, plain truth, and there was both allure and self-abnegation in that. “The chaos resulting from the criminal war may have blown over, but its consequences are still painfully felt in the present day. Guardsmen, brothers! We have a single objective: to tear up by the roots everything that drags us back toward chaos. The enemy on our borders remains ever vigilant, he has attempted repeatedly and unsuccessfully to draw us into a new war on land and at sea, and it is only thanks to the courage and fortitude of our soldier brothers that the country is able to enjoy peace and repose. But no efforts by the army can lead us to our goal if the enemy within is not broken. And breaking the enemy within is our task, and only ours, Guardsmen. For the sake of this, we accept many sacrifices, we shatter the peace of our mothers, brothers, and children, we deprive the honest worker, the honest functionary, the honest merchant and manufacturer of their well-earned rest. They know why we are obliged to intrude into their homes, and they greet us like their best friends, like their defenders. Remember this, and do not allow yourselves to get carried away in the noble passion of carrying out your mission. A friend is a friend, and an enemy is an enemy . . . Are there any questions?”

  “No!” roared the section, all twelve throats in unison.

  “Attention! Thirty minutes to relax and check your equipment. Dismissed!”

  The section scattered, and the guardsmen headed for the barracks in groups of two or three. Gai unhurriedly followed after them, feeling pleasantly drained. Maxim was waiting for him a little farther on, smiling in anticipation.

  “Let’s have a game of words,” he suggested.

  Gai inwardly groaned. If he could just call him to order somehow! What could be more unnatural than a candidate, a dull blockhead, pestering a corporal with familiar comments half an hour before the start of an operation!

  “This isn’t the time,” he said as drily as he could manage.

  “Are you nervous?” Maxim asked in a sympathetic voice.

  Gai stopped and raised his eyes to the sky. What could he do, what could he do? It had turned out to be absolutely impossible to reprimand a good-natured, naive giant like this, who was also his sister’s rescuer, and in addition—at the end of the day—a man who was in every respect, apart from discipline in formation, far superior to Gai himself . . . Gai looked around and said in a pleading voice, “Listen, Mak, you’re putting me in an awkward situation. When we’re in barracks, I’m your corporal, your superior—I give the orders and you obey them. I’ve told you a hundred times—”

  “But I’m willing to obey, give me an order!” Maxim protested. “I know what discipline is. Give me an order.”

  “I’ve already given you one. Get on with checking your equipment.”

  “No, I’m sorry,
Gai, that isn’t the order you gave. You ordered us to relax and to check our equipment, have you forgotten? I’ve already checked my equipment, and now I’m relaxing. Let’s have a game, I’ve thought up a good word . . .”

  “Mak, try to understand, a subordinate has the right to address a superior officer, first, only in the prescribed form, and second, exclusively on service business.”

  “Yes, I remember. Paragraph nine . . . But that’s during duty time. And right now we’re relaxing.”

  “What gave you the idea that I’m relaxing?” Gai asked. They were standing beside a mock-up of a wall with barbed wire, in a spot where, thank goodness, nobody could see them—nobody could see this huge tower of a man slumped against the wall and repeatedly trying to catch hold of his corporal’s button. “I only relax at home, but even at home I wouldn’t allow any subordinate to— Listen, let go of my button and fasten your own.”

  Maxim fastened it and said, “One thing on duty and another at home. What’s the point?”

  “Let’s not get into talking about that. I’m tired of telling you the same thing over and over again . . . By the way, when are you going to stop smiling in formation?”

  “It doesn’t say anything about that in the regulations,” Maxim immediately responded. “And as for repeating the same thing over and over again, I’ll tell you this. Don’t take offense, Gai, I know that you’re not a speecher . . . not a declaimer . . . “

  “Not who?”

  “You’re not a person who knows how to speak beautifully.”

  “An orator?”

  “An orator . . . Yes, not an orator. But all the same. Today you gave a speech to us. Correct words, good words. Only when you talked to me at home about the objectives of the Guards and the situation in the country, it was very interesting. It was very much in your style. But here you say the same thing seven times, and not in your style. All very correct. All very identical. All very boring. Eh? You’re not offended?”

  Gai wasn’t offended. That is, his vanity had been pricked by a cold little needle: until now he had thought that he spoke just as convincingly and smoothly as Corporal Serembesh or even Cornet To’ot. But then, if he thought about it, Corporal Serembesh and the cornet had also spent the last three years repeating the same things. And there was nothing surprising, let alone blameworthy, about that—after all, during those three years, no substantial changes had taken place in either the internal or the external situation.

  “And where in the regulations does it say,” Gai chuckled, “that a subordinate can correct his superior?”

  “It says just the opposite there,” Maxim admitted with a sigh. “But I don’t think that’s right. You listen to my advice when you’re solving ballistics problems, don’t you? And you listen to my comments when you make mistakes in the calculations.”

  “That’s at home!” Gai heatedly exclaimed. “Everything is possible at home.”

  “But what if you give us the wrong aim at firing practice? What if you haven’t properly corrected for the wind? Eh?”

  “No, under no circumstances,” Gai adamantly declared.

  “So we fire inaccurately?” Maxim asked in amazement.

  “You fire as ordered,” Gai said in a stern voice. “In these last ten minutes, Mak, you’ve said enough for fifteen days in the punishment cell. Do you understand?”

  “No, I don’t understand. What about in combat?”

  “What about what in combat?”

  “What if you give an incorrect aim? Eh?”

  “Hmm . . .” said Gai, who had never commanded in combat. He suddenly remembered how Corporal Bahtu had gotten in a muddle with the map during a reconnaissance operation and herded the section into close-range fire from the next company. He didn’t come back, and he got half the section killed, and we knew that he’d gotten confused, but nobody even thought of correcting him.

  For crying out loud, Gai suddenly thought, why, it could never even have occurred to us that we could correct him. A commander’s order is the law, and even higher than the law—laws are sometimes discussed, after all, but you can’t discuss an order; discussing an order is outrageous, harmful, simply dangerous when you get right down to it . . . But Maxim doesn’t understand that, and it’s not even that he doesn’t understand it—there’s nothing here to understand—he simply doesn’t accept it. It’s happened so many times already: he takes something self-evident and rejects it, and there’s no way I can convince him—in fact, the very opposite happens. In fact, I start doubting, my head starts spinning, and I end up totally stupefied. Yes, he really is an extraordinary person . . . a rare, totally unique kind of person . . . he learned our language in a month. He mastered the grammar in two days. And in another two days he read everything that I’ve got. He knows math and mechanics better than our teachers, and we have genuine specialists teaching our courses.

  Or take Uncle Kaan, now. Just recently the old man had been directing all his monologues at the dining table exclusively at Maxim. More than that, he had made it plain on more than one occasion that in these hard times Maxim was probably the only person who demonstrated such impressive abilities and such a lively interest in fossil animals. Gai’s uncle sketched some terrifying animals for Maxim on a sheet of paper, and Maxim sketched some even more terrifying animals for him, and they argued about which of those animals was more ancient, and who they were descended from and why it happened. The scholarly books from the old man’s library were even brought into play, but there were still times when Maxim didn’t give the old man a chance to open his mouth. Gai and Rada didn’t understand a word of what they were saying, but their uncle either shouted himself hoarse or tore the sketches into scraps and trampled them underfoot, calling Maxim an ignoramus, worse than that fool Shapshu, or suddenly started furiously raking both hands through his sparse gray hair and muttering with a dumbfounded smile, “That’s audacious, massaraksh, audacious . . . You have a vivid imagination, young man!” One evening in particular had stuck in Gai’s memory, when one of Maxim’s pronouncements had struck the old man like a lightning bolt. Maxim said that some of these primordial monsters used to walk around on their hind legs, and apparently that proposition very simply and naturally resolved a protracted dispute that went back to before the war . . .

  He knows math, he knows mechanics, he has a superlative knowledge of military chemistry, and he knows paleontology—good grief, who knows about paleontology these days, but he knows paleontology too . . . He draws like an artist, sings like a professional performer . . . and he’s good-natured, unnaturally good-natured. He scattered those bandits, massacred all eight of them, completely on his own, with his bare hands. In his place anybody else would have acted like the cock of the walk and gone around looking down on everybody, but he was in torment, he couldn’t sleep at night, and he was upset when people praised him for killing . . . Good grief, what a problem it was to persuade him to join the Guards! He understood everything, he agreed with everything, he wanted to join. “But I’ll have to shoot there,” he said. “At people.” I told him, at degenerates, not at people, at scum, worse than gangsters . . . Thank goodness, we agreed that at first, until he got used to it, he could simply disarm them . . .

  It’s funny, and somehow frightening at the same time. Yes, no wonder he sometimes starts jabbering about coming from a different world. I know that world. My uncle even has a book about it: The Misty Land of Zartak. It says that the valley of Zartak, where happy people live, lies in the mountains to the east of here. According to the descriptions, everyone there is like Maxim. And the amazing thing is that if one of them ever leaves their valley, he immediately forgets where he’s from and what happened to him before; he can only remember that he comes from a different world. Of course, my uncle says there isn’t any such valley, that it’s all made up, there’s only the Zartak mountain range—and then, he says, during the war they blasted that mountain range with megabombs. So the Highlanders had their memories totally zapped out of them anyway . .
.

  “Why don’t you say anything?” Maxim asked. “Are you thinking about me?”

  Gai looked away. “I tell you what,” he said. “There’s only one thing I ask of you: in the interests of discipline, never show that you know more than I do. Watch how the others behave, and behave exactly as they do.”

  “I’m trying,” Maxim said in a sad voice. He thought for a while and added, “It’s hard to get used to it. Everything’s different where I’m from.”

  “How’s your wound coming along?” Gai asked to change the subject.

  “My wounds heal up quickly,” Maxim absentmindedly replied. “Listen, Gai, after the operation, let’s go straight home. Well, why are you looking at me like that? I really miss Rada a lot. Don’t you? We’ll take the guys back to the barracks and then go home in the truck. We’ll let the driver go . . .”

  Gai drew as much air into his lungs as he could. But at that moment the silvery box of a loudspeaker on a pole almost right over their heads started growling, and the commanding voice of the brigade duty officer rang out, “Sixth company, turn out and form up on the parade ground! Attention, sixth company . . .”

  And Gai only barked, “Candidate Sim! Stop talking and quick march into formation!” Maxim made to dart off, but Gai caught hold of the barrel of his automatic. “I implore you,” he said. “Like everybody else! Act like everybody else! Today the cornet himself will be keeping an eye on you.”

  Three minutes later the company had already formed up. It had turned dark, and a floodlight flared to life above the parade ground. The motors of trucks murmured gently behind the formation. As always just before an operation, the brigadier, accompanied by Cornet Chachu, silently walked along the formation, inspecting every guardsman. He was calm, with his eyes narrowed and the corners of his lips amiably raised. Afterward, still not having said anything, he nodded to the cornet and walked away. The cornet, walking with a waddling gait and brandishing his maimed hand in the air, walked out in front of the formation and turned his dark, almost black face to the ranks of guardsmen.