Hard to Be a God

Chapter 1

When Rumata passed Holy Míca’s grave—the seventh and last along the road—it was already completely dark. The much-ballyhooed Hamaharian stallion, received from Don Tameo in payment of a gambling debt, had turned out to be completely worthless. He had become sweaty and footsore, and moved in a wretched, wobbly trot. Rumata dug his knees into the horse’s sides and whipped him between the ears with a glove, but he only dejectedly shook his head without moving any faster. Bushes stretched alongside the road, resembling clouds of solidified smoke in the gloom. The whine of mosquitoes was intolerable. Scattered stars trembled dimly in the murky sky. A mild wind was blowing in gusts, warm and cold at the same time, as was always the case in autumn in this seaside country, with its dusty, muggy days and chilly nights.

Rumata wrapped his cloak tighter and let go of his reins. He had no reason to hurry. There was still an hour until midnight, and the jagged black edge of the Hiccup Forest had already appeared above the horizon. Plowed fields flanked the road; swamps flickered beneath the stars, stinking of inorganic rust; barrows and rotting palisades from the time of the Invasion were visible in the dark. To his left, a grim glow was flaring up and dying down; a village must be burning, one of the innumerable indistinguishable places known as Deadtown, Gallowland, or Robberdale, though august decree had recently renamed them Beloved, Blessed, and Angelic. This country extended for hundreds of miles—from the shores of the Strait until the saiva of the Hiccup Forest—blanketed with mosquito clouds, torn apart by ravines, drowning in swamps, stricken by fevers, plagues, and foul-smelling head colds.

At the turn of the road, a dark figure materialized from the bushes. The stallion shied, throwing back his head. Rumata grabbed the reins, adjusted the lace on his right sleeve out of habit, and put his hand on the hilt of his sword before taking a good look.

The figure took off his hat. “Good evening, noble don,” he said quietly. “I beg your pardon.”

“What is it?” Rumata asked, listening hard.

There’s no such thing as a silent ambush. Robbers give themselves away by the creak of their bowstrings, the gray storm troopers belch uncontrollably from the stale beer, the baronial militiamen breathe avidly through their noses and clatter their weapons, while the slave-hunting monks noisily scratch themselves. But the bushes were quiet. It seemed the man wasn’t a bandit. Not that he looked much like a bandit—a short, thickset city resident in a modest cloak.

“May I run alongside you?” he asked, bowing.

“Certainly,” said Rumata, lifting the reins. “You may hold the stirrup.”

The man began to walk next to Rumata. His hat was in his hand, and a substantial bald patch shone on top of his head. Probably a steward, thought Rumata. Visiting the barons and cattle dealers, buying flax or hemp. A brave steward, though… Maybe he isn’t a steward. Maybe he’s a bookworm. A fugitive. An outcast. There are a lot of them on the night roads nowadays, more than there are stewards. Or maybe he’s a spy.

“Who are you and where are you from?” Rumata asked.

“My name is Kiun,” the man said sadly. “I’m coming from Arkanar.”

“You’re running away from Arkanar,” Rumata said, bending down.

“I’m running away,” the man agreed sadly.

Some eccentric, thought Rumata. Or maybe he really is a spy? I should test him… Actually, why should I? Who says I should? What right do I have to test him? No, I don’t want to! Why can’t I simply trust him? Here is a city dweller, clearly a bookworm, running for his life… He’s lonely, he’s scared, he’s weak, he’s looking for protection. He meets an aristocrat. Due to their arrogance and stupidity, aristocrats don’t understand politics, but their swords are long and they don’t like the grays. Why shouldn’t Kiun the city dweller benefit from the disinterested protection of a stupid and arrogant aristocrat? That’s it. I won’t test him. I have no reason to test him. We’ll talk, pass the time, part as friends…

“Kiun…” Rumata said. “I knew a Kiun once. A seller of potions and an alchemist from Tin Street. Are you a relative of his?”

“Unfortunately, I am,” said Kiun. “Just a distant relative, but it’s all the same to them… until the twelfth generation.”

“And where are you running away to, Kiun?”

“Somewhere… The farther the better. Lots of people run away to Irukan. I’ll try Irukan too.”

“Well, well,” Rumata said. “And you think that the noble don will help you across the border?”

Kiun was quiet.

“Or maybe you think that the noble don doesn’t know who the alchemist Kiun from Tin Street is?” Kiun stayed quiet.

What am I saying? thought Rumata. He stood up in his stirrups and shouted, imitating the town crier in the Royal Square, “Accused and convicted of terrible, unforgivable crimes against God, peace, and the Crown!”

Kiun was quiet.

“And what if the noble don adores Don Reba? What if he’s wholeheartedly devoted to the gray word and the gray cause? Or do you think that’s impossible?”

Kiun was quiet. The jagged shadow of a gallows appeared out of the darkness to the right of the road. A naked body, strung up by its feet, shone white beneath the crossbeam. Bah, it’s not even working, thought Rumata. He reined his horse in, grabbed Kiun by the shoulder, and spun him around to face him.

“And what if the noble don decides to string you up right next to this tramp?” he said, peering into the white face with dark pits for eyes. “All by myself. Quickly and neatly. Why are you quiet, literate Kiun?”

Kiun was quiet. His teeth chattered, and he squirmed weakly in Rumata’s grasp, like a crushed lizard. Then something suddenly fell into the roadside ditch with a splash, and immediately, as if to drown out the splash, he shouted frantically: “Then hang me! Hang me, traitor!”

Rumata took a deep breath and let Kiun go. “I was joking,” he said. “Don’t be scared.”

“Lies, lies…” Kiun mumbled, sobbing. “Lies everywhere!”

“Come on, don’t be mad,” Rumata said. “You’d better pick up what you threw in—it’ll get wet.”

Kiun waited a bit, rocking in place and blubbering, then he pointlessly patted his cloak with the palms of his hands and climbed into the ditch. Rumata waited, hunching wearily in his saddle. That’s how it has to be, he thought; there’s no other way.

Kiun climbed out of the ditch, hiding the bundle underneath his shirt.

“Books, of course,” Rumata said.

Kiun shook his head. “No,” he murmured. “Just one book. My book.”

“And what are you writing about?”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t interest you, noble don.”

Rumata sighed. “Take the stirrup,” he said. “Let’s go.”

For a long time, they were silent.

“Listen, Kiun,” said Rumata. “I was joking. Don’t be scared of me.”

“What a wonderful world,” Kiun said. “What a merry world. Everybody jokes. And everybody’s jokes are the same. Even noble Rumata’s.”

Rumata was surprised. “You know my name?”

“I do,” Kiun said. “I recognized you by the circlet on your head. I was so glad to meet you on the road…”

Ah, of course, that’s what he meant when he called me a traitor, thought Rumata. He said, “You see, I thought you were a spy. I always kill spies.”

“A spy,” repeated Kiun. “Yes, of course. In our times it’s so easy and rewarding to be a spy. Our eagle, the noble Don Reba, is interested in what the king’s subjects say and think. I wish I could be a spy. A rank-and-file informer at the Gray Joy Inn. How lovely, how respectable! At six o’clock I come to the bar and sit down at my table. The proprietor rushes toward me with my first pint. I can drink however much I want, the beer is paid for by Don Reba—or rather, it isn’t paid for at all. I sit there, sip my beer, and listen. Sometimes I pretend to write down conversations, and the frightened little people hurry to me with offers of friendship and money. Their eyes express only the things I want: doglike devotion, fearful awe, and delightful impotent hatred. I can grope girls with impunity and fondle wives in front of their husbands—big burly men—and they’ll only giggle obsequiously. What beautiful reasoning, noble don, is it not? I heard it from a fifteen-year-old boy, a student of the Patriotic School.”

“And what did you tell him?” asked Rumata curiously.

“What could I tell him? He wouldn’t have understood. So I told him that when Waga the Wheel’s men catch an informant, they rip his belly open and fill his insides with pepper. And drunken soldiers stuff the informant into a sack and drown him in an outhouse. And this was gospel truth, but he didn’t believe me. He said that wasn’t covered in school. Then I took out some paper and wrote down our conversation. I needed it for my book, but he, poor thing, decided that it was for a report, and he wet himself from fright.”

The lights of Skeleton Baco’s inn flashed through the bushes ahead. Kiun stumbled and went quiet. “What’s wrong?” asked Rumata.

“It’s a gray patrol,” muttered Kiun.

“So what?” said Rumata. “Listen to another bit of reasoning, worthy Kiun. We love and value these simple, rough boys, our gray fighting beasts. We need them. From now on, a commoner better keep his tongue in his mouth, unless he wants it to dangle out on the gallows!” He roared with laughter, because it was so well put—in the finest tradition of the gray barracks.

Kiun shuddered and drew his head into his shoulders.

“A commoner’s tongue should know its place. God gave the commoner a tongue not for making fine speeches but for licking the boots of his master, who has been placed above him since time immemorial.”

The saddled horses of the gray patrol were tied to the hitching post in front of the tavern. Husky, avid swearing came through the open window. There was a clatter of dice. In the door, blocking the way with his monstrous belly, stood Skeleton Baco himself, in a ragged leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up. In his hairy paw was a cleaver—clearly he had been chopping dog meat for the soup, gotten sweaty, and come out to catch his breath. A dejected-looking gray storm trooper was sitting on the front steps, his battle-ax between his knees. The ax handle was pulling his mug off to one side. He was clearly feeling the effects of drink. Noticing the rider, he pulled himself together and bellowed huskily, “S-Stop! Who goes there? You, no-obility!”

Rumata, jutting out his chin, rode past without a single look. “… and if a commoner’s tongue licks the wrong boot,” he said loudly, “then it should be removed altogether, for it is said: ‘Thy tongue is my enemy.’”

Kiun, hiding behind the horse’s croup, was taking long strides by his side. Out of the corner of his eye, Rumata saw his bald patch glistening with sweat.

“I said stop!” roared the storm trooper.

They could hear him stumbling down the stairs, rattling his ax, cursing God, Satan, and those noble scum in one breath.

About five men, thought Rumata. Drunk butchers. Piece of cake.

They passed the inn and turned toward the forest.

“I can walk faster if you like,” Kiun said in an unnaturally steady voice.

“Nonsense!” Rumata said, reining in his stallion. “It’d be dull to ride so far without a single fight. Don’t you ever want to fight, Kiun? It’s all talk and talk…”

“No,” said Kiun. “I never want to fight.”

“That’s just the trouble,” Rumata muttered, turning the stallion around and slowly pulling on his gloves.

Two horsemen jumped out from beyond the bend, coming to a sudden halt when they saw him. “Hey you, noble don!” one of them shouted. “Come on, show us your traveling papers!”

“Boors!” Rumata said icily. “You’re illiterate, what would you do with them?”

He nudged his stallion with his knees and trotted toward the storm troopers. They’re chickening out, he thought. Hesitating. Come on, at least a couple of blows! No… no luck. How I’d like to let out some of the hatred that’s accumulated over the past twenty-four hours, but it looks like I’ll have no luck. Let us remain humane, forgive everyone, and be calm like the gods. Let them slaughter and desecrate, we’ll be calm like the gods. The gods need not hurry, they have eternity ahead.

He rode right up to them. The storm troopers raised their axes uncertainly and backed up.

“Well?” said Rumata.

“What’s this, eh?” said the first storm trooper in confusion. “Is this the noble Don Rumata, eh?”

The second storm trooper immediately turned his horse around and galloped away at full speed. The first one kept backing up, his ax lowered. “Beg your pardon, noble don,” he was saying rapidly. “Didn’t recognize you. Just a mistake. Affairs of state, mistakes do happen. The boys drank a bit much, they’re burning with zeal…” He started to ride away sideways. “As you know, it’s a difficult time… We’re hunting down fugitive literates. We wouldn’t like you to be displeased with us, noble don…”

Rumata turned his back to him.

“Have a good journey, noble don!” said the storm trooper with relief.

When he left, Rumata called softly. “Kiun!”

No one answered.

“Hey, Kiun!”

And again no one answered. Listening carefully, Rumata could make out the rustling of bushes through the whine of the mosquitoes. Kiun was hurrying west through the fields, toward the border with Irukan. And that’s that, thought Rumata. That’s it for that conversation. That’s how it always is. A careful probing, a wary exchange of cryptic parables. Whole weeks are wasted in trite chatter with all sorts of scum, but when you meet a real man there’s no time to talk. You have to protect him, save him, send him out of danger, and he leaves you without even knowing whether he was dealing with a friend or a capricious ass. And you don’t learn much about him either. His wishes, his talents, what he lives for…

He thought of Arkanar in the evening: the solid stone houses on the main streets, the friendly lantern above the entrance to the tavern, the complacent, well-fed shopkeepers drinking beer at clean tables and arguing that the world isn’t bad at all—the price of bread is falling, the price of armor is rising, conspiracies are quickly discovered, sorcerers and suspicious bookworms are hanged on the gallows, the king is, as usual, great and wise, while Don Reba is infinitely clever and always on his guard. “The things they come up with! The world is round! For all I care it’s square, just don’t stir things up!” “Literacy, literacy is the source of it all, my brothers! First they tell us money can’t buy happiness, then they say peasants are people, too, and it only gets worse—offensive verses, then rioting.” “Hang them all, my brothers! You know what I’d do? I’d ask them straight out: Can you read? Off to the gallows! Write verses? Off to the gallows! Know your multiplication tables? Off to the gallows, you know too much!” “Bina, honey, three more pints and a serving of rabbit stew!” Meanwhile, squat, red-faced young men, with heavy axes on their right shoulders, pound the cobblestones—thump, thump, thump—with their hobnailed boots. “My brothers! Here they come, our defenders! Would they let it happen? Not on your life! And my boy, my boy… he’s on the right flank! Seems like only yesterday I was flogging him! Yes, my brothers, these are no troubled times! The throne is strong, prosperity reigns, there’s inviolable peace and justice. Hurray for the gray troops! Hurray for Don Reba! Glory to the king! Oh, my brothers, how wonderful life has become!”

Meanwhile, the roads and trails of the dark plains of the Kingdom of Arkanar, lit by the glows of fires and the sparks of torches, are filled with hundreds of wretches running, walking, stumbling, avoiding outposts. They are tormented by mosquitoes, covered in sweat and dust, exhausted, frightened, and desperate, yet hard as steel in their convictions. They’ve been declared outside the law because they are able and willing to heal and teach their sick and ignorant race; because they, like the gods, use clay and stone to create another reality to beautify the life of a race that knows no beauty; because they penetrate the secrets of nature, hoping to put these secrets in the service of their inept race, which is still cowed by ancient superstitions… helpless, kind, impractical, far ahead of their time.

Rumata pulled off his glove and whipped his stallion hard between the ears. “Giddyup, lazybones!” he said in Russian.

It was already midnight when he entered the forest.

No one was quite sure where the strange name came from—the Hiccup Forest. The official version was that three hundred years ago, the troops of Imperial Marshal Totz—later the first king of Arkanar—were hacking their way through the saiva, pursuing the retreating hordes of copper-skinned barbarians, and during rest stops they boiled white tree bark to make a brew that caused uncontrollable hiccups. According to this legend, one day Marshal Totz was making the rounds of the camp and, wrinkling his aristocratic nose, declared, “This is truly insupportable! The whole forest has hiccups and reeks of home brew!” And this was allegedly the source of the strange name.

In any case, it wasn’t quite an ordinary forest. It was full of gigantic trees with hard white trunks, which no longer existed elsewhere in the empire—not in the Duchy of Irukan, and definitely not in the Mercantile Republic of Soan, which had long since used up its timber on ships. It was said that there were many such forests beyond the North Red Ridge in the country of the barbarians, but lots of tales were told about the country of the barbarians.

A road had been cut through the forest two centuries ago. It led to the silver mines and by feudal right belonged to the Barons Pampa, descendants of one of the companions of Marshal Totz. This feudal right cost the kings of Arkanar twelve pounds of pure silver per year, and therefore each successive king, after ascending the throne, gathered an army and went to war with Castle Bau, the seat of the barons. The castle walls were strong, the barons were brave, and each campaign cost thirty pounds of silver. After the return of the defeated army, the king of Arkanar would once again confirm the feudal right of the Barons Pampa, along with their other privileges—picking their noses at the royal table, hunting to the west of Arkanar, and calling princes only by their names, without adding titles and ranks.

The Hiccup Forest was full of dark secrets. During the day, wagons of processed ore trundled south along the road, and at night the road was empty, because few men were brave enough to walk it by starlight. It was said that at night, the Sioux bird—a bird that has never been seen and cannot be seen, since it is no ordinary bird—cried out from the Father-Tree. It was said that huge hairy spiders jumped out of the branches onto the necks of horses and instantly gnawed through their veins, drowning in blood. It was said that the ancient beast Pekh roamed the forest—a creature, covered in scales, that sired offspring every twelve years and dragged behind him twelve tails oozing poisonous sweat. And someone had seen the naked boar Y, cursed by the Holy Míca, crossing the road in broad daylight, grumbling plaintively—a ferocious animal, invulnerable to iron but easily pierced by bone.

Here you could also meet a runaway slave with a tar brand between his shoulder blades—silent and ruthless, like the hairy bloodsucking spider. Or a stooped warlock, collecting secret mushrooms for his magic potions, which could be used to become invisible, turn into various animals, or acquire a second shadow. The night sentries of the fearsome Waga the Wheel also walked this road, as did the fugitives from the silver mines with their black hands and white, transparent faces. Medicine men gathered here for their nightly vigils, and Baron Pampa’s rowdy huntsmen would skewer stolen oxen and roast them whole in the scattered clearings.

In the depths of the forest, a mile away from the road, beneath an enormous tree that had dried up of old age, stood a lopsided hut made out of enormous logs, surrounded by a blackened picket fence. It had been here since the beginning of time, its door was always shut, and there were crooked idols carved from whole tree trunks around its rotting porch. This hut was the most dangerous place in the Hiccup Forest. It was said that this was the very place to which the ancient Pekh would come every twelve years to deliver his offspring, after which he would immediately crawl beneath the hut and expire, so the hut’s entire cellar was filled with black poison. And when the poison seeped out—that’s when the end would come. It was said that on stormy nights, the idols dug themselves out of the ground, came out onto the road, and signaled to passersby. And it was also said that sometimes the windows shone with unnatural light, sounds resounded through the forest, and a column of smoke reached up from the chimney to the sky.

Not long ago, Irma Kukish, a sober simpleton from the farmstead of Plenitude (in common parlance, Stinkfield) foolishly wandered by the hut at night and peered into the windows. He came home completely incoherent, and after he recovered a little, said that the hut was full of bright light and that a man with his feet on the bench sat behind a crude table and guzzled from a barrel held in one hand. The man’s face hung all the way down to his waist and was spotted all over. It was obvious that this was the Holy Míca himself, before his conversion to the faith, a polygamist, drunkard, and blasphemer. To look at him was to be afraid. A sickly sweet smell wafted out the window, and shadows moved across the trees. People gathered from all over to hear the idiot’s story. And it all ended when the storm troopers came, bent his elbows to his shoulder blades, and hustled him off to the city of Arkanar. But people still talked about the hut, and it was now called nothing but the Drunken Lair.

Rumata made his way through the thicket of giant ferns, dismounted by the Drunken Lair’s porch, and wound his reins around one of the idols. The hut was fully lit, the door open and hanging by a hinge, and Father Cabani was sitting behind the table in a state of utter dejection. The room was filled with a powerful odor of spirits, and a huge stein towered on the table between the gnawed bones and pieces of boiled turnips.

“Good evening, Father Cabani,” Rumata said, stepping over the threshold.

“Greetings,” Father Cabani answered, in a raspy voice that sounded like a battle horn.

Rumata came up to the table, spurs jingling. He threw his gloves on the bench and took another look at Father Cabani. Father Cabani was motionless, supporting his drooping face with his hand. His shaggy, graying eyebrows hung down over his cheeks like dry grass over a cliff. With every breath, the nostrils of his coarsely pored nose whistled out air saturated with undigested alcohol.

“I invented it myself!” he said suddenly, raising his right eyebrow with effort and turning a puffy eye toward Rumata. “I did it myself! Why did I do it?” He extracted his right hand from underneath his cheek and shook a hairy finger. “But it’s not my fault. I invented it… and it’s not my fault, eh! That’s right—not my fault. Anyway, we don’t invent a thing, that’s all nonsense!”

Rumata unbuckled his belt and pulled his swords off over his head. “Now, now,” he said.

“The box!” barked Father Cabani and stayed silent for a long time, making strange motions with his cheeks.

Rumata, without taking his eyes off him, threw his dusty-booted feet over the bench and sat, putting his swords down nearby.

“The box…” Father Cabani repeated in a deflated voice. “We only say we invent things. Actually, it was all invented a long time ago. A long time ago, someone invented it all, stuck it in a box, made a hole in the lid, and left. Left to go to sleep… then what? Father Cabani comes in, closes his eyes, sh-shoves his hand into the hole.” Father Cabani looked at his hand. “He g-grabs it! Aha! An invention! This thing here is my invention, he says! And if you don’t believe it, you’re a fool. I shove my hand in—th-that’s one! What is it? Barbed wire! What’s it for? Protecting farmyards from the wolves… I shove my hand in—th-that’s two! What is it? The handiest thing—a meat grinder. What’s it for? Tender minced meat… good job! I shove my hand in—that’s three! What is it? F-Flammable water! What’s it for? Kindling damp wood… eh!”

Father Cabani went quiet and began to slump, as if someone had grabbed his neck and was pushing him forward. Rumata picked up the stein, looked inside, then poured a few drops onto the back of his hand. The drops were purple and smelled of fusel oil. Rumata carefully wiped his hand with a lace handkerchief. Oil stains appeared on it. Father Cabani’s shaggy head touched the table and immediately jerked up.

“The man who put it in the box—he knew what it was all for. Barbed wire for the wolves? How silly of me—for the wolves. The mines, the mines should be ringed with this wire… so state criminals can’t escape! But I don’t want that! I’m a state criminal myself! Did they ask me? Sure they did! Barbed wire, they said? Barbed wire. For the wolves, they said? For the wolves. Well done, they said, good job! We’ll use it to ring the mines… Don Reba did it himself. And he took my meat grinder. Good job, he said! What a mind you’ve got, he said! So now the Merry Tower makes tender minced meat… very effective, they say.”

I know, thought Rumata. I know about all this. And how you yelled in Don Reba’s office, how you begged and groveled at his feet: “Give it back, don’t do it!” It was too late. Your meat grinder had started turning.

Father Cabani grabbed the stein and put it to his hairy maw. Gulping down the poisonous brew, he roared like the boar Y, then he shoved the stein onto the table and started to chew on a piece of turnip. Tears crept down his cheeks.

“Flammable water!” he finally announced in a strangled voice. “For kindling fires and merry magic tricks. What does it matter that it’s flammable if you can drink it? Mix it with beer—what a beer you get! I won’t allow it! I’ll drink it myself… and I drink it. All day long I drink it. All night long. I’m all swollen. I fall down all the time. The other day, Don Rumata, you won’t believe it, I was near a mirror—and I got scared. I look—Lord help me!—where’s Father Cabani? A sea creature like an octopus—with colored spots all over. First red spots. Then blue spots. That’s what comes of inventing water for magic tricks.”

Father Cabani tried to spit on the floor but hit the table instead, then shuffled his feet beneath the bench out of habit, as if rubbing it into the dirt. He suddenly asked, “What day is it today?”

“The eve of Cata the Pious,” said Rumata.

“And why is there no sun?”

“Because it’s night.”

“Night again,” Father Cabani said dejectedly, and fell face-first into the table scraps.

Rumata looked at him for a while, whistling through his teeth. Then he stood up from the table and went into the pantry. There, between the heap of turnips and the heap of sawdust, gleamed the glass tubes of Father Cabani’s massive brewing apparatus—an amazing creation of a born engineer, natural chemist, and master glassblower. Rumata circled the “infernal machine” twice, then felt for a crowbar in the dark and swung hard at it, aiming nowhere in particular. Clanking, jingling, gurgling sounds filled the pantry. The nauseating smell of sour home brew assaulted his nostrils.

Broken glass crunching beneath his heels, Rumata made his way into a far corner and turned on an electric lamp. There, underneath a pile of trash, was the compact field synthesizer Midas in its strong silicate safe. Rumata cleared away the trash, entered in the code, and lifted the lid of the safe. Even in the white electric light, the synthesizer looked peculiar in the midst of the scattered junk. Rumata dumped a few shovels of sawdust into the receiving funnel, and the synthesizer began to hum quietly, its display panel turning on automatically. Rumata shoved a rusty bucket underneath the output chute with the toe of his boot. And immediately—clink, clink, clink!—gold disks with the aristocratic profile of Pitz the Sixth, King of Arkanar, started pouring onto its battered tin bottom.

Rumata carried Father Cabani to a squeaky bunk, pulled his shoes off, and covered him with the hairless hide of some long-extinct animal. During this process, Father Cabani woke up for a minute. He could neither move nor think. He merely sang a couple of verses from the forbidden love song “I’m Like a Scarlet Flower in Your Little Hand,” after which he started snoring loudly.

Rumata cleared the table, swept the floor, and cleaned the glass in the only window, which had turned black from dirt and the chemical experiments Father Cabani was performing on the windowsill. He found a full barrel of alcohol behind the rusty stove and emptied it into a rat hole. Then he watered the Hamaharian stallion, poured him some oats from his saddlebag, washed up, and sat down to wait, gazing at the oil lamp’s smoking flame. He had lived this strange double life for five years and thought he was completely used to it, but from time to time, like right now, for example, it would suddenly occur to him that there was no organized brutality and approaching gray threat, only a performance of a bizarre theatrical production with him, Rumata, in the lead. That at any moment now, after a particularly felicitous line, there would be a burst of applause, and fans from the Institute of Experimental History would shout admiringly from their boxes, “Not bad, Anton! Not bad! Good job, Toshka!” He even looked around to check—but there was no crowded hall, only blackened mossy walls made from bare logs and caked in layers of soot.

In the yard, the Hamaharian stallion neighed quietly and beat his hooves against the ground. Rumata heard a steady low hum, achingly familiar but here utterly improbable. He listened hard, his mouth half-open. The hum stopped, and the flame above the lamp flickered then shone brighter. Rumata started to get up, and at that moment a man stepped into the room out of the darkness of the night: Don Condor, Chief Justice and Keeper of the Great Seals of the Mercantile Republic of Soan, Vice President of the Conference of the Twelve Merchants, and Knight of the Imperial Order of the Hand of Mercy.

Rumata jumped up, nearly knocking over the bench. He was ready to rush toward him, hug him, kiss him on both cheeks—but his legs observed the proper etiquette in spite of himself and bent at the knees. His spurs jingled solemnly, his right hand swept out an arc starting at his heart and ending at his side, and his head bent down so that his chin sank into the foamy lace ruff. Don Condor ripped off his plumed velvet beret, hastily waved it in Rumata’s direction, as if he were chasing off mosquitoes, flung it on the table, and undid the clasps of his cloak at his neck with both hands. His cloak was still slowly falling behind his back and he was already sitting on the bench with legs apart, his left hand on his hip and his right hand grasping the hilt of a gilded sword that he had stuck into the rotten floorboards. He was small and skinny, with large protuberant eyes in a pale, narrow face. He wore his black hair the same way as Rumata—gathered by a massive gold circlet with a large green stone above the bridge of his nose.

“Are you alone, Don Rumata?” he asked curtly.

“Yes, noble don,” Rumata answered sadly.

Father Cabani suddenly said loudly and soberly, “Noble Don Reba! You’re a hyena, that’s all.”

Don Condor didn’t turn around. “I flew here,” he said.

“Let us hope,” said Rumata, “that nobody saw you.”

“One legend more, one legend less,” Don Condor said irritably. “I don’t have time to travel on horseback. Whatever happened to Budach? Where did he go? Do sit down, Don Rumata, I beg you! My neck hurts.”

Rumata obediently sat on the bench. “Budach has disappeared,” he said. “I waited for him in the Territory of Heavy Swords. But only a one-eyed ragamuffin showed up, who gave the password and handed me a bag of books. I waited for another two days, then got in touch with Don Gug, who informed me that he had accompanied Budach all the way to the border, and that from then on Budach was escorted by a certain noble don who can be trusted because he gambled away body and soul to Don Gug at cards. Therefore Budach must have disappeared somewhere in Arkanar. That’s all that I know.”

“It’s not a whole lot,” said Don Condor.

“Budach is not the point,” Rumata objected. “If he’s alive, I’ll find him and save him. I know how to do that. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. I want to once again draw your attention to the fact that the situation in Arkanar is not within the scope of basis theory.”

A sour expression appeared on Don Condor’s face. “No, you have to hear me out,” Rumata said firmly. “I have the feeling that I’ll never explain myself over the radio. Everything in Arkanar has changed! Some new, systematic factor has appeared. And it looks like Don Reba is intentionally inciting all the grayness in the kingdom against learned people. Everything that’s even slightly above the average gray level is now in danger. Hear me out, Don Condor—these aren’t emotions, these are facts! If you’re smart, educated, a skeptic, if you say anything unusual—even if you simply don’t drink wine!—you’re in danger. Any shopkeeper has the right to hound you, even until death. Hundreds and thousands of people are declared outside the law. They are caught by troopers and strung up along the roads. Naked, upside down. Yesterday, they beat an old man with their boots after learning that he was literate. I hear they trampled him for two hours, the morons, with their sweaty animal mugs…” Rumata regained control of himself and ended calmly: “In short, there will soon be no literate people left in Arkanar. Like in the Region of the Holy Order after the Barkan slaughter.”

Don Condor stared at him intently, pursing his lips. “I don’t like how you sound, Anton,” he said in Russian.

“I don’t like a lot of things, Alexander Vasilievich,” said Rumata. “I don’t like that we’ve tied our hands and feet with the very formulation of the problem. I don’t like that it’s called the Problem of Nonviolent Impact. Because under my conditions, that means a scientifically justified inaction. I’m aware of all your objections! And I’m aware of the theory. But here there are no theories, here there are typical fascist practices, here animals are murdering humans every minute! Here everything is pointless. Knowledge isn’t enough, and gold is worthless, because it comes too late.”

“Anton,” said Don Condor. “Don’t lose your head. I believe that the situation in Arkanar is absolutely exceptional, but I’m convinced that you don’t have a single constructive suggestion.”

“Yes,” Rumata agreed, “I don’t have any constructive suggestions. But it’s very hard for me to control myself.”

“Anton,” Don Condor said. “There are two hundred and fifty of us on this entire planet. Everybody controls themselves, and everybody finds it very hard. The most experienced of us have lived here for twenty-two years. They came here as nothing more than observers. They were completely forbidden to do anything whatsoever. Imagine that for a moment: forbidden to do anything. They wouldn’t even have had the right to save Budach. Even if Budach was being trampled before their eyes.”

“Don’t talk to me as if I were a child,” Rumata said.

“You’re impatient like a child,” Don Condor declared. “And we must be very patient.”

Rumata smiled bitterly. “And while we watch and wait,” he said, “calculating and planning, animals will be destroying humans every minute of every day.”

“Anton,” Don Condor said, “the universe has thousands of planets where we haven’t come yet, where history is taking its course.”

“But we’ve come here already!”

“Yes, we have. But we’ve come here to help these people, not to satisfy our righteous rage. If you’re weak, leave. Go home. After all, you really aren’t a child, and you knew what you’d encounter here.”

Rumata stayed silent. Don Condor, slumping and seeming instantly older, walked up and down the table, dragging his sword by the hilt behind him like a stick, sadly nodding his head. “I understand,” he said. “I’ve gone through it myself. There was a time when this feeling of helplessness and my own culpability seemed to be the worst thing. Some of us, the weakest ones, went crazy from it, were sent back to Earth, and are now being treated. It took me fifteen years, dear boy, to understand what the worst thing really is. The worst thing is to lose your humanity, Anton. To sully your soul, to become hardened. We’re gods here, Anton, and we need to be wiser than the gods from the legends the locals have created in their image and likeness as best they could. And yet we walk along the edge of a swamp. One wrong step—and down you go in the dirt, and you won’t be able to wash it off your whole life. Goran the Irukanian, in his History of the Coming, wrote, ‘When God, after descending from the heavens, appeared to the people from the Pitanian marshes, his feet were covered in mud.’”

“For which Goran was burned,” Rumata said grimly.

“Yes, he was burned,” Don Condor said, returning to his seat. “But that was said about us. I’ve been here for fifteen years. My dear boy, I’ve even stopped having dreams about Earth. One day, rummaging through my papers, I found a picture of a woman and for a long time couldn’t figure out who she was. I occasionally realize with terror that I’ve long stopped being an employee of the Institute, that I’m now an exhibit in the Institute’s museum, the chief justice of a feudal mercantile republic, and that there’s a room in the museum in which I belong. That’s the worst thing—to lose yourself in the role. Inside each one of us, the noble bastard struggles with the communard. And everything around us helps the bastard, while the communard is all alone—the Earth is thousands and thousands of parsecs away.” Don Condor paused, stroking his knees. “That’s how it is, Anton,” he said in a firmer voice. “We must remain communards.”

He doesn’t understand. And how could he? He’s lucky, he doesn’t know what gray terror is, what Don Reba is. Everything he’s witnessed in his fifteen years of work on this planet has in one way or another fit into the framework of basis theory. And when I tell him about fascism, about the gray storm troopers, about the incitement of the petty bourgeoisie, he interprets it as emotional expressions. “Don’t abuse terminology, Anton! Terminological confusion brings about dangerous consequences.” He simply can’t grasp the fact that in Arkanar, typical medieval brutality belongs to a happy past. For him, Don Reba is something like the Duke of Richelieu, a shrewd and farsighted politician, defending absolutism from feudal excesses. I’m the only one on this whole planet who’s aware of the terrible shadow creeping over the country, but even I can’t figure out whose shadow it is or where it’s coming from. And how can I possibly convince him, when I can see in his eyes that he’s almost ready to send me back to Earth for treatment?

“How’s honorable Sinda?” Rumata asked.

Don Condor stopped eyeing him suspiciously and grumbled, “He’s doing well, thank you.” Then he said, “To conclude, we must be firmly aware of the fact that neither you nor I nor any of us will see the tangible fruits of our labors. We’re not physicists, we’re historians. For us, time isn’t measured in seconds but in centuries, and our work isn’t even sowing, it’s preparing the ground for sowing. Because occasionally we do get… enthusiasts, blast them—sprinters who can’t go the distance.”

Rumata gave a crooked smile and started pointlessly fiddling with his boots. Sprinters. Yes, there’ve been sprinters.

Ten years before, Stephan Orlovsky, also known as Don Capata, the commander of a company of His Imperial Majesty’s crossbowmen, ordered his soldiers to open fire on the executioners at a public torture of eighteen Estorian witches; he cut down the judge and two court bailiffs and was lanced by the Imperial Guard. Writhing in agonies of death, he shouted, “But you’re human! Get them, get them!”—but few heard him over the roar of the crowd: “Fire! More fire!”

Approximately at the same time, in another hemisphere, Carl Rosenblum, one of the leading experts on the peasant wars in France and Germany, also known as the wool-seller Pani-Pa, led a revolt of Murissian peasants, stormed two cities, and was killed by an arrow to the back of the head while trying to stop the looting. He was still alive when they came for him in the helicopter, but he couldn’t speak and only looked on in guilt and bewilderment with his big blue eyes, which constantly streamed tears…

And shortly before Rumata’s arrival, the magnificently placed confidant of the Caisan tyrant (Jeremy Tafnat, a specialist in the history of agrarian reforms) suddenly staged a palace coup, usurped power, and for two months attempted to start a golden age. He stubbornly refused to reply to furious queries from his neighbors and from Earth, earned the reputation of a lunatic, managed to avoid eight assassination attempts, and was finally kidnapped by an emergency team of Institute workers and transferred by submarine to an island base by the planet’s southern pole.

“Just think!” muttered Rumata. “And all of Earth still imagines that the hardest problems are in null-physics.”

Don Condor looked up. “Finally!” he said quietly.

There was a clattering of hooves, the Hamaharian stallion let out an angry, shrill neigh, and they heard energetic swearing with a strong Irukanian accent. In the doorway appeared Don Gug, the Chamberlain of His Grace the Duke of Irukan, fat, ruddy, with a dashing upturned mustache, a smile from ear to ear, and merry little eyes underneath the chestnut curls of his wig. And once again, Rumata was about to jump up and hug him, because this was actually Pashka, but Don Gug suddenly assumed a formal posture, an expression of cloying sweetness appearing on his plump-cheeked face. He bent slightly at the waist, pressed his hat to his chest, and pursed his lips. Rumata briefly glanced at Alexander Vasilievich—but Alexander Vasilievich had disappeared. On the bench sat the Chief Justice and Keeper of the Great Seals, his legs apart, his left hand on his hip, and his right hand holding the hilt of his gilded sword.

“You’re very late, Don Gug,” he said in an unpleasant voice.

“A thousand apologies!” cried Don Gug, smoothly approaching the table. “I swear by the rickets of my duke, there were completely unforeseen circumstances! I was stopped four times by the patrols of His Majesty the King of Arkanar, and I got into two fights with various boors.” He gracefully lifted his left hand, wrapped in a bloody rag. “By the way, noble dons, whose helicopter is that behind the house?”

“That’s my helicopter,” Don Condor said crossly. “I don’t have time for roadside brawls.”

Don Gug smiled pleasantly, sat down on the bench, and said, “Well, noble dons, we’re forced to acknowledge that the highly learned Doctor Budach mysteriously disappeared somewhere between the Irukanian border and the Territory of Heavy Swords—”

Father Cabani suddenly tossed in his bed. “Don Reba,” he said thickly, without waking up.

“Leave Budach to me,” Rumata said in despair, “and try to understand what I’m saying…”