The Inhabited Island

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 finally, 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.”

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.

“Guardsmen!” he croaked in the voice that sent shivers running up and down Gai’s spine. “We have an assignment to carry out. And we shall perform it in worthy fashion. Company, attention! To the trucks! Corporal Gaal to me!”

When Gai ran up and snapped to attention in front of him, the cornet said in a low voice, “Your section has a special assignment. On arriving at the destination, stay in the truck. I shall take command myself.”

6

The truck had terrible shock absorbers, which was very noticeable on the terrible cobbled roadway. Candidate Maxim, clutching his automatic rifle between his knees, considerately held Gai by his belt, thinking that it would be inappropriate for the corporal, who was so concerned about his authority, to bounce and hover above the benches like some Candidate Zoiza. Gai didn’t object, or perhaps he didn’t notice his subordinate’s attentiveness. Since his conversation with the cornet, Gai had been seriously preoccupied with something, and Maxim was glad the schedule meant they would be close beside each other and he would be able to help if necessary.

The trucks drove past the Central Theater, trundled along beside the foul-smelling New Life Canal for a long time, turned onto long Factory Street, which was empty at this time of day, and started winding their way through the crooked little side streets of a workers’ district where Maxim had never been before, although recently he had been in many places and given the city very thorough and thoughtful study. In general, he had learned a great deal during these last forty-something days and finally figured out the situation, which proved far less reassuring and far more bizarre than he had expected.

Maxim was still at the stage of poring over his spelling primer when Gai accosted him with the question of where he came from. Drawings didn’t help; Gai responded to them with a strange kind of smile and carried on repeating the same question: “Where are you from?”

Then Maxim had tetchily jabbed his finger at the ceiling and said, “From the sky.”

To his surprise, Gai had found this perfectly natural and started peppering him with a barrage of words spoken with an interrogative intonation; at first Maxim took them for the names of planets in the local system. But Gai spread out a map of the world in the Mercator projection, and it turned out that they weren’t the names of planets at all but the names of countries on the far side of this world. Maxim shrugged, uttered all the expressions of negation and denial that he knew, and started studying the map, and that was where the conversation temporarily ended.

About two days later, Maxim and Rada were watching television in the evening. The program being shown was a very strange one, something like a movie without any beginning or any end, without any definite storyline, and with an interminable cast of characters—rather sinister characters who acted rather barbarically from the viewpoint of any humanoid. Rada watched, enthralled, sometimes crying out or grabbing hold of Maxim’s sleeve, and twice breaking into tears, but Maxim quickly got bored and was about to doze off to the dismal, menacing music when he suddenly caught a glimpse of something familiar on the screen. He actually rubbed his eyes in surprise. There on the screen was Pandora, with a morose tahorg trudging through the jungle, trampling down the trees, and then suddenly Oleg appeared, holding a decoy whistle in his hand, very intent and serious, walking backward; suddenly he stumbled over an exposed root and went flying, landing on his back in a swamp. Maxim was absolutely flabbergasted to recognize his own mentogram, and then another, and another, but there was no commentary, the same music just kept on playing, and Pandora disappeared, to be replaced by a blind, haggard man who was crawling across a ceiling, tightly wrapped in a dusty cobweb.

“What is this?” Maxim asked, jabbing his finger at the screen. “A program,” Rada impatiently replied. “It’s interesting. Watch.” He didn’t manage to get a sensible answer, and suddenly the strange idea occurred to him of dozens and dozens of different aliens, all diligently recalling their own worlds. However, he quickly rejected this idea; the worlds were too terrible and too uniform—small, poky, airless rooms; endless corridors crammed with furniture that suddenly sprouted gigantic thorns; spiral staircases winding their way down into the impenetrable gloom of narrow well shafts; barred-off basements packed with writhing bodies, motionless faces peering out between them through ghastly, motionless eyes, like in the pictures of Hieronymus Bosch. It was all more like delirious fantasy than real worlds. Against the backdrop of these visions Maxim’s mentograms shone with a bright realism that, owing to his unique temperament, verged on Romantic Naturalism. Programs of this kind were shown every day, under the title Magical Voyage, but Maxim never did completely understand what the point of it all was. Gai and Rada responded to his questions with baffled shrugs and said, “A program. To keep things interesting. Magical Voyage. A story. Just watch it, watch! Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s frightening.” And extremely serious doubts arose in Maxim’s mind about the goal of Professor Hippopotamus’s research being first contact, and about his research really being research at all.

This intuitive conclusion was indirectly confirmed about ten days later, when Gai passed the exam to join the correspondence school for guardsmen wishing to apply for the initial officer’s rank and began cramming math and mechanics. The diagrams and formulas of the elementary course in ballistics perplexed Maxim. He started pestering Gai, who didn’t understand at first, but then, with a condescending smirk, he explained the cosmography of his world to Maxim. And then it turned out that the inhabited island was not a globe and not a geoid—in fact, it was not a planet at all.

The inhabited island was the World, the only world in the universe. What lay beneath the feet of the indigenous population here was the firm surface of the Sphere of the World. What hung above the heads of the indigenous population was a gaseous sphere of absolutely gigantic but finite volume; its composition was not yet known and it possessed physical properties that were not yet entirely clear. A theory existed that the density of the gas rapidly increased toward the center of the gaseous bubble, where certain mysterious processes occurred that gave rise to regular changes in the brightness of the so-called World Light, and this gave rise to the regular succession of day and night. In addition to short-term, diurnal changes in the state of the World Light, there were also long-term changes, which gave rise to seasonal fluctuations in temperature and the succession of the seasons of the year. The force of gravity was directed out from the center of the Sphere of the World, perpendicular to its surface. In short, the inhabited island existed on the inner surface of an immense bubble in an infinite firmament of solid matter that filled the rest of the Universe.

Totally dumbfounded by this surprise, Maxim tried to launch into a debate, but it very soon became clear that he and Gai were speaking different languages, and it was far more difficult for the two of them to understand each other than it would have been for a convinced Copernican and a follower of Ptolemy. The whole problem lay in the amazing properties of the atmosphere of this planet. First, its exceptionally powerful refraction hoisted up the horizon, and from time immemorial this had implanted in the heads of the indigenous population the idea that their land was not flat and quite definitely, absolutely not convex—it was concave. “Stand on the seashore,” the school textbooks recommended, “and follow the movement of a ship that has pulled away from the quayside. At first it will appear to move across a flat surface, and the farther away it moves, the higher it will rise, until it is concealed in the atmospheric haze that screens off the remainder of the World.” Second, this atmosphere was extremely dense, and it phosphoresced by day and by night, so that nobody here had ever seen the starry sky, and the incidences of observation of the planet’s sun that were recorded in chronicles had only served as a basis for attempts to create a theory of the World Light.

Maxim realized that he was caught inside a gigantic trap, that first contact would only become possible when he managed to turn natural conceptions that had been formed over the course of millennia inside out. Apparently some attempts had already been made to do this here, judging from the common expression “massaraksh,” which literally meant “the world inside out.” And in addition, Gai had told him about a purely abstract mathematical theory that took a different view of the world. This theory, which arose in ancient times, had been persecuted by what was once the official religion, and it had its own martyrs. It had been given mathematical consistency by the works of brilliant mathematicians of the past but had remained purely abstract, although, like most abstract theories, it had finally found practical application very recently, when super-long-distance ballistic shells had been created.

After thinking over and collocating everything that he had learned, Maxim realized, first, that all this time he must have seemed like a madman here, and it was no accident that his mentograms had been included in the schizoid TV program Magical Voyage. Second, he realized that for the time being he would have to keep quiet about his alien origins if he didn’t want to go back to Hippopotamus. This meant that the inhabited island was not going to come to his rescue and he had only himself to rely on, that the construction of a null-transmitter was indefinitely postponed, and he was obviously stuck here for a long time, or perhaps, massaraksh, forever. The hopelessness of the situation had almost floored him, but he had gritted his teeth and forced himself to think in a purely logical fashion. His mother would have to survive a very difficult time. She would be immensely wretched, and that thought was enough in itself to dispel any wish to think logically.

Curse this second-rate, self-contained world. But I have only two options: either carry on pining for the impossible and wallowing in bitter regret, or pull myself together and live. Live a genuine life, the way I have always wanted to live—loving my friends, achieving my goals, fighting, winning and losing, taking it on the chin and giving as good as I get—anything at all except wringing my hands in despair… He had stopped talking about the structure of the universe and started asking Gai about the history and social order of his inhabited island.

As far as history was concerned, things were not that easy. Gai had only a fragmentary knowledge of it, and he didn’t have any serious books. And there weren’t any serious books in the city library either. But it was clear that right up until the latest ruinous war, the country that had given Maxim refuge had been considerably more extensive and was governed by a bunch of bungling financial economists and depraved aristocrats who had driven the people into poverty, established a corrupt state apparatus, and eventually become involved in a large colonial war unleashed by their neighbors. This war had engulfed the entire world, millions and millions of people had been killed, and thousands of cities had been reduced to ruins. Dozens of small states had been annihilated, and chaos had engulfed the world and the country. A period of appalling famine and epidemics had set in. The bunch of bloodsucking exploiters had suppressed attempts at a popular uprising by using nuclear warheads. Both the country and the world were on course for total destruction.

The situation had been saved by the “Unknown Fathers.” As far as Maxim could tell, these were an anonymous group of young officers from the General HQ who, one fine day, when they had at their disposal only two divisions, highly incensed at being dispatched into the nuclear meat grinder, had organized a putsch and seized power. That had happened twenty-four years earlier, and since then the situation had stabilized to a significant extent and the war had died down of its own accord, although nobody had concluded peace with anybody else. The energetic, anonymous rulers had restored relative order and straightened out the economy with harsh measures—at least in the central regions—making the country into what it was now. The standard of living had increased quite substantially, life had settled into a peaceful groove, civic behavior had improved to a level never previously seen in history, and in general everything had become rather good.

Maxim realized that the political order in the country was very far from ideal and represented a species of military dictatorship. But it was clear that the Unknown Fathers enjoyed an extremely high level of popularity, and moreover in all strata of society. The economic basis for this popularity remained a mystery to Maxim; after all, half the country was still lying in ruins, military spending was huge, and the overwhelming majority of the population lived in conditions that were modest, to say the least… But the important point was clearly that the military elite had managed to rein in the appetites of the industrialists, which had made them popular with the workers, and also to subjugate the workers, which had made them popular with the industrialists. However, all of this was only guesswork. This way of posing the question seemed outlandish to Gai, for instance; for him, society was a unitary organism, and he couldn’t conceive of any contradictions between social groups.

The external situation of the country still remained extremely tense. Two large states lay to the north of it—Hontia and Pandeia, both of them former provinces or colonies. Nobody really knew much about these countries, but it was known that both of them harbored extremely aggressive intentions; they continually sent in spies and saboteurs, contrived incidents on the borders, and were making preparations for war. The goal of this war was unclear to Gai, and in fact he had never even wondered about that question. There were enemies to the north, he was fighting their secret agents to the death, and that was quite enough for him.

To the south, beyond the border forests, lay a scorched desert produced by nuclear explosions; it had been formed on the territory of a whole group of countries that were most actively involved in the hostilities. Nothing was known about what had happened and what was happening now on those millions of square miles, and nobody was interested. The southern borders of the country were subject to continuous attacks by colossal hordes of half-savage degenerates—the territory on the far side of the Blue Serpent River was teeming with them. The problem of the southern borders was regarded as just about the most important one of all. Things were very difficult there, and that was where the elite units of the Battle Guards were concentrated. Gai had served in the South for three years, and he told Maxim some quite incredible things.

To the south of the desert, at the other end of the only continent on the planet, some states might possibly have survived, but they gave no indications of their presence. However, the so-called Island Empire, established on the two immense archipelagoes of the other hemisphere, constantly provided disagreeable evidence of its existence. The World Ocean belonged to the Empire; the radioactive waters were furrowed by an immense fleet of submarines, provocatively painted snow white and equipped with the latest word in combat technology, with gangs of specially trained cutthroats on board. As sinister as ghosts, these white submarines held the coastal regions in a state of ghastly agitation and anticipation, carrying out unprovoked bombardments and landing piratical assault forces on the shore. The Guards confronted this white threat too.

Maxim was stunned by this picture of universal chaos and destruction. He was dealing with a graveyard planet, on which the flame of rational life was just barely flickering, and that life was on the point of finally extinguishing itself at any moment.

Maxim listened to Rada’s calm and terrible stories about her mother receiving the news that Rada’s father had been killed (an epidemiologist, he had refused to leave a region stricken by plague, and at that moment the state had neither the time nor the capability to fight the plague by regular means, so a bomb had simply been dropped on the region); and about the time, ten years ago, when insurgents had approached close to the city, an evacuation had begun, and Rada’s grandmother, her father’s mother, had been trampled to death in a crowd that was storming a train; and about how, ten days after that, her youngest brother had died of dysentery; and about how, after her mother died, in order to feed little Gai and the completely helpless Uncle Kaan, she had worked for eighteen hours a day as a dishwasher at a military reconsignment point, then as a cleaner in a luxurious hangout for speculators, then competed in “women’s sweepstake races,” and then spent some time in jail, although not very much, but after jail she had been left without a job, and for several months she had lived by begging…

Maxim listened as Uncle Kaan, who was once a prominent scientist, told him how the Academy of Sciences was dissolved in the first year of the war and His Imperial Majesty’s Academy Battalion was formed; how the originator of the theory of evolution went insane during the famine and hanged himself; how they had boiled up watery soup out of glue scraped off wallpaper; how a starving crowd had ransacked the zoological museum and seized the specimens preserved in alcohol for food…

Maxim listened to Gai’s artless stories about the building of ADTs, or antiballistic defense towers, on the southern border, and about cannibals creeping up to the construction sites and abducting the educatee workers and the guardsmen on watch; about merciless ghouls, half men and half bears, or half dogs, attacking without a sound in the night. Maxim also listened to Gai’s ecstatic praise of the system of ADTs, which had been constructed at the cost of incredible deprivations in the final years of the war, had essentially put an end to the military action by protecting the country against attack from the air, and even now was the only guarantee of safety from aggression by the country’s northern neighbors… But, said Gai, those bastards organized attacks on the defense towers—those sell-out rats, murderers of women and children, who had been bought with Hontia’s and Pandeia’s dirty money, those degenerates, that scum worse than any Rat Catcher… Gai’s high-strung face contorted in hatred. “The most important business is here,” he said, hammering his fist on the table, “and that’s why I went into the Guards and not into a factory, not into the fields or into a business but into the Battle Guards, who bear the responsibility for everything now…”

Maxim listened avidly, as if it was all some terrible, impossible fable, only all the more terrible and impossible because it was real, because so very much of it was still happening, and the most terrible and impossible things in all of this could be repeated at any moment. It seemed absurd and shameful to think about his own anxieties and problems, which suddenly became tiny—petty concerns about first contact, a null-transmitter, homesickness, wringing his hands…

The truck took a sharp turn onto a rather narrow street of brick buildings, and Pandi said, “We’re here.” People on the sidewalk drew back against the walls, shielding their faces from the light of the headlights. The truck halted and a long telescopic antenna extended to its full height above the driver’s cabin.

“Disembark!” the commanders of the second and third sections barked in unison, and guardsmen scrambled over the sides of the truck.

“First section, remain where you are!” Gai commanded.

Pandi and Maxim, who had jumped to their feet, sat back down.

“Divide up into groups of three!” roared the corporals on the sidewalk.

“Second section, forward march.”

“Third section, follow me!”

Steel-tipped boots clattered, a woman’s voice squealed rapturously, and someone yelled from the top floor in a piercing howl, “Gentlemen! The Battle Guards!”

“Hoorah!” shouted the pale-faced people, who were pressing themselves back hard against the wall in order not to get in the way. It was as if these passersby had been waiting here for the guardsmen and, now that they had arrived, were as glad to see them as if they were their best friends.

Candidate Zoiza, sitting on Maxim’s right, was still a complete boy, a long, skinny beanpole with white fluff on his cheeks. He nudged Maxim in the side with his sharp elbow and joyfully winked at him. Maxim smiled back. The other sections had already disappeared into their entrances, and only the corporals were left at the doors, standing there firmly and dependably, their faces immobile under their cocked berets. The door of the driver’s cabin slammed, and Cornet Chachu’s voice croaked, “First section, disembark and fall in!”

Maxim vaulted over the side of the truck. When the section had formed up, Cornet Chachu gestured to stop Gai, who had run up to report, then the cornet walked up close to the formation and commanded, “On helmets!”

The active privates seemed to have been waiting for this order, but the candidates hesitated. The cornet waited, impatiently tapping his heel, until Zoiza finally mastered his chin strap. Then he gave the orders “Right turn!” and “Forward on the double!” He himself ran ahead, with an awkwardly nimble gait, strenuously waving his maimed hand in the air as he led the section through a dark archway between iron containers of rotting refuse and into an inner yard that was as narrow and dark as a well shaft, crammed with stacks of firewood, before turning under another archway, as gloomy and foul-smelling as the first one, and stopping in front of a peeling door below a dim lightbulb.

“Attention!” he croaked. “The first group of three and Candidate Sim will go with me. The others will remain here. Corporal Gaal, at the whistle bring the second team of three upstairs to me, on the fourth floor. Do not let anyone out, take them alive, and shoot only as a last resort! First group and Candidate Sim, follow me!”

The cornet pushed the scruffy door open and disappeared inside. Maxim overtook Pandi and followed the cornet in. Behind the door was a steep stone stairway, narrow and dirty, with clammy iron banisters; it was illuminated by a sickly, sordid kind of light. The cornet friskily ran up it, three steps at a time. Catching up with him, Maxim saw a pistol in his hand and took his own automatic from around his neck as he ran, feeling nauseous for a second at the thought that now, perhaps, he would have to shoot at people, but he drove the thought out of his head: these weren’t people, they were animals, worse than Rat Catcher with his mustache, worse than spotted monkeys—and the repulsive sludge under his feet and the walls covered with gobs of spittle confirmed and supported this feeling.

The second floor. A suffocating reek of kitchen fumes and a frightened old woman’s face in the crack of a half-open door covered in tattered burlap. A demented cat meowed as it shot out from under their feet. The third floor. Some blockhead had left a bucket of kitchen slop in the middle of the landing. The cornet kicked over the bucket and the slop went flying into the stairwell. “Massaraksh,” Pandi growled below them. A young guy and a girl with their arms around each other had squeezed back into a dark corner with expressions of frightened delight on their faces. “Get out, down the stairs!” the cornet croaked as he ran. The fourth floor. A hideous brown door with peeling oil-based paint, a scratched tin plaque with the inscription GOBBI, DENTIST. CONSULTATIONS AT ANY TIME. On the other side of the door someone was shouting—a long, drawn-out yell.

The cornet stopped, with sweat coursing down his dark face, and wheezed, “The lock!” Maxim didn’t understand. Pandi ran up, pushed him aside, set the muzzle of his automatic to the door just below the handle, and fired a rapid burst. There was a shower of sparks, chunks of wood went flying into the air, and immediately, on the other side of the door, the protracted yell was punctuated by the popping sound of shots, splinters of wood went flying into the air again, and something hot and dense went hurtling just over Maxim’s head with an atrocious screech. The cornet threw the door open; it was dark inside and the yellow flashes of shots lit up eddying billows of smoke.

“Follow me!” the cornet wheezed, and charged in headlong, straight toward the flashes. Maxim and Pandi dashed in after him; the door was too narrow, Pandi was squeezed, and he gave a brief moan. A corridor, fuggy air, powder fumes. Danger on the left. Maxim flung out his hand, grabbed a hot gun barrel, and jerked the weapon upward and away from himself. Someone’s wrenched joints cracked with a quiet but appallingly distinct sound, and a large, soft body froze and limply fell. Up ahead in the smoke, the cornet croaked, “Don’t shoot! Take them alive!”

Maxim dropped his automatic and burst into a large, well-lit room containing a lot of books and pictures, but there was nobody there to shoot at. Two men were writhing around on the floor. One of them kept shouting; he had already gone hoarse, but he kept on shouting. Lying in a faint in an armchair with her head thrown back was a woman, so white that she was almost transparent. The room was full of pain. The cornet stood over the shouting man and looked around, thrusting his pistol into its holster. Pandi shoved Maxim hard in the back as he burst into the room and was followed in by the other guards, dragging the corpulent body of the man who had been shooting. Candidate Zoiza, soaking wet and agitated, handed Maxim the automatic that he had abandoned.

The cornet turned his terrible, dark face toward him. “But where’s the other one?” he croaked, and at that very moment a blue curtain dropped to the floor and a long, thin man in a soiled white doctor’s coat clumsily jumped down off the windowsill. He walked toward the cornet like a blind man, slowly raising two huge pistols to the level of his eyes, which were glazed with pain. “Aiee!” Zoiza screamed.

Maxim was standing sideways and he had no time to turn. He jumped with all the strength in his body, but the man still managed to pull the triggers once. Maxim’s face was scorched and powder fumes filled his mouth, but his fingers had already closed on the wrists in the white coat, and the pistols clattered to the floor. The man went down on his knees and lowered his head, and when Maxim let go of him, he gently tumbled forward onto his face.

“Well, well, well,” the cornet said in an unfathomable tone of voice. “Put that one here too,” he ordered Pandi. “And you,” he said to soaking-wet, pale-faced Zoiza. “Run downstairs and tell the section commanders where I am. Tell them to report on how they’re doing.” Zoiza clicked his heels and dashed toward the door. “Oh yes! Tell Gaal to come up here… Stop yelling, you bastard!” he shouted at the groaning man, and prodded him in the side with the toe of his boot. “Ah, a waste of time. Flimsy garbage, trash… Search him!” he ordered Pandi. “And put them all in a row. Right here, on the floor. And the woman too, she’s sprawled out in the only chair.”

Maxim walked over to the woman, cautiously lifted her up, and moved her onto the bed. He had an uneasy feeling. This wasn’t what he had expected. But now he didn’t even know what he had expected—yellow fangs bared in a snarl of hatred, baleful howling, a ferocious skirmish to the death? He had nothing he could compare his feelings with, but for some reason he recalled how he once shot a tahorg, and the immense beast, so fearsome to look at and reputedly absolutely merciless, tumbled into an immense pit with its spinal column broken, and wept quietly and mournfully, muttering almost articulately to itself in its dying despair…

“Candidate Sim!” the cornet croaked. “I said on the floor!”

He looked at Maxim with his terrifying, transparent eyes, his lips twisted as if in a cramp, and Maxim realized it was not for him, Maxim, to judge or determine what was right here. He was still an outsider; he didn’t know their hates and their loves… He picked up the woman again and put her down beside the corpulent man who had been shooting in the corridor. Pandi and the second guardsman puffed and panted as they painstakingly turned out the arrested group’s pockets. But the prisoners were unconscious. All five of them.

The cornet sat down in the armchair, tossed his peaked cap onto the table, lit up a cigarette, and beckoned Maxim over to him with his finger. Maxim walked across and gallantly clicked his heels.

“Why did you drop your automatic?” the cornet asked in a low voice.

“You ordered us not to shoot.”

“Mr. Cornet.”

“Yes, sir. You ordered us not to shoot, Mr. Cornet.”

Narrowing his eyes, the cornet released a stream of smoke up toward the ceiling. “So if I’d ordered you not to talk, you would have bitten off your own tongue?”

Maxim didn’t say anything. He didn’t like this conversation, but he remembered Gai’s admonitions very clearly.

“What does your father do?” the cornet asked.

“He’s a nuclear physicist, Mr. Cornet.”

“Alive?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Cornet.”

The cornet took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at Maxim. “Where is he?”

Maxim realized that he’d put his foot in it. He had to extricate himself from this situation somehow. “I don’t know, Mr. Cornet. That is, I don’t remember.”

“But you do remember that he’s a nuclear expert… And what else do you remember?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Cornet. I remember a lot of things, but Corporal Gaal thinks they’re all false memories.”

There was the sound of hurrying footsteps in the corridor, and Gai entered the room and snapped to attention in front of the cornet.

“Take care of these half corpses, Corporal,” said the cornet. “Do you have enough handcuffs?”

Gai glanced over his shoulder at the prisoners. “With your permission, Mr. Cornet, I’ll have to get one pair from the second section.”

“Go ahead.”

Gai ran out. There was the sound of boots tramping in the corridor again, and the other section commanders appeared and reported that the operation was proceeding successfully: two suspicious individuals had already been detained, and as usual the residents were rendering active assistance. The cornet ordered them to finish up as soon as possible and to relay the password “Pedestal” to headquarters when they were finished. After the section commanders went out, he lit up another cigarette and said nothing for a while, watching the guardsmen take books down off the shelves, leaf through them, and throw them onto the bed.

“Pandi,” he said in a quiet voice, “you deal with the pictures. Only be careful with that one, don’t damage it—I’ll take it for myself.” Then he turned back to Maxim. “How do you like it?” he asked.

Maxim looked at the picture. It showed the seashore at twilight, a high expanse of water with no horizon, and a woman emerging from the sea. It was fresh and windy. The woman was feeling cold.

“A good picture, Mr. Cornet,” said Maxim.

“Do you recognize the place?”

“Negative. I have never seen that sea.”

“Then what sea have you seen?”

“A quite different one, Mr. Cornet. But that’s a false memory.”

“Rubbish. It’s the same one. Only you were looking at it not from the shore but from a bridge deck, and the deck below you was white, and behind you on the stern there was another bridge, only a bit lower. And it wasn’t this woman on the shore but a tank, and you were directing its aim at the base of a tower… Do you know, you young whelp, what it’s like when a solid shot hits the base of a tower? Massaraksh…” He hissed and crushed out his cigarette end on the table.

“I don’t understand,” Maxim said in a cool voice. “I have never directed any fire at anything.”

“But how can you know that? You don’t remember anything, Candidate Sim!”

“I remember that I have never directed anybody’s fire, Mr. Cornet. And I don’t understand what you are talking about.”

Gai walked in, accompanied by the other two candidates. They started putting heavy handcuffs on the prisoners.

“They’re people too,” the cornet suddenly said. “They have wives, they have children. They loved someone, someone loved them…”

He said it in a way that was clearly mocking, but Maxim said what he really thought. “Yes, sir, Mr. Cornet. It turns out that they are people too.”

“You didn’t expect that?”

“No, Mr. Cornet. I was expecting something different.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gai looking at him in fright. But he was already sick to death of lying, and he added, “I thought that they really were degenerates. Like naked, spotted… animals.”

“You naked, spotted fool,” the cornet emphatically exclaimed. “You bumpkin. You’re not in the South now… here they’re like people—dear, kind people who get bad headaches when they’re really anxious. God marks the scoundrel. Do you get a pain in your head when you’re anxious?” he unexpectedly asked.

“I never get a pain anywhere, Mr. Cornet,” Maxim replied, “How about you?”

“Whaaat?”

“Your voice sounds irritated,” said Maxim, “and so I thought—”

“Mr. Cornet!” Gai called out in a strange, trembling voice. “Permission to report… The prisoners have come around.”

The cornet looked at him and chuckled. “Don’t worry, Corporal. Your little friend has shown himself to be a true guardsman. If not for him, Cornet Chachu would be lying here with a bullet in his head.” He lit up a third cigarette, raised his eyes to the ceiling, and let out a thick stream of smoke. “You have sound instincts, Corporal. I’d promote this fine young man to active private right here and now… Massaraksh, why, I’d promote him to officer’s rank! He has the manners of a brigadier, he simply adores asking officers questions… But I understand you very well now, Corporal. That report of yours had every justification. So… we’ll wait for a while before we make him an officer.” The cornet got up, clumsily stomped around the table, and stopped in front of Maxim. “We won’t even promote him to active private yet. He’s a good soldier, but he’s still wet behind the ears, a bumpkin. We’ll take his education in hand… Attention!” he suddenly bellowed. “Corporal Gaal, lead out the prisoners! Private Pandi and Candidate Sim, collect my picture and everything here that’s made of paper! Bring them to me in the truck!”

He turned around and walked out of the room. Gai gave Maxim a reproachful look, but he didn’t say anything. The guardsmen got the prisoners up, setting them on their feet with kicks and jabs, and led them to the door. The prisoners didn’t resist, their legs were rubbery, and they swayed on their feet. The corpulent man who had fired in the corridor kept loudly groaning and swearing in a whisper. The woman soundlessly moved her lips. Her eyes had a strange glimmer in them.

“Hey, Mak,” said Pandi, “take that blanket off the bed and wrap the books in it, and if it’s not big enough, take the sheet too. When you’ve got everything, lug it all downstairs, and I’ll take the picture… And don’t forget your rifle, dimwit! You can’t just go dumping your gun! And in action too… Eh, you bumpkin…”

“Cut the talk, Pandi,” Gai said angrily. “Take the picture and go.”

In the doorway he turned back toward Maxim, tapped his finger on his forehead, and disappeared. Maxim could hear Pandi singing “Cool It, Mama” at the top of his voice as he walked down the stairs. Maxim sighed, put his automatic on the table, and walked over to the heaps of books dumped on the bed and the floor. It suddenly struck him that he had never seen such a large number of books anywhere here, except perhaps in the library. The bookshops also had more books, of course. But only by the number of items, not by titles.

The books were old, with yellowed pages. Some of them were scorched, and some, to Maxim’s surprise, were palpably radioactive. There was no time to examine them properly, so Maxim hurriedly stacked the neat piles on the spread-out blanket, reading only the titles. Yes, the book Kolitsu Felsha, or The Insanely Brave Brigadier Who Performed Daring Exploits in the Enemy’s Rear wasn’t here; the novel A Sorcerer’s Love and Devotion wasn’t here; the thick narrative poem A Woman’s Ardent Heart wasn’t here; and the popular leaflet The Tasks of Social Hygiene wasn’t here. But Maxim did see the thick volumes of the serious works The Theory of Evolution, Problems of the Workers’ Movement, Financial Politics and the Economically Sound State, Famine: Stimulus or Obstacle?, and various kinds of “Critiques,” “Courses,” and “Fundamentals,” accompanied by terms that Maxim didn’t know. There were collections of medieval Hontian poetry, the folktales and ballads of peoples unknown to Maxim, a four-volume collection of the works of a certain T. Kuur, and a lot of fiction: The Tempest and the Grass, The Man Who Was the World Light, Islands Without Azure, and many more books in unfamiliar languages, then once again books on math, physics, biology, and then more fiction…

Maxim packed up the two bundles and stood there for a few seconds looking around the room. Empty, warped bookcases, dark patches where pictures used to hang, and the pictures themselves, torn out of their frames and trampled underfoot… and no signs at all of any dentist’s equipment. He picked up the bundles and walked toward the door, but then remembered and went back for his automatic. Two photographs were lying under glass on the table. One of them showed the transparent-looking woman with a boy about four years old, sitting on her knees with his mouth wide open in amazement, and the woman was young, contented, and proud. The other photograph showed a beautiful spot up in the mountains, dark clumps of trees, and an old, half-ruined tower.

Maxim swung his automatic behind his shoulder and went back to the bundles of books.

7

In the morning after breakfast the brigade formed up on the parade ground for the reading out of orders and assignment of activities. This was the most painful procedure of all for Maxim, if you didn’t count the evening roll calls. The reading out of any orders always concluded with a paroxysm of absolute ecstasy—a blind, senseless, unnatural ecstasy, for which there was no justification, and which therefore produced an extremely unpleasant impression on an outsider. Maxim forced himself to suppress his instinctive abhorrence of this abrupt fit of insanity, which swept through the entire brigade, from the commander to the lowliest candidate. He tried to persuade himself that he simply was not capable of displaying the same passionate enthusiasm for the activities of the brigade administration as the guardsmen; he rebuked himself for possessing the skepticism of an alien and an outsider and tried to seek inspiration by repeating to himself over and over again that in difficult conditions such outbursts of mass enthusiasm were no more than an expression of people’s solidarity, of their unanimity and readiness to completely devote themselves to the common cause. But he found it very difficult.

Having been raised since his childhood to take a restrained and ironic attitude toward himself, to feel distaste for all high-flown words in general and for triumphal choral singing in particular, he felt almost angry at his comrades in formation, these good-hearted, guileless, basically quite excellent guys, when suddenly, after an order had been read out, sentencing Candidate Somebody or Other to three days in the punishment cell for an altercation with Active Private Such and Such, they opened their mouths wide, cast off their intrinsic amiability and sense of humor, started enthusiastically roaring “hoorah” and singing “The March of the Battle Guards” with tears in their eyes, and then repeated it for a second, third, and sometimes even fourth time. When this happened, even the cooks came pouring out of the brigade kitchen—fortunately for them, they weren’t standing in formation—and enthusiastically joined in, boisterously brandishing their ladles and knives. Bearing in mind that in this world he had to be like everybody else, Maxim also sang and also tried to lose his sense of humor, and he managed to do it, but it felt obnoxious, because he didn’t feel even the slightest enthusiasm—all he felt was a sense of awkward embarrassment.

This time the outburst of enthusiasm came after order number 127, concerning the promotion of Active Private Dimba to the rank of corporal, order number 128, concerning an expression of gratitude to Candidate for the Rank of Active Private Sim, for bravery demonstrated in the course of an operation, and order number 129, concerning the assignment of the barracks of fourth company to refurbishment status. The moment the brigade adjutant thrust the pages of the orders into his leather map-case, the brigadier grabbed his cap off his head, filled his lungs with air, and shouted out in a squeaky falsetto, “The Battle! Guards! Advance!” And then it went on and on…

Maxim felt especially awkward today, because he saw tears streaming down Cornet Chachu’s dark cheeks. The guardsmen roared like bulls, beating out the time with their rifle butts on their massive belt buckles. In order not to see or hear any of this, Maxim squeezed his eyes as tightly shut as he could and started bellowing like an enraged tahorg, and his voice drowned out all the other voices—or at least, so it seemed to him. “Forward, fearless Guards,” he roared, no longer hearing anybody but himself. What incredibly stupid words. Probably some corporal or other had written them. You had to really love your cause to go marching into battle with words like that. He opened his eyes and saw a flock of startled black birds darting about above the parade ground. “No diamond carapace will save you, our enemy!…”

Then everything ended as abruptly as it had begun. The brigadier ran his bleary eyes over the formation, remembered where he was, and commanded in a sobbing, broken voice, “Gentlemen officers, divide up the companies for exercises!” The dazed guys blearily squinted at each other, shaking their heads. They didn’t seem able to grasp anything, and Cornet Chachu had to shout “Dress right dress!” twice before the ranks assumed the required appearance. Then the company was led off to the barracks, and the cornet gave his commands: “The first section is appointed to escort duty. Other sections commence exercises in accordance with the normal routine. Dismissed!”

The sections separated, and Gai lined up his section and assigned postings. Candidate Maxim and Active Private Pandi were given the posting in the interrogation room. Gai hurriedly explained Mak’s responsibilities to him: “Stand to attention on the right of and behind the prisoner, and if the prisoner makes the slightest attempt to get up off the stool, prevent him from doing so by force. Obey the direct orders of the brigade commander. Private Pandi is the senior man—in short, watch Pandi and do everything he does. I wouldn’t have assigned you to this posting for anything, but the cornet ordered me to. You just keep your eyes peeled, Mak. I don’t really get what the cornet is up to. Either he wants to promote you as soon as possible—he really liked the look of you in action, yesterday at the review of the operation with the section commanders, he spoke well of you, and he put you in the order of the day—or he’s checking up on you. I don’t know why he’s doing it, maybe it’s my fault, with that report of mine, or maybe it’s your fault, with those little conversations of yours…” He anxiously looked Maxim over. “Give your boots another polish, pull in your belt, and put on your dress gloves—no, you don’t have any, candidates aren’t provided with them… OK, run to the store, and look lively, we go on duty in thirty minutes.”

At the store Maxim ran into Pandi, who was changing a cracked beret badge. “Look at this, Corporal!” said Pandi, addressing the store commander and slapping Maxim on his shoulder. “How about that? The guy’s only been in the Guards eight days, and he has an expression of gratitude already. They’ve put him in the interrogation room with me… I reckon you must have come running for a pair of white gloves, right? Issue him some good gloves, Corporal, he deserves them. This guy’s as tough as a nail.”

The corporal started discontentedly muttering, reached into the shelves piled high with official-issue clothing, tossed several pairs of white, string-knit gloves on the counter in front of Maxim, and said with a scornful grin, “A nail… you and these crazies are all nails. Of course, when the pain has completely pulverized his innards, you can just take him and put him in a sack. My old granddad would be a nail here like that. No arms, no legs…”

Pandi took offense. “Your old granddad with no arms and no legs would have gone scuttling off on his eyebrows,” he said, “if someone leaped out at him with two pistols. I thought the cornet was a goner.”

“A goner, a goner…” the corporal grouched. “In six months, when you get dumped on the southern border, then we’ll see who’ll go scuttling off on his eyebrows.”

When they walked out of the store, Maxim asked, with all the respect he could muster (good old Pandi liked respect), “Mr. Pandi, why do these degenerates get such bad pains? And all of them at the same time. How come?”

“It’s from fear,” Pandi replied, lowering his voice for greater solemnity. “They’re degenerates, you see. You need to read more, Mak. There’s this pamphlet called Degenerates: Who They Are and Where They Come From. You read it, or you’ll always be the same ignorant bumpkin you are right now. Bravery on its own won’t get you very far…” He paused for a moment. “Take us now: we get all agitated, for instance, or, say, we get a scare—but that’s OK for us, except we’ll maybe break into a sweat or, say, our knees will start trembling. But their bodies are abnormal, degenerate. If one of them gets angry with someone or, say, he gets in a funk, or whatever… then right away he gets bad pains in his head and all over his body. Bad enough for him to black out, understand? That characteristic is how we recognize them, and of course we detain them—grab them… Those are good gloves, and just my size. What do you reckon?”

“They’re a bit too tight on me, Mr. Pandi,” Maxim complained. “Why don’t we swap? You take these, and give me yours that have already been worn in.”

Pandi was very satisfied. And Maxim was very satisfied. Then suddenly he remembered Fank, the way he had writhed in the car, squirming about in pain… and then the guardsmen on patrol had grabbed him… Only what could Fank have been frightened by? And who could he have been angry with there? He wasn’t agitated, was he? He was calmly driving the car, whistling, there was something he wanted very badly… probably to have a smoke… Of course, he did look back and he saw the patrol vehicle… or was that later? Yes, he was in a great hurry, and there was a truck blocking the road… maybe he got angry? Ah, no, I’m imagining things! You never know what kind of fits people might suffer from. And he was arrested for the accident. Though I wonder where he was taking me and who he was. I ought to find Fank…

He polished his boots and spruced up, putting himself into absolutely perfect order in front of the big mirror, hung his automatic around his neck, took another look in the mirror—and just then Gai gave the order to fall in.

After casting a critical eye over everybody and checking their knowledge of their duties, Gai ran over to the company office to report. While he was gone, the guardsmen played a game of “soap” and three stories of army life were told, but Maxim didn’t understand them because he didn’t know certain specific expressions, and then they started pestering Maxim to tell them how come he was so ginormous—that had already become a standing joke in the section—and they begged him to bend a couple of coins into little tubes as trophies. Then Cornet Chachu came out of the company office, accompanied by Gai. He also cast a critical eye over everybody, stepped back, and told Gai, “Lead the section on, Corporal,” and the section set off toward the HQ building.

In the HQ building the cornet ordered Active Private Pandi and Candidate Private Sim to follow him, and Gai led the others away. The three of them walked into a small room with tightly curtained windows and a smell of tobacco and eau de cologne. There was a huge empty table at the far end of the room with soft chairs arranged around it and a darkened painting of some ancient battle hanging on the wall: horses, close-fitting uniforms, unsheathed sabers, and lots of clouds of white, eddying smoke. Ten paces away from the table, to the right of the door, Maxim saw an iron stool with holes in the seat. The single leg of the stool was screwed to the floor with massive bolts.

“Take up your places,” the cornet commanded, then walked forward and sat at the table.

Pandi carefully set Maxim behind and to the right of the stool, then stood on the left of it and commanded in a whisper: “Attention.” And he and Maxim froze. The cornet sat there with his legs crossed, smoking and casually examining the guardsmen. He seemed entirely indifferent and disinterested, and yet Maxim could sense quite clearly that the cornet was very intently observing him, and not only him.

Then the door opened behind Pandi’s back. Pandi instantly took two steps forward, a step to the right, and made a left turn. Maxim gave a jerk too, but he realized that he wasn’t standing in the way, and this didn’t concern him, so he simply goggled even harder. There was something infectious about this grown-up game after all, despite all its primitiveness and its obvious inappropriateness in the catastrophic conditions of the inhabited island.

The cornet got up, stubbing out his cigarette in an ashtray and lightly clicking his heels to greet the men walking toward the table: the brigadier, an unfamiliar man in plainclothes, and the brigade adjutant with a thick folder under his arm. The brigadier took a seat behind the table at the center. His expression was sour and peevish, and he thrust one finger in under his embroidered collar, pulled it out a bit, and twisted his head about. The plainclothes man, a nondescript little individual with a flabby, yellowish, poorly shaved face, took a seat beside him, without making any sound as he moved. Without sitting down, the brigade adjutant opened his folder and started sorting through his papers, handing some of them to the brigadier.

Pandi, after standing where he was for a while, as if he was feeling uncertain, moved back to his place with the same crisp, precise movements. The men at the table started quietly talking.

“Will you be at the meeting today, Chachu?” the brigadier asked.

“I have business to deal with,” the cornet replied, lighting another cigarette.

“That’s not good. There’ll be a dispute there today.”

“They caught on too late. I’ve already expressed my opinion on that matter.”

“Not in the best possible manner,” the plainclothes man gently remarked to the cornet. “And in addition, circumstances are changing, and opinions are changing.”

“That’s not the way it is here in the Guards,” the cornet icily remarked.

“Really and truly, gentlemen,” the brigadier said in a peevish voice, “let’s get together today at the meeting after all.”

“I heard they’ve brought fresh shrimp,” the adjutant announced, still rummaging through his papers.

“With beer, eh, Cornet?” said the plainclothes man, backing up the adjutant.

“No, gentlemen,” said the cornet. “I have only one opinion, and I have already expressed it. And as for beer…” He added something in an indistinct voice, the entire company burst into laughter, and Cornet Chachu leaned back in his chair with a satisfied air. Then the adjutant stopped rummaging in his papers, leaned down to the brigadier, and whispered something to him. The brigadier nodded. The adjutant took a seat and declared, apparently addressing the iron stool, “Nole Renadu.”

Pandi pushed open the door, stuck his head out, and spoke loudly into the corridor. “Nole Renadu.”

There was a sound of movement in the corridor and an elderly, well-dressed, but oddly creased and crumpled man walked into the room. His feet stumbled slightly. Pandi took him by the elbow and sat him on the stool. The door clicked as it closed. The man loudly cleared his throat, propped his hands on his parted knees, and proudly raised his head.

“Riiight, then…” the brigadier drawled, examining his papers, and suddenly started speaking in a rapid patter: “Nole Renadu, fifty-six years of age, property owner, member of the magistracy… riiight… Member of the Veteran Club, membership number such and such…” (The plainclothes man yawned, putting his hand over his mouth, pulled a brightly colored magazine out of his pocket, placed it on his knees, and started leafing through it.) “Detained at such and such a time at such and such a place; during the search the following items were confiscated… riiight… What were you doing at building number eight on Street of the Buglers?”

“I own that building,” Renadu said with a dignified air. “I was consulting with my manager.”

“Have the documents been checked?” the brigadier asked the adjutant.

“Yes, sir. Everything is in order.”

“Riiight,” said the brigadier. “Tell us, Mr. Renadu, are you acquainted with any of the prisoners?”

“No,” said Renadu, with a vigorous shake of his head. “How would I be? However, the surname of one of them… Ketshef… I believe there is a Ketshef who lives in my building… But then, I don’t remember. Perhaps I’m mistaken, or perhaps it’s not in this building. I have another two buildings, one of them—”

“I beg your pardon,” the plainclothes man interrupted, without looking up from his magazine. “But what were the other detainees talking about in the cell, did you happen to notice at all?”

“Uhhh…” Renadu drawled. “I must admit… You’ve got… uhhh… insects in there. So we mostly talked about them… Someone was whispering in the corner, but I must admit that I didn’t pay any attention… And then, I find these people extremely distasteful, I’m a veteran… I’d rather consort with the insects, heh-heh!”

“Naturally,” the brigadier agreed. “Well then, we are not apologizing, Mr. Renadu. Here are your documents, you are free to go… Escort officer!” he added, raising his voice.

Pandi opened the door and shouted, “Escort officer to the brigadier!”

“There can be no question of any apologies,” Renadu solemnly declared. “I, and I alone, am to blame… And not even I, but my cursed genetic heritage. May I?” he asked, addressing Maxim and pointing to the table where his documents were lying.

“Sit down,” Pandi said in a quiet voice.

Gai walked in. The brigadier handed him the documents, asked him to return Mr. Renadu’s confiscated property to him, and Mr. Renadu was allowed to go.

“In Aio Province,” the plainclothes man mused, “they have this custom: every degenerate who is arrested—I’m talking about the legal degenerates—pays a tax, a voluntary contribution to support the Guards.”

“That is not customary here,” the brigadier replied in a dry voice. “In my opinion, it is illegal… Let us have the next one,” he ordered.

“Rashe Musai,” the adjutant said to the iron stool.

“Rashe Musai,” Pandi repeated through the open door.

Rashe Musai turned out to be a thin, completely jaded little man in a tattered night robe and one slipper. As soon as he sat down, the brigadier, with his face flushed bright red, yelled at him, “So, lying low, are you, you scum?”—at which Rashe Musai started verbosely and confusedly explaining that he wasn’t lying low at all, that he had a sick wife and three children, that he worked in a factory, as a cabinetmaker, and that he wasn’t guilty of anything.

Maxim was already expecting them to let him go, but the brigadier abruptly stood up and announced that Rashe Musai, forty-two years of age, married, a worker, with a record of two arrests, having violated the terms of the decree concerning exile, was sentenced, in accordance with the law concerning preventative measures, to seven years of educational labor with a subsequent prohibition on residence in the central regions of the country.

It took Rashe Musai about a minute to grasp the meaning of this sentence, and then a terrible scene was played out. The wretched cabinetmaker wept, incoherently begging forgiveness, and attempted to go down on his knees while carrying on shouting and crying, until Pandi eventually dragged him out into the corridor. And Maxim sensed Chachu’s probing glance on him once again.

“Kivi Popshu,” the adjutant announced.

A broad-shouldered young guy, whose face was disfigured by some kind of skin disease, was shoved in through the door. He turned out to be a habitual house burglar, a repeat offender who had been caught red-handed at the scene of the crime, and he acted in a manner that was simultaneously insolent and ingratiating. Sometimes he started imploring the gentlemen bosses not to condemn him to a ferocious death, and then he suddenly started hysterically giggling, cracking jokes and telling stories from his own life, which all began in an identical manner: “I’m breaking into this building…” He didn’t give anyone a chance to speak.

After making several unsuccessful attempts to ask a question, the brigadier leaned back in his chair and looked to the left and the right with an indignant air. Cornet Chachu said in a flat voice, “Candidate Sim, stop his mouth.”

Maxim didn’t know how mouths were stopped, so he simply took Kivi Popshu by the shoulder and shook him a couple of times. Kivi Popshu’s jaws clattered, he bit his tongue, and he stopped talking.

Then the plainclothes man, who had been observing the prisoner with keen interest for a long time, declared, “I’ll take that one. He’ll come in useful.”

“Excellent!” said the brigadier, and ordered Kivi Popshu to be sent back to his cell.

When the young guy had been led out, the adjutant said, “That’s all the trash. Now we’ll start on the group.”

“Begin straightaway with the leader,” the plainclothes man advised. “What’s his name—Ketshef?”

The adjutant glanced into his papers and spoke to the iron stool. “Gel Ketshef.”

They brought in someone Maxim recognized—the man in the white doctor’s coat. He was wearing handcuffs, and therefore held his hands unnaturally extended in front of him. His eyes were red and his face was puffy. He sat down and started looking at the picture above the brigadier’s head.

“Is your name Gel Ketshef?” the brigadier asked.

“Yes.”

“A dentist?”

“I was.”

“And what is your relationship with the dentist Gobbi?”

“I bought his practice.”

“Why are you not practicing?”

“I sold the equipment.”

“Why?”

“Straitened circumstances,” said Ketshef.

“What is your relationship with Ordi Tader?”

“She is my wife.”

“Do you have children?”

“We did. A son.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did he do during the war?”

“He fought.”

“Where? In what capacity?”

“In the southwest. First as the head of a field hospital, than as the commander of an infantry company.”

“Injuries? Decorations?”

“He had all of that.”

“Why did you decide to engage in anti-state activity?”

“Because in the entire history of the world there has never been a more abhorrent state,” said Ketshef. “Because I love my wife and my child. Because you killed my friends and depraved my people. Because I have always hated you. Is that enough?”

“Yes,” the brigadier calmly said. “More than enough. Why don’t you tell us instead how much the Hontians pay you? Or are you paid by Pandeia?”

The man in the white coat laughed. It was spine-chilling laughter, the way a corpse might laugh. “Drop this comedy, Brigadier,” he said. “What do you need it for?

“Are you the leader of the group?”

“Yes. I was.”

“Which members of the organization can you name?”

“Nobody.”

“Are you certain?” the plainclothes man suddenly asked.

“Yes.”

“Listen, Ketshef,” the plainclothes man said in a gentle voice. “You are in an extremely difficult situation. We know everything about your group. We even know something about your group’s contacts. You must realize that we received this information from a certain individual, and now it depends entirely on you what name this individual will have—Ketshef or something different…”

Ketshef said nothing, keeping his head lowered.

“You!” Cornet Chachu croaked. “You, a former combat officer! Do you understand what you are being offered? Not life, massaraksh! But honor!”

Ketshef laughed again and started coughing, but he didn’t speak. Maxim could sense that this man wasn’t afraid of anything. Neither death nor dishonor. He had already been through all of that. He already regarded himself as both dead and dishonored…

The brigadier looked at the plainclothes man, who nodded. The brigadier shrugged, got to his feet, and announced that Gel Ketshef, fifty years of age, married, a dental practitioner, was sentenced to execution in accordance with the law concerning the protection of public health, the sentence to be carried out within forty-eight hours. The sentence could be commuted if the condemned individual consented to provide testimony.

After Ketshef was led out, the brigadier remarked to the plainclothes man with a discontented air, “I don’t understand you. In my opinion, he was speaking quite willingly. A typical blabber—according to your own classification. I don’t understand.”

The plainclothes man laughed and said: “Well that, old man, is why you command a brigade, and I… and I am where I am.”

“All the same,” the brigadier said in a resentful tone of voice. “The leader of the group… inclined to philosophize a bit… I don’t understand.”

“Old man,” the civilian said, “have you never seen a philosophizing corpse?”

“Ah, nonsense.”

“But really?”

“Perhaps you’ve seen one?” the brigadier asked.

“Yes, right now,” the civilian said. “And this is not the first time, note… I am alive, he is dead—what is there to talk about? That’s how Verbliben puts it, I think?”

Cornet Chachu suddenly got up, walked right up to Maxim, and hissed up into his face: “What way is that to stand, Candidate? Which way are you looking? Attention! Eyes to the front! Stop shifting those eyes around!” He scrutinized Maxim for several seconds, breathing heavily, with his pupils narrowing and expanding at a furious rate—then he went back to his place and lit a cigarette.

“Right,” said the adjutant. “That leaves: Ordi Tader, Memo Gramenu, and another two, who refused to give their names.”

“Then let’s start with them,” the civilian suggested. “Call them out.”

“Number Seventy-Three Thirteen,” said the adjutant.

Number Seventy-Three Thirteen walked in and sat down on the stool. He was also wearing handcuffs, although one of his hands was artificial—a lean, sinewy man with unnaturally thick lips, swollen from repeated biting.

“Your name?” the brigadier asked.

“Which one?” the one-handed man merrily asked. Maxim actually shuddered—he had been certain that the one-handed man would remain silent.

“Do you have a lot of them? Then give us the real one.”

“My real name is Number Seventy-Three Thirteen.”

“Riiight… What were you doing in Ketshef’s apartment?”

“Lying in a faint. For your information, I’m very good at doing that. Would you like me to show you?”

“Don’t bother,” said the plainclothes man. He was very angry. “You’ll be needing that skill later.”

The one-handed man suddenly broke into laughter. He laughed with a loud, resounding laugh, like a young man, and Maxim was horrified to realize that he was laughing sincerely. The men at the table sat and listened to that laughter as if they had turned to stone.

“Massaraksh!” The one-handed man eventually said, wiping away his tears on his shoulder. “Oh, what a threat!… But then, you’re still a young man… They burned all the archives after the coup, and you don’t even know just how petty you’ve all become… That was a great mistake, eliminating the old cadres—they would have taught you to take a calm approach to your duties. You’re too emotional. You hate too much.

“But your job has to be done as drily as possible, formally—for the money. That makes a tremendous impression on a prisoner. It’s terrible when you’re being tortured not by your enemy but by a bureaucrat. Look at my left hand here. They sawed it off for me in good old prewar state security, in three sessions, and every action they took was accompanied by extensive correspondence. The butchers were doing a laborious, thankless job—they were bored, and while they sawed off my hand, they swore and grumbled about their miserly rates of pay. And I was terrified. It took me a great effort of will to stop myself from blabbing.

“But now… I can see how much you hate me. You hate me, I hate you. Wonderful! But you’ve been hating me for less than twenty years, and I’ve been hating you for more than thirty. Back then you were still walking in under the table and torturing the cats, young man.”

“I get it,” said the plainclothes man. “An old bird. The workers’ friend. I thought they’d killed you all off.”

“No chance!” the one-handed man retorted. “You need to get a bit more clued-in about the world you live in… but you still imagine that they canceled the old history and started a new one… What terrible ignorance, there’s nothing to talk to you about—”

“That’s enough, I think,” said the brigadier, addressing the plainclothes man, who made a rapid note of something on the magazine and let the brigadier read it. The plainclothes man was smiling.

Then the brigadier shrugged, thought for a moment, and turned to the cornet. “Witness Chachu, how did the accused conduct himself during the arrest?”

“He lay sprawled out, with his toes turned up,” the cornet somberly replied.

“That is, he didn’t offer any resistance… Riiight…” The brigadier thought for another moment, got up, and announced the sentence. “The accused, number Seventy-Three Thirteen, is hereby condemned to death, but no term is set for the sentence to be carried out, and until such time as the sentence is carried out, the prisoner shall be employed in educational labor.”

An expression of contemptuous bewilderment appeared on Cornet Chachu’s face, and the accused quietly laughed and shook his head as he was led out, as if to say, Well, would you believe it!

After that Number Seventy-Three Fourteen was led in. He was the man who had been shouting while writhing around on the floor. He was full of fear, but he acted defiantly. He shouted out from the threshold that he wouldn’t answer questions and wasn’t looking for leniency. And he really did remain silent, without answering a single question, even when the plainclothes man asked if he had any complaints about bad treatment. It all ended with the brigadier looking at the plainclothes man and clearing his throat in a tone of inquiry. The plainclothes man nodded and said, “Yes, send him to me!” He seemed very pleased.

Then the brigadier looked through the remaining sheets of paper and said, “Let us go and get something to eat, gentlemen. This is impossible.” The court retired and Maxim and Pandi were permitted to stand at ease.

When the cornet had also left, Pandi said, “How do you like those creeps? Worse than snakes, so help me! And what’s the worst thing about it all: if their heads didn’t hurt, how could you tell they were degenerates? It’s terrifying to think what would happen then.”

Maxim didn’t answer. He didn’t feel like talking. The picture of this world that had seemed so logical and clear only a day ago had become blurred and murky now. And in any case, Pandi didn’t need an answer from him. After removing his gloves to avoid staining them, the active private took a paper bag of sugar candy out of his pocket, treated Maxim to a piece, and started telling him how much he hated this posting. In the first place, he was afraid of catching something from the degenerates. And in the second place, some of them, like that one-hander, came on so cocky, it was almost more than he could do not to thump them. There was one time he stuck it out for as long as he could, and then did thump one—he was almost demoted to candidate. The cornet had stood up for him though: he only gave him twenty days, and another forty without leave…

Maxim sucked on his sugar candy, listening with half an ear and not saying anything. Hate, he thought. This side hates that side, and that side hates this side. For what? The most abhorrent state of all time. Why? Where did he get that from? They’ve depraved the people. How? What could that mean? And that man in plainclothes—he couldn’t have been hinting at torture, surely! That was a long, long time ago, in the Middle Ages… But then again, fascism. Yes, I recall now, it wasn’t only the Middle Ages. Maybe this is a fascist state? Massaraksh, just what is fascism? Aggression, racial theory… Hitler. No, Himmler. Yes, yes—a theory of racial superiority, mass exterminations, genocide, world conquest… lies, elevated to a basic principle of politics, the state’s lies. I remember that very clearly, that was what staggered me most of all. But I don’t think there’s any of that here. Is Gai a fascist? And Rada? No, it’s something else here—the aftermath of war, explicitly cruel manners and behavior as a consequence of the difficult situation. The majority intent on suppressing the opposition of the minority. Capital punishment, penal servitude. This is all repulsive to me, but what else could you expect?

And what exactly does the opposition consist of? Yes, they hate the existing order. But what do they actually do, in concrete terms? Not a single word was said about that. It’s strange… As if the judges had conspired in advance with the accused, and the accused had no problems with that. Well, it certainly looked very much that way. The accused are endeavoring to destroy the antiballistic defense system, and the judges know that perfectly well, and the accused know that the judges know that perfectly well—everybody sticks to his own convictions, there’s nothing to talk about, and all that remains is to officially confirm the existing state of their relations. They eliminate the first one, dispatch the second one to be “educated,” and the third one… for some reason the plainclothes man takes the third one for himself. It would be a good thing now to understand what connection exists between a pain in the head and a partiality for opposition. Why is it only degenerates who endeavor to destroy the system of ADTs? And not even all degenerates, at that?

“Mr. Pandi,” he said, “the Hontians, are they all degenerates, have you heard?”

Pandi started thinking hard. “How can I put it?… You see,” he eventually said, “we mostly deal with internal business concerning the degenerates, the urban ones and the ones they have down in the South. But what’s up there in Hontia or wherever else, they probably teach the army men about that. The most important thing you have to know is that the Hontians are the most vicious external enemies our state has. Before the war they had to knuckle under to us, and now they’re getting their own back, out of spite… And the degenerates are our internal enemies. That’s all there is to it. You got that?”

“More or less,” said Maxim, and Pandi immediately handed him a reprimand: in the Guards you didn’t answer like that; in the Guards you answered “affirmative” or “negative,” while “more or less” was a civilian expression. The corporal’s sister could answer you like that, but you were on duty here, so you couldn’t do that.

Probably he would have carried on pontificating for a long time—it was a gratifying subject, close to his heart, and he had an attentive, respectful listener—but at this point the gentlemen officers came back in. Pandi broke off midword, whispered “Attention,” and after performing the requisite maneuvers between the table and the iron stool, froze in his position. Maxim also froze.

The gentlemen officers were in an excellent mood. Cornet Chachu was telling the others in a loud voice, with a disdainful air, about how in the Eighty-Fourth they stuck raw dough straight onto red-hot armor plating, and it was really tasty. The brigadier and the plainclothes man objected that the spirit of the Guards was all very fine, but the Guards’ cuisine should be well up to the mark, and the fewer canned goods, the better. Narrowing his eyes, the adjutant suddenly started quoting some cookbook or other verbatim, and all the others fell silent and listened to him for rather a long time, with a strange, tender expression on their faces. Then the adjutant swallowed his own saliva the wrong way and started coughing, and the brigadier sighed and said, “Yes, gentlemen… But nonetheless, we have to finish up here.”

The adjutant, still coughing, opened his folder, rummaged in the papers, and announced in a strangled voice, “Ordi Tader.”

And the woman came in, just as white and almost transparent as the day before, as if she were still in a swoon, but when Pandi reached out in his customary manner to take her by the elbow and sit her down, she pulled sharply away, as if reacting to some kind of vermin, and Maxim fancied that she was going to hit Pandi. She didn’t hit him—her hands were shackled—she merely enunciated very clearly, “Don’t touch me, you lackey,” then walked around Pandi and sat down on the stool.

The brigadier asked her the usual questions. She didn’t answer. The plainclothes man reminded her about her child and about her husband, and she didn’t answer him either. She sat there, holding herself erect, and Maxim couldn’t see her face; all he could see was a tense, thin neck under tousled blonde hair.

Then she suddenly spoke in a calm, low voice. “You are all brain-dead blockheads and dopes. Murderers. You will all die. You, brigadier, I do not know you, this is the first and last time I shall see you. You will die a ghastly death. Not at my hands, unfortunately, but a very, very ghastly death. And you, you bastard from secret state security. I have already liquidated two like you myself. I’d kill you right now if not for this lackey standing behind me…” She caught her breath. “And you, you black-faced lump of cannon fodder, you butcher, you will fall into our hands. But you will die simply. Gel missed, but I know people who won’t miss. You’ll all die a long time before we knock down your cursed towers, and that’s good. I pray to God that you won’t survive your towers, because then you might wise up, and those who come later will feel pity for you and be loath to kill you.”

They didn’t interrupt; they attentively listened to her. Anyone might have thought they were willing to listen to her for hours, but she suddenly got up and took a step toward the table. However, Pandi caught her by the shoulder and flung her back down onto the stool. Then she spat with all her strength, but the gobbet fell short of the table, and she suddenly went limp and started crying.

For a while they watched her crying. Then the brigadier got to his feet and sentenced her to execution within forty-eight hours, and Pandi took her by the elbow and flung her out through the door, and the plainclothes man energetically rubbed his hands and told the brigadier, “Good job. An excellent outcome.”

But the brigadier told him, “Thank the cornet.”

And Cornet Chachu said only “Informers,” and they all fell silent.

Then the adjutant summoned Memo Gramenu, and they didn’t stand on ceremony with this prisoner at all. He was the man who was shooting in the corridor. His case was absolutely clear—he had offered armed resistance to arrest—and they didn’t ask him any questions. He sat there on the stool, corpulent and hunched over, and while the brigadier read out his death sentence, he indifferently looked up at the ceiling, using his left hand to cradle his right, with its dislocated fingers swaddled in a rag. Maxim fancied he detected a strange, unnatural calm in this man, a kind of no-nonsense confidence, a cold indifference to what was happening, but he couldn’t figure out his own feelings…

Before they had even led Gramenu out, the adjutant was already packing his papers away in his folder with an air of relief, the brigadier had struck up a conversation with the plainclothes man about the procedure for promotion, and Cornet Chachu had come across to Pandi and Maxim and ordered them to leave. In the cornet’s transparent eyes Maxim detected a clear hint of derision and menace, but he didn’t want to think about that. He thought with a strangely abstracted sense of commiseration about the man who would have to kill the woman. It was iniquitous, it was inconceivable, but somebody would have to do it in the next forty-eight hours.

8

Gai changed into his pajamas, hung his uniform in the wardrobe, and turned toward Maxim. Candidate Sim was sitting on his camp cot, which Rada had set up for him in a free corner; he had already pulled off one boot and was holding it in his hand but hadn’t set about tackling the other one yet. His eyes were directed straight at the wall and his mouth was half open. Gai crept up on him from the side and tried to flick him on the nose. And, as always, he missed—at the last moment Mak jerked his head away.

“What are you pondering?” Gai playfully asked. “Are you grieving because Rada’s not here? That’s just your bad luck, brother. She’s on the day shift today.”

Mak gave a faint smile and started pulling off his other boot. “Why do you say she’s not here?” he absentmindedly asked. “You can’t fool me.” Then he froze again. “Gai,” he said. “You always told me that they work for money.”

“Who? The degenerates?”

“Yes. You’ve often talked about it—to me, and the guys. Paid agents of the Hontians. And the cornet harps on about it all the time, the same thing day after day.”

“What else do you expect?” said Gai. He thought Mak must be launching into his old conversation about monotony again. “You’re a queer fish, after all, Mak. How could we start saying anything new, if everything always stays the same old way? The degenerates are still the same degenerates they always were. And they still get money from the enemy, the same way they always have. Last year, for instance, this crew outside the city was raided—they had an entire basement there stuffed with sacks of money. Where could an honest man get money like that from? They’re not industrialists and not bankers… and right now bankers don’t have that kind of money anyway, not if the banker’s a genuine patriot.”

Mak neatly set his boots down by the wall, stood up, and started unbuttoning his coverall. “Gai,” he said, “does it sometimes happen that people tell you one thing about a person, and you look at that person and feel that it just can’t be right? It’s a mistake. A mix-up.”

“Yes, it happens,” said Gai, knitting his brows. “But if you mean the degenerates…”

“Yes, that’s exactly who I mean. I watched them today. They’re people just like any others—some better, some worse, some brave and some cowardly, and not animals at all, not like I was thinking, and like you all think—Wait, don’t interrupt. And I don’t know if they do harm or they don’t—that is, from the look of things, they do, but I don’t believe that they’ve been bought.”

“What do you mean, you don’t believe it?” said Gai, knitting his brows even tighter. “Look, let’s accept that you can’t take my word for it, I’m only a little man. But what about the cornet? And the brigadier? And the radio, if it comes to that. How is it possible not to believe the Fathers? They never lie.”

Maxim took off his coverall, walked over to the window, and started looking out at the street, pressing his forehead against the glass and clutching the frame with both hands. “Why do they have to be lying?” he eventually said. “What if they’re mistaken?”

“Mistaken…” Gai repeated in bewilderment, gazing at Maxim’s bare back. “Who’s mistaken? The Fathers? You crackpot… The Fathers never make mistakes!”

“Well, maybe not,” said Maxim, turning around. “But we’re not talking about the Fathers right now. We’re talking about the degenerates. Let’s take you, for example… You’d die for your cause if you had to, right?”

“I would,” said Gai. “And so would you.”

“Exactly! We’d die. But we’d be dying for a cause—not for a guardsman’s rations and not for money. You could give me a billion of your banknotes, but I wouldn’t agree to die for that! And would you?”

“No, of course not,” said Gai. What a weirdo Mak was, always coming up with something.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well, it’s obvious!” Mak said impatiently. “You’re not willing to die for money. I’m not willing to die for money. But the degenerates, it seems, are willing to. What sort of bullshit is that?”

“That’s just it, they’re degenerates!” Gai said with passionate feeling. “That’s what degenerates are like. For them, money’s more important than anything else; nothing’s sacred to them. For them it’s nothing to strangle a child—there have been cases like that… You must understand, if someone’s trying to destroy the system of ADTs, what kind of human being can he be? He’s just a cold-blooded killer!”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Mak. “Look at the ones who were interrogated today. If they had named their accomplices, they could have stayed alive, they would have gotten off with hard labor… But they didn’t name them! So their accomplices mean more to them than money? More than life?”

“We don’t know that yet,” Gai objected. “By law they’re all condemned to death, without any trial—you’ve seen the way they’re tried. And if some of them are sent off to do hard labor, do you know why? Because we don’t have enough men in the South… and let me tell you, educational labor is even worse than death.”

Looking at Mak, Gai saw that his friend was hesitant and perplexed. He has a good heart, but he’s still green, he doesn’t understand that cruelty is necessary with the enemy, that right now kindness is worse than treason… I’d love to just smash my fist down on the table and shout, tell him to shut up and stop this idle talk, stop spouting all this crap and listen to his elders and betters until he learns to figure things out for himself. But Mak isn’t some kind of blockhead, is he? He only needs things to be properly explained and he’ll understand.

“No!” Mak stubbornly exclaimed. “It’s impossible to hate for money. But they do hate… The way they hate us, I didn’t even know people could hate that fiercely. You hate them less than they hate you. And what I’d like to know is: What for?”

“Just listen here,” said Gai, “and I’ll explain it to you again. In the first place, they’re degenerates, they hate all normal people anyway. They’re malicious by nature, like rats! And then, we get in their way. They’d like to just do their job, take the money, and live high on the hog. But we tell them, Stop! Hands behind your head! So are they supposed to love us for that?”

“If they’re all as malicious as rats, then why isn’t that… property owner malicious? Why did they let him go, if they’ve all been bought?”

Gai laughed. “The property owner’s a coward. There are plenty of that kind too. They hate us, but they’re afraid. The useful degenerates, the legal ones. It’s more convenient for them to live as our friends… And then, he’s a property owner, a rich man—he can’t be bought that easily. He’s not just some dentist or other… You’re funny, Mak, just like a child! People aren’t all the same, and degenerates aren’t all the same—”

“I already know that,” Mak impatiently interrupted. “But take that dentist, for instance. I’d stake my life that he hasn’t been bought. I can’t prove it to you, I just feel it. He’s a very courageous and good man—”

“A degenerate!”

“All right. He’s a courageous and good degenerate. I saw his library. He’s a very knowledgeable man. He knows a thousand times more than you or the cornet. Why is he against us? If our cause is just, why doesn’t he know that—an educated, cultured man like that? Why, on the brink of death, does he tell us to our faces that he is for the people and against us?”

“An educated degenerate is a degenerate to the second power,” Gai sententiously declared. “As a degenerate, he hates us. And his education helps him justify his hate and disseminate it. Education, my friend, is not always a boon either. Like an automatic—it all depends on who’s holding it.”

“Education is always a boon,” Maxim said with resolute conviction.

“Oh, no. I’d prefer it if all the Hontians were uneducated. Then at least we could live normal, human lives without expecting a nuclear strike all the time. We’d soon crush them.”

“Yes,” Mak said in a strange tone of voice. “We know how to crush people. We’ve got no shortage of cruelty, and that’s a fact.”

“There you go, talking like a kid again. We’re not cruel, it’s the times that are cruel. We’d be glad to make do with just persuasion—it would cost us less, and there’d be no bloodshed. But what would you have us do? If there’s no way to change their minds—”

“So they’re already convinced, then?” Mak interrupted him. “So they’re convinced? And if a knowledgeable man is convinced that he’s right, what does Hontian money have to do with it?”

Gai was fed up. As a last resort, he was on the point of throwing in a quotation from the Codex of the Fathers to put an end to this stupid, interminable quarrel, but at that very moment Mak interrupted himself with an impatient gesture and shouted, “Rada! No more sleeping! The Guards are famished and pining for some female company!”

Gai was absolutely amazed to hear Rada’s voice from behind the screen. “I’ve been awake for ages already. You gentlemen Guards have been screaming and shouting as if you were on the parade ground.”

“Why are you at home?” Gai snapped.

“I was given notice,” she explained. “Mama Tei has closed down her place—she came into an inheritance and she’s moving to the country. But she’s already recommended me for a good job… Mak, why are your things thrown all over the place? Put them in the wardrobe. Boys, I asked you not to come into the room in your boots! Where are your boots, Gai?… Set the table, we’re going to have lunch now… Mak, you’ve lost weight. What are they doing to you in there?”

“Come on, come on!” said Gai. “No more talking in the ranks! Bring in the lunch.”

She stuck her tongue out at him and walked out. Gai glanced at Mak. Mak was watching Rada go with the usual good-natured expression on his face.

“A fine girl, right?” Gai asked, and then took fright when Mak’s face suddenly turned to stone.

“Listen,” said Mak. “You can do anything. Even use torture, I suppose. All of you are in a better position to judge. But shooting women… torturing women…” He grabbed his boots and walked out of the room.

Gai cleared his throat, scratched the back of his head hard with both hands, and started setting the table. This entire conversation had left a bad taste in his mouth. A strange, schizophrenic kind of feeling. Of course, Mak was still green and not really of this world. But somehow, amazingly, he had done it again. And that was just it—when it came to logic, he was incredible. Like just now he was spouting nonsense, but how logically he had it all laid out! Basically, Gai was obliged to admit that if not for this conversation, he himself would probably never have arrived at what was essentially a very simple idea: the most important thing about degenerates is that they’re degenerates. Take that characteristic away, and all the other accusations against them—treason, cannibalism, and all the rest—are all reduced to drivel. Yes, the whole point is that they’re degenerates and they hate everything normal. That’s enough, and there’s no need for any Hontian gold… And the Hontians, are they degenerates as well, then? They don’t tell us that. But if they’re not degenerates, then our degenerates ought to hate them like they hate us… Ah, massaraksh! Damn this logic to hell!

When Mak came back, Gai pounced on him: “How did you know Rada was home?”

“What do you mean, how? It was just obvious.”

“But if it was obvious to you, massaraksh, why didn’t you warn me? And why, massaraksh, do you go blabbing about things in front of outsiders? Thirty-three massarakshes…”

Mak blew his top too. “Who’s an outsider here, massaraksh? Rada? Why, all of you and your cornet are more outsiders to me than Rada is.”

“Massaraksh! What does it say in the regulations about official secrets?”

“Massaraksh and massaraksh! What are you hassling me for? I didn’t know that you didn’t know she was home! I thought you were kidding me! And anyway… what official secrets are we talking about here?”

“Everything that concerns service activity.”

“You can all go to hell with your service activity that has to be hidden from your own sister! And from absolutely anybody at all, massaraksh! You’ve heaped every corner so high with secrets, there’s no room left to breathe—you can’t even open your mouth!”

“And now you’re shouting at me too! I’m trying to teach you, you fool, and you’re yelling at me!”

But Mak had already stopped being angry. Suddenly he was right up close, and before Gai could even stir a muscle, strong arms crushed his sides, the room swung around in front of his eyes, and the ceiling came hurtling toward him. Gai gave a strangled gasp, and Mak, carefully carrying Gai above his head with his arms fully extended, walked over to the window and said, “Right, where shall we put you and all your secrets? Want to go out the window?”

“What stupid sort of joke is this, massaraksh?” Gai yelled, frantically waving his arms around in search of support.

“You don’t want to go out the window? All right, then, stay here.”

Gai was carried to the screen and dumped onto Rada’s bed. He sat up, pulled down his hitched-up pajama jacket, and muttered, “Damn giant muscleman…” He wasn’t angry any longer either. And there wasn’t anybody to be angry with, except maybe the degenerates.

They started setting the table, and then Rada arrived with a saucepan of soup, followed by Uncle Kaan with his beloved flask—which, so he assured them, was the only thing that saved him from catching a cold and various other geriatric ailments. They sat down and started on the soup. Uncle downed a shot, sniffed in air through his nose, and began telling them about his enemy, his colleague Shapshu, who had written another article about the function of some bone or other in some ancient lizard or other, an article that was founded on nothing but stupidity from start to finish, and designed for stupid fools…

For Uncle Kaan, all the people around him were fools. His colleagues in his department were fools, some diligent and some indolent. The assistants were all born fools, who ought to be up in the mountains tending animals, and even then, if the truth be told, it wasn’t certain that they could manage that. As for the students, all the young people nowadays seemed to have been replaced by changelings, and apart from that, the ones who became students were the stupidest of all, the ones that a judicious entrepreneur wouldn’t even let near his machine tools and a knowledgeable officer would refuse to take as soldiers. And so the fate of the science of fossil animals had already been determined.

Gai didn’t really regret that very greatly. To hell with the fossils, he had other things to think about, and in general he didn’t understand what anybody could ever need this science for. But Rada loved her uncle very much and always supported his expressions of horror at the stupidity of his colleague Shapshu and his grief that the university authorities wouldn’t approve the funding required for expeditions.

Today, however, the conversation took a different turn. Rada, who had heard everything, massaraksh, behind her screen, asked her uncle in what way degenerates were different from ordinary people. Gai gave Mak a menacing look and suggested that instead of spoiling her near and dear ones’ appetites, she should read the literature. However, Uncle Kaan declared that the literature was written only for the absolute stupidest of fools, and the people in the Department of Public Education imagined everybody else to be the same kind of ignoramuses as they were. But the question of the degenerates was by no means as simple and by no means as trivial as they tried to make it appear in order to mold public opinion in a specific manner, and he said they could discuss this here either like civilized individuals or like their courageous but—unfortunately!—poorly educated officers in the barracks. Mak suggested discussing like civilized individuals for a change.

Uncle Kaan downed another shot and started expounding the theory that was current in scientific circles about the degenerates being nothing less than a new biological species that had appeared on the face of the World as a result of exposure to radiation. The degenerates were undoubtedly dangerous, but not as a social and political phenomenon; the degenerates were biologically dangerous, for they were not waging their struggle against any single nationality, they were simultaneously waging it against all peoples, nationalities, and races. They were fighting for their place in this world, for the survival of their species, and that struggle was not dependent on any social conditions, and it would only end when either the last human being or the last degenerate mutant departed from the arena of biological history.

“Hontian gold—gibberish!” yelled the raging professor. “Sabotage of the ADT system—nonsense! Look to the South, dear gentlemen! To the South! Beyond the Blue Serpent! That’s where the real danger is coming from! That’s where the monsters in human form will multiply, that’s the place from which their columns will advance to trample us underfoot and wipe us off the face of the World. You’re a blind man, Gai. And your commanders are blind men. You don’t understand the truly great destiny of our country and the historically heroic task of the Unknown Fathers! To save humankind! Not just one nation or other, not just our mothers and children, but the whole of humankind!”

Gai got angry and said he wasn’t much concerned about the fate of humankind. He didn’t believe in all these armchair ravings. And if he was told there was a chance of setting the wild degenerates on Hontia, bypassing his own country, he would dedicate his entire life to that. The professor flew into a rage and called him a blind fool again. He said that the Unknown Fathers were the most heroic of heroes—that the battle they had to wage was truly against the odds if the only foot soldiers they had at their disposal were as pathetic and blind as Gai. Gai decided not to argue with him. His uncle didn’t have a clue about politics, and in some ways he was an animal fossil himself.

Mak tried to intervene and started telling them about the degenerate who had fought against the authorities before the war, but Gai forestalled this feeble impulse to disclose official service secrets by telling Rada to serve the main course. And he told Mak to turn on the television. “Too many conversations today,” he said. “Let the soldier home on leave get a bit of rest.”

But Gai’s imagination had been stimulated, and they were showing some kind of nonsense on the television, so he gave in and started telling stories about the wild degenerates. He knew a thing or two about them—God be praised, hadn’t he fought against them for three years rather than sitting it out in the rear like certain philosophers? Rada felt offended for the old man and called Gai a boaster, but for some reason her uncle and Mak took Gai’s side and asked him to continue. Only Gai declared that he wouldn’t say another word. In the first place, he was actually feeling rather offended himself, and in the second place, after rummaging around in his memory, he couldn’t find anything in there that would have refuted the old drunkard’s fabrications. The southern degenerates really were hellish beings, and absolutely merciless. Maybe their kind could exterminate the whole of humankind without a second thought, and perhaps even take pleasure in it. But then he suddenly recalled what Zef, the master sergeant of the 134th Unit, had once told him. Ginger-haired Zef had said that the degenerates were constantly getting more active because the radioactive desert was advancing on them from the south, and the poor wretches had nowhere to go—they had no choice but to try fighting their way north into regions where there was no radiation.

“Who told you that?” his uncle asked scornfully. “What blockhead could ever get such a primitive idea into his head?” Gai looked at him with a gloating expression and gravely replied, “That is the opinion of a certain Allu Zef, an Imperial Prize winner and our foremost psychiatrist.”

“And where did you meet him?” Gai’s uncle asked even more contemptuously. “Not in the company mess, was it?”

In the heat of the moment, Gai was about to say where he had met Zef, but he bit his tongue, put on an important expression, and started demonstratively listening to the television announcer, who was reading out the weather forecast.

And at that moment, massaraksh, Mak butted into the conversation again. “I am prepared to acknowledge,” he said, “that the monsters in the South are some new breed of humans, but what do they have in common with the property owner Renadu, for instance? Renadu is also considered a degenerate, only he clearly doesn’t belong to any new breed. In fact, to be quite frank, he belongs to a very old breed of people.”

Gai had never thought about this point, so he was very glad when his uncle jumped in to answer the question. Calling Mak a clodhopping dolt, Kaan started explaining that the secret degenerates, otherwise known as urban degenerates, were nothing other than surviving remnants of the new breed that had been almost completely exterminated in our central region while they were still in the cradle. “I can still remember all the horrors: they were killed at birth, sometimes together with their mothers. The only ones who survived were those in whom their new species characteristics were not manifested in any external form.” Uncle Kaan downed a fifth shot, then went on a rampage, setting out in front of his audience a precise plan for the universal medical screening of the entire population, which would have to be carried out sooner or later, and preferably sooner rather than later. And no legal degenerates! No tolerance! The weeds had to be mercilessly pulled out by the roots!

On that note lunch came to an end. Rada started washing the dishes, and her uncle, without waiting for any objections, put the stopper in his flask and carried it off to his room, muttering that he was going to write a reply to that fool Shapshu. But for some reason, he happened to take the shot glass with him too. Gai watched him go, looking at his shabby, threadbare jacket, at his old, patched trousers, at his darned socks and darned slippers, and he felt sorry for the old man. That cursed war! His uncle used to own this entire apartment, he had a wife and a son and a servant, and there was luxurious tableware, plenty of money, and even an estate somewhere, but now… Just a dusty study crammed with books, which was also his bedroom and all his other rooms as well; shabby clothes, loneliness, and obscurity. Yes.

Gai moved the only armchair up to the television, stretched out his legs, and started drowsily gazing at the screen. Mak sat beside him for a while, then instantly and silently, as only he was capable of doing, disappeared and turned up in a different corner. He rummaged in Gai’s little library for a while, selected some kind of textbook, and started leafing through it, leaning his shoulder against the wardrobe. Rada cleared the table, sat down beside Gai, and started knitting, occasionally glancing at the screen. The home was filled with peace, quiet, and contentment. Gai dozed off.

He dreamed about some kind of rubbish: he captured two degenerates in some kind of iron tunnel, started interrogating them, and suddenly discovered that one of the degenerates was Mak. The other degenerate, smiling gently and kindly, said to Gai, “You were mistaken all the time. Your place is with us, and the cornet is simply a professional killer, without any patriotism, without any real loyalty—he simply likes killing, the way you like shrimp soup.” Gai suddenly felt a suffocating doubt. He sensed that he was on the brink of completely understanding everything through and through; just one more second and not even a single question would be left. But this unfamiliar condition was so agonizing that his heart stopped beating and he woke up.

Mak and Rada were talking in quiet voices about some nonsense or other—about swimming in the sea, about sand and seashells… He didn’t listen to them. A thought had suddenly occurred to him: Could he really be capable of doubts of any kind, of hesitation or uncertainty? But he had doubted in his sleep, hadn’t he? Did that mean he would have doubts in the same situation when he was awake? He tried for a while to recall all the details of his dream, but the dream slipped away from him, like wet soap skidding out of wet hands, blurring until eventually it became completely implausible, and Gai decided in relief that it was all a load of drivel. And when Rada noticed that he wasn’t sleeping and asked what he thought was better, the sea or a river, he replied in soldierly fashion, in the style of good old Doga, “The best thing of all is a good bathhouse.”

The program showing on television was Patterns. They were bored. Gai suggested having a beer. Rada went to the kitchen and brought two bottles from the refrigerator. Over the beers they talked about this and that, and somehow in passing it emerged that Mak had mastered the textbook on geopolitics in the last half hour. Rada was delighted. Gai didn’t believe it. He said half an hour was enough time to leaf through the textbook, perhaps even to read it, but only mechanically, without any understanding. Mak demanded an examination. Gai demanded the textbook. A wager was struck: the loser would have to go to Uncle Kaan and declare to him that his colleague Shapshu was an intelligent man and an excellent scientist.

Gai opened the textbook at random, found the test questions at the end of a chapter, and asked, “What is it that makes our state’s expansion to the north a morally noble endeavor?” Mak replied in his own words, but very close to the text, and added that in his view moral nobility had nothing at all to do with it; as he understood things, it was all a matter of the aggressive stance of the Hontian and Pandeian regimes, and in general this section of the textbook contradicted the basic thesis of the first chapter on the sovereignty of each and every nation. Gai scratched the back of his head with both hands, turned over a few pages, and asked, “What is the average harvest of cereals in the northwestern regions?” Mak laughed and said there was no data on the northwestern regions. The attempt to trick him had failed, and Rada delightedly stuck her tongue out at Gai. “Then what is the population pressure per unit area in the estuary of the Blue Serpent River?” Mak gave the figure, also giving the margin of error, and took the opportunity to add that he thought the concept of population pressure was rather vague. In any case, he didn’t understand why it had been introduced. Gai started explaining to him that population pressure was a measure of aggressiveness, but at that point Rada intervened. She said that Gai was twisting things and trying to back out of the rest of the exam because he realized it was looking bad for him.

Gai absolutely did not want to go and speak to Uncle Kaan, so he started bickering to drag things out. Mak listened to him for a while, then suddenly announced that under no circumstances should Rada go back to working as a waitress; she needed to study, he said. Gai, delighted by the change of subject, exclaimed that he had told her the same thing a thousand times, and had already suggested that she should apply to the Women’s Guards Corps, where they would make a really useful person out of her. Mak only shook his head, and Rada, as she had always done before, expressed her opinion of the Women’s Guards Corps in highly disrespectful terms

Gai didn’t try to argue. He put down the textbook, reached into the wardrobe, took out a guitar, and started tuning it. Rada and Mak immediately moved the table aside and stood facing each other, ready to roar out “Yes-yes, no-no.” And Gai gave them “Yes-yes, no-no,” tapping out the rhythm and strumming so that the notes chimed out. He watched them dance and thought what a splendid couple they made, only they had nowhere to live, and if they got married, he would have to move out completely into the barracks. Well, what of it? Plenty of corporals lived in the barracks… Only, then again, Mak wasn’t giving any signs of planning to get married. He treated her more like a friend, only with more tenderness and respect, but all the signs were that Rada had really fallen for him. Oh, just look at the way her eyes flash. And how could she possibly not fall for a young guy like that? Even that old hag Madam Go acts the same way, and she’s well past sixty; when Mak walks along the corridor, she opens her door, sticks her skull out, and grins. But then, damn it all, the entire building loves Mak, even the guys in the section love him, only the cornet takes a strange sort of attitude toward him—but even the cornet doesn’t deny that the guy’s a real ball of fire.

The couple danced until they were ready to drop. Then Mak took the guitar from Gai, retuned it in his own outlandish manner, and started singing his strange Highlander songs. Thousands of songs, and not a single one that Gai knew. Something new every time. And the strangest thing of all was that Gai didn’t understand a single word, but when he listened, he felt like crying, or he laughed until he almost split his sides.

Rada had already memorized some of the songs, and now she tried to sing along. She was especially fond of a funny song (Mak had translated it) about a girl who is sitting on a mountain and waiting for her boyfriend, but her boyfriend just can’t get to her—first one thing stops him, and then another… Through the sounds of the guitar and the singing, they didn’t hear the front doorbell ring. There was just a loud knock, and Cornet Chachu’s orderly lumbered into the room.

“Mr. Corporal, sir, permission to speak!” he barked out, squinting sideways at Rada.

Mak stopped playing. Gai said, “Permission granted.”

“The cornet has ordered you and Candidate Sim to report immediately to the company office. The car is waiting downstairs.”

Gai jumped to his feet. “Off you go,” he said. “Wait in the car, we’ll be down immediately. “Quick, get dressed,” he said to Maxim.

Rada took the guitar in her arms, as if it were a child, and stood at the window, turned away from them.

Gai and Mak hastily got dressed. “What do you think this is about?” asked Mak.

“How should I know?” Gai growled. “Maybe it’ll be an alarm drill.”

“I don’t like this,” said Mak.

Gai looked at him and switched on the radio, just to make sure. They were broadcasting Businesswomen’s Small Talk.

After they had gotten dressed and tightened their belts, Gai said, “Rada, we’re off, then.”

“Go,” said Rada, without turning around.

“Let’s go, Mak,” said Gai, tugging his beret down on his head.

“Give me a call,” said Rada. “If you’re delayed, be sure to call.” But she still didn’t turn around.

The orderly obligingly opened the car door for Gai. They got in and drove off. The business was obviously urgent; the driver drove hard and fast, with the siren on, in the reserve lane. Gai rather regretfully thought that now their little party, and a fine, cozy, carefree evening at home, had been ruined. But such was the life of a guardsman. Now they would tell him, You’re going to get into this tank and you’re going to fire, straight after the bottle of beer, after his cozy pajamas, after the jolly songs to the strains of the guitar. Such was the glorious life of a guardsman, the best of all possible lives. And we don’t need any girlfriends or wives. And Mak’s right for not looking to marry Rada, although I feel sorry for my sweet sister, of course… Never mind, she’ll wait. If she loves him, she’ll wait.

They turned onto the parade ground and braked to a halt at the entrance to the barracks building. Gai jumped out and ran up the steps. He stopped outside the door of the office, checked the position of his beret and his buckles, cast a quick glance over Mak, fastened Mak’s collar button—massaraksh, that thing was always unfastened!—and knocked.

“Come in!” the familiar voice croaked. Gai walked inside and reported in. Cornet Chachu was sitting at his desk, wearing a wool cape and peaked cap. He was smoking and drinking coffee, and the shell casing in front of him was full of cigarette butts. Lying next to it on the desk were two automatic rifles.

The cornet slowly got to his feet, leaned heavily on the desk with both hands, and started to speak, staring fixedly at Mak. “Candidate Sim. You have shown yourself to be an outstanding soldier and a loyal comrade in arms. I have petitioned the brigade commander for your early promotion to the status of an active private in the Battle Guards. You have passed the test of fire quite satisfactorily. There remains only the final test—the test of blood.”

Gai’s heart leaped in joy. He hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. Good for you, Cornet! That’s an old war dog for you! What a fool I was to think he was scheming against Mak… Gai looked at Mak, and his joy dwindled. Mak’s face was completely wooden and his eyes were goggling—which was all correct according to the rules, but just at this moment he didn’t need to adhere so strictly to all the rules and regulations.

“I am handing you an order, Candidate Sim,” the cornet continued, holding a sheet of paper out to Mak. “This is the first written order addressed to you in person. I hope it will not be the last. Read it and sign it.”

Mak took the order and ran his eyes over it. Gai’s heart leaped again, only this time not in joy but with a strange, oppressive sense of foreboding. Mak’s face remained as motionless as ever, and everything seemed to be in order, but he hesitated slightly before taking the pen and signing his name. The cornet examined the signature and put the sheet of paper in his map-case.

“Corporal Gaal,” he said, taking a sealed envelope off the desk. “Go to the guardhouse and bring the condemned prisoners. Take a rifle… no, this one, at the edge.”

Gai took the envelope, hung the rifle over his shoulder, made an about-face, and walked toward the door. He had time to hear the cornet say to Mak, “It’s all right, Candidate, don’t get cold feet. It’s only frightening the first time around…” Gai set off at a run across the parade ground toward the building of the brigade jail, handed the envelope to the officer of the guard, signed where he had to, and was given the necessary receipts, and the condemned prisoners were led out to him. They were two of the conspirators he had seen recently: the fat man whose fingers Maxim had dislocated, and the woman. Massaraksh, this was the last thing they needed! The woman would be too much of a shock… This wasn’t for Mak.

Gai led the prisoners out onto the parade ground and herded them toward the barracks building. The man plodded along, step after step, all the while cradling his arm, and the woman walked ramrod straight, with her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her little jacket, not seeming to see or hear anything. Massaraksh, just why exactly wasn’t she for Mak? What the hell? This woman was exactly the same kind of low snake as the man. What right did she have to any special privileges? And why, massaraksh, did any special privileges have to be granted to Candidate Sim? Let him get used to it, massaraksh and massaraksh.

The cornet and Mak were already in the truck. The cornet was at the wheel, and Mak was in the backseat, with his rifle between his legs. Gai opened the door and the condemned prisoners got in. “On the floor!” Gai commanded. They obediently sat down on the iron floor, and Gai sat on the seat facing Mak. He tried to catch Mak’s eye, but Mak was looking at the condemned prisoners. No, he was looking at that woman, huddled on the floor with her arms around her knees. Without looking around, the cornet asked, “Ready?” and the truck set off.

They didn’t talk along the way. The cornet drove the truck insanely fast—he obviously wanted to get it all over with before twilight set in, and what point was there in dragging it out anyway? Mak kept looking at the woman as if he was trying to catch her eye, and Gai kept trying to catch Mak’s eye. The condemned pair clutched at each other and squirmed about on the floor; the fat man tried to talk to the woman, but Gai shouted at him. The truck hurtled out of the city, passed through the southern gate, and immediately turned onto an abandoned cart track, a very familiar cart track for Gai, leading to the Pink Caves. The truck bounced on all four wheels, there was nothing to hold on to, and Mak didn’t want to raise his eyes—and there were the semi-corpses, grabbing at Gai’s knees all the time, trying to escape from the merciless jolting. Eventually Gai’s patience ran out and he jabbed the fat man under the ribs with his boot, but that didn’t do any good; the fat man kept grabbing at his knees anyway. The cornet turned the wheel again, braked sharply, and the truck slowly and cautiously drove down into a quarry. The cornet turned off the engine and commanded, “Get out!”

It was already about eighteen hundred hours, a light evening mist was gathering in the quarry, and the weathered stone walls shimmered pink. Marble had once been quarried here, but who needed it now, that marble?

The business was approaching its conclusion. Mak was still conducting himself like an ideal soldier: not a single superfluous movement, an indifferently wooden expression, eyes trained on his superior in anticipation of a command. The fat man was conducting himself well, with dignity. They clearly wouldn’t have any trouble with him. But as the end approached, the woman had fallen apart. She kept convulsively clenching her fists, pressing them against her chest, and lowering them again, and Gai decided there would be hysterics, but he didn’t think they would have to lug her to the execution site in their arms.

The cornet lit up a cigarette, looked at the sky, and said to Mak, “Take them along this path. When you reach the caves, you’ll see for yourself where to stand them. When you’re done, be sure to check and if necessary give them a finishing shot. Do you know what a finishing shot is?”

“Yessir.”

“Don’t lie, you don’t know. It’s a shot to the head. Go ahead, Candidate. When you come back, you’ll be a genuine private.”

The woman suddenly spoke: “If there is at least one human being among you… let my mother know… Utki Village, house number two… it’s close by here… Her name is—”

“Don’t debase yourself,” the corpulent man said in a deep voice.

“Her name is Illy Tader—”

“Don’t debase yourself,” the corpulent man repeated, raising his voice, and the cornet jabbed a fist into his face, without even bothering to take a swing. The corpulent man fell silent, clutching at his cheek, and cast a look filled with hate at the cornet.

“Go ahead, Candidate,” the cornet repeated.

Mak turned to the condemned prisoners and gestured with his automatic rifle. The condemned pair set off along the path. The woman looked back and shouted once again. “Utki Village, house two, Illy Tader!”

Holding his rifle out in front of him, Mak slowly walked along behind them. The cornet swung the door of the truck open, sat sideways on the driver’s seat, stretched out his legs, and said, “Right, now we’ll wait for a quarter of an hour.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Cornet, sir,” Gai replied mechanically. He watched Mak walking away and carried on watching until the entire group was hidden from sight behind a pink outcrop of rock. We’ll have to buy some vodka on the way back, he thought. Let him get drunk. It helps some men.

“You may smoke, Corporal,” said the cornet.

“Thank you, Mr. Cornet, but I don’t smoke.”

The cornet spat a long way through his teeth. “Are you not afraid of being disappointed in your friend?”

“No indeed, sir,” Gai said indecisively. “Although, with your permission, I’m very sorry that he got the woman. He’s a Highlander, and for them—”

“He’s no more a Highlander that you are or I am,” said the cornet. “And this isn’t a question of women… However, let’s wait and see. What were you doing when you were summoned?”

“Singing together, Mr. Cornet.”

“And what were you singing?”

“Highlanders’ songs, Mr. Cornet. He knows an awful lot of songs.”

The cornet got out of the truck and started walking backward and forward on the path. He didn’t talk anymore, but after about ten minutes he started whistling the Guards’ march. Gai kept waiting for the sound of shots, but no shots came, and he started feeling anxious. He didn’t know himself why he felt anxious. It was unconceivable for anyone to get away from Mak. And disarming him was even more inconceivable. But then why didn’t he fire? Perhaps he had taken them farther than the usual place? The smell there was very strong—the grave diggers didn’t bury the bodies very deep—and Mak’s sense of smell was far too keen. He might walk several extra miles out of sheer squeamishness.

“Weeell now…” said the cornet, halting. “That’s it then, Corporal Gaal. I’m afraid we won’t be seeing your little friend back here. And I’m afraid today’s the last day we’ll be calling you Corporal.”

Gai looked at him in amazement, and the cornet chuckled.

“Well, what are you looking at? Why are you gawking like a pig at ham? Your friend has run off, deserted—he’s a coward and a traitor. Is that clear, Private Gaal?”

Gai was dumbfounded. And not so much by what the cornet had said as by his tone of voice. The cornet was elated; he looked like a man who had just won a large bet. Gai automatically glanced into the depths of the quarry and suddenly saw Mak: he was coming back alone, carrying his automatic rifle by its strap.

“Massaraksh!” the cornet wheezed. He had seen Mak too, and he looked totally stupefied.

They didn’t speak anymore, they just watched as Mak drew closer, walking unhurriedly and stepping lightly over the crushed stone. They watched his calm, good-natured face with the strange eyes, and Gai’s head was filled with total confusion: There weren’t any shots, were there? But surely he couldn’t have strangled them, or beaten them to death with his rifle butt. Mak kill a woman like that? No, that’s rubbish… But there weren’t any shots!

Five steps away from them Mak stopped, looked into the cornet’s face, and flung the automatic down at his feet. “Good-bye, Mr. Cornet,” he said. “I let those poor, unfortunate people go, and now I want to go myself. Here’s your weapon, here’s your clothing…” Mak turned toward Gai as he unfastened his belt and told him, “Gai, this is a dirty business. They tricked us, Gai.”

He took off his boots and coverall and rolled everything up into a bundle, leaving himself standing there as Gai saw him for the first time on the southern border—almost naked and now without even any footwear, in nothing but his silvery undershorts. He walked over to the truck and put the bundle on the radiator. Gai was horrified. He looked at the cornet and felt even more horrified.

“Mr. Cornet!” he shouted out. “Don’t! He’s gone mad! It’s another—”

“Candidate Sim,” the cornet croaked, holding his hand on his holster. “Get into the truck immediately! You’re under arrest.”

“No,” said Mak. “You just think I’m under arrest. I’m free. And I’ve come for Gai. Come on, Gai, let’s go! He duped you. These are sordid people. I had some doubts before, but now I’m certain. Let’s go.”

Gai shook his head. He wanted to say something, to explain something, but he didn’t have any time, and he didn’t have any words.

The cornet took out his revolver. “Candidate Sim! Into the car!” he croaked.

“Are you coming?” Mak asked.

Gai shook his head again. He looked at the pistol in the cornet’s hand, and there was only one thought in his head, and he knew only one thing: Mak was going to be killed now. And he didn’t understand what he ought to do.

“All right,” said Mak. “I’ll find you. I’ll find out everything and I’ll find you. This isn’t the place for you… Kiss Rada for me, I’ll be seeing you.”

He turned and walked over the crushed stone in his bare feet, with the same light stride as when he was in his boots, and Gai, shuddering as if he had a fever, mutely watched Mak’s triangular back and waited for a shot and a little black hole under Mak’s left shoulder blade.

“Candidate Sim,” the cornet said, without raising his voice, “I order you to come back. I’ll shoot.”

Mak stopped and turned back toward him again. “Shoot?” he said. “At me? For what? But then, that’s not important… Give the pistol to me.”

The cornet held the pistol beside his hip with the barrel aimed at Mak. “I’m counting to three,” he said. “Get into the car, Candidate. One!”

“Come on now, give me the pistol,” said Mak, reaching out his hand and moving toward the cornet.

“Two!” said the cornet.

“Don’t!” shouted Gai.

The cornet fired. Mak was already close and Gai saw the bullet hit his shoulder, making Mak stagger, as if he had run into an obstacle.

“You stupid fool,” said Mak. “Give me that gun, you malicious, stupid fool…”

He didn’t stop, he just kept on walking toward the cornet, holding out his hand for the gun, and blood suddenly spurted out of the little hole in his shoulder. The cornet made a strange screeching sound and backed away, firing three very rapid rounds into that broad, brown chest. Mak was flung backward; he fell on his back but immediately jumped up, then fell down again, and then sat up, and the cornet, crouching down in his state of stress, fired another three bullets into him. Mak tumbled over onto his stomach and lay still.

Everything started blurring and swaying in front of Gai’s eyes, and he lowered himself onto the running board of the truck. His legs refused to hold him up. His ears were still filled with the repulsive crunching of flesh as the bullets entered the body of this strange man whom he loved. Then he recovered his senses, but he kept sitting there for a while, afraid to risk getting to his feet.

Mak’s brown body lay there among the white and pink rocks, itself as motionless as a rock. The cornet was standing in the same spot, holding his pistol at the ready as he greedily drew in the smoke of a cigarette. He didn’t look at Gai. Then he finished smoking his cigarette right down to the end, burning his lips, threw away the stub, and took two steps toward the dead man. But the second step was a very short one, and Mr. Cornet Chachu couldn’t bring himself to move in really close. He fired the finishing shot from a distance of ten paces, and he missed. Gai saw the stone dust spurt up right beside Mak’s head.

“Massaraksh,” the cornet hissed, and started stuffing his pistol into its holster. It took him a long time to stuff it in, and then he simply couldn’t button the holster. After that he walked over to Gai, grabbed hold of the chest of Gai’s uniform with his mutilated hand, and jerked Gai up onto his feet. Breathing loudly into his face, and drawling his words like a drunk, the cornet said, “All right, you will remain a corporal. But there’s no place for you in the Guards. You will write a request to be transferred to the army. Get in the truck.”

“There’s a Bad Kind of Smell Here…”

“There’s a bad kind of smell here,” said Dad.

“Really?” asked Father-in-Law. “I can’t smell anything.”

“It stinks, it stinks,” Stepfather peevishly grouched. “Some kind of rotten meat. Like at a garbage dump…”

“The walls must have rotted,” Dad decided.

“Yesterday I saw a new tank,” said Brother-in-Law. “The Vampire. Impeccable hermetic sealing, thermal barrier good for up to a thousand degrees…”

“They probably went rotten in the late emperor’s time,” said Dad, “And there hasn’t been any refurbishment work since the coup…”

“Did you approve it?” Stepbrother asked Brother-in-Law.

“Yes,” said Brother-in-Law.

“So when does it go into mass production?” asked Stepbrother.

“It already has,” said Father-in-Law. “Ten units a day.”

“With these tanks of yours we’ll all be left with no pants soon,” Stepfather grumped.

“Better no pants than no medals,” Brother-in-Law objected.

“You used to be a colonel,” Stepfather cantankerously told him, “and you haven’t changed. Always wanting to play with tanks…”

“My tooth’s nagging at me,” Dad pensively complained. “Wanderer, is it really so difficult to invent a painless way of fixing teeth?”

“I could think about it,” said Wanderer.

“You’d better think about heavy weapons systems,” Stepbrother angrily told him.

“I can think about heavy weapons systems too,” said Wanderer.

“Let’s not talk about heavy weapons systems today,” Dad suggested. “Let’s just say this isn’t the time.”

“Well, in my opinion, it’s a very good time,” objected Stepbrother. “The Pandeians have thrown another division at the Hontian border.”

“What does that have to do with you?” Stepfather morosely inquired.

“Plenty,” replied Stepbrother. “I made calculations for the following scenario: the Pandeians intervene in the Hontians’ mess, quickly put their own man in there, and we face a united front—fifty million against our forty.”

“I’d give big money to have them intervene in the Hontians’ mess,” said Stepfather. “You’re the one who always imagines any mess is a mess of pottage, so it can simply be eaten… But what I say is, anyone who touches Hontia has already lost.”

“That depends on how they touch it,” Father-in-Law said in a quiet voice. “If it’s done delicately, with small forces and without getting bogged down—just a light touch and then spring back as soon as they stop their quarreling… and at the same time, before the Pandeians can manage—”

“In the final analysis, what do we want?” asked Brother-in-Law. “It’s either the Hontians united, without that civil mess of theirs, or Hontians who are ours, or Hontians who are dead… In any case we can’t dispense with an invasion. Let’s agree on an invasion, and after that it’s a matter of the details. There’s a plan ready for every alternative.”

“You absolutely have to throw us in there without any pants,” said Stepfather. “You don’t care if there are no pants, just as long as there are medals… What do you want a united Hontia for, if we can have a disunited Pandeia?”

“A fit of detective novel raving,” Stepbrother remarked to nobody in particular.

“It’s not funny,” said Stepfather. “I’m not suggesting any unreal alternatives. If I say something, I have good grounds for it.”

“You can hardly have any good grounds,” Father-in-Law gently said. “It’s just that you’re seduced by the cheapness of a solution, and I understand you there—it’s just that the northern problem can’t be solved with small resources. You can’t get the job done with putsches or coups there. The Stepfather who came before you divided the Hontians, and now we have to unite them again… Putsches are all well and good, but that way you can end up with a revolution. After all, things don’t work the same way there as they do here.”

“And why don’t you say anything, Egghead?” asked Dad. “You are our egghead, after all.”

“When fathers talk, prudent children should hold their tongues,” Egghead replied with a smile.

“Come on, speak, speak, damn you.”

“I’m not a politician,” said Egghead. They all laughed. Brother-in-Law actually choked. “Honestly, gentlemen, there’s nothing funny about this… I really am only a narrow specialist. And as such, I can only inform you that, according to my data, the mood of the army officers is in favor of war.”

“So that’s how it is?” said Dad, giving him an intent look. “And you’re inclined the same way?”

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Egghead passionately exclaimed. “But in my view now is an expedient moment for an invasion: the reequipping of the army is being concluded.”

“All right, all right,” Dad good-naturedly said. “I’ll have a talk with you about that later.”

“There’s no need to have a talk with him later,” Father-in-Law objected. “We’re all on the same team here, and a specialist is obliged to express his opinion. That’s what we keep him for.”

“By the way, on the subject of specialists,” said Dad, “why don’t I see Twitcher here?”

“Twitcher is inspecting the mountain defensive belt,” said Brother-in-Law. “But we know his opinion anyway. He worries about the army, as if it were his own army…”

“Yes,” said Dad. “The mountains are serious business. Stepbrother, was it you who told me they’d found a Highlander spy in the Guards? Yes, dear gentlemen, the North is all well and good, but there are mountains looming in the east, and beyond the mountains is the ocean… We’ll cope with the North one way or another… You want to fight a war, well, we can fight one. Although… How long can we last, Wanderer?”

“About ten days,” said Wanderer.

“Well then, we can fight for five or six…”

“The plan of deep invasion,” said Brother-in-Law, “envisages the rout of Hontia in eight days.”

“A good plan,” Dad approvingly remarked. “All right, then that’s what we’ll decide on… You seem to be opposed, Wanderer?”

“It’s none of my business,” said Wanderer.

“All right,” said Dad, “so be against it… Well then, Stepfather, shall we join the majority?”

“Ah,” Stepfather said in disgust. “Do what you want… He’s frightened of a revolution…”

“Dad!” Father-in-Law triumphantly exclaimed. “I knew you’d be with us!”

“But of course!” said Dad. “Where would I be without you? I recall, I used to have some mines in the Governorate General of Hontia… copper mines… I wonder how they’re doing now?… Yes, Egghead! And we’ll probably have to organize public opinion too, won’t we? You’ve probably already come up with something, haven’t you? You are our egghead after all.”

“Of course, Dad,” said Egghead. “Everything’s ready.”

“Some kind of assassination attempt? Or an attack on the towers? You go off right now and prepare the materials for me before nightfall, and we’ll discuss the time frame here…”

When the door closed behind Egghead, Dad said, “Was there something you wanted to tell us about Blister, Wanderer?”