Things get easier now. I find my crack in the pavement, which still looks good, isn’t overgrown with weeds, and hasn’t changed color; I feel happy just looking at it. And it takes us all the way to the gates of the garage better than any markers.
I order Kirill to take us down to five feet, and I lie on my stomach and peer into the open gates. At first, I can’t see a thing, just darkness, but then my eyes adjust, and I see that the garage seems unchanged. The dump truck is standing over the pit, just like before—in great shape, without any rust holes or spots—and the stuff on the floor around it also looks the same; that’s probably because there isn’t much hell slime in the pit, and it hasn’t splashed out since my last visit. Only one thing worries me: something silver is sparkling at the back of the garage, near the canisters. That wasn’t there before. Well, all right, let it sparkle; we aren’t going back because of that! It’s not even sparkling in an unusual way, just a tiny bit, mildly and almost gently … I get up, dust myself off, and look around. Ah, and here are the trucks parked on the lot, really just like new; since I’ve last been here, they’ve gotten even newer, while the gasoline tanker, poor thing, is now completely rusted through and about to fall apart. And there’s the tire lying beside the gates, that you can see on their map …
I don’t like the look of that tire. There’s something wrong with its shadow. The sun is at our backs, but the shadow is stretching toward us. Oh well, it’s far away from us. Anyway, everything’s fine; we’ll manage. But still, what could be sparkling there? Or am I imagining things? Now, the thing to do would be to light up, sit down quietly, and think it through—what’s that silver stuff above the canisters, why isn’t it also beside them? Why is that tire’s shadow like that? The Vulture Burbridge was telling us something about the shadows, which sounded strange but harmless … The shadows do funny things around here. But what about that silver stuff? It looks just like a cobweb. What sort of spider could have left it behind? I’ve yet to see a single bug in the Zone. And the worst thing is that my empty is lying right there, two steps away from the canisters. I should have just taken it last time, then I’d have nothing to worry about. But the damn thing is full, so it’s heavy—I could have managed to lift it, but to drag it on my back, at night, crawling on all fours … Yeah, if you’ve never carried an empty, go ahead and try: it’s like lugging twenty pounds of water without a bucket. Well, should I go in? I guess I should. A drink would sure help …
I turn to Tender and say, “Kirill and I are going into the garage now. Stay here with the boot. Don’t touch the controls without my permission, no matter what happens, even if the ground below you catches fire. If you chicken out, I’ll find you in the afterlife.”
He nods at me seriously: Don’t worry, I won’t chicken out. His nose looks like a plum—I really gave it to him. I carefully lower the emergency ropes, take one more look at the silver stuff, wave at Kirill, and start to climb down. I stand on the pavement, waiting for him to go down the other rope. “Take it slow,” I say. “Don’t rush. Don’t raise dust.”
We’re standing on the pavement, the boot is swaying next to us, the ropes are wriggling under our feet. Tender is sticking his head over the railings, looking at us with despair in his eyes. We have to go in. I tell Kirill, “Walk two steps behind me, keep your eyes on my back, and stay alert.”
And I go in. I stop in the doorway and look around. Damn, it sure is easier to work during the day! I remember how I lay in this same doorway. It was pitch black, the hell slime was shooting tongues of flame up from the pit, blue ones, like burning alcohol, and the most frustrating thing was that the damn flames didn’t even give off light but only made the garage seem darker. And now it’s a breeze. My eyes have gotten used to the gloom, I can see everything, even the dust in the darkest corners. And there really is something sparkling there, silver threads are stretching from the canisters to the floor—looks just like a cobweb. It might in fact be a cobweb, but better to stay away from it.
And here I screw up. I should have Kirill walk next to me, wait until his eyes get used to the dark, and show him this cobweb, point right at it. But I’m used to working alone—my eyes adjust to the light, and I don’t think about Kirill.
I step inside and head straight for the canisters. I squat by the empty; there aren’t any cobwebs stuck to it. I take one end of it.
“All right, grab hold,” I say, “and don’t drop it—it’s heavy.”
I look up at him, and my heart leaps into my throat—I can’t say a word. I want to yell Stop, don’t move! and can’t. And there probably isn’t enough time, anyway, it all happens so fast: Kirill steps over the empty, turns around, and his back goes right into the silver stuff. The only thing I can do is close my eyes. I feel weak all over, can’t hear a thing—just the sound of the cobweb tearing. With a faint crackle, like a regular cobweb, except louder, of course. I’m crouching there with my eyes closed, can’t feel my hands or my feet, then Kirill says, “Well, are we picking it up?”
“Let’s do it,” I say.
We pick up the empty and, walking sideways, carry it to the exit. The damn thing is heavy—it’s hard to carry even for the two of us. We go out into the sun and stop near the boot. Tender is reaching his paws toward us already.
“All right,” says Kirill, “one, two—”
“No,” I say, “wait. Put it down first.”
We put it down.
“Turn around,” I say.
He turns without a word. I look—there’s nothing on his back. I check this way and that. Still nothing. Then I look around and check the canisters. Nothing there either.
“Listen,” I say to Kirill, still looking at the canisters. “Did you see the cobweb?”
“What cobweb? Where?”
“Never mind,” I say. “The Lord is merciful.” Meanwhile, I think, Actually, that remains to be seen. “All right,” I say, “grab hold.”
We load the empty onto the boot and put it on its side so it won’t roll around. It’s standing there, looking lovely—spotless, new, the copper gleaming in the sun, the blue filling swirling slowly between the copper disks in cloudy streams. It’s now obvious that it isn’t an empty but a container, like a glass jar with blue syrup inside. We admire it for a bit, then clamber up onto the boot ourselves and without further ado are on our way back.
These scientists sure have it easy! First of all, they work in the daylight. And second, the only hard part is getting into the Zone—on the way back, the boot drives itself. It has this feature, a route memorizer, I guess, that takes the boot back along the exact same route it took here. We’re floating back, repeating each maneuver, stopping, hanging in the air a bit, then continuing; we pass over all the nuts, I could pick them up if I wanted to.
Of course, my novices immediately cheer up. They’re looking this way and that, their fear almost gone—only curiosity left, and joy that everything ended well. They begin to chatter. Tender is waving his arms and threatening to come right back into the Zone after dinner, to lay the path to the garage. Kirill takes me by the sleeve and starts explaining his gravicon-centrate to me—that is, the bug trap. Well, eventually I have to shut them up. I calmly explain to them how many idiots became careless with relief and kicked the bucket on the way back. Be quiet, I tell them, and keep your eyes open, or you’ll meet the fate of Shorty Lyndon. That works. They don’t even ask me what happened to Shorty Lyndon. Much better. In the Zone you can easily take a familiar route a hundred times and kick off on the hundred and first. We’re floating in silence, and only one thing is on my mind: how I’ll twist the cap off the flask. I keep visualizing how I’ll take the first sip, but the cobweb occasionally flickers before my mind’s eye.
In short, we make it out of the Zone, and they send us, still in our boot, into the delouser, or, as the scientists say, the sanitization hangar. They wash us in three boiling liquids and three alkaline solutions, smear some crap on us, sprinkle us with powder, and wash us again, then dry us and say, “Ge
t going, guys, you’re free!” Tender and Kirill drag the empty along. People show up in droves—it’s hard to get through, and it’s so typical: everyone is staring and shouting greetings, but no one is brave enough to lend a hand to three tired men. Oh well, that’s none of my business. Nothing is my business anymore …
I pull the specsuit off and throw it on the floor—the sergeant lackeys’ll pick it up—then I head for the showers, since I’m soaked from head to toe. I lock myself in the stall, take out the flask, unscrew it, and attach myself to it like a leech. I’m sitting on the bench, my heart is empty, my head is empty, my soul is empty, gulping down the hard stuff like water. Alive. I got out. The Zone let me out. The damned hag. My lifeblood. Traitorous bitch. Alive. The novices can’t understand this. No one but a stalker can understand. And tears are pouring down my face—maybe from the booze, maybe from something else. I suck the flask dry; I’m wet, the flask is dry. As usual, I need just one more sip. Oh well, we’ll fix that. We can fix anything now. Alive. I light a cigarette and stay seated. I can feel it—I’m coming around. The bonus comes to mind. Here at the Institute that’s a given. I could go get the envelope this very minute. Or maybe they’ll bring it right to the showers.
I slowly undress. I take off my watch and look at it—my Lord, we were in the Zone for more than five hours! Five hours. I shudder. Yes, my friends, there’s no such thing as time in the Zone. Although, really, what’s five hours to a stalker? Nothing at all. You want twelve hours instead? Or maybe two whole days? When you don’t finish in one night, you stay in the Zone all day long facedown in the dirt; you can’t even pray properly but can only rave deliriously, and you don’t know if you are dead or alive. And the next night when you finish, you try to get out with the swag, except the guards are patrolling the borders with machine guns. And those toads hate you, they get no pleasure from arresting you, the bastards are scared to death that you might be contagious—they just want to shoot you down … And they are holding all the cards: go ahead and prove later that they killed you illegally. So there you are again, facedown in the dirt, praying until dawn, then until dusk, the swag lying beside you, and you don’t even know if it’s simply lying there or slowly killing you. Or maybe you’ll end up like Knuckles Isaac—he got stuck in an open area at dawn, lost his way, and wound up between two ditches—couldn’t go left or right. They shot at him for two hours, couldn’t hit him. For two hours he played dead. Thank God, they finally got tired of it, figured he was finished, and left. I saw him after that—I didn’t recognize him. They broke him, left only a shell of a man.
I wipe away my tears and turn on the water. I take a long shower, first in hot water, then in cold water, then again in hot water. I use up a whole bar of soap. Eventually I get sick of it. I turn the water off and immediately hear rapping on the door, and Kirill yelling cheerfully, “Hey, stalker, come on out! It smells like money out here!”
Money—that’s always good news. I open the door, Kirill’s standing there wearing only boxer shorts, in great spirits, no sign of melancholy, and he’s handing me an envelope.
“Take it,” he says, “from grateful humanity.”
“Screw grateful humanity! How much is it?”
“For extraordinary courage under danger, just this once—two months’ pay!”
Ah. That’s real money. If they paid me two months’ salary for every empty I brought in, I’d have told Ernest to fuck off a long time ago.
“So, are you happy?” says Kirill, beaming, grinning from ear to ear.
“I’m all right,” I say. “How about you?”
He doesn’t say anything. He grabs me around the neck, presses me to his sweaty chest, hugs me, then pushes me away and disappears into the next stall.
“Hey!” I shout after him. “Where’s Tender? Washing out his undies, I bet.”
“No way! Tender is surrounded by reporters, you should see how important he’s gotten. He’s giving them a real perspicuous account …”
“What kind of account?” I say.
“A perspicuous one.”
“All right,” I say, “sir. Next time I’ll bring a dictionary, sir.” Then I feel an electric shock go through me. “Wait, Kirill,” I say. “Come out here.”
“But I’m naked already,” he says.
“Come out, I’m not a girl!”
All right, he comes out. I take him by the shoulders and turn his back toward me. No, I imagined it. His back is clean, nothing on it except some rivulets of dried sweat.
“What’s with you and my back?” he asks.
I kick his naked ass, dive into my stall, and lock the door. Nerves, God damn it. I keep imagining things: first there, now here. To hell with it all! I’ll get plastered tonight. I gotta beat Richard, that’s the thing! The bastard sure knows how to play … You can’t win no matter what you’re dealt. I tried cheating, even blessing the cards under the table, nothing worked.
“Kirill!” I yell. “Are you going to the Borscht today?”
“It’s pronounced ‘borshch,’ not ‘borsht’—how many times do I have to tell you?”
“Cut it out! The sign says BORSCHT. Don’t you try to force your customs on us. Are you coming or not? I’d like to beat Richard.”
“I’m not sure, Red. You simple soul, you don’t even understand what we found today …”
“And you do?”
“To be honest, I don’t either. That’s fair. But at least we now know what these empties were used for, and if one of my ideas works out … I’ll write a paper and dedicate it to you personally: ‘To Redrick Schuhart, honored stalker, with reverence and gratitude.’”
“And then they’ll put me away for two years,” I say.
“But you’ll go down in science. This thing will forever be known as Schuhart’s jar. Sound good?”
While we’re joking around, I get dressed. I stuff the empty flask into my pocket, count the money again, and get on my way. “Have a good shower, you complicated soul.”
He doesn’t reply; the water’s very loud.
In the hallway I see Mr. Tender himself, completely red and strutting like a peacock. A crowd has formed around him—coworkers, journalists, even a few sergeants (fresh from dinner, picking their teeth), and he’s blathering on: “The technology we command practically guarantees a safe and successful expedition …” Here, he notices me and immediately dries up, smiling and waving tentatively. Shit, I think, I need to escape. I take off, but it’s too late. I hear footsteps behind me.
“Mr. Schuhart! Mr. Schuhart! A few words about the garage!”
“No comment,” I reply, breaking into a run. But I can’t get away: a guy with a mike is on my right, and another one, with a camera, is on my left.
“Did you see anything unusual in the garage? Please, just two words!”
“I have no comment!” I repeat, trying to keep the back of my head to the camera. “It’s just a garage.”
“Thank you. What do you think about the turbo-platforms?”
“They’re great,” I say, heading straight for the john.
“What’s your opinion about the goals of the Visit?”
“Talk to the scientists,” I say. And I slide into the bathroom.
I hear them scratching at the door. So I call out, “I highly recommend you ask Mr. Tender why his nose looks like a plum. He’s too modest to mention it, but that was our most exciting adventure.”
Man, they shoot down the hallway! Just like horses, I swear. I wait a minute—silence. I stick my head out—no one’s around. So I walk away, whistling. I go down to the lobby, show my ID to the beefy sergeant, then I see that he’s saluting me. Guess I’m the hero of the day.
“At ease, Sergeant,” I say. “I’m pleased with you.”
He flashes a huge grin at me, as if I paid him the greatest compliment. “Good job, Red,” he says. “I’m proud to know you.”
“Well,” I say, “you’ll have something to tell the girls back in Sweden, huh?”
“Hell
yeah!” he says. “They’ll be all over me!”
Really, the guy is OK. To be honest, I don’t like these hale and hearty types. The girls go crazy over them, and for what? It can’t just be the height … I’m walking along the street, trying to figure out what it could be. The sun is shining, no one’s around. And suddenly I want to see Guta real bad. Not for any particular reason. Just to look at her, hold her hand. That’s about all you can manage after the Zone: hand holding. Especially when you remember the stories about the children of stalkers—how they turn out … No, I shouldn’t even be thinking about Guta; first I need a bottle, at least, of the strong stuff.
I pass the parking lot, then I see the checkpoint. Two patrol cars are waiting there in all their glory—wide, yellow, bristling with searchlights and machine guns. And, of course, a whole crowd of cops is blocking the street. I walk along, looking down so I won’t see their faces; it’s best if I don’t look at them in broad daylight. A couple of guys here I’m afraid to recognize; there’d be one hell of a scene if I did. I swear, they’re lucky that Kirill convinced me to work for the Institute, otherwise I’d have found the assholes and finished them off.
I’m pushing my way through the crowd, almost past it, when I hear, “Hey, stalker!” Well, that has nothing to do with me, so I keep walking, pulling a cigarette from the pack. Someone catches up with me and grabs my sleeve. I shake his hand off, turn halfway toward him, and inquire politely, “What the hell are you grabbing my sleeve for, mister?”
“Wait, stalker,” he says. “Two questions for you.”
I look up at him—it’s my old friend Captain Quarterblad. He has completely dried up and turned a shade of yellow. “Hello, Captain,” I say. “How’s the liver?”
“Don’t you try to distract me, stalker,” he says angrily, boring his eyes into me. “You better explain to me why you don’t stop immediately when called.”
And two cops instantly appear behind him, pawing their guns. You can’t see their eyes, just their jaws working away below the helmets. Where in the world do they find these guys? Did they send them to Harmont to breed or what? I’m not usually afraid of the guards in the daytime, but the toads could search me, and that wouldn’t suit me at all right now.