“Reveille,” Andrei said wearily.
The Mute opened his eyes and got up. Izya raised his head and looked at Andrei through swollen eyebrows.
“Where’s Pak?” Andrei asked, looking around.
Izya sat up, sank his hooked fingers into his mop of hair, and started scratching furiously. “Daaamn . . .” he mumbled in a thick voice. “Listen, I’m desperately hungry . . . How long can this last?”
“We’ll leave straightaway,” Andrei told him, still looking around. “Where’s Pak?”
“Gontolibry,” Izya replied, yawning fervently. “Ah, yuck, I’m totally wasted, dammit . . .”
“Where did he go?”
“He went to the library.” Izya jumped to his feet, picked up his small volume, and started stuffing it into his rucksack. “We decided that he’d go and select some books in the meantime. What time is it now? Seems like my watch has stopped . . .”
Andrei glanced at his own watch. “Three,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Maybe we could eat first?” Izya tentatively suggested.
“As we walk,” said Andrei. He had a vaguely uneasy feeling. Something was bothering him. Something was wrong. He took the automatic from the Mute, narrowed his eyes, and strode out onto the incandescent steps.
“That’s just great . . .” Izya grumbled behind him. “Now we eat on the move. I waited for him, like an honest man, and he won’t even let me eat right . . . Hey, Mute, hand me that rucksack . . .”
Andrei walked quickly between the pediments, without looking back. He was hungry too, his insides felt sore, but something urged him to keep moving, and move fast. He arranged the strap of his automatic more comfortably on his shoulder and glanced rapidly at his watch again. It was still one minute to three. His watch had stopped.
“Hey, Mr. Counselor!” Izya called to him. “Take this.”
Andrei stopped for a moment and accepted two hard biscuits with a filling of fatty canned pork. Izya was already zestfully crunching and chomping. Andrei examined his sandwich as he walked along, trying to see which side would be most convenient to bite on, and asked, “When did Pak leave?”
“Well, he went almost immediately,” Izya said with his mouth full. “The two of us looked over the Pantheon, and we didn’t find anything interesting, so he set off.”
“That was wrong,” said Andrei. He’d realized what was worrying him.
“What was wrong?”
Andrei didn’t answer.
4
There was no sign of Pak in the library. Of course; he was never intending to come in here. The books were still lying in a heap, exactly like before.
“Strange,” said Izya, turning his head this way and that in bewilderment. “He said he was going to pick out everything on sociology.”
“He said, he said,” Andrei growled through his teeth. He kicked the nearest plump volume with the toe of his shoe, turned around, and ran down the stairs. “So he outfoxed us after all. Cunning old slant-eye outfoxed us. The Jew of the Far East . . .” Andrei didn’t really understand what the Jew of the Far East had done that was so cunning, but every fiber of his being cried out that he had been outfoxed.
Now they stuck close to the walls as they walked along—Andrei on the right side of the street and the Mute, who had also realized things were looking ugly, on the left. Izya tried to set out straight down the middle, but Andrei yelled at him so fiercely that the archivist immediately dashed back and fell in behind him, walking with him step for step, sniffing in indignation and scornfully snorting. The visibility was about fifty meters; beyond that the street looked as if it were submerged in an aquarium, with everything blurred and trembling, shimmering and glimmering—waterweed even seemed to be rippling above the surface of the road.
When they drew level with the movie theater, the Mute suddenly stopped. Andrei, who was watching him out of the corner of his eye, stopped too. The Mute stood there motionless, as if he were listening to something, clutching his naked machete in his lowered hand.
“I smell burning,” Izya in a low voice behind Andrei.
And Andrei immediately caught the smell of burning too. That’s it, he thought, gritting his teeth.
The Mute raised the hand holding the machete, gestured along the street, and moved on. They covered another two hundred meters or so, taking every possible precaution. The burning smell grew stronger—a cocktail of hot metal, smoldering rags, diesel oil, and some other sweetish, almost appetizing odors. What happened back there? Andrei thought, gritting his teeth so hard he heard his temples crack. What have they gone and done? he repeated over and over in his anguish. What’s burning back there? Because that’s where the burning is, no doubt about it . . . And at that moment he saw Pak.
He immediately thought it was Pak because the body was wearing the familiar jacket of faded blue denim twill. No one else in the camp had a jacket like that. The Korean was lying on the corner of the street, with his legs sprawled out and his head lowered onto his short-barreled, handmade automatic. The short barrel was pointing along the street in the direction of the camp. Pak looked unusually fat, as if he’d been inflated, and his hands were a glossy bluish-black.
Before Andrei could even grasp what he was really seeing, Izya shoved him aside with a strange croaking sound and trampled on Andrei’s feet as he darted across the intersection and went down on his knees beside the dead body.
Andrei gulped and looked toward the Mute, who was nodding emphatically and pointing to something up ahead with his machete. Andrei spotted another body up there, at the very limit of visibility—someone else fat and black was lying there. And now through the haze Andrei caught sight of an image, distorted by refraction—a column of gray smoke rising up over the roofs.
Lowering his automatic, Andrei cut across the intersection. Izya had already gotten up off his knees, and when Andrei got close, he realized why: the body in the light blue denim twill exuded an unbearable, sickly sweet odor.
“My God . . .” said Izya, turning his dead face, streaming with sweat, toward Andrei. “They killed him, the scum . . . All of them together aren’t worth even his little finger . . .”
Andrei glanced down briefly at the ghastly, bloated puppet with a black, gaping wound where the back of its head ought to be. The sun glinted dully on a scattering of copper cartridge cases. Andrei walked around Izya and cut slantwise across the street, no longer hiding or stooping over, toward the next bloated puppet and the Mute, who was already squatting down beside it.
This one was lying on his back, and although his face was appallingly swollen and black, Andrei recognized him: it was one of the geologists, Quejada’s deputy for surveying work, Ted Kaminski. It seemed especially horrible that he was dressed in nothing but his shorts and, for some strange reason, a wadded jacket like the drivers wore. He had obviously been shot from behind, and the burst of gunfire had passed right through him—on his chest the jacket was peppered with holes, with clumps of gray wadding sticking out of them. An automatic rifle with no ammunition clip was lying about five steps away.
The Mute touched Andrei on the shoulder and pointed ahead, to where there was another body, doubled up and huddled against the wall on the right side of the street. It turned out to be Permyak. He had obviously been shot in the middle of the street—there was still a dried-out black patch on the cobblestones there—but in his agony he had crept over to the wall, leaving a thick black trail behind him, and died with his head tucked down, clutching his bullet-shredded stomach in his arms with every last ounce of strength.
They had killed each other here in a fit of demented fury, like enraged predators, like frenzied tarantulas, like rats deranged by hunger. Like men.
Tevosyan was in the unpaved side street nearest to the camp, lying slantwise across the road on the dried-up excrement. He had been chasing the tractor, which turned into this alley and moved off toward the precipice, ripping up the hard-baked earth with its impatient caterpillar treads. Tevosyan chased it all the wa
y from the camp, shooting as he ran, and they shot at him from the tractor, and here, at the intersection where the statue with the toadish face had stood that night, they got him, and he had been left lying here, grinning with his yellow teeth, in his army tunic, smeared with dust, excrement, and blood. But before he died, or maybe after he died, he hit the target too: halfway to the cliff edge, Sergeant Vogel was lying in a bloated heap, clutching with his gnarled fingers at the earth crushed to powder by the caterpillar tracks. From there the tractor had gone on without him—all the way to the cliff edge and down into the Abyss.
In the camp a burnt-out sled was smoldering. Little tongues of smoky orange flame were still flicking over the metal barrels, warped and battered by the bullets shot through them and turned bluish-black by the heat, and clouds of greasy smoke were rising up into the pale sky. Someone’s burnt legs protruded from a caked heap of slag on a trailer, and the appetizing odor that made Andrei feel nauseous hung in the air.
Roulier’s naked body was hanging out the window of the cartographers’ room—his long, hairy arms reached almost down to the sidewalk, where an automatic rifle was lying. The wall all around the window was gouged and chipped by bullets, and on the opposite side of the street Vasilenko and Palotti were lying together in a heap, cut down by a single burst of gunfire. There were no weapons anywhere near them, and Vasilenko’s shrunken face still wore an expression of boundless amazement and fear.
The other geologist, the other cartographer, and Ellisauer, the deputy expedition leader for technical matters, had all been stood up against that same wall and shot. They were lying there in row in front of a door riddled with bullet holes—Ellisauer in his shorts, and the other two naked.
And at the very center of this stinking hecatomb, right in the middle of the street, Colonel St. James, draped in the British flag, was calmly lying on a table with aluminum legs, with his hands folded on his chest. He was in full dress uniform, with all his medals. Still as prim and imperturbable as ever, and even smiling ironically. Beside him, with his gray-haired head nestling against the road, lay Duggan—also in full dress uniform, and clutching the colonel’s broken cane in his hands.
And that was all. Six soldiers, including Hnoipek, plus the engineer Quejada and the debauched girl Skank, and the tractor with its sled, had disappeared, leaving behind corpses, geological equipment dumped in a heap, and a few automatic rifles stacked in a pyramid. And a vile stench. And greasy soot. And a suffocating odor of roasted flesh from the sled that was still smoldering. Andrei stumbled into his room, collapsed into a chair, and lowered his head onto his hands with a groan. It was all over. Forever. And there was no salvation from the pain, no salvation from the shame, and no salvation from death.
I brought them here. I did it. I left them here on their own, like a stinking coward. I wanted to take a break. From their ugly faces—what a skunk, what a namby-pamby jerk, what a lousy wuss . . . Colonel, ah, Colonel! You shouldn’t have died, you shouldn’t have done that! If I hadn’t gone he wouldn’t have died. If he hadn’t died, no one here would have dared to lift a finger. Animals, animals . . . Hyenas! I ought to have shot them, shot them!
He gave another long, drawn-out groan and dragged his wet cheek across his sleeve. We’ve been idling away the time in libraries . . . making speeches to statues . . . You lousy bungler, you bag of wind, you screwed everything up, let everything unravel . . . So now croak, you bastard! No one will cry. What damned use are you to anyone anyway? But I’m afraid, aren’t I, afraid. But it’s so horrible, so horrible . . . They hunted each other down, they shot each other—they shot men lying on the ground, they shot dead men, they put them up against the wall, swearing and reviling them, punching and kicking them . . . How did it come to this, guys? What have I reduced you to? And for what? For what?
He slammed his fists down onto the tabletop, then straightened up and wiped his face with his open palm. Through the window he could hear Izya screeching inarticulately and the Mute cooing soothingly, like a pigeon. I don’t want to live, Andrei thought. I don’t want to. To hell with all this. He got up from the table to go out there, to Izya, to the men—and suddenly he saw the expedition log lying open in front of him. He pushed it away from him in disgust, but immediately noticed that the last page wasn’t written in his handwriting. He sat down again and started reading.
Quejada wrote:
Day 31. Yesterday, in the morning of day 30 of the expedition, Counselor Voronin, the archivist Katzman, and the emigrant Pak set off on a reconnaissance sortie, intending to return to the camp before taps, but did not come back. Today at 1430 Colonel St. James, the acting leader of the expedition, died of a sudden heart attack. Since Counselor Voronin has still not returned from the reconnaissance sortie, I am assuming command of the expedition. Signed: deputy expedition leader for scientific matters, D. Quejada, 1545.
Then came the usual gobbledygook about provisions and water expended, about the temperature and the wind, and also an order appointing Sergeant Vogel commander of the military unit, a reprimand to deputy expedition leader for technical matters Ellisauer for procrastination, and an order, also to Ellisauer, to expedite the repair of the second tractor. After that Quejada wrote:
Tomorrow I intend to hold a funeral with full military honors for the untimely deceased Colonel St. James and immediately after the ceremony dispatch a well-armed group of men to search for Counselor Voronin’s reconnaissance party. Should the missing party not be found, I intend to give the order to turn back, since I consider continuing our advance to be even more pointless that it was before.
Day 32. The reconnaissance party has not returned. For a shameful brawl that broke out last night, I am giving the cartographer Roulier and privates Hnoipek and Tevosyan a final warning and withdrawing their water ration for one day . . .
After that the page was streaked with black zigzags and spatters of ink, and the entries came to an end. Evidently shooting had broken out in the street, and Quejada had jumped up and never come back.
Andrei reread the entries twice. Yes, Quejada, this is what you wanted. You got what you wanted. And I blamed it all on Pak, may he rest in peace . . . He bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut when the bloated puppet in a faded blue jacket appeared in front of him again, and suddenly he realized. Day thirty-two? Thirty! Yesterday I wrote the entry for day twenty-eight . . . He flipped the page back hurriedly. Yes. Twenty-eight . . . And these bloated corpses—they’ve been lying here for days . . . My God, what is all this? One, two . . . What date is it today? We only left this morning!
And he remembered the hot square studded with empty pediments, and the icy darkness of the Pantheon, and the blind statues at the infinitely long table . . . That was a long time ago. It was a very long time ago. Yep, yep. Some unholy power must have swept me up and swirled me around, set my head spinning and addled my brains . . . I could have come back the same day. I would have found the colonel still alive, I wouldn’t have let it happen . . .
The door swung open and Izya walked in, looking like a different person—all dried out, somehow, with a bony, tight-drawn face, sullen and bitter, as if it wasn’t he who had just been shrieking under the windows like a woman. He flung his half-empty rucksack into the corner, sat in an armchair facing Andrei, and said, “The bodies have been lying here for at least three days. What’s happening? Do you understand?”
Without saying anything, Andrei pushed the logbook across the table to him. Izya avidly grabbed it, devoured the entries in a single gulp, and looked up at Andrei with red eyes.
“The Experiment is the Experiment,” Andrei said with a crooked grin.
“Lousy, devious crap . . .” Izya said with hatred and disgust. He glanced through the log entries again and dropped the logbook on the table.
“I think they tampered with us at the square,” said Andrei. “Where the pediments are.”
Izya nodded, leaned back in the armchair, jerked up his beard, and closed his eyes. “Well, what are we going to do, C
ounselor?” he asked.
Andrei didn’t answer.
“Just don’t you even think of shooting yourself!” said Izya. “I know you . . . the Komsomol member . . . the young eagle . . .”
Andrei gave another crooked grin and tugged on his collar. “Listen,” he said, “let’s go somewhere else . . .”
Izya opened his eyes and stared at him.
“The stink from the window . . .” Andrei said with an effort. “I can’t . . .”
“Let’s go to my room,” said Izya.
In the corridor the Mute got up to greet them. Andrei took hold of his bare, muscular arm and drew him along. They all walked into Izya’s room together. The windows here looked out onto a different street. Beyond the low roofs behind the windows, the Yellow Wall soared upward. There was no stink at all here, and for some reason it was even cool. Only there was nowhere to sit—the floor was completely covered with heaps of paper and books.
“On the floor, sit on the floor,” Izya said, and collapsed onto the tangled, dirty sheets on his bed. “Let’s think,” he said. “I don’t intend to croak here. I’ve still got a whole heap of work to do.”
“What’s there to think about?” Andrei said morosely. “It all comes down to one thing . . . There’s no water, they took it. And all the food’s been burned. There’s no way back—we’d never make it across the desert . . . If we overtook those scumbags . . . But then, we can’t, it’s been days . . .” He paused for a moment. “If we could find water—is it far to that pumping station of yours?”
“About twenty kilometers,” said Izya. “Or thirty.”
“If we travel by night, in the cool . . .”
“We can’t travel by night,” said Izya. “It’s too dark. And the wolves . . .”
“There aren’t any wolves here,” Andrei objected.
“How do you know that?”