Аркадий Стругацкий - The Inhabited Island

He was as calm and cool as always. “Hello, Mak,” he said. “What’s happened?”

Maxim turned the car around and drove back out onto the main street. “Do you know what a thermobaric bomb is?” he asked.

“I’ve heard about them,” said Boar.

“Excellent.”

For a while they drove in silence. The traffic was heavy and Maxim switched off, concentrating on how to cut in, work his way forward, and squeeze his way through between the immense trucks and old, stinking buses without scraping anybody or letting anybody scrape him so that he could catch the green light and then catch the next green light without sacrificing any of the pitiful speed that they already had, and eventually their car broke out onto Forest Boulevard, the familiar highway lined with huge, branching trees.

It’s amusing, Maxim suddenly thought. I drove into this world along this very road—or, rather, poor old Fank drove me into it, and I didn’t have a clue about anything, I thought he was a specialist in aliens. And now maybe I’m driving out of this world along the same road, and maybe even out of the world altogether, and I’m carrying a good man away with me… He squinted sideways at Boar. Boar’s face was absolutely calm; he was sitting there with the elbow above his false hand sticking out of the window and waiting for when he would be given an explanation. Maybe he was surprised, maybe he was agitated, but it wasn’t obvious, and Maxim felt proud that a man like this trusted him and relied on him without the slightest hesitation.

“I’m very grateful to you, Boar,” he said.

“How’s that?” Boar asked, turning his dry, yellowish face toward Maxim.

“Do you remember, at one of the HQ sessions you called me aside and gave me some sensible advice?”

“I remember.”

“Well then. I’m grateful to you for that. I took your advice.”

“Yes, so I noticed. You even disappointed me a bit by doing that.”

“You were right back then,” said Maxim. “I listened to your advice, and now as a result of that, things have turned out so that I have a chance to get into the Center.”

Boar gave a sudden jolt. “Right now?” he quickly asked.

“Yes. I’ve got to hurry, I haven’t had a chance to prepare anything. I might be killed, and then it will all have been in vain. That’s why I’ve taken you with me.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ll go into the building, you’ll stay in the car. After a while the alarm will be raised, and maybe shooting will break out. But it shouldn’t involve you. You keep sitting in the car and waiting. You wait for…” Maxim thought for a moment, calculating… “You wait for twenty minutes. If you get a jolt of radiation during that time, it means everything has worked out fine. You can pass out with a happy smile on your face… If not—get out of the car. There’s a bomb in the trunk with a synchronous fuse set for ten minutes. Unload the bomb onto the road, activate the fuse, and drive away. There’ll be a panic. A very great panic. Try to squeeze everything you can out of it.”

Boar pondered for a while. “Will you just let me call a couple of places?” he asked.

“No,” said Maxim.

“You see,” said Boar. “If they don’t kill you, then as I understand it, you’re bound to need men who are ready for a fight. If they do kill you, then I’ll need them. That’s what you took me along for, in case they kill you… But on my own I can only make a start, and there won’t be much time, and the men have to be warned in advance.”

“HQ?” Maxim asked in a hostile tone.

“Absolutely not. I’ve got my own group.”

Maxim didn’t say anything. A five-story building with a stone wall running across its pediment was already rising up ahead of them. That building. Somewhere inside it Fish was wandering along the corridors and the infuriated Hippopotamus was yelling and sputtering. And the Center was in there. The circle was closing.

“All right,” said Maxim. “There’s a pay phone at the entrance. When I go inside—but not before—you can get out of the car and make your calls.”

“OK,” said Boar.

They were already approaching the turn off the highway. For some reason Maxim remembered Rada and imagined what would happen to her if he didn’t come back. Things would be bad for her. Or maybe, on the contrary, they would let her go. But anyway, she’ll be alone, with Gai gone, and me gone… The poor little girl…

“Do you have a family?” he asked Boar.

“Yes. A wife.”

Maxim bit his lip. “I’m sorry things have turned out so awkward,” he muttered.

“Never mind,” Boar calmly said. “I said good-bye. I always say good-bye when I leave the house… So this is the Center, then? Who would ever have thought it? Everybody knows that the television center and the radio center are here, and now it turns out that the Center is here too…”

Maxim stopped in the parking lot, squeezing in between a dilapidated little old car and a luxurious government limousine.

“Well, this is it,” he said. “Wish me luck.”

“With all my heart,” said Boar. His voice broke and he started coughing. “So I’ve lived to see this day after all,” he murmured.

Maxim laid his cheek on the steering wheel. “It would be good to survive this day,” he said. “It would be good to see the evening.” Boar looked at him in alarm. “I really don’t feel like going,” Maxim explained. “Oh, I don’t feel like it at all… By the way, Boar, don’t forget to tell your friends that you don’t live on the inner surface of a sphere. You live on the outer surface of a sphere. And there are many such spheres in existence on which people live far worse than you do, and some on which they live far better. But nowhere do they live more stupidly… You don’t believe me? Well, to hell with you anyway. I’m going.”

He swung open the door and clambered out. He walked across the asphalt surface of the parking lot and started walking up the stone steps, one step at a time, fingering in his pocket the entry pass that the prosecutor had had made for him. It was hot and the sky was shimmering like aluminum—the impenetrable sky of the inhabited island. The stone steps burned his feet through the soles of his shoes, or maybe he was just imagining it.

It was all stupid. The entire undertaking was amateurish. Why the hell should he do all of this when they hadn’t had a chance to properly prepare… What if there are two officers sitting there instead just one? Or even three officers sitting there in that little room, waiting for me with their automatic rifles at the ready? Cornet Chachu shot me with a pistol, the caliber’s the same, only there’ll be more bullets, and I’m not the same man I used to be; it’s really worn me down, this inhabited island of mine. And this time they won’t just let me just creep away… I’m a fool. I always was a fool and I still am. Mr. State Prosecutor snared me, hooked me on his rod… But how could he have trusted me? It doesn’t make any sense… It would be good to slope off and head for the mountains right now, breathe some pure mountain air—I’ve never had a chance to visit the mountains here… And I really love mountains… Such a clever, distrustful man—and he trusted me with such a valuable thing! The greatest treasure of this world. This abominable, repulsive, iniquitous treasure! Curse and confound it, massaraksh, and three more massarakshes, and another thirty-three massarakshes!

He opened the glass door and held out his pass to the guardsman. Then he walked across the vestibule—past the girl in glasses, who was still stamping pieces of paper, past the administrator in the peaked cap, who was bawling somebody out on the phone—and at the entrance to the corridor he showed his internal pass to another guardsman. The guardsman nodded to him—they were already acquainted, you could say: Maxim had come here every day for the last three days.