Аркадий Стругацкий - The Inhabited Island

Boar…

He jumped up. How much time had gone by? He went dashing back through the tunnel. Boar must also be lying with his toes turned up, but if he had heard the shooting, his nerves might have given way… Of course, that was highly doubtful—what nerves did Boar have?

He ran up to the elevator, pausing for a moment to glance at the gentlemen officers in their depressed state. It was a painful sight: all three of them had dropped their rifles and were weeping—they didn’t even have the strength to wipe away their tears and snot. Fine, weep a bit, it’s good for you. Weep over my Gai, weep over Bird… over Gel… over my Forester… I guess you haven’t wept since you were kids, and in any case you never wept over the people you killed. So weep a little bit at least before you die…

The elevator shot him up to the surface. The enfilade of rooms was full of people: officers, soldiers, corporals, guardsmen, civilians, all of them armed, all lying or sitting there lamenting, some wailing at the top of their lungs, some muttering, shaking their heads, and hammering one fist against their chests… and this one here had shot himself. Massaraksh, what a terrible thing it is, this Black Radiation, no wonder the Fathers were saving it for a rainy day.

He ran out into the vestibule, leaping over the feebly stirring people, almost flying head over heels down the stone steps, and stopped in front of his own car, relieved to be able to catch his breath. Boar’s nerves had held out. He was slumped in the front passenger seat with his eyes closed.

Maxim lugged the bomb out of the trunk, freed it from the oil-impregnated paper, carefully set it under his arm, and went back to the elevator without hurrying. He thoroughly examined the fuse, activated the timer, placed the bomb in the elevator cabin, and pressed the button. The cabin fell down and away, carrying with it a lake of fire that would be unleashed in ten minutes—or, rather, nine minutes and a number of seconds.

He ran back.

In the car he sat Boar up more or less straight, got in behind the wheel, and drove out of the parking lot. The gray building towered up over them, oppressive, grotesque, and doomed, chock full of doomed people incapable of moving or of understanding what was happening.

It was a nest, a hideous nest of vipers packed with the very choicest garbage, deliberately and thoughtfully selected garbage, and this garbage had been collected together here especially in order to transform into garbage everybody who was within reach of the hideous sorcery of radio, television, and radiation from the towers. All of them in there are enemies, and none of them would pause for even a second before riddling us with bullets, before betraying and crucifying me, Boar, Zef, Rada, and all my friends and dear ones.

And it’s a good thing that I’ve only just remembered this now; any earlier that thought would have been a hindrance to me. I would immediately have remembered Fish… The only human being in the doomed nest of vipers, and that human being happens to be a Fish. But what about Fish? he thought. What do I actually know about her? That she taught me to speak their language? And made up my bed after me? Come on now, leave Fish out of it, you know perfectly well that it’s not just a matter of Fish.

The point is that as of today you’re coming out to fight seriously, to the death, the way everybody else here fights, and you’ll have to fight against blockheads—against malicious blockheads, who have been reduced to dummies by the radiation; against cunning, ignorant, ravenous blockheads who directed that radiation; against benevolently motivated blockheads who would be glad to use the radiation to transform rabid, brutalized puppets into amiable, quasi-benign puppets… And they will all do their best to kill you, and your friends, and your cause, because—and remember this very well, master this lesson now for the rest of your life!—because in this world they don’t know any other way to change the opinion of those who don’t share their views.

The Sorcerer said, Do not let your conscience prevent you from thinking clearly; let reason learn to stifle your conscience when it is necessary . That’s right, thought Maxim. The truth of it is bitter, a terrible truth… They call what I have just done a heroic deed. Boar has lived to see this day. And Forester, Bird, Green, and Gel Ketshef all believed in this day like a heartwarming fairy tale, and so did my Gai, and hundreds and thousands of people whom I have never seen… But even so, I feel bad about it. And if I want people to trust me in the future, I must never tell anyone that the greatest feat of courage I performed wasn’t when I cavorted about under a hail of bullets but right now, when there is still enough time to go back and defuse the bomb but I’m driving this car as hard as I can push it, away from that cursed place…

He drove hard along the straight highway, the same road along which Fank had driven him six months earlier in his luxurious limousine, trying to overtake the endless column of armored trucks, hurtling along the road in order to hand Maxim over to Wanderer… and now it was clear why… Could he really have already known that the radiation didn’t affect me, that I didn’t understand anything and I could be turned and twisted any way at all? He must have known, that damned Wanderer did know. And that means he really is a devil, the most terrifying man in the country, and maybe on the planet.

“He knows everything,” the state prosecutor told me, fearfully glancing back over his shoulder… But no, not everything—you have outsmarted Wanderer, Mak, you have beaten the devil. And now you have to finish him off before it’s too late, before he has time to bounce back. Or maybe he has already been finished off—right in front of the gates of his own lair… Oh, I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it, the guys aren’t up to that job. Blister had twenty-four relatives with machine guns…

Massaraksh. It’s true that I don’t know how revolutions are made. I didn’t make any preparations for seizing the telegraph office, the telephone exchange, and the bridges right at the very outset, I have hardly any men at all, the rank-and-file underground members don’t know me, Central HQ will be against me… I didn’t even manage to inform General in the penal labor camp to get ready to rouse the political prisoners and shoot them up here on a special train. But no matter what happens there, I have to finish Wanderer off. I have to be able to finish Wanderer off and hold out for a few hours until the army and the Guards are knocked out by radiation deprivation. None of them know about radiation deprivation, do they? Even Wanderer probably doesn’t know—how could he know? After all, in the entire country, Gai is the only one who has ever been removed from the radiation field—by me.

There were lots of cars on the highway, all of them standing in chaotic disarray—across the roadway, at a slant, slumped over into the roadside ditches. The drivers and passengers, crushed by depression, were sitting, dolefully lamenting, on the running boards, helplessly slouching off the seats, and lying around at the edge of the road. All of this was a hindrance; Maxim constantly had to brake, doubling back and driving around blockages, and he didn’t immediately notice that moving toward him from the direction of the city, also doubling back and driving around blockages, was a low, flat, bright yellow government automobile.

They met on a relatively clear section of the highway and shot past each other, almost colliding, and Maxim had time to spot a naked cranium, round green eyes, and immense, protruding ears. He cringed bodily, because suddenly everything had gone down the tubes again… Wanderer! Massaraksh! The entire country is lying around in a state of depression, and that bastard, that devil, has wormed his way out of things again! So he did invent his protective device after all… And I don’t have a gun…