Arkady Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic

“Listen, Red,” whispers Kirill. “Let’s jump, eh? Fifty feet up and then right back down, and there we’ll be at the garage, eh?”

“Quiet, you,” I say. “Just leave me alone right now.”

Up, he says. And what if something gets you at that height? They won’t even be able to find the pieces. Or maybe there’s a bug trap around here—never mind the pieces, there will be nothing left at all. These risk takers really get me: he doesn’t like waiting, you see, so let’s jump… In any case, it’s clear how to get to the mound, and we’ll figure the rest out from there. I slip my hand into my pocket and pull out a handful of nuts and bolts. I put them on the palm of my hand, show them to Kirill, and say, “Remember the story of Hansel and Gretel? Read it in school? Well, here we’ll have that in reverse. Look!”

And I throw the first nut. It flies a short way, like I intended, and lands about twenty-five feet away. The nut goes fine.

“Did you see that?” I ask.

“So?” he says.

“Don’t ‘so’ me. I’m asking you, did you see that?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Now, take our boot over to that nut at low speed and stop six feet in front of it. Got it?”

“Got it. You looking for graviconcentrates?”

“Never you mind what I’m looking for. Give me a second, I want to throw another one. Watch where it falls, then don’t take your eyes off it.”

I throw another nut. Naturally, this one also goes fine and lands just ahead of the first one.

“Go ahead,” I say.

He starts the boot. His face has become completely calm; you can see he’s figured everything out. They are all like that, the eggheads. The most important thing for them is to come up with a name. Until he comes up with one, you feel really sorry for him, he looks so lost. But when he finds a label like “graviconcentrate,” he thinks he’s figured it all out and perks right up.

We pass the first nut, then the second and third. Tender keeps sighing, shifting from one foot to the other and yawning nervously with a slight whimper—he’s suffering, the poor guy. It’s all right, this will probably do him good. He’ll take ten pounds off today, this is better than any diet… I throw the fourth nut. It doesn’t go quite right. I can’t explain it, but I feel it in my gut—something’s off. I immediately grab Kirill’s hand.

“Stop,” I say. “Don’t move an inch.”

I take the fifth nut and throw it farther and higher. There it is, the bug trap! The nut goes up all right and starts going down fine, but halfway down it looks like someone tugged it off to the side, pulling it so hard that it goes right into the clay and disappears.

“Ever see that?” I whisper.

“Only in the movies,” he says, straining forward so far he almost falls off the boot. “Throw one more, eh?”

Jesus. One more! As if one would be enough. Lord, these scientists! Anyway, I throw out eight more nuts, until I figure out the shape of the trap. To be honest, I could have managed with seven, but I throw one especially for him, right into the center, so he can properly admire his graviconcentrate. It smashes into the clay as if it were a ten-pound weight instead of a nut, then goes right out of sight, leaving only a hole in the ground. He even grunts with pleasure.

“All right,” I say. “We’ve had our fun, but that’s enough. Look over here. I’m throwing one out to show the way, don’t take your eyes off it.”

Anyway, we go around the bug trap and climb to the top of the mound. It’s a puny little mound, I’ve never even noticed it until today. Right… OK, so we’re hanging above the mound, the pavement is a stone’s throw away, at most twenty paces from here. Everything’s visible—you can make out every blade of grass, every little crack in the ground. It ought to be smooth sailing from here. Just throw the nut and get on with it. I can’t throw the nut.

I don’t understand what’s happening to me, but I just can’t force myself to throw it.

“What is it?” says Kirill. “Why did we stop here?”

“Wait,” I say. “Just be quiet, for God’s sake.”

All right, I think, now I’ll throw the nut, nothing to it, we’ll glide right by, won’t disturb a single blade of grass—half a minute, and there’s the pavement… And suddenly I break into an awful sweat! Some even gets into my eyes, and I know right then I won’t be throwing a nut that direction. To our left—sure, as many as you like. That route is longer, and the stones over there look suspicious, but it’ll have to do; I just can’t throw a nut in front of us. And so I throw one to our left. Kirill doesn’t say a thing, just turns the boot, drives it over to the nut, and only then looks at me. I must look pretty bad, since he immediately looks away.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “You can’t always take the straight path.” And I throw the last nut onto the pavement.

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.”