Arkady Strugatsky - Hard to Be a God

“So the Greaves of Our Lord are for the legs, they are wider and have spikes, and the Gloves of the Great Martyr, they have screws—that’s specifically for the hand, got it?”

“Funny thing, brothers! I go inside and see—you know who’s in chains? Fika the Red, the butcher from our street, used to slap me around when drunk. You better watch out, I think, I’m gonna have some fun.”

“Pekora the Lip hasn’t been back since the monks dragged him off this morning. And he didn’t come to the exam.”

“Ugh, I shoulda used the meat grinder, but I stupidly bashed his sides with a crowbar, so, you know, I broke a rib. So Father Kin grabs my head and kicks me square in the tail-bone, and brothers, I gotta tell you—I saw stars, it hurt so bad. ‘What are you doing,’ he says, ‘spoiling my goods?’”

Look, my friends, look, thought Rumata, slowly turning his head from side to side. This isn’t theory. This is something no one has ever seen. Watch, listen, videograph this… and appreciate and love your age, damn it, and bow to the memory of those who went through this! Take a good look at these mugs—young, dumb, indifferent, used to all sorts of brutality—and don’t turn up your noses at it, either. Your own ancestors were no better.

They saw him. Two dozen eyes who’d seen it all stared at him.

“Hey, there’s a don. His Lordship’s so white.”

“Heh… Everyone knows nobles ain’t used to it.”

“You’re supposed to give water in these cases, I hear, but the cup’s chain is too short—we couldn’t reach him.”

“No need, the don will come around.”

“I hope I get that kind… With that kind, you ask them a question and they answer it.”

“Quiet, brothers, before His Lordship starts slashing at us. Look at all those rings… and the paper.”

“See how he’s staring at us. Let’s get out of harm’s way, brothers.”

They moved away together, retreating to the shadows, their cautious spider eyes gleaming at him from the gloom. That’s enough of that, thought Rumata. He was about to grab some passing monk by the cassock, but then he noticed three of them at once, not scurrying around but doing their work. They were beating one of the tower’s torturers with sticks, probably for negligence.

Rumata approached them. “In the name of the Lord,” he said quietly, clanking the rings.

The monks lowered their sticks and took a good look. “In His name,” the tallest one said.

“Now, Fathers,” Rumata said, “please take me to the floor attendant.”

The monks exchanged glances. The torturer nimbly crawled away and hid behind the tank. “What do you need him for?” asked the tall monk.

Rumata silently raised the paper to his face, held it there for a bit, and lowered it.

“Aha,” the monk said. “So right now I’m the floor attendant.”

“Excellent,” said Rumata. He rolled the paper into a tube. “I’m Don Rumata. His Grace has given me Doctor Budach. Go and fetch him.”

The monk stuck his hand under his hood and loudly scratched himself. “Budach?” he said meditatively. “Which one’s Budach? The child molester?”

“Nah,” another monk said. “The child molester—that’s Rudach. He was already released last night. Father Kin unchained him himself and took him out. And I—”

“Nonsense, nonsense!” Rumata said impatiently, slapping his hip with the paper. “Budach. The king’s poisoner.”

“Ah,” the attendant said. “I know him. But he’s probably already been hanged. Brother Paca, go to twelve, take a look. Why, are you going to take him away?” he addressed Rumata.

“Naturally,” said Rumata. “He’s mine.”

“Then hand that paper over. The paper’s for the file.”

Rumata gave him the paper.

The attendant turned it over in his hands, inspected the seals, and then said in admiration: “They sure can write! Don, you stand aside for a bit, we have work to do. Hey, where did he go?”

The monks started to look around, searching for the delinquent torturer. Rumata moved away. They dragged the torturer out from behind the tank, laid him down on the floor once again, and started giving him a businesslike thrashing, not being excessively cruel. Five minutes later, the dispatched monk appeared from beyond the turn, dragging a thin, completely gray-haired old man wearing dark clothes on a rope behind him.

“Here he is, your Budach!” he shouted happily from a distance. “Not hanged at all, Budach’s alive, he’s healthy! A bit weak, though, must have been sitting hungry for a while, I guess.”

Rumata stepped toward them, tore the rope from the monk’s hands, and took the noose off the old man’s neck. “You’re Budach of Irukan?” he asked.

“I am,” the old man said, looking at him from beneath his brows.

“I’m Rumata; follow me and stay close.” Rumata turned toward the monks. “In the name of the Lord,” he said.

The attendant straightened his back and, lowering his stick, answered, a little out of breath, “In His name.”

Rumata looked at Budach and saw that the old man was holding on to the wall and could hardly stand. “I don’t feel well,” he said with a sickly smile. “I apologize, noble don.”

Rumata took him by the arm and led him away. When the monks were out of sight, he stopped, took a sporamin pill from the vial, and handed it to Budach. Budach looked at it quizzically. “Take it,” Rumata said, “You’ll immediately feel better.”

Budach, still holding on to the wall, took the pill, examined it, sniffed it, raised his shaggy eyebrows, then carefully put it on his tongue and smacked his lips.

“Swallow it, swallow it,” Rumata said with a smile.

“ Mm-m-m …” he said. “I had assumed that I knew everything about medicines.” He paused, noting his sensations. “Mmmm!” he said “Curious! The dried spleen of the boar Y? Although, no, the flavor isn’t putrid.”

“Let’s go,” said Rumata.

They walked along the corridor, went up the stairs, went down another corridor, and climbed another staircase. And then Rumata stopped in his tracks. A familiar deep roar was resounding through the prison arches. Somewhere in the bowels of the prison, bellowing at the top of his lungs, spouting monstrous curses, raging against God, the saints, hell, the Holy Order, Don Reba, and who knows what else, was the friend of his heart Baron Pampa don Bau de Suruga de Gutta de Arkanar. The baron got caught after all, thought Rumata with remorse. I had completely forgotten about him. And he wouldn’t have forgotten about me.

Rumata hurriedly took two bracelets off his hand, put them on Doctor Budach’s thin wrists, and said, “Go up, but don’t go through the gates. Wait off to the side somewhere. If someone bothers you, show them the bracelets and act impudent.”

Baron Pampa roared like a nuclear ship in the polar fog. The echo resounded through the arches. The people in the hallways froze, reverently listening with mouths open. Many of them were making circular motions with their thumbs, warding off the devil. Rumata rushed down two staircases, knocking the monks going the other way off their feet, laid himself a path through the crowd of graduates with his scabbards, and kicked open the door of the chamber, which was warping from the baron’s roars. In the flickering torchlight he saw his friend Pampa: the mighty baron had been chained to a cross, naked and upside down. His face had darkened from the blood flow. A stooped official sat behind a crooked table, covering his ears, and the torturer, glossy with sweat and somehow resembling a dentist, was sorting through clanking instruments in an iron basin.

Rumata gently closed the door behind him, walked up to the torturer from behind, and hit him on the back of the head with the hilt of his sword. The torturer turned around, wrapped his arms around his head, and sat down in the basin. Rumata pulled his sword from its scabbard and struck the paper-covered table at which the official was sitting, cutting it in half. Everything was now in order. The torturer was sitting in the basin, hiccuping softly, and the official had very nimbly crawled away into the corner and lay down there. Rumata came up to the baron, who had been looking at him upside down with cheerful curiosity, grabbed the chains that held the baron’s feet, and ripped them out of the wall with two jerks. Then he carefully put the baron’s feet on the floor. The baron went silent, froze in the strange position, then gave a hard tug and freed his hands.