Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

‘How do you…?’ the old man began, dumbfounded. ‘Did you tell him?’ he asked, looking round at Sasha.

‘Here comes your highly qualified friend,’ said the musician, prudently taking a step back as he spotted Hunter approaching. ‘Well then, the ambulance brigade is all here, I’m beginning to feel superfluous.’

‘He’s lying! He just wants to get you to… But even if it’s true,’ Homer whispered fervently to her, ‘you won’t have time to do anything. Hunter will be back here with reinforcements in a day’s time at the latest. If you stay with us, perhaps you’ll be able to persuade him… But this boy…’

‘I won’t be able to do anything,’ Sasha responded gloomily. ‘Nobody’s going to stop him now, I can sense it. He has to be given a choice. To split him…’

‘Split him?’ Homer’s eyebrows shot up.

‘I’ll be back here in less than a day,’ she promised, stepping away.

Why did he let her go?

Why did he weaken and allow a crazy tramp to abduct his heroine, his muse, his daughter? The more closely the old man studied Leonid, the less he liked him. His big green eyes could suddenly cast surprisingly covetous glances, and obscure shadows skimmed across that angelic face when the young man thought no one was watching him.

What did she want with the musician? At best, that connoisseur of the beautiful would stick a pin through the flower of her innocence and leave it to dry in his memory – crumpled up, with all the charm of youth, which was so impossible to remember or even photograph, lost, scattered like pollen. Deceived and exploited, the girl would take flight, but it would be a long time before she could purge herself and forget, especially since this blasted wandering minstrel wanted to win her by deception.

Then why did he let her go?

Out of cowardice. Because Homer was not just afraid of arguing with Hunter, he was even afraid of asking him the questions that were really worrying him. Because Sasha was in love and her audacity and folly could be forgiven. Would the brigadier have shown him the same indulgence? To himself the old man still called him the brigadier – partly out of habit, but partly because it made Homer feel calmer: there was nothing terrible happening, nothing unusual, he was still the same brigadier of the northern watch from Sebastopol… But he wasn’t. The man striding shoulder to shoulder with Homer now was not the same old unsociable soldier of fortune. The old man was beginning to understand: his travelling companion was being transformed before his very eyes… Something terrible was happening to him, and it would have been stupid to deny it, it was pointless trying to persuade himself.

Hunter had taken Homer with him again – this time was it to show him the bloody denouement of the whole drama? Now he was prepared to exterminate not only the whole of Tula, but also the sectarians cooped up in the tunnels and Serpukhov Station too, including all its inhabitants and the soldiers sent there from the Hansa garrison – simply on the suspicion that one of them might have become infected. The same fate could be in store for Sebastopol.

He no longer needed reasons for killing, he was just looking for pretexts.

Homer could only summon up enough strength to trudge after Hunter as if he was mesmerised, contemplating and documenting all the brigadier’s crimes like some nightmarish dream. Justifying himself by the fact that they were committed in order to save people, trying to convince himself that this was the lesser of two evils. To Homer, the relentless brigadier seemed like an incarnation of Moloch, and he had never tried to get the better of fate.

But Sasha didn’t seem to acknowledge fate at all. And if, in the depths of his heart, the old man had already accepted that Tula and Serpukhov would be turned into Sodom and Gomorrah, the girl was still clutching at the tiniest hope. Homer had stopped trying to convince himself that any pills or vaccine or serum would turn up before Hunter stopped the epidemic with fire and lead. Sasha was prepared to keep searching for the cure right to the end.

Homer wasn’t a soldier or a doctor, and above all, he was too old to believe in miracles. But there was still a particle of his soul that passionately desired miracles and dreamed of salvation. He had torn that particle out of himself and let it go with Sasha.

He had simply offloaded onto the girl what he wouldn’t have dared to do himself.

And in his resignation he had discovered peace for himself. In twenty-four hours it would all be over. And after that the old man would desert from his post, find himself a monastic cell and finish writing his book. Now he knew what it would be about.

About how a nimble-witted beast found a magical fallen star, a heavenly spark, swallowed it and became a man. About how, after stealing fire from the gods, man hadn’t been able to control it and had burnt the world to a cinder. About how, as a punishment, exactly one hundred centuries later, that human spark was taken away from him, but after losing it, he didn’t become a beast again – he turned into something far more terrible that didn’t even have a name.

The head of the sentry squad tipped the handful of cartridges into his pocket and sealed his deal with the musician with a firm handshake.

‘For a symbolic additional payment I could put you on a tram,’ he said.

‘I prefer romantic walks,’ Leonid replied.

‘Well, look at it this way. I can’t let the two of you walk through our tunnels on your own,’ said the sentry, trying to reason with him. ‘You’ll have to go with a guard anyway. Your girl hasn’t got any documents… And you could get to where you’re going express, in a flash, and there you are, all alone with her,’ he whispered loudly.

‘We don’t need to be all alone!’ Sasha declared adamantly.

‘We’ll consider it a guard of honour. As if we’re the Prince and Princes of Monaco out promenading,’ said the musician, bowing to the girl.

‘What princess?’ Sasha asked, overcome by curiosity.

‘The Princess of Monaco. There was a principality of that name once. Right on the Côte d’Azur – the Azure Coast…’

‘Listen,’ the sentry interrupted. ‘If you want to walk, come on, get ready will you? A cartridge clip’s all very fine, but the lads have got to get back to base before evening. Hey, Kostya!’ he called to a soldier. ‘See these two to Kiev, tell the patrols it’s a deportation. Put them out onto the radial station and get straight back. All correct?’ he asked, turning to Leonid.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Leonid with a humorous salute.

‘Come again!’ said the sentry, giving him a wink.

How incredibly different Hansa territory really was from all the rest of the Metro! All the way along the stretch of tunnel from Pavelets to October, Sasha hadn’t seen a single place that was completely dark. Every fifty steps there were light bulbs hanging from the wire that crept along the wall, and every one of them gave enough light to reach the next one. Even the reserve and secret tunnels branching off from the main line were well lit, and there was nothing frightening about them any longer.

If it had been up to Sasha, she would have gone dashing on ahead, done anything to save the precious minutes, but Leonid persuaded her there was no need to hurry. He flatly refused to say where they would go on to after Kiev Station and strolled along at a leisurely pace with a bored air: she supposed the musician had quite often been in stretches of the tunnels that were barred to ordinary inhabitants of the Metro.

‘I’m glad that your friend has his own approach to everything,’ he said.

‘What do you mean by that?’ Sasha asked with a frown.

‘If he dreamed as strongly as you do of saving the civilian population, we would have had to take him with us. But this way we’ve split up into pairs and everyone gets to do what he wants to do. He gets to kill, you get to cure…’