Arkady Strugatsky: The Snail on The Slope

"I don't want you to leave either," said Kim.

"But I can't stand it here anymore!" "Seven hundred and eighty-seven, multiply by four hundred and thirty-two..."

"I'll leave all the same," thought Pepper, depressing the keys. "I'll leave anyway. You may not want it but I will. I shan't be playing ping-pong with you, or playing chess, or sleeping with you, or drinking tea with jam. I don't want to sing you any more songs or calculate for you on the Mercedes, sort out your arguments for you or now read you lectures you won't understand anyway. And I'm not going to think for you, either. Think for yourselves, and I'm leaving. Leaving. Leaving. You'll never understand that thinking isn't a pastime, it's a duty..."

Outside, beyond the incomplete wall, a piledriver thumped heavily, pneumatic hammers knocked, bricks spilled with a roar. Four workmen in forage caps were sitting side by side, stripped to the waist and smoking. As a finishing stroke, a motorcycle roared into life under his window and ticked over noisily.

"Somebody from the forest," said Kim. "Better multiply me sixteen by sixteen."

The door burst open and a man ran into the room. He had on a boiler-suit and an unbuttoned hood dangled on his chest from a length of radio flex. From boots to waist the boiler-suit bristled with the pale-pink arrows of young shoots while the right leg was entwined with an orange plaited liana of endless length and which trailed along the floor. The liana was still twitching a bit and it seemed to Pepper a very tentacle of the forest, which would reach out at any moment and drag the man back-through the corridors of the Directorate down the staircase, along the yard wall, past the canteen and the workshops, then down the dusty road, through the park, past the statues and pavilions, up to the entrance to the Serpentine, to the gates, but not into them, past them to the precipice, and down...

He was wearing motorcycle goggles, and with his face thickly powdered with dust, Pepper did not at once recognize Stoyan Stoyanov from the biostation.

He was holding a large paper bag. He made several steps on the tiled floor with its mosaic picturing a woman taking a shower, and halted in front of Kim, concealing the paper bag behind his back and making odd head movements as if his neck was itching.

"Kim," he said, "it's me."

Kim made no reply. His pen could be heard tearing and scratching the paper.

"Kimmy," Stogan said, ingratiating. "I'm asking you, on my knees."

"Get lost," said Kim. "Maniac."

"It's the very last time," said Stoyan. "The very, very last little time!"

He moved his head again and Pepper saw in the depression at the back of his skinny shaven neck a tiny little pink shoot, sharply pointed and already twining, trembling, avid.

"Just pass it over and say it's from Stoyan, that's all. If he starts telling you to go to the cinema, tell him you've got urgent overtime. If he offers you tea, say you've already had some. And don't accept any wine if he suggests it. Eh? Kimmikins! For the very last time for ever and ever!"

"What're you fidgeting about for?" Kim asked irritably. "Here, turn around!" "Got one again?" asked Stoyan, turning. "Well, it doesn't matter. Just so you hand that over, nothing else matters."

Kim, leaning forward over the table, was busy with his neck, kneading and massaging, elbows spread. He bared his teeth from squeamishness and muttered curses. Stoyan patiently shifted his weight from foot to foot, head bent and neck extended.

"Hello, Peppy," said he. "Long time no see. What're you doing here? I've brought some again ... what can I do? ... Very, very last time ever." He unwrapped the paper and showed Pepper a small bunch of poison-green forest flowers. "Boy, what a smell! What a smell!"

"Stop pulling, you," cried Kim. "Stand still. Maniac.

Useless."

"Maniac. Useless," agreed Stoyan ecstatically. "But! For the last time ever and ever!"

The pink shoots on his boiler-suit were already wilted and wrinkling, raining down on the brick face of the lady under the shower.

"There," said Kirn. "Now get out."

He moved away from Stoyan and threw something half alive, squirming and bloody into the waste-bin.

"I'm going," said Stoyan. "Right away. But, well, our Rita's acting up again. I'm afraid to be away from the biostation. Peppy, you might come over and have a word with them, eh?"

"What next!" said Kim. "Pepper's not needed there."

"What d'you mean, not needed?" Stoyan exclaimed. "Quentin's fading away before your eyes! Just listen. Rita ran off a week ago-all right. Okay, what can you do? But, she came back that night all wet, white, and icy cold. The guard was questioning her, unarmed, and she did something to him, so he's been senseless ever since. And the whole experimental compound has been invaded by grass."

"Well?" said Kim.

"Quentin cried all morning..."

"I know all about that," Kim broke in. "What I don't get is how Pepper comes into it."

"What d' you mean how? What're you talking about? Who else if not Pepper? Not me, eh? And not you... We're not calling in Hausbotcher, Claudius-Octavian."

"Stop it," said Kim, slamming his palm on the table. "Get back to work and don't let me see you here in working hours again. Don't make me lose my temper."

"All right," said Stoyan hastily. "Okay. I'm off. You'll hand it over?"

He placed the bouquet on the table and ran off, shouting as he left: "and the cess-pit's working again."

Kim picked up a broom and swept all the droppings into a corner.

"Mad fool," he said. "And that Rita... Now calculate the lot again. To hell with them and their love affairs..."

The motorbike started banging nerve-rackingly under the window, then all was quiet, with only the piledriver thudding behind the wall.

"Pepper," said Kim. "Why were you at the cliff this morning?"

"I was hoping to catch sight of the director. I was told he sometimes does physical jerks there. I wanted to ask him to send me but he didn't come. You know, Kim, I think everybody lies here. Sometimes I even think you do."

"Director," said Kim, ruminating, "you know that's an idea. You're on the ball. You've got guts..."

"All the same, I'm leaving tomorrow" said Pepper. "Acey's taking me, he promised. Tomorrow I shan't be here, official."

"I never expected that, no," continued Kim, unheeding. "Plenty of guts ... maybe we should send you over there, to sort things out..."

Chapter Two

Kandid woke and thought at once: I'll go tomorrow. At the same moment Nava stirred in the other comer.

"Are you asleep?" she asked.

"No."

"Let's talk, then," she suggested. "We haven't spoken to each other since yesterday evening after all. All right?"

"All right."

"First you tell me when you're going."

"I don't know," he said, "soon."

"That's what you always say: soon. Soon, or the day after tomorrow. Maybe you think it's the same thing? Well no, you've learned to talk now. At first you mixed everything up, mixed everything up, mixed the hut up and the village, grass and mushrooms, even people and deadlings, mixed them up you did and then you'd mutter away. We couldn't make it out, couldn't understand a word..."

He opened his eyes and stared at the low, lime-encrusted ceiling. The worker ants were on the move in two even columns, from left to right loaded, right to left empty. A month ago it had been the other way around, right to left loaded with mushroom spawn, left to right empty.

A month hence it would be the other way again unless someone told them to do something else. Dotted here and there along the column stood the big black signalers motionless, antennae slowly waving, awaiting orders. A month ago I used to wake up and think I'd go the day after tomorrow but we never went, and long before that even I used to wake up and think the day after tomorrow we'd be off at last and we never went. But if we don't go the day after tomorrow, this time I'll go on my own. I used to think like that before as well of course, but this time it's for sure. The best thing would be to go now, straight away, no talking or trying to persuade. But that needed a clear head. Better not. The best thing would be to decide once and for all: as soon as I can wake with a clear head, be up, and straight out into the street and away into the forest, and not let anybody start talking to me. That's vital: don't let anybody start talking to you, distracting you with their whining, starting your head buzzing, especially just here above the eyes, till your ears start ringing and you feel like vomiting and the whining goes on and on right through you. And Nava was already talking...