Arkady Strugatsky - The Snail on The Slope

"Take a seat," said he affably. "Something to eat? Good mushrooms."

"I will," said Kandid and seated himself alongside.

"Eat up, eat up," said Hopalong. "Now you've got no Nava, while you're adjusting yourself without Nava.

I've heard you're going off again. Who was it telling me? Ah, yes now, it was you yourself said to me: I'm going, so you did. No sitting at home for you. Better if you did, would have been better... To the Reed-beds is it, or the Anthills? I'd go with you to the Reed-beds. You and I, we'd turn right down the street, pass by way of the scrub, we would, we'd stock up with mushrooms there at the same time, we'd take along some ferment and eat-grand mushrooms there in the scrub, not like in the village, don't grow anywhere else either, but there eat and eat, never get enough... When we'd eaten, you and I, we'd leave the scrub, then past Bread Fen, eat again there-fine cereals grow there, sweet, amazing, growing on the marsh, on the mud there and cereal's like that coming up... Well, after that, of course, straight after the sun, three days walking, and there's your Reed-beds..."

"We're going to Devil's Rocks," Kandid patiently reminded him. "Leaving day after tomorrow. Buster's going too."

Hopalong shook his head, dubiously. "Devil's Rocks..." he repeated. "No, Dummy, we won't get to Devil's Rocks, won't get there. Do you know where it is, Devil's Rocks? Maybe they don't even exist, people just say: Rocks, they say, Devilish... So I'm not going to Devil's Rocks, I don't believe in them. If it was to the City now, or the Anthills, still better, that's a stone's throw from here, right next door... . Listen, Dummy, let's go, you and I, to the Anthills. Buster'll go too... I've never been there since the time I damaged my leg. Nava often used to beg me: let's go, she says, Hopalong, to the Anthills... Wanted, you see, to have a look at the hollow tree, where I hurt my leg... I tell her I don't remember where that hollow tree is, and anyway, maybe there's no Anthills there anymore, it was long ago when I was there."

Kandid masticated mushroom and regarded Hopalong. Hopalong talked and talked about the Reed-beds, about the Anthills, his eyes were downcast and he looked at Kandid only occasionally. You're a good man, Hopalong, and a kind one, a great orator, the elder takes notice of you, and Buster, and the old man is just terrified of you, it wasn't an accident that you were the best friend and companion to the notable Anger-Martyr, a man questing, an unquiet man, one who found nothing and rotted in the forest... . However, that's the trouble: you don't want to let me go into the forest, Hopalong, you pity the wretch. The forest is a place of danger and disaster, where many have gone and few returned, and if they have returned they're badly frightened, and, occasionally, crippled ... one with a broken leg, another with ... And you pretend, Hopalong, out of cunning either to be a halfwit yourself or to take Dummy for one, but really you are sure of one thing: if Dummy has come back once, having lost a girl, two such miracles can't happen...

"Listen, Hopalong," said Kandid. "Hear me out carefully. Say what you want, think what you like, but T ask one thing of you: don't abandon me, go into the forest with me. I shall need you very much in the forest, Hopalong, we're setting off the day after tomorrow and I want you very much to be with us. Do you understand?"

Hopalong looked at Kandid and his washed-out eyes were inscrutable.

"Surely," he said. "I understand you very well. We'll go together then. So we go out from here, turn left, go as far as the field, and past the two stones, to the path. You can tell this path straight away, there's so many boulders you can break your leg... Yes, eat them up, Dummy, they're fine... By this path, then we'll get to the mushroom village, I've told you about that already, I think, it's empty, all grown over with mushrooms, not like these ones here for example, nasty ones, we won't eat them, you can get sick or die that way. So we won't even stop in that village we'll press on right away and after a time we'll get to Funny Village, they make pots out of earth there, what next? That happened with them after the blue grass went through. Nothing happened, no sickness even, they just started making their pots out of earth... We won't stop there either, nothing to stop there for, we'll go sharp right from them and there's your Clay Clearing for you."

Perhaps I shouldn't take you then? thought Kandid. You've been there already, the forest has chewed you over, and who knows, maybe you've already rolled on the ground yelling with pain and fear with a young girl standing over you, biting her delicious lip, her childish littie palms outspread. I don't know, don't know. But I've got to go. Grab one at least, two at least, find everything out, sort every last bit out... After that? Doomed, doomed and wretched. Or rather-happy and doomed, since they don't know they're doomed, that the mighty of their world see in them only a dirty tribe of ravishers, that the mighty have already aimed at them clouds of controlled viruses, columns of robots, the very forest itself, that for them everything is preordained and-worst of all-that historical truth here, in the forest, is not on their side, they are relics, condemned to destruction by objective laws, and to assist them means to go against progress, to delay progress on some tiny sector of the front. Only that doesn't interest me, thought Kandid. What has their progress to do with me, it's not my progress and I call it progress only because there's no other suitable word... Here the head doesn't choose. The heart chooses. Natural laws are neither good nor bad, they're outside morality. But I'm not! If those Maidens had picked me up, cured me and showed me kindness, accepted me as one of themselves, taken pity on me- well, then, I would probably have taken the side of this progress easily and naturally, and Hopalong and all these villages would have been for me an exasperating survival, taking up too much effort for too long... But perhaps not, perhaps it wouldn't have been simple and easy, I can't stand it when people are regarded as animals. But perhaps it's a matter of terminology, and if I'd learned the women's language, everything would have sounded different to me: enemies of progress, gluttonous stupid idlers... . Ideals... Great aims... Natural laws... . And for the sake of this annihilate half the inhabitants! No, that's not for me. In any language, that's not for me. What do I care if Hopalong is a pebble in the millstones of their progress? And if I ever manage to reach the biostation, which I probably won't, I'll do everything I can to stop those millstones. Anyway, if I reach the biostation... . M- yes. It's odd, it's never occurred to me before to look at the Directorate from the side. And Hopalong never dreams of looking at the forest from the side. Nor do those Maidens, either, probably. And it's really a curious spectacle-the Directorate, seen from above. All right, I'll have a think about that later.

"We're agreed, then," he said. "We leave day after tomorrow."

"Surely," replied Hopalong at once. "Sharp left from me..."

A sudden hubbub was heard from the field. Women began shrieking. A great many voices began shouting out in unison:

"Dummy! Dummy! Hey, Dummy!"

Hopalong roused himself.

"Doubtless deadlines!" said he, rising hastily. "Come on, Dummy, don't sit there, I want to watch."

Kandid got up, drew the scalpel from his blouse, and strode off to the outskirts of the village.