Виктор Пелевин - Babylon

The room he entered blinded him with the golden gleam of its walls and floor, lit by bright studio lights. The sheet-metal cladding of the walls rose up to form a smoothly tapering cone, as though the room were an empty church dome gilded on the inside. Directly opposite the door stood an altar - a cubic gold pediment on which there lay a massive crystal eye with an enamel iris and a bright reflective pupil. In front of the altar there was a gold chalice standing on the floor, and towering up on each side of it were two stone sirrufs, covered in the remnants of gilt and painted designs. Hanging above the eye was a slab of black basalt, which appeared to be very ancient. Chiselled into its very centre was the Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘quick’, which was surrounded by complicated figures - Tatarsky could make out a strange dog with five legs and a woman in a tall tiara reclining on some kind of couch and holding a chalice in her hands. Along the edges of the slab there were images of four terrible-looking beasts, and between the dog and the woman there was a plant growing up out of the ground, resembling a Venus fly-trap, except that for some reason its root was divided into three long branches, each of which was marked with an unintelligible symbol. Also carved into the slab were a large eye and a large ear, and all the rest of the space was taken up by dense columns of cuneiform text.

Azadovsky, dressed in his gold mask, skirt and red flip-flops, was sitting on a folding stool near the altar. His mirror was lying on his knee. Tatarsky didn’t notice anybody else in the room.

‘Right on!’ said Azadovsky, giving the thumbs-up sign. ‘You look just great. Having doubts, are you? Just don’t turn sour on us, OK; don’t you go thinking we’re nothing but a set of fuckheads. Personally I couldn’t give a toss for all this, but if you want to be in our business, you can’t get by without it. To cut it short, I’ll fill in the basic picture for you, and if you want more detail, you can ask our head honcho; he’ll be here in a minute. The important thing is, you just take everything as it comes; be cool. Ever go to pioneer camp?’

‘Sure,’ Tatarsky replied.

‘Did you have that business with the Day of Neptune? When everybody got dunked in the water?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, you just figure like this is another Day of Neptune. Tradition. The story goes that once there was this ancient goddess. Not that I mean to say she really existed - there was just this legend, see. And the storyline says the gods were mortal as well and carried their deaths around inside them, just like ordinary folks. So when her time was up, this goddess had to die too; and naturally enough, she didn’t fancy the idea. So then she separated into her own death and the part of her that didn’t want to die. See there, on the picture?’ - Azadovsky jabbed his finger in the direction of the bas-relief - ‘That dog there’s her death. And the dame in the fancy headgear - that’s her. To cut it short - from here on in you just listen and don’t interrupt, ‘cause I’m not too hot on this stuff myself - when they split apart, this war immediately started between them, and neither of them could stay on top for long. The final battle in the war took place right above the Ostankino pond - that is, where we are right now, only not underground, but way high up in the air. That’s why they reckon it’s a sacred spot. For a long time no one could win the battle, but then the dog began to overpower the goddess. Then the other gods got frightened for themselves, so they interfered and made them make peace. It’s all written down right here. This is like the text of a peace treaty witnessed in the four corners of the earth by these bulls and…’

‘Gryphons.’ Tatarsky prompted him.

‘Yeah. And the eye and the ear mean that everyone saw it and everyone heard it. To cut it short, the treaty gave them both a drubbing. It took away the goddess’s body and reduced her to a pure concept. She became gold - not just the metal, though: in a metaphorical sense. You follow me?’

‘Not too well.’

‘Not surprising,’ sighed Azadovsky. ‘Anyway, to cut it short, she became the thing that all people desire, but not just a heap of gold, say, that’s lying around somewhere, but all gold in general. Sort of like - the idea.’

‘Now I’m with you.’

‘And her death became this lame dog with five legs who had to sleep for ever in this distant country in the north. You’ve probably guessed which one. There he is on the right, see him? Got a leg instead of a prick. Wouldn’t want to run into him in the back yard.’

‘And what’s this dog called?’ Tatarsky asked.

‘A good question. To tell the truth, I don’t know. But why d’you ask?’

‘I read something similar. In a collection of university articles.’

‘What exactly?’

It’s a long story,’ answered Tatarsky. ‘I don’t remember it all.’

‘What was the article about, though? Our firm?’ Tatarsky guessed his boss was joking.

‘No,’ he said, ‘about Russian swear words. It said swear words only became obscenities under Christianity, but before that they had an entirely different meaning and they signified incredibly ancient pagan gods. One of these gods was the lame dog Phukkup with five legs. In the ancient chronicles he was indicated by a large letter ‘P’ with two commas. Tradition says he sleeps somewhere among the snow, and while he sleeps, life goes along more or less OK; but when he wakes up, he attacks. When that happens, the land won’t yield crops, you get Yeltsin for president, and all that kind of stuff. Of course, they didn’t actually know anything about Yeltsin, but overall it’s pretty similar.’

‘And who is it this Phukkup attacks in this article?’ Azadovsky asked.

‘Not anyone or anything special - just everything in general. That’s probably why the other gods interfered. I asked what the dog was called specially - I thought maybe it was some kind of transcultural archetype. So what do they call the goddess?’

‘They don’t call her anything,’ broke in a voice behind them, and Tatarsky swung round.

Farsuk Seiful-Farseikin was standing in the doorway. He was wearing a long black cloak with a hood framing his gleaming golden mask, and Tatarsky only recognised him from his voice.

‘They don’t call her anything,’ Seiful-Farseikin repeated, entering the room. ‘Once a long time ago they used to call her Ishtar, but her name has changed many times since then. You know the brand No Name, don’t you? And the story’s the same with the lame dog. But you were right about all the rest.’

‘You talk to him, will you, Farsuk?’ said Azadovksy. ‘He knows everything anyway, without us telling him.’

‘What do you know, I wonder?’ Farseikin asked.

‘Just a few bits and pieces,’ answered Tatarsky. ‘For instance, that jagged sign in the centre of the slab. I know what it means.’

‘And what does it mean?’

‘"Quick" in ancient Egyptian.’

Farseikin laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s certainly original. New members usually think it’s M amp;M chocolate. Actually it’s a symbol that indicates a certain very ancient and rather obscure dictum. All the ancient languages in which it existed have been dead for ages, and even translating it into Russian is difficult - there aren’t any appropriate glosses. But English has an exact equivalent in Marshall MacLuhan’s phrase: "The medium is the message." That’s why we decode the symbol as two ‘M’s joined together. And we’re not the only ones, of course - altars like this are supplied with all render-servers.’

‘You mean the slab isn’t genuine?’

‘Why not? It’s absolutely genuine,’ answered Farseikin. ‘Three-thousand-year-old basalt. You can touch it. Of course, I’m not sure this drawing always meant what it means now"