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Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. The snail on the slope
© Copyright Arcady And Boris Strugatsky
© Copyright Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon.
© Copyright Translated from the Russian by Alan Meyers, 1980
© Copyright Bantam Books, Inc.
Origin: "Ulitka na sklone"
Chapter One
From this height, the forest was like foam, luxuriant and blotchy, a
gigantic world--encompassing porous sponge, like an animal waiting in
concealment, now fallen asleep and overgrown with rough moss. A formless
mask hiding a face, as yet revealed to none.
Pepper shook off his sandals and sat down with his bare legs dangling
over the precipice. It seemed to him that his heels at once became damp, as
if he had actually immersed them in the warm lilac fog that lay banked up in
the shadows under the cliff. He fished out the pebbles he had collected from
his pocket and laid them out neatly beside him. He then selected the
smallest and gently tossed it down into the living and silent, slumbering,
all-enveloping indifference, and the white spark was extinguished, and
nothing happened--no branch trembled, no eye half-opened to glance up.
If he were to throw a pebble every one and a half minutes, and if what
the one-legged cook, nicknamed Pansy, said was true and what Madame Bardot,
head of the Assistance to the Local Population Group, reckoned, if what
driver Acey whispered to the unknown man from the Engineering Penetration
Group was untrue, and if human intuition was worth anything at all, and if
wishes came true once in a lifetime, then at the seventh stone, the bushes
behind him would part with a crash, and the director would step out onto the
soft crushed grass of the dew-gray clearing. He would be stripped to the
waist in his gray garbardines with the lilac braid, breathing heavily, sleek
and glossy, yellow-pink and shaggy, looking nowhere in particular, neither
at the forest beneath him nor at the sky above him, bending down to bury his
arms in the grass, then unbending to raise a breeze with his broad palms,
each time the mighty fold on his belly bulging out over his trousers, while
air, saturated with carbon dioxide and nicotine, would burst out of his open
mouth with a whistling gurgle.
The bushes behind parted with a crash. Pepper looked around cautiously,
but it wasn't the director, it was someone he knew, Claudius-Octavian
Haus-botcher from the Eradication Group. He approached without haste and
halted two paces away, looking Pepper up and down with his piercing dark
eyes. He knew something or suspected something, something very important,
and this knowledge or suspicion had frozen his long face, the stony face of
a man who had brought here to the precipice a strange, alarming piece of
news. No one in the whole world knew what this news was, but it was already
clear that everything had altered decisively; what had gone before was no
longer significant and now, at last, everyone would be required to
contribute all he was capable of.
"And whose might these shoes be?" said he, glancing about him.
"They're not shoes, they're sandals," said Pepper. "Indeed?"
Hausbotcher sneered and withdrew a large notepad from his pocket. "Sandals?
Ver-ry good. But whose sandals are they?"
He edged toward the brink, peeped cautiously down and stepped back
smartly.
"Man sits by the precipice," he said, "next to him, sandals. The
question inevitably raises itself: whose sandals are they and where is their
owner?" "They're my sandals," said Pepper. "Yours?" Hausbotcher looked
doubtfully at the large notepad. "You're sitting barefooted, then? Why?"
"Barefoot because I've no choice," explained Pepper. "Yesterday I
dropped my right shoe and decided from now on, I'll always sit barefoot." He
bent down and looked between his splayed knees. "There she lies. I can just
drop this pebble in. . "
Hausbotcher adroitly seized him by the arm and appropriated the pebble.
"It is indeed just a pebble," he said. "That, however, makes no
difference as yet. Pepper, it's incomprehensible why you're lying to me. You
can't possibly see the shoe from here--even if it's there, and whether it is
or not is another question, which will be gone into later--and if you can't
see the shoe, ergo you can't hit it with a stone, even if you possessed the
necessary accuracy and actually did wish to do that and only that. I mean
hitting. . . . But we'll sort all that out presently." He hitched up his
trousers and squatted down on his haunches.
"So you were here yesterday as well," he said. "Why? For what reason
have you come a second time to the precipice, where the other Directorate
personnel, not to mention temporary staff, only come to obey the call of
nature?"
Pepper slumped. This is just plain ignorance, he thought. No, no, it's
not a challenge, nor is it spite, no need to take it seriously. It's just
ignorance. No need to take ignorance seriously. Ignorance excretes itself on
the forest. Ignorance always excretes itself over something.
"You like sitting here, seemingly," Hausbotcher went on insinuatingly.
"You like the forest a lot, seemingly. You love it, don't you? Answer me!"
"Don't you?" asked Pepper.
"Don't you forget yourself," he said aggrieved and nipped open his
notepad. "As you very well know, I belong to the Eradication Group and
therefore your question, or rather your counterquestion is entirely devoid
of meaning. You understand perfectly well that my attitude to the forest is
defined by my professional duty; what defines your attitude to it is not
clear to me. That's bad, Pepper, you need to think about that. I'm advising
you for your own good, not for mine. You mustn't be so unintelligible. Sits
on the edge of the cliff in bare feet, throwing pebbles. . . . Why, one
asks? In your place I'd tell me everything straight out. Get everything
sorted out. Who knows, there could be extenuating circumstances. Nothing's
threatening you anyway. Is it, Pepper?"
"No," said Pepper, "that is, of course, yes." "There you are.
Simplicity disappears at once and never comes back. Whose hand? we ask.
Whither the cast? Or, perhaps, to whom? Or, as it may be, at whom? And why?
And how is it you can sit on the edge of the cliff? Is it inborn or have you
done special training? I, for example, am unable to sit on the edge of the
cliff, and I can't bear to think why I might train for such a thing. I get
dizzy at the thought. That's only natural. Nobody needs to sit on the cliff
edge. Especially if he doesn't have a permit to enter the forest. Show me
your permit, if you please, Pepper." "I haven't got one." "So. Not got. Why
is that?"
"I don't know. . . . They won't give me one, that's all."
"That's right, not given out. This we know. And why don't they give you
one? I've got one, he's got one, they've got one, plenty of people have
them, but for some reason you don't get one."
Pepper stole a cautious glance at him. Hausbotcher's long emaciated
nose was sniffing, his eyes constantly blinking.
"Probably it's because I'm an outsider," suggested Pepper. "Probably
that's why."
"I'm not the only one taking an interest in you, you know," Hausbotcher
confided. "If it were only me! People a bit higher up than me are taking an
interest. Listen, Pepper, could you come away from the edge, so we can carry
on. I get dizzy looking at you."
Pepper got up and began leaping about on one leg as he fastened his
sandal.
"Oh dear, please come away from the edge!" cried Hausbotcher in agony,
waving his notepad at Pepper.
"You'll be the death of me someday with your antics."
"That's it," said Pepper, stamping his foot. "I shan't do it again.
Let's go, shall we?"
"Let's go," said Hausbotcher. "I assert, however, that you haven't
answered a single one of my questions. You pain me, Pepper. Is this any way
to go on?" He looked at the bulky notepad and placed it under his armpit
with a shrug. "It's very odd, definitely no impressions, let alone
information."
"All right, what should I answer?" said Pepper. "I just wanted to have
a talk with the director here."
Hausbotcher froze, as if trapped in the bushes. "So that's how you go
about it." His voice was altered.
"Go about what? There's no going about. . . ."
"No, no," whispered Hausbotcher, gazing about him, "just keep silent.
No need for any words. I realize now. You were right."
"What've you realized? What was I right in?"
"No, no, I haven't understood anything. I haven't understood, period.
You may rest absolutely assured. Haven't understood a thing. I wasn't even
here, I didn't see you."
They passed by the little bench, climbed the crumbling steps, turned
into an alley strewn with red sand, and entered the grounds of the
Directorate.
"Total clarity can exist only on a certain level," Hausbotcher was
saying. "And everybody should know what he can lay claim to. I claimed
certainty on my level, that was my right and I exercised it fully. Where
rights end, obligations begin. . . ."
They passed the ten flat cottages with tulle curtains at the windows,
passed the garage, cut across the sports ground, and went by dumps and the
hostel, in whose doorway stood a deathly-pale warden with motionless
pop-eyes, and by the long fencing beyond which could be heard the snarling
of engines. They kept quickening their pace and as there was little time
left, they began to run. But all the same, they burst into the canteen too
late, all the seats were taken. Only at the duty table in the far corner
were there two places, the third being occupied by driver Acey, and driver
Acey, observing them shuffling in indecision on the threshold, waved his
fork at them, inviting them over.
Everybody was drinking yogurt and Pepper took the same, so that they
had six bottles on the crusted tablecloth, and when Pepper moved his legs a
bit under the table, making himself more comfortable on the backless chair,
there was a clink of glass and an empty brandy bottle rolled out between the
little tables. Driver Acey swiftly grabbed it and thrust it back under the
table; more glass clinked.
"Careful with your feet," he said.
"I couldn't help it," said Pepper. "I didn't know."
"Did I know?" responded Acey. "There's four of them under there. Prove
your innocence later if you can."
"Well I, for instance, don't drink at all," said Haus-botcher with
dignity.
"We know how you don't drink," said Acey. "That's how we all don't
drink."
"But I have liver trouble!" Hausbotcher was growing uneasy. "Look,
here's the certificate." He pulled a crumpled exercise-book page out from
somewhere; it had a triangular stamp. He shoved it under Pepper's nose. It
was indeed a certificate written in an illegible medical hand. Pepper could
only make out one word "antabus." "I've got last year's and the year before
that as well, only they're in the safe."
Driver Acey didn't look at the paper. He drained a full glass of
yogurt, sniffed the joint of his index finger, and asked in a tearful voice:
"Well, what else is there in the forest? Trees." He wiped his eyes with
his sleeve. "But they don't stand still: jump. Got it?"
"Well?" asked Pepper eagerly, "what was that-- jump?"
"Like this. It stands still. A tree, right? Then it starts hunching and
bending, then whoosh! There's a noise, crashing, I don't know what all. Ten
yards. Smashed my cab. There it is standing again." "Why?" asked Pepper.
" 'Cos it's called a jumping tree," explained Acey pouring himself more
yogurt.
"Yesterday, a consignment of new electric saws arrived," announced
Hausbotcher, licking his lips. "Phenomenal productivity. I would go so far
as to say that they weren't electrosaws but saw-combines. Our saw-combines
of eradication."
All around they were drinking yogurt out of cut glasses, tin mugs,
little coffee cups, paper cones, straight out of the bottle. Everybody's
legs were stuck , under their chairs. And everyone probably could show his
certificate of liver, stomach, small intestine trouble. For this year and
for the last several.
"Then the manager calls me in," Acey went on, raising his voice, "and
he asks why my cab's stove in. 'Again,' he says, 'sod, giving people lifts?'
Now you, Mr. Pepper, play chess with him, you might put in a little word for
me. He respects you, he often talks of you, 'Pepper,' he says, 'he's a
character! I won't give a vehicle for Pepper and don't ask. We can't let a
man like that go. Understand, all you zombies, we couldn't carry on without
him!' Put in a word, eh?"
"All right," Pepper brought out in a low voice, "I'll try."
"I can speak with the manager," said Hausbotcher. "We served together.
I was a captain and he was my lieutenant. He greets me to this day, bringing
his hand to his headgear."
"Then there's the mermaids," said Acey, weighing his glass of yogurt.
"In big clear lakes. They lie there, get it? Nothing on."
"Your yogurt's putting ideas into your head," said Hausbotcher.
"I haven't seen them myself," rejoined Acey. "But the water from those
lakes isn't fit to drink."
"You haven't seen them because they don't exist," said Hausbotcher.
"Mermaids, that's mysticism."
"You're another mysticism," said Acey, wiping his eye with a sleeve.
"Wait a bit," said Pepper, "wait a bit. Acey, you say they're lying ...
is that all? They can't just lie and that's all."
"Maybe they live underwater and float up onto the surface, just like we
go out onto the balcony to escape from smoke-filled rooms on moonlit nights
and, eyes closed, bare our face to the chill, then they can just lie. Just
lie and that's all. Rest. And talk lazily and smile at each other. . . ."
"Don't argue with me," said Acey, looking obstinately at Hausbotcher.
"Have you ever been in the forest? Never been in there once, have you, to
hell."
"Silly if I did," said Hausbotcher. "What would I be doing there in
your forest? I've got a permit into your forest. And you, Acey, haven't got
one at all. Show me, if you please, your permit, Acey."
"I didn't see the mermaids myself," repeated Acey, turning to Pepper,
"but I entirely believe in them. Because the boys have told me. So did
Kandid even, and he was the one who knew everything about the forest. He
used to go into that forest like a man to his woman, put his finger on
anything. He perished there in his forest."
"If he did," said Hausbotcher significantly.
"What do you mean 'if'? Man flies off in his helicopter, three years no
sight or sound. His obituary was in the paper, we held the wake, what more
d'you want? Kandid crashed, that's for sure."
"We don't know enough," said Hausbotcher, "to assert anything with
complete certainty."
Acey spat and went to the counter to order another bottle of yogurt. At
this, Hausbotcher leaned over and whispered in Pepper's ear, his eyes
darting:
"Bear in mind that touching Kandid there was a sealed directive. ... I
consider it right for me to inform you, because you are a person from
outside."
"What directive?"
"To regard him as alive," said Hausbotcher in a hollow whisper and
moved away. "Nice, fresh yogurt today," he announced loudly.
Noise increased in the canteen. Those who had already breakfasted were
getting up, scraping chairs, and making for the exit, lighting up and
throwing match-sticks on the floor. Hausbotcher surveyed them malevolently
and said to everyone as they passed: "Strange behavior, gentlemen, you can
surely see we're having a discussion."
When Acey returned with his bottle, Pepper spoke to him.
"The manager didn't really say he wouldn't provide me with a vehicle,
did he? He was just joking, wasn't that it?"
"Why should he? He likes you, Mister Pepper, bored without you and it's
just not worth his while to let you go. ... Well if he lets you, what's in
it for him? No joking."
Pepper bit his lip.
"How the devil can I get away? There's nothing more for me to do here.
My visa's running out, and anyway I just want to get away."
"Anyhow," said Acey, "if you get three reprimands, they'll sling you
out in two shakes. You'll get a special bus, they'll get a driver up in the
middle of the night, you won't get time to collect your bits of things. . .
. Here the boys work it this way. First warning, a reduction in rank;
second, you're sent to the forest to expiate your sins. Third reprimand,
thank you and good night. If I wanted the sack, for example, I'd drink half
a jar and sock this guy in the jaw," he indicated Hausbotcher. "They'd take
away my privileges and transfer me to the crap-wagon. Then what do I do?
Drink another half-jar and give him another one--got it? They'd take me off
the crap-wagon and send me out to the biostation to catch some old microbes.
But I don't go. I drink another half-jar and give it to him across the chops
for the third time. Well that's the end of it. Sacked for hooligan conduct
and deported in twenty-four hours."
Hausbotcher waved a threatening finger at Acey.
"Misinformation, misinformation, Ace. In the first place, at least a
month must elapse between the actions, otherwise all the misdemeanors will
be regarded as one and the transgressor will simply be put in jail without
any further steps being taken within the Directorate. Secondly, following
the second misdemeanor, they send the convicted man to the forest at once
under guard, so that he will be deprived of any opportunity to carry out a
third offense at his own discretion. Don't pay any attention to him, Pepper,
he knows nothing about these matters."
Acey took a mouthful of yogurt, frowned, and wheezed out a confession.
"True, enough. I really . . . well. I'm sorry, Mister Pepper."
"Doesn't matter, what the. . . ." said Pepper sadly. "I still can't hit
a man in the face whichever way you put it."
"It doesn't have to be the . . . jaw," said Acey. "You can make it the
... the behind. Or just rip his suit." "No, I can't do it," said Pepper.
"Too bad, then," said Acey. "That's your trouble, Mister Pepper. Here's what
we'll do. Tomorrow morning around sevenish, come around to the garage, get
in my truck, and wait. I'll take you." "You will?" Pepper was overjoyed.
"Well I've got to take a load of scrap metal to the mainland. We'll go
together."
Somebody suddenly gave a terrible shout in the corner. "What do you
think you're doing? You've spilled my soup!"
"A man ought to be simple and straightforward," said Hausbotcher. "I
don't understand, Pepper, why you want to get away from here. Nobody wants
to leave,just you."
"I'm always like that," said Pepper. "I always do the opposite. Anyway,
why should a man always be simple and straightforward?"
"A man ought to be teetotal," announced Acey, sniffing the joint of his
index finger, "what d'you think, eh?"
"I don't drink," said Hausbotcher. "And I don't drink for a very simple
reason, one that anyone can understand. I have a liver complaint. You can't
catch me out, Ace."
"What gets me about the forest," said Acey, "is the swamps. They're
hot, get me? It turns me around. I just can't get used to it. You plop in
somewhere . . . then you're off the brushwood road. There I am in my cab,
can't climb out. Just like hot cabbage soup. There's steam coming off it and
it smells of cabbage soup--I tried a mouthful once, but it's no good, not
enough salt or something . . . no, the forest is no place for a man. What
more do they want to know about it? They drive their machines on and on into
it, like a hole in the ice--and they still write if off, and down they go,
and they still. ..
"Green odorous abundance. Abundance of colors, abundance of smells.
Abundance of life. And all of it alien. Somehow familiar, a resemblance
somewhere, but profoundly alien. The hardest part was to accept it as alien
and familiar at one and the same time, derived from our world, flesh of our
flesh--but broken away, not wishing to know us. An apeman might think the
same way about us, his descendants, grieving and fearful . . ."
"When the order comes out," proclaimed Hausbotcher, "we shall move some
real stuff in there, not your lousy bulldozers and landrovers--in two months
will turn it all into ... er ... a concrete platform, dry and level."
"You will turn it," said Acey. "If you don't cop one in the jaw, you'll
turn your own father into a concrete platform. For straighforwardness sake."
The siren started up thickly. The glass in the windows rattled and
above the door a massive bell hammered out, lamps flickered on the walls,
while above the counter a large sign lit up: "Get up and leave!" Hausbotcher
rose hastily, adjusted his watch and without a word went off at a run.
"Well, I'm off," said Pepper. "Work to be done."
"Time to go," agreed Acey. "Time's up."
He divested himself of his quilted jacket, rolled it up neatly, and
moved the chairs so as to lie down, using the jacket as a pillow.
"Tomorrow at seven, then?" said Pepper.
"What?" asked Acey in a drowsy voice.
"I'll be here tomorrow at seven."
"What d'you say?" Acey asked, tossing about on the chairs. "Place is
going to the dogs, bastards," he mumbled. "How many times have I told them
to get a sofa in here. . . ."
"To the garage," said Pepper. "Your truck."
"Ah-h. . . . Well, to do that thing, we'll see. It's not that easy."
He tucked up his legs, stuck his palms under his armpits, and started
snuffling. His arms were heavy and a tattoo could be glimpsed under the
hair. "What destroys us" was written there, also, "Ever onward." Pepper made
for the exit.
He crossed an enormous puddle in the backyard on a board, skirted a
mound of empty jam-jars, crept through a hole in the fence, and entered the
Directorate building via the service entrance. It was cold and dark in the
corridors, which reeked of tobacco, dust, and old papers. There wasn't a
soul anyway, no sound could be heard from behind the leatherette doors.
Pepper went up to the second floor by way of a narrow staircase without a
handrail, clinging to the dilapidated wall. He went up to a door above which
a sign flickered on and off. "Wash your hands before work." A large black
letter M showed up on the door. Pepper thrust at the door and experienced a
slight shock on discovering it was his own office. That is, of course, it
wasn't his office; it was Kirn's, chief of Science Security, but Pepper had
put a table in there and now it stood sideways near the door by the tiled
wall; half the table was, as usual, taken up with a mothballed Mercedes.
Kirn's table stood by the large, well-cleaned window; he was already at
work, sitting hunched-up and consulting a slide rule.
"I wanted to wash my hands," said Pepper, at a loss.
"Wash away, wash away," Kim nodded. "There's the washbasin. It's going
to be very convenient. Now everybody will be coming to see us."
Pepper went over to the basin and began washing his hands. He washed
them in hot and cold water, two kinds of soap, and special grease-absorbent
paste, rubbed them with a bast whisp and brushes of varying degrees of
stiffness. After that he switched the electric dryer on and for some time
held his moist pink hands in the howling stream of warm air.
"They announced at four that they were transferring us to the second
floor," said Kim. "Whereabouts were you? With Alevtina?"
"No, I was at the cliff-edge," said Pepper, seating himself at his
table.
The door opened wide and Proconsul entered the room with a rush, waved
his briefcase in greeting, and disappeared behind the curtain. The door of
his study creaked and the bolt shot home. Pepper took the sheet off the
Mercedes, sat without moving, then went over to the window and flung it
open.
The forest wasn't visible from here, but it was there. It always was
there, though it could only be seen from the cliff. Anywhere else in the
Directorate something was in the way. In the way were the cream structures
of the mechanical workshops and the four-story garage for staff cars. In the
way were the cattle-yards of the farm area and the washing hung out near the
laundry with its spin dryer permanently out of commission. In the way was
the park with its flowerbeds and pavilions, its big-wheel and
plaster-of-paris bathers, covered with penciled grafitti. In the way stood
cottages with ivy-draped verandahs adorned with the crosses of television
antennae. From here, however, the first-floor window, the forest was hidden
by a high brick wall, incomplete as yet, but very high, which rose around
the flat-roofed one-story Engineering Penetration building. The forest could
only be seen from the cliff-edge.
However, even a man who had never seen the forest, heard nothing about
it, never thought about it, wasn't afraid of it, and never yearned for it,
even such a man could easily have guessed at its existence if only because
of the simple existence of the Directorate. I, for example, have thought
about the forest, argued about it, dreamed about it, but I never even
suspected its actual existence. I became convinced of its existence not when
I first went out onto the cliff-edge, but when I first read the notice near
the entrance: "Forest Directorate." I stood before this notice with a
suitcase in my hand, dusty and dehydrated after the long journey, reading
and re-reading it, and felt weak at the knees, for now I knew that the
forest existed and that meant that everything that I had thought about it up
till now was the toyings of a feeble imagination, pale impotent falsehoods.
The forest exists and this vast, somewhat grim building is concerned with
its fate.
"Kim," said Pepper, "surely I'll get into the forest. I'm leaving
tomorrow, after all."
"You really want to go there?" asked Kim absently. "Hot green swamps,
irritable and timorous trees, mermaids, resting on the water under the moon
from their mysterious activity in the depths, wary enigmatic aborigines,
empty villages . . ." "I don't know," said Pepper.
"It's not for you, Peppy," said Kim. "It's only for people who've never
thought about the forest, who've never given a curse about it. You take it
too much to heart. The forest, for you, is dangerous, it will trap you."
"Very likely," said Pepper, "but after all I came here just to see it."
"What do you want the bitter truth for?" asked Kim. "What'll you do
when you've got it? What'll you do in the forest, anyway? Cry over a dream
that's become your destiny? Pray for it to be different? Or, who knows,
maybe start to re-work what there is and must be?"
"So why did I come here?"
"To convince yourself. Surely you realize how important it is--to be
convinced. Other people come for different reasons. Maybe to see miles of
firewood, or find the bacteria of life, or write a thesis. Or get a permit,
not to go into the forest but just in case: come in handy sometime and not
everybody's got one. The limit of their little intentions is to make a
luxury park out of the forest, like a sculptor producing a statue from a
block of marble. So they can keep it trim. Year in, year out. Not let it be
a forest again."
"It's time I got away from here," said Pepper. "There's nothing for me
to do here. Somebody's got to go, either me or all of you."
"Let's multiply," said Kim and Pepper seated himself at his table,
found the wall-plug by feel, and plugged in the Mercedes.
"Seven hundred and ninety three, five hundred and twenty-two by two
hundred and sixty-six, zero eleven."
The machine began to chatter and leap. Pepper waited for it to settle,
then hesitantly read out the answer.
"All right. Clear it," said Kim. "Now, six hundred and ninety-eight,
three hundred and twelve, divide for me by twelve fifteen. . . ."
Kim dictated the figures, Pepper picked them out, pressed the
multiplier and divider keys, added, subtracted, derived roots, everything
proceeded as normal.
"Twelve by ten," said Kim. "Multiply."
"One oh oh seven," dictated Pepper automatically, then woke up and
said: "Wait, it's lying. It should be a hundred and twenty."
"I know, I know," said Kim, impatient. "One zero zero seven," he
repeated. "Now get me the root of ten zero seven. . . ."
"Just a minute," said Pepper.
The bolt clicked again behind the curtain and Proconsul appeared, pink,
fresh, and satisfied. He began to wash his hands, humming the while "Ave
Maria" in a pleasant voice. After this he announced:
"What a marvel it is after all, this forest, gentlemen! It's criminal
how little we talk and write about it! And it is indeed worthy of
description. It ennobles, it arouses the highest feelings. It facilitates
progress. We, however, are totally unable to stem the spread of unqualified
rumors, stories, and jokes. There is no real forest propaganda being done.
People talk and think about the forest hell knows. . . ."
"Seven hundred and eighty-five multiplied by four hundred and
thirty-two," said Kim.
Proconsul raised his voice. His voice was powerful and well modulated.
The Mercedes became inaudible.
" 'As if we lived in the forest. . .' 'Forest people . . .' 'You can't
see the wood for the trees.' 'If you're in the forest, you're after
firewood.' That's what we have to fight against! To eradicate! Let's say
that you, Monsieur Pepper, don't fight against it, why not? After all, you
could do a detailed, meaningful lecture on the forest at the club, but you
do no such thing. I've been keeping tabs on you for quite a while, it's been
wasted time waiting. What's the matter?"
"Well, I've never been there, have I?" said Pepper. "That doesn't
matter. I haven't been there either, but I've read a lecture, and judging by
the response, it was most useful. It's not whether you've been in the forest
or not, it's a matter of ridding the facts of this encrustation of mysticism
and superstition, laying bare the essence of things, having cleansed it of
adornments placed upon it by philistines and utilitarians. . . ."
"Twice eight divide into forty-nine minus seven times seven," said Kim.
The Mercedes got going. Proconsul once again raised his voice:
"I did it as a trained philosopher. You could do it as a qualified
linguist. I'll give you the points and you can develop them in the light of
the latest linguistic research ... if that's the theme of your thesis?"
"It's 'Stylistic and Rhythmic Characteristics of Feminine Prose in the
Late Heian based on Makwa-no Sosi,' " said Pepper. "I'm afraid that . . ."
"Ex . . . cell . . . ent! Just the thing. And emphasize the fact that
it's not swamps, it's excellent therapeutic mud-baths; not jumping trees but
the end product of high-power research; not natives or savages, rather an
ancient civilization of proud, free, modest, and powerful people with noble
intentions. And no mermaids. No lilac veils of fog, no veiled hints--forgive
me for a poor pun-- That will be excellent, mynheer Pepper, just splendid.
It's a good thing you know the forest, so's you can introduce your own
personal impressions. My lecture was good too, but, I fear, somewhat
over-speculative. As the basis of my material, I made use of conference
minutes. Whereas you as one who has researched into the forest . . .."
"I'm not a forest researcher," said Pepper earnestly. "I'm not allowed
into the forest. I don't know the forest at all."
Proconsul, nodding absently, wrote something swiftly on his shirt cuff.
"Yes!" said he. "Yes, yes. It is the bitter truth, alas. Alas, we still
find pockets of formalism, bureaucracy, heuristic approach to the
personality. . . . You can talk about that as well, by the way. You can, yes
you can, everybody talks about that. Meanwhile, I shall attempt to get your
speech agreed with the higher-ups. I'm damned glad that you'll give us a
hand in our work after all, Pepper. I've had a very careful eye on you for a
very long time. . . . There you are then. I've noted your name down for next
week!"
Pepper unplugged the Mercedes.
"I won't be here next week. My visa has expired and
I'm going tomorrow."
"Well, we'll fix that somehow. I'll go to the director, he's a club
member himself, he'll understand. You can reckon to stay another week."
"No," said Pepper. "That won't be necessary." "Oh, yes it will!" said
Proconsul, looking him straight in the eye. "You know perfectly well it is,
Pepper! Good day."
He brought two fingers to his temple and made off, waving his
briefcase.
"It's like a spider's web!" said Pepper. "Am I a fly to them or what?
The manager doesn't want me to leave, Alevtina doesn't and now this one.
..."
"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. . .
.
". . . so that's what happened," Nava was saying, "the deadlings took
us along in the night, and they can't see very well at night. Blind as bats,
anyone'll tell you that, even that Humpy, though he doesn't belong here,
he's from the village that was next to ours, not this one of ours where you
and I live now, but ours where I lived with mam, so you can't know Humpy, in
his village everything's covered in mushrooms, the spawn fell and that's
something not everybody likes, Humpy went away from the village straight
away. It's the Accession, he says, and now there's no place for people in
the village. . . . So-o-o. There was no moon that night and they probably
lost the track, anyway they all bunched together, us in the middle, and it
got so hot, you couldn't breathe. . . ."
Kandid looked at her. She was lying on her back, legs crossed, arms
folded behind her head. Only her lips moved endlessly, and from time to time
her eyes flashed in the half darkness. She went on talking even when the old
man came in and seated himself at the table. He drew a pot toward him,
sniffed at it noisily and with a slurp set to. At that Kandid got up and
with his palms wiped the night sweat from his body. The old man was champing
and slobbering, not taking his eyes from the bin with the lid protecting it
from mold. Kandid took the pot away and set it next to Nava to stop her
talking. The old man sucked his teeth comprehensively.
"Not very tasty," he said, "it's the same everywhere you go these days.
And that path's all grown over I used to go along; I used it a lot too, I
went to the training there and just bathing, I often went bathing in those
days, there was a lake there, now it's just a swamp and it's dangerous but
somebody still goes along there otherwise how come there's so many drowned
bodies? And reeds. I can ask anybody: how come there's paths through the
reeds? And nobody can tell me, and no more they ought. What have you got
there in that bin? If it's berries in soak I'll have them, I love soaked
berries, but if it's something of yesterday's then it doesn't matter, I
won't eat leavings, you can eat your own leavings." He paused, looking from
Kandid to Nava and back again. Getting no answer he went on:
"You can't sow anymore where the reeds have grown over. They used to
sow there before. They had to for the Accession, and they took everything to
Clay Clearing, they still take it there but they don't leave it on the
clearing, they bring it back. I told them they shouldn't, but they don't
know the meaning of the word. The elder asked me straight out in front of
them all: 'Why shouldn't we?' Buster was standing there, look, where you're
standing, closer even, and Ears just here, say, and over there where your
Nava's lying, there are the Baldy brothers, and he asks me in front of them,
in front of everybody. I tell him don't you realize, I tell him, we're not
alone here. . . . His father was a very wise man, or maybe he wasn't his
father, some say he wasn't and to be sure it doesn't seem like it. 'Why,' he
asks me, 'can't I ask why I shouldn't in front of eyeryone?' "
Nava got up and, passing the pot to Kandid, started tidying up. Kandid
began to eat. The old man fell silent and watched him for a while chewing on
his lip before observing: "That food's not good, you shouldn't eat it."
"Why not?" asked Kandid to tease.
The old man cackled.
"Eh, listen to him! Dummy, you'd do better to keep quiet. You'd be
better off answering what I keep asking, does it hurt much when you have
your head cut off?"
"What's it to you?" shouted Nava. "Why do you keep prying?"
"Shouts at me," announced the old man. "Lifts up her voice against me.
She's borne no child and raises her voice against me. Why don't you have a
child? Living with Dummy all this time and no child. Everybody has them but
not you. You shouldn't go on like this. Do you know what 'shouldn't' means?
It means undesirable, not approved, and since it's not approved it means you
shouldn't. What you should do may not be clear but what you shouldn't do,
you shouldn't. Everybody should know that and you most of all seeing as how
you live in a village not your own, got a house given, got Dummy for a
husband. Maybe he's got a different head stuck on him, but he's got a
healthy body, you've no right not to have a child. So that's it, shouldn't,
not desirable. . . ."
Nava, by now bad tempered and sulky, snatched the bin from the table
and went off into the pantry. The old man looked after her then went on,
snuffling:
"How else can shouldn't be understood? It can and ought to be realized,
shouldn't is harmful. . . ."
Kandid finished his meal and plunked the empty pot in front of the old
man. Then he went out onto the street. The house had been heavily overgrown
during the night and the only thing visible in the surrounding greenery was
the path made by the old man and the place by the door where he had sat
fidgeting waiting for them to wake up. The street had already been cleared,
the green creeper, thick as a man's arm, which had slid out of the network
of boughs hanging above the village on the previous night and put down roots
in front of the house next door had already been chopped up and fermenting
fluid poured on it. It had turned dark and was going nicely sour. It gave
out a strong appetizing smell and the neighbor's boys sat around it and tore
out chunks of the soft brown matter, damp and juicy, and stuffed them into
their mouths. When Kandid walked past, the eldest shouted with his mouth
full, "Dumbling--deadling!" but the cry was not taken up, they were all too
busy. Otherwise the street, orange and red from the tall grass in which the
houses lay drowned, somber, and mottled with dusky green patches where the
sun penetrated the forest roof, lay deserted. From the direction of the
field could be heard the monotonous ragged choir of voices: "Hey, hey, make
it gay, right way, left way, hey, hey."
From the forest came the echo. Or maybe not an echo. Maybe deadlings.
Hopalong was sitting at home, of course, massaging his leg. "Sit down,"
was his affable greeting. "Here I've put some soft grass for visitors. They
tell me you're going?"
Once more, thought Kandid, once more from the very beginning.
"What's the matter, leg hurting again?" he inquired, seating himself.
"Leg? No, it's just nice sitting here and giving it a rub. When are you
off then?"
"Just as we've been fixing it, you and I. If you were to come with me
then we could go the day after tomorrow. Now I'll have to find somebody else
who knows the forest. I can see you don't want to go."
Hopalong cautiously extended his leg and spoke weightily:
"As soon as you leave me, turn left, and carry on till you get to the
field. Across the field, past the two stones and you'll see the road
straight away, it's not much overgrown, there's too many boulders on it.
Along the road you'll pass through two villages. One's deserted, mushroomy,
mushrooms started growing there, so nobody lives there, there's funny folk
living in the other village, the blue grass went through there twice and
since then they've been sick, no need to start talking to them they won't
understand a word, it's like they've lost their memory. Through there then
and on the right you have your Clay Clearing. No need for guides, you can
get there on your own, no sweat."
"We'll get as far as Clay Clearing," agreed Kandid, "and after that?"
"What do you mean, after that?"
"Across the swamp where the lakes used to be. Remember you were telling
me about the stone road?"
"What road? To Clay Clearing. Well I'm trying to tell you, aren't I?
Turn left, across the fields up to the two stones. . . ."
Kandid heard him out before speaking.
"Now I know the way to Clay Clearing. We'll get there. But I have to go
further, as you know, I must get to the City, and you promised to show me
the way."
Hopalong shook his head in sympathy.
"To the Ci-i-i-i-ty, ah now, is that where you're heading. I remember,
I remember . . . yes to the City . . . you can't get there, Dummy. To Clay
Clearing now, that's easy; past the two stones, through the mushroom
village, past funny village, then Clay Clearing'11 be on your right. Or to
the Reeds, say, turn right as you leave me through the scrub, past Bread
Fen, then keep following the sun. Where the sun goes, you follow. It's three
days travel, but if you really have to go, we'll do it. We used to get pots
there before we planted our own. I know the Reeds like the back of my hand,
you should have said that's where you wanted to go. No need to wait till the
day after tomorrow either, we'll start tomorrow in the morning, we needn't
take any food with us, seeing as we're going by Bread Fen... .
"You know, Dummy, you speak so fast it hurts to listen to you. A man's
just started to take in what you say when you shut your mouth. Well, we'll
go to the Reeds, tomorrow morning we'll go. . . ."
Kandid heard him out once more.
"Listen, Hopalong, I don't have to go to the Reeds. The Reeds aren't
where I want to go. Where I want to be isn't the Reeds." Hopalong was
listening and nodding. "I want to go to the City. We've often spoken of it
before I told you yesterday I wanted to go to the City. I told you the day
before I wanted to to the City. I said a week ago I wanted to go there. You
told me you knew the way to the city. You said that yesterday. And the day
before. Not to the Reeds, to the City. I don't want to go to the Reeds
[don't let me get mixed up, he thought, maybe I'm mixed up already. Not the
Reeds, the City. The City and not the Reeds]. The City, not the Reeds," he
repeated aloud. "Understand? Tell me about the road to the City. Not to the
Reeds, to the City. Still better, let's go to the City together. Not to the
Reeds together, together to the City."
He stopped. Hopalong started rubbing his sore knee again.
"Likely when they cut your head off, Dummy, something got damaged in
there. Like my leg. It used to be just an ordinary leg like anybody else's,
then once I was going through the Anthills at night, carrying an ant queen
and I put this foot in a hollow tree and now the leg's twisted. Why it's
twisted nobody knows, but it doesn't walk straight, and that's a fact. But
it'll get me to the Anthills. And I'll take you along. What I don't get is
why you told me to get food ready for the trip-- the Anthills is only a
stone's throw from here."
He looked at Kandid, floundered, mouth open.
"Of course you don't want to go to the Anthills, do you? Where is it,
now? I know, the Reeds. Well I can't go there, I'd never make it. See how
twisted this leg is? Listen, Dummy, what is it you've got against going to
the Anthills? Let's go there, eh? I've never been there once since that day,
maybe the hills aren't there anymore. Let's have a look for that hollow
tree, what say?"
He'll sidetrack me, I know it, thought Kandid. He leaned over on his
side and rolled a pot over to him.
"Good pot you've got here," he said, "I don't remember when I saw a pot
as good as this ... so you'll take me to the City? You told me nobody knows
the road to the City except you. Let's go to the City, what do you think,
will we make it?"
"Make it? Course we'll make it! To the City, of course we will. And you
have seen pots as good as these, know where? The funny folk make them like
that. They don't grow them, you know, they make them out of clay, they're
not far from Clay Clearing, I told you: left away from me and past the two
stones as far as Mushroom Village, only nobody lives there anymore so
there's no sense in going. Why should we? Haven't we seen mushrooms before?
Even when my leg was all right I never went to Mushroom Village, I only know
the funny folk live two ravines past there. Yes ... we could go tomorrow,
yes. . . . Listen, Dummy, let's not go there eh? I don't like those
mushrooms. There's mushrooms in our part of the forest, that's different,
you can eat them, they taste good. Over there they're sort of green and they
smell rotten. Why do you want to go there? You'll bring spawn back with you
as well. We'd better go to the City. A lot nicer. Only we can't go tomorrow,
there's food to get together and we'll have to find out the way--or do you
know the way? If you do, I won't need to ask. In fact I can't think who to
ask. Maybe the elder knows --what do you think?"
"Don't you know the way to the City yourself?" asked Kandid. "You know
a lot about it, don't you? You even got to the City almost once, didn't you?
Only you got frightened of the deadlings and decided you couldn't get
through on your own. . . ."
"I wasn't frightened of deadlings any more than I am now," objected
Hopalong. "I'll tell you what I am afraid of, though. Are you going to be
quiet all the way? That's something I could never do. There's something else
as well . . . don't get angry at me. Dummy, just tell me, or if you don't
want to say it aloud, whisper, or nod, or if you don't even want to nod just
close that eye of yours, the right one in the shadow, nobody'll see only me.
The question I want to put is this: aren't you just a teeny bit of a
deadling? I can't stand deadlings, you know, I get the tremble when I see
them, can't do a thing with myself. . . ."
"No, Hopalong, I'm not a deadling," said Kandid. "I can't stand them
myself. If you're afraid I'll be too quiet for you, just remember we'll not
be alone, I've told you often enough, Buster's going with us, Barnacle, and
two men from New Village."
"I'm not going with Buster," said Hopalong with decision. "First Buster
took my daughter away and didn't take care of her. Lost her, he did. I
didn't mind him taking her, I do mind him not taking care of her. He was
going with her to New Village and robbers set on him and took my daughter
and he gave her up. Your Nava and me looked ages for her but we never found
her. No, Dummy, there's no sense messing with robbers. If we went to the
City, you and I, there'd be no peace from them. Now if it were the Reeds, no
trouble at all. We'll start tomorrow."
"The day after," said Kandid. "You'll go, Buster, Barnacle, and the two
from New Village. And we'll get right to the City."
"If there's six of us, we'll get there," said Hopalong confidently.
"I'd never get there on my own of course, but if there's six of us, we'll
get there. With six of us we'd get as far as Devil's Rocks, only I don't
know the way there. Shall we go to Devil's Rocks? Listen, Dummy, let's go to
the City and decide there, eh? There's food to get ready though, and plenty
of it."
"Okay," said Kandid, rising to his feet. "So the day after tomorrow, we
start for the City. Tomorrow I'll go to New Village, then I'll see and
remind you."
"Come around," said Hopalong. "I'd come to see you, only my leg aches,
no strength in it. You come around. We'll have a chat. There's a lot of folk
don't like talking to you, Dummy, it's pretty hard going, you know, but I
don't mind, I've got used to it, I even like it. Come around, and bring Nava
with you, she's a good girl, your Nava, no children though, they'll come
she's young yet, that Nava of yours. . . ."
Out on the street, Kandid wiped the sweat away with his palms.
Somewhere near, somebody cackled and started coughing. Kandid turned and saw
the old man waving a knotted finger of warning.
"The City, eh? So that's where you're off to? That's interesting,
nobody's ever got there alive, what's more it's not done. Even you should
know that even if you have got a transplanted head."
Kandid swung off to the right along the street. The old man trailed
along in the grass after him, muttering:
"If it's not done, then it's always forbidden in some sense or the
other, of course ... for instance, it's not done without the elder or the
assembly, with the elder and the assembly it is permissible, of course,
though not in every sense. . . ." Kandid was walking as quickly as the
ennervating heat and humidity would allow and the old man gradually fell
behind.
On the village square, Kandid caught sight of Ears. Ears, staggering
and crossing his bandy legs, was moving around in circles, sprinkling
handfuls of brown grass-kiHer from a huge pot slung around his belly. Behind
him the grass was already smoking and shriveling. Ears had to be avoided and
Kandid tried to do just that, but Ears smartly changed direction and came
face to face with him.
"Ah . . . Dummy!" he cried joyously, hastily un-slinging the pot from
his neck and setting it on the ground. "Where are you off to. Dummy? Home,
is it to Nava? Well could be wrong but your Nava's not at home, your Nava's
in the field, with these eyes I saw her going to the field, you may believe
me or not. . . . Maybe, of course, she hasn't gone to the field, could be
wrong. Dummy, but your Nava definitely went along tha-at alley over there
and if you go along there the field's the only place you come to, and
where's else should she go, your Nava? Not looking for you, would she be. .
. ."
Kandid made another effort to get by but again ended up face to face
with Ears.
"No need anyway to follow her to the field. Dummy," he went on
convincingly. "Why go after her? I'm just killing off the grass then I'll be
calling them all here, the land surveyor came and said the elder had told
him to tell me to kill the grass on the square because there's to be a
meeting on the square. As there's a meeting they'll all come here from the
field, your Nava among them if it's to the field she's gone, and where else
could she have gone along that alley? Although now I think of it, you can
get to other places than the field there, you can. . . ."
He suddenly stopped and gave a shuddering sigh. His eyes screwed up,
his hands lifted palms upward, as if of their own accord. His face broke
into a sweet smile, then abruptly sagged. Kandid about to make off, stopped
to listen. A small dense purplish cloud had formed around Ears' bare head,
his lips quivered and he began to speak swiftly and distinctly, in a voice
not his own, a sort of announcer's voice; the intonation was alien and the
style was one no villager would use, it was as if he spoke an alien language
so that only certain phrases seemed comprehensible.
"In the far Southlands new . . . are going into battle. . . .
retreating further to the South ... of the victorious march . . . the Great
Harrowing in the Northern lands has been temporarily halted owing to
isolated and sporadic . . . new advances in Swamp-making are giving
extensive areas for peace and new progress toward ... In all settlements . .
. great victories . . . work and efforts . . . new detachments of Maidens .
. . tomorrow and forever calm and amalgamation."
The old man had caught up to Kandid and now stood at his shoulder
interpreting wildly:
"All the settlements, hear that? That means here as well. . . . 'Great
victories.' It's what I always say, you can't . . . calm and amalgamation .
. . you've got to understand. Here as well, if they say everywhere . . . and
new detachments of Maidens, got it?"
Ears fell silent and dropped to his haunches. The lilac cloud had
dissipated. The old man impatiently tapped Ears on his bald pate. He blinked
and rubbed his ears.
"What did I say?" he asked. "Was it a broadcast? How's the Accession
going? Progressing or what? And you don't go to the field, Dummy, at a guess
I'd say you're going after your Nava, but your Nava ..."
Kandid stepped over the pot of grass-killer and hurried on.
The old man was no longer audible--either he'd got caught up with Ears
or else he'd gone into one of the houses to get his breath back and have a
bite to eat on his own.
Buster's house stood on the very edge of the village, There an
embattled old woman, neither aunt nor mother, said with a sneer full of
malice that Buster wasn't at home, Buster was in the field and if he was at
home, there'd be no point in looking for him in the field, but as he was in
the field, why was he, Dummy, standing there for nothing?
In the field the sowing was in progress. The oppressive stagnant air
was saturated with a powerful range of odors, sweat, fermenting fluid,
rotting grain. The morning harvest lay in great heaps along the furrow, the
seed already beginning to sprout. Clouds of working flies swarmed over the
pots of fermenting fluid and in the heart of this black, metallic-glinting
maelstrom stood the elder. Inclining his head and screwing up one eye, he
was minutely examining a single drop of whey on his thumbnail. The nail was
specially prepared, flat, polished to a gleam and cleaned with the necessary
fluids. Past the elder's legs the sowers crawled along the furrows, ten
yards apart. They had stopped singing by now, but the heat of the forest
still oohed and aahed, obviously now, no echo.
Kandid walked along the chain of workers bending and peering into the
lowered faces. Finding Buster, he touched him on the shoulder and Buster at
once climbed out of the furrow without question. His beard was clogged with
mud.
"Who're you touching, wool on yer nose?" he croaked, looking at
Kandid's feet. "Somebody once touched me like that, wool on yer nose, and
they took him by his hands and feet and threw him up in a tree, he's up
there to this day, and when they take him down he won't do any more
touching, wool on yer nose. . . ." "You coming?" asked Kandid shortly.
"Course I'm coming, wool on yer nose, when I've prepared leaven for seven;
it stinks in the house, there's no living with it, why not go, when the old
woman can't stand it and I can't bear to look at it--only where are we
going? Hopalong was saying yesterday we were going to the Reeds, and I
shan't go there, wool on yer nose, there's no people there, in the Reeds,
never mind dames. If a man wants to grab somebody by the leg and throw him
into a tree, wool on yer nose, there's nobody there, and I can't live
without dames any longer and that elder'll be the death of me. . . . Look at
him standing there, wool on yer nose, staring his eyes out and him as blind
as a mole, wool on yer nose . . . somebody once stood like that on his own,
he got one in the eye, doesn't stand anymore, wool on yer nose but I'm not
going to the Reeds, just as you like. . . ." "To the City," said Kandid.
"Oh well, the City, that's another affair altogether, I'll go there all
right, specially as I hear tell there's no City there anyway, that old
stump's lying his head off--he comes in the morning eats half a pot and
starts, wool on yer nose, laying down the law: that's not right, you
shouldn't do that. ... I ask him: who are you to tell me what's right and
what's wrong, wool on yer nose? He doesn't say, he doesn't know himself. . .
. Mutters on about some City."
"We'll set off the day after tomorrow," said Kandid. "What are we
waiting for then?" burst out Buster. "Why the day after tomorrow? I can't
sleep at night in my house, the leaven is stinking, let's go this evening,
somebody once waited and waited, they gave him round ears and he's stopped
waiting, never waited since. . . . The old woman's cursing there's no life,
wool on yer nose! Listen, Dummy, let's take my old woman with us maybe the
robbers would take her, I'd give her up all right!"
"The day after tomorrow we'll go," repeated Kandid patiently. "You're a
good fellow, making up so much leaven, from New Village, you know. . . ."
He failed to finish; from the fields came shouting.
"Deadlings! Deadlings!" roared the elder. "Women home! Run off home!"
Kandid looked around. Between the trees on the extreme edge of the
field stood the deadlings: two blue and quite close, one yellow a bit
farther off. Their heads with the round eye-holes and the black slash of a
mouth slowly revolved from side to side. Their huge arms hung loosely along
the length of their bodies. The earth where they stood was already smoking,
white trailers of steam mingled with gray-blue smoke.
The deadlings knew a thing or two and so behaved with extreme caution.
The yellow one had the whole of his right side eaten away by grass-killer
while the blue ones were covered in rashes caused by ferment burns. In
places, the skin had died off and hung in rags. While they stood and stared
about them, the shrieking women fled to the village and the menfolk,
muttering threats, crowded together with pots of grass-killer at the ready.
Then the elder spoke. "What are we standing here for, I ask you? Let's
go, why stand here?" Everyone moved slowly forward, spreading out into a
line, toward the deadlings. "Get them in the eyes," the elder kept shouting.
"Try and splash them in the eyes. Best get the eyes, not much good if we
can't get their eyes. . . ."
The line sang out ominously. "Ooh-hoo-hoo, get out! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
Nobody was inclined to get too close.
Buster, picking the dried mud from his beard, walked next to Kandid and
shouted louder than the others; between shouts he argued with himself.
"No, no-o-o, we're wasting our time, wool on yer nose, they won't stay,
they'll run in a minute. . . . Deadlings are they? Rubbish, I'd say, they
won't stay. . . . Hoo-hoo-hoo! You lot!"
Coming within twenty paces of the deadlings, the men stopped. Buster
hurled a clod of earth at the yellow one, but with surprising agility it
stuck out its broad palm and deflected the clod to one side. Everybody
started hooting and stamping their feet, some displayed the pots and made
threatening motions toward the deadlings. Nobody wanted to waste the fluid
and nobody wanted to drag all the way to the village for more. The deadlings
were battered and wary, they could be got rid of this way.
So it turned out. Steam and smoke thickened under the deadlings' feet,
they were faltering. "Well that's it" was said along the chain. "They've
given ground, they'll turn in a minute. . . ."
The deadlings imperceptibly altered, as if they were turning inside
their own skins. Their eyes and mouth disappeared from view--they had turned
their backs. In a second they were retreating, flickering among the trees.
Where they had stood, a cloud of steam slowly settled.
The men, in an excited hubbub, moved back toward the furrow. It was
suddenly realized that it was time to return to the village for the meeting.
They set off.
"Go onto the square," repeated the elder to everyone. "Onto the square.
The meeting will take place on the square, so everyone must go to the
square."
Kandid was looking for Barnacle, but he was nowhere in the crowd for
some reason. Barnacle had disappeared somewhere. Buster was talking nervily
beside him.
"Remember, Dummy, when you jumped on that deadling? Yes, jumped on him,
you did, wool on yer nose, took him by the head an' all, cuddling him like
your Nava, wool on yer nose, and what a yell. . . . Remember, Dummy, what a
yell you gave out with? You got burned, and then came out in blisters, wet
and painful as well. . . . Why did you jump on him, Dummy? Somebody did
that, jumpy-jumped on a deadling, took all the skin off his belly, now he
doesn't jump anymore; tells children to jump, wool on yer nose. . . . They
say, Dummy, you jumped on his back so he'd carry you to the City, but you're
no dame, why should he carry you away with him? Anyway there's no City at
all, it's that old stump making up his words City, Accession. . . . Who's
seen this Accession? Ears gets drunk on beetles and goes out burbling, the
old stump listens, then he wanders off everywhere, guzzling other people's
food and repeating. . . ."
"I'm going out to New Village in the morning," said Kandid. "I'll be
back at night, I shan't be here during the day. You see Hopalong and remind
him about the day after tomorrow. I've been reminding him and I'll do it
again, still, you do it, otherwise he'll wander off . somewhere."
"I'll remind him," promised Buster. "I'll remind him if I have to break
his other leg off."
The whole village had come out onto the square. Everybody was talking,
shoving and scattering seeds on the bare earth so that stems might come up
and provide soft seating. Children were mixed in underfoot; their parents
were pulling them along by their ears or hair to avoid a mix-up. A column of
poorly trained ants attempting to drag worker-fly larvae straight across the
square were being driven off by the cursing elder. He was asking by whose
orders there were ants here, it was a disgrace that's what. Ears and Kandid
were suspected, but the matter was not conducive to proof.
Kandid found Barnacle and wanted to talk with him, but failed as the
assembly was then declared open and as always the old man crawled forward to
speak first. What he spoke about nobody could understand but everybody sat
quietly listening and hissed at their scuffling children not to scuffle.
Some--those seated most comfortably well away from the sunny spots--fell
into a doze.
The old man went on at length about what was not "right" and in what
senses this was to be understood. He called for a mass Accession, threatened
victories in North and South, cursed the village and, separately, New
Village, announced that new detachments of Maidens were everywhere and that
neither in the village nor in the New Village was there calm or
amalgamation, that all this was a consequence of people forgetting the word
"shouldn't" and thinking everything was permitted. Dummy, for instance, was
set on going to the City, though nobody had summoned him. The village bore
no responsibility for that, seeing as he was foreign, but if it turned out
by chance that he was a deadling after all, and such an opinion existed in
the village, then nobody knew what would happen, especially as Nava, though
of course she was an alien too, had had no children by Dummy, and this was
not to be tolerated, yet the elder tolerated it. ...
Toward the middle of the oration, the elder dozed off as well, but
hearing his own name, started and immediately gave a threatening bark: "Hey!
No sleeping! You can sleep at home," he said, "that's what houses are for,
sleeping in, nobody sleeps on the square, meetings are held on the square.
Nobody has ever been allowed to sleep on the square, nobody is allowed and
nobody will be." He glanced toward the old man.
The old man gave a satisfied nod. "And so we have our general 'not
permitted.' " He smoothed his hair and announced: "A bride has been
announced at New Village. And we have a groom, Loudmouth, whom you all know.
Stand up. Loudmouth, and show yourself, no better not, you just sit there,
everybody knows you anyway. Now we have the question: shall Loudmouth go to
New Village or alternatively shall we bring the bride here to the village. .
. . No, no. Loudmouth, sit you down, we'll decide this without you . . .
those sitting next to him keep a good hold on him till the meeting is over.
Who has any opinion, let him speak."
There turned out to be two opinions. One (Loud-mouth's neighbors for
the most part) demanded Loudmouth's dismissal to New Village, let the rest
live here. Others, calm and serious men, living well away from Loudmouth
proposed the opposite, women were getting short, some had been stolen,
therefore the bride should come to the village. Loudmouth was that all
right, but suppose there would be children, let there be no doubt, that was
for sure. The argument was long, and at first to the point. Then Hopalong
unfortunately shouted out that it was wartime and everybody was forgetting
that. Loudmouth was instantly forgotten. Ears started to explain that there
was no war and never had been, there was and would be the Great Harrowing.
Not Harrowing, objected someone in the crowd, it was Essential Swamping. The
Harrowing was over long ago, the Swamping had been going on for years, Ears
didn't know a thing, how could he, he was Ears wasn't he? The old man got up
and rolling his eyes, croaked out hoarsely that there was no war, no
Harrowing; there was no Swamping either, there had been, was, and would be
the Personal Struggle in North and South. How was there no war, wool on yer
nose, came from the crowd, when there was a whole lake full of drowned
bodies past Funny Village? The meeting exploded. What about the drowned
bodies? Where there was water you found bodies, past Funny Village wasn't
like here, you couldn't go by Funny Village, they ate out of clay there,
lived under clay, gave their wives to the robbers, now people talked about
drowned bodies. It wasn't drowned bodies, no struggle and no war, it was
Calm and Amalgamation in the interests of the Accession! Why then was Dummy
going to the City? Dummy was going to the City, therefore the City existed,
and if it existed where was your war? It must be Amalgamation! Anyway did it
matter where Dummy went? Somebody went as well once, they gave it him right
in the nose and he doesn't go anywhere anymore. . . . Dummy was going to the
City because there was no City, they knew Dummy, Dummy was a fool if ever
there was one, and if there was no City, how could there be Amalgamation?
There was no Amalgamation, there had been one time mind you, but that was
ages ago . . . and no Accession either! Who says there's no Accession? What
do you mean? What's that? Loudmouth . . . hold Loudmouth! They've let him
go! Why couldn't they hold onto him?
Kandid, knowing this would go on for long, attempted to start a
conversation with Barnacle, but Barnacle was in no mood for conversation.
"Accession," he shouted. "Then what about the deadlings? You're forgetting
the deadlings! Why? Because you haven't any idea what to think about them,
that's why you're all shouting about this Accession! . . ."
They went on shouting about the deadlings, then about the mushroomy
villages, then they got tired and began to quiet down, mopping their faces
and shrugging one another off wearily. Soon it transpired that everybody had
fallen silent and only the old man and Loudmouth were carrying on. Everyone
came to their senses. Loudmouth was borne down and his mouth stuffed with
leaves. The old man went on for a while but lost his voice and became
inaudible. Then a disheveled representative from New Village got up and
pressing his hands to his breast and staring about him, began to beg in a
broken voice that Loudmouth shouldn't be sent to New Village, they had no
need of him, they had lived a hundred years without him and could do it
again, they should bring the bride to the village and then they would see
New Village would make no trouble over a dowry. . . . Nobody had the
strength to start arguing again--they promised to think about it and decide
later, especially as the matter wasn't urgent.
People began to drift off to dinner. Barnacle took Kandid by the arm
and dragged him to one side under a tree.
"Right, when do we leave?" he asked. "I'm so fed up here in the
village, I want off into the forest, I'll be ill of boredom here soon. ...
If you're not going, say so and I'll go alone, I'll talk Buster or Hopalong
into going too."
"We're going the day after tomorrow," said Kandid. "You've prepared
food?"
"Prepared it and eaten it. I haven't got patience to look at it, lying
there and nobody to eat it except the old man--he's getting on my nerves,
I'll make a cripple of him yet if I don't go soon. . . . What do you think,
Dummy, who is that old man and why does he eat everybody out of house and
home, where does he live? I'm a traveled man, I've been in a dozen villages,
I've been with the funny folk, I've even visited the skinnies, spent the
night there--nearly died of fright, but I've never seen an old man like
that, he must be a rare specimen, that's why we keep him and don't beat him,
but I've no patience left to watch him rummage around my pots day and
night--he eats in the house and takes stuff away with him, why my father
used to curse him before the deadlings smashed him up. . .. Where does he
put it all? He's just skin and bones, there's no room inside him, but he can
lap up two jars and take two away with him, and he never brings any jars
back. . . . You know, Dummy, maybe we've got more than one old man, maybe
there's two or even three? Two sleep while one works. When he's had his fill
he wakes up the next and goes to sleep himself. . . ."
Barnacle accompanied Kandid as far as the house but declined to have
dinner, out of tact. After chatting for fifteen minutes about how they lured
fish in the Reed-bed lake by wiggling their fingers, and promising to drop
in on Hopalong to remind him of the journey to the City, and asserting that
Ears was no Ears at all, but only a very deranged man, and that the
deadlings caught women for food, since men had tough flesh and the deadlings
had no teeth, and promising to prepare fresh supplies and drive off the old
man without mercy, he at last departed.
Kandid got his breath back with difficulty, and before going in stood
awhile in the doorway shaking his head. You, Dummy, don't forget that
tomorrow you've to go to New Village, early in the morning, don't forget:
not to the Reed-beds, not to Clay Clearing, but New Village . . . and why
should you go there, Dummy, better go to the Reed-beds, lots of fish there .
. . good fun. ... To New Village, don't forget, New Village, don't forget
Kandid . . . tomorrow morning to New Village . . . talk the boys into it,
you'll never get to the City with just the four of you. ... He entered the
house without realizing it.
Nava was still absent, but the old man was seated at the table waiting
for someone to put his dinner out. He squinted testily at Kandid and said:
"You walk slow, Dummy, I've been in two houses-- everybody's having
dinner but here there's nothing. . . . Likely that's why you've got no
children, you walk slow and there's nothing in the house at dinner time. . .
."
Kandid went right up to him and stood there for some time, reflecting.
The old man continued:
"How long will you take to get to the City, if you're as late as this
for dinner? It's a long way to the City, they say, a mighty long way, I know
everything about you now, I know you've decided to head for the City, only
thing I don't know is how you're going to reach it if you spend a whole day
getting to a pot of food and still don't get there. . . . I'll have to go
with you, I'll lead you there, I should have gone long ago, only I don't
know the road, but I've got to get to the City to fulfill my duty and tell
everything about everything to the proper person. . . ."
Kandid took him under the arms and hoisted him swiftly from the table.
The old man was dumbfounded. Kandid carried him out of the house in
outstretched arms and placed him on the road; he wiped his hands on the
grass. The old man recovered his wits.
"Just don't forget to take along food for me," he said to Kandid's
back. "Take a lot of good stuff for me, because I'm going to fulfill my duty
and you're going for your own pleasure and though 'not done'. . . ."
Kandid returned to the house, sat down at the table and lowered his
head onto clenched fists. Never mind, I'm leaving the day after tomorrow, he
thought. Let me not forget that: day after tomorrow. Day after tomorrow, he
thought, day after tomorrow.
Chapter Three
Pepper was awakened by the touch of cold fingers on his bare shoulder.
He opened his eyes and perceived someone standing over him, dressed in
underwear. The room was dark, but the man was standing in a shaft of
moonlight. Pepper could make out his pale face and
staring eyes.
"What do you want?" whispered Pepper. "You have to vacate," the man
whispered in return.
It's only the warden, thought Pepper, relieved. "Why vacate?" he asked
loudly, raising himself on his elbow. "Vacate what?"
"The hotel is overbooked, you'll have to vacate the room."
Pepper glanced around the room in confusion. Everything was as it had
been, the other three bunks were empty as before.
"You needn't stare," said the warden. "We know the situation. In any
case the sheets on your bed have to be changed and sent to the laundry. You
won't be washing them yourself, not brought up to. . . ." Pepper understood.
The warden was very frightened and was being rude to keep his spirits up. He
was in that state where one touch and he would cry out, squeal, twitch
convulsively, call for help.
"Come on, come on," said the warden and pulled the pillow from beneath
Pepper's head in a sort of weird impatience. "Sheets, I said. . . ."
"Look, what is this," said Pepper. "Does it have to be now? In the
night?" "Urgent."
"Good God," said Pepper, "you're off your head. Well, all right. . . .
You collect the sheets, I'll get by. I've only got this one night left."
He slid from the bunk onto the chilly floor and began stripping the
pillowcase off. The warden, as if frozen to the spot, followed his movements
with bulging eyes. His lips quivered.
"Repairs," he said finally. "Repairs got to be done. All the
wallpaper's peeling off, the ceiling's cracked, the floors need re-laying. .
. ." His voice took on a firmer note. "So you've got to vacate in any case.
We're starting repairs right away here."
"Repairs?"
"Repairs. Look at that wallpaper. The workmen will be here directly."
"What, now?"
"Right now. Why wait? The ceiling's full of cracks. Just take a look."
Pepper began to shiver. He left the pillowcase and picked up his
shorts.
"What's the time?" he asked.
"Well after twelve," said the warden, again whispering, and, forsome
reason, glancing around.
"Where on earth shall I go?" said Pepper, pausing with one leg in his
shorts. "You'll have to fix me up. Another room. ..."
"Full up. And where it isn't, repairs are under way."
"In the duty room, then."
"Full up."
Pepper stared at the moon in despair.
"Well, the storeroom will do," he said. "The storeroom, the laundry,
the isolation ward. I've only got six more hours to sleep. Or maybe you can
fix me up in your place. . . ."
The warden began rushing about the room. He ran between the bunks,
barefoot, white, and terrible as a specter. Then he stopped and groaned:
"What a business, eh? I'm a civilized man as well, graduate of two
colleges, I'm not a savage or anything. ... I know it all. But it's
impossible, get me? It's absolutely out of the question!"
He bounded up to Pepper and whispered in his ear, "Your visa has run
out! Twenty-seven minutes ago it ran out and you're still here. You mustn't
be here. I beg you. . . ." He collapsed onto his knees and drew Pepper's
boots and socks out from under the bed. "I woke up at five to twelve covered
in sweat," he mumbled. "Well, I thought, this is it. This is the end of me.
I ran off just as I was. I don't remember a thing. Clouds over the streets,
nails catching my feet--and my wife's expecting! Get dressed, please, get
dressed. . . ."
Pepper got dressed in a hurry. He found it hard to think. The warden
kept running between the bunks, shuffling across the moonlit squares, now
glancing out into the corridor, now looking out of the window, whispering,
"Good lord, what a business."
"Can I at least leave my suitcase with you?" inquired Pepper.
The warden clacked his teeth.
"Not at any price! You'll be the ruin of me. .. . You might have some
sympathy. . . . Good lord, good lord... ."
Pepper gathered his books together, closing his case with difficulty,
and picked up his raincoat. "Where shall I go now?" he asked.
The warden was mute. He waited fidgeting with impatience. Pepper hefted
his suitcase and went off down the dark and silent staircase to the street.
He paused on the verandah and while attempting to control his shivering,
spent some time listening to the warden instructing the somnolent duty
clerk: "He'll ask for readmittance. Don't let him in! He's got ...
[inaudible sinister whisper] Got it! You're responsible. .. ." Pepper sat
down on his suitcase and placed his raincoat across his knees.
"I'm afraid not, sorry," said the warden behind him. "I must ask you to
leave the verandah. I must ask you to vacate the hotel premises completely."
He had to go down and put his case on the roadway. The warden stamped
around, muttering: "I must ask you. . . . My wife . . . and no fuss. . . .
Consequences . . . can't be done. ..." and left, white underwear gleaming,
stealing along the fence. Pepper glanced at the dark windows of the
cottages, the dark windows of the Directorate, the dark windows of the
hotel. There was no light anywhere, even the street lighting was off. There
was only the moon, round, brilliant, and somehow malevolent.
He suddenly realized he was alone. He had nobody. All around people
were asleep and they all like me, I know that, I've seen it many times. Yet
I'm alone, just as if they'd suddenly died or become enemies . . . and the
warden--kind, ugly man, a martyr to Basedow's disease, a loser who latched
on to me the very first day. We played the piano together, four hands, and
argued. I was the only one he dared to argue with and next to whom he felt
himself a real person, not just the father of seven children. And Kim. He
had returned from the chancellery and brought a huge document case with him,
full of informers reports. Ninety-two denunciations of me, all written in
one hand and with different signatures. That I steal official sealing wax at
the post office, that I brought an underage girl in my suitcase and am now
keeping her in the bakery cellar, and much besides. . . . And Kim read these
denunciations and threw some into the wastebasket, and kept others to one
side, muttering: "I'll have to put some headwork in on that." And that was
unexpected and horrible, senseless and repulsive. . . . How he would timidly
glance at me and drop his eyes at once.
Pepper rose, gripped his case and wandered off, following his nose. His
nose led nowhere. Not that there was anywhere to lead to along these dark
empty streets. He kept stumbling, the dust made him sneeze, and he fell a
time or two. The suitcase was incredibly heavy and somehow ungovernable. It
rubbed its.bulk against his leg then swung out to one side and then,
returning from the dark, struck his kneee a tremendous clout. In the park's
dark alley where there was no light at all and only the statues, like the
warden, glimmered shakily in the gloom, the case got caught up in a thread
of his trouser-leg and Pepper abandoned it in despair. The hour of despair
had arrived. Weeping and blind with tears, Pepper struggled through dry,
dusty, spiky hedges, rolled down steps, fell, painfully striking his back,
and finally drained of strength and gasping with exasperation and self-pity,
went down on his knees at the edge of the cliff.
The forest, however, remained indifferent. So indifferent that it was
invisible. Below the edge was inky blackness. Only on the far horizon
something layered, gray, and formless lazily reflected the rays of the moon.
"Wake up," asked Pepper. "Look at me just this once, while we're alone,
don't worry, they're all asleep. Surely you need at least one of us? Or
don't you understand what a need is? It's when you can't do without . . .
when you think all the time about . . . when all your life you've been
striving toward. ... I don't know what you are. Nor do those who are dead
sure they know. You are what you are, but I can hope that you're what I've
wanted to see all my life: kind, intelligent, indulgent, and considerate,
perhaps even grateful. We've dissipated all that, we've no energy or time
for it, all we do is construct historical monuments, ever higher, ever
cheaper, but consideration is something we can't manage. But you're
different, because from a long way off I came to you, not believing you
actually existed. So you really don't need me? No, I won't lie. I'm afraid I
don't need you either. We've caught sight of each other, but came no closer.
It shouldn't have been that way. Perhaps they stand between us? There are
plenty of them and only one of me, but I'm--one of them, you, probably can't
pick me out in the crowd, maybe it isn't worth the trouble.
Maybe I invented those human characteristics that would appeal to you
myself, to you that is, not as you are, but as I had imagined you to be. ...
Suddenly from beyond the horizon, bright white puffs of light slowly
swam up and hung, dissipating and at once to the right under the cliff,
under the overhanging rocks, searchlight beams began hunting wildly, haring
about the sky and encountering massed banks of fog. The light balls above
the horizon continued to thin out and disperse and turned into silvery
clouds before extinguishing. A minute later the searchlights went out.
"They're afraid," said Pepper. "I am too. I'm afraid for myself but I'm
afraid for you as well. You don't know them after all, yet. Even I don't
know them at all well. All I know is they're capable of any extreme, the
furthest extremes of stupidity and wisdom, cruelty and pity, fury and
restraint. There's only one thing they lack--understanding. They always
substituted some sort of surrogate for understanding, be it faith,
disbelief, indifference, or neglect. That always turned out to be the
simplest way. Easier to believe than comprehend. Easier to become
disenchanted than to comprehend. I'm leaving tomorrow, by the way, not that
that matters. I can't help you here, here everything's too solid and
well-established. I'm just too obviously superfluous here, alien. I'll find
the pressure point though, don't worry. It's true they can ruin you
irretrievably, but that needs time and plenty of it. They've yet to find the
most effective, economic, and above all, cheap method of approach. We'll
keep up the struggle, it will have been worth it. ... Good-bye."
Pepper got up from his knees and wandered back by way of the bushes,
the park, the alley. He tried without success to locate his suitcase. After
that he got back to the main street, empty and illuminated only by the moon.
It was already after one when he halted outside the Directorate library, it
was open invitingly. The windows were hung with heavy curtains but inside it
was brightly lit, like a dance hall. The parquet floor had dried out and
squeaked desperately; all around were books. The shelves groaned under the
weight of books, books lay in heaps on tables and in corners, and apart from
Pepper and the books there wasn't a soul in the library.
Pepper lowered himself into a big old armchair and stretched out his
legs; reclining he calmly placed his arms on the rests. Well now, what are
you standing there for, said he to the books. Lazy devils! That's not what
you were written for? Tell us, you tell me how the sowing went, how many
acres? How many acres "of the wise, the good, the everlasting"? What are the
prospects for the harvest? Above all--how is it sprouting? Quiet now, you
there, what's your name two-volume! How many people have read you? How many
understood? I've a lot of affection for you, old man, you're a good, honest
friend. You never bawled or boasted or beat your chest. Good and honest.
Those who read you also become good and honest, at least for a time. At
least to themselves. You know, though, don't you, that some are of the
opinion that goodness and honesty are not all that indispensable if we're to
forge ahead. For that you need legs. And boots. Even unwashed legs and dirty
boots. Progress can be perfectly indifferent to concepts of goodness and
honor, as it has been indifferent up to now. The Directorate, for example,
has no need of goodness or honor in order to function properly. Pleasant,
desirable, but by no means essential. Like a knowledge of Latin to a
bathhouse attendant, or biceps on an accountant. Or respect for women to
Hausbotcher. ... It all depends on your definition of progress. You can
define it so the famous "for all that" appears: an alcoholic but for all
that an outstanding specialist; a lecher but for all that an excellent
preacher; a thief, you know, a rogue, but for all that what an executive! A
murderer but for all that, what discipline and dedication. . . . You can
also look on progress as a transformation of everyone into good and honest
men. Then we'll live to hear people say: he's a specialist, of course, knows
his stuff, but he's a dirty type, he'll have to go. ...
Listen, books, do you know there are more of you than there are people?
If all the people were to disappear, you could populate the earth and supply
their place. You've got good and honest among you, wise and erudite,
frivolous rattles, sceptics and madmen, murderers, corrupters of children,
children, prophets of doom, complacent fools, and hoarse demagogues with
flaming eyes. You wouldn't know why you were here either. Why are you here,
anyway? A lot of you give knowledge but what use is it in the forest? It has
no connection with the forest. It's like drilling the principles of
fortification into a future builder of sun cities, and then no matter how he
tried to build sanatoria or stadia, he kept producing gloomy redoubts
complete with bastions, scarps, and counterscarps. All you've given to
people coming to the forest is prejudice, not knowledge. . . . Others of you
instill mistrust and depression. And that's not because they're miserable or
cruel or suggest hope be abandoned, but because they lie. Occasionally they
lie radiantly, accompanied by rousing songs and jaunty whistling, sometimes
maudlin, moaning, and defensive, but--they lie. For some reason nobody ever
burns books like that and never removes them from libraries, never has there
been a case in human history where a lie has been given to the flames,
unless people chanced not to understand it, or indeed believed in it. In the
forest they're not needed either. They're never needed. Probably that's why
there are so many of them ... or rather it's because people like them.
"Dearer to us than the bitter truth. . . ." What? who's that talking there.
. . . Oh, it's me ... as I was saying, there are other books. . . . What? .
. .
"Quiet. Let him sleep." "Why sleep. Better have a drink." "Stop
scraping about like that. . . . Here, it's old Pepper!"
"What if it is, watch you don't fall." "He's sort of unlooked-after,
he's pathetic!" "I'm not pathetic," mumbled Pepper as he woke up. A library
stepladder stood opposite Pepper. On its top step sat Alevtina from the
photo laboratory, while below, driver Acey was holding the steps with his
tattooed arms and gazing upward. "He's always wandering about like a lost
soul," said Alevtina, looking at Pepper. "No supper, likely. He wants waking
up, a glass of vodka at least. What do people like that dream about, I
wonder?"
"Ask me what I'm seeing awake!" said Acey gazing up.
"Anything new?" asked Alevtina. "Never seen it before?"
"Well, no," said Acey. "Can't say it's especially new, but it's like
the movies--you see it twenty times over but it's still nice."
On the third step from the bottom lay pieces of a massive strudel, on
the fourth were laid out cucumbers and peeled oranges, a half-empty bottle
and a plastic pencil-cup stood on the fifth step.
"Look as much as you like as long as you keep the steps steady," said
Alevtina, and she set to work getting weighty journals and faded folders
down from the top shelves of the stack. She blew the dust off and frowned as
she flipped the pages; she put some to one side and replaced the rest.
Driver Acey snuffled loudly.
"Do you need the year's before last?" asked Alevtina.
"There's only one thing I want just now," said Acey mysteriously. "I'll
just wake Pepper up."
"Keep near the steps," said Alevtina.
"I'm not asleep," said Pepper. "I've been watching you for ages."
"You can't see anything from there," said Acey. "Come over here,
Monsieur Pepper. We've got the lot here, women, wine, fruit. . . ."
Pepper got up, stumbling on one numb leg, and came uo to the steps; he
poured himself a drink. "What did you dream about, Peppy?" inquired Alevtina
from aloft.
Pepper glanced up mechanically and averted his eyes at once.
"What I dreamed . . . rubbish. ... I was talking to the books."
He drained the drink and took a piece of orange. "Just a minute there.
Monsieur Pepper," said Acey. "I'll have a drink myself."
"So do you want the year before last's?" "I'll say!" said Acey,
splashing into his glass and choosing a cucumber. "And for the one before
that. I always need it. I've always had it and can't do without it. Nobody
can. Some need more, some less ... I always say, why lecture me? What I am,
I am." Acey tossed down his drink with the greatest of pleasure and crunched
into a cucumber. "But you can't live the way I live here. I'll put up with
it just a little bit more and then I'll drive my truck into the forest and
catch myself a mermaid. . . ."
Pepper stood holding the steps and tried to think about the following
day, while Acey seated himself on the bottom step and began relating a story
of his youth. He and a group of cronies caught a couple on the edge of town,
beat up the boyfriend and chased him off and tried to make use of the dame.
It was cold and damp and being extremely young nobody could achieve
anything, the lady friend was crying and afraid and one by one the boys
drifted off. Acey on his own tagged after her for a long time through the
dirty backstreets, grabbing at her, swearing. He kept thinking he would make
it, but nothing transpired until he had got her to her own house and there
in the dark hallway he had his way up against the iron railing. In Acey's
account the incident seemed extraordinarily thrilling and cheerful.
"So the mermaids won't escape me," said Acey. "I never let go and won't
start now. What I have in the window is what's in the shop--fair dealing."
He had a darkly handsome face, bushy eyebrows, lively eyes, and a full
mouth of excellent teeth. He looked very like an Italian. Except that his
feet smelled.
"Good lord, what've they been doing," said Alev-tina. "All the folders
are mixed up. Here, hold this lot for a bit."
She bent down and gave Acey a pile of papers and journals. Acey took
it, scanned several papers, read to himself, lips moving, and counted the
folders.
"I need two more."
Pepper kept holding the ladder and looked at his clenched fists.
Tomorrow at this time I won't be here, he thought. I'll be sitting next to
Acey in the cab. It'll be hot. The metal will just be starting to cool down.
Acey will switch on the headlights, settle down more comfortably with his
elbow out of the window and will start up about world politics. I'm not
going to let him talk about anything else. Let him stop at every snack bar.
Let him pick up anybody he wants, even let him make a detour to deliver
somebody's repaired motorbike. But we're going to talk about world politics
only. Or I could ask him about various cars, fuel consumption, accidents,
murders of bribe investigators. He tells a good story, and you can never
guess if he's telling the truth.
Acey drank another, smacked his lips, glanced at Alevtina's legs, and
continued his narration, fidgeting and making expressive gestures, bursting
out in delighted laughter. With a scrupulous adherence to chronology he
related the story of his life, from year to year, month to month. The cook
at a concentration camp where he'd done time for stealing paper (the cook
had commented meanwhile: "Don't let me down, Acey, see you don't! . . ."),
the daughter of a political prisoner at the same camp (it was all the same
to her, she was sure she was a goner anyway), a sailor's wife in some
seaside town, who was trying this way of revenging herself on her tomcat of
a husband for his multitudinous betrayals. A certain rich widow, from whom
Acey had had to flee in the middle of the night clad only in his drawers, as
she wanted Acey under her wing and force him to traffic in drugs and
shameful medical preparations. Women he'd transported when he was a
taxi-driver; they paid him in coin for each of their guests, and at the end
of the night with their bodies. ("I says to her, what's all this then,
nobody thinks about me, you've had four and I've not had one yet. . . .")
Then a wife, a fifteen-year-old girl whom he married on a special
dispensation--she bore him twins and finally left him when he attempted to
use her in payment for the use of his friend's lady friends. Women ... birds
. . . stinkers . . . butterflies . . . shits . . . bitches. . . . "So you
see I'm no lecher," he concluded. "I'm just a man with a bit of spirit, not
some gutless impotent."
He finished off the liquor, collected up the folders, and left without
saying good night, scraping the parquet and whistling. Oddly bent forward as
he was, he was surprisingly like a cross between a spider and a neanderthal.
Pepper was looking helplessly after him when Alevtina spoke.
"Give me your hand, Peppy."
She sat down on the top step, put one hand on his shoulder and leapt
down with a small shriek. He caught her under the arms and lowered her to
the floor; for some time they stood close to one another, face to face. She
kept her hands on his shoulders and he kept holding her under the arms.
"I've been thrown out of the hotel," he said. "I know," she said.
"Let's go to my place, okay?" She was kind-hearted and warm and looked him
in the eyes calmly, though without any particular assurance. Looking at her,
one could imagine many kindly, warm sweet pictures and Pepper avidly flicked
through them all, one after the other, and tried to imagine himself next to
her, but was suddenly aware that it wasn't working. Instead of himself he
kept seeing Acey, handsome and naked, economical in movement and smelling of
feet.
"No, thank you," taking his hands from her. "I'll get by all right."
She immediately turned from him and set about collecting the leftovers
onto a newspaper.
"Why 'get by'?" she said. "I can put you up on the sofa. Sleep till
morning, then we'll find you a room. You can't sit in the library every
night. . . ."
"Thank you," said Pepper. "Only I'm leaving tomorrow."
She looked around at him in astonishment. "Leaving. For the forest?"
"No. Home."
"Home. . . ." She slowly wrapped the food in the newspaper. "But you've
wanted to get into the forest all the time. I've heard you myself."
"Yes, you see, I did want to. But they won't let me go. I don't even
know why. And there's nothing for me to do in the Directorate. So I've fixed
it. Acey's taking me away tomorrow. It's three already. I'll go to the
garage, get into Acey's truck and wait till morning. So don't you worry. . .
."
"So, we'll be saying good-bye. . . . Maybe we'll go to my place
anyway?"
"Thanks, but better in the truck. ... I'd be afraid of oversleeping.
Acey won't wait for me, will he?"
They went out into the street arm in arm and walked toward the garage.
"So you didn't like Acey's storytelling?" she asked.
"No," said Pepper. "I didn't like it at all. I don't like it when
people talk about that. Why? It's sort of embarrassing ... for him, you and
me ... for everybody. It's too pointless, all of this. Just one vast
boredom."
"It usually is," said Alevtina. "But don't be embarrassed for me. I'm
absolutely indifferent. . . . Well, this is your road. Kiss me good-bye."
Pepper kissed her, aware of a vague regret. "Thank you," she said,
turning away quickly and walking off in another direction. For some reason,
Pepper waved a hand after her.
He came into the garage, which was lit up by blue lamps and, stepping
across the snoring guard on his car-seat, found Acey's truck and got into
the cab. It smelled of rubber, gas, and dust. On the windshield hung a
spreadeagled Mickey Mouse. Nice and cozy, thought Pepper. I should have come
here straight away. All around stood silent trucks, dark and empty. The
guard snored sonorously. The trucks slept, the guard slept, the whole
Directorate slept. And Alevtina was undressing before the mirror in her room
alongside her neatly-made bed, large, double, soft, and very warm. . . . No,
no sense thinking about that because during the day the chatter got in the
way, the tapping of the Mercedes, the whole busy, meaningless chaos, but now
there was no eradication, no penetration, no security, or the other sinister
stupidities. There was a dream world above the abyss, transparent like all
dream worlds, invisible and inaudible, not a whit more real than the forest.
The forest was at this moment more real: the forest, after all, never slept.
Or perhaps it slept and dreamed us. We are the forest's dream. An atavistic
dream. The crude ghosts of its cooled sexuality. . . .
Pepper lay down, curled up, and put his rolled-up raincoat under his
head as a pillow. Mickey Mouse swung gently on his thread. On seeing the toy
the girls always cried: "Ah, isn't it pretty!" and driver Acey answered:
"What's in the window's always in the shop." The gear-lever dug into
Pepper's side and he didn't know how to remove it or whether it could be.
Maybe if he moved it, the truck would move, slowly at first then quickening
straight toward the sleeping sentry while Pepper flung himself about the cab
pressing everything he could reach with a hand or foot, and the guard
getting ever closer, his open snoring mouth already visible. Then the truck
would leap and turn viciously, slamming into the garage wall; the blue sky
would be seen through the hole. . ..
Pepper woke up and saw it was already morning. Mechanics were smoking
in the gaping garage doors, the square in front of the garage was yellow
with sunlight. It was seven o'clock. Pepper sat up, wiped his face and
looked at himself in the rear mirror. Need a shave, he thought but he didn't
get out of the truck. Acey wasn't around yet and he had to wait for him here
on the spot, since all the drivers were forgetful and always went off
without him. There were two rules governing relations with drivers: first,
never get out of the cab if you can be patient and wait; secondly, never
argue with the driver who's carrying you. If worse comes to worst, pretend
to be asleep.
The mechanics at the doors had thrown away their cigarette butts and
ground them out carefully with their heels. They came into the garage.
Pepper knew only one of them and he was no mechanic, he was the manager.
They passed by Acey's truck, where the manager paused by the cab and,
placing his hand on the wing, for some reason glanced under the vehicle.
Then Pepper heard him giving orders:
"Move now, get the jack."
"Where is it?" asked the unknown mechanic.
"!" said the manager calmly. "Look under the seat."
"How should I know," said the mechanic, irritably. "I kept telling you
I was a waiter." There was silence for a while, then the driver's door
opened and the frowning tense face of the waiter-mechanic appeared. He
glanced at Pepper, gazed around the cab, tugged the wheel for some reason,
then put both arms under the seat and started feeling around.
"Would this be the jack?" he asked quietly.
"N-no," said Pepper. "I believe it's the starting handle."
The mechanic raised the handle to his eyes, examined it, placed it on
the step, and thrust his arms once more under the seat.
"What about this?" he asked.
"No," said Pepper, "I can be absolutely sure of that one. It's a
calculating machine. Jacks aren't like that."
The waiter-mechanic wrinkled his low forehead and looked the machine
over carefully.
"What are they like then?" he inquired.
"We-11 ... a sort of metal rod . . . there's different kinds. They've
got a sort of movable handle."
"Well there's a handle on this, like a cash register."
"No, it's a different handle altogether."
"What happens if you turn this one?"
Pepper was completely at a loss. The mechanic waited for a moment,
placed the machine on the step, and got back under the seat. "Would it be
this?" he said.
"Could be. It looks very like it. Only there should be another metal
spoke to it, a thick one."
The mechanic found that, too. He hefted it in his palm, saying: "Okay,
I'll take this along to him for a start," then left, leaving the door open.
Pepper lit a cigarette. Somewhere behind him came the sound of metal
clanking accompanied by swearing. The truck began creaking and trembling.
There was still no sign of Acey, but Pepper wasn't worried. He was
picturing them bowling down the main street of the Directorate and no one
looking at them. Then they would turn toward the settlement dragging a cloud
of yellow dust behind them. The sun would rise higher and higher, it would
be to their right and would soon start scorching, then they'd turn from the
settlement onto the main road, it would lie long, even, gleaming and
monotonous, on the horizon mirages would flow like great shining pools. . .
.
Once again the mechanic walked past the cab, rolling before him a heavy
rear wheel. The wheel raced along the concrete floor and it was obvious the
mechanic wanted to stop it and lean it up against the wall. The wheel,
however, wobbled a little and ponderously trundled out into the yard, the
mechanic in awkward pursuit, but being outdistanced. At this point, they
disappeared from view. Out in the yard the mechanic began shouting
despairingly. Came the tramp of many feet past the gates and shouts of:
"Catch it! Come in from the right." More people ran past.
Pepper noticed that the truck was not standing as evenly as before and
looked out of the cab. The manager was busy with the rear wheel.
"Hello," said Pepper. "What're you . . ." "Ah, Pepper, friend!" the
manager cried happily, continuing his work. "You stay there, stay there,
don't get out! You're not bothering us. Jammed, blast it. One came off fine,
the other's jammed."
"How's that? Something broken?"
"Don't think so," said the manager, straightening up and wiping his
brow with the back end of the palm with which he held the spanner. "Just
rusted in a bit, probably. I'll do it right away. Then we'll get the
chessmen out. What d'you say?"
"Chess?" said Pepper, "but where's Acey?"
"Acey? That is, Ace? Ace is our senior lab assistant. He's been sent to
the forest. Ace doesn't work with us anymore. What d'you want him for?"
"Nothing, just . . ." said Pepper quietly. "I just thought . . ." He
opened the door and leapt down onto the cement floor.
"No need to get out. You could have stayed there, you're not in our
way."
"Why sit in here," said Pepper. "This truck's not going anywhere, is
it?"
"No, it isn't. Can't go without wheels, and these want taking off.
That's all I needed--jammed! Ah, to ... Never mind, the mechanics'll take
them off. Let's go and set up the board."
He took Pepper's arm and led him into his office. They sat down at a
table, the manager pushed away a heap of papers, set out the board, and
disconnected the telephone.
"Are we going to play with a clock?" he asked.
"Well I don't know, really," said Pepper.
It was dim and cold in the office, blue tobacco smoke floated between
the cupboards like frozen seaweed, and the manager, warty, rotund, and
covered in mottled patches, was like a gigantic octopus opening the
lacquered shell of the chess board with two hairy tentacles, and busily
extracting its wooden innards. His round eyes held a dull gleam, the
righthand one, the false one, was permanently directed toward the ceiling,
whereas the left one, lively as a mercury dot, rolled freely in its srcket,
fixing its stare in turn on Pepper, the door, and the board.
"With a clock," the manager decided finally. He took a clock from the
cupboard, wound it up and, pressing the button, made his first move.
The sun was coming up. From the yard came a shout of "come in from the
right!"
At eight o'clock, the manager, in a difficult position, went into deep
thought, then abruptly ordered breakfast for two. Cars were rumbling out of
the garage. The manager lost one game and proposed another. They breakfasted
solidly, two bottles of yogurt and a crustly strudel apiece. The manager
lost a second game and offered a third, his good eye gazing at Pepper with
devoted admiration. He played an identical queen's gambit every time,
indefatigably sticking to an inevitably losing variation. He had, as it
were, worked out his defeat perfectly and Pepper moved his pieces absolutely
automatically feeling like a programmed machine; neither in him nor in the
world was there anything except a chess board, clock buttons, and a firmly
fixed program of action.
At five to nine the tannoy crackled and announced in a sexless voice:
"All Directorate personnel to stand by telephones. The Director will address
all staff." The manager became most serious, reconnected the telephone and
put the receiver to his ear. Both his eyes were now contemplating the
ceiling. "Can I go, now," asked Pepper. The manager frowned horribly, placed
his finger to his lips, then waved his hand at Pepper. An unpleasant
quacking resounded in the receiver. Pepper left on tiptoe.
There were lots of people in the garage. Every face was stern and
impressive, even solemn. No one was working, everybody had telephone
receivers pressed to their ears. In the yard, only the waiter-mechanic,
sweaty, red and tormented, pursued his wheel, breathing heavily. Something
very important was taking place. This can't go on, thought Pepper, it just
can't. I'm always left out, I never know anything, perhaps that's the whole
trouble, perhaps everything's really all right, but I don't know what's
what, so I'm always superfluous.
He sprang into the nearest automatic telephone, snatched the receiver,
and listened eagerly. He could only hear the ringing tone. At once he was
aware of a sudden fear, a nagging apprehension that he was missing something
again, that somewhere everybody was getting something, and he, as usual, was
going without. Leaping over the ropes and inspection pits, he crossed the
construction site, gave a wide berth to a guard blocking the road with a
pistol in one hand and a receiver in the other, and shinned up a ladder onto
the partially-built wall. In all the windows he could make out people frozen
to telephones in attitudes of concentration; just then something whined
above his ear and almost at once he heard the sound of a revolver shot. He
leaped down into a heap of rubbish and rushed to the service entrance. It
was locked. He yanked at the handle several times until it came off. He
flung it to one side and for a second debated what to do next. There was a
narrow open window alongside the door and, covered in dust, his nails torn,
he climbed in.
There were two tables in the room in which he found himself. At one sat
Hausbotcher with a telephone. His eyes were closed, his face stony. He was
pressing the receiver to his ear with his shoulder and jotting something
down with a pencil on a large notepad. The other was vacant, on it stood a
telephone. Pepper took off the receiver and began to listen.
Hissing. Crackling. An unfamiliar squeaky voice: "Directorate can in
practice only control an infinitesimal area in the ocean of the forest,
which laps the continent. The meaning of life does not exist, nor does the
meaning of action. We can do an extraordinary amount, but up to now we have
not understood what, out of what we can do, we really need. It does not
resist, it simply takes no notice. If an action has brought you
pleasure--well and good, if it hasn't--it was pointless." More hissing and
crackling. "We oppose with millions of horsepower, dozens of land-rovers,
airships, and helicopters, medical science and the finest logistics theory
in the world. The Directorate has at least two major failings. At the
present time similar actions can have far-reaching cipher communication in
the name of Herostratus, so that he remains our dearly beloved friend. It
cannot create at all without destroying authority and ingratitude. ..."
Hooting, whistling, noises like an explosive cough. ". . . it is
particularly fond of so-called simple solutions, libraries, internal
communications, geographical and other maps. The ways it regards as
shortest, so as to consider the meaning of life for everyone at once, and
people don't like that. Personnel sit with their legs dangling over the
cliff, each in his own place, tussle together, make jokes and hurl stones,
each trying to hurl a heavier stone, at the same time, the expenditure on
yogurt does not help grafting or eradication, nor the due amount of forest
security. I am afraid that we have not realized what we really want, and
nerves, let us face it also need to be trained, as capacity for receptivity
can be trained. Reason does not blush or suffer from pangs of conscience,
since a question from a scientific, a correctly posed one, becomes a moral
one. It is deceitful and slippery, it is impermanent and dissimulates. But
someone must irritate, not relate legends, and carefully prepare himself for
a trial exit. Tomorrow I will receive you again and see how you have
prepared yourself. Twenty-two hundred hours--radiological alarm and
earthquake. Eighteen hundred-- meeting of all off-duty personnel in my
office, so to speak, on the carpet. Twenty-four hundred--general evacuation.
. . ."
Through the receiver came a sound of pouring water. Then everything
went quiet and Pepper noticed Hausbotcher watching him with sternly accusing
eyes.
"What's he saying?" asked Pepper in a whisper. "I can't understand a
thing."
"Hardly surprising," said Hausbotcher icily. "You picked up the wrong
telephone." He dropped his eyes, noted something on his pad and went on:
"That is, incidentally, an absolutely impermissable contravention of the
rules. I insist that you replace the receiver and leave. Otherwise I shall
summon official personnel."
"All right," said Pepper. "I'll go. But where's my telephone? This
isn't mine. Where's mine, then?"
Hausbotcher made no reply. His eyes had closed again, and he once more
pressed the instrument to his ear. Pepper could hear croaking noises.
"I'm asking you, where's my phone?" shouted Pepper. Now he could hear
nothing at all. There was hissing, there was crackling, then came the rapid
beeps of the signing-off signal. He dropped the instrument and ran out into
the corridor. He opened the doors of the offices one after another and
everywhere saw staff familiar and unfamiliar. Some were sitting or standing,
frozen into total immobility, like wax figures with glassy eyes; others were
treading from one corner to another, stepping over the telephone wires they
trailed after them; still others were feverishly writing in thick exercise
books, on scraps of paper, or the margins of newspapers. And every one of
them had the telephone clamped close to his ear, as if afraid to miss even a
word. There were no spare telephones. Pepper attempted to take a receiver
away from one of the entranced ones, a young man in a boiler-suit. He,
however, at once came alive, began squealing and kicking, at which the
others began shushing and waving their hands. Somebody shouted hysterically:
"Disgraceful! Call the guard!"
"Where's my telephone?" Pepper was shouting. "I'm a man like you and I
have a right to know! Let me listen! Give me my telephone!"
He was pushed out and the doors locked in his face. He wandered up to
the last story, where, almost into the attic, next to the never-working
elevator machinery, there sat two duty mechanics at a table, playing noughts
and crosses. Pepper leaned against the wall, out of breath. The mechanics
glanced at him, gave him an absent smile, and once more bent over the paper.
"Haven't you got your own telephone?" asked Pepper.
"Yes," said one. "Naturally. We haven't come to that yet."
"Well, why aren't you listening?" "You can't hear anything. Why
listen?" "Why can't you hear anything?"
"Because we've cut the wire."
Pepper wiped his face and neck with a crumpled handkerchief, waited
till one mechanic defeated the other, then went downstairs. The corridors
had become noisy; doors were open wide, staff were coming out for a smoke.
Lively, excited, exhilarated voices exclaimed and buzzed. "I'm telling you
the truth. Eskimos invented the Eskimo ice cream. What? Well, all right, I
just read it in a book. . . . You can't hear the assonance yourself?
Es-ki-mos. Es-ki-mo. What? . . ." "I saw it in the Hiver catalogue, a
hundred and fifty thousand francs--and that was in fifty-six. Can you
imagine what that would be today?" "Funny cigarettes. They say they aren't
putting tobacco into cigarettes anymore. They get special paper, crush it,
and saturate it in nicotine. . . ." "You can get cancer from tomatoes as
well. Tomatoes, a pipe, eggs, silk gloves. . . ." "Did you sleep well?
Imagine, I couldn't get to sleep all night: that piledriver keeps thumping
all the time. Can you hear it? Like that all night. Hello, there, Pepper!
They were saying you'd left. . . . You're staying, good lad!" "They've found
that thief at last, remember, all those things kept disappearing? It turned
out to be the discus-thrower from the park, you know, the statue near the
fountain. He had something filthy written on his leg, too." "Peppy, be a
pal, lend me five till payday--tomorrow that is. . . ." "But he wasn't after
her. She kept throwing herself at him. Right in front of her husband. You
won't believe this, but I saw it with my own eyes. . . ."
Pepper went down to his office, said hello to Kirn, and washed his
hands. Kim wasn't working. He was sitting quietly with his hands on the
table, gazing at the tiled wall. Pepper took the dust-cover off the
Merce-des, plugged it in, and glanced expectantly at Kim.
"Can't work today," said Kim. "Some goon is going around repairing
everything. I'm sat here not knowing what to do."
At this point a note on his desk caught Pepper's eye. "To Pepper. We
are to advise you that your telephone is located in office 771." Signature
illegible. Pepper sighed.
"No use sighing," said Kim, "you should have got to work on time."
"Well, I didn't know," Pepper said. "I was intending to leave today."
"It's your own fault," Kim said shortly.
"Anyway I did hear something. Kim, you know. I didn't understand it at
all. Why was that?"
"Hear something! You're a fool. You're an idiot. You missed such an
opportunity I can hardly bear to speak to you. I'll have to introduce you to
the director. Out of pity."
"Do that," said Pepper. "You know," he went on, "sometimes I thought I
caught the sense of something, some scraps of ideas, I think very
interesting ones, but I'm trying to recall them--and nothing."
"Whose telephone was it?"
"I don't know. Where Hausbotcher sits!"
"Ah-h, yes, she's having a baby. Hausbotcher's out of luck. Gets a new
assistant, works six months--and a baby. Yes, Pepper, you got a woman's
telephone. So I don't know how I can help you. . . . Nobody listens to it
all right through, women either, I suppose. After all, the director is
addressing everybody at once, but at the same time everybody separately as
well. Understand?"
"I'm afraid not."
"I for instance, recommend listening like this. Put the director's
speech into one line, omitting punctuation marks, and choose the words at
random, mentally putting down dominoes. Then if the domino halves coincide,
the word is accepted and noted down on a separate list. If it doesn't--the
word is temporarily rejected, but remains in the line. There are a few other
refinements to do with the frequency of vowels and consonants, but that is
an effect of secondary significance. Get it?"
"No," said Pepper. "That is, yes. Pity I didn't know that method. And
what did he say today?"
"It's not the only method. There is, for example, the
intermittent spiral method. It's rather crude, but if the speech is
only about equipment and economic problems, it's very convenient because
it's simple. There is the Stevenson-Zade method, but that requires
electronic gadgets. ... So that, all round, the domino method's the best,
but when the terminology is specialized and narrow--the spiral method."
"Thank you," said Pepper. "But what was the director talking about
today?"
"What d'you mean, what about?"
"What? . . . Well. .. what about? Well, what did he ,say?"
"To whom?"
"To whom? Well, you for instance." "Unfortunately, I can't tell you
that. It's classified material, and after all. Peppy, you're not on
permanent staff here. So don't get mad."
"No, I'm not angry," said Pepper. "I'd have liked to know, that's all.
... He said something about the forest and free will. ... I'd recently been
lobbing pebbles over the cliff, well, just like that for no real reason and
he said something about it."
"Don't you tell me about that," said Kirn nervously. "It's nothing to
do with me. Or you either if it wasn't your telephone."
"Now wait a minute, did he say something about the forest?"
Kim shrugged.
"Well, naturally. He never talks about anything else. Anyway, let's
stop this sort of talk. Tell me how you meant to get away." Pepper told him.
"You shouldn't beat him all the time," said Kim, thoughtful.
"There's nothing I can do. I'm a pretty strong player, you know, and
he's just an amateur. And he plays a queer game."
"That doesn't matter. I'd have thought a bit in your shoes. I'm getting
not to like you just lately. . . . They're writing denunciations about you.
. . . You know what, I'll fix a meeting with the director for you tomorrow.
Go to him and explain yourself fully. I reckon he'll let you go. Stress the
fact that you're a linguist, an arts graduate, and got here accidentally.
Mention, as if in passing, that you were very keen to get into the forest,
but you've changed your mind, because you don't think you're competent."
"All right."
They were silent for a while. Pepper imagined himself face to face with
the director and was terrified. Domino method, he thought, Stevenson-Zade. .
. .
"Main thing, don't be afraid to cry," said Kim. "He likes that."
Pepper sprang to his feet and paced the room in agitation.
"Good lord," he said. "If I only knew what he looks like. What sort of
a man he is."
"What sort? He's not very tall, gingerish. ..."
"Hausbotcher was saying that he was a real giant."
"Hausbotcher's a fool. Boaster and liar. The director is a ginger sort
of guy, stoutish, small scar on right cheek. Bit pigeon-toed when he walks,
like a sailor. In fact that's what he used to be."
"But Acey said he was skinny and had long hair because of his missing
ear."
"What Acey is this?"
"Driver. I was telling you about him."
Kim gave an irritated laugh.
"How would driver Acey know about all that? Take my advice, Peppy, and
don't be so trusting."
"Acey said he'd been his driver and seen him several times."
"Well, what of it? He's lying, probably. I was his personal secretary
and never saw him once."
"Who?"
"The director. I was his secretary for ages till I got my further
degree."
"And never saw him once?"
"Well, naturally! You imagine it's that easy?"
"Wait a minute, how do you know he's ginger and so forth?"
Kim shook his head.
"Peppy," said he tenderly. "Dear lad. Nobody's ever seen a hydrogen
atom, but everybody knows it has an electron shell having certain
characteristics and a nucleus consisting in the simplest instance of one
proton."
"That's true enough," said Pepper limply. He felt weary. "So I'll see
him tomorrow."
"Now, now, ask me something easier," said Kim. "I'll fix you a meeting,
that I can guarantee you. But what you'll see or who--that I don't know. Or
what you'll hear, either. You don't ask me whether the director will let you
go or not, do you? And rightly so, I can hardly know that, can I?"
"That's a different matter, surely," said Pepper. "Same thing. Peppy,"
said Kim. "Believe me, the same."
"I must seem very stupid," Pepper said sadly. "A bit." "I just slept
badly, that's all."
"No, you're not practical, that's all. Why did you sleep badly anyway?"
Pepper told all and became alarmed. Kirn's kindly face flushed and his
hair became disarranged. He snarled and grabbed the telephone, dialed
furiously and barked:
"Warden? What does this mean? How dare you turn Pepper out? Si-1-ence!
I didn't ask what had run out. I'm asking you how you dared move Pepper out?
What? Si-1-ence! You don't dare! What? Rubbish, blather! Si-1-ence! I'll
walk all over you! You and your Claudius-Octavian! You'll clean out my
toilet, you'll go into the forest in twenty-four hours, in sixty minutes!
What? Yes ... yes. ... What? Yes ... that's right. Now you're talking. And
the best sheets. . . . That's your business. In the street if you like. . .
. What? All right. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Sorry to disturb you. . . . Well,
naturally. Thanks a lot. Bye." He replaced the receiver.
"Everything's okay," he said. "Marvelous man when all's said. Go and
lie down. You'll be living in his flat, he and his family are moving into
the hotel room you had, otherwise, unfortunately, he can't. . . . And don't
argue, for heaven's sake, it's not at all our business. He decided himself.
Go on, go, that's an order. I'll call you about the director."
Pepper went out into the street, swaying. He stood for a moment,
blinking in the sun, then set off for the park to look for his suitcase. He
did not find it at once since it was firmly held in the muscular gypsum hand
of the thieving discus-thrower by the fountain. The filthy inscription on
his thigh was not as filthy as all that. A chemical pencil had written:
"Girls, beware of syphilis."
Chapter Four
Kandid left before sunup so as to get back by dinner-time. It was about
ten kilometers to New Village, the road was familiar, well-trodden, spotted
with bald patches from spilled grass-killer. It was reckoned safe to travel
on. Warm, bottomless swamps lay to right and left, rotten branches poked up
out of the stinking rusty water, the sticky caps of enormous swamp
toadstools thrust up their round shining domes. Sometimes by the very road
could be found the crushed homes of water spiders. From the road it was hard
to make out anything taking place on the swamps; myriads of thick green
columns, ropes, threads as shimmering as gossamer hung down from the dense
interlocking tree-crowns overhead and sank their questing roots into the
ooze. A greedy, relentless greenery stood like a wall of fog and concealed
everything except sounds and smells. Every now and again something broke off
in the yellow-green twilight and fell with an endless crashing, finishing
with a thick, oily splash. The swamp sighed, rumbled, champed, and silence
fell again, and a minute later, the fetid stench of the perturbed depths
penetrated the green curtain and drifted onto the road. It was said that
nobody could walk across these bottomless places, though the deadlings could
walk anywhere, for the good reason thai they were deadlings-- the swamp
would not accept them. Just in case, Kandid broke off a branch for himself,
not that he was afraid of deadlings, deadlings did no harm to men as a rule,
but various rumors went the rounds concerning the fauna and flora of forest
and swamp, and some of them might turn out to be true, with all their
absurdity-He had gone about five hundred paces from the village, when Nava
called him. He halted.
"Why go without me?" asked Nava, somewhat breathlessly. "I told you I'd
go with you, I shan't stay alone in that village, nothing for me to do on my
own, nobody likes me there, you're my husband, you have to take me with you,
it doesn't signify that we've got no children yet all the same, you're my
husband, and I'm your wife, we'll have children sometime. . . . It's just,
I'll tell you honestly, I don't want children yet, I can't understand why
they're necessary or what we could do with them. . . . Never mind what that
elder says or that old man of yours, in our village it was quite different:
who wants to, has children, and who doesn't doesn't. ..."
"Now, now, go back home," said Kandid. "Where did you get the idea I
was going away? I'm just going to New Village, I'll be home for dinner all
right. . . ."
"That's all right, I'll go with you then, and we'll come back for
dinner together, the dinner's been ready since yesterday, I've hidden it so
that even that old man of yours won't find it."
Kandid walked on. It was useless to argue, let her come. He cheered up,
even. He felt like tangling with somebody, swinging his stick and taking out
on them all the frustration and anger and helplessness built up over how
many years was it. On robbers. Or deadlings --it made no difference. Let the
little girl come along. My wife, too, wants no children. He hit out with all
his force, swung at a dank tree-root on the verge, and almost knocked
himself over: the root had rotted completely and the stick went through it
like thin air. Several sprightly gray animals leaped out and, gurgling,
disappeared into the dark water.
Nava skipped alongside, now running ahead, now lagging behind. Now and
again she took hold of Kandid's arm with both of hers and hung on thoroughly
contented. She talked of the dinner, which she had so cunningly concealed
from the old man, of how wild ants might have eaten it if she hadn't made
sure they'd never find it, of how some noxious fly had woken her up and that
when she was going to sleep last night, he, Dummy, was already snoring and
muttering incomprehensible words in his sleep, and how did you know such
words, Dummy, it's amazing when nobody in our village knows words like that,
only you know, you always had, even when you were quite ill, knew even
then... .
Kandid listened and didn't listen, the usual monotonous drone
penetrated his brain, he strode on and pondered dully and at length, about
why he could never think about anything, perhaps because of the endless
inoculations that went on in the village when they took time off from
chattering, or perhaps from something else. . . . Perhaps it was the whole
dozy, not even primitive, just vegetable way of life he had led since the
long-forgotten days when the helicopter had flown into an invisible barrier
at full speed, heeled over, snapped its rotors, and crashed like a stone
into the swamps. . . . Probably I was thrown out of the cabin then, he
thought. Thrown out of the cabin, he thought for the thousandth time. Hit my
head on something, so I never recovered . . . and if I hadn't been thrown
out, I'd have drowned in the swamp along with the aircraft, so it's a good
thing I got thrown out. ... It suddenly struck him that all this was actual
ratiocination and he rejoiced; it had seemed that he'd lost his ability to
think clearly long ago, could only affirm one thing: day after tomorrow, day
after tomorrow. . . .
He glanced at Nava. The girl was hanging on his left arm and talking
recklessly as she looked up at him:
"They all got into a huddle, and it got terrible hot, you know how hot
they are, and there was no moon at all that night. Then mam started pushing
me away quietly, and I crawled on all fours between all their legs, and mam
never got to see me anymore...."
"Nava," said Kandid. "You're telling me that story again. You've told
it to me two hundred times."
"Well, what if I have?" asked Nava, astonished. "You're a queer one.
Dummy. What else can I tell you about? There's nothing else I can remember
or know about. I'm not going to tell you how we dug a cellar together last
week, you saw all that yourself, didn't you? Now if I'd dug the cellar with
somebody else, with Hopalong, now, or Loudmouth. . . ." She suddenly livened
up. "You know. Dummy, that's interesting now. Tell me how we dug the cellar,
nobody's told me about that yet, 'cos nobody saw. . . ."
Kandid's attention was drawn away again, the yellow-green undergrowth
floated by on either side, slowly waving, some creature snuffled and sighed
in the water, a swarm of soft white bugs, the sort they made intoxicating
liquors from, sailed by with a thin whine, the road under their feet was now
soft where there was tall grass, now rough from gravel and crushed stone.
Yellow, gray, green, blotches--nothing for the eye to latch onto, nothing to
lodge in the memory. Now the path turned sharply to the left; Kandid walked
on another few paces and halted, trembling. Nava abruptly fell silent.
By the road, with its head in the swamp, lay a large deadling. Its arms
and legs were flung out and unpleasantly distorted, it was perfectly still.
It was lying on crushed grass, now yellow from the heat, pale, broad, and
even from a distance it was obvious that it had been terribly beaten. It was
like jelly. Kandid cautiously circled it. He became alarmed. The fight had
taken place fairly recently: the crushed, yellowing grass-blades were
straightening up as he watched. Kandid carefully surveyed the road. There
were plenty of tracks, but he could make nothing of them, while the road
made another bend some little way ahead, and what lay beyond that he could
not guess. Nava was still looking back at the deadling.
"Our people didn't do it," said she very quietly. "Our people don't
know how. Buster always threatens but he can't do this either, just waves
his arms all over the place. . . . Nobody from New Village can either. . . .
Dummy, let's go back, eh? Maybe they're freaks. They walk here, so they say,
not often, but it happens. Better go back, eh? ... What're you taking me to
New Village for anyway? Haven't I seen New Village before?"
Kandid lost his temper. What the devil was all this? He'd walked this
road a hundred times without meeting anybody, something worth recalling and
pondering. And now, when they were leaving tomorrow-- not even the day
after, but tomorrow, of course it had to happen!--this one and only safe
road becomes dangerous. . . . You could only reach the City through New
Village. If there was any reaching the City at all, if the City even
existed, then the road to it led through New Village. He went back to the
deadling. He pictured to himself Hopalong, Buster, and Barnacle, chattering
ceaselessly, boasting, and threatening, as they stamped around this
deadling, and then still continuing the boasts and threats, turning back
from sin and going back to the village. He bent down and took the deadling
by the legs. They were still hot but not enough to burn. With a flurry, he
shoved the bulky body into the swamp. The quag champed, groaned, and gave
way. The deadling disappeared, a ripple ran across the dark water and died.
"Nava," said Kandid, "go to the village." "How should I go to the
village if you aren't going there?" said Nava calculatingly, "now if you
were to go to the village too. . . ."
"Stop chattering," said Kandid. "Run away now to the village and wait
for me. And don't talk to anybody there."
"What about you?"
"I'm a man," said Kandid, "nobody's going to do anything to me."
"Oh yes they will," objected Nava. "I'm telling you: what if they're
freaks? It's all the same to them, you know, man, woman, or deadling,
they'll make you into one of their own kind, you'll walk here, horrible, and
grow onto a tree at night. How can I go on my own, when they could be back
there?"
"There's no such thing as freaks," said Kandid, without much
confidence. "That's all travelers' tales. . . ."
He looked back. There was a bend in the road and what lay beyond that
he could not guess either. Nava was saying something to him copiously, fast
and whispering, which made it speciaHy unnerving. He took a better grip on
his club.
"All right. Come with me. Just stick close to me and if I order you to
do something, do it straight away. And keep quiet, close your mouth, and say
nothing till we get to New Village. Let's go."
Keep quiet, of course she couldn't. She did stick close by his side, no
more running ahead or lagging behind, but kept up a continuous muttering to
herself:
at first it was something about freaks then about the cellar, then
about Hopalong and how she had walked these parts with him and made a flute.
. . . They negotiated the dangerous bend, then another and Kandid had
relaxed somewhat, when right out of the tall grass in the swamp came people
who halted silently before them.
So it goes, thought Kandid wearily. Just my luck. Always just my luck.
He glanced sideways at Nava. Nava was shaking her head and wrinkling up her
face.
"Don't you give me up to them, Dummy," she was muttering. "I don't want
to go with them. I want to go with you, don't give me up. . . ."
He looked at the people. There were seven of them, all men, all
overgrown with hair to the eyes and all with huge knobbly clubs. They
weren't local people, they weren't clothed after the local fashion, quite
different plants. These were robbers.
"Well. why've you stopped?" said their leader in a deep rolling voice.
"Come here, now. We mean you no harm. ... If you were deadlings, then of
course, we'd have a different sort of talk, that is no talk at all, we'd
take you to little bits, and that's all the talk there'd be. ... Where are
you heading for? To New Village, I'd guess. That's all right, you can do
that. You, pop, you get along. The little daughter, of course, you leave
with us. Don't you fret, she'll be better off with us. . . ."
"No," said Nava, "I don't want to go with them. You hear that, Dummy, I
don't want to go with them, they're robbers. . "
The robbers began laughing, not gloating, just from habit.
"Maybe, you'd let us both through?" asked Kandid. "No," said the
leader, "both is out. Just now there are deadlings around here, your little
daughter would be a goner, she'll get to be a splendid Maiden or some such
rubbish, and we get nothing out of that, nor do you, pop, think it out for
yourself if you're a man and not a deadling, and you don't look much like
one of them, though you've an odd look about you for a man."
"She's still a girl, you know," said Kandid. "Why hurt her?"
The leader was astonished.
"Why do we have to harm her? She won't be a girl forever, when the time
comes she'll be a woman, not one of your what d'you call 'em splendid
Maidens, but a woman. . . ."
"It's all lies," said Nava, "don't you believe him, Dummy, do something
quick as you've brought me here, or they'll cart me off this minute like
they did Hopalong's daughter, since then nobody's set eyes on her, I don't
want to go with them, better if I become one of them splendid Maidens. . . .
Look how wild they are and skinny, they've got nothing to eat by them
either, very like. . . ."
Kandid looked about him helplessly, then an idea occurred to him, one
that seemed good to him. "Listen, people," he pleaded, "take us both." The
robbers approached without haste. Their leader inspected Kandid carefully
from head to foot.
"No," he said. "What do we need somebody like you for? You village lot
are not fit for anything, you've got no desperation in you, why you're alive
I don't know, we could come in and take the lot of you with our bare hands.
We don't need you, pop, you talk a bit queer, no knowing what sort of a man
you are, you get yourself to New Village and leave the little daughter with
us."
Kandid sighed deeply, took a grip on his club with both hands and said
softly to Nava:
"Now, Nava, run! Run, don't look back, I'll hold them back."
Stupid, he thought. Of course it would turn out stupid. He remembered
the deadling lying with its head in the dark water, like jelly, and lifted
his club above his head.
"Ey-ey!" cried the leader.
All seven, shoving and slithering, rushed forward in a mass. Kandid
could still hear the pattering of Nava's heels, then there was no time for
that. He was frightened and ashamed, but his fear left him very quickly,
since unexpectedly it pretty soon became clear that the only real fighter
among the robbers was the leader. Fending off his blows, Kandid saw that the
rest of them, while continuing to wave their clubs in an aimlessly
aggressive manner, were just knocking into one another tottering from their
own heroic swings, stopping often to spit on their palms. One of them
suddenly gave a despairing squeal: "I'm sinking!" and collapsed noisily into
the swamp, two of the robbers at once threw away their weapons and set to
work dragging him out. The leader, however, pressed on croaking and stamping
his feet, until Kandid caught him a chance blow on the kneecap. The leader
dropped his staff, hissed sharply, and squatted on his haunches. Kandid
leaped back.
The two thieves were busy dragging the sinking one from the bog; he was
completely stuck, his face had gone bluish. Their leader sat on his haunches
and was examining his injury solicitously. The other three, sticks raised,
were crowding about behind his back, also examining the injury over his
head.
"You're a fool, pop," said the leader reproachfully. "You didn't ought
to do that, you village yokel. I've never seen the likes of you, and that's
a fact. . . . You can't see what's good for you, village yokel, blasted
thick oaf. . . ."
Kandid waited no longer. He turned and raced after Nava as fast as his
legs would carry him. The robbers called out after him, jeering and angry,
the leader shouting: "Stop him! Stop him!" They didn't come after him, and
Kandid wasn't happy about that. He experienced feelings of disappointment
and annoyance and as he ran tried to imagine how these clumsy, awkward, and
unmalicious people could so terrorize the villages and also in some way
destroy deadlings, those agile and merciless fighters.
Soon he caught sight of Nava; the girl was bounding along about thirty
yards ahead, banging her hard bare heels down on the ground. He saw her
disappear around a bend and suddenly reappear coming toward him, then freeze
for an instant and race sideways straight across the swamp, leaping from
root to root, amid flying spray. Kandid's heart stopped.
"Don't," he roared, breathless. "Have you gone crazy? Stop!"
Nava at once halted, grabbing at a liana, and turned toward him. Now he
saw another three robbers emerging from the bend, who stopped, looking now
at him, now at Nava.
"Dummy!" cried Nava penetratingly. "You hit them and run here! You
won't sink here don't be scared! Hit them, beat them! That's the way! Go on!
Go on! Give it to them!"
"You there," said one of the robbers solicitously, "stop that shouting,
just hold on, or you'll fall in, drag you out after. . . ."
Behind him the robbers began stamping and crying:
"Ooh-hoo!" The three in front waited. Then Kandid, seizing hold of his
cudgel at both ends, thrust it ahead of him across his chest and flew at
them, knocked all three down and fell over himself. He knocked himself badly
on somebody but leaped up at once. Everything swam before his eyes. Somebody
again cried out in terror: "I'm sinking." Someone's bearded face thrust at
him and Kandid struck it a blow with his staff without looking. The staff
broke in half. Kandid flung the fragment from him and jumped into the swamp.
A root subsided under his foot and he very nearly came to grief, but at
once leaped for the next and proceeded jumping heavily from one snag root to
another, in a spray of black stinking mud. Nava squealed in triumph and
whistled as he came toward her. In the rear angry voices resounded: "What
happened to you, butterfingers, clumsy devil?"
"What about you, then, tell me that!"
"We let the girl go, the girl won't last long now. . . ."
"The man's gone mad, fighting!"
"He ripped my clothes, blast it, what clothes too, best you can get, my
clothes, but he tore them. Not even him, it was you tore them. . . ."
"That's enough talky-talk, when all's done; we've got to catch them,
not talky-talk. . . . See, they're running, and you talky-talk!"
"What about you, then, tell me that!"
"He hit my leg, see? Damaged my poor knee, but how he did it, I don't
understand, I just swung and . . ."
"And where's Seveneyes? Boys, Seveneyes is sinking."
"Sinking! That's right, sinking. . . . Seveneyes sinking and they
talky-talk!"
Kandid came to a halt, and likewise grabbed hold of a liana; breathing
heavily, he listened and watched the odd people piled up on the road,
flailing their arms about, dragging their Seveneyes out of the bog by leg
and head. Gurgling and snoring sounds filled the air. Two robbers were
already moving toward Kandid, knee-deep in the black sludge, testing the
quagmire with their staves. They were avoiding the root-snags. Lies again,
thought Kandid. You could cross the swamp by a ford and everybody said you
could only do it by the road. They used the robbers as bugbears, good Lord,
what bugtoears!
Nava tugged his arm. "Let's go, Dummy," she -said. "What're you
standing there for? Let's go quick ... or maybe you want to fight a bit
more[9] Wait then and I'll find you a good stick, then you can
beat these two and the Others'11 get scared. Though if they don't, then
they'll get the better of you, 'cos you're only one, and they're one . . .
two . . . three . . . four. . . ."
"Go where?" asked Kandid. "Will we get to New Village?"
"We'il get there very like," said Nava. "I don't know why we shouldn't
get to New Village. . . ."
"G" forward then," said Kandid, who had got his breath back by now.
"Show me the way."
Nava lightly sprang off into the forest, into the very depths of the
green fog of undergrowth.
"I'm not too sure which way we should go or how," said she as she ran.
"But I've been here once, or maybe not once but more. Hopalong and I used to
come here, before you came. ... Or no, you were here, only you were still
going about witless, couldn't understand anything, couldn't talk, looked at
everybody like a fish, then they gavie me to you, I married you, but you
don't remember anything, likely. . . ." Kandid jumped after her, striving to
keep his breathing regular and keep exactly to her footprints. From time to
time he glanced back. The robbers were not far off.
"I came here wilth Hopalong," continued Nava, "when Buster had his wife
abducted by thieves, Hopa-long's daughter. He always used to take me with
him, wanted to exchange me maybe, or just wanted to take me as his daughter,
anyway he went with me into the forest, 'cos he was wasting away with grief
for his daughter. . . ."
The lianas stuck to their arms, lashed their faces, and dead tangles of
them dragged at their clothes and tripped them up. From above, detritus and
insects rained down, and sometimes heavy, shapeless masses accumulated and
plunged downward through the tangle of greenery and swayed about above their
heads. To left or right could be glimpsed sticky purple clusters. fungi of
some sort, or fruits, or some repulsive creatures' nests.
"Hopalong used to say, that there's a village somewhere here. . . ."
Nava spoke lightly as she ran, as if she weren't running at all but lolling
on her bed at home: it was obvious straight away she wasn't a local girl,
the locals couldn't run. "Not our village and not New Village, some other,
Hopalong told me the name but I've forgotten, it was a long time ago, after
all, before you came ... or no, you were here, only you couldn't think, and
they hadn't given me to you yet. . . . And use your mouth when you breathe,
no sense in using your nose, you can talk fine that way too, this way you'll
get out of breath, we've a long way to run yet, we haven't got past the
wasps, where we'll have to run fast, though maybe the wasps have gone from
there since. . . . They were the wasps of that village I was telling you
about, but Hopalong used to say there's been no people in the village for
ages, the Accession's happened there, he says, so there's no people left. .
. . No, Dummy, I'm lying, he was talking about another village. . . ."
Kandid had got his second wind and running was easier. They were now in
the very heart of the forest, the very depths of the thickets. Kandid had
been as deep as this only once, when he had attempted to straddle a
deadling, so as to reach its masters on its back, the deadling had galloped
along, it was as hot as a boiling kettle and Kandid had finally lost
consciousness from the pain and fallen off into the mud. He had suffered for
ages afterward from burns on chest and palms.
It was getting darker and darker. The sky was no longer visible at all,
the air became more and more stifling. At the same time, the stretches of
open water became rarer, mighty clumps of red and white moss appeared. The
moss was soft and cool, and extremely springy, it was pleasant to step on.
"Let's. . . have a rest. . . ." breathed Kandid. "No, what are you
thinking of. Dummy," said Nava. "We can't possibly rest here. We have to get
past this moss as quick as we can, it's dangerous moss, it's a sort of
animal lying down, like a spider, you go to sleep on it and you won't wake
up anymore, that's what sort of moss it is, let the robbers rest on it, but
likely they know that you mustn't, otherwise that'd be good...."
She looked at Kandid and slackened to a walk. Kandid hauled himself to
the nearest tree, leaned his back on it, the back of his head, finally all
his weight and closed his eyes. He very much wanted to sit down, to fall
down, but he was afraid. He assured himself; they're surely lying around the
moss as well. But all the same he was afraid. His heart was beating like a
mad thing, his legs might not have existed at all, his lungs were bursting
and expanded painfully in his chest at every breath, and everything was
slippery and salty with sweat.
"What if they catch up with us?" he heard Nava's voice as if through
cotton wool. "What will we do, Dummy, when they catch us up. You're about
all in, likely you couldn't fight anymore, eh?"
He wanted to reply: I could, but only managed to move his lips. He was
no longer frightened of the robbers. He wasn't frightened of anything. He
was only afraid of moving and of lying down in the moss. It was the forest,
after all, whatever lies they told, it was the forest, this was something he
well recalled, he never forgot that ever, even when he used to forget
everything else.
"You haven't even got a stick now," Nava was saying. "Shall I look for
a stick. Dummy, shall I?" "No," he mumbled. "Don't bother . . . heavy. . .
." He opened his eyes and listened intently. The robbers were near, and
could be heard panting and trampling in the undergrowth, the trampling
wasn't very lively either, the robbers too were having a hard time of it.
"Let's get on," said Kandid.
They passed through a zone of dangerous white moss, then a zone of
dangerous red moss, the wet bog began again with still, thick water, on
which reclined gigantic pale flowers with a repellent meaty smell, and out
of each flower peered a gray, speckled animal, which followed them with eyes
on stalks.
"You, Dummy, splash along a bit faster," Nava was saying practically,
"or something'll suck you in and you'll never get free afterward, don't
think just because you've had an inoculation, you won't get sucked in, 'cos
you just will. Then it'll conk out, of course, but that won't help you any.
. . ."
The bog suddenly came to an end, and the terrain began to rise steeply.
A tall striped grass with sharp cutting edges made its appearance. Kandid
looked back and caught sight of the robbers. For some reason they had
halted. For some reason they were standing up to their knees in swamp,
leaning on their clubs and looking after them. Done in, thought Kandid,
they're done in as well. One of the robbers raised his arm and made an
inviting gesture, shouting:
"Come on down, what do you think you're doing?"
Kandid turned away and went after Nava. After the quagmire, walking on
solid ground seemed an easy matter, even uphill. The robbers were shouting
something, two and then three voices. Kandid turned for the last time. The
robbers were still standing in the swamp, in the filth, full of leeches;
they hadn't even come out onto dry land. Seeing him look back, they started
waving their arms desperately and began shouting again discordantly; it was
hard to make out.
"Back!" they were shouting, it seemed. "Ba-a-ck! We won't to-ouch you!
. . . You're goners, you foo-o-ols!"
You don't catch me, thought Kandid, with cheerful malice. Fools,
yourselves, and I believed in you. I've had enough of believing. . . . Nava
had already disappeared behind the trees and he hastened after her.
"Come ba-a-ack! We'll let you go-o-o!" roared the leader.
They can't be as done in as all that if they can bawl like that,
thought Kandid fleetingly and at once began to reflect that a little farther
on and he would sit down and rest, and search out any leeches and ticks he
had picked up.
Chapter Five
Pepper presented himself in the director's anteroom at exactly ten.
There was a line there already, about twenty people. Pepper was put in
fourth place. He took an armchair between Beatrice Vakh of the Aid to Native
Populations Group and a morose member of the Engineering Penetration Group.
The morose member, judging by the identification button on his chest and the
legend on his white mask, bore the name Brandskugel. The anteroom was
decorated in pale pink, on one wall hung a board, "No smoking, no litter, no
noise," on the other a large picture of pathfinder Selivan's exploit:
Selivan with arms upraised, was turning into a jumping tree before the eyes
of his stunned comrades. The pink blinds on the windows were tightly down,
an enormous chandelier blazed from the ceiling. Apart from the entrance door
on which was written "Exit," the room possessed one other door, vast and
covered in yellow leather, with the sign "No Exit." This notice was done in
fluorescent colors and had the effect of a lugubrious warning. Under it the
secretary's desk stood with its four different-colored telephones and
electric typewriter. The secretary herself, a plump middle-aged lady in
pince-nez, was haughtily perusing the Textbook of Atomic Physics. The
visitors talked among themselves in restrained voices. Many were plainly
nervous and were compulsively leafing through old illustrated magazines.
It was all extraordinarily like a dentist's waiting room and Pepper
again experienced an unpleasant chill, a quiver in the jaw, and a desire to
go somewhere else quickly.
"They're not lazy even," said Beatrice Vakh, turning her beautiful red
head slightly toward Pepper. "But they can't tolerate systematic work. How,
for instance, can you explain the extraordinary ease with which they abandon
their living places?"
"Are you addressing me?" asked Pepper timidly. He hadn't the faintest
idea how to explain the extraordinary ease.
"No, I was talking to Monsher Brandskugel." Monsher Brandskugel
adjusted his left moustache, which had come unstuck, and gave a muffled
mumble. "I don't know!"
"Nor do we," said Beatrice bitterly. "As soon as our groups get near a
village, they leave their houses and possessions and go. You get the
impression they're absolutely uninterested in us. We've got nothing for
them. Do you see it that way?"
Monsher Brandskugel was silent for a while as if pondering and looked
at Beatrice through the strange cross-shaped embrasures of his mask. At
length he brought out in his previous intonation, "I don't know."
"It's a great pity," Beatrice continued, "that our group is made up
exclusively of women. I realize that • there is an underlying reason for it,
but we often lack masculine toughness and endurance, I'd call it
pur-posefulness. Women unfortunately tend to dissipate their energies, no
doubt you've noticed that?"
"I don't know," said Brandskugel, at which his moustaches came off and
floated softly to the floor. He picked them up, inspected them carefully,
lifting the edge of his mask and, applying spit matter-of-factly, replaced
them.
A bell rang sweetly on the secretary's desk. She put aside her book,
glanced through her list, holding on her pince-nez with an elegant gesture,
and announced:
"Professor Cockatoo, please go in." Professor Cockatoo dropped his
picture magazine, jumped to his feet, sat down again, glanced around, grew
perceptibly pale and then, biting his lip and with a violently distorted
face, pushed off from his chair and disappeared behind the door marked "No
Exit." A painful silence reigned in the anteroom for several seconds. Then
voices resumed humming and pages rustling.
"We simply cannot find any way of engaging their interest, of absorbing
them. We built them convenient day houses on piles. They fill them up with
peat and colonize it with insects of some kind. We tried to offer them tasty
food in place of the sour filth they eat. Useless. We tried to dress them
like human beings. One died, two fell ill. Well, we're pushing on with our
experiments. Yesterday we scattered a truckload of mirrors and gilt buttons
in the forest. . . . The cinema doesn't interest them, neither does music.
Immortal works are just received with giggles. . . . No, we'll have to start
with the children. For instance, I suggest catching the children, and
organizing special schools. Unfortunately that's linked with technical
difficulties; human hands can't touch them, special machines are needed. . .
. Anyway, you know that as well as I dp."
"I don't know," said Brandskugel miserably.
The bell tinkled again and the secretary said, "Beatrice, you now. Go
through, please."
Beatrice started fussing about. She was about to rush toward the door,
stopped, however, looking about her in dismay. She came back, glanced under
the chair, whispering: "Where on earth is it? Where?" sweeping the room with
her enormous eyes; pulling at her hair, she exclaimed loudly, "Where is it?"
and suddenly seized Pepper by the jacket and rolled him out of his chair
onto the floor. A brown briefcase was discovered where he had been. Beatrice
seized it and stood for some seconds with eyes closed and an expression of
immense happiness, pressing the case to her chest; she then moved slowly
toward the door of yellow leather and disappeared behind it. Amid a deathly
hush, Pepper got up and, trying not to look at anyone, brushed his trousers.
Nobody was paying him attention in any case: everyone was looking at the
yellow door.
What on earth am I going to say to him? thought Pepper. I'll say I'm an
arts graduate, can't be of any use to the Directorate, let me go, I'll leave
and never come back, I give my word. And why on earth did you come here? I'd
always been interested in the forest, but well, nobody lets me get into the
forest. And anyway I got here purely by chance, I'm an arts man. Arts
people, writers, philosophers are out of place in the Directorate. They do
right to keep me out, I accept this. ... I can't possibly be in a
Directorate where they excrete onto the forest, or in a forest where they
catch children with machines. I should leave and occupy myself with
something simpler. I know I'm popular here, but they like me the way a child
is fond of a toy. I'm here for amusement, I can't teach anybody here what I
know. . . . No, I can't say that. I have to cry a bit, how can I do that?
I'll blow up in there, just let him try and keep me here. I'll blow my top
and leave on foot. Pepper pictured himself walking the dusty road mile after
mile under the blazing sun, with his case, getting more and more
empty-headed. And every step carrying him farther and farther from the
forest, his dream, his anxiety, that which had long ago become the meaning
of his existence. . . .
They haven't called anybody in for a long time, he thought. The
director's probably vastly taken by the children-trapping plan. And why
didn't anyone come out of the study? Doubtless, another exit.
"Excuse me," he said, addressing Monsher Brandskugel, "what time is
it?"
Monsher Brandskugel looked at his wristwatch and thought for a moment:
"I don't know," he said.
At this, Pepper bent over and whispered in his ear, "I shan't tell
anybody. An-y-body."
Monsher Brandskugel hesitated. He fingered his plastic button in
indecision, stole a look around, yawned nervously, took another look around,
and fixing his mask more firmly, answered in a whisper:
"I don't know."
After which he rose and hurriedly betook himself to the other corner of
the anteroom.
The secretary spoke:
"Pepper, your turn."
"How's that," Pepper said, surprised. "I'm fourth."
"Temporary staff Pepper," the secretary raised her voice, "your turn."
"Arguing," grumbled somebody.
"Should get rid of the likes of him," someone on the left said loudly,
"with a red-hot broom!"
Pepper got to his feet. His legs were like cotton wool. He was scraping
his palms senselessly along his sides. The secretary was looking intently at
him.
"The cat knows when he's in for it. . . ."
"However much you twist. . . ."
"We've put up with the likes of him!"
"Pardon me, you may have. I've never seen him before."
"Well, I don't see him every day."
"Quiet!" said the secretary, raising her voice. "Observe silence! And
don't drop litter on the floor--you there . . . yes, yes, you I'm speaking
to. Now then, Pepper, will you go through? Or shall I call the guard?"
"Yes," said Pepper, "I'm going."
The last person he saw in the anteroom was Monsher Brandskugel,
barricaded behind an armchair in the corner, teeth bared, on his haunches
with his hand in his rear trouser pocket. Then his eye fell on the director.
The director turned out to be a slender well-proportioned man of about
thirty-five, in an expensive superbly-cut suit. He was standing by the open
window scattering crumbs for the pigeons clustered on the windowsill. The
study was completely empty, there wasn't a single chair, not even a table,
on the wall opposite the window hung a small copy of "Pathfinder Selivan's
Exploit."
"Temporary employee Pepper?" the director said in a clear ringing bass,
turning toward Pepper the fresh face of a sportsman.
"Y-yes. I..." mumbled Pepper. "Glad, very glad to make your
acquaintance at last. How d'you do. My name's Alas. I've heard a lot about
you. Shake hands."
Pepper stooping timidly pressed the proffered hand. The hand was dry
and firm.
"As you see, I'm feeding the pigeons. Curious bird. One senses enormous
potential there. How do you see the pigeon, Pepper?"
Pepper faltered. He couldn't stand pigeons. The director's face,
however, was radiating such joy and weird interest, such impatient
expectation that Pepper took a grip on himself and lied:
"I like them very much, Monsieur Alas." "You like them roasted? Or
stewed? I like them in a pie, myself. Pigeon pie with a glass of good wine--
demi-sec--what could be nicer? What's your opinion!"
Once more Monsieur Alas' face expressed the most lively interest and
impatient expectation.
"Terrific," said Pepper. He had decided to give up guessing and agree
with everything.
"What about Picasso's 'Dove'?" said Monsieur Alas. "I call to mind at
once: 'Nor eat, nor drink, nor kiss, the moments fly unchecked. . . .' How
exactly that catches the idea of our incapacity to catch and materialize the
beautiful!"
"Splendid verses," said Pepper stupidly. "What I first saw the 'Dove,'
I, like many another I expect, thought the drawing a poor likeness, or at
any rate unnatural. Later, however, in the course of service, I had occasion
to observe pigeons closely and I suddenly realized that Picasso, that
magician, had seized on that moment when the bird folds its wings prior to
landing. Its feet are already touching the ground while the bird itself is
still in the air, in flight. The moment when movement turns into immobility,
flight into rest."
"Picasso has strange paintings, which I don't understand," said Pepper,
demonstrating his independent judgment.
"Ah, you've simply not looked at them long enough.
To understand real art, it's not enough to go through a museum two or
three times a year. You should look at a picture for hours on end. As often
as possible. And only originals. No reproductions. No copies. . . . Take a
look at that picture there. I can see by your face what you think of it. And
you're right: it's a bad copy. If you'd ever familiarized yourself with the
original, you would understand the artist's idea." "What exactly is it?"
"I'll try to explain it to you," said the director readily. "What do
you see in that picture? Formally-- half man, half tree. The picture is
static. What can't be seen, isn't caught, is the transition from one essence
into the other. The most important element is missing from the picture--the
direction of time. Now if you had the opportunity of studying the original
you would realize that the artist had succeeded in introducing into the
image a most profound symbolic meaning, that he had depicted, not a
man-tree, not even a man turning into a tree, but a tree turning into a man
and that only. The artist made use of the old legend in order to depict the
emergence of a new personality. New from old. Life from death. Intelligence
from inert matter. The copy is absolutely static and everything pictured in
it exists outside the stream of time. The original contains that time-flow!
Vector! The arrow of time as Eddington would have said. . . ."
"Where exactly is the original?" asked Pepper politely.
The director smiled.
"The original, naturally, has been destroyed as a work of art, not
permitting ambiguous interpretation. The first and second copies were also
destroyed as a precautionary measure."
Monsieur Alas returned to the window and elbowed the pigeons off the
sill.
"Well. We've talked of pigeons," said he in a new, somehow official
voice. "Your name?"
"Pardon?"
"Name. Your name."
"Pe--Pepper."
"Year of birth." "Thirty."
"More precisely!" "Nineteen thirty. Fifth of March." "What are you
doing here?"
"Temporary employee. Seconded to Science security."
"I'm asking you: what are you doing here?" said the director, turning
his distant eyes on Pepper. "I ... don't know. I wish to leave." "Your
opinion of the forest. Briefly." "The forest ... is. ... I always... I...
fear it. And love it."
"Your opinion of the Directorate." "There are lots of good people here,
but . . ." "That's enough."
The director came up to Pepper, clasped him by the shoulders and,
looking him in the eyes, said:
"Listen, friend! Drop it! Let's make a threesome? Let's call the
secretary in, did you see the dragon? She's no dragon, she's a box of
delights! 'Come lads, let's open the long-cherished wine,' " he sang through
his nose. "Well? Shall we open it? Drop that, I don't like it. Understand?
How does it grab you?"
He suddenly gave off a smell of liquor and garlic sausage, his eyes
came together over his nose.
"We'll get the engineer in, Brandskugel. My mon cher," he went on,
clasping Pepper to his chest. "He can tell such a tale--you'll not need a
bite to eat with it. Shall we?"
"Well, why not?" said Pepper. "But after all, I ..." "Well, what about
you then?" "Monsieur Alas, I ..."
"Drop that! What sort of monsieur am I? Kamerad --see? Mio Caro!"
"I, Kamerad Alas, came to request you . . ." "Ask aw-a-y! I shan't be
mean! You want money? Take it! Somebody you don't like? Just say and we'll
look into it! Well?"
"N-no. I just want to leave. I can't get away no matter what I try. I
came here by accident. Permit me to leave. Nobody wants to help me, and I'm
requesting you as director. . .."
Alas released Pepper, put his tie right, and smiled coldly.
"You're in error, Pepper," said he, "I'm not the director. I'm the
director's personnel officer. Forgive me, I've delayed you somewhat. Please
go through that door. The director will receive you."
He threw the door wide before Pepper at the far end of his bare office
and made inviting gestures. Pepper coughed, nodded in restrained fashion,
and leaned forward as he passed into the next room. As he did so he thought
he was lightly struck on the rear. Probably his imagination, or perhaps
Monsieur Alas was in some haste to close his door.
The room in which he found himself was a facsimile of the anteroom;
even the secretary here was an exact copy of the first one. She was reading,
however, a book entitled Sublimation of Genius. The same pale visitors were
sitting in armchairs with newspapers and magazines. Professor Cockatoo was
here, suffering severely from nervous itch as was Beatrice Vakh with her
brown briefcase across her knees. True, all the others were unfamiliar.
Under a copy of "Pathfinder Selivan's Exploit" a sign saying "Quiet!"
regularly flared and dimmed. For this reason, nobody here talked. Pepper
cautiously lowered himself onto the edge of a chair. Beatrice Vakh smiled at
him--somewhat warily but welcoming on the whole.
After a minute of apprehensive silence the little bell rang and the
secretary put aside her book. "The venerable Luke, go through." The
venerable Luke was frightful to look upon and Pepper averted his gaze.
Doesn't matter, he thought, closing his eyes. I can stand it. He remembered
the rainy autumn evening when they had brought Esther into his flat, after
she had been knifed by a drunken yob in the hallway, and the neighbors
hanging onto him, and the glass shards in his mouth--he had chewed the glass
when they brought him some water. . . . Yes, he thought, the worst was past.
His attention was attracted by swift scratching sounds. He opened his
eyes and looked about him. In the next chair but one. Professor Cockatoo was
furiously scratching himself under the arms with both hands. Like a monkey.
"What do you think, should we separate the boys from the girls?" asked
Beatrice in a trembling voice. "I don't know," Pepper said irritably.
"Co-education has its advantages, of course," Beatrice went on, "but this is
a special situation. . . . Lord!" she said, suddenly lachrymose. "Surely he
won't throw me out? Where could I go then? I've been thrown out everywhere,
I haven't got a single pair of decent shoes left. All my tights are in
holes, my powder's all lumpy. . . ."
The secretary put aside Sublimation of Genius to say severely:
"Don't lose your concentration." Beatrice Vakh froze in terror. At once
the small door opened and a completely shaven head was thrust into the
waiting room.
"Is there a Pepper here?" it inquired in a stentorian voice.
"Yes," said Pepper, leaping to his feet. "To the outbound area with
your stuff! Vehicle leaves in ten minutes. Jump to it!" "Vehicle where to?
Why?" "You're Pepper?" "Yes. . . ." "You wanted to leave or not?" "I wanted
to, but . . ."
"Well, just as you like," bellowed the shaven one angrily. "I'm just
supposed to tell you."
He disappeared and the door slammed. Pepper rushed after him.
"Back," cried the secretary, and several hands clutched at his
clothing. Pepper struggled desperately and heard his jacket rip.
"The vehicle is there!" he groaned. "You're off your head!" said the
secretary peevishly.
"Where are you trying to get? The door marked 'Exit' is over there,
where are you going?"
Horny hands propelled Pepper to the 'Exit' sign. Beyond the door lay a
spacious polygonal hall, with a multiplicity of doors; Pepper rushed about
opening one after the other.
Bright sunlight, sterile-white walls, people in white coats. A naked
back, smeared with iodine. Smell of a chemist's shop. Not that one.
Blackness. Whirring of a cine-projector. On the screen, someone being
pulled by the ears in all directions. White patches of displeased faces. A
voice:
"Door! Shut the door!" Not that one either. . .. Pepper crossed the
hall, slipping on the parquet. Smell of a cake shop. A short line with bags.
Behind the glass counter glint bottles of yogurt, cakes, and gateaux in
colorful array.
"Gentlemen!" shouted Pepper. "Where is the exit?" "Exit out of where?"
asked a plump assistant in a cook's hat.
"Out of here. . . ." "It's the door you're standing in." "Don't listen
to him," said a feeble old man in the line. "We've got a wise guy around
here who just holds lines up. ... Keep serving, don't pay any attention."
"No, no, I'm not joking," said Pepper. "I've got a car, it'll go in a
minute. . . ."
"No, it's not him," said a fair-minded old man. "That bloke always asks
where the toilet is. Where is the car you speak of, sir?" "In the street."
"What street?" asked the assistant. "There's plenty of streets."
"I don't care as long as it's outside!" "No," said the shrewd old man.
"It's the same chap. He's just changed his program. Pay no attention to
him."
Pepper looked around in despair, leaped back into the hall and pushed
against the next door. It was locked. A testy voice inquired:
"Who's there?" "I have to get out!" shouted Pepper. "Where's the exit
here?"
"Just a moment."
Behind the door came noises, the splash of water, the clatter of boxes
being moved. The voice said:
"What do you want?"
"To get out! I must get out!"
"Right away."
A key scraped and the door opened. It was dark inside.
"Come through," said the voice.
It smelled of fumigation. Pepper put his hands up in front of him and
essayed several uncertain steps.
"I can't see a thing," he said.
"You'll get used to it in a minute," the voice assured. "Well, come on,
why've you stopped?"
Pepper was taken by the sleeve and led on.
"Sign here," said the voice.
A pencil appeared in Pepper's fingers. Now he perceived in the darkness
the vague whiteness of paper.
"Have you signed?"
"No. What am I signing?"
"Don't you be afraid, it isn't a death sentence. Sign that you haven't
seen anything."
Pepper signed anywhere. He was seized firmly by the sleeve again and
propelled between some door curtains, then the voice asked:
"Are there a lot of you here?"
"Four," came from behind the door apparently.
"Is there a line formed? Bear in mind I'm opening the door now and
letting a person out. Move up one, don't push and no funny remarks. That
clear?" "All right. Not the first time." "Nobody's forgotten his clothes?"
"Nobody, nobody. Let him out." The key scraped again. Pepper was almost
blinded by the bright light and he was pushed out. Still not opening his
eyes properly, he reeled down some steps and only then realized that he was
in the Directorate's inner courtyard. Peevish voices were shouting:
"Come on now, Pepper! Get a move on! How long are we supposed to wait?"
In the middle of the yard stood a truck, packed with Scientific
Security personnel. Kim was looking out of the cab and gesturing angrily.
Pepper ran up to the truck and scrambled aboard, they tugged at him, lifted
him and dumped him on the bottom of the truck. The vehicle revved up at
once, gave a jerk, somebody stood on Pepper's hand, somebody else gaily sat
on him, everyone started up singing and laughing, and they set off.
"Peppy, here's your suitcase," said somebody. "Is it true you're
leaving, Pepper?" "Care for a cigarette, Monsieur Pepper?" Pepper lit up,
seated himself on his case and turned up his jacket collar. Someone gave him
a raincoat;
Pepper smiled his thanks and wrapped himself up in it. The truck sped
on faster and faster and although it was a hot day, the head wind seemed
savagely penetrating. Pepper smoked, concealing the cigarette in his fist
and gazed about him. I'm on my way, he thought, I'm on my way. This is the
last time I'll see you, wall. Last time I'll see you, cottages. Good-bye
scrap-heap, I left my galoshes here somewhere. Good-bye pool, good-bye
chess, good-bye yogurt. It's so marvelous, so easy! I'll never drink yogurt
in my life again. Never will I sit down to a chess board. . . ."
The personnel, crowded up near the cab, clutching one another and
huddling behind each other from the wind, conversed on abstract subjects.
"It's been worked out, and I've worked it out. If it goes on like this,
in a hundred years there'll be ten scientists for every square yard, and the
total mass will cause the cliff to collapse. So much transport for food and
water delivery will be needed, they'll have to have a continuous transport
service between the Mainland and the Directorate; the trucks will go at
twenty-five miles an hour, one yard apart, and be unloaded on the move. . .
. No, I'm absolutely certain the top people are considering regulating the
recruitment of new personnel. Well now, judge for yourselves: the hotel
warden --you can't have the likes of that, seven and one more arriving. All
healthy. Hausbotcher thinks something should be done about it. No, not
sterilization, necessarily, as he suggests. . . ."
"Hausbotcher is the last person who should suggest that."
"That's why I say, not necessarily sterilization."
"They say the annual holidays are being extended to six months."
They went by the park, and Pepper suddenly realized that the truck was
going in the wrong direction. They'd be out of the gates soon and descend by
way of the hairpins to the foot of the cliff.
"Here listen, where are we going?" he asked, alarmed.
"What d'you mean--where? To get paid."
"Not to the Mainland?"
"Why on earth should we? The cashier's arrived at the biostation."
"You mean you're going to the biostation, the forest."
"Well of course. We're Science Security and get paid at the
biostation."
"And what about me?" asked Pepper in bewilderment.
"You'll be paid as well. You're due for a bonus. . . . Incidentally,
everybody got his papers?"
The men fussed about, extracting from their pockets stamped papers of
assorted shapes and colors. These they examined intently.
"Pepper, did you fill the questionnaire in?"
"What questionnaire?"
"Pardon me, but what a question! Form number eighty-four."
"I didn't fill anything in," Pepper said.
"Dear sirs! What have we here? Pepper's got no papers."
"That doesn't matter. He's probably got a permit. . . ."
"I haven't got a permit," said Pepper. "I haven't got anything. Only a
suitcase and a raincoat. ... I didn't intend going into the forest, I wanted
to get away altogether. . . ."
"And the medical check? Inoculations?"
Pepper shook his head. The truck was already rolling down through the
hairpins and Pepper took a detached look at the forest, at the level porous
layers of it on the horizon, at its arrested storm-cloud seething, the
clinging web of mist in the shade of the cliff.
"You can't get away with things like that," somebody said.
"Well now, there aren't any classified objects along the road."
"What about Hausbotcher?"
"Well what of him, if there's no classified objects?"
"Let's assume you don't know that. Nobody does. There now, last year
Kandid flew out without documents and where's Kandid now, desperate lad?"
"In the first place it wasn't last year, it was long before that.
Secondly, he was simply killed. At his post."
"Oh yes? Have you seen the directive?"
"That's true, there was no directive."
"So, there's nothing to argue about. Since they put him in the bunker
at the checkpoint, he's been sitting filling in forms. . . ."
"How did you not fill in the forms. Peppy? Maybe you've got a black
mark against you?"
"One moment, gentlemen! This is a serious matter. I propose we
investigate employee Pepper to be on the safe side. By democratic methods,
so to speak. Who'll be secretary?"
"Hausbotcher for secretary!"
"Excellent suggestion. As honorary secretary we choose our
much-respected Hausbotcher. I see by your faces--unanimous. And who will be
the secretary's assistant?"
"Vanderbilt for secretary's assistant!"
"Vanderbilt? . . . Well, why not. ... We have Vanderbilt proposed as
secretary's assistant. Any other nominations? For? Against? Abstentions? Hm
. . . two abstainers. Why did you abstain?"
"Me?"
"Yes, yes, I mean you."
"I don't see the sense. Why torment a man? He's in a bad way as it is."
"All right. And you?"
"None of your damned business."
"As you wish. . . . Secretary's assistant, note please, two
abstentions. Let's begin. Who first? No takers? Then permit me. Employee
Pepper answer the following question. What distances have we covered between
years twenty-five and thirty; (a) on foot (b) by land transport (c) by air?
Take your time, think. Here's paper and pencil."
Pepper took the paper and pencil obediently and set to work
remembering. The truck shook. To start with everybody looked at him, but
eventually they all got bored.
"I'm not afraid of overpopulation," mumbled somebody. "But have you
seen how much hardware there is? On the empty lot behind the
repair-shops--have you seen it? And what is it, d'you know? Of course it's
in packing cases, nailed down. Nobody's got time to open it up and have a
look. D'you know what I saw night before last over there? I'd stopped to
have a smoke when I heard a sort of crash. I turn around and I see the side
of one of the cases, the size of a house end, cracking open, and widening
like a set of gates. Out of the case crawls a machine. I'm not going to
describe it, you understand why. But what a sight. . . . It stood there for
a few seconds then threw up this long tube with a rotating thing on the end
as if it were taking a look around, then it crawled back into the case and
the lid shut. I felt bad then and couldn't believe what I'd seen. This
morning I think: 'I'll have another look anyway.' I arrived and my skin
crept, I can tell you. The packing case was perfectly all right, not a
crack, but the side was nailed up from the inside! The nails stuck out as
long as your finger, shiny and sharp. And now I'm thinking, why was it
climbing out? Was it the only one? Maybe they come out every night and...
have a look around. While we're getting over-populated they're organizing a
Bartholomew massacre and our bones will go flying over the cliff--or what's
left of them . . . What? No thank you, friend, you tell the engineers if you
want. After all I saw that machine and how do I know whether that's
forbidden or not? There's no markings on the cases. . .." "All right,
Pepper. You ready?" "No," Pepper said. "I can't remember anything. It was a
long time ago."
"That's odd. I can remember perfectly, for example. Six thousand seven
hundred and one kilometer by rail, seventeen thousand one hundred and
fifty-three by air (out of that three thousand two hundred and fifteen for
personal travel) and fifteen thousand and seven on foot. And I'm older than
you. Strange, very strange, Pepper. . . . W-e-ll all right. Let's try the
next point. What toys were you specially fond of before you went to school?"
"Clockwork tanks," said Pepper, wiping sweat from his brow. "And
armored cars."
"Aha! You remember! And yet it was before you went to school, times, so
to speak, a great deal further removed. Though less care-laden, eh, Pepper?
So then. Tanks and armored cars it is. ... Next. At what age did women,
brackets, men become attractive to you? The expression in brackets is
addressed as a rule, to women. Go ahead and answer."
"A long time ago," said Pepper. "It was long, long ago."
"Exactly when?"
"What about you?" asked Pepper. "You say first, then I will."
The presider shrugged. "I've nothing to hide. The first time was when I
was nine, when they bathed me and my female cousin together. . . . Now you."
"I can't," said Pepper. "I don't wish to answer such questions."
"Idiot," somebody whispered in his ear. "Tell some lie with a straight
face, and that's it. Why torment yourself? Who's going to check you?"
"All right," Pepper said submissively. "When I was ten. When they
bathed me and Murka the dog together."
"Splendid!" exclaimed the presider. "Now list me all the diseases of
the legs you've had."
"Rheumatism."
"What else?"
"Intermittent lameness."
"Very good. What else?"
"Cold," said Pepper.
"That's not a leg disease."
"I don't know. With you no, perhaps. With me it's the legs. My legs get
wet--a cold."
"We-ll, let it pass. Anything else?"
"Isn't that enough?"
"As you wish. But I warn you: the more the better."
"Spontaneous gangrene," said Pepper. "Subsequent amputation. That was
my last leg disease."
"That's enough then. Last question. Your world-view. Briefly."
"Materialist," Pepper said.
"What sort of a materialist exactly?"
"Emotional."
"I've no more questions. Any questions, gentlemen?"
There were no more questions. Some of the travelers were half-asleep,
some were chatting with their backs to the presider. The truck was going
slowly now. It was getting hot and the forest's damp and sharp unpleasant •
smell was ever-present. The smell never reached the Directorate on normal
days.
The truck rolled along with the engine switched off, and far far away
could be heard the faint rumbling of a storm.
"I'm amazed, looking at you," said the secretary's assistant, also with
his back to the presider. "It's unhealthy pessimism. Man is an optimist by
nature, that's one thing. And the second and main thing is--surely you
realize the director considers these matters as much as you do? It makes me
laugh. In the last speech addressed to me, the director revealed majestic
prospects. I caught my breath from sheer admiration, I'm not ashamed to
admit. I always was an optimist, but that picture. ... If you want to know,
everything's going to be cleared, all these rocks, cottages. . . . Instead
buildings of dazzling beauty will rise from transparent and semi-transparent
materials, stadia, swimming-pools, aerial parks, crystal bars, and cafes.
Stairways to the sky! Slender, swaying women with dark supple skin!
Libraries! Muscles! Laboratories! Penetrated by sun and light! A free
timetable! Cars, gliders, airships . . . debates, hypnopaedia,
stereo-cinema. . . . After their working hours, the workers will sit in
libraries, ponder, compose melodies, play guitars and other musical
instruments, carve in wood, read poems to each other!"
"And what will you be doing?"
"I shall do wood-carving."
"What else?"
"I shall write poetry. They will teach me to write poetry. I have good
handwriting."
"What will I do?"
"Whatever you like!" said the secretary's assistant magnanimously.
"Carve wood, write poetry. . . . Whatever you like."
"I don't want to carve wood. I'm a mathematician."
"Well all right! Do maths to your heart's content!"
"I do it now to my heart's content."
"Now you get paid for doing it. Silly. You'll jump from towers."
"Why?"
"There you go--why? It's interesting isn't it?"
"No."
"What are you trying to say, then? That apart from mathematics you're
not interested in anything?"
"Well now, that's about right. After a day's work you're so fagged out
that you take no interest in anything."
"You're just a narrow person. Never mind, you'll develop. You'll find
you have some aptitudes, you'll be composing music, doing a bit of fretwork,
or something. . . ."
"Composing music isn't the trouble, it's finding an audience."
"Well, I'll listen to you with pleasure. . . . Pepper here."
"You just think that. You won't do it though. You'll do a bit of
fretwork then you'll be off to join the ladies. Or get drunk. I know you all
right, I know everybody here. You'll shamble about from crystal bar to
diamond cafeteria. Especially if work is optional. I'm afraid to think,
even, what it'll be like if they make work optional here."
"Every man is a genius at something," retorted the assistant. "You've
only to find what it is. We don't even suspect that I'm, say, a genius at
cooking, you, perhaps, a pharmaceutical genius, but we have other jobs and
find out little about ourselves. The director said specialists would be put
on that, they'll bring to light our hidden potential. ..."
"Potential, now, that's a murky business. I'm not arguing, maybe
everybody's a potential genius, only what's to be done if it can only be
applied, say, in the distant past or future, and it isn't regarded as genius
now whether you've got it or not? Very good if you're a cooking genius. But
how's it going to be discovered that you're a cab-driver of genius, or
Pepper's a genius at chipping arrow heads, or I'm a genius at finding an
X-field about which nobody knows yet and which won't be discovered for ten
years? . . . Well then, as the poet said, leisure's black face will turn our
way.. . ."
"Boys," said someone, "we've brought no grub with us. While we're
traveling and till they pay us. . . ."
"Stoyan'll see us all right."
"Like heck he will. They're on rations there."
"Never mind, we'll last out. There's the checkpoint already."
Pepper extended his neck. In front, the forest stood, a yellow-green
wall and the road ran straight into it, like a thread going into a
multi-colored carpet. The truck passed by a plywood sign:
ATTENTION! REDUCE SPEED! PREPARE TO SHOW DOCUMENTS!
The striped bar was already visible; it was lowered and had to the left
of it a sentry-box, on the right, barbed wire, white insulators, lattice
towers with searchlights. The truck came to a halt. Everybody looked at the
guard who was dozing with his carbine under his arm, as he stood
cross-legged in his box. An extinguished cigarette hung on his lip and the
concrete around the box was littered with ends. Next to the box stood a pole
with various admonishments nailed to it:
ATTENTION! FOREST! DISPLAY PERMITS! DON'T SPREAD INFECTION! The driver
hooted tactfully. The guard opened his eyes and stared muz-zily before him,
he then detached himself from the box and walked around the lorry.
"There's plenty of you," said he. "Money, is it?"
"Right first time," said the former presider.
"That's fine, good," said the guard. He circled the vehicle, hoisted
himself up onto the step and glanced inside. "Gee, there's a lot of you," he
said reproachfully. "What about hands? Hands clean?"
"Yes!" chorused everyone.
"Everybody?"
"Everybody."
"All righty," said the guard, thrusting the top half of his body into
the cab. From the cab: "Who's in charge? You? How many you got? Aha . . .
you telling the truth? Name? Kim? Well now Kirn, I'm writing your surname
down. . . . Great, Voldemar! Drive all the time do you? I'm on guard all the
time. Show us your pass. . . . Now, now, no snarling, just show us it. ...
Pass in order, otherwise I'd. . . . Why d'you write telephone numbers on
your pass? Wait a minute .. . what Charlotte is this? Ah yes, I remember.
Give it here, I'll write it down as well. . . . Okay, thanks. Drive on.
Permission to pass."
He jumped down from the step, raising the dust as he did so, went over
to the barrier, and dropped on the counterweight. The barrier slowly rose,
and the long underpants strung along it dropped into the dust. The truck
started up.
There was a hubbub of conversation in the back, but Pepper heard
nothing. He was going into the forest. The forest was getting closer,
nearing and massing higher and higher, like an ocean wave and suddenly, it
swallowed him. There was no more sun and sky, space or time, the forest had
taken their place. All there was, was a flickering of murky tints, thick
moist air, incredible smells, fumes rather, and an acrid taste in his mouth.
Only sound was untouched by the forest: the noises of the forest were
overpowered by the roar of the engine and the chatter of the passengers. So
here's the forest, Pepper kept repeating, here I am in the forest, he
repeated meaninglessly. Not from up above, but inside, not an observer, a
participant. Here I am in the forest. Something cool and moist touched his
face, ticklish, detached itself and slowly descended to his knees. He looked
down: a long, thin, filament of some plant or other, or maybe some animal,
or maybe just the contact of the forest, a friendly greeting or a wary
feeling out; he did not touch the filament.
Meanwhile the truck roared along the road of glorious advance; yellow,
green and brown meekly sank away behind, while along the verges streamed the
untidy, forgotten columns of the veterans of the invading army, black
bulldozers upended with shields furiously ripped, tractors buried in the
earth as far as the driving-cab, their caterpillar tracks squashed flat and
trailing behind them, lorries lacking wheels or glass-- everything dead,
deserted forever, but maintaining their former fearless gaze ahead, into the
depths of the forest with their wrenched radiators and shattered headlights.
And all around, the forest stirred, palpitated, and contorted, changing its
hues, blurring and flaring up, flowing forward and retreating, deceiving the
sight, the forest terrified and mocked and gloated, and it was all strange
and it was impossible to describe, and it was nauseating.
Chapter Six
Pepper opened the door of the landrover and looked at the thickets. He
didn't know what he was supposed to see. Something in the nature of a
nauseating blancmange. Something strange, something indescribable. But the
most strange, the most unimaginable thing in this undergrowth was the
people, therefore Pepper saw only them. They were walking toward the
landrover, slender and neat in their movements, confident and elegant, they
walked easily, never backtracking, instantly choosing the exact place to
step. They acted as if they didn't notice the forest, as if they were at
home in it and the forest belonged to them. They weren't pretending even,
they really did think that, and the forest hung above them silently laughing
and pointing with myriads of jeering fingers, while adroitly contriving to
be familiar, obedient and simple--absolutely trustworthy. Until the time,
the day. . . .
"Oh what a wench, that Rita," said former driver Acey to Pepper. He was
standing next to the landrover, his somewhat bandy legs set wide across a
rasping and trembling motorcycle, which he held lightly with his thighs.
"I'd have got my hands on her for sure if it wasn't for her Quentin, he's a
sharp one."
Quentin and Rita had approached quite close and Stoyan climbed out from
behind the wheel to meet them.
"Well, how is she?" asked Stoyan. "Breathing," said Quentin, closely
studying Pepper. "Has the money arrived, then?"
"This is Pepper," said Stoyan. "I was telling you."
Rita and Quentin smiled at Pepper. There was no time to study them but
the thought crossed Pepper's mind that he had never seen a stranger woman
than Rita or a more deeply unhappy man than Quentin.
"Hello, Pepper," said Quentin, continuing to smile piteously. "Come to
have a look? Never seen it before?"
"I don't see it now," said Pepper. And it was true, the unhappiness and
the strangeness were impossible to pin down, though linked powerfully.
Rita lit a cigarette and turned away. "You're looking in the wrong
direction, man. Look straight ahead of you. Don't tell me you can't see?"
Then Pepper did see and at once forgot about the people. It had
appeared like a hidden image on photographic paper, like a figure in a
child's puzzle picture "where is the rabbit hiding" and once having found
it, it was impossible to lose it from view. It was very close, it began ten
paces from the landrover's wheels and the path. Pepper shuddered and
swallowed.
A living column rose to treetop level, a sheaf of thin transparent
threads, sticky, shiny, writhing and tense, a sheaf penetrating the dense
foliage and climbing farther and farther into the clouds. It had its origin
in a cesspit, an oily gurgling cesspit, full up with protoplasm, living,
active, swelling up in bubbles of primitive flesh, busily organizing and as
quickly decaying, pouring out the products of decay onto its flat banks
spitting gluey foam. . . . And at once, as if unseen sound-filters had been
switched on, the voice of the cesspit stood out from the chugging of the
motorbike: gurgling, splashing, sobbing, bubbling, long drawn-out swamp
groans; a heavy wall of smells drew nearer of raw sweating meat, pus, fresh
bile, serum, hot paste-- only then did Pepper notice that both Rita and
Quentin had oxygen masks hanging on their chests; he saw Stoyan squeamishly
grimacing and raising a respirator to his face. He himself did not start
putting his respirator on, he was somehow hoping that the smells might tell
him what his eyes and ears had failed to do. . . .
"It stinks around here," said Acey, revolted. "Like a morgue...."
Quentin was talking to Stoyan.
"You might have asked Kim to see about our rations. We should get
danger money. We're due milk, chocolate. . . ."
Rita was smoking pensively, dribbling smoke through her thin mobile
nostrils. . . .
Around the cesspit, bending tenderly over it, trembled the trees; their
branches were all turned in one direction and drooped toward the seething
mass, while along the branches thick hairy lianas wriggled and dropped into
the cesspit. The cesspit took them to itself and the protoplasm gnawed
around them and converted them into itself, as it could dissolve and make
its own all that surrounded it. ...
"Peppy," said Stoyan, "don't goggle like that, your eyes'll pop out."
Pepper smiled, though he knew it looked forced.
"Why did you bring the motorbike, anyway?" asked Quentin.
"In case we got stranded. They crawl along the path--I go with one
wheel on the path, the other on the grass, and the motorbike goes behind. If
we get stuck, Acey nips off on the bike and gets a tractor."
"You'll get stuck for sure," said Quentin.
"Course we will," said Acey. "This is a stupid idea, I've said so all
along."
"You just be quiet," Stoyan said to him. "Your part is small enough.
... Is the eruption soon?" he asked Quentin.
Quentin looked at his watch.
"Well now. . . ." he said. "It reproduces every eighty-seven minutes.
So in ... in ... in nothing, there, she's starting already."
The cesspit was reproducing. Out onto its level banks, in a series of
convulsive jerks, came spurting out one after another, bits of whitish
rippling goo. They rolled along the earth, helpless and blind, then stopped,
flattened out, threw out cautious pseudopodia and suddenly began moving
purposefully--still fussing, still prodding about, but now in one set
direction, wandering from the direct path, now and again colliding, but in
one set direction, along one radius from the womb, out into the thickets, on
and out in a single flowing off-white column, like gigantic clumsy,
slug-like ants. . . .
"It's a quagmire all around here," Acey was saying. "We'll plop in so
deep no tractor'll ever get us out-- the ropes'll just snap."
"Do you want to come with us?" said Stoyan to Quentin.
"Rita's tired."
"Rita can go home and we'll push on. . . ." Quentin was wavering. "How
d'you feel, Rita, dear?" he asked. "Yes, I'll go on home," said Rita. "Well,
that's fine," Quentin said. "We'll go and take a look eh? We'll be back soon
enough I expect. Not long,eh, Stoyan?"
Rita threw away her cigarette end and went off along the track toward
the biostation, without saying good-bye. Quentin shuffled in indecision
before saying to Pepper in an undertone:
"Allow me ... get past. . . ."
He pushed through into the back seat; at which moment the motorbike
with tremendous roar, tore itself from under Acey and bounding high in the
air, hurtled into the cesspit. "Stop!" Acey shouted, as he sank to his
haunches. "Where are you off to?" Everybody froze. The bike raced over a
hummock, squealing wildly, stood on end and fell into the pit. Everybody
rushed forward. Pepper thought the protoplasm rose up under the bike,
softening the blow; then it easily and soundlessly accepted it and closed
over it. The motorbike shut off.
"Clumsy bastard," said Stoyan to Acey. "What the devil are you doing?"
The cesspit had become a maw, sucking, tasting, enjoying. It was
rolling the machine around inside, the way a man rolls a mint from cheek to
cheek with his tongue. The motorcycle was swirling around in the foaming
mass, now disappearing, now surfacing, helplessly waving its handlebars;
with every appearance it got smaller and smaller, its metal plating thinner
and thinner, now transparent as thin paper. Already the engine innards could
be glimpsed through it, then the plating melted away, the tires disappeared,
the bike dived down for the last time and appeared no more.
"Swallowed it," said Acey with idiotic joy.
"Clumsy bastard," repeated Stoyan. "You'll pay me for that. You'll be
paying me the rest of your life for it."
"Well all right then," said Acey. "So I'll pay for it! Was it my fault?
I just turned the throttle the wrong way," he said to Pepper. "That's how it
got away. I really wanted to throttle down, Monsieur Pepper, so it didn't
rattle so much, well I just turned it the wrong way. I'm not the first or
the last to do that. Anyway it was an old bike. . . . I'm off then," said he
to Stoyan. "I'm no use here now. I'll go home."
"Where are your eyes wandering then?" Quentin said abruptly with an
expression that caused Pepper to step aside involuntarily.
"What's the matter?" said Acey. "I look where I want."
He was looking back at the path, where Rita's orange wrap was
flickering under the dense yellowy-green awning of branches as she receded.
"Come on, let me pass," said Quentin to Pepper. "I'll just have a word
with him."
"Where're you going, d'you think?" mumbled Stoyan. "Think on, Quentin.
. . ."
"What d'you mean, think on? I've known what he was after long enough. .
. ."
"Listen, don't be a kid. .. . Just stop it! Just think on!"
"Let go, I tell you, let go my arm!"
There was a noisy struggle around Pepper who was being shoved from both
sides. Stoyan held Quentin's jacket firmly by the back and sleeve, as
Quentin, now red and sweating, keeping his eyes fixed on Acey, was fending
off Stoyan with one hand while bending Pepper double with the other in his
attempt to step over him. He was jerking about and emerging farther from his
jacket with each jerk. Pepper chose this moment to tumble out of the
landrover. Acey was still looking after Rita, his mouth half-open, his eyes
lustful and tender.
"What's she doing wearing trousers," said he to Pepper. "It's the
latest craze they've got, going about in trousers. . . ."
"Don't defend him!" roared Quentin in the car. "He's not a sexual
neurasthenic, he's just a bastard! Let me go, or I'll give you one as well!"
"They used to wear skirts," said Acey dreamily. "A piece of material
wrapped around and fixed with a pin. And I would get hold of the pin and
unloose. . . ."
If this had been in the park. ... If it had been in the hostel or the
library or the assembly hall. . . . And it had been--in the park, the
library and even in the assembly hall during Kirn's lecture on "What all
Directorate personnel should know about methods of mathematical statistics."
But now the forest was seeing it all and hearing it all--the lascivious
obscenity that filled Acey's eyes, Quentin's purple face swaying in the van
doorway, some dull, ox-like, droning mumble of Stoy-an's, something about
work, responsibility, stupidity and the crack of flying buttons against the
windshield . . . and its reaction couldn't be guessed, whether it was one of
horror, amusement or a fastidious grimace. "--" said Acey with satisfaction.
And Pepper hit him. Hit him on the cheekbone apparently, with a crunch,
spraining his finger. Everybody stopped talking at once. Acey held his cheek
and looked at Pepper in vast astonishment.
"Don't say things like that," said Pepper firmly. "Not here. Don't do
it."
"Well I'm not arguing," Acey said with a shrug. "I only meantthat I'm
doing no good here, haven't got a
motorbike you can see that.... So what good can I do here?"
Quentin inquired loudly:
"You want one across the jaw?"
'There you are," said Acey, vexed. "Right across the cheekbone, right
on the bone. . .. Good job, you missed my eye."
"No, I mean it, one to the jaw."
"Yes," Pepper said severely, "because here that sort of thing is out."
"Let's go then," said Quentin, lying back in his seat.
"Ace," said Stoyan. "Climb in. If we get stuck you can give us a hand."
"I've got a new pair of pants on," objected Acey. "Better let me
drive."
Nobody answered, so he climbed into the back seat next to Quentin who
moved up. Pepper got in next to Stoyan and they set off.
The pups had already gone quite a way, but Stoyan, driving with great
skill, keeping the offside wheels on the path and the nearside on the dusty
moss, soon overtook them and crawled slowly behind carefully using the
clutch to adjust his speed. "You'll burn the clutch out," said Acey. He
turned to Quentin and began explaining that he'd had no ulterior motive, he
had no motorbike anymore anyway and a man's a man and if he's normal always
will be, forest or no, no matter whether . . .
"Have you had one in the jaw?" Quentin kept asking. "No, you just tell
me, the truth now, have you ever had one on the jaw or not?" Quentin kept
asking and interrupting Acey. "No," Acey would answer, "no, wait a minute,
you hear me out first. . . ."
Pepper stroked his swollen finger and looked at the pups. The children
of the forest. Or perhaps its servants. Or maybe its experiments. They were
proceeding slowly and tirelessly one after the other in line ahead, as if
flowing along the ground; they oozed across rotting tree stumps, crossed
ruts, pools of stagnant water in the tall grass, through prickly bushes.
The track kept disappearing, diving into evil-smelling mud, hiding
itself under layers of tough gray mushrooms that crunched under the wheels,
then again appearing, while the pups held their direction and stayed white,
clean, smooth; not a blade of grass stuck to them, not a thorn wounded them,
they were unstained by the sticky black mud. They oozed along with a kind of
stupid unthinking confidence, as if along a road long-known and habitual.
There were forty-three of them.
I was dying to get here and now I've arrived, at least I'm seeing the
forest from inside and I'm seeing nothing. I could have imagined all this
sitting in my bare hostel room with its three empty bunks; late night
insomnia, everything quiet all about, then right on midnight the piledriver
starts thumping on the construction site. I could have thought it all up:
mermaids, walking trees and these pups, turning into pathfinder Selivan--the
most absurd things, the holiest. And everything there is in the Directorate
I can imagine and bring to mind. I could have stayed at home and dreamed
this all up, lying on my sofa listening to symphojazz or voices talking
unfamiliar languages on the radio. . . . But that doesn't mean a thing. To
see and not understand is the same as making it up. I'm alive, I can see and
I don't understand. I'm living in a world someone has thought up without
bothering to tell me, or maybe even himself. A yearning for
understanding--that's my sickness, thought Pepper suddenly, a yearning for
understanding.
He stuck his hand out of the window and held his aching finger against
the cool car-body. The pups were paying the landrover no attention. They
probably had no suspicion of its existence. They gave off a sharp unpleasant
smell; their membrane now seemed transparent and it was as if wave-like
shadows moved beneath.
"Let's catch one," suggested Quentin. "It's simple enough, we'll wrap
it in my jerkin and take it to the lab."
"Not worth it," said Stoyan.
"Why not?" Quentin asked. "We'll have to catch one sooner or later."
"Doesn't seem right, somehow," Stoyan said. "In the first place, God
help us, the thing'll die on us and I'll have to write a report for
Hausbotcher."
"We've had them boiled," Acey announced suddenly. "I didn't like the
taste, but the boys said it was all right. Bit like rabbit, I can't touch
rabbit, to me a cat and a rabbit's just the same; can't bear the stuff. . .
."
"I've noticed one thing," said Quentin. "The number of pups is always a
simple number: thirteen, forty-three, forty-seven. . . ."
"Nonsense," objected Stoyan. "I've come across groups of six or
twelve."
"That's in the forest," said Quentin, "after that groups scatter in
different directions. The cesspit always produces a simple number, you can
check the log, I've put all my conclusions down."
"Me and the boys caught one of the local girls once, what a laugh that
was!"
"Well all right, write an article then," said Stoyan.
"1 already have," said Quentin. "That'll make fifteen. . .."
"I've done seventeen," said Stoyan. "And one at the printers. Who's
your co-author?"
"I don't know yet," said Quentin. "Kirn recommends the manager, he says
transport's the coming thing now, but Rita advises the warden."
"Not him," said Stoyan.
"Why?" asked Quentin.
"Don't choose the warden," Stoyan repeated. "I'm not saying anything to
you--just keep it in mind."
"The warden used to dilute the yogurt with brake fluid," said Acey.
"That was when he was the manager of the barbershop. So me and the boys
slipped a handful of bedbugs into his room."
"They say they're preparing a directive," said Stoyan. "Whoever's got
less than fifteen articles to their name have to undergo treatment."
"Oh Lord," said Quentin, "that's a bad business. I
know what special treatment means, after one of them your hair stops
growing and you have bad breath for a year... ."
Home, thought Pepper. Get home as soon as you can. Now there really is
nothing for me here. Just then he saw that the pup formation had broken up.
Pepper counted: thirty-two pups went straight ahead, while a column of
eleven had turned off left and down, where a lake became suddenly visible
between the trees-- dark motionless water, quite near the landrover. Pepper
glimpsed a low misty sky and the vague outline of the Directorate on the
horizon. The eleven pups were heading confidently toward the water. Stoyan
shut the engine off and everybody climbed out to watch the pups oozing over
a twisted bough at the water's edge and plop heavily one after another into
the lake. Oily circles rocked along the dark water.
"They're going down," said Quentin in amazement. "They're drowning."
Stoyan got his map and spread it out over the bonnet.
"Right enough," he said. "This lake isn't marked. There's a village
marked but no lake. . . . Here it is written: 'Vill. Aborig. Seventeen point
one one.' "
"That's always the way," said Acey. "Who uses a map in this forest? In
the first place all the maps are inaccurate and secondly, you don't need
them here. Say there's a road here today, tomorrow they'll have barbed wire
up and a watchtower. Or you'll find a dump all of a sudden."
"I don't sort of feel like going on farther," said Stoyan, stretching
himself. "Maybe we'll call it a day?"
"Surely," said Quentin. "Pepper's still got his pay to collect. Back to
the van."
"A pair of binoculars would be handy," said Acey suddenly, cupping his
eyes and avidly staring into the lake. "I reckon there's a woman in there
bathing."
Quentin halted.
"Where?"
"She's got nothing on," said Acey. "True as I'm standing here. Not a
stitch."
Quentin suddenly went pale and made a headlong rush for the van.
"Where is it you see her?" asked Stoyan.
"Over there at the far bank. . . ."
"There's nothing there," croaked Quentin. He was standing on the
running-board and sweeping the far bank with his binoculars. His hands
shook. "Damned bigmouth. . . . Asking for another one. . . . No, not a
thing!" he repeated passing Stoyan the glasses.
"What d'you mean, nothing?" said Acey. "I'm no four-eyes, I've got an
eye like a water-level. . . ."
"Wait a minute, wait, don't grab them," said Stoyan. "There's manners,
grabbing them out of my hand...."
"There's nothing there," muttered Quentin. "He's pulling your leg.
There's plenty of travelers' tales...."
"I know what it is," said Acey. "It's a mermaid. I'm telling you."
Pepper roused himself.
"Give me the binoculars," he said quickly.
"Nothing to see," said Stoyan, holding out the glasses.
"Fine guy to believe, I must say," muttered Quentin, now calming down.
"Honestly, there was," said Acey. "She must have dived. She'll be up in
a minute.. . ."
Pepper focused the glasses. He didn't expect to see anything: that
would have been too simple. And nothing was what he saw. The unruffled lake,
a distant bank overgrown with forest and the silhouette of a rock above the
forest's jagged skyline.
"What was she like?" he asked.
Acey began a detailed description of her, with much use of the hands.
His narrative was succulent and full of fervor, but it wasn't at all what
Pepper wanted.
"Yes, naturally . . ." said he, "yes . . . yes."
Perhaps she came up to welcome the pups, he thought as he bounced
around in the back seat alongside a gloomy Quentin, gazing at the even
movement of Acey's ears. Acey was chewing something. She came out of the
forest thickets white, cold, confident, and stepped into the water, the
water she knew so well, entered into the lake as I walk into a library, sank
into the rippling green twilight and swam toward the pups. She met them
straight away in the center of the lake, on the bottom, and led them off
somewhere, for some reason, at someone's behest, and one more knot of forest
events is tied. And perhaps miles away from here something will happen or
start to happen; banks of the lilac fog that isn't fog will seethe between
the trees, or another cesspit will start up in a peaceful clearing, or
mottled aborigines who've just been sitting and watching an educational film
and patiently listening to a lecture by Beatrice Vakh, earnestly hoarse,
will all of a sudden get up and go off into the forest, never to return. . .
. And it will all be replete with profound significance, the profound
significance that informs the movements of complicated machinery, and it
will all be strange and, therefore, meaningless to us, at any rate for those
of us who still can't get used to lack of meaning or accept it as the norm.
He sensed the significance of each and every event, every phenomenon about
him: that no batch of pups could number forty-two or forty-five and that the
trunk of that tree there was overgrown with red moss and no other, that the
sky was invisible along the path because of overhanging branches.
The vehicle shook. Stoyan was driving extremely slowly and from some
way off Pepper could see a leaning post and a sign with something written on
it. The legend had been washed out by rain and faded, it was a very old
notice on a very old, dirty-gray board, pinned to the pole with two huge
rusty nails. "Here, two years ago, pathfinder Gustave was tragically
drowned. Here his memorial will be set up." The landrover made its way
around the pole, lurching from side to side.
Whatever got into you, Gustave, Pepper thought. How did you manage to
drown here? You were a tough guy no doubt, your head was shaved, your jaw
was bristly and square, a gold tooth, tattooed from top to toe, your arms
hung below your knees, you'd a finger missing on the right, bitten off in a
drunken brawl. It wasn't your heart that sent you off to become a
pathfinder, things just panned out that way, you served your time up on the
cliff where the Directorate stands now and there was nowhere for you to run
to except the forest. And you wrote no articles in the forest, you never
even gave them a thought, you thought about other articles written before
that and aimed at you. And you built a strategic road, laid concrete slabs
and chopped down the forest far away on both sides so that eight-engined
bombers could land here if need be. Could the forest put up with that? It
drowned you in a dry place, but they'll put a monument up to you in ten
years time and maybe give your name to some cafe. The cafe will be called
"Gustave's" and driver Acey will drink yogurt there and stroke the rumpled
girls from the local choir. . . .
Apparently Acey had two convictions, neither, for some reason, for what
might be expected. The first time he'd landed up in a labor colony for
stealing stationery from some concern, and the second time for offenses
against the passport regulations. Stoyan there was clean. Doesn't drink
yogurt, nothing. He loves Alevtina tenderly and purely, whom nobody ever
loved tenderly and purely. When article number twenty came out, he would
offer Alevtina his heart and hand and would be turned down, his articles
notwithstanding, his broad shoulders and beautiful Roman nose
notwithstanding, for Alevtina couldn't stand anybody fastidious, suspecting
in him (not without reason) a rake of such refinement as to be beyond her
comprehension. Stoyan lives in the forest whither, unlike Gustave, he came
voluntarily. He never complains about anything although for him the forest
is just a vast pile of material for articles, guaranteeing him against
treatment. . . .
One might marvel endlessly at the fact that there were people able to
get used to the forest, and yet such people were the overwhelming majority.
At first they were attracted by the forest as a romantic or lucrative
location, or a place where control was not over-strict, or a place of
refuge. Then they got a bit afraid of it, and then they made the discovery
that "it's just the same mess here as everywhere else," and that reconciled
them to the strangeness of the forest, but nobody intended to live out his
old age here. Quentin now, as rumor had it, only lived here because he
feared to leave Rita unguarded, and Rita refused to go away from the forest
at any price, though she never told anybody why. . . . There, I've got
around to Rita. . . . Rita can go off into the forest and not come back for
weeks. Rita bathes in forest lakes. Rita breaks all the rules and nobody
dares to criticize. Rita writes no articles. Rita doesn't write anything,
even letters. It's common knowledge that Quentin cries of a night and goes
off to sleep with the canteen assistant if she's not busy with somebody else
. . . it's all over the biostation. . .. Good god, they light up the club,
plug in the record-player, drink yogurt; they drink a vast amount of yogurt
and in the moonlight they hurl the bottles into the lake and see who gets
the farthest. They dance, play forfeits and spin the bottle, cards and
billiards, they swap women, and by day in their laboratories they pour the
forest from one test tube to another, study the forest under a microscope,
reckon it up on adding machines, while the forest stands all around them,
looms above them, grows up through their bedrooms and in the stifling hours
before the thunderstorm, wandering trees come crowding up to their windows,
and they also, no doubt wonder what these people are, why they're here and
why they exist at all. . . .
A good thing I'm getting out of here, he thought. I've been here,
understood nothing, found nothing I wanted to find, but I know now that I
never will understand anything, that there is a time for everything. There's
nothing in common between the forest and me, the forest is no nearer to me
than the Directorate is. Anyway, at least I'm not staying here to be covered
in shame. I'm going away, I shall work and wait. I shall hope for the time
to come when. . . .
The biostation yard was empty. There was no sign of the truck, and
there was no line at the pay-out window. All there was was Pepper's suitcase
standing on the porch that barred his way, his gray raincoat hung on the
verandah rail. Pepper got out of the landrover and looked around in
perplexity. Acey, arm in arm with Quentin was already heading for the
canteen, which gave out a clink of cutlery and a smell of burning. Stoyan
said: "Let's go and have supper, Peppy," and drove the vehicle into the
garage. Pepper, to his horror, suddenly realized what all this meant: a
howling record-player, senseless chatter, yogurt, another little glass, eh?
And the same every evening, on and on for evening after. . . .
The pay-window rattled and an angry cashier stuck his head out:
"Where've you been, Pepper? How long haye I got to wait? Get over here and
sign up."
Pepper approached the window on stiffened legs. "Right here--I'll put
the total in," the cashier said. "No, no, not there, here. Why're your hands
shaking? Here you are."
He began counting out notes.
"But where are the rest? asked Pepper.
"Don't rush. . . . The rest are in the envelope here."
"No, I mean. . . ."
"What you mean doesn't affect anybody. I--canf change the procedure
just for you. There's your salary, have you got it?"
"I wanted to find out. . . ."
"I'm asking you, have you received your salary? Yes or no?"
"Yes."
"Thank the Lord. Now your bonus. Have you received that?"
"Yes."
"That's it then. Allow me to shake your hand. I'm in a hurry. I have to
be at the Directorate by seven."
"I only wanted to ask," said Pepper hurriedly, "where all the rest of
the people . . . Kim, the truck . . . they did promise to take me ... to the
Mainland."
"Can't do it to the Mainland, I have to be at the Directorate. Excuse
me, I'm shutting the window now.
"I won't take up much room," said Pepper.
"That's not the point. You're not a child, you must realize, I'm a
cashier. I have payrolls--what if anything happens to them? Take your elbow
away."
Pepper took his elbow away and the window slammed down. Through the
murky thumb-printed glass, Pepper could make out the cashier collecting up
his payrolls, screwing them up any how and stuffing them into his briefcase;
then the office door opened, two massive guards came in and bound the
cashier's hands, throwing a noose about his neck; one of them led the
cashier off on the rope while the other took the briefcase and gazed around
the room, catching sight of Pepper as he did so. For a while they stared at
one another through the dirty glass, then very slowly and carefully, as if
fearing to scare someone, the guard placed the briefcase on the chair and,
without taking his eyes from Pepper, reached out for the rifle that was
leaning against the wall. Pepper waited, cold and incredulous, as the guard
took up the rifle, stumbled and went out, shutting the door behind him. The
light was extinguished.
Pepper then fell back from the window, ran on tiptoe to his suitcase,
seized it and fled, anywhere, as far as might be from this place. He took
cover behind the garage and watched the guard come out onto the porch,
holding his rifle at the port, a glance left and right, then underfoot; he
took Pepper's raincoat, weighed it in his hand, rummaged in the pockets and
after another glance around, went off into the house. Pepper sat down on his
suitcase. It was chilly and night was falling. Pepper sat pointlessly
staring at the lighted windows, whitened for half their height. Beyond the
window shadows moved; on the roof the latticed vane of the radar silently
rotated. Crockery rattled, night creatures called in the forest. Then
somewhere a searchlight flashed out a blue beam and into it from behind the
corner of the building rolled a shovel truck, rumbling and leaping on the
rutted road; followed by the searchlight, it reached the gates. In the scoop
sat the guard with the rifle. He was smoking, muffled up against the wind; a
thick fleecy rope was wrapped around his left wrist and led off through the
half-opened window of the driver's cab.
The truck drove off and the searchlight went out. Across the yard,
scraping his gigantic boots, passed the second guard, a menacing shadow with
a rifle under his armpit. Every now and again he bent down and prodded the
earth, looking for footprints, seemingly. Pepper pressed his sodden back to
the wall and, motionless, followed him with his eyes.
There came a terrible drawn-out cry from the forest. Somewhere doors
slammed. A light went on on the first floor, someone said loudly: "Not half
stuffy in your place." Something round and shining dropped into the grass
and rolled to Pepper's feet. Pepper froze into stillness once more, than
realized it was a yogurt bottle.
On foot, thought Pepper. It'll have to be on foot. Twelve miles through
the forest. Through the forest, that was bad. Now the forest would see a
pitiful trembling man, damp with fear and fatigue, dead under the weight of
his suitcase, yet for some reason clinging onto it. I'll be trailing along
and the forest will hoot and yell at me from both sides.
The guard had reappeared in the courtyard. He was not alone. Alongside
came something else, breathing heavily and snorting, huge and four-footed.
They halted in the middle of the yard and Pepper could hear the guard
muttering: "Grab that, go on. . . . Don't eat the thing, then .... It's not
sausage, it's a raincoat, smell it then. . . . Well? Cherchez when you're
told. . . ." The four-footed one whined and squealed. "Gaw!" said the
exasperated guard. "Hunting fleas is your job. . . . Get on there!" They
melted into the darkness. Heels clacked along the porch, a door shut.
Just then something cold and moist knocked against Pepper's cheek. He
shuddered and almost fell. It was an enormous wolfhound. It whined very
quietly, gave a heavy sigh, and laid its heavy head on Pepper's knees.
Pepper stroked it behind the ears. The wolfhound yawned and seemed about to
shift itself around to get comfortable when the record-player thundered out
from the first floor. The wolfhound silently started up and bounded off.
The record-player raged on, for miles around nothing else existed. And
then, just like in an adventure film, the gates were suddenly bathed in blue
light and silently opened wide, and an enormous truck slid into the yard
like a vast ship lit up with constellations of signal lamps. It stopped and
dipped its headlights, which died slowly as if some forest monster were
giving up the ghost. Driver Voldemar thrust his head out of the window and
started shouting something, mouth wide, and kept it up, straining away, his
eyes fierce, then spat and dived back into the cab, came out again and
chalked "Pepper!!!" on his door upside down. At this, Pepper realized the
truck had come for him, seized hold of his suitcase and ran across the yard,
fearing to look back, fearful of hearing shots behind him. He made hard work
of scrambling up the two steps into a cab the size of a room and while he
got his suitcase settled, then himself a dug-out cigarette, Voldemar kept
talking, purple in the face, his voice straining, gesticulating and pushing
Pepper's shoulder with the palm of his hand. Only when the record-player
stopped suddenly did Pepper at last hear his voice: Voldemar wasn't saying
anything in particular, he was just swearing violently.
The truck had not succeeded in passing the gates, when Pepper fell
asleep, as if someone had placed an ether mask over his face.
Chapter Seven
The village was very strange. When they emerged from the forest and saw
it below in the dip, the silence stunned them. It was so quiet that their
joy was dampened. The village was triangular in shape and the sizeable
clearing on which it stood was similarly three-sided--a wide clay outcrop
without a single bush or blade of grass, as if it had been burned off and
then stamped down, completely black and sheltered from the sky by the
interlacing tops of mighty trees.
"I don't like this village," announced Nava. "It'll likely be hard to
beg a bite to eat there. They're not likely to have food if they haven't
even got fields, just bare clay. They're likely hunters, trapping and eating
animals, makes you sick to think. . . ."
"Perhaps we've landed up at Funny Village?" inquired Kandid. "Perhaps
it's Clay Clearing?"
"How can it be Funny Village? Funny Village is just an ordinary
village, like our village only funny folk live there. But here, the quiet
and nobody to be seen, no kids, they might be in bed, mind. . . . And why's
there nobody about, Dummy? Let's not go into that village, I don't like it
at all. . . ."
The sun was setting, and the village below was sinking into shadow. It
had the air of being very empty but not deserted, not abandoned, simply
empty, unreal, as if it were not a village at all but some sort of stage
scenery. Yes, thought Kandid, probably we shouldn't go there, only my feet
are hurting and I'd give a lot for a roof over my head. And something to
eat. And the night's coming on. ... We've been wandering around the forest
all day, even Nava's weary, hanging on to my arm, not letting go. "All
right," he said hesitantly, "let's not go."
"Not go, not go," said Nava, "just when I want to eat? How long can I
last without eating? I've had nothing since morning . . . and your robbers .
. . that made me mighty hungry. No, let's go down there, have a bite and if
we don't like it, we'll leave straight away. The night's going to be warm,
no rain . . . let's go, what're you standing there for?"
As soon as they reached the edge of the village someone called them.
Alongside the first house, on the gray earth sat a gray man, practically
naked. It was hard to pick him out in the twilight, he almost merged with
the earth and Kandid was only able to make out his silhouette against the
background of a whitewashed wall.
"Where are you going?" asked the man in a feeble voice.
"We're going to spend the night here and in the morning we have to go
to New Village. We've lost our way, we ran away from some robbers and lost
the way."
"You came here yourselves, then?" said the man weakly. "You've done
well then, good people. .. . You come in, come in, there's lots of work to
be done and hardly any people left now. . . ." He could hardly bring the
words out, as if he were nodding off. "And the work must be done, it's just
got to be, got to be. . . ." "Will you give us something to eat?" asked
Kandid. "Just now we've got . . ." The man spoke some words that struck
Kandid as familiar, except that he knew he'd never heard them before. "It's
good that a boy's come, because a boy . . ." He started talking strange,
incomprehensible words again.
Nava tugged at Kandid, but he tore his arm away in annoyance."I can't
understand you," he said to the man, trying to get a better look at him at
least. "Just tell me whether you've got food by you or not."
"Now if there were three. . . ." said the man.
Nava dragged Kandid off to one side by main force.
"Is he ill?" said Kandid angrily. "Did you understand what he was
saying?"
"What are you talking to him for?" whispered Nava. "He hasn't got a
face! How can you talk to him if he hasn't got a face?"
"How d'you mean 'no face'?" Kandid looked around in amazement. The man
was not to be seen;
either he'd gone or had melted into the shadows.
"He's like a deadling," she said. "Only he's not, he's got a smell, but
for all that, he's like a deadling. . . . Let's go to some other house, but
we won't get anything to eat here, don't think you will."
She hauled him off to the next house and they glanced inside.
Everything in the house was odd, no beds, no smell of habitation, inside it
was empty, dark, unpleasant. Nava sniffed the air.
"There's never been any food here," she said, repelled. "You've brought
me to some stupid village, Dummy. What shall we do here? In my life I've
never seen villages like this. There's no children shouting and there's
nobody in the street."
They walked on. Beneath their feet lay a cool fine dust; their very
steps were soundless and there were none of the usual evening hootings and
gurgling from the forest.
•'He spoke in a funny way," said Kandid. "I've been thinking, I've
heard that talk somewhere before . . . but when and where I don't remember.
. . ."
"I don't remember either," said Nava, after a pause, "but it's true.
Dummy, I've heard words like that, maybe in a dream, maybe in our village,
not the one where you and I live now, but the other one where I was born,
only then that would have been a very long time ago, because I was still
very little, I've forgotten everything since, just now it was as if I
remembered, but I just can't remember properly."
In the next house they saw a man lying flat on the floor by the
entrance, asleep. Kandid bent down and shook him by the shoulder, but the
man did not wake up. His skin was moist and cold like an amphibian, he was
flabby, soft, and lacked muscle almost entirely. His lips in the
semi-darkness seemed black and had an oily gleam.
"He's asleep," said Kandid, turning to Nava. "What d'you mean asleep,
when he's looking at us?" said Nava.
Kandid bent over the man again and it now seemed that he was watching
them through barely-open eyes. The impression lasted only briefly. "No, no,
he's asleep all right," said Kandid. "Let's go."
Unusually for her, Nava said nothing. They made their way to the center
of the village, glancing into every house, and in every house they saw
sleepers. All the sleepers were plump, fleshy men. There wasn't a single
woman or child. Nava was now completely silent and Kandid also felt uneasy.
The bellies of the sleepers rumbled heavily. They didn't wake up, but almost
every time that Kandid looked back at them as he passed out into the street
it seemed that they were following him with quick cautious glances.
By now it had got dark and scraps of sky made ashen by the moon peeped
through between the branches; to Kandid it once more seemed weirdly like the
backdrop in a good theater. He felt weary to the ultimate degree, to
complete and utter indifference. Just now he wanted only one thing; to lie
down somewhere under a roof (in case some nocturnal horror fell on him
asleep), let it be on a hard stamped floor, but better anyhow in an empty
house, not with these suspicious sleepers. Nava was now literally hanging on
his arm. "Don't you be afraid," said Kandid, "there's absolutely nothing to
be afraid of here." "What d'you say?" she asked sleepily. "I said: don't be
afraid, they're all half dead here, I could turf them out with one hand."
"I'm not afraid of anybody," said Nava angrily, "I'm tired out and I
want to go to sleep, if you can't give me anything to eat. You keep going on
from house to house, house to house. I'm fed up, it's the same in every
house anyway, all the people are lying down resting, and you and me are the
only ones wandering about. . . ."
Kandid then made up his mind and entered the first house he came
across. It was pitch black inside. Kandid pricked his ears trying to
determine whether anyone was inside or not, but all he could hear was the
snuffling of Nava who had her forehead buried in his side. He found the wall
by groping and scrabbled about on the floor to see if it was wet; he lay
down placing Nava's head on his stomach. She was already asleep. He hoped to
himself he had done the right thing, there was something wrong about this
place . . . still, just one night . . . then ask the way . .. they won't
sleep in the daytime ... at worst into the swamp, the robbers had gone . . .
and if they hadn't. . . how were the lads in New Village? . . . Surely not
the day after tomorrow again? .... Not at all, tomorrow . . . tomorrow. . .
.
He was awakened by a light and thought it was the moon. Inside the
house it was dark, the lilac light was coming in by the door and it struck
him as interesting that this light could enter by both the door and the
window in the opposite wall, then he remembered he was in the forest and
this could be no real moon; he at once forgot all this as the silhouette of
a man appeared in the strip of light falling from the window. The man was
standing in the house with his back to Kandid, gazing out of the window, and
it was obvious by his silhouette that he was standing with his arms behind
his back and head bowed. The forest inhabitants never stood like that--there
was simply no reason for them to do so--but Karl Etinghof used to like to
stand like that by the laboratory window during the rain and fog season when
there was no work to do, and the clear realization came to him that this was
Karl Etinghof, who had gone absent from the biostation one day and had not
returned from the forest. He had been posted as missing without trace.
Kandid gave a gasp of ex citement and cried "Karl!" As Karl slowly turned,
the lilac light fell across his face and Kandid saw that it was not Karl but
some unknown local inhabitant; he came noiselessly up to Kandid and bent
over him, hands still behind his back, so that his face became clearly
visible--an emaciated, beardless face, indeed quite unlike Karl's face. He
straightened up without a word, seeming not to see Kandid, and made for the
door, stooping as before, and when he was stepping across the threshold
Kandid realized that it was Karl after all, leaped to his feet and ran after
him.
Beyond the entrance he halted and looked up and down the street, trying
to suppress a nervous tremor that had suddenly taken hold of him. It was now
very bright outside from the luminous lilac cloud hanging low over the
village and all the houses seemed two-dimensional and more than ever unreal,
while at an angle on the other side of the street rose a long outlandish
structure unlike any normal forest building. Near to it figures were moving.
The man resembling Karl was heading along for the building; when he reached
the crowd he mingled with it and vanished as if he had never been. Kandid
also wanted to get to the building but his legs felt like cotton wool and he
couldn't move. He was astonished that he could still stand up. Afraid he
would fall, he looked for something to support him; there was nothing but
emptiness all around. "Karl," he mumbled, swaying, "Karl, come back!" He
repeated the words several times, finally shouting aloud in despair; no one
heard him, for at that very moment a much louder cry rang out, piteous and
wild, a frank sob of pain that rang in his ears and forced tears to his
eyes; for some reason he realized at once that the cry came from that long
structure, perhaps because there was nowhere else it could be.
"Where's Nava?" he began to shout. "My girl, where are you?" He
realized that he would lose her now, that the moment had come for him to
lose everything that was close to him, all that linked him to life, and he
would be alone. He turned to rush into the house and saw Nava, slowly
falling backward. He caught and lifted her without understanding what had
happened to her. Her head was thrown back and her open throat was in front
of his eyes; where everybody has a hollow between their collarbones, Nava
had two and he would never see them again. The screaming sob had not stopped
and he knew that he had to go where it was. He was only too well aware what
a feat this would be, dragging her over there, but he also knew that they
would simply consider it normal procedure, because they didn't understand
what it meant to hold a wife in your arms, warm and unique and carry her
yourself to a place of weeping.
The cry broke off. Kandid saw that he was standing right in front of
the building before the square black door, and strove to understand what he
was doing there with Nava in his arms. He did not succeed, for out of the
square black door came two women and Karl, all three displeased and
frowning, and halted in conversation. He saw their lips moving and guessed
they were arguing irritably but the words he could not understand, just once
he caught the half-familiar word "chiasmus." Then one of the women, without
interrupting the conversation, turned to the crowd and gestured as if
inviting all of them into the building. Kandid said, "Right away, right
away," and hugged Nava to him more tightly than ever. Once again the loud
cry rang out and everybody began shuffling about, the fat people began to
embrace one another, hug one another close, stroke and caress each other;
their eyes were dry and their lips tightly closed, nevertheless they were
crying and shouting, taking farewell of each other, for it turned out they
were men and women and the men were saying good-bye to the women forever. No
one wanted to go first, so Kandid went up first, since he was a brave man,
since he knew he had to and since he knew that there was no help for him in
any case. Karl, however, glanced at him and motioned him aside with a barely
perceptible shake of the head, and Kandid felt utterly weird because it
wasn't Karl after all, but he understood and retreated, knocking into soft
and slippery bodies with his back. And when Karl gave
another shake of the head, he turned, slung Nava over his shoulder and
ran on rubbery legs along the bright, empty village street as if in a dream;
there was no sound of pursuit.
He came to himself as he collided with a tree. Nava shrieked and he
lowered her to the ground. There was grass underfoot.
From here the whole village could be surveyed. A fog of lilac
luminescence hung in a cone over the village, and the houses looked blurred
as the figures of the people seemed blurred.
"For some reason I can't remember anything," said Nava, "why are we
here? We went to bed. Or am I dreaming?"
Kandid lifted her and carried her farther and farther crashing through
bushes, tripping over grass, until all around became completely dark. He
pushed on a little farther yet, set Nava down once more and sat down beside
her. Around them grew tall warm grass, keeping the damp out; never had
Kandid chanced upon such a dry, warm, blissful place since he had been in
the forest. He had a headache and drowsiness kept coming on; he felt no
desire to think at all, there was just this feeling of huge relief that he
had been about to do something terrible and had not done it.
"Dummy," said Nava dreamily, "you know. Dummy, I've remembered where I
heard talk like that before. You used to talk like that, Dummy, when you
hadn't recovered your wits. Listen, Dummy, maybe you've just forgotten. You
were very sick then, Dummy, lost your wits altogether. . . ."
"Go to sleep," said Kandid. He didn't want to think. Not about
anything. Chiasmus, he recalled and fell asleep at once. Not quite at once.
He recalled suddenly that it wasn't Karl that had gone missing; that was
Valentine, it was Valentine's name that had been posted up in orders, Karl
had perished in the forest and they had put his body, discovered by
accident, in a lead coffin and shipped it to the Mainland. But he thought he
might be dreaming all that.
When he opened his eyes, Nava was still asleep. She was lying on her
stomach in the hollow between two roots, her face buried in the crook of her
left arm with her right flung out to one side; Kandid saw a thin shining
object in her dirty, half-open fist. At first he didn't realize what it was,
and he was occupied with the sudden memory of the strange half-dream of the
night, his fear, and the relief he felt at something terrible which had not
happened. It then occurred to him what the object actually was, even its
name swam into his memory. It was a scalpel. He waited a while, testing the
shape of the object with the sound of the word, realizing at the back of his
mind that it was correct, but impossible, because a scalpel by its name and
shape was monstrously incongruous in this world. He roused Nava.
Nava awoke and, sitting up, began to talk at once.
"What a dry place, I never in all my life thought there were dry places
like this, look how high the grass grows, eh, Dummy?" She became quiet and
brought the scalpel in her fist close to her eyes. She gazed at it for a
second, then squealed and flung it, shuddering, from her. She leapt to her
feet. The scalpel sliced into the grass and stood quivering. They looked at
it and both were terrified.
"What is it, Dummy?" whispered Nava at last, "what a horrible thing ...
is it a thing? Maybe it's a plant? Look, it's all dry around here--maybe it
grew here?"
"Why -horrible'?" asked Kandid.
"Why ever not?" said Nava. "You pick it up ... you try, try, go on ...
then you'll know why it's horrible. I don't know, myself, why it's horrible.
. . ."
Kandid picked up the scalpel. It was still warm, but the sharp point
struck cold. Passing a cautious finger along it, he found where it changed
from warm to cold.
"Where did you pick it up?" asked Kandid.
"I didn't pick it up anywhere," said Nava. "It likely crawled into my
hand by itself, while I was asleep. See how cold it is? It likely wanted to
get warm and crawled into my hand. I've never seen anything like it,
I don't know what to call it. Likely it's not a plant, it's some kind
of beastie, maybe he's got legs just tucked them up, only so hard and nasty
. . . maybe we're asleep, Dummy, you and I?" She faltered all of a sudden
and looked at Kandid. "Were we in the village tonight? Surely we were, there
was a man without a face as well, and he kept thinking I was--a boy. . . .
And we hunted for somewhere to sleep . . . yes, and then I woke up, you had
gone and I started feeling about with my hands. That's when it crawled into
my hand!" she said, "but it's surprising, Dummy, I wasn't at all frightened
of it then, just the opposite even ... I even wanted it for something. . .
."
"It was all a dream," said Kandid decisively. The hair had risen on his
scalp. He remembered all the events of the night. And Karl. And how he had
shaken his head just slightly; run while you can. And that when he was
alive, Karl had been a surgeon.
"Why don't you say anything, Dummy?" asked Nava, gazing anxiously at
his face. "Where are you looking?"
Kandid pushed her away. "It was a dream," he repeated harshly, "forget
it. Better hunt up something to eat, and I'll bury this thing."
"What did I need it for, don't you know?" asked Nava. "I had to do
something. . . ." She shook her head. "I don't like dreams like that,
Dummy," she said, "you can't remember a thing. You bury it deep otherwise
it'll get out and crawl into the village and frighten somebody. Good idea to
put a stone on top, a pretty heavy one, too. . . . Well, you bury it and
I'll go and look for food." She sniffed the air. "There's berries somewhere
near here. I never did, berries in such a dry place?"
She ran off lightly and noiselessly over the grass and was soon lost to
view beyond the trees. Kandid remained seated, holding the scalpel in his
palm. He didn't bury it. He wiped the blade with a handful of grass and
tucked it in his blouse. Now he recalled everything and could understand
nothing. It was a kind of strange and terrible dream, and owing to some
oversight, the scalpel had fallen out of it. What a pity, he thought, today
my head's clearer than it's ever been and all the same I can't understand a
thing. That means I never will.
Nava quickly returned and dug out from her bosom a pile of berries and
several sizeable fungi.
"There's a path over there, Dummy," she said. "Let's not go back to
that village, you and I, why should we, let it ... let's you and I go by the
path, we're bound to get somewhere. We can ask there the way to New Village
and everything'll be all right. It's just amazing how much I want now to get
to New Village, never before wanted to so much. Let's not go back to that
nasty village, I didn't like it there, you know if we hadn't got away from
there, something awful would have happened. If you want to know, we
shouldn't have come here, those robbers did shout at you not to go or you
were done for, but of course you never listen to anybody. . . . Because of
you we nearly got into trouble. . . . Why don't you eat? The mushrooms are
filling and the berries are nice, rub them in your palm and make them into
crumbs, you're like a kid today. I remember now, mam used to tell me the
best mushrooms grow where it's dry, but I didn't know what dry meant, mam
used to say that there were lots of dry places before, like on a good road,
that's why she understood and I didn't. . . ."
Kandid tried a mushroom and ate it. They really were good, and so were
the berries; he felt his strength coming back. He still didn't know what to
do next, however. He wasn't keen to go back to the village. He tried to
visualize the locality as Hopalong had drawn it on the ground with a stick,
and recalled that Hopalong used to speak of a road to the City, a road which
should run through these parts. "It's a very good road," Hopalong would say
regretfully, "the most direct road to the City, only we can't get there
across the quagmire, that's the trouble." He lied. The lame one lied. He had
gone across the quagmire and had been in the City probably, but for some
reason he lied. But perhaps Nava's path was that self-same road? It had to
be risked. But first they had to go back, back to the village. . . .
"We'll have to go back all the same, Nava," he said, after they had
eaten.
"Where to? Back to that nasty village?" Nava was upset. "Now why do you
say that to me, Dummy? What's there left to see in that village? That's what
I can't like about you, Dummy, there's no making any arrangements with you.
. . . We'd already decided that we wouldn't go back to that village, and I
found the path for you, now you start saying we've got to go back...."
"We have to," he answered, "I don't want to either, Nava, but we have
to. What if they can tell us there the quickest way to get to the City?"
"Why to the City? I don't want to go to the City, I want to go to New
Village!"
"We're going straight to the City," said Kandid, "I can't stand any
more of this."
"Well, all right," said Nava, "all right, let's go to the City, even
better, what's left to be seen in New Village? Let's go to the City, I
agree, I'm always in agreement with you, only don't let's go back to that
village. You think what you like, Dummy, but for my part, I'd never return
to that village. . . ."
"It's the same with me," he said, "but it's got to be done. Don't be
angry, Nava, I really don't want to.. . ."
"If you don't want to, why go?" He didn't want to and couldn't explain
to her why. He rose and without looking back, went in the direction of the
village, through the warm, dry grass, past the warm, dry tree trunks,
squinting from the warm sun of which there was unusually much hereabouts,
heading toward a horror from which all his muscles were still painfully
strained, toward a strange and quiet hope that broke through the horror,
like a blade of grass through asphalt.
Nava caught him up and walked alongside. She was angry and was even
silent for some time, but couldn't keep it up.
"Just don't think that I'm going to talk to those people, you can talk
to them, you're going there, you talk to them. I don't like having anything
to do with a man if he hasn't got a face, I don't like that. Expect no good
from a man like that, if he can't tell a boy from a girl. . . . My head's
been aching since morning, and now I know why. , . ."
They came on the village unexpectedly. Apparently, Kandid had veered
off the true direction and the village now opened out among the trees on the
right. Everything was altered, though. Kandid didn't at first realize what
had happened. Then he did; the village had drowned.
The triangular clearing was awash with black water, and water was
entering before their eyes, filling the clay dip, drowning the houses,
silently eddying along the streets. Kandid stood and watched helplessly as
windows disappeared under the water and waterlogged walls crumbled and sank,
roofs caved in and nobody ran out of the houses, nobody attempted to reach
the shore, not a single person appeared on the surface of the water. Perhaps
there were no people there, perhaps they'd left that night, but he felt
it-wasn't as simple as that. It's not a village, he thought, it's a model,
it stood forgotten and dusty and then somebody got curious as to what would
happen if it were covered with water. It might be interesting? ... So they
did it. But it wasn't interesting. . . .
Gently caving in, the roof of a smooth building slid into the water. A
light breath seemed to float over the water, waves fled over the even
surface and all was over. Before Kandid lay an ordinary triangular lake, for
the moment quite shallow and lifeless. Later it would deepen into a gulf,
fish would appear, for us to catch, prepare, and place in formalin.
"I know what this is called," said Nava. Her voice was so calm, that
Kandid glanced at her. She really was absolutely calm, even, it seemed,
pleased. "It's called the Accession," she said, "that's why they had no
faces and I didn't understand straight away. Likely they wanted to live in
the lake. They used to tell me that the people who lived in the houses can
stay and live in the lake, there'll be a lake here now for always, those who
don't want to can leave. Take me for example, I would leave, though maybe it
would be better living in the lake. But that nobody knows. . . . Maybe we
could bathe here?" she suggested.
"No," said Kandid, "I don't want to bathe here. Let's get on to your
path. Come on."
I've just got to get out of here, he thought, unless I want to be like
that machine in the maze. . . . We all stood around and laughed as it busily
probed and searched and sniffed . . . then we filled a small trough in its
path with water and it panicked touchingly but only for a moment, then its
busy antennae got going again, buzzing and sniffing, not knowing that we
were observing it, and in general we couldn't have cared less that it
didn't, though it was that which was the most terrible thing of all. If it
was terrible at all, he thought. Necessity can't be either terrible or kind.
Necessity is necessary, and anything else about it we imagine ourselves, or
machines in mazes, if they can imagine. It's just that when we make a
mistake, necessity grips us by the throat and we start crying and
complaining how cruel and terrible it is, and it's just exactly what it
is--it's us who are stupid or blind. I can even philosophize today, he
thought. Probably from the lack of humidity. That's all I need, I can
philosophize. . . .
"There it is, your path," said Nava angrily, "come on, if you please."
Angry, he thought. Won't let me bathe, I can't talk, it's dry
everywhere, nasty . . . never mind, let her be angry, she's quiet, and thank
God for that. Who walks these paths? Surely they can't be walked often
enough to keep the grass down? It's an odd path all right, it is as if it
were dug out, not trampled down. . . .
The path led at first through comfortable dry places, but after some
time it descended steeply and became a vicious strip of black mud. The pure
forest ended, bogs appeared on all sides, moss grew everywhere, it got damp
and stifling. Nava at once livened up. She felt much better here. She was
now talking continuously and soon the well-known ringing hum took over and
established itself in Kandid's head; he moved in a half-dream, forgetting
all his philosophy, almost forgetting where he was going, giving himself up
to chance thoughts, not even thoughts, fancies.
.... Hopalong comes hobbling down the main street and tells everyone he
meets (and even if he meets nobody, he still puts it out), that Dummy has
gone off, yes, and taken Nava with him, to the City, likely he's gone to the
Reed-beds, good fish to trick there; just stick your finger in the
water--there you are, a fish. Only why should he, if you think about it.
Dummy doesn't eat fish, fool, although maybe he'll decide to catch a few for
Nava, Nava eats fish, there now he'll feed her up on fish. . . . But why did
he go on asking questions about the City? No-o-o, he's not gone to the
Reed-beds, we can't expect him back soon.
Toward him along the main street comes Buster and tells everyone he
meets that Dummy now, used to go about trying to talk people into going to
the City, Buster, let's go day after tomorrow to the City, and when I make
too much food so the old woman tells me off, then off he goes without me and
without food . . . on his own, yes, wool on yer nose, off he goes, no food,
give him one in the eye and put a stop to that, no going with food, and with
no food he'd be frightened to go, sit at home, give him one. . . .
And Barnacle stands next to the old man breakfasting at his house and
says to him: you're eating again, and eating somebody else's again. Don't
think I begrudge it, I'm just amazed how many pots of filling food can be
stowed away inside a skinny old man like you. You eat, he says, but you tell
me is there really only one of you in the village? Maybe there's really
three, or two at least? It's weird looking at you, eat, eat till you're full
up, then explain that it's not right to. ...
Nava walked alongside, hanging on to his arm with both of hers, talking
with a reckless air:
"And there was another man living in our village, who they called
Anger-Martyr, you wouldn't remember him, you were witless then, and this
Anger-Martyr was always annoyed at us and he used to ask: Why? Why is it
light in the daytime and dark at night? Why is it beetles that get you drunk
but not ants? Why are the deadlings interested in women but not men? The
dead-lings stole two wives from him, one after the other. The first one was
before my time, but I remember the second, he went about asking why, he
asked, did they steal my wife and not me? He deliberately walked whole days
and nights in the forest, so's he could be picked up and find his wives, or
one of them at least, but of course it didn't work, they don't want men,
it's women they need, that's how they're made, and they're not going to
change their ways because of any Anger-Martyr. ... He used to ask us as well
why we had to work in the fields when there was more than enough food in the
forest, just pour some ferment on the ground then eat your fill. The elder
says to him: don't work if you don't want to, nobody's grabbing your arm . .
. but he still went on: why, but why ... or he would go up to Buster, Why
says he, is Upper Village grown over with mushrooms and ours has nary a one?
At first Buster quietly explains: the Accession happened up there and not
here yet, that's all about it. But he goes on: Why haven't we had the
Accession, Buster, after such a long time? What if it hasn't come then asks
Buster, you miss it or something? Anger-Martyr won't leave off, he wore
Buster out. Buster started shouting, all the village heard him, he waved his
fists about and ran off to the elder to complain, the elder got angry as
well and called the village together. They all set on Anger-Martyr to punish
him, but they couldn't catch him. ... He used to get onto the old man as
well an awful lot At first, the old man stopped going to his house to eat
then he tried hiding from him but eventually he couldn't stand it: Leave me
alone, says he, the food won't go into my mouth because of you, how should I
know--why? The City knows why and that's all about it. Anger-Martyr went off
to the City and never came back. . . .
Greeny-yellow blotches swam slowly by to right and left, ripe
dope-toadstools puffed deeply and hurled out their spores in ginger
fountains; a wandering forest wasp tried to sting their eyes, prompting a
hundred-yard dash to escape; multi-colored water spiders clung to the lianas
fussing about building their constructions; jumping trees alighted and
hunched for another jump before, sensing the presence of people, they froze
and pretended to be ordinary trees--there was nothing for the eye to rest
on, nothing to record. And nothing to think about either, since to think of
Karl and last night and the drowned village meant delirium.
"Anger-Martyr was a good man--it was he and Hopalong found you beyond
the Reed-beds. They went off toward the Anthills, but drifted over somehow
to the Reed-beds and found you there and dragged you in, or rather
Anger-Martyr dragged you in, Hopalong just walked behind picking up the
things that fell out of you. . . . Ever such a lot of things he picked up,
then, he said he got scared and threw them all away. No such thing ever grew
in our village, or could ever. Then Anger-Martyr took the clothes off you,
very strange clothes you had, nobody could understand where things like that
grew or how. . . . Then he cut them up and planted them, thinking they'd
grow. But nothing ever grew for him not even a shoot, and he started going
around again asking why, if you cut up and planted anybody's clothes they
grew, but yours, Dummy, never even sprouted. ... He pestered you a lot, gave
you no peace, but you had no wits then, just muttered something or other,
like that one with no face, and covered your face with your hand. Otherwise
he'd never have left you alone. After that lots of men went over beyond the
Reed-beds--Buster, Hopalong, even the elder went, hoping to find another one
like you. But they never did. . . . Then they brought me to you. Marry him,
say they, while you can, get married, you'll have a husband, he's a
stranger, so what? So are you, sort of. I'm a stranger too. Dummy. This is
how it was: the deadlings had kidnapped mother and me, it was a night
without moon. . . ."
The terrain was again beginning to rise, but the humidity remained,
although the forest did begin to thin out. The root-snags, decayed boughs,
and piles of rotting lianas had disappeared. The greenery had gone, all
around was yellow and orange. The trees were now slender, and the swamp had
changed oddly--it was now level, without moss and without mud-heaps. The
tangled web of undergrowth had disappeared and visibility was good to left
and right. The grass on the verges was now softer and juicier, blade against
blade as if someone had specially selected and planted them.
Nava halted in mid-word, drew breath and said matter-of-factly glancing
around; "Where could you hide here? Looks like nowhere to hide. . . ."
"Is someone coming?" asked Kandid.
"A lot of someones, and I don't know who. . . . It's not deadlings, but
best to hide anyway. We could stay in the open of course, they're pretty
close anyway, and there's nowhere to hide. Let's get on the verge and have a
look. . . ." She sniffed again. "Nasty sort of smell, not dangerous, but
better if it wasn't there. . . . You, Dummy, can't you smell it? It stinks
like over-rotted ferment--a pot of over-rotted ferment covered in mold right
in front of your nose. . . . There they are! Eh, little ones, they're all
right, you can chase them away, shoo! shoo!"
"Be quiet," said Kandid, taking a closer look.
At first he thought that white tortoises were crawling toward him along
the path. Then he realized that he'd never seen animals like this before.
They resembled enormous opaque amoebas or very young tree-slugs except that
the slugs had no pseudopodia and were a little larger. There were a lot of
them. They crawled along in single file, quite quickly, hurling forward
their pseudopodia neatly and flowing on into them.
Soon they were quite near, white and shining; Kandid also sensed a
sharp, unfamiliar smell and stepped from the path to the verge, drawing Nava
after him. The slug-amoebas crawled on past them, one after the other,
paying them no attention whatever. There turned out to be twelve of them in
all. Nava kicked out at the twelfth and last, unable to restrain herself.
The slug neatly tucked in its behind and went on in hope. Nava was delighted
and wanted to rush forward and deliver another kick, but Kandid caught her
dress.
"They're so funny," said Nava, "and they crawl along the path just like
people walking . . . where are they going, I wonder? Likely, Dummy, they're
off to that nasty village, they're from there likely, and they're going back
now knowing the Accession's happened there. They'll march around the water
and head back. Where will they go, poor things? Find another village? . . .
Hey!" she shouted, "stop! your village has gone, there's only a lake there
now!"
"Be quiet," said Kandid. "Let's go. They don't understand your
language, don't waste your breath."
They went on. After the slugs the path seemed somewhat slippery. Met
and parted, mused Kandid. Met and went our separate ways. And I was the one
to step out of the way. I, not they. This circumstance suddenly seemed
extremely important to him. They were small and defenseless, I'm big and
strong, but I stepped off the path and let them through, and now I'm
thinking about them, they've passed through and probably don't remember me
at all. Because they're at home in the forest and there's plenty of strange
sights in the forest. Just as in a house there are cockroaches, bedbugs,
woodlice, the odd brainless butterfly, or a fly banging against the glass.
Anyway they don't bang against the glass. Flies think they're flying
somewhere when they fly into the glass. I think I'm walking somewhere, only
because I'm moving my legs. . . . Probably I look funny from the side and
... as it were . . . pitiful ... piteable . . . which is correct.
"There'll be a lake soon," said Nava. "Let's get on, I want to eat and
drink. Maybe you can catch some fish for me."
They put on speed. The reed-thickets began. Well, that's fine, thought
Kandid. I'm just like the fly. Am I like a man? He remembered Karl and
remembered that Karl wasn't like Karl. Very possible, he thought calmly,
very possibly I'm not the man who crashed his helicopter how many years ago.
Only in that case why do I bang against the glass. After all, Karl, when
that happened to him, didn't bang against the glass. It'll be strange when I
get out to the biostation and they see me. A good thing I thought of that.
I've got to think good and hard about that. Good thing there's still lots of
time and I won't reach the biostation all that soon....
The path forked. One arm obviously led to the lake, the other turned
off sharply to one side.
"We won't go that way," said Nava, "it leads up and I want a drink."
The path became narrower and narrower, and eventually turned into a rut
and petered out in the undergrowth. Nava halted.
"You know. Dummy," she said, "let's not go to this lake. There's
something I don't like about this lake, there's something not right about
it. I don't even think it is a lake, there's a lot of something there apart
from the water. . . ."
"But there is water there?" asked Kandid. "You wanted a drink, I
wouldn't mind either. . . ."
"There is water," said Nava reluctantly, "but it's warm, bad water,
unclean. . . . You know what, Dummy, you stay here. You make too much noise
when you walk, I can't hear a thing, you stay and wait for me, I'll call
you. I'll call like a hopper. You know what a hopper sounds like? Well, I'll
call like that. You stand here, or better still, sit down. .. ."
She dived into the reeds and disappeared. Kandid then turned his
attention to the deep, cushioned silence that reigned here. There were no
insects droning, no sighings and suckings from the swamp, no cries of forest
creatures, the damp hot air was still. This wasn't the dry silence of the
nasty village; there it was quiet like behind a theater curtain at night.
Here it was like being under water.
Kandid cautiously squatted on his haunches, pulled off some blades of
grass. He pulled up a clump of grass, rubbed it between his fingers and
unexpectedly realized that the earth here should be edible and began eating.
The turf effectively combatted hunger and thirst, it was cool and salty to
the taste. Cheese, thought Kandid, yes, cheese ... what was cheese? Swiss
cheese, processed cheese, sweating cheese . . . what was cheese? Nava
noiselessly ducked out of the reeds. She squatted beside him and started
eating, rapidly and neatly. Her eyes were round.
"It's a good thing we've eaten here," she said finally. "Do you want to
see what sort of a lake it is? I want to see it again but on my own I'm
scared. It's the lake Hopalong keeps talking about, only I thought he was
making it up or he dreamed it, but it looks like it's true, if I'm not
dreaming, that is. . . ."
"Let's take a look," said Kandid. The lake was about fifty yards in.
Kandid and Nava came down the boggy bank and parted the reeds. Above the
water lay a thick layer of white mist. The water was warm, even hot, but
clean and transparent. There was a smell of food. The mist slowly eddied in
a regular rhythm and after a minute Kandid felt he was going dizzy. There
was someone in the mist. People. Lots of people. They were all naked and
were lying absolutely motionless on the water. The mist rhythmically rose
and fell, now revealing, now concealing the yellowy, white bodies, faces
lying back--the people weren't swimming, they lay on the water as if they
might on a beach. Kandid retched. "Let's get out of here," he whispered and
pulled Nava by the arm. They got out onto the shore and returned to the
path.
"They're not drowned," said Nava, "Hopalong didn't understand, they
were just bathing here then a hot spring started up suddenly and they all
got boiled. . . . That's really awful, Dummy," she said after a silence. "I
don't even feel like talking about it... so many of them ... a whole
village. . . ." They had reached the place where the path forked. Here they
halted. "Now up?" asked Nava.
"Yes," said Kandid, "now up."
They turned right and began to ascend a slope. "And they're all women,"
said Nava, "did you notice?"
"Yes," said Kandid.
"That's the most awful thing, that's what I just can't understand.
Maybe . . ." Nava looked at Kandid, "maybe the deadlings drive them here?
Likely the deadlings drive them here--catch them around all the villages,
drive them to this lake and boil them. . . . Listen, Dummy, why did we leave
the village? We'd have lived there and not seen any of this. Thought that
Hopalong had dreamed it up, lived quietly, but no, you had to go to the
City. . . . Well, why did you have to go to the City?"
"I don't know," said Kandid.
Chapter Eight
They were lying in bushes at the very edge of the trees and gazing at
the crest of the hill through the foliage. The hill was steep and bare, and
its crest was capped by a cloud of lilac mist. Above the hill was the open
sky; a gusty wind was bringing drizzle. The lilac mist was motionless as if
there were no wind. It was rather cool, even fresh; they were soaked, and
had gooseflesh from the cold, their teeth chattered but they couldn't go
away; twenty paces from them, upright as statues, stood three deadlings,
their wide black mouths open, also looking at the crest of the hill with
empty eyes. These deadlings had arrived five minutes before. Nava had sensed
them and was set to flee, but Kandid had clamped his palm across her mouth
and forced her down into the grass. Now she had calmed down a little; though
she still shuddered heavily, it was due to the cold rather than fear. She
was now watching the hill, not the deadlings.
On and around the hill something strange was happening, some kind of
grandiose ebbing and flowing. Out of the forest, with a dense, deep droning,
suddenly erupted enormous swarms of flies, which headed into the lilac fog
on the hill and were hidden from view. The slopes were alive with columns of
ants and spiders, hundreds of slug-amoebas were pouring out of the bushes,
huge swarms of bees and wasps, clouds of multi-colored beetles flew over,
under the rain. It sounded like a typhoon. This wave reached the heights and
was sucked in, disappeared, and there came a sudden silence. The hill was
dead once more and bare; some time passed and the noise and roar rose again
and it all erupted again from the mist and headed for the forest. Only the
slugs remained on the hilltop. In their place came spilling down the slopes
the most incredible animals--hairies came rolling, clumsy arm-chewers came
lurching down on frail legs, and there were plenty of others unknown as yet,
speckled, multi-eyed, naked, shining half-beast, half-insects. Then the
silence again, then the process started up once more, and again, and again,
in a frightening, urgent rhythm, an inexorable energy. It seemed as though
this rhythm and this energy had always been and would always be. ... Once a
young hippocete emerged from the mist with a frightful roar, deadlings came
running out from time to time and at once rushed into the forest, leaving
white trails of cooling steam in their wake. And the motionless lilac cloud
kept swallowing and spitting out, swallowing and spitting out, tireless and
regular as a machine.
Hopalong used to say that the City stood on a hill, that thing is the
City, perhaps, that's what they call the City. Yes, probably that's the
City. But what's the meaning of it? Why is it like this? And the strange
activity. ... I expected something like this. . . . Rubbish, I never
expected anything like it. I thought only about the masters, and where are
the masters here? Kandid looked at the deadlings. These were standing in
their former postures, their mouths open as before. Perhaps I'm wrong,
thought Kandid. Perhaps they are the masters. Probably I'm mistaken all the
time. I've completely forgotten how to think here. If ideas come to me, I
can't fit them together. Not a single slug has come out of the fog yet.
Question: why hasn't a single slug come out of the fog yet? . . . No, that's
not it. Get it straight. I am searching for the source of intelligent
activity. . . . Not true, again not true. I'm not interested in intelligent
activity at all. I'm simply looking for someone to help me get home. Help me
to get through six hundred miles of forest. Tell me which direction to go at
least. . . . The deadlings must have masters, I'm looking for these masters,
I'm looking for the source of intelligent activity. He was quite pleased
with himself; it was quite coherent. Let's start from the beginning, we'll
think it all through--calmly and slowly. No need to hurry, now's just the
time to think everything through slowly and calmly. Start from the very
beginning. The deadlings must have masters--because deadlings aren't
people--because they aren't animals. Therefore they are manufactured. If
they aren't people. . . . But why aren't they people? He rubbed his
forehead. I've already worked that out. Long ago, in the village, I worked
it out twice even, because the first time I forgot the answer, and now I've
forgotten the proofs. . . .
He shook his head as hard as he could and Nava quietly whispered at
him. He was quiet and for a while lay with his face pressed into the wet
grass.
Why they aren't animals--I worked that out before sometime. . . . High
temperature. . . . No, no rubbish. . . . Suddenly, he realized with horror
that he'd forgotten what deadlings looked like. He remembered only their
red-hot bodies and a sharp pain in his palms. He turned his head to look at
them. Yes, I ought not to think. Thinking's out for me, right now, when I
have to think more intensively than ever before.
Time to eat; you've told me that before, Nava; we set off the day after
tomorrow--that's my limit. But I did go! And I'm here. Now I'm going into
the City. Whatever it is--it's the City. My brain's overgrown with forest. I
understand nothing. . . . I've remembered. I was going to the City, to find
an explanation for everything; about the Accession, the deadlings, the Great
Harrowing, the lake of drowned bodies ... all a deception it seems,
everybody's lied their heads off nobody can be trusted. ... I hoped they
would explain how I could get back to my own people, the old man used to
keep on saying: the City knows everything--it couldn't possibly not know
about our biostation, about the Directorate. Even Hopalong nattered on about
Devil's Rocks and flying trees. . . . But surely a lilac cloud couldn't
explain anything? It would be terrible if the master turned out to be a
lilac cloud. And why "would be"? It's terrible now! It's in front of your
nose, Dummy: the lilac fog is the master, here, surely you remember? Yes,
and it's no fog either. . . . So that's the way it is, why people are driven
away like beasts into dense forest, into swamps, drowned in lakes: they were
too weak, they didn't understand and even when they understood they couldn't
do anything to interfere with the process. . . . When I hadn't been driven
out, when I was still living at home, somebody proved very convincingly that
contact between human-oid and non-humanoid intelligence was impossible. Yes,
it is impossible. Of course it's impossible. And now nobody can tell me how
to get home.
I can have no contact with people, and I can prove that. I can still
get a sight of Devil's Rocks, so they say, you can see them sometimes if you
climb the right tree in the right season, but you've got to find the right
tree first, an ordinary human tree. That doesn't jump and doesn't throw you
off, and doesn't try and spike your eyes. Anyway, there's no tree I can see
the biostation from. . . . Biostation? Bi-o-sta-tion. I've forgotten what a
biostation is.
The forest began to hum and buzz, crackle and snort, once again myriads
of flies and ants whirled toward the lilac dome. One swarm passed above
their heads and the bushes were deluged with the weak and the dying, the
still and the barely twitching, those crushed in the press of the swarm.
Kandid sensed an unpleasant burning sensation in his arm and glanced down.
Slender threads of mushroom spawn were creeping over the elbow he had
propped upon the porous earth. Kandid indifferently brushed them off with
his palm. Devil's Rocks was a mirage, thought he, none of that exists. If
they told you stories about Devil's Rocks, then it was all lies, none, none
of that existed, and now I don't know why I ever came here. . . .
Away to one side came a familiar terrifying snort. Kandid turned his
head. At once a mother hippocete looked stupidly out from behind the seven
trees on the hill. One of the deadlings suddenly sprang to life, got in
gear, and made a few steps toward the hippocete. Once more came the
appalling snort, the trees crackled, and the hippocete made off. Even
hippocetes are afraid of the deadlings, thought Kandid. Who isn't? Where can
you find someone who isn't? . . . Flies roaring. Stupid, absurd.
Flies--roaring. Wasps roaring. . . .
"Mam!" whispered Nava suddenly. "It's mam coming. . . ."
She was on all fours and gazing over his shoulder. Her face expressed
huge astonishment and disbelief. And Kandid saw that three women had emerged
from the forest, and, without noticing the deadlings, were heading for the
foot of the hill.
"Mam!" shrieked Nava in a voice not her own, leapt over Kandid, and
raced to intercept them. At that Kandid also jumped up; it seemed to him
that the deadlings were right next to him and he could feel the heat of
their bodies.
Three, he thought. Three. . . . One would have been more than enough.
He looked at the deadlings. This is the end for me, he thought. Stupid. Why
did these old birds have to come barging in here? I hate women, always
something going wrong because of them.
The deadlings closed their mouths, their heads slowly swiveling after
the sprinting Nava. Then they strode off in unison and Kandid compelled
himself to leap up from the bushes and face them.
"Back!" he yelled to the women without looking. "Get out of it!
Deadlings!"
The deadlings were enormous, broad-shouldered, in mint condition, not a
single scratch or rough edge. Their incredibly long arms reached down to the
grass. Without taking his eyes from them, Kandid halted in their path. The
deadlings were gazing over the top of his head and moved unhurriedly toward
him; he faltered, gave ground, putting off the inevitable beginning and the
inevitable end, contending with a nervous desire to bs sick and trying to
bring himself to make a stand. Behind his back, Nava was shouting: "Mam!
It's me. Mam, main!" Stupid women, why don't they run? Too scared to run?
Stop, he said to himself, stop, blast you! How long can you walk backward?
He was unable to stop. Nava's there, he thought. And those three idiots. . .
. Fat, dreamy, indifferent idiots. . . . And Nava. . . . What are they to me
anyway, he thought. Hopalong would have made off long ago on his one leg.
Buster quicker than that. . . . But I've got to stay. Not fair. But I must
stay! Well, stop then! . . . He was unable to stop, and despised himself for
it, and applauded himself for it, and hated himself for it, and kept on
going backward.
The deadlings stopped. Straight away, as if at an order. The one in the
lead froze with one leg in the air, then slowly, as if undecided, lowered it
to the grass. Their mouths dropped slackly open and their heads swiveled
toward the hilltop.
Kandid, still retreating, glanced around. Nava, legs kicking, was
hanging around the neck of one of the women, who, it seemed, was smiling and
clapping her lightly on the back. The other two women were standing calmly
by watching them. Not watching the dead-lings, not the hill. Not even
Kandid, a strange hairy man, perhaps a robber. The deadlings, for their
part, were standing stock-still, like some primitive graven image of old, as
if their legs grew straight into the earth, as if in all the forest there
were no woman left to seize and carry off somewhere, in obedience to orders;
from beneath their feet, like the smoke of a sacrificial fire, rose pillars
of steam.
Kandid now swung around and walked toward the women. Not walked, but
rather trailed, totally uncertain, not believing eyes, ears, or brain
anymore. His skull was a seething mass of pain, and his whole body ached
from the tension of his brush with death.
"Run," he said again from a distance. "Run before it's too late, why're
you standing there?" He already knew he was talking nonsense, but it was the
inertia of obligation, and he continued his mechanical mumbling: "Deadlings
here, run, I'll delay them. . . ."
They paid him no attention. It wasn't that they didn't hear or see
him--the young woman, a girl really, perhaps a couple of years older than
Nava, still slim-legged, examined him and smiled in very friendly
fashion--but he meant nothing to them, no more than if he were a big stray
hound, the sort that dash aimlessly about in all directions and are willing
to stand about for hours near people, waiting for reasons known only to
themselves.
"Why aren't you running?" asked Kandid quietly. He expected no answer
and received none.
"My, my, my," the pregnant woman was saying, laughing and shaking her
head. "And who would have thought it? Would you?" she inquired of the girl.
"I certainly wouldn't. My dear," said she addressing Nava's mother, "what
was it like? Did he puff and pant? Or did he just twitch about and break
into a sweat?"
"It wasn't like that," said the girl, "he was beautiful, wasn't he? He
was fresh like the dawn, and fragrant. . . ."
"As a lily," chimed in the pregnant woman, "you were dizzy from his
smell, you got all tingly from his paws. . . . Did you have time to squeal?"
The girl burst out laughing. Nava's mother smiled reluctantly. They
were all thick-set, healthy, surprisingly cleanly, as if thoroughly washed,
which indeed they were--their short hair was wet and their yellowish
sacklike garments clung to their damp bodies. Nava's mother was the tallest
of them and apparently the eldest. Nava was hugging her around the waist,
her face buried in her bosom.
"How should you know," said Nava's mother with feigned indifference.
"What can you know about it? You've a lot to learn. . . ."
"All right," said the pregnant woman at once. "How can we know? That's
why we're asking you. . . . Tell us, please, what was the root of love
like?"
"Was it bitter?" said the girl, and shook with laughter again.
"There, there, the fruit's pretty sweet if grubby. . . ." "Never mind,
we'll wash it clean," said Nava's mother. "You don't know if Spider Pond's
been cleaned out yet, do you? Or do we have to take her into the valley?"
"The root was bitter," said the pregnant woman to the girl. "She
doesn't like recalling it. Strange isn't it, and they say it's
unforgettable! Listen dear, you do dream about him, don't you?"
"Not very funny," said Nava's mother. "And sick. . . ."
"We're not trying to be funny, are we?" The pregnant woman was amazed.
"We're just interested."
"You tell a story so well," said the girl with a flashing smile. "Tell
us more. . . ."
Kandid was all ears, attempting to discover some hidden meaning in this
conversation, but could understand nothing. He could only perceive that the
two of them were making fun of Nava's mother, that Nava's mother was
offended and was trying to hide this or turn the conversation in another
direction, and was failing to do so. Nava, meanwhile, had raised her head
and was gazing from one to another of the speakers.
"You'd think you'd been born in the lake yourself," said Nava's mother
to the pregnant woman, now displaying open irritation.
"Oh, no," said she, "but I never managed to pick up such a broad
education, and my daughter," she slapped her belly, "will be born in the
lake. That makes all the difference."
"Why don't you leave mam alone, fat old woman?" said Nava suddenly.
"Take a look at yourself, what you look like, then start upsetting people!
Or I'll tell my husband, and he'll warm your fat backside with a stick,
teach you to bother her."
The women, all three, roared with laughter. "Dummy!" Nava started
yelling. "What're they laughing at me for?"
Still laughing, the women looked at Kandid. Nava's mother, with
surprise, the pregnant woman indifferently, the girl more enigmatically, but
with apparent interest.
"What's this Dummy, then?" asked Nava's mother. "It's my husband," said
Nava. "See how nice he is. He saved me from the robbers. . . ."
"What d'you mean, husband?" the pregnant woman brought out in a
unfriendly tone. "Don't make things up, little girl."
"Same to you," Nava said at once. "What're you butting in for? What's
it to you? Is he your husband then? If you want to know, I'm not talking to
you anyway. I'm talking to mam. And you butt in, like the old man, unasked
and without a by your leave. . . ."
"Are you really her husband then?" asked the pregnant woman of Kandid.
Nava became silent. Her mother embraced her and pressed her to herself.
She looked at Kandid with loathing and horror.
Only the girl was still smiling, and her smile was so pleasant and
tender that Kandid addressed himself to her.
"No, no, of course not," he said. "She's no wife of mine. She's, my
daughter...." He wanted to say that Nava had niursed him, that he loved her
very much and he was very pleased that everything had turned out so well,
though he didn't understand a thing.
But the girl suddenly dissolved in laughter, her arms waving. "I knew
it," she groaned. "It's not her husband . . . it's hers!" she pointed at
Nava's mother. "It's . . . her . . . husband! Oh dear, oh dear!"
The face of the pregnant woman expressed cheerful bewilderment and she
began to examine Kandid from top to toe with exaggerated minuteness.
"My, my, my ..." she began in her former tone, but Nava's mother said
irritably, "Stop it now! That's enough of it! Go away from here," she said
to Kandid. "Go on, go on, what're you waiting for? Go on into the forest!
..."
"Who would have thought that the root of love could be so bitter ... so
filthy ... so hairy. . . " She intercepted Nava's mother's furious glance
and gestured to her. "All right, all right," said she, "don't get angry, my
dear. A joke's a joke. We're just very pleased you've found your daughter.
It's an incredible piece of luck. .. ."
"Are we going to do any work or not?" said Nava's mother. "Or are we
going to stand here gossiping?"
"I'm going, don't get angry," said the girl. "The output's just
starting anyway."
She nodded, and once more smiled at Kandid, and ran lightly up the
slope. Kandid watched her running--controlled, professional, not womanly.
She ran up to the summit and, without pausing, dived into the lilac mist.
"Spider Pond hasn't been cleaned out yet," said the pregnant woman
anxiously, "we've always got these muddles with the constructors. . . . What
are we going to do?"
"It's okay," said Nava's mother, "we'll go along to the valley."
"I understand, but it's extremely stupid all the same--take all that
trouble, carry a nearly adult person all the way to the valley, when we have
our own pond."
She gave a vigorous shrug and suddenly pulled a face.
"You ought to sit down," said Nava's mother; she looked about her,
stretched out her arm in the direction of the deadlings and snapped her
fingers.
One of the deadlings at once left his place and ran up, slipping on the
grass in its haste; it fell to its knees and all of a sudden flowed somehow,
fashioned itself into a curve, and flattened itself out.
Kandid blinked: the deadling had ceased to exist, what did exist was an
apparently comfortable and convenient armchair. The pregnant woman, with a
groan of relief, sank into her soft seat and reclined her head against its
soft back.
"Soon, now," she purred, extending her legs plea-surably, "make it
soon. . . ."
Nava's mother squatted in front of her daughter and began to look her
in the eyes.
"She's grown," said she. "Run wild. Glad?"
"Well of course I am," said Nava, uncertainly. "You're my mam, after
all. I dreamed about you every night. . . . And this is Dummy, mam. . .."
And Nava started talking.
Kandid stared about him, clenching his jaws, all this wasn't delirium,
as he had at first hoped. It was something everyday, very natural, just
unfamiliar to him, but there was plenty unfamiliar in the forest. He had to
get used to this, as he had got used to the noise in his head, and edible
earth and deadlings and all the rest of it. The masters, he thought, these
are the masters. They're not afraid of anything. They control deadlings.
Therefore, they're the masters. Therefore, it's they who send deadlings
after women. Therefore, it's they. . . . He looked at the damp hair of the
women. Therefore. . . . And Nava's mother, who was abducted by deadlings. ..
.
"Where do you bathe?" he asked. "Why? Who are you? What do you want?"
"What?" asked the pregnant woman. "Listen, my dear, he's asking
something."
Her mother spoke to Nava: "Wait a moment, I can't hear anything because
of you. . . . What do you say?" she asked the pregnant woman.
"This little lamb," said she. "There's something he requires."
Nava's mother looked at Kandid. "What can he want?" she asked. "Wants
to eat, I expect. They're always hungry and they eat an awful lot, it's
quite baffling why they want so much food, they don't do anything after all.
. . ."
"Little lamb," said the pregnant woman. "Poor little lamb wants grass.
Be-e-e! Do you know," she said, turning to Nava's mother, "it's a man from
White Rocks. They're turning up a lot more often. How do they get down
there?"
"It's harder to understand how they get up there. I've seen how they
come down. They fall. Some get killed, some stay alive. . . ."
"Mam," said Nava, "why are you looking at him like that? It's Dummy!
Say something nice to him or he'll get annoyed. Strange that he isn't
annoyed already, in his place I'd have got annoyed long ago. . . ."
The hill once again began to roar, black clouds of insects covered the
sky. Kandid could hear nothing, all he could see was Nava's mother's lips
moving; she appeared to be impressing something on Nava. The lips of the
pregnant woman, who was addressing him, were also moving and her facial
expression indicated that she was in fact talking to him as if to a domestic
goat, strayed into the garden. Then the roaring ceased.
". . . .only a mite grubby," the pregnant woman was saying. "Aren't you
sorry, now?" She turned from him and began to watch the hill.
Deadlings were creeping out of the lilac cloud on hands and knees.
Their movements were uncertain and clumsy, and they kept falling forward,
head-first into the ground. The girl was walking among them; she bent down,
touching and nudging them till, one after another, they hoisted themselves
to their feet, straightened up and, after initial stumbles, strode on more
and more confidently and set off into the forest. The masters, Kandid
assured himself. The masters. I don't believe it. And what to do? He looked
at Nava. Nava was asleep. Her mother was sitting on the grass, and she
herself was curled up in a ball next to her and slept, holding her hand.
"They're all weak, somehow," said the pregnant woman. "Time to clean it
all out again. Look at them stumbling about... the Accession will never get
finished with workers like that."
Nava's mother made some reply, and they commenced a conversation which
Kandid couldn't make head or tail of. He could make out only isolated words,
like Ears did when the fit was on him. He consequently just stood and
watched the girl coming down the hill, dragging a clumsy armchewer by the
paw. Why am I standing here, he thought, there was something I needed from
them, they being the masters. . . . He couldn't remember. "I'm just
standing, that's all," he said aloud bitterly. "They've stopped chasing me
away so I'm just standing. Like a deadling."
The pregnant woman glanced fleetingly at him and turned away.
The girl came up and said something, indicating the armchewer; both
women began examining the monster intently, the pregnant one had even risen
from her chair. The huge armchewer, the terror of the village children,
squeaked plaintively, and made feeble efforts to break loose, helplessly
opening and closing its fearful horned jaws. Nava's mother took hold of its
lower jaw and with a powerful, assured movement, detached it. The armchewer
gave a sob and froze into stillness, closing its eyes with an oily film. The
pregnant woman was speaking: ". . . . obviously, insufficient . . . remember
my girl, . . . weak jaws, eyes not fully open . . . surely won't stand the
pace, therefore useless, perhaps even harmful, like every mistake . . .
it'll have to be cleaned up, moved elsewhere, and clean everything up here.
. . ."
"The hill, ... dry and dusty. . . ." the girl was saying, ". . . the
forest has slowed right down . . . that I don't know yet ... but you said
something totally different. . .."
". .. you try it yourself," Nava's mother was saying, "you'll see, go
on, try!"
The girl dragged the armchewer off to one side, took a pace backward
and began looking at it. It was as if she were taking aim. Her face became
grave, tense even. The armchewer tottered on its awkward feet, despondently
working its remaining jaw; it whined feebly. "You see," said the pregnant
woman. The girl went right up to the armchewer and squatted lightly before
it, resting her hands on her knees. The armchewer fell convulsively, paws
outspread, as if a heavy weight had dropped on it. The woman laughed.
Nava's mother said: "Stop it now, why don't you believe us?"
The girl made no reply. She was standing over the armchewer, and
watching as it slowly and carefully tucked in its paws and attempted to
rise. Her features sharpened. She snatched the armchewer upright, set it on
its feet, and made a movement as if to embrace it.
A stream of lilac mist flowed between her palms and through the
armchewer's body. The armchewer began to squeal, writhing and arcing its
body and thrashing its paws. It tried to escape, wriggle away to safety; it
tossed about, while the girl followed behind it, looming above it. It fell
with its paws unnaturally entwined, and began curling up into a knot. The
women were silent. The armchewer was transformed into a multi-colored ball,
oozing slime. The girl then walked away and said, glancing aside, "Rubbish,
really. . . ."
"Still have to be cleaned up, cleaned up," said the pregnant woman
rising. "Get on with it, no sense in delaying matters. Is everything clear?"
The girl nodded. "We'll go then and you make a start." The girl turned and
went up the hill toward the lilac cloud. She paused by the multi-colored
ball, seized a feebly twitching paw and proceeded on her way, trailing the
ball behind her.
"Splendid Maiden," said the pregnant woman. "Excellent."
"She'll be a controller one day," said Nava's mother, also getting up.
"She's got a bit of character to her. Well then, we must be going. . . ."
Kandid barely heard them. He still couldn't take his eyes from the dark
puddle, on the spot where the armchewer had been screwed up. She hadn't even
touched it, not laid a finger on it, she'd just stood over it and done what
she wished . . . such a sweet girl . . . so gentle and loving. . . . Not
even laid a finger on it ... had he to get used to that as well? Yes, he
thought. Has to be done. He began to watch as Nava's mother and the pregnant
woman carefully set Nava on her feet, before taking her hand and leading her
into the forest, down toward the lake. This without noticing him, this
without a word to him. He took another look at the puddle. He felt himself
to be small, pitiable, helpless, nevertheless he nerved himself and began
the descent after them; he caught up with them and, sweating with terror,
followed two steps behind. Something hot approached his back. He glanced
back and leaped to one side. At his heels strode a gigantic deadling--heavy,
hot, silent, dumb. Well, now, well, thought Kandid, it's only a robot, a
servant. I really am doing well, he thought suddenly, I thought that out
myself, didn't I? I've forgotten how I got there, but that's not important,
what is important is that I understood, I grasped it. I weighed it all up
and grasped it--on my own. . . . I've a brain, got it? he said to himself,
gazing at the women's backs. You're not so special. . . . I'm not completely
incapable.
The women were talking of somebody who hadn't minded their own business
and had made themselves a laughing-stock. They were amused at something,
they laughed. They were walking through the forest and laughing. As if going
down a village street for a gossip. And all around was the forest; they were
not walking on a path even, but on light-colored dense grass, which always
concealed tiny flowers that hurled spores to penetrate the skin and
germinate in the body. And they were giggling and chattering and
scandal-mongering, while Nava walked between them and slept, but they did it
so that she walked fairly steadily and stumbled hardly at all. . . . The
pregnant woman shot a glance back at Kandid and said absently, "You still
here? Go into the forest, go on. . . . Why are you following us?"
Yes, thought Kandid, why? What business have I with them? But there is
some business, something I have to find out. . . . No, that's not it. ...
Nava! he suddenly recalled. He realized that he had lost Nava. Nothing to be
done about that. Nava was going away with her mother, all as it should be,
she was going to the masters. And me? I'm staying. Still, why am I following
them? Seeing Nava off? She's asleep anyway, they put her to sleep. A pang
shot through him. Goodbye Nava, he thought.
They came to where the paths forked, the women turned off to the left,
toward the lake. The lake of drowned women. They were drowned women all
right. . . . Again lies from everybody, everybody mixed up. . .. They passed
the place where Kandid had waited for Nava and eaten earth. That was long,
long ago, thought Kandid, almost as long ago as the biostation. . . .
Biostation. ... He could scarcely plod along; had it not been for the
deadling walking at his heels, he would probably have fallen behind by now.
Then the women halted and looked at him. All around were Reed-beds, the
ground underfoot was warm and squelchy. Nava was standing with eyes closed,
imperceptibly swaying, while the women regarded him thoughtfully. Then he
remembered.
"How do I get to the biostation?" he asked. Their faces expressed
astonishment, and he realized that he had spoken in his native language. He
was himself astonished: he couldn't now remember when he had last spoken
that tongue. "How do I get to White Rocks?" he asked.
The pregnant woman said, grinning:
"So that's what our little lamb wants... ." She wasn't talking to him,
but to Nava's mother. "It's amusing how little they understand. Not one of
them realizes. Imagine them wandering to White Rocks and suddenly finding
themselves in the battle zone!"
"They rot alive there," said Nava's mother pensively, "they go about
and rot as they walk and don't even notice that they're not going anywhere,
just marking time. . . . Well anyway, let him go, it can only help the
Harrowing. If he rots, that's useful. Dissolves--useful again. . . . But
perhaps he's protected? Are you protected?" she asked Kandid.
"I don't understand," said Kandid, cheerlessly. "My dear, what are you
asking him? How could he be protected?"
"In this world all things are possible," said Nava's mother. "I've
heard of such things."
"Just talk," said the pregnant woman. She inspected Kandid carefully
once more. "Now, you know," said she, "he could indeed be more use here.
Remember what the Teachers were saying yesterday?"
"Ah, yes," said Nava's mother. "Indeed yes ... let him. . . . Let him
stay."
"Yes, yes, stay," said Nava suddenly. She was no longer asleep and also
felt something untoward was taking place. "You stay, Dummy, don't you go
anywhere, why should you go anywhere? You wanted to go to the City, didn't
you, and this lake is the City, isn't it, mam? ... Or are you offended at
mam? Don't be hurt, she's really kind, only she's in a bad temper today. I
don't know why. . . . Likely because of the heat. . . ."
Her mother caught her by the hand. Kandid saw that a familiar little
lilac cloud had condensed over the mother's head. Her eyes glazed for a
second and closed. Then she said, "Let's go, Nava, they're waiting for us
now."
"What about Dummy?"
"He'll stay here. . . . There's nothing for him to do in the City."
"But I want him to be with me! Why can't you understand, mam, he's my
husband, they gave him to me for a husband, and he's been my husband for
ever so long... ."
Both women grimaced.
"Let's go, let's go," said Nava's mother. "You don't understand things
yet. . . . Nobody needs him, he's superfluous, they all are, they're
a--mistake. . . . Come on now! Well, all right you can come to him afterward
... if you want to then."
Nava was putting up a struggle, doubtless feeling what Kandid was
feeling--that they were parting forever. Her mother was dragging her by the
arm into the reeds, while she kept looking back and shouting:
"Don't you go away, Dummy! I'll be back soon, don't you think of going
away without me, that wouldn't be right, that would be dishonest! All right,
you're not my husband, they seem not to like that, I don't know why, but I'm
your wife all the same, I nursed you, so now you wait for me! Do you hear?
Wait! . . ."
He followed her with his eyes, waving his hand feebly, nodding
agreement, and trying hard to smile. Good-bye, Nava, he thought. Good-bye.
They were hidden from view behind the Reed-beds, but Nava's voice could
still be heard, then she went quiet, the sound of a splash came back, and
all was silent. He swallowed the lump in his throat and asked the pregnant
woman:
"What will you do with her?"
She was still examining him closely.
"What will we do with her?" said she thoughtfully. "That isn't your
worry, lambkin, what we'll do with her. At all events, she won't need a
husband anymore. Or a father. . . . But what are we going to do with you?
You're from White Rocks, after all, you can't just be let go...."
"What do you want of me?"
"What do we want ... at all events, husbands we don't need." She
intercepted Kandid's look and laughed scornfully. "Not needed, don't worry,
not needed. Try for once in your life not to be a sheep. Try to imagine a
world without sheep. . . ." She was speaking without thinking, or rather,
thinking of something else. "What else are you good for? . . . Tell me
lambkin, what can you do?"
There was something behind all her words, and her tone, behind the
casual indifferent authority, something important, something unpleasant and
frightening, but it was hard to pin down and Kandid, for some reason, kept
remembering the square black doors and Karl with the two women--just the
same, indifferent and imperious.
"Are you listening to me?" asked the pregnant woman. "What can you do?"
"I can't do anything," Kandid said limply.
"Perhaps you know how to control?"
"I did once," said Kandid. Go to hell, he thought, why don't you leave
me alone? I ask you how to get to White Rocks, and you start bothering me. .
. . He realized suddenly that he was afraid of her, otherwise he'd have gone
long ago. She was the master here, and he was a pitiful, dirty, stupid
lambkin.
"Did once," she repeated. "Tell that tree to lie down!"
Kandid looked at the tree. It was a big solid tree with a luxuriant
topgrowth and shaggy trunk. He shrugged his shoulders.
"Very well," said she. "Kill that tree, then. . . . Not that either?
Can you make the living die at all?" "Kill, you mean."
"Not necessarily kill. An armchewer can do that. Make the living die.
Compel something living to become dead. Can you?"
"I don't understand," said Kandid. "Don't understand. . . . What on
earth do you get up to on your White Rocks if you can't even understand
that? You can't make dead things live either?" "No."
"What can you do then? What did you do on White Rocks before you fell
down? Just guzzled and denied women?"
"I studied the forest." She regarded him severely.
"Don't dare lie to me. One man can't study the forest, it's like
studying the sun. If you won't speak the truth, just say so."
"I really did study the forest," Kandid said. "I studied. . . ." he
faltered. "I studied the smallest creatures in the forest. The ones you
can't see with your eyes."
"Lying again," said the woman tolerantly. "You can't study what the eye
can't see."
"It's possible," said Kandid. "Only you have to have. . . ." he
faltered again. Microscope . . . lenses . . . instruments. . . . That
wouldn't get across. Untranslatable. "If you take a drop of water," he said,
"if you have the necessary things, you can see thousands upon thousands of
tiny animals. . . ."
"You don't need any 'things' for that," the woman said. "I can see
you've got corrupted by your dead things on your White Rocks. You're
degenerating. I noticed long ago the way you've lost the capacity to see
what anybody can see in the forest, even a filthy man. . . . Wait a minute,
were you talking about small creatures or the smallest ones? Perhaps you're
referring to the constructors?"
"Perhaps," said Kandid. "I don't understand you. I'm speaking of the
small creatures that make people ill, but which can cure as well, they help
in food production, there's very many of them and they're everywhere. ... I
tried to find out their constituents here in your forest, what sorts there
were and what their function was. . . ."
"They're different on White Rocks, of course," she said with sarcasm.
"All right, anyway, I've got what your work was. You have no power over the
constructors, of course. The veriest village idiot can do more than you. . .
. What can I do with you? You came here unasked, after. . . .
"I'm going," Kandid said wearily. "I'm going. Good-bye."
"No wait. . . . Stop, I said!" she cried and Kandid felt the burning
hot pincers gripping his elbows from behind. He struggled, but it was
pointless. The woman was meditating aloud:
"He did come of his own free will. There have been such cases. If we
let him go, he'll go off to his village and be completely useless. . . .
There's no point in rounding them up. But if they come voluntarily. . . .
Know what I'll do?" she said. "I'll hand you over to the Teachers for night
work. After all, there have been successful cases. . . . Off to the
Teachers, then, off to the Teachers!" She waved her hand and unhurriedly
waddled off into the Reed-beds.
Kandid then felt himself being turned about onto the path. His elbows
had gone numb, it seemed to him that they were charred through. He strove to
break free and the vice gripped tighter. He hadn't grasped what was to
become of him and where he was to be taken, who the Teachers were and what
this night work was, but he recalled the most terrible things he had seen:
Karl's specter in the midst of the weeping crowd and the armchewer screwing
up into a multi-colored knot. He continued to kick the deadling, striking
backward in blind desperation, knowing this could never work twice. His foot
sank into soft heat, the deadling snorted, and relaxed its grip. Kandid fell
flat in the grass, leapt up, turned and cried out--the deadling was
advancing on him once more, opening its incredibly long arms. There was
nothing to hand, no grass-killer, no ferment, no stick or stone. The
squelchy warm earth was giving beneath his feet. Then he remembered and
thrust his hand in his blouse; when the deadling loomed above, he struck it
with the scalpel somewhere between the eyes, then leaned his whole weight
forward, drawing the blade downward to the ground and fell once again.
He lay, cheek pressed to the grass, and gazed at the deadling, as it
stood, swaying, its orange carcass slowly swinging open like a suitcase; it
stumbled and collapsed flat on its back, flooding the surrounding earth with
a thick white fluid, gave a few twitches and lay still. Kandid then got up
and wandered off. Along the path. As far as possible from here. He vaguely
recalled that he had wanted to wait for somebody, wanted to find something
out, there was something he was intending to do. Now all that was
unimportant. What was important was to get as far away as possible, though
he realized that he would never get away. He wouldn't, and neither would
many, many, many another.
Chapter Nine
Discomfort awakened Pepper, sadness, and an unbearable, as it seemed to
him, weight on his mind and all his sense organs. Discomfort reached the
pain threshold and he groaned involuntarily as he slowly came to.
The burden on his mind turned out to be despair and exasperation, since
the truck was not going to the Mainland; once again it was not going to the
Mainland--in fact it wasn't going anywhere. It was standing with its engine
switched off, icy and dead, doors open wide. The windshield was covered in
trembling droplets, which now and again coalesced and flowed in cold
streams. The night beyond the glass was lit up by the dazzling flashes of
searchlights and headlamps, nothing else could be seen but these continual
flashes that made the eyes ache. Nothing could be heard either and Pepper
initially even thought he'd gone deaf only realizing after a while that his
ears were oppressed by a steady deep chorus of roaring sirens. He began
flailing around the cab striking painfully against levers and projections
and his blasted suitcase, tried to scrub the windshield, stuck his head out
of one door, then the other. He simply couldn't make out where he was, what
sort of a place it was and what was going on. War, he thought, my god, it's
war! The searchlights beat into his eyes with malicious pleasure, he could
see nothing apart from some large unfamiliar building in which all the
windows on all the floors were flashing on and off in unison. He could also
see an enormous number of patches of lilac mist.
A monstrous voice calmly pronounced, as if in complete silence:
"Attention, attention. All personnel to stand by their posts according to
regulation number six hundred and seventy-five point Pegasus omicron three
hundred and two directive eight hundred and thirteen, for triumphal
reception of padishah without special suite, size of shoe fifty-five. I
repeat. Attention, attention. All personnel . . ." The searchlights stopped
racing about and Pepper was able to make out at last the familiar arch and
the legend "Welcome," the main street of the Directorate, the dark cottages
lining it and various individuals in underwear standing by them with
paraffin lamps in their hands. Then he noticed quite close at hand a line of
running men in billowing black capes. These were strung out across the whole
width of the street as they ran, towing something strangely bright. Looking
more closely, Pepper realized they were dragging something like a cross
between a fishing net and one used in volleyball, and at once a cracked
voice began screaming by his ear: "Why the truck? Why are you standing
here?"
Swaying back, he saw next to him an engineer in a white cardboard mask
marked on the forehead in indelible pencil "Libidovich," and this engineer
crawled straight across him with his filthy boots, jabbing his elbow in his
face, snuffling and stinking of sweat. Then he collapsed into the driver's
seat and scrabbled for the ignition key; not finding it, he screamed
hysterically and rolled out of the cab on the opposite side. All the street
lamps went on and it became light as day, though the people with paraffin
lamps went on standing in the cottage doorways. Everyone had a butterfly net
in his hand and they waved these nets rhythmically, as if driving something
unseen from their doors. Along the street toward and past him rolled four
grim black machines one after another, like buses only without windows,
their roofs were equipped with latticed vanes. After that an ancient armored
car turned out of a side street and followed them. Its rusty turret swung
around with a piercing squeal as its machine gun's slim barrel rose and
fell. The armored car had trouble in squeezing past the truck; the turret
hatch opened and a man in a calico nightshirt with dangling ribbons stuck
his head out and shouted angrily at Pepper: "Now what's this, my dear? I've
got to get by and you're stuck here!" At this Pepper dropped his head on his
hands and closed his eyes.
I'll never get out of here, he thought dully. Nobody here needs me, I'm
totally useless but they won't let me go even if it means starting a war or
causing a flood....
"I'd like to see your papers," said a leisurely old man's voice. Pepper
felt himself clapped on the shoulder.
"What?" said Pepper. "Your little papers. Got 'em ready?" It was an old
man in an oilskin coat with an obsolete rifle slung across his chest on a
worn metal chain. "What papers? What documents? Why?" "Ah, mister Pepper!"
said the old man. "Why aren't you carrying out the procedure? All your
papers should be in your hand, open for inspection, like in a museum. . . ."
Pepper gave him his identity card. The old man placed his elbows on his
rifle and studied the stamp closely, checked the photograph against Pepper's
face, then said:
"Looks as if you've got thinner, Herr Pepper. Your face has lost a lot.
You're working hard." He handed back the card.
"What's going on?" asked Pepper. "What's happening is what's supposed
to be happening," the old man said, suddenly becoming sterner. "Regulation
number six hundred and seventy-five point Pegasus is what's going on. That
is, escape." "What escape? Where from?"
"Whatever escape the regulation states," said the old man, commencing
to climb down the steps. "Anyway they'll be banging I expect, so protect
your ears by keeping your mouth open."
"All right," said Pepper. "Thanks."
"What are you doing here, you old sod, creeping about?" came a
bad-tempered voice below. It was driver Voldemar. "I'll give you your little
documents! There you are, smell them! Right, got it? Now shove off, if you
got it. . . ."
A concrete-mixer was towed by amid a general racket. Driver Voldemar,
disheveled and bristling, scrambled up into the cab. Muttering curses he
started up the engine and slammed the door. The truck shot forward and
roared down the street past the people in underwear waving their nets. To
the garage, thought Pepper. Oh well, what difference does it make? But I'm
not touching that case again. I just don't want to lug it around, to hell
with it. He kicked it hatefully. The truck swerved sharply off the main
street, slammed into a barricade of empty barrels and carts scattering them
in all directions, and sped onward. For some time a splintered droshky board
flapped about on the radiator, then whipped off, and crunched under the
wheels. The truck was now traveling along narrow side streets. Voldemar,
scowling, with his extinguished cigarette on his lip, bending and twisting
his body, manipulated the enormous wheel. No, it isn't the garage, Pepper
thought. Or the workshops. Or the Mainland. The side streets were dark and
empty. Just once, cardboard faces with names, hands outstretched flickered
in the headlights and disappeared.
"Hell's flames," said Voldemar. "I wanted to drive straight to the
Mainland. I look, and there you are asleep, well thinks I, let's just drop
by the garage, play a bit of chess. . . . Then I came across Achilles, the
fitter, ran off for some yogurt, brought it back, set up the pieces. ... I
offer the Queen's gambit, he accepts, so far so good. I go P-K.4, he goes
P-B6. ... I tell him: well now start praying. And then it all started.. . .
Haven't got a cigarette have you. Pepper?"
Pepper gave him one.
"What's this about an escape?" he asked. "Where are we driving?"
"The usual escape," said Voldemar, lighting up.
"We get them every year. One of the engineers' little machines got
away. Order for all, catch it. There they are at it over there. . . ."
The habitations fell away. People were wandering around over open
country, lit by the moon. It looked as if they were playing blind-man's buff
as they went about on bent legs with their arms spread wide. Everybody was
blindfolded. One of them went full tilt into a post and probably uttered a
cry of pain, for the others at once halted and cautiously began turning
their heads.
"Every year the same game," Voldemar was saying. "They've got
photoelements and acoustics of all sorts, cybernetics and layabout guards
stuck up on every corner--all the same, every year one of their little
machines gets away. Then they tell you: drop everything and go and look for
it. Who wants to do that? Who wants to get involved, I ask you? If you just
catch sight of it out of the corner of your eye--that's it. Either you get
drafted into the engineers or they send you off into the forest somewhere,
to the advance base to pickle mushrooms so's you can't talk about what
you've seen, for God's sake. That's why the people get around it as best
they can. Some of them blindfold themselves so's not to see what's going on.
, . . . The brighter boys just run around and shout as loud as they can.
They ask people for documents, search people or just get up on the roof and
howl as if they're taking part, no risk involved. . . ."
"What about us, are we trying to catch anything?" Pepper asked.
"I'll say we are. The public here are out hunting and we're the same as
everybody else. Six hours by the clock we'll be on the hunt. There's a
directive: if in the course of six hours the runaway mechanism is not
detected, it's blown up by remote control. So everything can stay hush-hush.
Else it might fall into unauthorized hands. You saw what a mess-up there was
in the Directorate? Well, that's heavenly peace--you see what it'll be like
in six hours time. See, nobody knows where the machine's got to. It might be
in your pocket. And the charge they use is pretty powerful, just to make
sure. Last year, for example, the machine turned up in a bathhouse, and
there were plenty of people packed in there--for safety. They think a
bathhouse is a damp sort of place, out of the way. .. . Well I was there as
well. A bathhouse, that's the place, thinks I. ... So I was blown out of the
window, nice and smooth like being on a wave. I hadn't time to blink before
I was sitting in a snowdrift, burning beams flying by overhead. . . ."
The land around was flat sickly grass, fitful moonlight, a tired white
road. On the left stood the Directorate where lights were racing madly about
again.
"What I don't understand," said Pepper, "is how we're going to lay
hands on it. We don't even know what it is ... big or small dark or
light-colored."
"That you'll see soon enough," Voldemar assured him. "That I'll show
you in five minutes. How the clever lads do their hunting. Hell, where's
that place. .. . Lost it. Went left, didn't I? Aha, left. . . . Yonder's the
machine-depot, we need to be right of that."
The truck veered off the road and went bumping over the hummocks. The
storage area was on the left--rows of enormous pale containers, like a dead
city on the plain.
. . . Probably couldn't stand it. It was tested on the vibrostand; they
set their minds to tormenting it, dug about in its innards, burned the
subtle nerves with soldering-irons, it suffocating from the smell of rosin.
They made it do stupid things, they created it to do stupid things, they
went on perfecting it to perform stupider things, and in the evenings they
left it, tortured, drained of strength in a hot dry cubicle. Finally it
decided to go, although it knew everything--the pointlessness of flight, and
its own doom. And it went, carrying within itself a self-destruct charge,
and is now standing somewhere in the shadows. Softly picking about with its
jointed legs, and watching, and listening and waiting. . . . And now it
understands with absolute clarity what before it only guessed at: that there
is no freedom, whether doors are open before you or not, that everything is
stupidity and chaos, there is loneliness alone... .
"Ah!" said Voldemar, pleased. "There she is, the little beauty. . . ."
Pepper opened his eyes but all he saw was a black pond of considerable
extent, a swamp in fact. The engine roared, a wave of filth rose and crashed
onto the windshield. The engine managed another crazy howl and died. It was
very quiet.
"Now that's more like it," said Voldemar. "All six wheels spinning like
the soap in a bathtub." He stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray and opened
his door a little. "There's somebody else out here," he said, then a shout.
"Ho, mate! How's it going?"
"Okay!" from somewhere outside.
"Caught it yet?"
"All I've caught is a cold!" from outside. "And five tadpoles."
Voldemar firmly shut his door, and switched on the light; he glanced at
Pepper, gave him a wink, retrieved a mandolin from under the seat and
commenced to pluck the strings, his head tucked into his right shoulder.
"You just make yourself at home," said he hospitably. "Till morning,
till the tow gets here."
"Thank you," Pepper said meekly.
"This doesn't bother you?" asked Voldemar politely.
"No-no," said Pepper. "Don't mind me. . . ." Voldemar leaned his head
back, began rolling his eyes and singing in a sad voice:
I see no limit to my many woes. I wander here alone bereft of sense.
Please tell me why you do not want my love. Why trample down a love that's
so intense?
The mud was slowly slipping down the windshield and the swamp could be
seen gleaming beneath the moon; a car of odd design was sticking up in the
middle of the swamp. Pepper switched on the wind-shield wipers and after a
while, to his amazement, he discovered that, sunk up to the turret in the
quagmire, was an ancient armored car.
Another holds you in his arms tonight;
I stand here anxious, weary, and alone.
Voldemar struck the strings with all his might, sang falsetto, and
started clearing his throat.
"Hey, mate!" a voice from outside. "Got a bite to eat?"
"What if?" cried Voldemar.
"We've got yogurt!"
"There's two of us!"
"Out you come! There's enough for everybody! We stocked up--we knew
we'd have a job on!"
Driver Voldemar turned to Pepper.
"What d'you think?" he said, delighted. "Let's go, eh? We'll have
yogurt, maybe a game of tennis ...eh?"
"I don't play tennis," said Pepper.
Voldemar gave a shout: "Okay we're coming! We'll just inflate the
boat!"
Quick as a monkey, he clambered out of the cabin and set to work in the
back of the truck, metal clanked, something dropped and Voldemar whistled
gaily. Then came a splash, a scraping of legs along the side and Voldemar's
voice calling from somewhere below: "Okay, Mister Pepper! Hop down here, and
don't forget the mandolin!" Below, on the brilliant liquid surface of the
mud, lay an inflated dinghy, and in it, legs wide apart, stood Voldemar like
a gondolier with a sizeable engineer's shovel in his hand; he smiled
delightedly as he gazed up at Pepper.
... In the old rusted armored car of Verdun vintage, it was sickeningly
hot and stank of hot oil and gas fumes. A dim lamp burned over the iron
command table scarred with indecent messages. Underfoot, squelching mud
chilled the feet; a dented tin ammunition rack was packed tight with yogurt
bottles, everybody was in pajamas and scratching their hirsute
chests with all five fingers, everybody was drunk, a mandolin was
droning. The turret-gunner in a calico shirt, not finding room below, was
dropping tobacco ash from up aloft and sometimes fell backward himself,
saying each time: "Beg pardon, I took you for someone else. ..." and they
propped him up again in an uproar. ...
"No," said Pepper. "Thanks, Voldemar, I'll hang on here. I've got some
washing to get through. ... I haven't done my physical exercises yet
either."
"Aha," said Voldemar, respecting this, "that's a different matter. I'll
drift across then and as soon as you've finished your washing give us a
shout and we'll come over for you . . . just give us the mandolin."
He floated off with it and Pepper remained sitting and watching him
trying at first to row across with his shovel. This just made the dinghy go
around in a circle; after that, he began to use the shovel as a pole and all
was well. The moon bathed him in its dead light; he was like the last man
after the last Great Flood, sailing among the roofs of the highest
buildings, very much alone, seeking rescue from loneliness, still full of
hope. He poled up to the armored car and banged his fist on the carapace;
somebody stuck his head out of the turret, guffawed cheerfully, and dragged
him inside upside down. And Pepper was left alone.
He was alone, like the only passenger on a train at night, trundling
along with its three battered carriages along some decayed branch line,
everything creaks and sways inside the carriage, the smell of locomotive
cinders wafts in through the shattered warped windows, cigarette butts leap
about the floor along with screwed-up bits of paper. Somebody's forgotten
straw hat swings on its hook, and when the train pulls into the terminus,
the sole passenger steps out onto the rotting platform and nobody is going
to meet him. He's certain nobody's going to meet him, and he'll wander home,
brown himself a two-egg omelette on the stove along with a bit of sausage
three days old and going green... .
The armored car suddenly began to shake and was lit up with convulsive
flashes. Hundreds of brilliant multi-colored threads extended from it across
the plain, and the glare of the flashes and the moonlight showed circles
welling out from the armored car across the smooth mirror of the swamp.
Someone in white poked out of the turret; in a strained voice he proclaimed:
"Dear sirs! Ladies and gentlemen! Salute to tthe nation! With the most
humble respect, your Excellency, I have the honor to remain, most respected
Princess Diko-bella, your obedient servant, technical supervisor, signature
indecipherable! . . ." The armored car once more started shaking and
emitting flashes, then subsided.
I will afflict you with vines to cling to yo"u, thought Pepper, and
your accursed race will be swept away by the jungle, your roofs will
crumble, the beams will fall, your houses will be grown about with wormwood,
the bitter wormwood.
The forest was moving in closer, climbing the hairpins, scrabbling up
the cliff overhang preceded by waves of lilac fog, and out of it came
crawling, gripping, and crushing, myriads of green tentacles, cesspits gaped
open on the streets and houses tumbled into bottomless lakes, jumping trees
got up on the concrete runways in front of packed airplanes, where the
people lay in piles, anyhow, with their yogurt bottles, slate-gray
document-cases and heavy safes, and the ground beneath the cliff yawned and
sucked it d'own. That would be so natural, so much to be expected, that no
one would be surprised. Everybody would be afraid simply and accept
annihilation as a vengeance long feared and expected. Driver Acey would be
running like a spider between the swaying cottages looking for Rita, to get
what he wanted at last, but be wouldn't have time. . ..
Three rockets went soaring up from the armored car and a military voice
bellowed: "Tanks on the right, cover on the left! Crew, under cover!"
Someone at once added thickly: "Dames to the left, bunks to the right! Crew
to your b-bunks!" Came sounds of neighing and stamping, quite unhuman by
now, just as if a herd of pedigree stallions were kicking and thrashing
about in that iron box searching for a door to liberty, to the mares. Pepper
swung his door wide and peered out. There was swamp beneath his feet, deep
swamp, since the truck's monstrous wheels were more than hub deep in the
mire. The edge wasn't far off, however.
Pepper crawled onto the back and made the long walk to the tailboard,
thudding and clanking as he strode the length of the immense steel trough in
the rich moon-shadow. Once there he climbed onto the tailboard and descended
by way of endless small ladders to the water. He remained suspended for a
time over the icy slime, screwing up his courage, then, as a burst of
machinegun fire once more came from the armored car, closed his eyes and
jumped. The bog gave way beneath him and continued to do so for a
considerable time, it seemed endless, and by the time he touched bottom, the
mud was up to his chest. He pressed his whole body down onto the mud, trod
with his knees, and used his palms to push off. At first he could only
struggle on the spot, but he got the hang of it after a while and began
making progress; to his surprise he soon found himself out of the wet.
It'd be a good idea if I could dig up some people somewhere, he
thought, just people would do for a start--clean, shaved, considerate,
hospitable. No high-flown ideas necessary, no blazing talents. No stunning
ideals needed, or self-hatred. Just let them clap hands on seeing me and
somebody can run and fill the bath, somebody else provide clean sheets and
put the kettle on. Just don't let anybody request documents or demand
signatures in triplicate with twenty pairs of fingerprints, let nobody
spring to the telephone to report in a meaningful whisper that a stranger
had appeared covered in filth, calling himself Pepper, but this could hardly
be the truth since Pepper had left for the Mainland and a directive about it
had already been issued and would be made public tomorrow. ... No need
either for them to be supporters or opponents of anything in principle. They
wouldn't have to be principled opponents of drinking as long as they weren't
drunkards themselves. Nor would they have to be supporters of truth at all
costs so long as they didn't lie or say spiteful things to anybody's face or
behind their backs. They shouldn't demand that anyone conform fully to any
set of ideals, just accept and understand him as he was. . . . Good god,
thought Pepper, is that too much to ask?"
He emerged onto the road and wandered for a long time toward the
Directorate. Searchlights flashed on unremittingly, shadows flitted, clouds
of multi-colored smoke continued rising. As Pepper walked on, water gurgled
and squelched in his boots, his drying clothes hung like a tent and slapped
together like cardboard; every now and again lumps of mud fell from his
trousers and slopped onto the road, every time deceiving Pepper into
thinking that he'd dropped his wallet and papers causing him to snatch at
his pocket, panic-stricken. When he had almost reached the machine depot the
frightful idea seized him that his papers had got wet and all the stamps and
signatures had run and were now indecipherable and irretrievably suspicious.
He came to a stop and opened his wallet with icy hands, he pulled out all
his identity cards, passes, certificates, and chits and began examining them
under the moon. It turned out that nothing terrible had happened; water had
done some damage only to one prolix document on crested paper, certifying
that the bearer had undergone a course of inoculations and was passed for
work on calculating machines. He put the lot back in his wallet, inserting
banknotes neatly between each, and was about to proceed on his way when he
suddenly pictured himself coming out onto the highway and people in
cardboard masks and beards stuck on anyhow grabbing his arms, blindfolding
him, giving him something to smell.
"Search! Search!" they would order. "Remember the smell, employee
Pepper?" "Cherchez, mutt, cher-chez" setting him on. Imagining all this; he
turned off the road without checking his pace, and ran, stooping, to the
machine depot, dived into the shadow of huge, pale containers, got his legs
tangled in something soft, and fell full tilt on a pile of rags and tow.
Here it was warm and dry. The rough sides of the containers were hot,
something that pleased him at first, but after a while caused him to wonder.
Inside the cases all was silent, but he recalled the tale about the machines
crawling out of their containers by themselves; he realized that another
life was going on inside there and he wasn't afraid. He felt secure even. He
eased his sitting position, took off his old boots, peeled off his wet
socks, and used the tow to wipe his feet. It was so pleasant here, so warm
and cosy, that he thought: Odd if I'm alone here--surely somebody's realized
it's far better sitting here than crawling about the waste lands blindfold
or hanging around some stinking bog? He leaned his back up against the hot
plywood bracing his feet against the hot plywood opposite and felt a strong
desire to purr. There was a tiny crack over his head through which he could
see a strip of sky pale with moonlight, complete with a few dim stars. From
somewhere came rumbling, crashing, the roar of engines, but all that had no
connection with him.
Marvelous to stay here for always, he thought. If I can't make it to
the Mainland, I'll stay here. Machines, so what? We're all machines. We are
the failed machines, or just badly put together.
. . . The opinion exists, gentlemen, that man will never come to terms
with the machine. We shan't argue that, citizens. The director feels the
same. And in addition, Claudius-Octavian Hausbotcher takes the same view.
What is a machine, after all? An inanimate mechanism, deprived of the full
range of feelings and incapable of being cleverer than a man. Moreover its
structure is not albuminous. Moreover life cannot be reduced to physical and
chemical processes, therefore reason. . . . Here, an intellectualyricist
with three chins and a bow tie climbed to the stand, tore mercilessly at his
starched shirt-front and sobbingly proclaimed:
"I cannot bear it ... I don't want that. ... A rosy babe playing with a
rattle . . . weeping willows bending over a pond . . . little girls in white
pinafores.. . . They are reading poetry . . . they weep . . . weep! Over the
poet's beautiful lines. ... I don't want electronic metal to quench those
eyes. . . those lips . .. these young modest cheeks. . . . No, a machine
will never be cleverer than a man! Because I ... because we ... We do not
wish it! And it will never be! Never!!! Never!!!"
Hands reached out with glasses of water, while two hundred and fifty
miles above those snow-white curls, silently, deathly, passed an automatic
sputnik-interceptor, keen-eyed and unbearably brilliant, stuffed with
nuclear explosive. . . .
I don't want that either, Pepper thought, but you don't have to be such
a stupid fool as that. You can, of course, announce a campaign to abolish
winter, do a bit of shamanism after eating mushrooms full of drugs, beat
drums, screech curses, but all the same, it's better to sew yourself a fur
coat and buy warm boots. . . . Anyhow, that grizzled protector of timid
cheeks will have his little shout from the platform, then steal an oil can
from his lover's sewing-machine case, steal up to some electronic giant, and
start oiling its pinions, glancing at the dials and giggling respectfully
when it gives him a shock. God preserve us from grizzled old fools. And
while you're about it, God, save us from clever fools in cardboard masks.
"In my opinion, it's your dreams," someone announced up above in a
kindly bass. "I know from experience that dreams can leave a really nasty
feeling. Sometimes it's as if you were paralyzed. You can't move, can't
work. Then it all wears off. You should work a bit. Why not? Then all the
aftereffects disappear in the pleasure of it."
"Oh I can't bring myself to that," returned a thin fretful voice. "I'm
sick of it all. Always the same:
metal, plastic, concrete, people. I'm fed up to here with them. I get
no pleasure out of it anymore. The world's so beautiful and so full of
different things and I sit in one place and die of boredom."
"You should have upped and transferred to another job," creaked some
peevish oldster.
"Easily said--transfer! I've been transferred already and I'm bored
stiff all the same. And it was hard getting away, let me tell you!"
"All right, now," said the bass judiciously. "Just what do you want? It
almost passes understanding. What can one want if not to work?"
"Why can't you understand? I want to live life to the full. I want to
see new places, have new experiences, it's always the same old around here.
. ."
"Dismissed!" barked a leaden voice. "Idle chatter! Same old
around--good thing. Constant aim. All clear? Repeat!"
"Ah, to hell with you and your orders. . . ."
There could be no doubt it was the machines conversing. Pepper had
never set eyes on them and couldn't imagine what they looked like, but he
had the feeling that he was hiding under a toyshop counter and hearing the
toys talking, toys he'd known since childhood, only huge, and by virtue of
that, frightening. That thin hysterical voice belonged of course to a
fifteen-foot doll called Jeanne. She had a bright-colored tulle dress on and
a fat, pink unmoving face with rolling eyes, fat, foolishly spread arms, and
legs with fingers and toes stuck together. The bass was a bear, an enormous
Winnie the Pooh bursting out of the container, gentle, shaggy,
sawdust-filled, brown, with glass-button eyes. The others were toys, too,
but Pepper couldn't place them yet.
"All the same, I suggest you ought to work a bit," rumbled Winnie the
Pooh. "Remember, my dear, that there are creatures who are a good deal less
fortunate than yourself. Our gardener, for instance. He really wants to
work, but he sits here thinking day and night, because he hasn't worked out
a plan of action properly. But nobody's heard any complaints from him.
Monotonous work's still work. Monotonous pleasure's still pleasure. No
reason for talk of death and stuff like that."
"Oh, there's no making you out," said Jeanne the doll. "For you,
everything's caused by dreams, or I don't know what. But I've got
premonitions. I can't stay still. I know there's going to be a terrible
explosion and I'll be blown to tiny pieces. I'll turn into steam. I know.
I've seen. . . ."
"Dismissed!" burst out the leaden voice. "I can't stand it! What do you
know about explosions? You can run toward the horizon with any speed you
like at any angle. But the one whose business it is can overtake you at any
distance and that'll be a real explosion, not some intellectual vapor. But
I'm not the one whose business it is, am I? Nobody will tell you that, and
even if they wanted to tell, they wouldn't be able. I know what I'm saying.
All clear? Repeat."
There was a good deal of blind self-assurance in all this. It was
probably a huge wind-up tank speaking. With exactly the same blind
self-assurance it used to move its rubber tracks forward, scrambling over a
boot placed in its way.
"I don't know what you mean," said the Jeanne doll. "But if I fled here
to you, the only creatures of my own kind, that doesn't mean, in my view,
that I intend at whoever's pleasure to run off to the horizon at some angle.
And anyway I would like you to observe that I'm not talking to you. ... If
it's work we're discussing, well I'm not ill, I'm a normal creature, and I
need pleasures just as all of you do. But this isn't real work, just a sort
of unreal pleasure. I keep waiting for my real work, but there's no sign of
it, no sign. I don't know what's the matter but when I start thinking, I
think myself into all sorts of nonsense." She gave a sob.
"Well, well, now. . .." rumbled Winnie the Pooh. "On the whole, yes. Of
course . . . only. .. . Hmm. . . ."
"It's all true!" observed a new voice, ringing and cheerful. "The
little girl's right. There's no real work...."
"Real work, real work!" creaked the old man venomously. "All of a
sudden whole seams of real work. Eldorado! King Solomon's mines! They're all
around me with their sick insides, sarcomas, delightful fistulas, appetizing
adenoids and appendixes, ordinary but so attractive. Let us speak frankly.
They get in the way, they prevent you from working. I don't know what the
matter is here, perhaps they give off some sort of special odor or they
radiate an unknown field, but whenever they're near I go schizophrenic. I
become two persons. One half of me longs for enjoyment, yearns to seize hold
of and accomplish the necessary, the sweet, the desirable, the other falls
into prostration and hammers away at the eternal questions--is it worth it,
why, is it moral? . . . You, it's you I'm talking about, what are you doing,
working?"
"Me?" said Winnie the Pooh. "Of course . . . why not? It's odd to hear
that from you, I didn't expect. I'm finishing a helicopter design and after
that ... I was telling you I'd created a marvelous tractor, such pure
enjoyment that was. ... I believe you have no grounds for doubting that I'm
working."
"No, I don't doubt it, don't doubt it at all," the old one ground out.
(Horrible boneless old man, between a goblin and an astrologer, wearing a
black plush shawl with gold spangles.) "If you'll just tell me where this
tractor is?"
"Well now ... I don't quite understand. . . . How do I know? What
business is it of mine? The helicopter interests me now. . . ."
"That's just what I'm talking about!" said the Astrologer. "Nothing's
your business, seemingly. You're satisfied with everything. Nobody's in your
way. They even help you! You gave birth to a tractor, choking with sheer
pleasure, and the people took it away from you at once, to keep you
concentrating on your main job, so's you didn't enjoy yourself over much.
You just ask him whether people help him or not. . . ."
"You talking to me?" Tank bellowed. "Crap! Dismissed! Whenever somebody
goes out on the testing area and decides to stretch his legs a bit, keeping
his pleasure going, playing about, taking aim on the azimuth, or let's say
the vertical bracket, they raise a racket and uproar, their shouting
makes^you feel awful, anybody can get upset by it. But I didn't say that
anybody was--me, did I? No! You'll have a long wait to hear that from me. Is
that clear? Repeat!"
"Me, too, me as well!" Jeanne began chattering. "I've wondered lots of
times, why do they exist? Now everything in the world has a meaning, hasn't
it? I don't think they do. Probably they're not there, it's a hallucination.
When you try to analyze them, and take a sample from the lower parts, then
the upper, then the middle, you're sure to run into a wall or go right past
them or you fall asleep all of a sudden. . . ."
"Of course they exist, you stupid hysteric!" creaked the Astrologer.
"They've got upper, lower, and middle parts, and all the parts are full of
diseases. I know nothing more delightful than people, no other creature has
so many objects of enjoyment within itself. What can you know about the
meaning of their existence?"
"Oh, stop complicating matters!" said the gay, ringing voice. "They're
simply beautiful. It's a genuine pleasure to look at them. Not always, of
course, but just imagine a garden. It can be as beautiful as you like, but
without people it won't be perfect, won't be complete. Just one sort of
people would be enough to give it life, they can be little people with bare
extremities that never walk but just run and throw stones . . . or middling
people picking flowers ... it doesn't matter. Even hairy people will do,
running about on four extremities. A garden without them is no garden."
"That sort of nonsense could make somebody feel sick," announced Tank.
"Bunkum! Gardens reduce visibility, and as for people, they get in a certain
person's way all the time, and you can't say anything good about them.
Anyhow, if a certain person were to send over a damn good salvo on a
building where for some reason people were located, all his desire for work
would disappear, he'd feel sleepy, and anybody would fall asleep. Naturally,
I don't speak of myself, but if someone were to say it of me, would you
object?"
"You've taken to talking a lot about people just lately," said Winnie
the Pooh. "Whatever the conversation starts on, you get it around to
people."
"Well why on earth not?" the Astrologer jumped in at once. "What's it
to you? You're an opportunist! If we feel like talking, then we'll talk.
Without asking your permission."
"Please, please," Winnie the Pooh said gloomily. "It's just that before
we used to talk mainly about living creatures, enjoyments, plans, but now, I
note that people are beginning to occupy a larger and larger part of our
conversations and therefore of our thoughts."
A silence ensued. Pepper, trying to move noiselessly, altered his
position to be on his side and draw his knees up into his stomach. Winnie
the Pooh was wrong. Let them talk about people as much as ever possible.
Apparently they had a very poor knowledge of them and it was therefore
interesting to hear what they had to say. From out of the mouths of babes
and sucklings. . . . When people talked of themselves, they either shoot
their mouths off or made you confessions. Sick of it. ...
"You are pretty silly in your judgments," said the Astrologer. "The
gardener, for instance. I hope you realize I'm being reasonably objective so
as to share the satisfaction of my friends. You enjoy planting gardens and
destroying parks. Splendid. I'm with you. But be so good as to tell me what
people have to do with it? What connection have those who lift their legs up
against trees or those who do it another way? I sense here a certain
unhealthy aestheticism. It's as if I were to operate on glands and demand
for my fuller satisfaction that the patient be wrapped in a floral gown. . .
."
"You're just cold by nature," the Gardener put in, but the Astrologer
was unheeding.
"Or take yourselves," he went on. "You're forever slinging your bombs
and rockets about, calculating corrections and playing about with
range-finders. Aren't you indifferent whether there's people in there or
not? It might be thought that you could spare a thought for your friends,
me, for instance, sewing up wounds!" he spoke dreamily. "You can't imagine
what that is--sewing up a really good jagged stomach wound."
"People again, people again," Winnie the Pooh said in a crushed voice.
"This is the seventh night we've talked only about people. It's queer for me
to talk about this but clearly some sort of link, vague as yet, but
powerful, has sprung up between you and people. The nature of this link is
totally obscure to me, if I don't count you, Doctor, for whom people are an
essential source of satisfaction. . . . All around, it all seems absurd to
me, and in my opinion the time has come to ..."
"Dismissed!" roared Tank. "The time has not yet come." "Wh-a-at?"
inquired Winnie the Pooh, at a loss. "I say the time has not come," Tank
repeated. "Some, of course, are incapable of knowing whether the time has
come or not, some--I don't name them-- don't even know what time it is
that's coming, but someone knows absolutely for certain that the time will
inevitably come when it will not only be permissible but necessary to open
fire on the people in the buildings! He who does not fire is an enemy! A
criminal! Annihilate! That clear? Repeat!"
"I can guess at something like that," put in the Astrologer in an
unexpectedly soft tone. "Jagged wounds. Gas gangrene.. . . Third degree
radiation burns."
"They're all ghosts," sighed doll Jeanne. "What a bore! How miserable!"
"Since there's no stopping your talk of people," said Winnie the Pooh,
"let us try to elucidate the nature of this bond. Let us attempt to reason
logically. . . ." "One of the two," said a new voice, measured and dull. "If
the bond mentioned exists, then either they or we are the dominant."
"Stupidity," said the Astrologer. "What's this 'or'? Of course we are."
"What's 'dominant'?" asked doll Jeanne, crestfallen.
"In the present context, 'dominant' means prevailing," the lackluster
voice elucidated. "As far as the actual phrasing of the question goes, it's
not stupid, it's the only true phrasing, if we intend to argue logically."
A pause. Everybody, seemingly, expected a continuation. At last Winnie
the Pooh could stand it no longer and asked: "Well?"
"I am not clear if you intend to argue logically." "Yes, yes, we do," a
general murmur. "In that case, accepting the existence of a bond as
axiomatic, either they are for us, or you are for them. If they are for us
and they hinder your work according to the laws of your nature, they should
be eliminated, like any other interference. If you are for them, but that
situation does not please you, they must similarly be eliminated like any
other reason for an unsatisfactory situation. That is all I can say on the
subject of your conversation."
Nobody said a word; from inside the containers came noises of scraping
and clicking, just as if enormous toys were settling down to sleep, weary of
talking. A general uneasiness hung in the air, as when a group of people who
have let themselves go in conversation, not sparing anyone in their urge for
eloquence, suddenly realize they've gone too far. "Humidity's rising a bit,"
creaked the Astrologer in a subdued voice. "I've noticed that for ages,"
squeaked doll Jeanne. "Its verv nice: new figures. . . ."
"Don't know why, my input's acting up," mumbled Winnie the Pooh.
"Gardener, you haven't got a spare twenty-two volt accumulator, have you?"
"I've not got anything," responded the Gardener. After this there came
a crash as of splintering wood, then a mechanical whistle and Pepper
suddenly saw something shining and moving in the crack above him; he seemed
to see someone gazing at him in the shadow between the cases. He broke into
a cold sweat, got up and tiptoed out into the moonlight and sprinted off
toward the road. As he ran with all his strength he seemed to feel dozens of
strange grotesque eyes following him and watching the small pitiful figure,
defense-less on the plain exposed to every wind, laughing to see his shadow
so much larger than himself; out of fear he had forgotten to don his boots
and was now scared to go back for them.
He skirted the bridge across the dry gully and could already make out
the outlying houses of the Directorate in front of him: he felt breathless
and his toes pained him intolerably. He wanted to stop but heard through the
noise of his own breathing the staccato clump of a multitude of feet behind
him. At this, he lost his head again and raced on with his last strength,
not feeling the earth beneath him, nor his own body, spitting out sticky
lengths of saliva, all attempts at thinking gone.
The moon raced with him across the plain and the thudding was getting
nearer and nearer. He thought, This is it, finish, and the thudding reached
him and somebody white, huge, and hot as a driven horse appeared alongside,
eclipsing the moon, drove past and began drawing slowly away, long naked
legs pumping in furious rhythm. Pepper saw it was a man in a football shirt
with number fourteen on it and white running pants with a dark stripe.
Pepper was even more frightened. The multitudinous thudding behind him did
not cease, groans and painful cries could be heard. They're running, he
thought hysterically. They're all running! It's started! And they're
running, but it's late, late, late! . . ."
He caught vague glimpses of cottages along the main street and frozen
faces as he strove to keep up with the long-legged number fourteen, since he
had no idea where to run to or where safety lay, and maybe they were already
distributing arms somewhere, and I don't know where, and I'm out of it again
on the sidelines, but I don't want that, I can't be on the sidelines now,
because those in the boxes might be right in their way, but they're my
enemies too. . . .
He rushed into the crowd, which gave way before him; a square checkered
flag flashed in front of his eyes and exclamations of approval rose all
around. Someone familiar ran alongside, speaking: "Don't stop, don't stop."
Then he stopped, and everybody clustered around and an enormous wrap was
thrown around his shoulders. A booming radio announced:
"Second place, Pepper of Science Security Department with a time of
seven minutes twelve and three tenths seconds. . . . Now here's the third
man coming!"
The familiar figure turned out to be Proconsul: "You're a great lad,
Pepper, I never expected anything like this. When your name was announced at
the start I laughed, but I see now you should be included in the main group.
Away you go and relax, be at the stadium tomorrow before twelve. We have to
get over the assault course somehow. I'm entering you for the fitters
workshop team. . . . Don't argue, I'll fix it with Kirn."
Pepper looked around. All about him were crowds of familiar people in
cardboard masks. Not far off they were tossing in the air and catching the
long-legged man who came in first. He flew up to the very moon, stiff and
straight as a log, clutching a large metal cup to his chest. Right across
the street hung a sign "Finish," underneath it, glancing at a stopwatch,
stood Claudius-Octavian Hausbotcher in a severe black coat with an armlet
saying: "Ch. judge."
". . . And if you'd taken part in sports dress," rumbled Proconsul, "it
would have been possible to take that time into consideration for you
officially." Pepper elbowed him aside and wandered off through the crowd on
rubbery legs.
". . . instead of sweating with fear sitting at home," someone was
saying in the crowd, "better take up sport."
"Just said the same thing to Hausbotcher. It's not being scared though,
you're not right there; The search groups should have been better organized.
Since everybody's running around, let them at least run to some purpose. . .
."
"Whose invention was it? Hausbotcher's! He never misses a trick. He
knows what's what!"
"No need to run around in long underpants though. It's one thing to do
your duty in long Johns, all respect due. But compete in them--in my view
that's a typical organizational oversight. I shall write on the matter."
Pepper escaped from the throng, and wandered off, swaying along the
murky street. He felt sick, his chest was hurting and he kept on imagining
those things in the cases, extending their metal necks and staring at the
road in amazement at the crowd of blindfolded people in underpants,
earnestly striving to understand what link existed between them and the
activity of this crowd and, of course, failing to do so; whatever served
them as sources of patience must now be near exhaustion. . . .
It was dark in Kirn's cottage. A baby was crying.
The hostel door was boarded up and the windows were dark but someone
was walking around inside with a shielded lamp and Pepper could make out
some pale faces at the first-floor windows warily peeping out.
An inordinately lengthy gun barrel with a thick muzzle-brake was
sticking out of the library door, while on the opposite side of the street a
shed was burning up; around the conflagration, men in cardboard masks were
prowling about with mine detectors, lit up in crimson flame.
Pepper headed for the park. In a dark alley, however, he was approached
by a woman who took his arm and led him off without a word. Pepper made no
resistance, he was past caring. She was all in black, her hand was soft and
warm, her white face shone through the dark.
Alevtina, thought Pepper. She's bided her time all right, he thought
with frank lack of shame. Well, what's wrong in that? So she waited. Don't
know why, or why I'm giving in to her, but it's me she waited for. ...
They entered the house. Alevtina switched on the light and said: "I've
waited for you here a long time."
"I know," he said.
"So why were you walking past?"
Yes indeed, why? thought Pepper. Probably because I didn't care. "I
didn't care," he said.
"Okay, never mind," she said. "Sit down, I'll make you something."
He perched himself on the edge of a chair, put his hands on his knees
and watched her fling off the black shawl from her neck and hang it up on a
nail--white, plump, warm. Then she disappeared into the recesses of the
house and soon a gas heater began humming and there came a sound of water
splashing. He experienced severe pain in the soles of his feet, drew up his
leg and looked at the bare sole. The balls of his toes were bloody, and the
blood had mixed with dust and dried in black crusts. He pictured himself
submerging his feet in hot water, at first very painful, then the pain
passing and being soothed. Today I'll sleep in the bath, he thought. And she
can come in and pour in hot water.
"This way," Alevtina summoned him.
He rose with difficulty, all his bones seemed to creak together. He
limped across the ginger carpet to the door that led into the corridor, in
the corridor, along a black and white carpet to a dead end, where the
bathroom door was already open wide. The businesslike blue flame in the
geyser hummed, the tiles sparkled, and Alevtina bent over the bath
sprinkling powder into the water. While he was getting undressed, stripping
off his underclothes stiff with dirt, she fluffed up the water; above the
water rose a blanket of foam, over the rim of the bath it came, white as
snow. He sank into that foam closing his eyes from pleasure and the pain in
his feet, while Alevtina seated herself on the edge of the bath and gazed at
him, sweetly smiling, so kind, so welcoming, and not a word about documents.
She washed his head as he spat water out and snorted and brooded over
her strong, expert hands just like his mother's, just as good a cook too,
likely, then she asked: "Want your back rubbed?"
He slapped his ear to get rid of the soap and water and said: "Well of
course, surely! . . ." She scrubbed his back with a rough loofah and turned
on the shower.
"Hold on," he said. "I want to lie just like this a bit longer. I'll
let this water out now, let in fresh and just lie here, and you sit there.
Please."
She turned the shower off, went out for a moment, and came back with a
stool.
"Lovely!" said he. "You know, I've never felt so good here as now."
"There you are," she smiled. "And you never wanted to."
"How did I know?"
"Why did you have to know in advance? You could have just tried. What
had you to lose? You married?"
"I don't know," he said. "Not now, seemingly."
"I thought as much. Loved her a lot, didn't you? What was she like?"
"What was she like? ... She wasn't afraid of anything. And she was
kind. We used to daydream about the forest."
"What forest?"
"What d'you mean? There's only one."
"Ours, you mean?"
"It's not yours. It's its own. Anyway maybe it really is ours. Only
it's hard to picture it like that."
"I've never been in the forest," said Alevtina. "They say it's
frightening."
"The unknown always is. Everything would be simple if people learned
not to be afraid of the unknown."
"Well I think you shouldn't invent things," she said. "If there was a
bit less making things up, there wouldn't be anything unknown in the world.
Peppy, you're always making things up."
"What about the forest?" he reminded her.
"Well, what about it? I've never got there, but if I did, I don't think
I'd do too badly. Where there's a forest, there's paths, where there's
paths, there's people, and you can always get by with people."
"What if there's no people?"
"If there's no people then there's nothing to do there. You have to
stick to people, they won't let you down."
"No," Pepper said. "It's not as simple as that. I'm going downhill,
people and all. I don't understand a thing about them."
"Lord, what on earth don't you understand?"
"Anything. That's what started me dreaming about the forest,
incidentally. Only now I see that it's no easier in the forest."
She shook her head.
"What a child you still are," she said. "Why can't you ever understand
that nothing exists in the world except love, food, and power. All rolled up
together of course, but whatever thread you pull, you're sure to arrive at
love, or power, or food. . . ."
"No," said Pepper. "I don't want that."
"Darling," she said quietly. "Who's going to ask you whether you want
it or not. Of course, I might ask you: what're you tossing about for, Peppy,
what the hell more do you want?"
"I don't think I need anything," said Pepper. "To clear out of here as
far as possible and become an archivist or a restorer. That's all the
desires I have."
She shook her head again.
"Hardly. That's a bit too complicated. You need something simpler."
He didn't argue, and she got up.
"Here's your towel," she said. "I've put your under-things over here.
Come out and we'll have some tea. You'll have all the tea and raspberry jam
you want, then go to bed."
Pepper had already pulled the plug and was standing up in the bath
rubbing himself down with a huge shaggy towel, when the windows rattled and
there came the muffled thud of a distant explosion. Then he remembered the
spares dump and Jeanne the silly, hysterical doll. He cried: "What's that?
Where?"
"They've blown up the machine," replied Alevtina. "Don't be afraid."
"Where? Where'd they blow it up? At the depot?"
Alevtina was silent for a while, apparently looking out of the window.
"No," she said at last. "Why the depot? In the park. . . . There's the
smoke going up. .. . There they all are, running, running. . . ."
Chapter Ten
The forest was invisible. In its place, below the rock as far as the
horizon, lay dense clouds. It resembled an ice-field powdered with snow:
ice-hummocks and snow dunes, holes and crevasses concealing endless depths--
if you jumped down from the rock your fall would be broken, not by earth,
warm swamps, or spreading branches, but by hard ice sparkling in the morning
sun, powdered lightly with dry snow, and you would stay lying on the ice
under the sun, flat, motionless, black. It might be thought to resemble an
old, well-washed white blanket, thrown over the treetops. .. .
Pepper hunted around to find a pebble, lobbed it from palm to palm,
thinking what a good little place this was above the precipice: pebbles
about, no sense of the Directorate, wild thorn bushes all around, faded
untrodden grass, even some little birdy permitting itself a chirp. Best not
to look over to the right, though, where a luxurious four-hole latrine was
suspended over the precipice, its fresh paint brazenly shining in the sun.
Quite a way off, it's true, and possible if you wanted, to make yourself
imagine it a summerhouse or some sort of scientific pavilion, but it did
spoil the scene.
Perhaps it was actually because of this new latrine, erected the
previous turbulent night, that the forest had shrouded itself in clouds.
Hardly likely though. The forest wouldn't wrap itself up to the distant
horizon for anything so petty, it was used to a lot worse than that from
people.
At any rate, Pepper thought, I can come here every morning. I'll do
what they tell me, I'll tote up on the broken Mercedes, I'll beat the
assault course, I'll play the manager at chess, even try to get to like
yogurt: it's probably not too bad if practically everybody likes it. And of
an evening (and for the night), I'll go over to Alevtina's and eat raspberry
jam and lie in the director's bath. There's something to be said for that
even, he thought. Dry yourself with the director's towel and warm your feet
up in the director's woolly socks, meanwhile crammed into the director's
dressing gown. Twice a month I'll go over to the biostation to collect
salary and bonuses, not the forest, just the biostation, and not even there,
just to the pay-out window, but no meeting with the forest and no war with
the forest, just salary and bonuses. But in the morning, early in the
morning, I shall come here and look on the forest from afar and lob pebbles
into it.
The bushes behind him parted with a crash. Pepper glanced around
warily, but it wasn't the director, just Hausbotcher once again. He was
carrying a fat file folder and halted some distance away, looking Pepper up
and down with his moist eyes. He clearly knew something, something very
important, and had brought this strange alarming information that no one in
the world knew of save himself, here to the cliff-edge, and it was plain
that everything that had gone before was no longer significant and from
everyone would be required to contribute all he was capable of.
"Hello," he said, and bowed, clasping the case to his hip. "Good
morning. Did you rest well?"
"Good morning," said Pepper. "Well, thank you."
"Humidity today seventy-six percent," Hausbotcher announced.
"Temperature--seventeen degrees. No wind. Cloud cover--nil." He had drawn
nearer noiselessly, arms along the seams of his trousers, and, inclining his
body toward Pepper, continued: "Double-u today--sixteen."
"What's double-u?" asked Pepper, getting up.
"Quantity of spots," said Hausbotcher swiftly. His eyes became shifty.
"On the sun," he said. "On the s-s-s. .. ." He ceased, staring Pepper in the
face.
"And why are you telling me this?" asked Pepper with distaste.
"I beg your pardon," said Hausbotcher rapidly. "It won't be repeated.
So, just humidity, cloud cover . . . hmm . . . wind and . . . you won't
require me to report planetary oppositions?"
"Listen," said Pepper dismally. "What do you want from me?"
Hausbotcher retreated a pace or two and hung his head. "I beg pardon.
Perhaps I intruded, but there are a few papers that require . . . that is,
immediate . . . your personal..." He held out the file folder toward Pepper,
like an empty tray. "Do you order me to report?"
"You know what. . . ." said Pepper menacingly.
"Yes . . . yes?" said Hausbotcher. Without relinquishing the file
folder, he began rummaging through his pockets, as if in search of his
notepad. His face was blue-tinged as if from sheer zeal.
Fool, fool, thought Pepper, trying to control himself. What was I
expecting from the likes of him? "Stupid," he said striving for restraint.
"That clear? Stupid and not in the least witty."
"Yes-yes," said Hausbotcher. Bent double, with the file folder clasped
between elbow and thigh, he scribbled frantically on the notepad. "One
second .. . yes, yes?"
"What are you writing there?" asked Pepper. Hausbotcher glanced
fearfully at him and read out:
"Fifteenth June . . . time . . . seven forty-five ... place:
cliff-edge. . . ."
"Listen, Hausbotcher," said Pepper, exasperated. "What the hell do you
want? Why d'you trail about after me all the time? I've had enough of it,
just lay off! [Hausbotcher scribbled.] This joke of yours is sheer stupidity
and there's no need to spy around me. You should be ashamed at your age. . .
. Now stop writing, idiot! It's damned stupidity! Why don't you do your
exercises or get washed, just take a look at yourself, you're like nothing
on earth! Ugh!"
He began doing up his sandal straps with fingers trembling with fury.
"They're probably right about you," he panted. "They say you get
everywhere and take a note of the conversation. I used to think these were
your stupid jokes. ... I didn't want to believe it, I can't stand that sort
of thing at all, but it looks as though you're quite brazen about it now."
He straightened up and saw that Hausbotcher was standing staunchly at
attention, tears were flowing down his cheeks.
"Just what's the matter with you today?" asked Pepper, alarmed.
"I can't.. . ." mumbled Hausbotcher, between sobs.
"What can't you?"
"Exercises. . . . My liver ... chit. . . and washing."
"Good God in heaven," said Pepper. "Well if you can't, you needn't, it
was just a manner of speaking. . . . Well anyway, why are you following me
around? Don't you see, for God's sake, it's not exactly pleasant.. . . I've
nothing against you, but can't you grasp? . . ."
"Won't happen again!" cried Hausbotcher, ecstatic. The tears on his
cheeks dried instantly. "Never again!"
"To blazes with you," said Pepper wearily and walked off through the
bushes. Hausbotcher forced his way after him. Old clown, thought Pepper,
feebleminded ...
"Absolute urgency," Hausbotcher was muttering, breathing heavily. "Only
extreme necessity.. . . Your personal attention."'
Pepper looked around.
"What the hell?" he exclaimed. "That's my suitcase, give it here, where
did you get it?"
Hausbotcher placed the case on the ground and was on the point of
opening his mouth twisted by the effort of breathing, when Pepper snatched
the case handle, not bothering to listen to him. At this, Hausbotcher
without a word lay belly-down on the case. "Give me that case!" said Pepper,
going ice-cold from fury.
"Never!" croaked Hausbotcher, scraping his knees about in the gravel.
The file folder was in his way so he gripped it between his teeth and
embraced the suitcase with both arms. Pepper heaved with all his might and
succeeded in ripping off the handle.
"Stop this outrageous behavior!" he said. "At once!"
Hausbotcher shook his head and burbled something. Pepper loosened his
collar and stared helplessly around. In the shadow of an oak tree not far
off, two engineers in cardboard masks were standing for some reason.
Catching his glance, they straightened up and clicked their heels. Pepper
peered around him like a hunted animal, then hurriedly walked along the path
out of the park. There'd been plenty of surprises up till now, he thought
feverishly, but this beat all. . . . They were all in it together . . . run,
he had to run! But how? He emerged from the park and was about to turn off
toward the canteen, but he found Hausbotcher blocking his way once more,
filthy and appalling. He was standing with the suitcase on his shoulder, his
blue face was bathed in tears or water or sweat, his eyes roved beneath a
white film of moisture, he gripped the file folder with teethmarks on it
close to his chest.
"Not here, please. . . ." he croaked. "I beg you . . . to the study . .
. intolerably urgent . . . not forgetting interests of subordination. . . ."
Pepper recoiled from him and ran off along the main street. People were
standing like statues along the pavements, heads back and eyes staring. A
truck speeding toward him pulled up with a squeal of brakes and smashed into
a newsstand. People with spades spilled out of the back and began forming up
in two ranks. A security guard went by with ceremonial step, holding his
rifle at the present-arms. . . .
On two occasions Pepper attempted to turn off into a side street, but
each time Hausbotcher appeared before him. Hausbotcher was no longer able to
speak, he just moaned and growled, rolling beseeching eyes. Thereupon Pepper
ran off toward the Directorate building.
Kim, he thought desperately, Kim won't permit. . . surely Kim wasn't in
with them as well? . . . I'll lock myself in the lavatory ... let them try
... I'll use my feet. . . I'm past caring. . .
He burst into the hallway only to be greeted at once with the brazen
clangor of the amalgamated local orchestras thundering out a march. Strained
faces, protruding eyes, inflated chests flashed before him. Hausbotcher
caught him up and chased him up the main staircase with its raspberry
carpets, a route forbidden to everyone at all times, through some unfamiliar
two-tone halls, past security guards in full-dress uniform with decorations,
along slippery waxed parquet, up to the fifth floor along a portrait
gallery, upstairs again to floor six, past some bedecked females frozen like
mannequins, into a sort of luxurious dead end with fluorescent lighting, and
up to an enormous leather door with the nameplate "Director." Nowhere else
to run.
Hausbotcher caught up with him and slid under his elbow, croaked
horribly like an epileptic and flung the leather door wide before him.
Pepper entered, and sank up to his insteps in a monstrous tiger skin, and
immersed his whole being into the austere executive twilight of half-drawn
door curtains, into the noble aroma of expensive tobacco, in the cotton-wool
silence, into the even tenor and serenity of an alien existence.
"Hello," he said into space. But no one was sitting behind the huge
table. No one was sitting in the huge armchairs. And no one met his glance
except Selivan the Martyr in a vast picture occupying the whole of one side
of the room.
Behind him, Hausbotcher dropped the suitcase with a thump. Pepper
started and turned around. Hausbotcher was standing, swaying and proffering
the file folder like an empty tray. His eyes were dead, glassy. The man'll
die any minute, thought Pepper. But Hausbotcher did not die.
"Unusually urgent..." he grated, panting. "Not possible without
director's signature . . . personal... would never dare. . . ."
"What director?" Pepper whispered. A terrible surmise had begun to take
vague shape in his brain.
"You. . . ." Hausbotcher croaked. "Without your official stamp ... no
way. . . ."
Pepper leaned against the table and supporting himself on its polished
surface, wandered around it to the chair that seemed nearest. He dropped
into its cool leather embrace and took in the rows of colored telephones on
his left and the gold stamped volumes on the right. In front of him stood a
monumental inkwell with Tannhauser and Venus, and above it, the white
beseeching eyes of Hausbotcher and the proffered document case. He drew his
elbows in, thought: Well, so that's how it is? You scum, sods, lackies . . .
that's it, eh? Well, well, you bastards, slaves, cardboard snouts. . . .
Well, all right, let it be. ...
"Stop waggling that over the table," he said severely. "Give it here."
Things began moving in the office, shadows flitted^ a small whirlwind
started up and Hausbotcher materialized at his right shoulder; the folder
lay on the table and opened as if of its own accord, sheets of fine quality
paper peeped out, and he read a word printed in large letters: DRAFT. "Thank
you," he said severely. "You may go."
Once more the whirlwind, an aroma of sweat was sensed and then
vanished, Hausbotcher was already by the door pausing, trunk inclined, hands
by his seams, appalling, piteous, and ready for anything.
"One moment," said Pepper. Hausbotcher froze. "Can you kill a man?"
asked Pepper. Hausbotcher did not hesitate. He pulled out a small notepad
and spoke: "Your orders?" "And commit suicide?" Pepper asked. "What?" said
Hausbotcher. "Go," said Pepper. "I'll call for you later." Hausbotcher
vanished. Pepper cleared his throat and wiped his cheeks.
"Let's assume that," he said aloud. "And now what?"
On the table he observed a desk diary, turned the page, and read the
present day's entry. The previous director's handwriting disappointed him;
it was large and legible like a primary school teacher's. "Group leaders.
9:30. Foot examination. 10:30. Power for Ala. Try aerated yogurt.
Machinization. Reel: who stole it? Four bulldozers!!!"
To hell with the bulldozers, thought Pepper, that's it: no bulldozers,
no excavators, no saw-combines of eradication. . . . Good idea to castrate
Acey at the same time--can't, pity . . . and that machine-depot. Blow that
up, he decided. He pictured the Directorate from above and realized that a
great deal needed blowing up. Too much. . . . Any fool can use explosives,
he thought.
He pulled out the desk's middle drawer and saw there heaps of papers,
blunted pencils, and two philatelic perforation-gauges, and on top of all
this, a twisted golden general's epaulette. Just one. He had a look for the
other, raking his hand around under the papers, received a pinprick and
found a bunch of safe keys. The safe itself stood in the far comer and a
pretty odd safe it was; decorated like a sideboard. Pepper got up and
crossed the room to the safe; he glanced around him and noticed a good many
odd things he'd not seen before.
Under the window stood a hockey stick, next to it--a crutch and a false
leg wearing a boot with a rusty skate. There turned out to be another door
in the recesses of the office; a rope was stretched across it on which hung
some black swimming trunks and several odd socks, a number of them holed. On
the door was a tarnished metal plate with the inscribed legend CATTLE. On
the windowsill, half-hidden by the curtain, stood a small aquarium; in the
pure transparent water among varicolored seaweeds, a plump black axoloti
stirred its feathery gills in measured tempo. From behind the Selivan
picture protruded a splendid bandmaster's baton complete with horses tails.
Pepper was busy with the safe a good while, trying the keys. At last the
heavy armored door swung open. The inside of the door was covered in
indecent pin-ups from men's magazines, and the safe was practically empty.
Pepper found a pair of pince-nez, the left lens broken, a crumpled cap with
a mysterious cockade, and a photograph of an unknown family (grinning
father, mother with cupid's-bow lips, and two boys in cadet uniform). There
was a parabellum pistol too, well cleaned and looked after, a single round
up the barrel, another twisted general's epaulette, and an iron cross with
oak leaves. There was another pile of file folders in the safe, but they
were all empty except for the bottom one, which held a rough draft of an
order imposing punishment on driver Acey for systematic nonattendance at the
Museum of Directorate History. "That's got him, that's got him, rascal,"
muttered Pepper. "Fancy that, skipping the museum. . . . We'll do something
about this." Always Acey, what the . . . ?
Yogurtomaniac, repulsive womanizer, junky, still, all the drivers were
that... no, a stop would be put to it: yogurt, chess during working hours.
By the way, what exactly does Kim add up on the broken Mercedes? Or is
everything as it should be--some sort of stochastic processes going on. ...
Look, Pepper, you don't know much; everybody's hard at work, after all.
Hardly anybody loafs around. They work at night. Everybody's busy, nobody's
got any time. Orders are carried out, that I know, seen it myself.
Everything looks to be in order: guards do their guarding, drivers drive,
engineers construct, scientists write articles, pay-clerks dish out money. .
..
Listen, Pepper, he thought, maybe all this merry-go-round exists just
for that--so everybody's kept busy? In actual fact a good mechanic can
service a car in two hours. What happens after that? What about the other
twenty-two hours? And if in addition competent workmen operate the machines
so as to keep them in good order? The answer's not far to seek: give the
good mechanic a job as a cook, make the cook a mechanic. That way you can
fill twenty-two years, never mind hours. No, there was a certain logic in
it. Everybody works, discharging his obligations to humanity, not like well,
monkeys . . . and they extend their specialization range. . . . Anyhow,
there's no logic at all there, it's an unholy mess, that's all. .. . My god,
I'm standing here like a post, while they're defiling the forest,
eradicating it, turning it into a park. Something's got to be done, now I'm
responsible for every acre, every pup, every mermaid, I'm responsible for it
all now. . . .
He moved into action, somehow got the safe shut, rushed over to the
table, pushed the file folder from him and pulled out a clean sheet of paper
from the drawer. . . . There's thousands of people here, though, he thought.
Traditions have been founded, accepted attitudes, they'll laugh at me. ...
He recalled the wretched, sweating Hausbotcher and indeed himself in the
director's anteroom. No, they wouldn't laugh at him. They'd cry, complain
... to ... Monsieur Alas . . . they'd kill each other. But not laugh. That
was the worst part of it, he thought, they didn't know how to laugh, they
didn't know what that was or the reason for it. People, he thought, people
and little people and littler people. Democracy's what's wanted, freedom of
opinion, freedom of criticism, I'll get them all together and tell them:
criticize! Criticize and laugh. . . . Yes, they would criticize. They'd do
it at length with warmth and ecstasy since they'd been ordered to do it,
they'd criticize the inadequate supplies of yogurt, the poor food in the
canteen, they'd lay into the street cleaners with particular relish: roads
unswept in donkey's years, they'd criticize driver Acey for systematic
bathhouse avoidance, and in between they'd hurry to the latrine overhanging
the precipice. . . . No, I'll get things in a tangle that way, he thought. A
set procedure is what we want. What have I got now?
He began writing swiftly and illegibly on the sheet:
"Forest Eradication Group, Forest Research Group, Forest Military
Guard, Assistance to Native Population Group. .. ." What else was there?
Yes! "Engineering Penetration Group." Yes, and . . . "Science Security
Group." The lot, apparently. So. What did they all do? Odd, I've never
wondered up till now what they all do here. What's more, I've never wondered
what the Directorate does anyway. How is it possible to combine forest
eradication with a forest guard, and assist the local populations at the
same time.
Well, now, he thought. For a start, no eradications. Eradicate
Eradication. Engineering Penetration too, most likely. Or let them work up
top, they're no use down there, anyway. Let their machines cope. Let them
build a good road, let them drain that stinking bog.. .. What's left then?
The military guard. And wolfhounds. Well, anyway . . . anyway the forest has
to be guarded. Only ... he recalled the faces of the guards he had
encountered and gnawed his lip doubtfully, Mm-yes. . . . Well all right,
we'll assume that. But why the Directorate? Why me! Dispense with the
Directorate, eh? He had a feeling of weird gaiety. Now that would be
something, he thought. I can do it! Disperse it and that's it, he thought.
Who's my judge? I'm the director, the chief. One order--finish!
Suddenly he heard ponderous footsteps somewhere close. The glass
chandelier tinkled, the drying socks swayed on the line. Pepper rose and
tiptoed to the little door. Just beyond it someone was walking unsteadily,
as it might be stumbling, but nothing else could be heard and there wasn't
even a keyhole to look through. Pepper cautiously pulled at the handle but
the door did not yield.
"Who's there?" he asked loudly, placing his lips to the crack. No one
replied but the footsteps continued. It was like a drunk wandering along,
falling over his own legs. Pepper tried the handle again, gave a shrug, and
went back to his chair.
Anyway, power has its advantages, he thought. I shan't disperse the
Directorate, of course, stupid--why get rid of a ready-made well-knit
organization? One simply had to redirect it, turn it onto its true course.
Stop the intrusion into the forest, intensify careful research, try to find
points of contact, learn from it. ... They didn't even know what the forest
was, after all. Just imagine, a forest! Mountains of firewood. . . . No,
there was a lot of work ahead. Real, important work. People would be
forthcoming, too--Kim, Stoyan . . . Rita . .. Good lord, what was wrong with
the manager? . . . Alevtina. . .. Well and why not this Alas as well, no
doubt a good man, brains there, doing a silly job that was all. ... We'll
show them, he thought cheerfully. We'll show them yet, hell! All right. How
are things going just now?
He drew the file folder toward him. On the top sheet was written:
DRAFT DIRECTIVE ON PROCEDURE
1. Over the past year the Forest Directorate has materially improved
its work and attained splendid results in all spheres of activity. Many
hundreds of acres of forest territory have been taken over, studied,
eradicated, and put under military and scientific security. The skills of
specialist and worker alike show continued steady development. Organization
is being perfected, unproductive spending is being reduced, bureaucratic and
other impediments external to productivity are being eliminated.
2. However, alongside the achievements achieved, the harmful effects of
the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as well as the Law of Large Numbers
continue to be felt, thus lowering the general level of attainment. Our most
pressing task is now the elimination of chance effects, productive of chaos
and destructive of rhythm as well as inductive of a relaxation of tempo.
3. With reference to the above-mentioned, it is suggested in the future
that all manifestations of chance be regarded as exceptional and at variance
with the ideal of organization, and involvement in chance effects
(probability)--as a criminal activity, or, if the involvement in chance
effects (probability) is not attended by major consequences--as a most
serious breach of office and production discipline.
4. The guilt of any person involved with chance effects
(probabilities), is defined and delimited by articles of the Criminal Code
nos. 62, 64, 65 (omitting paras. S and 0) 113, and 192 par. K, or
Administrative Codex 12, 15 and 97. NOTE: The fatal upshot of any
involvement with chance effects (probabilities) is not regarded per se as a
justifying or extenuating circumstance. Conviction, or penalty in this
instance, will be imposed posthumously.
5. The present Directive promulgated .. . month .. . day . . . year. No
retroactive application.
Signature: DIRECTOR (---------------).
Pepper moistened his dry lips and turned the page over. On the next
sheet was an order concerning a summons for a member of the Science Security
Group, one H. Toity, with reference to the Directive "On procedure," "for
malicious indulgence of the law of large numbers, to wit, sliding on the ice
with concomitant damage to the ankle joint, which criminal involvement with
chance effects (probability) took place on March llth this year." Officer H.
Toity should be referred to in all documents henceforward as probabili-trick
Toity.
Pepper clicked his teeth and glanced at the next sheet. This was an
order too: the imposition of administrative punishment--a fine of four
months pay, posthumously--on dog-breeder G. de Montmorency of the military
guard, "carelessly permitting himself to be struck down by atmospheric
discharge (lightning)." Further on were requests for leave, requests to do
with a lump-sum benefit on the loss of a breadwinner, and an explanatory
note from one Z. Lumbago concerning the loss of a reel. .. .
"What in the name of!" said Pepper aloud and reread the draft
Directive. He began to sweat. The draft was printed on art paper with a gold
edge. I need advice from somewhere, thought Pepper miserably, otherwise I'm
done for. . . .
At this the door flung open and into the study, pushing a wheeled cart
before her, came Alevtina, dressed with extreme elegance in the latest
fashion, and wearing a grave expression on her expertly powdered and made-up
face.
"Your breakfast," said she in a delicate voice.
"Close the door and come here," said Pepper. She shut the door, pushed
the cart with her foot and, adjusting her hair, came over to Pepper.
"Well now, ducky?" said she, smiling. "Satisfied now?"
"Listen," said Pepper. "This is rubbish. Have a read."
She seated herself on the arm of the chair, put her bare left arm
around Pepper's neck, and picked up the Directive with the bare right one.
"Well, I know," she said. "It's all in order. What's the matter? Should
I bring the Criminal Code in? The previous director couldn't remember a
single article either."
"No, no, wait," said Pepper impatiently. "What's the code got to do
with it, what's that to do with it? Have you read it?"
"Not only read, typed. And corrected the style. Hausbotcher's no
writer, and he only learned to read here. . . . Incidentally, ducky," she
said, solicitously, "Hausbotcher is waiting out there in the anteroom, see
him during breakfast, he likes that. He'll do your sandwiches for you. . .
."
"I sent him packing!" said Pepper. "Just you explain to me what I ..."
"You shouldn't send Hausbotcher packing," put in Alevtina. "You're
still my little ducky, you still don't know anything." She pressed Pepper's
nose like a button. "Hausbotcher has two notepads. In one he writes who said
what--for the director--in the other he notes down what the director said.
Ducky, you remember that and don't go forgetting."
"Wait," said Pepper. "I want your advice. That Directive .. . I'm not
signing crazy stuff like that."
"How do you mean not?"
"What I say. My hand won't move--to sign anything like that."
Alevtina's face became stern.
"Ducky," she said. "Now don't get obstinate. Just sign. It's very
urgent. I'll explain it all to you later, but now . . ."
"What's there to explain?" asked Pepper.
"Well if you don't understand, it means you need an explanation. So
that's what I'll do later."
"No, explain it now," Pepper said. "If you can," he added. "Which I
doubt."
"Ooh, then, my little one," said Alevtina and kissed him on the temple.
She glanced at her watch concernedly. "Well, fine, all right."
She shifted her seat to the table, placed her hands beneath her and
began, her screwed-up eyes fixed above Pepper's head.
"Administrative work exists as the basis of all else. This work didn't
come into being today or yesterday, the vector has its base back in the
depths of time. At present it is embodied in existing orders and directives.
But it extends far into the future too, and there it waits for its
embodiment. It's like laying a highway through a section already marked off,
where the asphalt ends and the surveyor stands with his back to the finished
section looking into his theodolite.
"That surveyor is you. The imaginary line traveling along the optical
axis of the theodolite is the unrealized administrative vector which only
you of all people can see and to which it is your duty to give substance. Do
you follow?"
"No," Pepper said firmly.
"Doesn't matter, keep listening. . . . Just as the highway can't turn
as it pleases to left or right, but has to follow the optical axis of your
theodolite, just so every directive must be a continuation of all those
preceding it.... Ducky, sweety, don't probe into it, I don't understand
anything about it myself, but that's good really, because probing stirs up
doubts, doubts make people mark time, and marking time is the death of
administrative activity, consequently yours, mine and every. . . .
"That's elementary. Not a single day without a Directive and everything
will be all right. This Directive on procedure, now--it doesn't exist in
vacuo, it's tied up with the preceding Directive on nonabsence, and that was
linked with the Order on nonpregnancy, and that Order flowed logically from
the Injunction on excessive indignation, and that . . ."
"What the hell!" said Pepper. "Show me these injunctions and orders.
No, better show me the very first order, the one in the depths of time."
"Now why do you need that?"
"What do you mean, 'why'? You say they stem logically. I don't believe
that!"
"Ducky," said Alevtina. "You'll see all that. I'll show you all that.
You'll read it all with your dear little short-sighted eyes. But realize,
there was no directive day before yesterday and none yesterday if you don't
count a petty little order about capturing a machine and that was by word of
mouth. . . . What do you think, how long can the Directorate exist without
directives? Since yesterday morning it's all been a mix-up: some people are
walking around everywhere changing burned-out bulbs, imagine? No, ducky, you
do as you like, but the Directive has to be signed. I'm on your side, you
know. You just sign it straight off, do the conference with the group
leaders, tell them something encouraging, then I'll bring you everything you
want. You can read, study, probe . . . better if you don't probe though."
Pepper took hold of his cheeks and rocked his head. Alevtina briskly
jumped down from the table, dipped a pen into Venus' skull and held the stem
toward Pepper.
"Well write, sweetie, just a quick one. . . ."
Pepper took the pen.
"But I'll be able to cancel the thing later?" he asked fretfully.
"Of course, ducky, of course," said Alevtina, and Pepper knew she lied.
He hurled the pen away. "No," he said. "No, never. I won't sign that. Why
the hell should I sign lunacy like that when there's probably dozens of
sensible and useful orders, and instructions, absolutely essential, really
necessary in this bedlam. . . ."
"For example?" asked Alevtina briskly.
"Good lord. . . . Well, anything you like . . . hell's bells. Well,
what about . . ."
Alevtina got out her notepad.
"Well, let's say ... let's say an order," said Pepper with
extraordinary bitterness, "to the members of the Eradication Group to
self-eradicate as soon as ever possible. Yes, indeed! Let them all throw
themselves off the cliff ... or shoot themselves . . . make it today! In
charge--Hausbotcher. Now that really is something more useful. . . ."
"One moment," said Alevtina. "That is, commit suicide with the aid of
firearms today before twenty-four hundred hours. In charge--Hausbotcher."
She closed her notepad and considered. Pepper looked at her in astonishment.
"So!" she said. "It's all right. It's even more progressive. . . . Sweety,
understand this: you don't like the directive--don't bother about it. But
issue another. That's what you've done and I've no more to ask of you. . .
."
She jumped down to the floor and busied herself arranging plates before
Pepper.
"Here's the pancakes, here's the jam. . . . Coffee in the thermos, it's
hot--watch you don't burn yourself. . . . Eat up and I'll do the draft quick
as a flash and bring it in half an hour."
"Wait," said Pepper, stunned. "Wait. . . ."
"Who's my clever one," said Alevtina tenderly. "You're great, only be a
bit nicer to Hausbotcher."
"Wait," said Pepper. "What d'you think you're doing?"
Alevtina ran for the door, Pepper rushed after her shouting: "Are you
crazy?" but failed to catch her. Alevtina vanished and in her place, like a
ghost, Hausbotcher materialized out of emptiness. Now slicked and cleaned,
now a normal color, as before ready for anything.
"A stroke of genius," he said softly, edging Pepper toward the table,
"it's brilliant. It will surely go down in history. . . ."
Pepper recoiled as if from a giant centipede, bumped into the table and
pushed Tannhauser onto Venus.
Chapter Eleven
He woke up, opened his eyes and stared at the low, lime-encrusted
ceiling. The ants were again heading across it. Right to the left, loaded,
left to right, empty. A month ago it had been the other way around, a month
ago Nava had been here. Nothing else had changed. Day after tomorrow, we'll
go, he thought.
The old man was sitting at the table looking at him and cleaning out
his ear. The old man had got terribly thin, his eyes were sunken, he hadn't
a tooth left. Probably he'll soon die, that old man.
"Why on earth is it. Dummy," said the old man tearfully, "you've not a
thing to eat. Since Nava got taken from you, you've no more food in the
house. Not in the morning or at dinnertime, I told you: don't go, shouldn't.
Why did you go away? Paid too much heed to Hopalong and went, what does
Hopalong know about what's done and what isn't? Hopalong doesn't realize
that, and his father before him was just as slow, his granddad just the
same, all the Hopalong breed just the same, so they've all died, and so will
Hopalong, no way out. . . . Maybe you have got some food, Dummy, maybe
you've hidden it, eh? A lot of them do ... if you have, get it quick, I'm
hungry, I can't do without food, I've eaten all my life, got used to it. ...
So now you've got no Nava, Barnacle killed by a tree as well, . . . that's
who always had a lot of food, Barnacle! I used to get through three pots at
his place, thought it was always low-grade stuff, nasty, why he got killed
by a tree, likely. ... I used to tell him: shouldn't eat food like that. . .
."
Kandid got up and searched the hiding places Nava had devised
throughout the house. There was no food at all. After that he went out into
the street, turned left and headed for the square, to Buster's house. The
old man trailed along behind, sniveling and whining. From the field there
came coarse and ragged shouting: "Hey, hey, make it gay, left way, right
way. . . ." The forest returned an echo. Every morning, so it seemed to
Kandid, the forest had moved closer. In fact, this wasn't so, and even if it
was, it would hardly have been perceptible to the human eye. The number of
deadlings in the forest, probably, had not increased, but it seemed so. Very
likely because Kandid now knew what they were, and that he hated them.
Whenever a dead-ling appeared out of the forest, the cry at once went up:
"Dummy! Dummy!" And he would go there and destroy the deadling with his
scalpel, swiftly, surely, with cruel enjoyment. The whole village would run
to view the spectacle and invariably exclaimed in unison and covered their
faces, when the terrible white scar opened up along the steam-shrouded
carcass. Little bovs no longer teased Dummy, they were now mortally afraid
of him, ran and hid at his approach. The scalpel was discussed in whispers
at home in the evenings, and by order of the resourceful elder they started
making storage bins out of deadling hides. They were good ones, too, big and
tough. . . .
In the middle of the square stood Ears, up to his waist in grass and
shrouded in lilac mist; his palms were raised, his eyes glassy and there was
foam on his lips. Around him crowded curious toddlers, listening and
watching, open-mouthed; this spectacle never wearied them. Kandid also
stopped to listen, and the toddlers scattered like leaves.
"Into the battle new. . . ." burbled Ears in a metallic voice.
"Successful movement. . . extensive areas of peace . . . new detachments of
Maidens. . . . Calm and Amalgamation. . . ."
Kandid passed on. Since that morning, his head had been reasonably
clear, and he felt he could think, and bsgan to consider who he was, this
Ears, and what his function was. There was some point now in such
speculation, since Kandid now knew something, and sometimes it even seemed
that he knew a great deal, if not everything. Every village had its Ears,
we've got one, New Village has, and the old man used to brag of how special
the Ears had been in the now mushroomy village. No doubt there had been a
time when many people knew what the Accession was, and understood what
successes were being referred to; then, very likely, they had been concerned
to inform everybody about it, or had assumed they were concerned, later it
dawned that a whole lot of people could perfectly well be done without, that
all these villages were--a mistake, the villagers no more than sheep . . .
that occurred when it was discovered how to control the lilac mist, and the
first deadlings emerged from the lilac clouds . . . and the first villages
found themselves at the bottom of the first triangular lakes . . . and the
first detachments of Maidens appeared. . . . The Ears had remained and the
tradition had survived, something that wasn't wiped out because they had
simply forgotten about it. A pointless tradition, as pointless as this whole
forest, as all these artificial monsters and cities, which spawned
destruction, and these terrible hoyden-amazons, priestesses of
parthenogenesis, cruel and complacent mistresses of the virus, sovereigns of
the forest, fresh-water plump . . . and this vast activity in the jungle all
these Great Harrowings, and Swampings, undertakings monstrous in their
absurdity. . . . His ideas flowed freely almost, even automatically, for the
last month they had managed to carve for themselves permanent channels and
Kandid knew in advance what emotions would spring up in him the next second.
In our village this is called "thinking." Here, now doubts would come up.
... I saw nothing after all. I encountered three forest witches. Plenty of
strange things in the forest. I saw the destruction of a deceptive village,
a hill resembling a factory of living creatures, hellish violence done to an
armchewer ... destruction, factory, violence. . . . Those words are mine, my
concepts. Even for Nava destruction isn't destruction, it's the Accession .
. . but I know what the Accession is. To me it's terrible, revolting, and
all because to me it's alien, and perhaps one should say not "a cruel and
senseless driving of the forest over people," but "a systematic, superbly
organized, precisely thought-out drive of the new against the old," "a
well-timed and matured, abundantly powerful offensive of the new against the
rotten, hopeless, old order. . . ." Not a perversion, but a revolution. The
natural order of things, a natural order I regard from the outside, with the
partial view of a stranger who understands nothing and by virtue of that
fact, imagines that he knows it all and that he has a right to judge. Just
like a little boy indignant at the nasty cock for trampling the poor hen.. .
.
He looked back at Ears. Ears was sitting in the grass with his
customary dazed look, turning his head, endeavoring to recall who and where
he was. A living radio receiver. So, there must be living transmitters . . .
and living mechanisms and living machines, yes, the deadlings for example. .
. . Well now, why, why doesn't all this, so superbly thought-up, so superbly
organized, rouse in me a shred of sympathy--only disgust and loathing. . . .
Buster came up noiselessly behind him and clapped him between the
shoulder blades.
"Stands there gawping, wool on yer nose," said he. "There was one
gawped like that, they twisted his arms and legs off, no more gawping from
him. When are we leaving, Dummy? How long are you going to keep pulling my
leg? My old woman's gone to another house, wool on yer nose, and I've been
sleeping at the elder's for three nights, just now I'm thinking I'll go and
spend the night with Barnacle's widow. The food's so rotten that even that
old stump doesn't want to guzzle it, makes a face, says: everything you've
got's rotten, you can't bear to smell it, never mind guzzle, wool on yer
nose. . . . Only I'm not going to Devil's Rocks, Dummy. I'll go with you to
the City, we'll pick up some babes there. If we meet thieves we'll give them
half, we won't be mean, wool on yer nose, and bring the other half back to
the village, let them live here, what do they want floating about there,
there was one floated, gave her a good 'un up the hooter, no more floating
and hates the sight of water, wool on yer nose. . . . Listen, Dummy, maybe
you lied about the City and those babes? Or maybe you were seeing
things--the robbers took Nava away from you, and you imagined it out of
sorrow? Hopalong there doesn't believe it; reckons you were seeing things.
What's that City in the lake, wool on yer nose, everybody said on a hill,
not in a lake. Who can live in a lake, wool on yer nose? We'll all drown in
there, there's water there, wool on yer nose, never mind the babes in there,
I'm not going in even for them, I can't swim, and anyway what for? Now I
could stand on the bank, while you drag them out. . . . You'll go into the
water then, and I'll stay on the bank, and we'll soon manage it that way,
you and I. . . ."
"Have you got yourself a stick?" asked Kandid.
"Where can I get you a stick in the forest, wool on yer nose?" objected
Buster. "That means a trip to the swamp, for a stick. And I've no time, I'm
hiding food so's the old man won't guzzle it, anyway what do I want with a
stick, I don't intend to fight anybody. . . . There was one who fought, wool
on yer nose. . . ."
"Okay," said Kandid. "I'll get you one myself. We leave day after
tomorrow. Don't forget."
He turned and retraced his steps. Still the same old Buster. None of
them had changed. No matter how hard he had tried to get it into their
heads, they couldn't grasp anything, and seemingly, didn't believe what he
said.
Deadlings can't be servants to women, you're putting it on there,
Dummy, boy, three of them you couldn't drive away. Women are scared stiff of
dead-lings, take a look at mine, then tell us again. As for the village
going under, that's the Accession happening, nobody needs you to tell them
that, what those women of yours have got to do with it I can't make out. . .
. Anyway, Dummy, you weren't in the City, go on now, confess, we won't take
offense, you tell a rattling good story. Only you haven't been in any City,
we all know that, 'cos if anyone gets to the City, they don't come back. ...
It wasn't any women took away your Nava, just robbers, our local ones. You
could never fight off robbers. Dummy. Though a man you are, of course, of
the bravest, and the way you tackle deadlings--that's just terrible to
watch. . . ."
Any idea of approaching destruction simply couldn't enter their heads.
Destruction was approaching too slowly and began its advance too long ago.
Probably, the trouble was that destruction was a concept linked with
immediacy, right now, with some sort of catastrophe. They were unable and
had no desire to generalize, couldn't and wouldn't think of the world
outside their village. There was the village and there was the forest. The
forest was the more powerful, but then the forest had always been and always
would be more powerful. What had destruction to do with it? What destruction
do you mean? It's just life. Now, when a tree crushes somebody, that's
destruction all right, but you've just got to use your head and figure out
what's what. . . . One day they'd realize. When there were no women left;
when the swamps had advanced up to the house walls; when subterranean
springs were tapped and the lilac mist hung over the rooftops. ... Or maybe
they wouldn't even then--just say: "Can't live here anymore--the Accession."
And go off to build a new village. . . .
Hopalong was sitting before his door, pouring ferment on a prop of
mushrooms that had come up during the night, and preparing to breakfast.
"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.
Last-modified: Tue, 05 Dec 2000 10:37:40 GMT



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