Tender made his entrance. He was red and out of breath. His daughter was sick and he had gone for the doctor. Apologized for being late. Well, we gave him his little present: we’re off into the Zone. He even stopped puffing and wheezing at first, he was so scared. “What do you mean the Zone?” he asked. “And why me?” However, talk of a double bonus and the fact that Red Schuhart was going too got him breathing again.
So we went down to the “boudoir” and Kirill went for the passes. We showed them to another sergeant, who handed us special outfits. Now they are handy things. Just dye them any other color than their original red, and any stalker would gladly pay 500 for one without blinking an eye. I swore a long time ago that one of these days I would figure out a way to swipe one. At first glance it didn’t seem like anything special, just an outfit like a diving suit with a bubble-top helmet with a visor. Not really like a diver’s—more like a jet pilot’s or an astronaut’s. It was light, comfortable, without binding anywhere, and you didn’t sweat in it. In a little suit like that you could go through fire, and gas couldn’t penetrate it. They say even a bullet can’t get through. Of course, fire and mustard gases and bullets are all earthly human things. Nothing like that exists in the Zone and there is no need to fear things like that in the Zone. And anyway, to tell the truth, people drop like flies in the special suits too. It’s another matter that maybe many many more would die without the suits. The suits are 100 percent protection against the burning fluff, for example, and against the spitting devil’s cabbage… All right.
We pulled on the special suits. I poured the nuts and bolts from the bag into my hip pocket, and we trekked across the institute yard to the Zone entrance. That’s the routine they have here, so that everyone will see the heroes of science laying down their lives on the altar of humanity, knowledge, and the holy ghost. Amen. And sure enough—all the way up to the fifteenth floor sympathetic faces watched us off. All we lacked were waving hankies and an orchestra. “Hup two,” I said to Tender. “Suck in your gut, you flabby platoon! A grateful mankind will never forget you!”
He looked at me and I saw that he was in no shape for joking around. And he was right, this was no time for jokes. But when you’re going out into the Zone you can either cry or joke—and I never cried, even as a child. I looked at Kirill. He was holding up under the strain, but was moving his lips, like he was praying.
“Praying?” I asked. “Pray on, pray. The further into the Zone the nearer to Heaven.”
“What?”
“Pray!” I shouted. “Stalkers go to the head of the line into Heaven.”
He broke out in a smile and patted me on the back, as if to say don’t be afraid, nothing will happen as long as you’re with me, and if it does, well, we only die once. He sure is a funny guy, honest to God.
We turned in our passes to the last sergeant, only this time, for a change of pace, it was a lieutenant. I know him, his father sells grave borders in Rexopolis. The flying boot was waiting for us, brought by the fellows from PPS and left at the passageway. Everyone else was waiting, too. The emergency first-aid team, and firemen, and our valiant guards, our fearless rescuers—a bunch of overfed bums with a helicopter. I wish I had never set eyes on them!
We got up into the boot, and Kirill took the controls and said: “OK, Red, lead on.”
Coolly, I lowered the zipper on my chest, pulled out a flask, took a good long tug, and replaced the flask. I can’t do it without that. I’ve been in the Zone many times, but without it—no, I just can’t. They were both looking at me and waiting.
“So,” I said. “I’m not offering any to you, because this is the first time we’re going in together, and I don’t know how the stuff affects you. This is the way we’ll do things. Anything that I say you do immediately and without question. If someone starts fumbling or asking questions I’ll hit whatever I reach first. I’ll apologize now. For example, Mr. Tender, if I order you to start walking on your hands you will immediately hoist your fat ass into the air and do what I tell you. And if you don’t, maybe you’ll never see your sick daughter again. Got it? But I’ll make sure that you do get to see her.”
“Just don’t forget to give me the order,” Tender wheezed. He was all red and sweating and chomping his lips. “I’ll walk on my teeth, not just on my hands, if I have to. I’m not a greenhorn.”
“You’re both greenhorns as far as I’m concerned,” I said. “And I won’t forget to give the orders, don’t worry. By the way, do you know how to drive a boot?”
“He knows,” Kirill said. “He’s a good driver.”
“All right then,” I said. “Then we’re off, Godspeed. Lower your visors. Low speed ahead along the pylons, altitude three yards. Halt at the twenty-seventh pylon.”
Kirill raised the boot to three yards and went ahead in low gear. I turned around without being noticed and spit over my left shoulder. I saw that the rescue squad had climbed into their helicopter, the firemen were standing at attention out of respect, the lieutenant at the door of the passage was saluting us, the jerk, and above all of them fluttered the huge, faded banner: “Welcome, Visitors.” Tender looked like he was about to wave to them, but I gave him such a jab in the ribs that he immediately dropped all ideas of such ceremonious bye-byes. I’ll show you how to say good-bye. You’ll be saying good-bye yet!
We were off.
The institute was on our right and the Plague Quarter on our left. We were traveling from pylon to pylon right down the middle of the street. It had been ages since the last time someone had walked or driven down this street. The asphalt was all cracked, and grass had grown in the cracks. But that was still our human grass. On the sidewalk on our left there was black bramble growing, and you could tell the boundaries of the Zone: the black growth ended at the curb as if it had been mown. Yeah, those visitors were well-behaved. They messed up a lot of things but at least they set themselves clear limits. Even the burning fluff never came to our side of the Zone—and you would think that a stiff wind would do it.
The houses in the Plague Quarter were chipped and dead. However, the windows weren’t broken. Only they were so dirty that they looked blind. At night, when you crawl past, you can see the glow inside, like alcohol burning with blue tongues. That’s the witches’ jelly breathing in the cellars. Just a quick glance gives you the impression that it’s a neighborhood like any other, the houses are like any others, only in need of repair, but there’s nothing particularly strange about them. Except that there are no people around. That brick house, by the way, was the home of our math teacher. We used to call him The Comma. He was a bore and a failure. His second wife had left him just before the Visitation, and his daughter had a cataract on one eye, and we used to tease her to tears, I remember. When the panic began he and all his neighbors ran to the bridge in their underwear, three miles nonstop. Then he was sick with the plague for a long time. He lost all his skin and his nails. Almost everyone who had lived in the neighborhood was hit, that’s why we call it the Plague Quarter. Some died, mostly the old people, and not too many of them. I, for one, think that they died from fright and not from the plague. It was terrifying. Everyone who lived here got sick. And people in three neighborhoods went blind. Now we call those areas: First Blind Quarter, Second Blind, and so on. They didn’t go completely blind, but got sort of night blindness. By the way, they said that it wasn’t any explosion that caused it, even though there were plenty of explosions; they said they were blinded from a loud noise. They said it got so loud that they immediately lost their vision. The doctors told them that that was impossible and they should try to remember. But they insisted that it was a powerful thunderbolt that blinded them. By the way, no one else heard the thunder at all.
Yes, it was as though nothing had happened here. There was a glass kiosk, unharmed. A baby carriage in a driveway—even the blankets in it looked clean. The antennas screwed up the effect though—they were overgrown with some hairy stuff that looked like cotton. The eggheads had been cutting t
heir teeth on this cotton problem for some time. You see, they were interested in looking it over. There wasn’t any other like it anywhere. Only in the Plague Quarter and only on the antennas. And most important, it was right there, under their very windows. Finally they had a bright idea: they lowered an anchor on a steel cable from a helicopter and hooked a piece of cotton. As soon as the helicopter pulled at it, there was a pssst! We looked and saw smoke coming from the antenna, from the anchor, and from the cable. The cable wasn’t just smoking—it was hissing poisonously, like a rattler. Well, the pilot was no fool—there was a reason why he was a lieutenant—he quickly figured what was what and dropped the cable and made a quick getaway. There it was, the cable, hanging down almost to the ground and overgrown with cotton.
So we made it to the end of the street and the turn nice and easy. Kirill looked at me: should he turn? I signaled: as slow as possible! Our boot turned and inched over the last feet of human earth. The sidewalk was coming closer and the boot’s shadow was falling on the bramble. That’s it. We were in the Zone! I felt a chill. Each time I feel that chill. And I never know if that’s the Zone greeting me or my stalker’s nerves acting up. Each time I think that when I get back I’ll ask if others have the same feeling or not, and each time I forget.
All right, so there we were crawling quietly over what used to be gardens. The engine was humming evenly under our feet, calmly—it didn’t care, nothing was going to hurt it here. Then old Tender broke. We hadn’t even gotten to the first pylon when he started gabbing. All the greenhorns usually run off at the mouth in the Zone: his teeth were chattering, his heart thumping, his memory fading, and he was embarrassed and yet he couldn’t control himself. I think it’s like a runny nose with them. It doesn’t depend on the person at all—it just flows and flows. And what nonsense they babble! They flip out over the landscape or they express their views on the Visitors, or they talk about things having no relation to the Zone—like Tender, who got all wound up over his new suit and couldn’t stop. How much he had paid for it, how fine the wool was, how the tailor changed the buttons for him…
“Shut up.”
He looked at me pitifully, flopped his lips, and went on: how much silk it took for the lining. The gardens had ended by now, the clayey lot that used to be the town dump was under us. And I felt a light breeze. Except there was no wind at all, and suddenly there was a gust and the tumbleweed scattered, and I thought I heard something.
“Shut up, you bastard!” I said to Tender.
No, he couldn’t shut himself up. He was on the pockets now. I had no choice.
“Stop the boot!” I said to Kirill.
He braked immediately. Good reflexes, I was proud of him. I took Tender by the shoulder, turned him toward me, and smacked him in the visor. He cracked his nose, poor guy, against the glass, closed his eyes, and shut up. And as soon as he was quiet, I heard it. Trrr, trrr, trrr… Kirill looked over at me, jaws clenched, teeth bared. I motioned for him to be still. God, please be still, don’t move a muscle. But he also heard the crackle, and like all greenhorns, he had the urge to do something immediately, anything. “Reverse?” he whispered. I shook my head desperately and waved my fist right under his visor—cut it out. Honest to God, with these greenhorns you never know which way to look, at the field or at them. And then I forgot about everything. Over the pile of old refuse, over broken glass and rags, crawled a shimmering, a trembling, sort of like hot air at noon over a tin roof. It crossed over the hillock and moved on and on toward us, right next to the pylon; it hovered for a second over the road—or did I just imagine it?—and slithered into the field, behind the bushes and the rotten fences, back there toward the automobile graveyard.
Damn those eggheads! Some thinking to lay the road over the dump! And I had been really sharp myself—what was I thinking of when I raved over their stupid map? “Low speed forward,” I said to Kirill.
“What was that?”
“The devil knows. It was, and now it’s gone. Thank God. And shut up, please, you’re not a human being now, do you understand? You are a machine, my steering wheel.”
I suddenly realized that I was running off at the mouth. “Enough. Not another word.”
I wanted another drink. Let me tell you, these diving suits were nonsense. I lived through so much without a damn suit and will live through so much more, but without a big glug at a moment like this—well, enough of that!
The breeze seemed to have died down and I didn’t hear anything bad. The only sound was the calm, sleepy hum of the motor. It was very sunny and it was hot. There was a haze over the garage. Everything seemed all right, the pylons sailed past, one after the other, Tender was quiet, Kirill was quiet. The greenhorns were getting a little polish. Don’t worry, fellows, you can breathe in the Zone, too, if you know what you’re about. We got to Pylon 27; the metal sign had a red circle with the number 27 in it. Kirill looked at me, I nodded, and our boot stopped moving.
The blossoms had fallen off and it was the time for berries. Now the most important thing for us was total calm. There was no rush. The wind was gone, the visibility good. It was as smooth as silk. I could see the ditch where Slimy had kicked off. There was something colored in it—maybe his clothes. He was a lousy guy, God rest his soul. Greedy, stupid, and dirty. Just the type to get mixed up with Buzzard Burbridge. Buzzard sees them coming a mile away and gets his claws into them. In general, the Zone doesn’t ask who the good guys are and who the bad ones are. So thanks to you, Slimy. You were a damned fool, and no one remembers your real name, but at least you showed the smart people where not to step… Of course, our best bet would have been to get onto the asphalt. The asphalt is smooth and you can see what’s on it, and I know that crack well. I just didn’t like the looks of those two hillocks! A straight line to the asphalt led right between them. There they were, smirking and waiting. Nope, I won’t go between them. A stalker commandment states that there should be at least a hundred feet of clear space either on your left or your right. So, we can go over the left hillock. Of course, I didn’t know what was on the other side. There didn’t seem to be anything on the map, but who trusts maps?
“Listen, Red,” whispered Kirill, “why don’t we jump over? Twenty yards up and then straight down, and we’re right by the garage. Huh?”
“Shut up, you jerk,” I said. “Don’t bother me.”
He wants to go up. And what if something gets you at twenty yards? They’ll never find all your bones. Or maybe the mosquito mange would appear somewhere around here, then there wouldn’t even be a little damp spot left of you. I’ve had it up to here with these risk-takers. He can’t wait: let’s jump, he says. It was clear how to get to the hillock. And then we’d stay there for a bit and think about the next move. I pulled out a handful of nuts and bolts from my pocket. I held them in my palm and showed them to Kirill.
“Do you remember the story of Hansel and Gretel? Studied it in school? Well, we’re going to do it in reverse. Watch!” I threw the first nut. Not far, just like I wanted, about ten yards. The nut got there safely. “Did you see that?”
“So?” he said.
“Not ‘so.’ I asked if you saw it?”
“I saw it.”
“Now drive the boot at the lowest speed over to the nut and stop two feet away from it. Got it?”
“Got it. Are you looking for graviconcentrates?”
“I’m looking for what I should be looking for. Wait, I’ll throw another one. Watch where it goes and don’t take your eyes off it again.”
The second nut also went fine and landed next to the first one.
“Let’s go.”
He started the boot. His face was calm and clear. Obviously he understood. They’re all like that, the eggheads, the most important thing for them is to find a name for things. Until he had come up with a name, he was too pathetic to look at—a real idiot. But now that he had some label like graviconcentrate, he thought that he understood everything and life was a breeze.
; We passed the first nut, and the second, and a third. Tender was sighing and shifting from foot to foot and yawning nervously—he was feeling trapped, poor fellow. It would do him good. He’d knock off ten pounds today, this was better than any diet. I threw a fourth nut. There was something wrong with its trajectory. I couldn’t explain what was wrong, but I sensed that it wasn’t right. I grabbed Kirill’s hand.
“Hold it,” I said. “Don’t move an inch.”
I picked up another one and threw it higher and further. There it was, the mosquito mange! The nut flew up normally and seemed to be dropping normally, but halfway down it was as if something pulled it to the side, and pulled it so hard that when it landed it disappeared into the clay.
“Did you see that?” I whispered.
“Only in the movies.” He was straining to see and I was afraid he’d fall out of the boot. “Throw another one, huh?”
It was funny and sad. One! As though one would be enough! Oh, science. So I threw eight more nuts and bolts until I knew the shape of this mange spot. To be honest, I could have gotten by with seven, but I threw one just for him smack into the middle, so that he could enjoy his concentrate. It crashed into the clay like it was a ten-pound weight instead of a bolt. It crashed and left a hole in the clay. He grunted with pleasure.
“OK,” I said, “we had our fun, now let’s go. Watch closely. I’m throwing out a pathfinder, don’t take your eyes off it.”
So we got around the mosquito mange spot and got up on the hillock. It was so small that it looked like a cat turd. I had never even noticed it before. We hovered over the hillock. The asphalt was less than twenty feet away. It was clear. I could see every blade of grass, every crack. It looked like a snap. Just throw the nut and be on with it.
I couldn’t throw the nut.
I didn’t understand what was happening to me, but I just couldn’t make up my mind to throw that nut.
“What’s the matter?” asked Kirill. “Why are we just standing here?”
Roadside Picnic Page 3
