One way or another, this is a total disaster for me, Maxim decided, gagging on his final piece of food. I have to learn the language as quickly as possible, and then everything will become clear.
“Good,” said Fish, taking away his plate. “We go.”
Maxim sighed and got up. They walked out into the corridor. It was a long, dirty-blue corridor, with long rows of closed doors, exactly like the door of Maxim’s room, on the right and the left. Maxim had never met anyone here, but on a couple of occasions he had heard strange, agitated voices from behind doors. Perhaps other aliens awaiting their fate were kept here too?
Fish walked in front with a broad, male stride, as straight as a ramrod, and Maxim suddenly felt very sorry for her. This country clearly still had no concept of the beauty industry, and poor Fish was left entirely to her own devices. With that sparse, colorless hair protruding from under her white cap, those huge shoulder blades bulging under her white coat, and those hideously skinny legs, it must be impossible to put a brave face on things—except perhaps with beings from other planets, and even then only with the nonhumanoids. The professor’s assistant treated her disdainfully, and Hippopotamus took absolutely no notice of her; the only thing he ever said to her was “Yyy,” which was probably his version of the intercosmic “Ehhh . . .” Recalling his own far-from-generous attitude toward her, Maxim felt a sudden pang of conscience. He hurried to catch up with her, stroked her bony shoulder, and said, “Nolu a fine girl. Good.”
She glanced up at him with her dry face, looking more than ever like a startled bream face-on. She removed his hand, knitted her almost invisible brows, and declared in a severe tone of voice, “Maxim not good. Man. Woman. Mustn’t.”
Feeling embarrassed, Maxim dropped back again, and they walked to the end of the corridor like that. Fish pushed open a door and they found themselves in the large, bright room that Maxim had dubbed the “reception area.” The windows here were tastelessly decorated with rectangular grilles of thick iron bars, and there was a tall, leather-upholstered door that led into Hippopotamus’s laboratory. And also, for some reason, there were always two strapping, rather slow-moving representatives of the local population who sat by that door, without responding to any greetings and appearing to be in a permanent state of trance.
As usual, Fish walked straight through into the laboratory, leaving Maxim in the reception area. As usual, Maxim said hello, and as usual, the men didn’t reply. The door into the laboratory was left slightly ajar, and Maxim could hear Hippopotamus’s irritated voice and the loud clicking of the activated mentoscope. He walked over to a window and looked out for a while at the misty, wet landscape and the forested plain, dissected by the express highway, and at a tall metal tower that was barely visible in the rain, but he quickly grew bored and walked into the laboratory without waiting to be asked.
Here, as usual, the air had a pleasant smell of ozone, the duplicate screens of the mentoscope were flickering, and the bald-headed, overworked assistant with a name that was impossible to remember and the new Russian nickname Floor Lamp was pretending to adjust the apparatus while in fact intently listening to the ruckus. Sitting in Hippopotamus’s chair at Hippopotamus’s desk was a stranger with a square, peeling face and red, puffy eyes. Hippopotamus was standing in front of him with his feet planted wide and his hands on his hips, leaning slightly forward. He was yelling. His neck was bluish-gray, his bald patch was blazing a bright sunset purple, and spray was flying out of his mouth in all directions.
Trying not to attract attention, Maxim quietly walked through to his work seat and said hello to the assistant in a quiet voice. Floor Lamp, a nervous, hassled kind of individual, recoiled in horror, his foot slipped on a thick cable, and Maxim only just managed to grab his shoulders in time. The unfortunate Floor Lamp went limp, his eyes rolled back and up, and the blood completely drained from his face. He was a strange man, and hysterically afraid of Maxim. Fish appeared out of nowhere with a little bottle, already opened, that was immediately held up to Floor Lamp’s nose. Floor Lamp hiccupped and came back to life, and before he could slip back into oblivion, Maxim leaned him against a metal cupboard and hastily moved away.
On taking his place in the scanning chair, Maxim discovered that the stranger with the peeling face had stopped listening to Hippopotamus and was instead intently studying him. Maxim amiably smiled. The stranger inclined his head slightly. At this point Hippopotamus slammed his fist down onto the desk with an appalling crash and grabbed the phone. The stranger took advantage of the pause that followed to utter several words, of which Maxim could only make out “must” and “mustn’t.” The stranger picked up a sheet of thick, bluish paper with a bright green border off the desk and fluttered it in the air in front of Hippopotamus’s face. Hippopotamus peevishly waved it aside and instantly started barking into the phone. “Must,” “mustn’t” and the incomprehensible “massaraksh” gushed out of him like the bounties flooding out of a horn of plenty, and Maxim also caught the word for “window.” It all ended with Hippopotamus angrily flinging down the receiver and bellowing at the stranger several more times, spraying him with saliva from head to foot, before shooting out of the room and slamming the door behind him.
The stranger mopped off his face with a handkerchief, got up out of his chair, opened a long, flat box that was lying on the windowsill, and took some kind of dark clothing out of it.
“Come here,” he said to Maxim. “Get dressed.”
Maxim looked over at Fish.
“Go,” said Fish. “Get dressed. Must.”
Maxim realized that the long-awaited turning point in his destiny was finally arriving: someone somewhere had decided something. Forgetting Fish’s admonitions, he immediately pulled off the ugly coverall and arrayed himself, with the stranger’s help, in the new attire. To Maxim’s mind, this attire was not remarkable for either its beauty or its comfort, but it was exactly the same as what the stranger himself was wearing. He could even have surmised that the stranger had sacrificed his own spare set of clothes, since the sleeves were too short while the trousers hung down behind like a sack and kept slipping off Maxim’s hips. However, everyone else present found Maxim’s appearance in his new clothes very much to their liking. The stranger muttered something approving and Fish, softening the features of her face—as far as that is possible for a bream—stroked Maxim’s shoulders and tugged the jacket down on him, and even Floor Lamp flashed a pallid smile from his refuge behind the control desk.
“Let’s go,” the stranger said, and set off toward the door through which the enraged Hippopotamus had rushed out.
“Good-bye,” Maxim said to Fish. “Thank you,” he added in Russian.
“Good-bye,” Fish replied. “Maxim good. Healthy. Must.”
She seemed to be moved. Or perhaps she was concerned because the suit didn’t fit very well? Maxim waved to poor Floor Lamp and hurried after the stranger.
They walked through several rooms cluttered with ponderous, antiquated apparatuses, rode down to the first floor in an elevator that rattled and clanged, and arrived in the spacious, low vestibule to which Gai had brought Maxim several days earlier. And just like several days earlier, they had to wait while documents of some kind were written out, while a funny little man in a ludicrous hat scratched something on pink forms, and the red-eyed stranger scratched something on green forms, and then a young woman with optical enhancers on her eyes applied violet impressions to these forms, and everybody exchanged forms and impressions, in the process getting confused and shouting at each other, and grabbing the phone, and eventually the little man in the ludicrous hat took two green forms and one pink one for himself, tearing the pink form in half and giving one half to the girl who had applied the impressions, and the stranger with the peeling face was given two pink forms and a piece of thick blue cardboard, as well as a round metal counter with words stamped on it, and a minute later he gave all of this to a tall, strapping man with bright buttons who was standing by the ex
it, only twenty steps away from the little man in the ludicrous headgear, and as they were already walking out into the street, the strapping man started hoarsely shouting, and the red-eyed stranger went back again, and when he came back explained to Maxim that he had forgotten to take the square of cardboard, which he stuffed inside his jacket with a deep sigh. Only after that was Maxim, who was already streaming with sweat, allowed to get into an irrationally long automobile, taking a seat to the right of the red-eyed man, who was extremely agitated and panting hard and kept reciting Hippopotamus’s favorite mantra: “massaraksh.”
The car started growling and smoothly moved off, winding its way out through a motionless herd of other cars, all empty and wet, before driving across the large, asphalted square in front of the building, around an immense flower bed with withered flowers, past a high yellow wall with broken glass scattered along its top, and finally rolling up to the turn onto the express highway, where it braked to a sharp halt.
“Massaraksh,” the red-eyed man hissed again, and switched off the engine.
A long column of identical trucks, with bodies made of crookedly riveted, bent iron, painted in blotches, stretched out along the highway. Rows of motionless round objects with a damp metallic glint protruded above the sides of the trucks, which were moving at a leisurely pace and maintaining the correct intervals, with their engines smoothly murmuring, and diffusing an appalling stench of organic combustion products.
Maxim examined the door on his side, figured out what did what, and raised the window. Without looking at him, the red-eyed man uttered a long phrase that was absolutely incomprehensible.
“I don’t understand,” said Maxim.
The red-eyed man turned toward him with an expression of surprise and, if his intonation was anything to go by, asked a question.
“I don’t understand,” Maxim repeated.
The red-eyed man seemed even more surprised by that. He reached into his pocket and took out a flat box filled with little white sticks, stuck one of them in his mouth, and offered the others to Maxim. Out of politeness Maxim took the little box and stated examining it. The box was made of cardboard and had a pungent smell of dried plant matter of some kind. Maxim took one of the little sticks, bit off a small piece, and chewed it. Then he hastily lowered the window, stuck his head out and spat. It wasn’t food.
“Mustn’t,” he said, handing the little box back to the red-eyed man. “Tastes bad.”
The red-eyed man looked at him with his mouth half-open and the little white stick adhering to his lip and dangling from it. Following the local rules, Maxim touched the tip of his own nose with one finger and introduced himself: “Maxim.” The red-eyed man muttered something and a little flame suddenly appeared in his hand; he lowered the end of the little white stick into it, and immediately the car was filled with nauseating smoke.
“Massaraksh!” Maxim exclaimed, and indignantly flung the door open. “Mustn’t!”
He had realized what the little sticks were. In the passenger car that he traveled in with Gai, almost all the men had been poisoning the air with exactly the same kind of smoke, only they hadn’t used little white sticks to do it but long or short wooden objects that looked like children’s whistles from some ancient era. They were breathing in some kind of narcotic—undoubtedly an extremely injurious habit, and at that time, in the train, Maxim’s only consolation had been that the likable Gai was clearly also categorically opposed to this custom.
The stranger hurriedly tossed the little narcotic stick out the window and for some reason flapped his hand in front of his face. Just to be on the safe side, Maxim also flapped his hand and then introduced himself again. The red-eyed man turned out to be called Fank, and that was as far as the conversation went. They sat there for about five minutes, exchanging affable glances and taking turns pointing at the endless column of trucks and repeating “massaraksh” to each other. Then the interminable column finally came to an end, and Fank drove out onto the highway.
He must have been in a hurry. In any case, he immediately revved up the engine to a velvety roar, switched on some device that broadcast an abhorrent howling, and set off—in Maxim’s opinion completely disregarding every rule of safety—racing along the highway, overtaking the column, and barely managing to dodge the cars hurtling toward him.
They passed the column of trucks and then, almost flying out onto the roadside, passed a wide red carriage with a solitary, very wet driver; they slipped past a wooden cart on wobbling wheels with spokes, drawn by a wet fossil of an animal, drove a group of howling pedestrians wearing canvas cloaks into a ditch, and then flew under the sheltering branches of huge trees with spreading crowns, planted in neat rows on each side of the road. Fank kept increasing speed, setting the oncoming stream of air roaring through the streamlined cowling, and vehicles ahead of them, frightened by this roaring, squeezed up close against the side of the road, making way. It seemed to Maxim that the car hadn’t been designed for this kind of speed—it was too unstable—and he felt rather anxious.
Soon buildings sprang up, flanking the road on both sides, the car hurtled into the city, and Fank was forced to reduce speed. The first time, with Gai, Maxim had traveled through the city in a large public vehicle, crammed unbelievably full of passengers. His head was jammed against the low ceiling, people on every side were swearing and smoking, and the ones standing next to him kept callously stepping on his feet and jamming sharp corners of some kind into his sides. It was late evening, the windows hadn’t been washed for a long time, and they were splattered with mud and caked with dust. And, in addition, they reflected the light of the little lamps inside the vehicle, so Maxim hadn’t seen anything of the city. But now he was a given a chance to see it.
The streets were disproportionately narrow and completely choked with traffic. Fank’s automobile barely even crept along, boxed in on all sides by vehicles of every possible kind. The rear wall of a van, covered in gaudy, brightly colored inscriptions and crude images of people and animals, towered up in front of them. On their left two identical cars crawled along, neither overtaking nor falling back, crammed with gesticulating men and women. Beautiful, striking women, not like Fish. Farther to the left some kind of electric train trudged along with a rattling and rumbling of iron, constantly scattering blue and green sparks; it was completely choked with passengers, who were hanging out of all the doors in bunches. On the right there was a sidewalk, a motionless strip of asphalt where traffic was forbidden. People wearing wet clothes in various tones of black and gray were walking along the sidewalk in a dense stream, colliding with each other, overtaking each other, dodging away from each other, forcing their way forward with their shoulders, continually running in through open, brightly lit doorways and mingling with the seething crowds behind immense misted-up windows, and sometimes suddenly gathering into large groups, creating blockages and whirlpools, craning their necks and peering at something or other. There were very many thin, pale faces, very similar to Fish’s face, and almost all of them were unattractive, morbidly scrawny, excessively pale, haggard, and angular. But they gave the impression of contented people; they laughed frequently and willingly, they acted spontaneously, their eyes glowed, and their voices rang out, loud and lively, on all sides. Perhaps this is a fairly successful world after all, Maxim thought. In any case, although the streets are dirty, at least they’re not piled high with garbage, and the buildings look quite cheerful; almost all the windows have a light in them because the day is overcast, and that means they obviously have no shortage of electricity. The advertising announcements glitter quite merrily, and as for the haggard faces, with this level of street noise and this level of air pollution, you could hardly expect anything else. It’s a poor world, poorly organized, and not entirely healthy . . . but outwardly at least it appears to be fairly successful.
Suddenly something about the street changed. Agitated shouts rang through the air. A man climbed up a streetlamp, hung there, and started strenuously sh
outing, waving his free hand around. The crowd on the sidewalk started singing. People stopped, tearing off their hats, rolling up their eyes, and singing, shouting themselves hoarse, raising their narrow faces toward the huge multicolored inscriptions that had suddenly blazed into life across the street.
“Massaraksh,” Fank hissed, and the car abruptly swerved.
Maxim looked at Fank. He was deathly pale and his face was contorted. Shaking his head around, he lifted one hand off the oval of the steering wheel with a struggle and stared at his watch. “Massaraksh,” he groaned, and added several more words, but the only ones Maxim could recognize were “I don’t understand.” Then Fank looked back over his shoulder, and his face contorted even more agonizingly. Maxim looked back too, but there was nothing special behind them. Just a completely enclosed bright yellow vehicle, like a square box, moving along the street.
The shouting in the street was completely unbearable now, but that wasn’t what bothered Maxim. Fank was obviously losing consciousness, but the car was still moving. The van in front of them braked, its signal lights lit up, and the brightly daubed wall suddenly leaped toward them; there was a repulsive scraping sound and a dull thud, and the car’s warped hood stood up on end.
“Fank!” Maxim shouted. “Fank! Mustn’t!”
Fank lay there with one hand and his head lowered onto the steering wheel, groaning loudly and frequently. All around them brakes squealed as the traffic came to a standstill and horns sounded. Maxim shook Fank by the shoulder, then let go of him, swung his own door open, stuck his head out, and shouted in Russian, “Over here! He needs help!” A singing, yelling, clamoring crowd of people had already gathered by the car, energetically gesturing and brandishing their fists in the air above their heads. Maxim saw dozens of pairs of glaring, bloodshot eyes rolling around in their sockets. He didn’t understand anything at all; either these people were outraged by the accident, or they were delighted to distraction about something, or they were threatening somebody.
The Inhabited Island Page 5
