“Maybe it’s precisely guys like him who shouldn’t be allowed to know,” Wild Boar replied, still in the same quiet voice.
Maxim shifted his gaze back and forth, from one of them to the other. He was puzzled; they had suddenly become almost unrecognizable. They had somehow wilted, and Maxim could no longer sense in Wild Boar the steely core on which so many prosecutor’s offices and field courts had broken their teeth, and Zef’s harum-scarum vulgarity had evaporated. A strange melancholy had broken through, a strange, previously concealed feeling of despair, resentment, and resignation—as if they had both remembered something they ought to have forgotten and had honestly tried to forget.
“I’m going to tell him,” said Zef. He wasn’t asking for permission or advice, he was simply stating his intention. Wild Boar said nothing, and Zef started telling Maxim the facts.
What he told Maxim was horrendous. It was horrendous in its own right, and it was horrendous because it left no more room for any doubts. All the time Zef was speaking—quietly, calmly, in correct, cultured language, and politely remaining silent when Wild Boar interpolated brief phrases—Maxim kept trying to identify some rent in the fabric of this new system of the world, but all his efforts were in vain. The picture that emerged was tidy, primitive, and hopelessly logical; it explained each of the facts known to Maxim, without leaving a single one unexplained. It was the greatest and the most terrible discovery of all the discoveries that Maxim had made on his inhabited island.
The radiation from the towers was not directed at the degenerates. It affected the nervous system of every human being on this planet. The physiological mechanism of this influence was not known, but the essential effect was that the brain of any individual exposed to the radiation lost its ability to critically analyze reality. A thinking individual was transformed into a believing individual—moreover, into an individual who believed frenziedly and fanatically, in defiance of the obvious reality in front of his very eyes. When an individual was in the field of radiation, the most elementary means could be used to instill absolutely any belief at all into him; he accepted whatever was instilled as the single, bright, and unique truth, and was willing to live for it, suffer for it, and die for it.
And the field was always there. Unnoticed, omnipresent, all-permeating. It constantly emanated from the gigantic network of towers that enmeshed the country. Like a gigantic vacuum cleaner, it sucked out of tens of millions of souls the very slightest doubt about what was proclaimed by the newspapers, pamphlets, radio, and television, about what was repeated over and over by teachers in schools and officers in barracks, about what glittered in neon signs across the streets and was pronounced from the pulpits of the churches. The Unknown Fathers directed the will and energy of the masses of millions in whatever direction they saw fit. They could and did compel the masses to adore them; they could and did incite unquenchable hatred for external and internal enemies; if they wished, they could direct millions to face artillery guns and machine guns, and the millions would go to die, exulting; they could make millions kill each other in the name of absolutely anything at all; if they conceived such a caprice, they could incite a mass epidemic of suicides . . . They could do anything.
And twice a day, at ten in the morning and ten in the evening, the gigantic vacuum cleaner was turned up to full power, and for half an hour people simply ceased to be people. All the hidden tensions that had accumulated in their subconscious as a result of the disparity between what had been instilled in them and what was real were released in an ecstatic paroxysm of obsequious servility and adulation. These radiation attacks totally suppressed all natural introspection and instinctive responses, replacing them with a monstrous complex of veneration and duty to the Unknown Fathers. In this condition a person exposed to the radiation completely lost the ability to think rationally and simply acted like a robot that had received a command.
Any danger for the Fathers could only come from those individuals who, owing to certain physiological peculiarities, were not susceptible to suggestion. They were called degenerates. The constant field of radiation had no effect on them at all, and the intense radiation attacks simply inflicted intolerable pain on them. There were relatively few degenerates, about 1 percent or so of the population, but they were the only people who were awake in this kingdom of sleepwalkers. Only they retained the ability to assess a situation soberly and to perceive the world as it was, to act on the world, to change it and control it.
And the most heinous thing of all was that they provided society with the ruling elite that were called the Unknown Fathers. All the Unknown Fathers were degenerates, but by no means were all degenerates Unknown Fathers. And those who had failed to join this elite, or did not wish to join this elite, or did not know that this elite existed—an elite of power-hungry degenerates, revolutionary degenerates, and philistine degenerates—were declared enemies of mankind and dealt with accordingly.
Maxim was overwhelmed by a despair as great as if he had suddenly discovered that his inhabited island was actually populated not by human beings but by puppets. There was nothing left for him to hope for. Zef’s plan to seize control of a sizable region now seemed like plain adventurism to Maxim. He was faced with an immense machine, too simple to evolve and too immense for him to hope that he could destroy it with small forces. There was no force in the country capable of liberating an immense nation that had no idea it wasn’t free, a nation that had fallen out of history, to use an expression of Wild Boar’s. This machine was invulnerable from the inside. It was proof against any minor disturbances. If it was partially destroyed, it immediately restored itself. When it was irritated, it immediately and unambiguously reacted to the irritant, entirely disregarding the fate of its own individual elements.
The only remaining hope lay in the thought that the machine had a Center, a control panel, a brain. This Center could theoretically be destroyed, and then the machine would halt in a state of unstable equilibrium, and a moment would come when it would be possible to try switching this world onto a different set of tracks, setting it back on the rails of history. But the location of the Center was an absolute secret, and who would destroy it?
This was no simple attack on a tower. It was an operation that would require immense resources and, first and foremost, an army of people who were not affected by the radiation. It would require either people who were not susceptible to the radiation or some simple, readily obtainable means of protection from it. Neither of these things existed, and they could not even be expected to appear in the future. The hundreds of thousands of degenerates were fragmented, disunited, and persecuted. Many of them actually belonged to the category of so-called legals, but even if they could be united and armed, the Unknown Fathers would immediately annihilate this little army by sending mobile radiation units, set to maximum power, to confront them.
Zef had stopped talking long ago, but Maxim kept sitting there, dejectedly scrabbling at the black, dry earth with a twig. Then Zef coughed and awkwardly said, “Yes, my friend. That’s the way things really are.” He seemed to already regret having told Maxim the way things really were.
“What are you hoping for?” Maxim asked.
Neither Zef nor Wild Boar said anything.
Maxim raised his head, saw their faces and murmured, “I’m sorry . . . I . . . It’s all so . . . I’m sorry.”
“We have to fight,” Wild Boar declared in a flat voice. “We are fighting, and we’ll keep on fighting. Zef has told you one of HQ’s strategies. There are others, equally vulnerable to criticism, that have never been tried in practice. You have to understand that everything we have right now is still in its formative stage. You can’t develop a mature theory of struggle starting from scratch in just twenty-odd years.”
“Tell me,” Maxim said slowly, “this radiation . . . Does it affect all the races of your world in the same way?”
Wild Boar and Zef exchanged glances. “I don’t understand,” said Wild Boar.
�
�What I’m thinking of is this: Is there any nation here in which you could find at least several thousand individuals like me?”
“It’s not likely,” said Zef. “Except among those . . . those mutants. Massaraksh, don’t be offended, Mak, but after all, you’re obviously a mutant . . . An advantageous mutation, one chance in a million . . .”
“I’m not offended,” said Maxim. “So, the mutants. That means down there, farther south?”
“Yes,” said Wild Boar. He was gazing at Maxim intently.
“And what’s actually down there, to the south?” Maxim asked.
“Forest, then desert,” Wild Boar replied.
“And mutants?”
“Yes. Half animals. Insane savages . . . Listen, Mak, drop this idea.”
“Have you ever seen them?”
“I’ve only seen dead ones,” said Wild Boar. “They sometimes catch them in the forest, and then they hang them in front of the bunkhouses to improve morale.”
“But what for?”
“What for?” Zef roared. “You fool! They’re wild beasts! They’re incurable, and more dangerous than any animals! I’ve seen some of them—you’ve never seen anything like it, even in your dreams.”
“Then why are they running towers down there?” asked Maxim. “Do they want to tame them?”
“Drop it, Mak,” Wild Boar said again. “It’s hopeless. They hate us . . . But then, do what you think is best. We don’t hold anybody here.”
There was silence for a while. And then behind them, in the distance, they heard a familiar growling sound.
Zef half rose. “A tank,” he mused. “Should we go and kill it? It’s not far away, quadrant eighteen . . . No, tomorrow.”
Maxim made a sudden decision. “I’ll deal with it. You go, I’ll catch up with you.”
Zef gave him a doubtful look. “Will you manage OK?” he asked. “You could blow yourself up.”
“Mak,” said the one-handed man. “Think!”
Zef was still looking at Maxim, then suddenly he bared his teeth in a grin. “Ah, that’s what you want the tank for!” he said. “You sly young dog. Naaah, you can’t fool me. OK. Go. I’ll keep your supper for you; if you change your mind, come back and gorge on it . . . Oh, and bear in mind that lots of the self-propelled vehicles are booby-trapped, so be careful how you rummage around in there . . . Let’s go, Boar. He’ll catch up with us.”
Wild Boar was about to say something, but Maxim had already gotten up and started striding toward the road through the forest. He didn’t want any more talk. He walked quickly, without looking back, holding his grenade launcher under his arm. Now that he had made his decision, he felt relieved, and what had to be done now depended only on his own know-how and his own dexterity.
14
Early in the morning Maxim drove the tank out onto the highway and pointed its nose toward the south. He could go now, but he clambered out of the control bay, jumped down onto the smashed concrete, and sat on the edge of the roadside ditch, wiping his dirty hands with grass. The rusty hulk calmly gurgled beside him, with the pointed top of its rocket aimed up at the sky.
He had worked all night but didn’t feel tired at all. The indigenous population here built things soundly, and the machine was in pretty good condition. No booby traps had been discovered, of course, but on the other hand, there was a manual control system. If anybody really had blown himself up in a machine like this, it could only have happened because the boiler was absolutely worn out or because he was a total technical ignoramus. True, the boiler was generating no more than 20 percent of normal power, and the undercarriage was thoroughly battered, but Maxim was content—yesterday he hadn’t hoped for even this much.
It was about six o’clock in the morning and already quite bright. Usually at this time the educatees were drawn up into check-cloth columns, hastily fed, and driven out to work. Maxim’s absence had already been noticed, of course, and it was quite possible that now he was listed as a fugitive and had been condemned to death. Or maybe Zef had thought up some kind of explanation—that he’d sprained his foot, been wounded, or something of that sort.
The forest had turned quiet. The “dogs,” who had called to each other all night, had calmed down, and probably retreated underground, where they were giggling and rubbing their paws together as they recalled how they had frightened those bipeds yesterday . . . He ought to give some serious attention to these “dogs” later on, but right now he would have to leave them behind. He wondered if they were sensitive to the radiation or not.
Such strange creatures . . . At night, while he was rummaging in the motor, two of them had loitered nearby behind the bushes all the time, slyly observing him, and then a third had come and climbed up a tree in order to get a better view. Maxim had stuck his head out of the hatch and waved to him and then, simply for the sake of mischief, reproduced as well as he could the four-syllable word that the choir had chanted the day before. The one up on the tree became absolutely furious: his eyes vehemently glinted, the fur all over his body stood up on end, and he started shouting some kind of guttural insults. The two in the bushes were obviously shocked by this, because they immediately left and didn’t come back. But the abusive one stayed up in the tree for a long time, quite unable to calm down—he hissed and spat, and pretended that he was going to attack, baring his widely spaced white fangs. He only cleared off when it was almost morning, having realized that Maxim had no intention of taking him on in a fair fight . . .
It was unlikely that these creatures were rational in the human sense, but they were fascinating, and they probably represented some kind of organized force, if they had dislodged the military garrison commanded by the prince or duke from the Fortress . . . There was so little information available here, nothing but rumors and legends . . .
It would have been good to wash up now. He was smeared all over with rust, and the boiler was leaking too; his skin was stinging from the radiation. If Zef and his one-handed comrade agreed to go along, he would have to block off the boiler with three or four slabs of metal, tear some of the armor off the flanks . . .
Far away in the forest there was a loud thud, followed by a resounding echo—the suicide-squad sappers had started their working day. Senseless, so senseless . . . There was another loud thud, and a machine gun started chattering, carrying on for a long time, before eventually falling silent. The day turned completely light, and it was bright, with a cloudless sky, as even and white as glowing milk. The concrete on the highway glittered with dew, but there was no dew around the tank—the armor radiated a noxious warmth.
Zef and Wild Boar appeared out of the bushes that had crept out onto the road, saw the tank, and started walking faster. Maxim got up and went toward them.
“You’re alive!” Zef said instead of greeting him. “Just as I expected. Your gruel . . . I . . . you know, brother, there was nothing to carry it in. But I brought your bread, here, scoff it down.”
“Thanks,” said Maxim, taking the crusty end of a loaf.
Wild Boar stood there, leaning on his mine detector and looking at Maxim.
“Eat up and get out of here,” said Zef. “They’ve come to collect you, brother. I reckon they want you for further investigation.”
“Who?” Maxim asked, and stopped chewing.
“He didn’t report to us,” said Zef. “Some flunky or other covered in medals from head to toe. He bawled out the entire camp, demanding to know why you weren’t there, and almost shot me . . . but I, you know, just gaped at him and reported that you’d died the death of the brave in a minefield.” He walked around the tank, said “Filthy heap of garbage,” sat down on the shoulder of the road, and started rolling a cigarette.
“Strange,” said Maxim, pensively taking a bite of the bread. “For further investigation? What for?”
“Maybe it’s Fank?” Wild Boar asked in a low voice.
“Fank? Average height, square face, peeling skin?”
“Nothing of the kind,” sai
d Zef. “A lanky great beanpole, covered in pimples, as dim-witted as they come. A guardsman.”
“That’s not Fank,” said Maxim.
“Maybe it’s on Fank’s orders?” Wild Boar suggested.
Maxim shrugged and dispatched the final piece of crust into his mouth. “I don’t know,” he said. “I used to think that Fank had something to do with the underground, but now I just don’t know what to think . . .”
“Then you’d definitely better leave,” said Wild Boar. “Although, to be quite honest, I don’t know what’s worse—that Guards officer or the mutants . . .”
“Come on, now, let him go,” said Zef. “He’s not going to work as a courier for you in any case, and this way at least he might bring back some kind of information about the South . . . if they don’t skin him alive down there.”
“You won’t go with me, of course,” Maxim said in an affirmative tone of voice.
Wild Boar shook his head. “No,” he said. “I wish you luck.”
“Dump the rocket,” Zef advised him. “Or you’ll get blown up along with it . . . And remember this: There’ll be two checkpoints ahead. You’ll easily skip through them, only don’t stop. They face south. And after that the farther you go, the worse it gets. Appalling radiation, nothing to eat, mutants, and even farther on—nothing but sand and drought.”
“Thanks,” said Maxim. “Good-bye.” He jumped up onto a caterpillar track, swung open the hatch, and clambered into the hot semi-darkness. He had already set his hands on the levers when he remembered that he had one more question to ask.
The Inhabited Island Page 25
