The Inhabited Island

by Arkady Strugatsky

  “Don’t let them go, don’t let them go,” the meeting affirmed. “How can we manage without them?” “And we’ve fed them, we bore them and raised them, they ought to realize that, but they don’t care, they’re always looking around for a chance to cut loose . . .”

  The bald freak finally calmed down, took his seat, and started greedily gulping down his cold tea. The meeting calmed down too and went quiet. The old folks sat there completely still, trying not to look at Maxim.

  Dejectedly nodding his head, Boshku said, “My, my, what an unhappy life we have! No salvation from anywhere. And what did we ever do to anyone?”

  “We should never have been born, that’s what,” said Filbert. “They didn’t think before they had us, it was the wrong time . . .” He held out his empty cup. “And we’re wrong to have children. Just for them to die. Yes, yes, for them to die.”

  “The equilibrium . . .” a loud, hoarse voice suddenly declared. “I already told you that, Mak. You didn’t want to understand me . . .”

  They couldn’t tell where the voice came from. Nobody said anything, keeping their eyes morosely lowered. Only the bird on the Sorcerer’s shoulder carried on shifting its feet and opening and closing its yellow beak. The Sorcerer himself was sitting absolutely still, with his eyes closed and his thin, dry lips pressed together.

  “But now, I hope, you have understood,” the bird seemed to continue. “You wish to disrupt this equilibrium. Well now, that is possible. It lies within your power. But the question is: What for? Will anyone ask you to do it? You have made the correct choice, you have consulted with the most pitiful and the most unfortunate, the people who have drawn the most onerous lot of all in this equilibrium. But even they do not wish to see the equilibrium disrupted. Then what is it that motivates you?”

  The bird ruffled up its feathers and tucked its head under its wing, but the voice carried on, and now Gai realized that it was the Sorcerer himself speaking, without opening his lips, and without moving a single muscle in his face. Gai found this very frightening, and so did everyone else in the meeting, even the duke-prince. Maxim was the only one who looked at the Sorcerer with a sullen and oddly challenging air.

  “The impatience of an agitated conscience!” the Sorcerer declared. “Your conscience has been pampered by constant attention—it starts groaning at the slightest discomfort, and your reason respectfully bows down to it, instead of shouting at it and putting it in its place. Your conscience is outraged by the existing order of things, and with obedient haste your reason seeks ways to change this order. But the order has its own laws. These laws derive from the aspirations of immense masses of people, and they can only change with a change in those aspirations . . . And so on the one hand we have the aspirations of immense masses of people, and on the other hand your conscience, the embodiment of your own aspirations. Your conscience urges you to change the existing order—that is, to transgress the laws of this order, which are determined by the aspirations of the masses; that is, to change the aspirations of masses of millions of people to match the image and likeness of your aspirations. This is ludicrous and antihistorical. Your reason, clouded and deafened by your conscience, has lost its ability to distinguish the real good of the masses from the imaginary good dictated by your conscience. And reason that has ceased to distinguish the real from the imaginary is no longer reason. Reason must be kept pure. If you do not wish or are unable to do that, then so much the worse for you. And not only for you.

  “You will tell me that in the world from which you came, people cannot live without a clear conscience. Well then, cease living. That is also not a bad solution—for you and for everyone else.”

  The Sorcerer stopped talking, and all heads turned to look at Maxim. Gai hadn’t entirely comprehended what this pronouncement was all about. It was evidently an echo of some old argument. And it was also clear that the Sorcerer considered Maxim to be an intelligent but willful individual, who acted more out of caprice than out of necessity. That was hurtful. Maxim was a strange character, of course, but he never spared himself and always wished everyone well—not out of some kind of caprice but out of genuinely profound conviction. Of course, forty million people befuddled by radiation didn’t want any changes, but they were befuddled, weren’t they? It wasn’t fair . . .

  “I cannot agree with you,” Maxim said in a cool voice. “With its pain, my conscience sets goals, and my reason realizes them. My conscience determines ideals; my reason seeks for the paths to them. That is the function of reason—to seek for paths. Without conscience, reason works only for itself, which means it works to no purpose. And as for the contradiction between my aspirations and those of the masses, there is a definite ideal: a human being should be free, both spiritually and physically. In this world the masses are not yet aware of this ideal, and the path to it is a painful one. But a start has to be made sometime. It is precisely those with an acutely sensitive conscience who must agitate the masses, not permit them to slumber in the brutish condition of cattle, and raise them up for the struggle against oppression. Even if the masses do not feel this oppression.”

  “Correct,” the Sorcerer agreed with surprising readiness. “Conscience does indeed set ideals. But ideals are called ideals because they stand in stark contrast to reality. And therefore, when reason sets to work—cold, calm reason—it starts searching for the means to realize ideals, and it turns out that these means will not fit within the frameworks of the ideals, and these frameworks have to be expanded, and conscience has to be slightly stretched, adjusted, and accommodated . . .

  “This is all that I wish to say, this is all that I repeat to you: you should not mollycoddle your conscience, you should expose it as often as possible to the dusty draft of new reality, and not be afraid that little blotches or a coarse crust might appear on it . . . But then, you understand this yourself. You have simply not yet learned to call things by their own names. But you will learn to do that too.

  “Well, so your conscience has proclaimed a task: to overthrow the tyranny of these Unknown Fathers. Your reason has calculated how things stand and given you its advice: since the tyranny cannot be blown up from within, we shall strike at it from the outside, we shall throw the barbarians against it . . . Let the forest folk be trampled, let the channel of the Blue Serpent be dammed with corpses, let there be a great war, which might, perhaps, lead to the overthrow of the tyrants—all for the sake of a noble ideal. Well then, your conscience has said with a slight frown, I shall have to grow a little coarser for the sake of the great cause.”

  “Massaraksh . . .” hissed Maxim, redder and more furious than Gai had ever seen him before! “Yes, massaraksh! Yes! Everything is exactly as you say! But what else can be done? On the other side of the Blue Serpent forty million people have been transformed into walking blocks of wood. Forty million slaves . . .”

  “That’s right, that’s right,” said the Sorcerer. “But it’s a different matter that the plan is inappropriate in and of itself: the barbarians will shatter against the towers and roll back, and in general our poor scouts are not capable of doing anything serious. But within the framework of this same plan, you could have contacted, for instance, the Island Empire . . .

  “Although that is not what I mean to say. I’m afraid you simply arrived too late, Mak. You should have come here about fifty years ago, before there were any towers, before there was a war, when there was still some hope of conveying your ideals to the millions . . . But now there is no such hope, now the age of the towers has begun . . . unless you drag those millions here one by one, as you dragged this boy with a gun away . . .

  “Only do not think that I am trying to dissuade you. I can see very clearly that you are a force. And your appearance here signifies of itself the inevitable collapse of the equilibrium on the surface of our little sphere. Act. But do not let your conscience hinder you from thinking clearly, and do not let your reason be embarrassed when conscience must be set aside . . . And I also advise you to
remember this: I do not know how things are in your world, but in ours no power remains without a master for long. Someone always appears who will attempt to tame it and subordinate it to himself—either furtively or on some plausible pretext . . . That is all I wished to say.”

  The Sorcerer got to his feet with surprising agility, and the bird on his shoulder squatted down and spread out its wings. He slithered along the wall on his short little legs and disappeared through the door. And the entire gathering immediately set out after him. They walked away, moaning and groaning, still not having really understood what had been said but clearly pleased that everything had remained as it was, that the Sorcerer had forbidden the dangerous plan, that the Sorcerer had shown compassion for them, that he had stuck up for them, and now they could live out their lives in the way they had been doing. After all, they had an entire eternity still ahead of them—ten years, or even more than that.

  The last to plod away was Boshku, with his empty teapot, and Gai, Mak, and the duke-prince were the only ones left in the room, apart from Baker, who was slumbering soundly in the corner, exhausted by his intellectual efforts. Gai’s head felt bleary and confused, and so did his heart. The only thing he had clearly understood was this: My poor life, for the first half of it I was just a puppet, a wooden doll in somebody else’s hands, and now I’ll obviously have to live out the second half as a wanderer with no homeland, no friends, and no tomorrow . . .

  “Are you offended, Mak?” the duke-prince asked with a guilty air.

  “No, not really,” Maxim replied. “More the opposite, in fact: what I feel is relief. The Sorcerer’s right, my conscience isn’t ready yet for undertakings like this. I probably need to do a bit more wandering and looking. Train my conscience a bit . . .” He gave a strangely disagreeable laugh. “What can you suggest to me, Duke-Prince?”

  The old duke-prince got up with a grunt and started walking around the room, rubbing his stiff sides. “In the first place, I don’t advise you to go on into the desert,” he said. “Whether there are barbarians there or not, you won’t find anything to suit your needs down there. Maybe it is worthwhile to take the Sorcerer’s advice and establish contact with the Islanders, although, as God is my witness, I don’t know how to do that. Probably you have to go to the sea and start from there . . . if the Islanders aren’t just another myth, and if they want to talk to you . . .

  “It seems to me that the best thing to do is go back and act on your own there. Remember what the Sorcerer said: you are a force. And everyone tries to put a force to use for his own purposes. In the history of our empire there have been numerous instances of bold and forceful individuals who have risen to the throne . . . of course, they were precisely the ones who created the most cruel traditions of tyranny, but that doesn’t apply to you—you’re not like that, and you are hardly likely to become like that . . . If I have understood you correctly, it is pointless to hope for a mass movement, which means that your path is not the path of civil war, and in fact not the path of war at all. You should infiltrate and act on your own, as a saboteur. After all, you are right, the system of towers must have a Center. And power over the North lies in the hands of whoever controls that Center. You need to take that lesson to heart.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not for me,” Maxim slowly said. “I can’t say why just yet, but it’s not for me, I can sense it. I don’t want to control the Center. But you are right about one thing: there’s nothing for me to do here or in the desert. The desert is too far away, and there is no base here for me to rely on. But there’s still so much for me to find out, there’s still Pandeia and Hontia, there are still the mountains, there’s still the Island Empire somewhere . . . Have you heard about the white submarines? No? But I have, and so has Gai here, and we know a man who has seen them and fought against them. So that means they can fight . . .

  “Well all right.” Maxim jumped to his feet. “No point in dragging things out. Thank you, Duke-Prince. You’ve been a great help to us. Let’s go, Gai.”

  They walked out into the square and stopped beside the half-melted statue. Gai wistfully gazed around. On all sides the yellow ruins trembled in the heat haze, and the air was stifling and foul-smelling, but he no longer wanted to leave this place, this terrible but already familiar place, and go trudging through the forests again, subjecting himself to the will of all the dark, malicious coincidences lying in wait for a man there with every breath he took . . . He could go back to his own little room, play with bald little Tanga, finally make her the whistle he had promised to make out of a spent cartridge case—and, massaraksh, not begrudge firing a bullet into the air for the sake of the poor little girl . . .

  “Where do you intend to go, after all?” the duke-prince asked, protecting his face from the dust with his battered, faded hat.

  “To the west,” Maxim replied. “To the sea. How far is it from here to the sea?”

  “Two hundred miles,” the duke-prince pensively said. “And you’ll have to pass through badly polluted areas . . . Listen,” he added. “Maybe we could do this . . .” He paused for a long time, and Gai had already begun impatiently stepping from one foot to the other, but Maxim wasn’t in any hurry.

  “Agh, what do I really need it for!” the duke-prince exclaimed at last. “To be quite honest, I was keeping it for myself. I thought that when things got really bad, when my nerves gave out, I’d just get in it and go back home, and then they could shoot me if they wanted . . . But what’s the point now . . . It’s too late.”

  “A plane?” Maxim quickly asked, casting a hopeful glance at the duke-prince.

  “Yes. The Mountain Eagle. Does that name mean anything to you? No, of course not . . . Or to you, young man? No again . . . It was once an extremely famous bomber, gentlemen. His Imperial Highness Prince Kirnu’s Quadruple-Golden-Bannered Personal Bombing Craft, the Mountain Eagle. I recall that the soldiers were forced to learn that by heart . . . Private Such and Such, name the personal bombing craft of His Imperial Highness! And the private would name it . . . Yes . . . Well then, I’ve preserved it. At first I wanted to evacuate the wounded in it, but there were too many. And then, after all the wounded died . . . Ah, what’s the point in telling you about that . . . You take it, my friend. There’s enough fuel to get halfway across the world . . .”

  “Thank you,” said Maxim. “Thank you, Duke-Prince. I’ll never forget you.”

  “Never mind me,” the old man said. “I’m not giving it to you for my sake. But if you should manage to do anything, my friend, don’t forget these folks here.”

  “I’ll manage something,” said Maxim. “I’ll manage, massaraksh! This has to work out, conscience or no conscience! And I’ll never forget anybody.”

  16

  Gai had never flown in an airplane before. In fact, this was the first time he had ever seen a plane. He had seen police helicopters and flying tactical platforms plenty of times and once had even been involved in an airborne raid—their section was loaded into a helicopter and landed on a highway, where a crowd of penal brigade soldiers who had rebelled because of the rotten food was surging toward a bridge. Gai’s memories of this aerial assault maneuver were extremely unpleasant: the helicopter had flown very low, shuddering and swaying so badly that his guts were turned completely inside out, and on top of that there was the stupefying roar of the rotor, the stench of gasoline, and fountains of engine oil spraying out from everywhere.

  But this was a different matter altogether.

  Gai was totally flabbergasted by the Personal Bombing Craft of HIH, the Mountain Eagle. It was a genuine monster of a machine. It was absolutely impossible to imagine that it could rise up into the air: its narrow, ribbed body, decorated with numerous gold emblems, was as long as a street, and its gigantic, menacingly magnificent wings reached out so far, an entire brigade could have taken shelter under them. They were as far from the ground as the roof of a building, but the blades of the six immense propellers reached almost all the way back down. The bo
mber stood on three wheels, each several times the height of a man. The path to the dizzying height of the glittering glass cabin lay along the slim, silvery thread of a light aluminum ladder. Yes, this was a genuine symbol of the old empire, a symbol of a great past, a symbol of the former might that once extended across the entire continent.

  Gai had thrown back his head to look, his legs trembling in awe, and Mak’s words had struck him like a bolt of lightning: “Well, what an old crate, massaraksh! . . . I beg your pardon, Duke-Prince, that just slipped out.”

  “It’s the only one I have,” the duke-prince coolly replied. “And by the way, it happens to be the best bomber in the world. In his time, His Imperial Highness made flights in it to—”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Maxim hastily agreed. “It was just the surprise.”

  Up in the cockpit, Gai’s delight reached the extreme limit of ecstasy. The compartment was made completely out of glass. An immense number of unfamiliar instruments, incredibly comfortable soft seats, incomprehensible levers and devices, bunches of different-colored wires, weird-looking helmets lying at the ready . . . The duke-prince hastily tried to impress something on Mak, pointing at instruments and wiggling levers, and Mak absentmindedly muttered, “Right, yes, I get it, I get it,” but Gai, who had been seated in a chair so that he wouldn’t get in the way, with his rifle on his knees so that he wouldn’t—God forbid!—scratch anything, goggled wide-eyed, inanely turning his head in all directions.

  The bomber was standing in an old, sagging hangar at the edge of the forest, and an even, gray-green field without a single hummock stretched out far in front of it. Beyond the field, about three miles away, the forest began again, and hanging over all of this was the white sky, which looked really close, within arm’s reach, from here in the cabin.