The Inhabited Island

by Arkady Strugatsky

  He finished chewing the final biscuit and drained the milk in a single gulp. Then he said out loud, “Let us begin.”

  He opened the folder. This man’s past is hazy. And that, of course, is a poor start when getting to know someone new. But you and I know not only how to deduce the present from the past but also how to deduce the past from the present. And if our Mak’s past really is so necessary to us, when all is said and done we can always do that, deduce it from the present. This is called extrapolation . . .

  Our Mak begins his present by escaping from penal servitude. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. At the very moment when Wanderer and I are reaching out our hands for him. Here is the panic-stricken report from the commandant-general, a classic howl from an idiot who has messed things up and has no hope of escaping punishment: he is not to blame for anything, he did everything according to his instructions, he did not know that the individual concerned had voluntarily joined the suicide sappers, but the individual concerned did join them and got himself blown up in a minefield. He didn’t know . . . And Wanderer and I didn’t know that, either. But we ought to have known! The individual concerned is an unpredictable kind of person—you ought to have anticipated something of the kind, Mr. Egghead . . . Yes, at the time I was staggered by the news, but now we understand what happened: someone explained about the towers to our Mak, he decided that there was no point hanging around in the Land of the Fathers, and he took off to the South, feigning his own death . . .

  The prosecutor lowered his head into his hands and feebly rubbed his forehead. Yes, that was when the whole business started . . . That was the first screwup in my series of screwups: I believed that he had been killed. But how could I not have believed it? What normal man would go running off to the South, to the mutants, to certain death? Anybody would have believed it. But Wanderer didn’t.

  The prosecutor picked up the next report. Oh, that Wanderer! That smart Wanderer, that brilliant Wanderer . . . That was how I should have acted—the way he did. I was certain that Mak had been killed: the South is the South. But he flooded the territory beyond the river with his agents. Fat Fank—ah, I didn’t get to him when I should have. I didn’t get my claws into him! That fat swine with the peeling skin even lost weight running around the country, nosing around, keeping his eyes open, and his agent Chicken died of a fever on Highway 6, and his Tapa the Cock was captured by the Highlanders, and then Fifty-One—I don’t know who he is—got captured by pirates way out on the coast, but still managed to report back just in time that Mak had shown up there, surrendered to the patrols, and been sent back to his penal colony . . . That’s the way people with brains do things: they don’t believe anything and they have pity on nobody. And that’s the way I should have acted at the time. Dropped all my other business and focused only on Mak—after all, even then I realized what a terrible force Mak is, but instead I got into a scrap with Twitcher and lost, and then I got involved with this idiotic war and lost again.

  And I would have lost again now too, but I’ve finally had a stroke of luck. Mak has turned up in the capital, in Wanderer’s lair, and I’ve found out about it before Wanderer. Yes, Wanderer, with your gristly ears, yes, now you’re the one who has lost. How terrible that you just had to go away again at this precise moment! And do you know, Wanderer, I’m not even offended by the fact that once again it remains entirely unknown where you went to and what for. So you went away—fine! Of course, you relied on that Fank of yours in all of this, and your Fank brought you Mak, but then—what a disaster!—Fank collapsed after all his military adventures. He’s lying unconscious in the Palace Hospital—such an important individual, people like him are only ever put in the Palace Hospital!—and I shan’t botch things up this time around; now he’ll stay lying there for as long as I need him to. So you’re not here, and Fank isn’t here, but our Mak is, so things have turned out really well . . .

  Noticing the onset of an incipient feeling of joy, the prosecutor immediately extinguished it. Emotions again, massaraksh. Calmly now, Egghead. You are making the acquaintance of a new individual by the name of Mak—you have to be very objective. Especially since this new Mak is nothing at all like the old one; he is very grown-up now, he knows what finance and juvenile criminality are now. Our Mak has grown wiser and sterner . . . Look at the way he has broken through into the underground’s Central HQ (on the recommendations of Memo Gramenu and Allu Zef ), descending on them like a bolt from the blue with his proposal for counterpropaganda. And Central HQ wailed and lamented, because it meant revealing the true function of the towers to the rank-and-file membership—but Mak convinced them, didn’t he? He frightened them, entangled them in his arguments, and they accepted the idea of counterpropaganda and assigned Mak to develop it . . . He figured out the situation very quickly, quickly and correctly. And they understood that—they realized just who they were dealing with. Or they simply sensed it . . .

  And here is the latest report: the faction of enlighteners invited him to participate in discussion of the program of reeducation, and he was delighted to accept. He immediately suggested a whole heap of ideas. Pretty useless ideas, but that’s not the point—reeducation is idiotic nonsense in any case—the important thing is that he is no longer a terrorist, he does not want to blow anything up, and he does not want to kill anyone; the important thing is that he has turned to political activity, that he is actively building up his authority at Central HQ, making speeches, criticizing, climbing upward; the important thing is that he has ideas and is just yearning to put them into practice, and that is precisely what we want, Mr. Egghead . . .

  The prosecutor leaned back in his chair.

  And here’s another thing that we need: reports on his way of life. He works a lot—both in the laboratory and at home—he is still pining for that woman, for Rada Gaal, he exercises, has almost no friends, doesn’t smoke, hardly drinks at all, and eats very moderately. On the other hand, he displays a clear inclination for luxury in his daily life and is well aware of his own worth: he accepted the automobile to which he is entitled by his position as an automatic given, while expressing his dissatisfaction with its low power and ugly appearance; he is also dissatisfied with his two-room apartment—he considers it too cramped and lacking in basic comforts; he has decorated his home with original paintings and antique works of art, spending almost his entire advance on them . . . well, and so on. Good material, very good material . . . And by the way, how much money does he have, what resources does he possess now? Riiight, a project coordinator in the chemical synthesis laboratory . . . salary paid in a blue envelope . . . his own car . . . a two-room apartment on the grounds of the Department of Special Research . . . They’ve set him up pretty well. And they’ve probably promised him even more.

  I’d like to know how they explained what it was that Wanderer needed him for. Fank knows, the fat swine, but he won’t tell, chances are he’ll croak anyway . . . Ah, if only I could somehow drag everything that he knows out of him! What pleasure I would take in terminating him after that—the amount of trouble that he has caused me, that mangy brute . . . He stole that Rada from me too, and she would be really useful to me right now. Rada . . . What a weapon she is for dealing with pure, honest, courageous Mak! But then, right now perhaps it’s not really such a bad thing . . . I’m not the one keeping your beloved under lock and key, Mak, it’s Wanderer—it’s all that odious blackmailer’s scheming . . .

  The prosecutor shuddered: the yellow telephone had quietly tinkled. Merely tinkled, and nothing more. Quietly, even melodically. Come to life for a split second and then frozen again, as if simply reminding him it was there . . . Keeping his eyes fixed on it, the prosecutor ran his trembling fingers across his forehead. No, it was a mistake. Of course, a mistake. It could have been anything—a telephone is a complicated device, some spark or other simply jumped the wires inside it . . .

  He wiped his fingers on his robe. And the phone immediately gave a thunderous roar. Like a shot at point-blank range . . .
Like a saber slash across the throat . . . Like a sudden fall from the roof to the asphalt . . . The prosecutor picked up the receiver. He didn’t want to pick up the receiver, he didn’t even know that he was picking up the receiver, he even imagined that he wasn’t picking up the receiver but was quickly tiptoeing into the bedroom, getting dressed, driving the car out of the garage and racing off at top speed . . . But where to?

  “State prosecutor,” he said in a hoarse voice, and coughed to clear his throat.

  “Egghead? It’s Dad speaking.”

  There . . . This is it . . . Now it will be We’re expecting you in about an hour . . .

  “I realized,” he helplessly said. “Hello, Dad.”

  “Have you read the communiqué?”

  “No.”

  Ah, you haven’t? Well, come over, and we’ll read it to you . . .

  “It’s over,” said Dad. “They’ve botched up the war.”

  The prosecutor gulped. He needed to say something. He urgently needed to say something, best of all to crack a joke. Crack a subtle joke . . . Oh God, help me crack a subtle joke!

  “Nothing to say? But what did I tell you? Steer clear of that mess, stick with the civilians, the civilians and not the military men! Oh, Egghead . . .”

  “Well, you are Dad,” the prosecutor managed to force out. “And children always disobey their parents, don’t they?”

  Dad giggled. “Children . . .” he said. “Remember that saying: ‘If your child disobeys you . . .’? How does it go on, Egghead?”

  My God, my God! “. . . wipe him off the face of the earth.” That was what he said that time: “Wipe him off the face of the earth,” and then Wanderer picked up a heavy black pistol off the table, slowly raised it, and fired two shots, and the child clutched his shattered bald head in his hands and toppled over onto the carpet . . .

  “Lost your memory?” Dad asked. “Oh, Egghead. What are you going to do, Egghead?”

  “I made a mistake . . .” the prosecutor wheezed. “A mistake. It was all because of Twitcher . . .”

  “You made a mistake . . . All right, then, think, Egghead. Ponder on it for a while. I’ll call you back . . .”

  And that’s all. He’s gone. And I don’t know where to call him to weep and implore . . . That’s stupid, stupid. That has never done anyone any good . . . OK . . . Hang on . . . Just hang on, will you, you bastard!

  He swung his open hand and smashed it hard against the edge of the desk—to make it bleed, to make it hurt, to make it stop trembling . . . That helped a bit, but he still leaned down, opened the lower drawer of the desk with his other hand, took out a flask, tugged out the cork with his teeth, and took several swallows. He felt a rush of heat. That’s the way . . . Calmly, now . . .

  We’ll see about this. This is a race—we’ll see who runs faster. You can’t do away with Egghead that easily; it will cost you a bit more effort than that. Egghead can’t instantly be summoned just like that. If you could have summoned him, you would have . . . It’s all right that he called. He always does that. There’s still time. Two days, three days, four days . . . “There is still time!” he shouted at himself. “Don’t get jittery.” He got up and started walking around the office in circles.

  I do have a hold over you. I have Mak. I have a man who is not afraid of the radiation. For whom no barriers exist. Who wishes to change the order of things. Who hates you. A man who is pure and, therefore, open to all temptations. A man who will trust me. A man who will want to meet with me . . . He already wants to meet with me as it is—my agents have told him many times that the state prosecutor is benevolent and just, a great expert on the laws, and a genuine guardian of law and order, that the Fathers dislike him and only tolerate him because they don’t trust each other . . . My agents have shown me to him, in secret, in advantageous circumstances, and he liked my face . . . And, most important of all, they have hinted to him, in the strictest secrecy, that I know where the Center is located. He has excellent control of his face, but it was reported to me that just at that moment he gave himself away . . . That’s the kind of man I have—a man who really wants to seize the Center and who can do it—the only one out of all of them . . . That is, I don’t actually have this man just yet, but the nets have been cast, the bait has been swallowed, and today I’ll strike and hook him. Or I’m finished. Finished . . . Finished . . .

  He abruptly swung around and glanced in horror at the yellow telephone.

  He couldn’t control his imagination any longer. He saw that cramped room, upholstered in dark red velvet, a stifling, musty room, with no windows, a dingy, bare desk, and five gilded chairs . . . And the rest of us were all standing there: me, Wanderer, with the eyes of a ravenous killer, and that bald butcher . . . that bungler, that blabbermouth, he knew where the Center was, didn’t he, he destroyed so many people to find out where the Center was, and then—the windbag, the drunk, the braggart—how could he go talking to anybody about such things? Let alone to relatives . . . And especially to relatives like that. And he was the head of the Department of Public Health, the eyes and ears of the Unknown Fathers, the armor and the battle-ax of the nation . . . Dad scowled as he said, “Wipe him off the face of the earth,” Wanderer fired twice at point-blank range, and Father-in-Law grumbled, “Now the upholstery’s all splattered again . . .” And they started arguing again about why the room stank like that, and I stood there with my legs turned to rubber, thinking, Do they know or don’t they? and Wanderer stood there, grinning like a hungry predator, and looking at me, as if he could guess . . .

  He didn’t guess a damn thing. But now I understand why he always took such pains to make sure nobody could penetrate the mystery of the Center. He always knew where the Center was and was just looking for a way to take it over himself . . . Too late, Wanderer, too late . . . And you’ll be too late as well, Dad. And you, Father-in-Law. And as for you, Twitcher, you’re not even in the running . . .

  He jerked open a curtain and pressed his forehead against the cold glass. He had almost smothered his fear. And in order to finally trample it underfoot, to extinguish the final spark, he pictured Mak bursting into the instrument room of the Center and taking it by storm . . .

  Blister could have done that too, with his personal bodyguard, with that gang of his brothers, cousins, nephews, blood brothers, and protégés, with those appalling scum who have never even heard of the law, who have only ever known one law—shoot first . . . Wanderer had had good reason to raise his hand against Blister—that very evening he had been attacked right outside the gates of his mansion, his car was riddled with bullets, his driver and secretary were killed, and in some mysterious way the attackers were all killed themselves, right down to the last man, all twenty-four of them with two machine guns . . . Yes, Blister could have burst into the instrument room too, but he would have gotten bogged down there, without going any farther, because then comes a barrier of depressive radiation, and maybe now there are even two barriers, although one would be enough. No one can get through there: a degenerate will collapse in a faint from the pain, and a simple, loyal citizen will just drop to his knees and start quietly weeping in mortal anguish . . .

  Only Mak will get through there, and he will sink his skilled hands into the generators, and first of all switch the Center, and the entire system of towers, to a depressive field. And then, entirely unopposed, he will walk up into the radio studio and put on a tape with a previously recorded speech for cyclical repeat transmission . . . The entire country, from the Hontian border to beyond the Blue Serpent, will be in a state of depression, millions of fools will be just lying there in floods of tears, with no desire to even to stir a finger, and the loudspeakers will be roaring at the tops of their voices that the Unknown Fathers are criminals, reviling them for this and castigating them for that, and saying they are here, and they are there, kill them, save the country, it is I who am telling you this, Mak Sim, a living god on earth (or something else, like the legitimate heir to the imperial throne,
or the great dictator—or whatever he likes the best) . . . To arms, my guardsmen! To arms, my army! To arms, my subjects! And meanwhile he’ll go back to the instrument room and switch the generator to a field of heightened attention, and then the entire country will listen open-mouthed, straining not to miss a single word, learning the message by heart, repeating it to themselves, and the loudspeakers will keep roaring, the towers will keep working, and it will go on like that for another hour, and then he will switch the radiation emitters to enthusiasm, just half an hour of enthusiasm—and that’s the end of the broadcasts . . .

  And when I come around—massaraksh, an hour and a half of hellish agony, but I’ll just have to put up with it, massaraksh—there won’t be any more Dad, none of them will be left, there will only be Mak, the great god Mak, and his faithful adviser the former state prosecutor, now the head of the great Mak’s government . . . Ah, never mind about the government, I shall simply be alive, and nobody will be threatening me, and then we shall see . . . Mak isn’t the kind to abandon useful friends—he doesn’t even abandon his useless friends—and I’ll be a very useful friend. Oh, what a friend I shall be to him!

  He abruptly broke off, went back to the desk, squinted at the yellow phone, laughed, picked up the receiver of the green phone, and asked for the deputy head of the Department of Special Research.

  “Brainiac? Good morning, this is Egghead. How are you feeling? How’s your stomach? Well, that’s excellent . . . Is Wanderer still not back yet? . . . Uh-huh . . . Well, OK . . . I got a call from upstairs, instructing me to inspect you a bit . . . No, no, I think it’s purely a formality, I understand damn all about what you do anyway, but you should draw up some kind of a report . . . the draft conclusions of an inspection visit and what have you. And make sure that everybody’s where they should be this time, not like last year . . . Huh . . . About eleven o’clock, probably . . . Arrange things so that I can leave with all the documents at twelve . . . Well, I’ll see you then. Let’s go and suffer . . . Do you suffer too? Or perhaps you long ago invented a form of defense? Only you’re hiding it from the bosses? All right now, I’m only joking . . . See you.”