Hastily he pushed it back in front of his face and closed his eyes. No, he couldn’t consciously think about that he brought death to all humans that he met. To turn back was impossible: When he was infected, as far as he hadn’t mistaken the symptoms, the whole station was going to die anyways. Starting with the women whose only fault was that she had to go “for little girls” at the wrong time. What would she do if he would tell her that she now only had a month to live at best?
How foolish, thought Homer. Foolish and stupid. He had wanted to make all immortal that crossed his path. Now fate had transformed him into an angel of death and one of the foolish and powerless kind. He felt like somebody had shortened his wings and told him: That an ultimatum of thirty days had been engraved on him. That was as much time as he had to act.
Was that the punishment for him overestimating himself and for his pride?
No he could no longer be silent. And there was only one human which he could open up to. He wouldn’t be able to deceive him for long and it was easier for both when they played with open cards.
With unsure steps he made his way to the hospital.
The room was at the end of the hallway and usually a nurse sat in front of it but now the place was empty. Through the door slit he could hear a broken moaning. He could only make out single words and as long as Homer listened, he could t put them together to sentences that made sense.
“Stronger … Fighting … Must ... Still sense … Resistance … Remember … Still able … Mistake … Punishment …”
His words were now a barking, as if the pain had become unbearable and hindered the speaker to catch his rushing thoughts. Homer entered the room.
Hunter was lying unconscious, had spread his limbs and turned from one side to the other on a wet blanket. The bandage that pressed the head of the brigadier together had slipped over his eyes, the bony checks were covered in sweat and the unshaven lower jaw hung down limp.
His broad chest raised and lowered itself, struggling like the bellows of a forge that only kept the fire burning in the big body with struggle.
At the head end of the bet stood the girl with her back turned to him, her small hands behind her back. Not at first, but after a closer look he saw the silhouette of a black knife that she was holding cramped through the fabric of her overall.
The ringing.
Again and again.
2235
2236
2237
Artyom (yes, our Artyom) counted the sound not because he wanted to justify himself in front of the commander but because he wanted to feel some kind of movement. When he distanced himself from the point where he had started counting so that meant that with every ringing sound the point where this madness was over came closer.
Deceiving oneself? Yeah, probably. But listening to this ringing knowing that it will never stop was unbearable.
Even though at first, it had been the same thing after his very first deployment: Like a metronome it had brought order in the cacophony of his thoughts with its monotone sound, had emptied his head and calmed down his racing pulse.
The ringing cut down minutes of his shift and Artyom felt like he was in a trap made out of time out of which he couldn’t escape. In medieval times there had been such torture: They had undressed a criminal and sat him under a barrel out of which never endingly water dropped onto his head. The cause was that the poor guy slowly lost his mind.
Where the stretch-table was without success, normal water brought extraordinary results …
Bound to the line of the telephone, Artyom didn’t dare to distance himself just for one second. His whole shift he had tried not to drink so that no important need would lure him from the apparatus. Days before he hadn’t been able to stand staying in the room, slipped out, hastily run to the exit and had returned immediately. Even on the doorstep he had listened and it had run down cold down his back: The frequency hadn’t been right; the signal was now faster than before. That could only mean one thing: The moment that he had waited for was finally here when he had been gone.
Fearful he looked to the door if somebody had watched him and had quickly dialed the number again and pressed his ear against the telephone.
Out of the apparatus the same clicking sound emerged, the ringing started from anew - in the know rhythm.
From that moment the busy sound hadn’t returned and nobody had picked up. Put Artyom didn’t dare to put down the telephone ever again. Only from time to time he put it from his one already hot ear to his other, cramped trying not to miscount.
He hadn’t said anything to the leadership and he wasn’t even sure if he had heard anything but the eternal rhythm back then. His orders were: Call. For a week there had been only this task. Any violation would bring him in front of the tribunal and there they made no difference between mistakes and sabotage.
The telephone helped him to orientate how long he still had to sit here. Artyom didn’t have his own watch, but the commander had told him, looking at his watch, that the signal repeated itself every five seconds. Twelve sounds were one minute, 720 an hour, 13 680 a whole shift. Like small grains of sand they dropped down from one part of a giant hourglass into another bottomless container. And between the two glasses, directly in the neck Artyom was stuck and listened to time.
Also he didn’t put down the receiver because the commander could return every second to check on him.
Otherwise … What he did was absolutely pointless.
At the other end of the line apparently nobody seemed to be still alive.
He saw the from the inside barricaded office of the head of the station and him pressing his face against the plate of the table, the makarov still in his hand. With his shot through ears he could no longer hear the ringing sound. The ones that were on the other side of the door hadn’t been able to break through, but through the keyhole and the door slit the desperate ringing crawled over the train platform where all the bloated bodies were lying … For a time you hadn’t been able to here the ringing, the noise of the crowd, of the steps, the crying of the children had been too loud, but now it only disturbed the rest of the dead. The gradually dying emergency aggregates still spread their red blinking light.
The ringing.
Again.
2563
2564.
No reaction.
Gifts (Chapter 11)
Your report! You could say what you wanted; the commander was always good for a surprise. In the entire garrison they told legends about him. Once a mercenary he was skillful with knives and was known that nothing could turn his attention away from his tasks. Back then before he had settled down at the Sevastopolskaya he had massacred the outer guard post of an enemy station alone, using the slightest mistakes of the guards.
Artyom jumped up, pressed the receiver against his ear with shoulder, saluted and stopped, not without some regret, counting. The commander approached the schedule of duty, locked at his clock and put next to his thumb, 3rd November and the numbers 9:22, signed and turned to Artyom.
“My report: Nothing. I mean, nobody picked up”
“Silence?” The commander crackled with his jaws and loosened his neck muscles. “I just can’t believe it”
“What?” Asked Artyom worried.
“That it has already hit the Dobryninskaya. Could the epidemic have already hit Hanza? Do you understand what is going if it has hit the ring line?”
“But we don’t know anything for sure.” Answered Artyom. “Maybe it has already started. We have no contact to them.”
“What if the line is damaged?” The commander lowered his head and started to knock on the table.
“But then there was still a line to the base.” Artyom nodded his head into the direction of the tunnel that lead to the Sevastopolskaya. “That one is completely dead. Here we get at least ringing. That means the line is still working”
“Only that the base seems to no longer need us.” Said the commander calm. “You can’t see anybody from there
at the door. Maybe the base is no more. And no more Dobryninskaya. Listen to me, Popov, when nobody is alive there anymore, we die very soon and all of us as well.
Nobody is going to come to our help. Why still keep the quarantine up? Maybe we should forget about all this shit, what do you think?” Again his jaws moved.
Artyom was shocked. What heresy! He didn’t want to but he had to think about the commander’s habit to shot deserters into the stomach before reading them their sentence.
“No commander, the quarantine is necessary”
“What you don’t say … Today alone three have become sick. Two from here and one of us. And Akopov is dead”
“Akopov?” Artyom swallowed and closed his eyes. His mouth felt dry.
“Beat his head in on the track.” Continued the commander with the same calm voice.” He had said that he couldn’t take the pain anymore. Not the first case. It got to hurt like hell when you try for half an hour to beat in your skull or what?
“Yes, sir.” Artyom turned his head.
“And what’s with you? Nausea? Weakness?” asked the commander worried and shined his small flashlight into Artyom’s face. “Open your mouth and say >Ahhh<. Good.
Listen up, Popov. You see that finally somebody picks up. Somebody has to pick up, Popov, at the Dobryninskaya and they shall say that Hanza has a vaccine and are reading sanitary brigades who are going to be here soon. And that they are going the get the healthy out. And heal the sick. And that we don’t have to stay in this hell forever. That we will get back to our wives. And you to your Galya and I to Alyona and Vera, understood?”
“Yes, sir!” Artyom nodded his head cramped.
“At ease”
His long knife hadn’t been able to resist the weight of the falling down beast and had broken exactly over the handle. The blade had penetrated deep into the chest of the creature so that they hadn’t even tried to get it back out of it.
The bold one who had been scared by the claws of the beast had been unconscious for almost three days.
Sasha couldn’t help him but she still had to see him.
At least to think about him, even though he couldn’t hear her.
But the doctors didn’t let her to him. They said the injured man needed rest before all.
She didn’t know exactly why the bold one had killed the people on the railcar. But if he had shot to save her then that was enough of a reason to her. She tried to believe in it but she couldn’t. Probably there was a different explanation:
Instead of asking, he rather killed.
At the Pavelezkaya it had been different: He had followed Sasha and had been ready to die for her. Was there actually a connection between them?
Like back then, at the Kolomenskaya when he had yelled after her, she had waited for a bullet not the question to come with them. But when she had turned around she had recognized a change in him, even though his scary face hadn’t moved a bit. It had been his eyes: Suddenly she had seen somebody else through the black pupils and looked at her.
Somebody who was interested in her.
Somebody who she had to be thankful for her live.
Should she give him a silver ring, the same gesture like back then from her mother? What if the bold one didn’t understand a gesture like that? But how should she thank him instead?
To give him a knife, as a replacement for the one which he had lost because of her, at that was least something.
When she had been totally illuminated by this simple thought, standing in front of the weapons-smith and imagining how she would give him the blade, how he would look at her, what he would say, she totally forget that she would buy a murderer another tool with it he would slit throats and stomachs.
No, in this moment he wasn’t a bandit for her but a hero, no killer but a warrior and before all – a man. And there was another, obscure thought in her head: Since his blade had broken, he hadn’t awoken. Maybe he would be a whole blade again … Like an amulet … So she had bought it for him.
And now that she was standing in front of his bed and hid the present behind her back Sasha hoped that he reacted to it or at least feel the presence of the blade. the bold one twitched from one sided to the other , made croaking sounds, started single words, moaned but didn’t awoke.
Darkness had him strongly in its grasp.
Up until now Sasha hadn’t said his name one single time, neither loud or to herself. No she whispered it to him.
“Hunter!”
The bold one went silent, he seemed to listen as if he was unimaginably far away and her voice was only an almost inaudible echo to his ear, but he didn’t answer. Sasha repeated it again, loader. She wouldn’t stop until he would open his eyes. She would be his tunnel light.
From the hallway she heard she a surprised scream, boots started to hammer on the ground. She kneeled down fast and put the knife on the small table at the head end of his stretcher. “That’s for you.” She said.
Suddenly the iron hard fingers held on to her hand, so strong that they could have broken all of her bones in her hand. The eyes of the injured man were open, his look wandered around without any goal. “Thanks.” He mumbled.
The girl had no intentions to free herself.
“What are you doing here?” A thin boy with a dirty white coat put a needle in the bold mans arm which brought him to sleep immediately again. Then the nurse grabbed Sasha by her shoulders and he said with closed teeth: “Don’t you understand? In his condition … The doctor has forbidden …”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand! He needs something that he can hold on to. From your needles he is just getting weaker …” The nurse tried to push Sasha into the direction of the exit, but she had already taken the steps and looked at him with angry eyes.
“I don’t want to see you in here again! And what is this here?” He had found the knife.
“That’s … His.” Mumbled Sasha. “I brought it with me. If he hadn’t been there … Those things would have torn me to pieces.”
“And the doctor is going to tear me to pieces when he is going to find out.” Growled the nurse. “Now go!”
Sasha hesitated for a moment and then she turned to Hunter again who was still sleeping heavily sedated and ended what she had wanted to say: “Thank you, you saved me”
When she was leaving the room she suddenly heard his croaky voce: “I just wanted to kill it … That beast …”
The door was shut right in front of her face and the key fell into the look.
The knife had been for something else. That had Homer realized immediately when he had heard how she called the name of the fevering brigadier, asking soft and sorrowful at the same time. At first he hadn’t wanted to get involved but then he thought about it differently and turned way, here was nobody that needed to be protected from something. All he could do was to retreat as fast as possible so he wouldn’t scare Sasha off.
Maybe she was right. At the Nagatinskya Hunter had totally forgotten about his companions. He had thrown them in front of the ghostly zyklops as a meal. But in this fight …
Maybe the girl meant something to him?
Sunken in thoughts homer strolled along the hallway and went to his room at the hospital. A nurse bumped into him, but the old man didn’t even realize it.
It was time to give Sasha what he had bought for her.
It seemed she would need it very soon.
Out of the desks drawer he brought a package to the light and turned it in his hands. After a few minutes the girl stormed into the room, nervous, confused and angry. She sat onto the bed, pulled her legs up and stared into the corner.
Homer waited until the storm would start or pass him. Sasha was silent and started to gnaw on her fingernails.
It was time to intervene.
“I got a gift for you.” The old man came forth from behind the table and put the package next to the girl on the blanket.
“For what?” She said, without coming out of her snail house.
“To repay good things.” She said convinced. “For what you have gotten or for what you hope to get”
“Then let’s say that I am repaying for all the good things that you have already given me. For I don’t need anything else”
“I didn’t give you anything.” Answered Sasha
“And what about my book?” He made a jokingly, offended face. “You’re already in it. I don’t like owing something to somebody. Now come on, open it”
“I don’t like to owing something as well.” Said Sasha and ripped open the wrappings of the package. “What’s this? Oh!”
In her hand was a red disk of plastic, a small box that could be opened from both sides. Back then it had been a cheap makeup box for when you were traveling, but both compartments for powder and rouge were already empty. But the mirror on the inside had survived.
“Here you can see yourself better then in a puddle of water.” Sasha looked with her big eyes at her reflection. It looked strange. “Why did you give this to me?”
“Sometimes it is better to see yourself from the side”
Homer was grinning. “You’ll understand more about yourself”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Sasha s voice had become more careful.
“There are people who have never seen their own reflection in their entire life and because of that they think that they are someone entirely different. And if the stand in front of their reflection they often can’t believe who is standing in front of them”
“And how am I seeing?”
“You tell me.” He crossed his arm in front of his chest. “Myself. Well … A girl” To be sure she turned the mirror from one cheek to the other.
“A young women.” Corrected Homer. “And a very unkempt one”
Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) Page 18
