Everyone except Artyom.
But what if somewhere in the boundless expanses of the Earth there was another place fit for human habitation? For Artyom and for Anya. For everyone from the station. A place where they wouldn’t have a cast-iron ceiling over their heads, and where they could grow right up to the sky? Build themselves houses of their own, a life of their own, and from that place go on gradually to resettle the whole of the scorched Earth?
“I could find places … for all our people … They could live … in the open air …”
Forty-six floors.
Artyom could have stopped on the fortieth, or even on the thirtieth; after all, no one had told him that he had to climb all the way to the very top. But somehow he had got it into his head that if he had any chance of success at all, then it was only up there, on the roof.
“Of course … it’s not … not as high … as on the tower … that time … But … But …”
The lenses of Artyom’s gas mask had misted over, his heart was trying to pound its way out of his chest, and someone seemed to be probing at Artyom’s rib, looking for a way to slip a crude metal shank in under it. The breath he drew in strenuously through the gas mask’s filters was too meager; there wasn’t enough life in it, and just like that time in the tower, when Artyom reached the forty-fifth floor, he gave in and tore off the tight-fitting rubber skin. He took a gulp of sweet and bitter air. Completely different from the air in the Metro. Fresh.
“The height … Maybe … up there … About three hundred meters … The height … So maybe … So probably … From that height … I can pick it up …”
He shrugged the knapsack off his shoulders and lugged it the rest of the way. Leaning his stiff back against the hatch, he forced it out and clambered onto the open surface. And only then did he fall. He lay on his back, looking at the clouds, which were only an arm’s length away; he coaxed his heart and calmed his breathing. Then he got up.
The view from here was …
It was as if Artyom had died and gone flying up to heaven, but suddenly run into a glass ceiling and got stuck there, dangling underneath it, no way back and no way forward. It was obvious from that height that it was no longer possible to go back: When you’ve seen how tiny everything on Earth really is, how can you take it all seriously again?
Towering up beside him were two identical skyscrapers, bright and colorful once upon a time, now gray. But Artyom had always climbed this one. It felt cozier that way.
For a brief second a gun-slit gap appeared in the clouds and the sun fired a shot through it; he thought he saw a sudden glint from the next building, either from the roof or from the dusty window of one of the upper apartments—as if someone had caught the ray of sunlight in a little mirror. But before he could glance round, the sun barricaded itself away again and the glint disappeared. There weren’t any more.
Hard as Artyom tried to turn his eyes away, his gaze kept slipping over toward the regenerated forest that flourished where the Botanical Gardens had been—and to the naked, black wasteland at the very heart of it. A spot as dead as if the Lord Himself had dumped his leftover boiling sulfur onto it. But no, not the Lord.
The Botanical Gardens.
Artyom remembered them looking different. They were all that he remembered from the prewar world that had disappeared.
A strange business: Look, your entire life consists of tiles, tunnel liners, dripping ceilings, and rivulets running along the floor beside the tracks, of granite and marble, of stale air and electric light.
Then suddenly there’s a tiny little piece of something else in it: a cool morning in May; innocent, delicate new greenery on elegant trees; park paths covered with drawings in colored chalk; a tantalizing queue for ice cream; and that ice cream itself, in a wafer cup, not simply sweet, but absolutely heavenly. And your mother’s voice—weak and distorted by time, as if it’s coming through a copper telephone cable. And the warmth of her hand, which you try not to let slip out of yours, so that you won’t get lost—and you cling on with all your might. Although, is it really possible to remember that kind of thing? Probably not.
And all of this something else is so incongruous and impossible that you don’t even understand any longer if it really did happen to you or you simply dreamed it. But how could you have dreamed it, if you’ve never seen or experienced anything like it?
Artyom could see it all in front of him—the chalk drawings on the paths, the sun shining through the lacy foliage in golden needles, the ice cream in his hand, the funny orange ducks scattered across the brown mirror of the shady pond and the rickety little bridges over it—he was so afraid of falling into that water and even more afraid of dropping his little wafer cup into it!
But her face, his mother’s face—Artyom couldn’t remember that. He had tried to summon it. When he went to bed he had tried asking himself to see it at least in his dreams, even if he forgot it again by morning—but nothing worked. had there really not been even a tiny little corner of his head where his mother could have hidden and waited out the death and darkness? Apparently not. But how can a person exist and then completely disappear?
And that day, and that world—where could they have vanished to? Look, they’re here, right beside you; just close your eyes. Of course you can go back to them. They must have escaped and still be there, somewhere in the world, calling to everyone who has gotten lost: We’re here, but where are you? You just have to hear them. You just have to know how to listen.
Artyom blinked and rubbed his eyelids, so that his eyes would see today again and not twenty years ago. He sat down and opened the knapsack.
It contained a radio transmitter-receiver—a cumbersome army model, green and badly scratched—and another monstrosity—a metal box with a handle that could be turned. A homemade generator. And right at the bottom—forty meters of fine cable, the antenna for the radio.
Artyom attached all the wires, walked round the roof reeling out the cable, wiped the water off his face, and reluctantly pulled on the gas mask again. Squeezed on the headphones He caressed buttons with his fingers and twirled the handle of the generator: A diode blinked. He felt a buzzing and vibrating in his palm, like a living thing.
He flipped a switch.
He closed his eyes, because he was afraid they would prevent him from fishing out that bottle, the one with a message in it from a distant continent, where someone else had survived. He swayed to and fro on the waves. And he turned the generator handle as if he were rowing an inflatable raft along with his hand.
The headphones started hissing, whining through the crackling with a shrill “Eeeooo …” They coughed consumptively and fell silent for a moment, then hissed again, as if Artyom were wandering through a tuberculosis isolation ward looking for someone to talk to, but not a single patient was conscious; there were only nurses putting their fingers to their lips and shushing strictly. No one here wanted to give Artyom an answer, no one intended to live.
No one from St. Petersburg. No one from Yekaterinburg.
London remained silent. Paris remained silent. Bangkok and New York remained silent.
It hadn’t mattered for a long time now who started that war. It just didn’t matter how it had started. Who could it matter to? History? History was written by the victors; there was no one here to write it, and soon there wouldn’t be anyone to read it either.
Sssssssh …
The airways were filled with emptiness. Boundless emptiness.
Eeeeooo …
Communications satellites hovered restlessly in their orbits: No one called them. The loneliness was driving them insane, and they plunged back down to Earth; burning up in the air was better than this.
Not a word from Peking. And Tokyo was a silent grave.
But Artyom kept turning that cursed handle anyway, turning and rowing, rowing and turning.
How quiet it was! Impossibly quiet. Unbearably quiet.
“Moscow here! Moscow Here! Come in!”
That
was his voice, Artyom’s. As usual, he couldn’t wait; he didn’t have the patience.
“Moscow here! Over! Come in!”
Eeeeooo.
He mustn’t stop. He mustn’t give up.
“St. Petersburg! Come in! Vladivostok! Moscow here, come in! Rostov! Come in!”
What’s wrong with you, City of Peter? How could you have turned out to be so feeble? Feebler than Moscow? What’s taken your place up there? A lake of glass? Or has the mold eaten you up? Why don’t you answer? Eh?
Where have you got to, Vladivostok, proud city at the other end of the world? You used to stand so far away from us. Did they really spill their plague on you too? Did they really not have any pity, even on you? K-kuha, k-kuha, k-kuha.
“Come in, Vladivostok! Moscow here!”
The entire world is lying facedown in the mud; it doesn’t feel the drops of this interminable rain on its back; it doesn’t sense that its mouth and nose are full of rusty water.
But Moscow … There it is. Standing there. Still on its feet. As if alive.
“What is all this? Have you all croaked then, all of you?”
Sssssssh …
Maybe that was their souls who had slipped into the airwaves and were answering him like that? Or maybe that was the way the background radiation sounded? Death had to have a voice of its own. Probably just like that: a whisper. Sssssssh … Come on now, no noise. Calm down. Calm down.
“Moscow here. Come in!”
Maybe they would hear him this time?
Right now someone would cough in the headphones, break excitedly through the hissing, and shout somewhere far, far away.
“We’re here! Moscow! I hear you! Come in! Moscow! Don’t go off air! I hear you! My God! Moscow! Moscow has made contact! How many of you have survived there? We have a colony here, twenty-five thousand people! The land’s clean! Zero radiation! The water’s unpolluted! Food? Of course! Medicines, yes, we have them! We’re sending a rescue mission for you! Just hold on! Do you hear, Moscow? That’s the most important thing—hold on!”
Eeeeooo. Nothing.
This wasn’t an attempt at radio contact; it was a spiritualist séance. And Artyom simply couldn’t get the hang of that. The spirits he was summoning didn’t want to come to him. They felt just fine in the next world. They looked down through the sparse gaps between the clouds at Artyom’s little hunched-up figure and just chuckled: Down there? To you? Oh no, not on your life!
K-kuha, k-kuha.
He stopped turning that damned handle and tore off the headphones. He got up, coiled the antenna into a neat bundle, slowly, forcing himself to be neat, violating his own will, because he wanted to tear it into pieces and fling it into the abyss from forty-six floors up.
He packed everything into the knapsack and set the demon of temptation on his shoulders. He carried it down. Into the Metro. Until tomorrow.
* * *
“Have you carried out the decontamination routine?” the blue handset asked in a nasal voice.
“Yes.”
“Answer more clearly!”
“Yes I have!”
“He has, uh-huh …” the handset hissed incredulously, and Artyom flung it against the wall in loathing.
The lock scraped inside the door, and the bolts withdrew. Then the door gave a long, drawn-out screech and opened, and the Metro breathed out its stale, heavy air on Artyom.
SukhoI met him on the threshold. Either he had sensed when Artyom would come back, or he hadn’t gone away at all. Probably he had sensed the moment.
“How are you?” he asked in a weary, good-natured voice.
Artyom shrugged. SukhoI ran his glance over him. Gently, like a children’s doctor.
“There was someone here looking for you. He came from another station.”
Artyom drew himself up erect.
“Was he from Miller?”
His voice jangled, as if a shell case had been dropped on the floor. Hope? Or cowardice? Or what?
“No. Some old man.”
“What old man?” The final drops of Artyom’s strength, gathered together in case his stepfather answered “yes,” instantly leaked away, and now all he wanted was to lie down.
“Homer. He called himself Homer. Do you know anyone called that?”
“No. I’m going to sleep, Uncle Sasha.”
* * *
She didn’t stir a muscle. Was she asleep or not? Artyom wondered. He simply wondered, automatically, because it was no longer any concern of his whether she was sleeping or pretending. He dumped his clothes in a bundle by the entrance, rubbed his shoulders to warm them up a bit, huddled up sideways against Anya, like an orphan, and pulled the blanket over himself. If there had been another blanket, he wouldn’t have bothered to mess with her.
The station clock said seven in the evening, didn’t it? But at ten Anya had to get up and go to work with the mushrooms. Artyom had been excused from mushroom duty, as a hero. Or as an invalid? He decided himself what his duties would be and when to perform them. He woke up when she came back from her shift—and went up onto the surface. He blanked out while she was still pretending to be asleep. That was how they lived, in antiphase. In a single bed, in different dimensions.
Carefully, so as not to wake her, Artyom started winding the quilted blanket round himself. Anya felt it, and without saying a word, furiously tugged the blanket in the opposite direction. After a minute of this idiotic struggle, Artyom gave in—and was left lying naked on the edge of the bed.
“Great,” he said.
She didn’t say anything.
Why is it that a lightbulb glows brightly at first, and then burns out?
Then he lay with his face buried in the pillow—there were two of those, thank God—warming it with his breath. And he fell asleep like that. And in a mean, sneaky dream he saw a different Anya—laughing, jaunty, cheerfully provoking him, so perfectly young. Although how much time had gone by? Two years? Two days? God only knew when things could have been like that. Back then it seemed like they had a whole eternity ahead of them. It had seemed that way to both of them. So everything must have been like that an eternity ago.
It was cold in his dream, but it was Anya who was making him feel the cold—he thought she was chasing him, naked, around the station, but out of mischief, not hate. And when Artyom woke up, in his sleepy inertia he carried on believing for a whole minute that eternity hadn’t ended yet, that he and Anya were only halfway through it. He wanted to call her, forgive her, turn it all into a joke. Then he remembered.
CHAPTER 2
— THE METRO —
“Are you at least trying to listen to me?” he asked Anya.
But she was no longer in the tent.
His clothes were lying exactly where he had left them, by the entrance. Anya hadn’t tidied them up or flung them about. She had just stepped over them, as if she was afraid of touching them. Of getting contaminated. Maybe she really was afraid.
She had probably always needed the blanket more. He’d get warm somehow.
It was a good thing she had gone. Thanks, Anya. Thanks for not bothering to talk to me. For not answering me.
“Thanks a whole bunch, fuck it,” he said out loud.
“May I come in?” someone replied through the tarpaulin right above his ear.” Artyom? Are you awake?”
Artyom crept over to his trousers.
Waiting outside, seated on a folding hiking stool, was an old man with a face that was too soft for his age. He was sitting comfortably, in an easy, well-balanced pose, and it was clear that he had settled in here a long time ago and had no intention at all of leaving. The old man was a stranger, not from this station: He puckered up his face and breathed in heedlessly through his nose. You could tell outsiders.
Artyom folded his fingers into a visor and used it to shield his eyes against the crimson light with which Exhibition Station was flooded while he peered at his visitor.
“What do you want, old man?”
“Are
you Artyom?”
“I might be,” said Artyom, drawing air in through his nose.” That depends.”
“I’m Homer,” the old man announced, without getting up.” That’s what they call me.”
“Is that so?”
“I write books. A book.”
“That’s interesting,” Artyom said in the voice of a man who isn’t interested.
“A historical book. Kind of. Only about our times.”
“Historical,” Artyom repeated cautiously, glancing round.” What’s that for? They say history’s finished. It’s over.”
“What about us? Someone has to take everything that we … Everything that’s happening to us here, and tell the future generations about it.”
If he’s not from Miller, Artyom thought, then who is he? Who from? What for?
“The future generations. A sacred duty.”
“On the one hand, we have to tell them about the most important thing … What our life here is like. Record all the milestones and vicissitudes, so to speak. But then on the other hand—how do we do it? Dry facts get forgotten. For people to remember things, we need a living story. We need a hero. I’ve been searching for material like that. I tried all sorts of thing. I thought I’d found him. But when I got started … it didn’t work out. It didn’t come together. And then I heard about Exhibition Station, and …”
The old man obviously didn’t find it easy to explain himself, but Artyom wasn’t going to help him anyway: He still couldn’t understand what was coming next. There was nothing malicious about the old man—he was simply incongruous—but something was accumulating in the air, taking shape between him and Artyom, something that was bound to explode at any moment, searing Artyom with heat and hacking at him with shrapnel.
“They told me about Exhibition … About the Dark Ones and about you. And I realized you were the one I had to find, in order to …
Artyom nodded: He’d finally understood.
“A good story.”
Metro 2035 Page 2
