They turned a corner.
Into an immense, blind tunnel ten meters across that ran from one point in the middle of the ground to another point somewhere in the middle of the ground. How many more of them were there here? The passageway ran on farther.
It was obviously late. The inhabitants of the bunker were straggling away, blowsy and fuzzy, from the snow-white drinking joint and creeping off home. Artyom glanced through the doorjambs into one of the apartments lined up along the tunnel. Then into another one. Yes, really quite cozy.
Good enough for a human being.
“Why are showing all this to me? Saying all this?”
“Well, you know, I enjoy it. A bit of an argument. You’re a revolutionary, aren’t you? What were you doing, sitting there, at Sashka’s place? Waiting for me. A romantic. Did you want to shoot me with your revolver? What, did you think that if you killed me, that would straighten out people’s lives? What do I do? I’m only in charge of domestic policy. Waste me—and a new head will grow. I tried to talk some sense into you back there at TsvetnoI Boulevard. But, you see, your memory has failed you.”
“At Tsvetnoi?”
“As I said, loss of memory. But that’s not surprising. It’s essentially symbolic. This amnesia of yours is a blessing to us, of course. No one remembers anything. A people of ephemeral mayflies. It’s as if yesterday never happened. And no one wants to think about tomorrow. A single continuous present moment.”
“What tomorrow? How can you plan tomorrow, when there’s barely enough chow for today? And that’s if you’re one of the lucky ones!”
“Now that’s where our skill comes in. There should always only be enough chow for today, and always just barely enough. An empty stomach brings dream about comprehensible things. One has to be able to keep a balance. Let people stuff themselves, and they get indigestion and their self-importance escalates. Underdo the chow—and they smash the structures of power. Well, or what they understand by power. Will you drink to our skill with me?”
“No!”
“That’s wrong. You should drink more. The salvation of the people lies in vodka. And it helps with the radiation, by the way.”
Thanks for the reminder.
The pure, alien blood crept through Artyom’s veins as viscously as gel, stinging and confusing him. Artyom would have preferred to have his own thin, dirty, poisoned blood back. Anything not to be indebted to these scumbags. Even if he only had one more week to live, at least he could burn out his own life and not parade about with a borrowed one.
“You talk like that about the people … But you, yourself … Where are you from?”
“Yes … It might have sounded as if I don’t like the people. Or I despise them. But quite the contrary, my heart lies completely with them. I love them, do you believe me? Look, I go out into the people like that, get to know people and mingle with them. The way I got to know you. Simply, loving the people, one has to understand everything about them. And one has to be honest. One mustn’t delude oneself. Yes, that’s what our people are like. One has to feel the kind of people one is governing. One has to love one’s own people. One has to edify them. Catch the demons.”
“You govern? Who governs? EloI governing Morlocks, is it? Are you some kind of aristocrat, then?”
“Me?” Bessolov smiled. “What sort of damned aristocrat am I? The aristocracy were all shot way back when! I’m not even from Moscow. I started out as a TV journalist. The food wasn’t so good, so I became a political technologist. And things spiraled on up from there. So I’m bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh through and through.”
Artyom had a sudden realization: Let their gel flow through his veins. This was the very respite that would give him the time to do something.
He looked around. There weren’t so very many guards here. He had to walk through the entire bunker, of course. What if there was a military base in one of the tunnels? Who provided the force to back their power?”
“What’s over that way?”
“Let’s go take a look, if you like. In the third tunnel we have a storage depot, and the fourth is just standing bare and empty. The businessmen didn’t get it refurbished before the war, and we haven’t had time to do it. What, are you wondering what’s the smartest way you could grab all this from us?” Bessolov winked at him. “I could take you on as an apprentice if you like; you only have to ask.”
“I don’t think you’ve explained to me yet why I should hang around here. Don’t you understand? It may be better or worse, but it’s all under the ground, in the Metro. What’s the fucking point of that? When there are entire cities up on the surface? Forests! Fields! The ocean, fuck it!”
They reached the end: an immense, empty tunnel flooded with rusty water. Nowhere further to go. A pump droned, siphoning the phlegm out of this throat.
“But how do you know what’s up there? Eh? Maybe it’s all exactly the same as here, only without a ceiling? Well, so there’s something on the radio. Does that give them paradise? Freedom? Fraternal love? Don’t make me laugh. They wander across the face of the Earth, turning wild one by one without any authorities, without any state, forgetting how to read and how to write. I was talking to you about exceptionality. It’s this Metro makes us exceptional! Fifty thousand people in one place. Only with a concentration like that is it possible to preserve civilization and culture. Only in that way. Yes, in the Metro. So what? up there in the fresh air they’ll become brutalized more rapidly; they’ll forget more rapidly what it means to be human. up there! On the surface there’ll be Neanderthals, polygamists, zooerasts! But the people—the spiritual, rational people—will be here!”
“Spiritual? And who eats their own children?”
“Well, Robinson Crusoe didn’t wean Friday off human flesh instantaneously. We simply don’t try to rush things. But sooner or later …”
“But why don’t you let us choose for ourselves? Whether we live on the surface or under it? Why didn’t you ask us?”
“We have asked.” Bessolov smiled. “And we’re still asking.”
“You’ve got nothing to feed them with! There’s the mushroom disease. Let them go! Then at least they won’t all starve to death here!”
“Our great people has survived worse trials than this. They’ll get by somehow. Do you know how hardy they are? It’s fucking crazy.”
“Let them go up there! At least give them a chance!”
“Up there? Do you think there’s a land flowing with milk and honey up there? You’ve been there! In Balashikha, for instance. What is there for them to eat?”
“They’ll find a way to feed themselves.”
“You bloody romantic. Why the hell am I wasting my time on a fool like you?”
“Well, let me go, then! I didn’t ask to be saved! For people like you to—”
“And what then? Do you think that if I let you out, the entire Metro will immediately rise up to support you? That you’ll cast us off, tell people the truth, and lead them off, up to the surface? And everything there will be different from here?”
“It will!”
“Off you go then,” AlexeI Felixovich said indifferently. “Go ahead. I’ll even give you back your revolutionary Nagant! No one there will believe you, just as you didn’t believe me. Do you realize at least that you’ll simply be telling everyone the tall tale about the Invisible Observers? Get real, Artyom!”
Artyom nodded. He smiled.
“We’ll see about that.”
CHAPTER 21
— COMRADES —
They took the bag off his head.
And he looked.
But even without looking, he’d already guessed from the voices where they’d brought him: to TsvetnoI Boulevard Station. To the same place they’d taken him from. They’d dragged him all the way from the bunker with a sack over his head, so that he couldn’t find the way back.
They unfastened the handcuffs, tugged the shapeless robe up over his head, and gave him a kick up the backsi
de; then the blue-finished revolver fell beside him with a clang.
The first thing Artyom did was grab it. Empty. He turned round—but his escorts had already vanished into the crowd. He caught a brief glimpse of two gray human grains before they were buried under the rest of the gray sand.
They’d flung him out of the bunker immediately, without wasting any time. Just as he was, still dressed in the waiter’s outfit. The lady doctor only had time to stuff some kind of tablets or other into the pocket of his trousers with the razor-sharp creases. A kind soul. Then the sack went over his head.
He sat down and thought for a while. People were copulating all around, giving it everything they’d got, because they had to live somehow. And now Artyom had to live somehow with all the things he had learned inside his frail, plywood brainpan. The new knowledge pressed against the inside of the millimeter-thick walls. Artyom couldn’t accept it; there couldn’t be any reconciliation.
It was impossible to believe that everything that was happening in the Metro—the living hell, the dark hopelessness and senselessness—had really been arranged that way by someone and that it all suited someone perfectly well. The appalling thing wasn’t that people were mixed together with earth to fill in tunnels, but that without all this the world couldn’t carry on; it would collapse and crumble into the ground. It was impossible to understand a world arranged like that.
And it was impossible to forgive it.
He sat there, looking at somebody’s bare, white backside pumping away and arguing with it, as if it was Bessolov’s face. He told it everything that he hadn’t been quick-witted enough to tell Bessolov.
“Of course, if you lie to people for so many years … How can they tell the truth from … If you make them bend them down over a trough of swill all the time … But that doesn’t mean they can’t straighten up … And look upwards, or at least forwards … Of course, that’s the way you’ve arranged things. But that doesn’t mean they can’t do it themselves. Or they don’t want to … You say you ask them? And you stick the right answers down their throats … They ask …”
Arguing with the backside was easy. The backside didn’t offer any objections.
“But what do people understand … You’re the ones who should be obliterated … That bunker of yours … Scattered … If the abscess isn’t lanced … Then nothing … You fat rats should be taken … By the scruff of the neck … And shown to the people … You try talking like that in front of people … About them … As if they were dumb cattle … And then … Then we’ll see. All of them in the bunker … They’re stinking bastards … I’ll scatter the lot of them … If they don’t believe me, they’ll believe you … I’ll make you tell them everything … And if you don’t … I’ll blast you with this here gun … We’re not the only ones who have backs to our heads … Bastards …”
He squeezed the handle of the empty Nagant in his hand.
He couldn’t do something like this alone. Nothing could be done alone.
He only had a small team—but he did have one. Letyaga, Homer, Lyokha. He could get them together. They already knew half the truth, and he could tell them the other half. Ask them. Together they could come up with a way to find that rats’ nest and rip it open.
How much time had gone by—a week? Or more? Everyone had probably wandered off throughout the Metro. Hunkered down in the cracks and crannies. One—so that Miller wouldn’t find him, another so that Hansa wouldn’t find him. But as for Homer—there wasn’t any more Reich. Maybe Homer knew where to look for the others? And he knew where to look for Homer.
He got up.
He strode off, elbowing aside the men lined up for some lovey-doving with numbers on their hands, past the dried-off fascists, past the sluts of every possible caliber, past the frightened adolescents who had come to discover love, past the scorched stalkers who wanted at least to take a look, past the villains who had been raped by life and now needed to rape life through women. Past all of them who were just beginning or already finishing their life of manhood in the underground world.
Where was Sasha’s cubbyhole here?
He found it.
He walked in without knocking, jumping the queue, smashed some trouserless fighting cock over the head with the butt of his Nagant, dragged him off Sashenka, and dumped him in the corner; and after that he said hello, turning away so that she could wrap herself up.
“Where’s Homer?”
“You can’t stay here, Artyom.” She looked up at him. “Why have you come back?”
“Where’s the old man? He hasn’t stopped pestering you, has he? Or has he? Where has he gone?”
“They took him away. Please, go.”
“They took him? Who took him?”
“You … Did he help you? Alexei—did he help? You look different. Better.”
“He helped me. You helped me. Thanks a fucking heap. To everyone. All my benefactors.”
“You wanted to find out. Now you have. Right? Or what did you want? Just to die?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I … I don’t want anything from him … from them. It’s a charity handout. I don’t want it. I didn’t. But now … Now thanks anyway.”
“Why did you leave them? It’s … It’s a completely different life there, isn’t it?”
“You mean you’ve never been there? He hasn’t taken you there?”
“He promised. He’s going to. But I asked him to take you instead of me. For the time being.”
“You haven’t missed anything. Life’s exactly the same down there. Only with better chow. Well … and the medical treatment too. You mean you could have gone there? With them?”
“What did he tell you about?”
“He told me about everything. Everything. The Invisible Observers, the powers that be, the Reds, the fascists, everything.”
“And he let you go?”
“Yes.”
“You have to go away. They picked up all your friends. That broker of yours. Everybody. The same day that you … Maybe they’re not alive any longer. I don’t know.”
“Who? The Observers?”
“No, not his people. Your Order.”
“The Order … Listen. You … I’m trying to understand. He explained everything to you, right? You knew everything. About the surface. About the world. But! That was your dream, wasn’t it? To go back up there. Just like it was mine. So that we could all … up there. Again. up there! You told me about it. Yourself! What are you doing here? Why are you hanging about in this cesspit? Why haven’t you made your getaway? Why are you here?”
Sasha stood there in front of him, as delicate as a pencil sketch, hugging herself. She gave him a sullen look.
“Go away. Really.”
He grabbed hold of her twig-thin wrists.
“Tell me. I want to get the people to rise up. You ask me why I didn’t stay there. Because everyone else … Us. All of us here. They have to know. All of them. They must know. You won’t betray me again? To him? You won’t give me away?”
“I won’t betray you.”
Her lips seemed seal themselves after that. Artyom waited.
“But I won’t go with you.”
“Why?”
“Artyom. I love him.”
“Who?”
“Alexei.”
“Him? That … old fart? That pervert? But he … He … He’s got no soul … You should hear what he says … about people! You love him?”
“Yes.”
Artyom released her arms from his scorched fingers and recoiled.
“You can’t!”
“I love him.” She shrugged her muffled shoulders. “He’s like a magnet for me. He’s a magnet, and I’m an iron filing. That’s all. He’s my master. And he has always been kind to me. From the very beginning.”
“He loans you out to be used! You! He likes to watch when you and all kinds of … Filthy … All kinds!”
“Yes.” Sasha nodded. “He enjoys that. And I like it too.”
“You lik
e it?”
“So what? Doesn’t that suit you either? Like Homer? Then I’m sorry.”
“And you’re waiting … Waiting for him to take you there? To join him?”
“One place became free there. He got permission. But I …”
“Okay. I get it. Instead of yourself—you sent me … I understand. Okay.”
“You have to go.”
“Do you really want to go there? To him? To that twenty-four-hour drinking den? To the bunker? Instead of going up—going even deeper?”
“I don’t care where I go. I want to be with him. I’m his. And that’s all.”
“Okay. I understand.”
He stood there for a little longer. Then he took the cross off his neck. And threw it to her.
“See you. Thanks.”
“See you.”
* * *
He walked out: a topsy-turvy, tumbling world.
He plodded through the lewd, ephemeral, drunken crowd. He’d told Sasha that he understood, but he hadn’t understood a thing. How could she—with Bessolov? How could she possibly love someone like that? How could she swap her airships, even for the dream of the bunker? Or for the brothel, for the sake of brief, condescending bawdy-house assignations? Bessolov brought her his leftover scraps of food from the bunker—and his leftover scraps of love too. But she didn’t mind that. Both kinds of scraps were enough for her. She wasn’t spoiled.
What didn’t Artyom really understand about Sasha?
And could he even hate her?
“Hey, waiter!” Someone reached out towards his lackey’s outfit. “A liter of hooch!”
“Go fuck yourself!”
He came out at the quayside. The water was high, right up to the brim.
He had to smash it. Smash everything. Smash it all to fuck.
So Miller had taken all his comrades from him. Homer, Lyokha, Letyaga. Artyom had to free them, if they were alive. He couldn’t do anything alone.
Miller.
If he could just win the Order over onto his side … With a force like that, he could even go up against the Observers. The Order had defended a bunker; it could storm one.
But how could he stir them up? Tell them about the way their comrades had been sold? But it was Miller who sold them—and who to? He’d been bought and sold himself, the old idiot; and the boys had all simply been killed senselessly. Because of an initiative at the middle-management level. Did the old man himself realize what he had given his legs for?
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