Doomed City

by Arkady Strugatsky

  “Guys,” he said in a choking voice. “Guys, wait . . .”

  “If anything comes up, we’ll be in the basement,” Fritz purred in velvet tones, smiled at Andrei, and prodded Izya out into the corridor.

  That was it. Feeling a repulsive, sickening chill inside him, Andrei walked around the office, turning off the unnecessary lights. That was it. He sat down at the desk and stayed there for a while, with his head lowered into his hands. He was covered in perspiration, as if he were about to faint. His ears were buzzing, and through the buzzing he kept hearing Izya’s soundlessly deafening, desperate, choking voice: “Guys, wait . . . Guys, wait . . .” And there was the sound of music solemnly roaring, feet clacking and shuffling across a parquet floor, the clatter of dishes and indistinct mumbling: “A gwass of cuwaçao and some pine-app-uw, quickwy!” He tore his hands away from his face and stared blankly at the drawing of the male sex organ. He took the sheet of paper and started tearing it into long, narrow strips, then threw the paper noodles into the trash basket and buried his face in his hands again. That was it. He had to wait. Summon up his patience and wait. Then everything would be justified. The nauseous feeling would pass off, and he’d be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Yes, Andrei, sometimes one even has to resort to this,” he heard a familiar, calm voice say.

  Sitting there on the stool where Izya had been sitting only a minute ago, with one leg crossed over the other and his slim white fingers clasped on his knee, gazing at Andrei with a sad, weary expression, was the Mentor. He was nodding gently and the corners of his mouth were dolefully turned down.

  “For the sake of the Experiment?” Andrei asked hoarsely.

  “For the sake of the Experiment as well,” said the Mentor. “But above all for one’s own sake. There is no way around it. You had to go through this too. We don’t want just any kind of people. We need a special kind of people.”

  “What kind?”

  “That’s something even we don’t know,” the Mentor said with quiet regret. “We only know the kind of people we don’t need.”

  “People like Katzman?”

  The Mentor told him yes with just his eyes.

  “And people like Ruhmer?”

  The Mentor laughed. “People like Ruhmer aren’t people. They’re living weapons, Andrei. By using people like Ruhmer in the name of and for the good of people like Wang, Uncle Yura . . . you understand?”

  “Yes. That’s what I think too. And after all, there isn’t any other way, right?”

  “Right. There isn’t any way around it.”

  “But what about the Red Building?” Andrei asked.

  “We can’t manage without that either. Without that anyone could become like Ruhmer without even realizing. Have you not sensed already that the Red Building is a necessity? Are you really the same as you were this morning?”

  “Katzman said the Red Building is the delirious raving of an agitated conscience.”

  “Well now, Katzman is smart. I hope you wouldn’t argue with that.”

  “Of course not,” said Andrei. “That’s precisely why he’s dangerous.”

  Once again the Mentor showed Andrei yes with just his eyes.

  “Oh God,” Andrei exclaimed wearily. “If only I could know for certain what the goal of the Experiment is! It’s so easy to get confused, everything’s such a muddle . . . Me, Heiger, Kensi . . . Sometimes I think I know what we have in common, but sometimes it’s a kind of blind alley, it’s totally absurd . . . After all, Heiger is a former fascist, and even now he . . . Even now I sometimes find him odious—not as an individual, but as a type, as . . . Or Kensi. He’s something like a social democrat, some kind of pacifist or Tolstoyan . . . No, I don’t understand.”

  “The Experiment is the Experiment,” said the Mentor. “It’s not understanding that is required of you but something quite different.”

  “What?”

  “If one only knew . . .”

  “But it’s all for the sake of the majority, isn’t it?” Andrei asked, almost in despair.

  “Of course,” said the Mentor. “For the sake of the benighted, downtrodden, entirely innocent, ignorant majority . . .”

  “Which must be raised up,” Andrei eagerly put in, “enlightened, and made the master of the Earth! Yes, yes, that I understand. You can go to any lengths for the sake of that . . .” He paused, agonizingly gathering his scattered thoughts. “And there’s still the Anticity,” he said hesitantly. “And that’s very dangerous, right?”

  “Very,” said the Mentor.

  “And then, even if I’m not entirely certain about Katzman, I still acted correctly. We have no right to take any risks.”

  “Absolutely!” said the Mentor. He was smiling. He was pleased with Andrei; Andrei could sense it. “The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who does nothing. It’s not mistakes that are dangerous—passivity is dangerous, specious fastidiousness is dangerous, devotion to the old commandments is dangerous. Where can old commandments lead? Only to the old world.”

  “Yes,” Andrei said excitedly. “I understand that very clearly. That’s exactly what we must all take as our foundation. What is the individual? A social unit! A zero without the digit one. It’s not a matter of the individual units but the public good. In the name of the public good we must be willing to lay any burden, no matter how heavy, on our Old Testament consciences, to transgress all written and unwritten laws. We have only one law: the public good.”

  The Mentor stood up. “You’re maturing,” he said almost triumphantly. “Slowly, but you are maturing.”

  He raised one hand in salutation, walked soundlessly across the room, and disappeared out the door.

  For a while Andrei sat there without thinking, leaning against the back of his chair, smoking and watching the bluish smoke slowly eddying around the yellow lamp hanging from the ceiling. He caught himself smiling. He didn’t feel tired anymore; the sleepiness that had tormented him since the evening had disappeared. He felt an urge to act, to work, and felt annoyed at the thought that anytime now he would have to go and sleep for a few hours anyway, in order not to burn out later.

  He pulled the phone toward him with an impatient gesture, lifted the receiver, and then remembered that there was no phone in the basement. He got up, locked the safe, checked that the drawers of the desk were locked, and walked out into the corridor.

  The corridor was empty, and the police officer on duty was dozing at his little desk. “You’re asleep at your post!” Andrei remarked reproachfully as he walked by.

  The building was filled with a resounding silence, as it always was at this time, a few minutes before the sun was switched on. A sleepy cleaning lady was slowly trailing a damp rag across the concrete floor. The windows in the corridors were wide open; the stinking vapors of hundreds of human bodies crept out into the darkness and dispersed as they were displaced by the cold morning air.

  With his heels clattering on the slippery iron stairway, Andrei went down into the basement, gestured casually with his hand for the guard who had jumped to his feet to sit back down, and swung open the low iron door.

  Fritz Heiger, with no jacket and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up, was standing beside the rusty washbasin, whistling a little march that Andrei vaguely knew and rubbing his hairy, rawboned hands with eau de cologne. There was no one else in the room.

  “Ah, it’s you,” said Fritz. “That’s good. I was just going to come up to see you . . . Give me a cigarette, I’ve run out.”

  Andrei handed him the pack. Fritz pulled out a cigarette, kneaded it, stuck it in his mouth, and looked at Andrei with a smirk on his face.

  “Well,” Andrei asked impatiently.

  “Well what?” Fritz lit up and dragged on it with relish. “You were way off the mark. He’s no spy, he’s not even—”

  “But how come?” said Andrei, stunned. “What about the file?”

  Fritz chortled, squeezing the cigarette into the corner of his large mout
h, and splashed out more eau de cologne onto his broad palm.

  “Our little Jew is a superhuman womanizer,” he said pedantically. “He had love letters in that file. He was on his way from a woman’s place—he’d quarreled with her and taken back his letters. But he’s scared shitless of that widow of his, so being no fool, as you know very well, he tried to get rid of that file at the first convenient moment. He says he dumped it down a manhole in the road . . . And that’s a great pity!” Fritz continued even more pedantically. “That file, Citizen Investigator, ought to have been confiscated immediately—it would have made grade-one dirt, and we would have had our little Jew by the short and curlies!” Fritz demonstrated where the short and curlies were. Fresh bruises were visible on his knuckles. “But anyway, he signed a little report of interrogation for us, so at least we got a tuft of wool from our mangy sheep.”

  Andrei fumbled for a chair and sat down. His legs wouldn’t hold him up. He glanced around again.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Fritz, rolling down his sleeves and fiddling with his cufflinks. “I see you’ve got a bump on your forehead. Now, you go to the doc and get that bump logged. I’ve already broken Ruhmer’s nose and sent him to the infirmary. Just as a precaution. During interrogation the suspect Katzman attacked investigator Voronin and junior investigator Ruhmer, causing them bodily harm. Forced to defend themselves . . . and so on. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Andrei muttered, mechanically feeling at his bump. He looked around again. “But where is . . . he?” he asked with an effort.

  “Ah, that gorilla Ruhmer went overboard again,” Fritz said in annoyance, buttoning up his jacket. “Broke his arm, right here . . . We had to send him to the hospital.”

  PART III

  1

  Four daily newspapers had been published in the City since time out of mind, but first of all Andrei picked up the fifth, which had put out its first issue about two weeks before the onset of the “Egyptian darkness.” It was a small newspaper, only one double sheet—not so much a newspaper, more of a handbill, and this handbill was published by the Party of Radical Rebirth, which had broken away from the left wing of the Radical Party. Bearing the title Under the Banner of Radical Rebirth, the handbill was vitriolic, vituperative, and aggressive, but the people who put it out were always superbly well informed: as a general rule, they knew what was going on in the City as a whole and in the government in particular.

  Andrei reviewed the headlines: “Friedrich Heiger warns: You have plunged the City into darkness, but we are on the alert”; “But really, Mr. Mayor, what did happen to the grain from the municipal granaries?”; “Forward shoulder to shoulder! Friedrich Heiger meets the leaders of the Peasants’ Party”; “Steel plant workers say: String up the grain dealers!”; “That’s the way, Fritz! We’re with you! PRR housewives’ rally”; “Baboons again?” A cartoon: the fat-assed mayor, enthroned on a heap of grain—presumably the same grain that had disappeared from the municipal granaries—handing out guns to lugubrious characters of criminal appearance. Caption: “Come on now, guys, you tell them where the grain went!”

  Andrei dropped the handbill on his desk and scratched his chin. Where the hell did Fritz get all the money for the fines? God, how sick Andrei was of everything. He got up, walked across to the window, and glanced out. In the dense, damp darkness, only faintly backlit by the streetlamps, he heard carts rumbling past, gruff voices swearing, and the loud hacking of a smoker’s cough. Every now and then a horse gave a high-pitched whinny. For the second day in a row the farmers were flocking into the City.

  There was a knock at the door and his secretary came in with a bundle of proofs. Andrei peevishly waved her away. “Ubukata. Give them to Ubukata.”

  “Mr. Ubukata is with the censor,” the secretary replied timidly.

  “He’s not going to spend the night in there,” Andrei said irritably. “Give them to him when he comes back—”

  “But the compositor—”

  “That’s all!” Andrei said rudely. “On your way.”

  The secretary withdrew. Andrei yawned, wincing at the pain in the back of his head, went back to the desk, and lit a cigarette. His head was splitting open and he had a foul taste in his mouth. And in general everything was murky, foul, and scummy. Egyptian darkness . . . Andrei heard the sound of shots somewhere in the distance—a faint crackling, like someone breaking dry branches. He winced again and picked up the Experiment, the government newspaper printed on eight double sheets:

  MAYOR WARNS PRR: THE GOVERNMENT IS VIGILANT, THE GOVERNMENT SEES EVERYTHING!

  THE EXPERIMENT IS THE EXPERIMENT. Our science correspondent considers solar phenomena.

  DARK STREETS AND SHADY CHARACTERS. The municipality’s political consultant comments on Friedrich Heiger’s latest speech.

  A JUST SENTENCE. Alois Tender sentenced to death for carrying a firearm.

  “SOMETHING UP THERE’S BROKEN. IT’S OK, THEY’LL FIX IT,” says master electrician Theodore U. Peters.

  TAKE CARE OF THE BABOONS—THEY’RE GOOD FRIENDS OF YOURS! A resolution from the latest meeting of the Society for the Protection of Animals.

  FARMERS ARE THE STAUNCH BACKBONE OF OUR SOCIETY. The mayor meets the leaders of the Peasants’ Party.

  THE MAGICIAN FROM THE LABORATORY ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS. Dispatches on the latest research into cultivating plants without light.

  “FALLING STARS” AGAIN?

  WE HAVE ARMORED VEHICLES. An interview with the commandant of police.

  CHLORELLA: NOT A PALLIATIVE, BUT A PANACEA.

  ARON WEBSTER LAUGHS, ARON WEBSTER SINGS! The celebrated comic’s fifteenth charity concert . . .

  Andrei raked all these sheets of paper together in a heap, clumped them into a tight ball, and tossed it into the corner. All that seemed unreal. What was real was the darkness, now hanging over the City for the twelfth day. Reality was the lines of people in front of the bread stores; reality was that ominous rumbling of rickety wheels below the windows, the little red sparks of crude hand-rolled cigarettes flaring up in the darkness, the dull, metallic clanking under the tarpaulins in the heavy country carts. Reality was the shooting, although so far no one really knew who was shooting at whom . . . And the most hideous reality of all was that blunt, hungover buzzing in his own poor head and the huge, furry tongue that he wanted to spit out because it didn’t fit into his mouth. Fortified port and raw spirit—they must have been out of their minds! It was fine for her, lounging under the blanket, sleeping it off, but he had to hang around here . . . If only the whole damn kit and caboodle would just fall apart, collapse . . . I’m sick and tired of wasting my life away; they can stick all their experiments, mentors, radical rebirths, mayors, farmers, and that lousy stinking grain right up their ass . . . Some great experimenters they are—they can’t even guarantee the sun will shine. And today I’ve still got to go to the jail and take Izya his food parcel . . . How much time has he got left to do? Four months . . . No, six. That bastard Fritz—if only all that energy could be put to peaceful purposes! Now there’s a man who never loses heart. It’s all grist to his mill. They flung him out of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, so he set up a party, he’s laying plans of some sort, the fight against corruption, all hail the new rebirth—he’s locked horns with the mayor now. Right now it would be good to go to City Hall, grab Mr. Mayor by his shock of noble gray hair, and smash his face into the desk: “Where’s the grain, you creep? Why isn’t the sun shining?” and then land a good kick on his ass—and again, and again . . .

  The door swung open and crashed into the wall, and little Kensi came tearing in. Andrei could see immediately that he was in a fury—eyes narrowed to slits, teeth bared, raven black thatch standing up on end. Andrei groaned to himself. Now he’ll drag me into another fight with someone, he thought drearily.

  Kensi walked over and slammed down a pile of proofs, savagely crisscrossed with red pencil, onto Andrei’s desk. “I’m not going to print this!” he declared. “It’s sabo
tage.”

  “Now what’s your problem?” Andrei asked. “Been scrapping with the censor, have you?” He took the proofs and stared at them without understanding anything, without even seeing anything apart from the red lines and squiggles.

  “The pick of the letters—with one letter!” Kensi said furiously. “The editorial won’t do—too provocative. The comments on the mayor’s speech won’t do—too trenchant. The interview with the farmers won’t do—a sensitive issue, now’s not the right time . . . I can’t work like this, Andrei, it’s up to you. You have to do something. Those bastards are killing the paper!”

  “Hang on now,” said Andrei, wincing. “Hang on, let’s figure this out . . .”

  A large, rusty bolt was suddenly screwed into the back of his head, right into the little depression at the base of his skull. He closed his eyes and gave a quiet moan.

  “Moaning won’t do any good here!” said Kensi, slumping into the chair for visitors and nervously lighting up a cigarette. “You moan and I groan, but that bastard’s the one who should be moaning, not you and me.”

  The door swung open again. The fat censor tumbled into the room, sweating and breathing heavily, with his face covered in red blotches. He yelled stridently on his way in, “I refuse to work in such conditions! I’m not some little kid, Mr. Senior Editor. I’m a government employee! I don’t sit here because I get any pleasure out of it, and I don’t intend to tolerate obscene language from your colleagues! Or let them call me abusive names!”

  “Why, you ought to be strangled, not just called names!” Kensi hissed from his chair, with his eyes glinting like a snake’s. “You’re a saboteur, not a government employee!”

  The censor’s face turned to stone, and he shifted his eyes from Kensi to Andrei and back again. Then he suddenly spoke in a very calm, solemn voice: “Mr. Senior Editor, I wish to register a formal protest!”