“Good evening,” I said. Please excuse me, but does Buba live here?”
“Here,” she said, examining me out of glistening oily-looking eyes.
“Can I see him?”
“And why not — all you want.”
“Where is he?”
“Funny man. Where would he be?” she laughed.
I could guess where, but said, “In the bedroom?”
“You are warm,” she said.
“What do you mean — warm?”
“What a dunce, and sober yet! Would you like a drink?”
“No,” I said, angry. “Where is he? I need him right away.”
“Your prospects are poor,” she said gaily. “But search on, search on. As for me, I must go.”
She patted me on the cheek and went out.
The study was empty. There was a large crystal vase on the table with some kind of reddish fluid in it. Everything smelled of that nauseatingly sweet odor. The bedroom was also empty; crumpled sheets and pillows were scattered about. I approached the bathroom door. The door was full of holes, obviously made by bullets shot from the inside, judging by their shape. I hesitated, then took hold of the handle. The door was locked.
I opened it with considerable difficulty. Buba lay in the bath up to his neck in greenish water; steam rose from its surface. The radio howled and wheezed on the edge of the tub. I stood and looked at Buba. At the erstwhile cosmonaut experimenter, Peck Xenai. At the once-upon-a-time supple and well-muscled fellow, who at eighteen left his warm city by the warm sea, and went into space for the glory of man, and who at thirty returned to his country to fight the last of the fascists and to remain here forever. I was repelled to think that only an hour ago, I had looked like him. I touched his face and pulled his thin hair. He did not stir. Then I bent over him to let him sniff some Potomac, and suddenly saw that he was dead.
I knocked the radio off the edge of the tub and crushed it under heel. There was a pistol on the floor. But Peck had not shot himself; it must have been simply that someone interfered with him and he shot through the door in order to be left alone. I stuck my arms in the hot water, picked him up, and carried him to the bed. He lay there all limp and terrible, with eyes sunken under his brows. If only he were not my friend… if only he were not such a wonderful guy… if only he were not such an outstanding worker…
I called emergency aid on the phone and sat down beside Peck. I tried not to think of him. I tried to think about the business at hand. And I tried to be cold and harsh, because at the very bottom of my conscious mind, that flick of warm feeling, like a speck of light, flashed again, and this time I understood what the thought was.
By the time the doctor came, I knew what I was going to do. I would find Eli. I would pay any sum. Maybe I would beat him. If necessary, I would torture him. And he would tell me, whence this plague flows out upon the world. He would name names and addresses. He would tell me all. And we would find these men. We would locate and burn their secret laboratories, and as for themselves, we would ship them out so far that they would never return. Whoever they might be. We would catch them all, we would catch all who ever tried slug and isolate them, too. Whoever they were. Then I would demand that I, too, be isolated because I knew what slug was. Because I grasped what sort of thought I had, because I was socially dangerous, just as they all are. And all that would be only the beginning. The beginning of all beginnings, and ahead would remain that which was most important: to make it so that people would never, never, wish to know what slug was. Probably that would be outlandish. Probably many would say that it was too outlandish, too harsh, too stupid — but we would still have to do it if we wanted mankind not to stop…
The doctor, an old gray man, put down his white case, leaned over Buba, looked him over, and said indifferently, “Hopeless.”
“Call the police,” I said.
Slowly he put away his instruments.
“There is no need of that whatsoever,” he said. “There’s no criminal content, here. It is a neurostimulator…”
“Yes, I know.”
“There you are — the second case this night. They just don’t know when to stop.”
“When did it start?”
“Not very long ago… a few months.”
“Then why in hell do you keep it quiet?”
“Keep it quiet? I don’t understand. This is my sixth call tonight, young man. The second case of nervous exhaustion and four cases of brain fever. Are you a relative?”
“No.”
“Well, all right, I’ll send some men.” He stood awhile, looking at Peck. “Join some choruses,” he said. “Enter the League of Reformed Sluts…”
He was mumbling something else as he left, an old, bent, uncaring man. I covered Peck with a sheet, pulled the drape, and went out into the living room. The drunks were snoring obscenely, filling the air with alcoholic fumes, and I took them both by the heels and dragged them out in the yard, leaving them in the puddle by the fountain.
Dawn was breaking once more and the stars were dimming in the paling sky. I got into the taxi and dialed the old Subway on the console.
It was full of people. It was impossible to get through to the railing, although it seemed to me that only two or three men were filling out the forms, while the rest were just looking, stretching their necks eagerly. Neither the round-headed man nor Eli were to be seen behind the barrier, and no one knew where they could be found. Below, in the cross-passages and tunnels, drunken, shouting, half-crazed men and hysterical women were milling about. There were shots, distant and muffled and some loud and close, the concrete underfoot shook with the detonations, and a mixture of smells — gunpowder, sweat, smoke, gasoline, perfume, and whiskey — floated in the air.
Squealing and arm-waving teenagers surrounded a big fellow who dripped blood and whose pale face shone with a look of triumph. Somewhere wild beasts roared menacingly. In the halls, the audience was going wild in front of huge screens showing somebody blindfolded, firing a spray of bullets from a machine gun held against his belly, and someone else sat up to his chest in some black and heavy liquid, blue from the cold and smoking a crackling cigar, and another one with a tension-twisted face, suspended as though cast in stone in some sort of web of taut cords…
Then I found out where Eli was. I saw round-head by a dirty room full of old sandbags. He stood in the doorway, his face covered with soot, smelling of burnt gunpowder, the pupils of his eyes fully distended. Every few seconds he bent down and brushed his knees, not hearing me at all, so that I had to shake him to make him take notice of me.
“There is no Eli,” he barked. “Gone, do you understand? Nothing but smoke — get it? Twenty kilovolts, one hundred amperes, see? He didn’t leap far enough!”
He pushed me away vigorously and took off into the dirty room, jumping over the sandbags. Elbowing the curious out of the way, he got to a low metal door.
“Let me through,” he howled. “Let me at it once more. God favors a third time!”
The door shut heavily and the mob surged away, stumbling and falling over the bags. I didn’t wait for him to come out.
Or not to come out. He was no longer of any use to me. There was only Rimeyer left. There was also Vousi, but I couldn’t count on her. So there was really only Rimeyer. I was not going to wake him. I’d wait outside his room.
The sun was already up and the filthied streets were empty.
The auto-streetcleaners were coming out of their underground garages to do their job. All they knew was work; they had no potentialities to be developed, but they also had no primitive reflexes. Near the Olympic, I had to stop for a long chain of red and green men followed by a string of people enclosed in some sort of scales, who dragged their shuffling feet from one street into the next, leaving behind a stench of sweat and paint. I stood and waited for them to pass, while the sun had already lit up the huge mass of the hotel and shone gaily in the metallic face of Yurkovsky, who, as he had while alive, looked out over
the heads of all men. After they passed, I went into the hotel. The clerk was dozing behind his counter.
Awaking, he smiled professionally and asked in a cheery voice, “Would you like a room?”
“No,” I replied, “I am visiting Rimeyer.”
“Rimeyer? Excuse me — room 902?”
I stopped.
“I believe so. What’s the matter?”
“I beg your pardon, but he is not in.”
“What do you mean, not in?”
“He checked out.”
“Can’t be, he has been ill. You are not mistaken? Room 902?”
“Exactly right, 902, Rimeyer. Our perpetual client. It’s an hour and a half since he left. More accurately, flew away. His friends helped him down and aboard a copter.”
“What friends?” I asked hopelessly.
“Friends, as I said, but, excuse me, they were acquaintances. There were three of them, two of whom I really don’t know. Just young athletic-looking men. But I do know Mr. Pebblebridge, he was our permanent guest. But he signed out today.”
“Pebblebridge?”
“Exactly. Lately he has been meeting Rimeyer quite often, so I concluded that they were quite well acquainted. He stayed in room 817. A fairly imposing gentleman, middle-aged, red-headed…”
“Oscar!”
“Exactly, Oscar Pebblebridge.
“That makes sense,” I said, trying to keep a hold on myself. “You say they helped him?”
“That’s right. He has been very sick and they even sent a doctor up: to him yesterday. He was still very weak and the young men held him up by his elbows, and almost carried him.”
“And the nurse? He had an attendant nurse with him?”
“Yes, there was one. But she left right after them — they let her go.”
“And what is your name?”
“Val, at your service.”
“Listen, Val,” I said. “You are sure it didn’t look like they were taking him away forcibly?”
I looked hard at him. He blinked in confusion.
“No,” he said. “Although, now that you have mentioned it…”
“All right,” I said. “Give me the key to his room and come with me.”
Clerks are, as a rule, quite savvy types. Their sense of smell, at least for certain things, is quite impressive. It was perfectly obvious that he had guessed who I was. And maybe even where I came from. He called a porter, whispered something to him, and we went up to the ninth floor.
“What currency did he pay in?” I asked.
“Who? Pebblebridge?”
“Yes.”
“I think… ah yes, marks, German marks.”
“And when did he arrive here?”
“One minute… it will come to me… sixteen marks… precisely four days ago.”
“Did he know that Rimeyer stayed with you?”
“Excuse me, but I can’t say. But the day before yesterday, they had dinner together. And yesterday, they had a long talk in the foyer. Early in the morning while everybody was still up.”
It was unusually clean and tidy in Rimeyer’s room. I walked about looking over the place. Suitcases stood in the closet. The bed was rumpled, but I could see no signs of struggle. The bathroom also was clean and tidy. Boxes of Devon were stacked on the shelf.
“What do you think — should I call the police?” asked the clerk.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Check with your administration.”
“You understand that I am in doubt again. True, he didn’t say goodbye. But it all looked completely innocent. He could have given me a sign, and I would have understood him — we have known each other a long time. He was pleading Mr.
Pebblebridge: ‘The radio, please don’t forget the radio.’”
The radio lay under the mirror, hidden by a negligently thrown towel.
“Yes?” I said. “And what did Mr. Pebblebridge say to that?”
Mr. Pebblebridge was soothing him, saying, “Of course, of course, don’t worry…”
I took the radio, and leaving the bathroom, sat down at the desk. The clerk looked back and forth from the radio to me.
So, I thought, now he knows why I came here. I turned it an. It moaned and howled. They all know about slug. No need for Eli, nor Rimeyer; you can take anyone at random. This clerk, for instance. Right now, for instance. I turned it off and said, “Please be good enough to turn on the combo.”
He ran over to it with mincing steps, turned it on, and eyed me questioningly.
“Leave it on that station. A little softer. Thank you.”
“So you don’t advise me to call the police?”
“As you wish.”
“It seemed you had something quite definite in mind when you questioned me.”
“It only seemed so,” I said coldly. “It’s just that I dislike Mr. Pebblebridge. But that does not concern you.”
The clerk bowed.
“I’ll stay here for a while, Val,” I said. “I have a notion that this Mr. Pebblebridge will be back. It won’t be necessary to announce that I am here. In the meantime, you are free to go.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
When he left, I rang up the service bureau and dictated a telegram; “Have found the meaning of life but am lonely brother departed unexpectedly come at once Ivan.” Then I turned on the radio again, and again it howled and screeched. I took off the back and pulled out the local oscillator-mixer. It was no mixer. It was a slug. A beautiful precision subassembly, of obviously mass-produced derivation, and the more I looked at it, the more it seemed that somewhere, sometime, long before my arrival here, and more than once, I had already seen these components in some very familiar device. I attempted to recollect where I had seen them, but instead, I remembered the room clerk and his face with a weak smile and his understanding, commiserating eyes. They are all infected. No, they hadn’t tried slug — heaven forbid! They hadn’t even seen one! It is so indecent! It is the worst of the worst! Not so loud, my dear, how can you say that in front of the boy… but I’ve been told it’s something out of this world… Me?… How can you think that, you must have a low opinion of me after all… I don’t know, they say over at the Oasis, Buba has it, but as for myself — I don’t know… And why not? I am a moderate man — if I feel something is not right, I’ll stop…
Let me have five packets of Devon, we have made up a fishing party (hee, hee!). Fifty thousand people. And their friends in other towns. And a hundred thousand tourists every year. The problem is not with the gang. That’s the least of our worries, for what does it take to scatter them? The problem is that they are all ready, all eager, and there is not the slightest prospect of the possibility to prove to them that it is terribly frightening, that it is the end, that it is the last debasement.
I clasped the slug in my fist, propped up my head on it, and stared at Rimeyer’s dress jacket with the ribbon bar on it, hanging on the back of the chair. Just like me, he must have sat in this chair a few months ago, and also held the slug and radio for the second time, and the same warm flick of desire wandered through the depths of his consciousness: there is nothing to worry about, because now there is light in any darkness, sweetness in any grief, joy in any pain…
…There, there, said Rimeyer. Now you have got it. You just have to be honest with yourself. It is a little shameful at first, and then you begin to understand how much time you have lost for nothing…
…Rimeyer, I said, I wasted time not for myself. This cannot be done, it simply cannot, it is destruction for everyone, you can’t replace life with dreams…
…Zhilin, said Rimeyer, when man does something, it is always for himself. There may be absolute egotists in this world, but perfect altruists are just impossible. If you are thinking of death in a bathtub, then, in the first place, we are all mortal, and in the second place, if science gave us slug, it will see to it that it will be rendered harmless. And in the meantime, all that is required is moderation. And don’t talk to me of the subst
itution of reality with dreams. You are no novice, you know perfectly well that these dreams are also part of reality. They constitute an entire world. Why do you then call this acquisition ruin?…
…Rimeyer, I said, because this world is still illusory, it’s all within you, not outside of you, and everything you do in it remains in yourself. It is the opposite of the real world, it is antagonistic to it. People who escape into this illusory world cease to exist in the real world. They become as dead. And when everyone enters the illusory world — and you know it could end thus — the history of man will terminate…
…Zhilin, said Rimeyer, history is the history of people. Every man wants to live a life which has not been in vain, and slug gives you such a life… Yes, I know that you consider your life as not having been in vain without slug, but, admit it, you have never lived so luminously, so fully as you have today in the tub. You are a bit ashamed to recollect it, and you wouldn’t risk recounting it to others. Don’t. They have their life, you have yours…
…Rimeyer, I said, all that is true. But the past! Space, schools, the struggle with fascists, gangsters — is all that for naught? Forty years for nothing? And the others — they did it all for nothing, too?…
…Zhilin, said Rimeyer, nothing is for nothing in history. Some fought and did not live long enough to have slug. You fought and lived long enough…
…Rimeyer, I said, I fear for mankind. This is really the end. It’s the end of man interacting with nature, the end of the interplay of man with society, the end of liaisons among individuals, the end of progress, Rimeyer. All these billions of people submerged in hot water and in themselves… only in themselves…
… Zhilin, said Rimeyer, it’s frightening because it’s unfamiliar. And as for progress — it will come to an end only for the real society, only for the real progress. But each separate man will lose nothing, he will only gain, since his world will become infinitely brighter, his ties with nature, illusory though they may be, will become more multifaceted; and ties with society, also illusory but not so known to him, will become more powerful and fruitful. And you don’t have to mourn the end of progress. You do know that everything comes to an end. So now comes the end of progress in the objective world. Heretofore, we didn’t know how if, would end, But we know now. We hadn’t had time to realize all the potential intensity of objective existence, it could be that we would have reached such knowledge in a few hundred years, but now it has been put in our grasp. Slug brings a gift of understanding of our remotest ancestors which you cannot ever have in real life. You are simply the prisoner of an obsolete ideal, but be logical, the ideal which slug offers you is just as beautiful. Hadn’t you always dreamed of man with the greatest scope of fantasy and gigantic imagination…
The Final Circle of Paradise Page 17
