The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  Dzhamil said nothing for a while, and then asked: “What if they come back?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  But they didn’t come back.

  The next day we climbed up to the excavation site and ascertained that not a single shard was left of anything that had been found the previous day: all the pottery fragments had disappeared. The flat square where the excavation had concentrated was covered in little holes. The mound of excavated soil had been knocked flat and looked as if someone had passed a steamroller over it. The wall was broken in two places. Dzhamil bit his lips and looked at me closely. The workers muttered to one another and came closer to us. They were scared, and so were we.

  Lozovsky had still not come back with the car. For breakfast we ate stale bread and drank cold water. When the bread was finished, the workers, expressing their wish to send the job to the devil, took their hoes and went up the hill, while I, after discussing the matter with Dzhamil, pulled my hat on and set off firmly down the road to Pendzhikent, trying to hitch a ride in a car.

  The first few kilometers went by uneventfully, and I even sat down a couple of times to smoke. The sides of the valley came together and then moved apart, dust blew over the twisting road, the river sang as it flowed. Several times I saw a flock of goats or some cows grazing, but never any people. There were about ten kilometers to go before the next inhabited area when a black helicopter appeared in the sky above me. It flew low along the road, passed over my head with a dull howling noise, and disappeared round a curve of the valley, leaving a blast of hot air behind it. It was not green, like our military helicopters, or silver, like a passenger vehicle. It was black and glinted a little in the sun like the barrel of a rifle. Its color, its strange shape, and the noise it made: all of these reminded me of what had happened yesterday, of the “spiders,” and I was frightened again.

  I started to walk faster, then started running. I saw a car around the corner, a GAZ-69, with three people standing around it and looking up into the empty sky. I was worried that they would leave, and so I called to them and ran as fast as I could. They turned round, then one of them lay down on the ground and crawled under the car. The other two, broad-shouldered and bearded fellows, geologists by the look of it, continued looking at me.

  “Will you take me to Pendzhikent?” I called.

  They were silent and stared at me, and I thought that they hadn’t heard what I said.

  “Hello,” I said as I came up to them. “Salaam alaikum….”

  The taller of the two men turned away in silence and got into the car. The shorter man said, very grumpily, “Hi,” and went back to looking at the sky. I looked up too. There was nothing there, except a large and immobile vulture.

  “Are you going to Pendzhikent?” I asked, clearing my throat.

  “Who are you?” the shorter man asked. The tall man got out of the car and stretched, and I saw a pistol in a holster at his belt.

  “I’m an archaeologist. We’re excavating the castle at Apida.”

  “What are you excavating?” the shorter man asked more politely.

  “The castle at Apida.”

  “Where is that?”

  I explained.

  “Why do you need to go to Pendzhikent?”

  I told them about Lozovsky and about the situation in the camp. I did not mention the “spiders” or what had happened last night.

  “I know Lozovsky,” the taller man said suddenly. He swung his legs out of the car and lit his pipe. “I know Lozovsky. Boris Yanovich?”

  I nodded.

  “A good man. Of course we would take you, comrade, but as you can see we’re cooling our heels ourselves….”

  “Georgey Palich,” came a reproachful voice from under the car, “you know it’s the driveshaft….”

  “Stop your nonsense, Petrenko,” the tall man said lazily. “I’ll fire you. I’ll fire you and pay you nothing….”

  “Georgey Palich…”

  “There it is, there it is again!” the shorter man said. The black helicopter came over the hill and hurried down the road straight toward us.

  “Lord only knows what kind of vehicle it is!” the shorter man said.

  The black helicopter lifted up into the sky and hung over our heads. I didn’t like this at all, and had already opened my mouth to say something, when suddenly the tall man said in a strangled voice: “It’s coming down!” and leaped out of the car. The black helicopter came lower and a wicked round hole opened up in its underside, and it came lower and lower, straight for us.

  “Petrenko, get away from the damn car!” the taller man said, and grabbed me by the sleeve to pull me away.

  I ran, and so did the shorter geologist. He shouted something, opening his mouth wide, but the roar of the motors covered all other sounds. I crouched in the ditch by the side of the road with my eyes filled with dust, and was able only to see Petrenko hurrying toward us on all fours and the black helicopter settling on the road. The updraft of the powerful rotors tore my hat off and surrounded us with a cloud of yellow dust. Then there was the same blinding light as before, brighter than the sun, and I shouted out from the pain in my eyes. When the dust settled, we saw that the road was empty. The GAZ-69 had disappeared. The black helicopter flew up along the valley…

  —

  …and I never saw the Visitors or their craft again. Dzhamil and the workers saw a single helicopter that day and two more on August 16. They were not flying particularly high, and kept to the course of the road.

  My further adventures were only connected tangentially to the Visitors. Together with the traumatized geologists I managed somehow to hitchhike my way to Pendzhikent. The taller geologist spent the whole time looking at the sky; the shorter one swore to himself and said that if this was a “trick by his friends at the flying club,” then they’d get what was coming to them. Petrenko, the driver, was completely stunned. Several times he piped up to say something about the driveshaft, but no one listened to him.

  They told me in Pendzhikent that Lozovsky had left on the morning of the fourteenth, but that our driver Kolya had come back that evening and had been picked up by the police, because it was obvious that he had stolen the car and dealt with Lozovsky, but he didn’t want to say how and where he had done it, and all he did was to try to explain himself with some rubbish about an attack from the air.

  I hurried to the police station. Kolya was sitting with the duty officer on a wooden bench and was suffering greatly from human injustice. According to his account, about forty kilometers outside Pendzhikent Boris Yanovich had decided to make a detour to look at a tepe, a mound that he suspected covered an archaeological site. Twenty minutes later the helicopter turned up and took the car. Kolya ran after it for about a kilometer, didn’t manage to catch up with it, and came back to look for Lozovsky. But Lozovsky had also vanished without a trace.

  Then Kolya went back to Pendzhikent and on his honor told people what had happened, but things got out of hand….“You’re going to catch it!” the duty officer said angrily, but just at that moment my two geologists and Petrenko came into the police station. They came to make a statement about the disappearance of their car, and asked with mild irony which department it was that dealt with acts of aerial hooliganism. Kolya was released within half an hour.

  This was not, I should add, the end to Kolya’s troubles. The Pendzhikent district attorney announced that he would be opening an investigation into the case of “the disappearance and supposed murder of citizen Lozovsky,” and cited Kolya as a suspect, and Dzhamil, the workers, and myself as witnesses. This case was only shelved after the arrival of the commission under Professor Nikitin. I don’t want to write about this and I am not going to, because what I am talking about here is the Visitors, and new information was being turned up about them every day. But the most interesting information was provided by our “Bossman,” Boris Yanovich Lozovsky, himself.

  We spent a long time musing about possible answers, trying to work
out where the Visitors had come from and why they had come. There were a huge number of contradictory opinions, and things were only cleared up when, in the middle of September, they found the Visitors’ landing site and Boris Yanovich’s diary. They were discovered by a border patrol that was investigating the traces of witness accounts of the black helicopters. The landing site was in a hollow surrounded by mountains, fifteen kilometers to the west of Apida Castle, a smooth space with melted rock at its edge. It was about two hundred meters in diameter, and the ground was scorched in many places, and all vegetation—grass, thistles, two mulberry trees—had been charred beyond recognition. One of the missing cars was found there (it was the GAZ-69), clean and serviced but without any fuel, as well as a few objects made of an unknown material and of unidentifiable purpose (they were handed over to the research group), and—most important of all—the diary that the leader of the Apida research group, Boris Yanovich Lozovsky, had kept, containing many surprising handwritten notes.

  The diary was lying on the backseat of the car, and it had not been affected by the damp or the sun, it was only a little dusty. It was a standard exercise book with a brown cardboard cover and two-thirds of it was filled with descriptions of the Apida Castle excavations and notes on further archaeological exploration in the surrounding area. But at the end there were twelve pages filled with a short account which, in my opinion, is at the same level as any novel and many scientific and philosophical works.

  Lozovsky wrote it in pencil, always (to judge by the handwriting) very quickly and sometimes not in a particularly connected manner. Some of what he wrote is incomprehensible, but lots of it also shines a light onto certain previously unclear elements of what happened, and the entire document is extremely interesting, especially insofar as its descriptions of how Lozovsky faced the Visitors are concerned. The notebook was handed over to me in my capacity as the temporary head of the Apida archaeological research group by the Pendzhikent district attorney immediately after the case of the “disappearance and supposed murder” had been closed “for lack of evidence of a crime.” I give the whole text below, making comments at a few points that need clarification.

  Extracts from the diary of B. Y. Lozovsky

  August 14

  [There is a drawing of something not entirely unlike the cap of a fly agaric mushroom—a severely flattened cone. Next to it are drawn for comparative purposes a car and a man. The caption reads “Spaceship?” The cone has several spots marked on it, and these have arrows pointing to them and the caption “Exits.” At the top of the cone is written “Load here.” To one side: “Height, 15 m. Diameter at base, 40 m.”]

  The helicopter has brought back another car, a GAZ-69, number-plate ZD19-19. The Visitors [Lozovsky was the first person to use this word] climbed into it, took the engine out, then loaded it into the ship. The hatches are narrow, but the machine went in somehow. Our car is still down on the plain. I unloaded all the food and they are not touching it. They don’t pay me any attention at all, it’s a little offensive, even. I suppose I could leave, but I won’t go just yet….

  [Here there is a very bad drawing, obviously supposed to show one of the Visitors.]

  I can’t draw. A black disk-shaped body about a meter in diameter. Eight legs, though some have ten. The legs are long and thin, like a spider’s, with three joints. The joints can turn in any direction. There are no obvious eyes or ears, but it is clear that they can see and hear very well. They can move very fast, like black streaks of lightning. They can run up an almost vertical cliff, like flies. It’s odd that their bodies are not divided into thorax and abdomen. I saw how one of them managed, while running, without stopping and without turning its body, to move rapidly to the side and then back again. When they come close to me, I can detect a fresh scent like the smell of ozone. They chitter like cicadas. A rational creature […the phrase is left unfinished.]

  The helicopter has brought a cow. A fat, stupid, Jersey cow. As soon as she was down on the ground she started to nibble at some of the charred thistles. Six Visitors surrounded her, chittering and apparently arguing with one another. They are extremely strong—one of them grabbed the cow by her legs and easily turned her over onto her back. They loaded the cow into the ship. Poor creature. Are they gathering supplies?

  I tried to start up a conversation: I went over to them face-to-face. They ignored me.

  The helicopter has brought a haystack and loaded it….There are at least twenty Visitors and three helicopters….

  They are following me. I walked behind some rocks. A Visitor came after me, chirruped, paused….

  This must be a spaceship. I sat in the shade of the cliff and suddenly the Visitors came running over from all different directions. Then the ship suddenly lifted a few feet up into the air and then came down again. Light as a dandelion. No noise, no fire, no sign that there are motors working. But the stones complained as the ship came down….

  One of them, it seems, does have eyes—five shining buttons on the edge of its body. They are all different colors: from left to right, turquoise, dark blue, violet, and then two black ones. Maybe they are not eyes, because their owner spends a lot of its time walking in the opposite direction from the way in which they are pointed. The eyes sparkled in the twilight.

  August 15

  I slept very little last night. The helicopters kept coming and going, the Visitors ran around and chirruped. And all of this in absolute darkness. There were occasional bright flashes….A fourth car, another GAZ-69, number-plate ZD73-98. Again without its driver. Why? Do they pick a moment when the driver has left the car?

  A Visitor caught some lizards, very skilfully. It ran on three legs and with the remaining ones picked up sometimes as many as three lizards at a time….

  Yes, I could leave if I wanted. I have just come back from the bottom of the cliff. From there it’s only a stone’s throw to Pendzhikent, only about three hours on foot. But I don’t leave. I need to see how this ends….

  They’ve brought a whole flock of sheep, about ten of them, and a huge amount of hay. They’ve already managed to find out what sheep eat! Clever things! It is clear that they want to take the sheep and the cow back alive, or else that they are laying in stocks of everything. But I still cannot understand why they are ignoring people so absolutely. Or are people less interesting to them than cows? They’ve loaded up our car now.

  …they also understand. What if I were to fly off with them? To try to get them to take me or else just sneak into the ship. Would they let me?…

  …Two propellers, sometimes four. Can’t count how many blades the propellers have. About eight meters long. Made of some matte-black material, without obvious joins. I don’t think it’s metal. Something like plastic. Don’t know how to get inside. No hatches that I can see….[This must be a description of the helicopters.]

  I must be the only person in the area. It’s scary. But how else could it be? I need to fly, that’s clear….

  Hedgehogs have appeared at the top of the ship again. [This makes no sense. Lozovsky mentions hedgehogs nowhere else in his account.] They spin round, give off sparks, and vanish. A strong smell of ozone…

  A helicopter came back, fist-sized dents in its side. It landed, sunk in on itself [?], and just now two of our fighter jets have come over the hills. What happened?

  The Visitors have carried on running around as if nothing has happened. If they do end up fighting […phrase unfinished.]

  […] theoretically […unclear…] must explain. Of course they don’t understand. Or else they think it’s unworthy of them….

  Astonishing. I’m stunned. Are they machines? Not two meters away from me two Visitors repaired a third! I couldn’t believe my eyes. An unusually complex mechanism, I can’t describe it, even. It’s a shame that I’m not an engineer. But maybe that wouldn’t have helped. They took off the base plate, and underneath there’s a star-shaped […unfinished]. There’s a storage space under the belly, but how they get all their things
in there, I don’t know. Machines!

  They put it back together, leaving it with just four legs but adding something like a gigantic claw. As soon as the repairs were finished, the “newborn” ran off and hurried to the ship….

  Most of their body is made up of a star-shaped object made of some white material, like pumice or sponge….

  Who is the Controller of these machines? Maybe the Visitors are being controlled from inside the ship?

  Thinking machines? Nonsense! Cybernetic objects, remote controlled? Amazing either way. And what stops the Controllers from coming out? They understand the difference between people and animals. That’s why they don’t take people. Humane. They must have taken me by accident….My wife won’t forgive them….

  …never, never to see her again—that’s terrifying. But I am a man!

  The chances of survival are very small. Hunger, cold, the cosmic rays, a million other accidents. The ship is clearly not designed for stowaways. Maybe I’ve got a chance in a hundred. But I don’t have the right not to take it. I have to make contact with them!

  Night, midnight. I’m writing by lamplight. When I turned it on, one of the Visitors came running up, grumbled at me, then left. The Visitors have been building something all evening, like a tower. First three wide gangways came out of three of the hatches. I thought that the controllers would finally come out. But what came down were lots of components and metal [?] bars. Six Visitors set to work. The one with the claw was not among them. I watched them for a long time. Their movements were exact and sure. The tower was built in four hours. How well they coordinate things! I can’t see anything now, it’s dark, but I can hear the Visitors running around on their landing site. They move perfectly well without the light, they haven’t stopped working for a moment. The helicopters are still flying around….Let’s suppose that I […unfinished.]