D

by George Right

  However, he had apparently overestimated the durability of the door which shuddered and caved in under blows from within. It was not simply hit with fists and feet but was apparently rushed all over. It even seemed to the amnesiac that it was already possible to distinguish on the surface of the door a rough convex resemblance to a human silhouette, and he didn't feel himself assured at all that he wanted to meet whoever was so fiercely breaking out.

  While he stood in indecision, however (there was absolutely nothing to prop up against the door other than his own shoulder), one more desperate blow moved the door outward from the door jamb several centimeters, and the following one threw it to the floor. And then something dreadful fell out into the corridor.

  A suitable word had escaped from the dark depths of amnesia: mummy. And specification: from old horror films. The figure was, almost from head to foot, in some sort of dirty bandages. Here and there they had been torn and bloody. There were no other clothes, or footwear. From under bandages on the head in several places long ugly strands of black hair rose up.

  The amnesiac involuntarily recoiled.

  "Who are you?" he hoarsely exhaled, throwing up again the useless flashlight, as if it were a sword.

  The figure, which had found balance, sharply turned toward him. It seemed to be as frightened as he was.

  "And you?" she asked. The voice was female. And the body outlines, actually, also female.

  "I would like to know it myself," he muttered and then had a subsequent thought that, probably, he had better pretend to be more informed–or at least try to stay in control of the order of questions and answers.

  "You don't remember anything?" she understood, her voice disappointedly going down. "Me too. For how long are you here?"

  "Thirty, forty minutes," he shrugged his shoulders, "or maybe hours. I am not sure that I correctly perceive time here. And that's from the moment when I came to my senses. But before..." he again shrugged his shoulders.

  "Like me. I regained consciousness in a closed room, in bandages. For some time I waited for someone to come and explain. Then I began to shout and call out. Then I understood that nobody would come. I began to bang on the door. That's all. And you? You were outside, weren't you?"

  "My door was open."

  "But what is there? I mean, around?"

  "Nothing good." He grew dark. "I don't know where the exit is, if you speak about it."

  "It is after all not a hospital?"

  "Yes, in hell there might be such hospitals."

  "But also not a prison? I mean..." She looked around. "It is too dirty here, even for a prison. And I have beaten out a cell door. Where are the jailers? Where is the alarm? It looks like there was no one alive for many years here."

  "We are."

  "Yes. Listen, we have to name each other somehow."

  "Just ‘Hey!’ won't be enough?"

  "Personally I don't want to be called just ‘Hey!’ And then, maybe we will find someone else."

  Or it will find us, the man gloomy thought, but answered aloud : "Well, considering circumstances, you can call me Adam," and adjusted his only clothing.

  "Then I am Eve," she easily agreed, "considering circumstances." Apparently she only now recognized that she did not even such clothing. However, she also did not look naked under all those bandages. Whether she was confused, under bandages, also remained unclear.

  He remembered about the piece of paper which he still held in his hand.

  "Listen, does a surname ‘Poplavska’ tell you anything? Professor Poplavska. Think."

  "No." She shook her head. "And who is it?"

  "Then, maybe Lebrun? Hart? Or lastly, Kovaleva?" ("No, this place is absolutely not similar to a monastery,” he added to himself.)

  "You, after all, know something? Who are all these people?"

  Without a word he gave her the sheet. For some time she studied the list.

  "You think we are some of these scientists?" She returned the paper.

  "Or victims of their experiments. I do not know. I know nothing."

  "Where did you find it?"

  "Eve, in your bath... by chance... was there a dead body?" he asked instead of answering her.

  "Dead body? In a bath?" She wonderingly stared from under her bandages, then got it: "You mean there was one in yours?"

  He silently nodded.

  "And are there a lot of them here?"

  "I've seen five yet. But I have not visited everywhere."

  "And all in baths?"

  "No."

  "And how have they died?"

  "A way we had better not," Adam muttered. Before his eyes a vision of the crucified woman appeared again, and he shuddered. However, Eve, apparently, had encountered a lot of trouble, too. "Painful?" he asked compassionately, nodding toward her blood-stained bandages.

  "A little. I was probably wounded when I rammed the door. Oh no, I just noticed!"

  "And old wounds?"

  "No, probably, all healed. I even tried to remove the bandages, but..."

  "They don't come off," Adam nodded. "The same story."

  "I am so afraid about my face," she admitted. "There’s no pain, but what if under the bandage I’m deformed."

  "We should not think about beauty now," he grumbled, thinking to himself: "Women!"

  "All right, let's think about how to get out of here. What do you know so far?"

  He briefly told her what he had had time to see, not going into details about the description of the corpses. However, Eve shivered. She probably had a vivid imagination.

  "Hyperion," she said. "Something terrible whiffs from this word."

  "I think, not from the word, but from something hidden behind it. Something we cannot remember."

  "We cannot or don't want to."

  He had to recognize that she was right. Each time when he tried to remember, fear rose from the bottom of his soul like disturbed silt.

  "All right," he said aloud. "Let's go upward. At this level there is certainly no exit."

  "But you haven't explored it completely, right? There can be other survivors–as both of us have recovered ourselves here."

  "I do not want to stay here anymore." Yet recently he was not so sure, but now, having found a partner, he decided to let well enough alone. "If we don't find an exit, we can always return. And if we find–we'll send rescuers or whatever."

  "Perhaps you’re right," agreed Eve. "I get the jitters from this place. And I wouldn't like to look at corpses at all."

  "I’m afraid,” Adam thought to himself, “you will see them not only on this level,” but he kept silent.

  They reached the staircase and, having stepped over the bloody warning, began to ascend.

  The route upward occurred to be much shorter, than downwards–only two levels. After entering the top one, they found themselves between the lift and some other sliding doors. There weren't any corridor here. Sometime these doors were closed, obviously, but someone had taken them apart, hammering them, as judged by crumpled edges, a certain rough wedge between halves, and then widing a gap by means of a lever. At the first Adam was delighted that he did not have to do the same work (especially taking into account that the stormer has carried away his tools), but then he understood that if their predecessor had gotten out to freedom this way, the rescuers or whoever from the external world must have come here already. Judging by a dust lying everywhere, the break in had to have occurred a very long time ago.

  It was dark inside, but not completely. Some sparks were shining in a gloom. Could it be stars? Was it night outside? Adam switched on the flashlight and resolutely stepped forward. Eve followed him.

  But it was not the night outdoors, not even a window to it. Shining points indeed suggested stars, but with stars seen through a window there usually are no inscriptions. Obviously, it was an image on a screen–more precisely, as revealed by the slipped beam of the flashlight, on a wall which simultaneously played the role of a screen. Below, the beam picked out of th
e darkness an instrument console stretching along a wall opposite to the entrance, and before it there were two high armchairs with headrests.

  Having pointed the beam to the left armchair, Adam saw a hand which motionlessly overhung from the armrest. He expected to see something like this.

  Adam and Eve approached more closely. In each armchair sat a person–a man in the left one, a woman in the right, both only in underwear. The head of the man had powerlessly fallen to his breast; the head of the woman, in contrast, was thrown back. The dim flashlight beam highlighted her white face, ripped from top to chin with deep furrows, like wounds from claws, and empty bloody holes instead of eyes. Eve involuntarily screamed and seized Adam's shoulder. He raised the head of the dead man by the hair. The face of this corpse had been scratched too, but not so cruelly. But his mouth and chin were covered in the dried blood. Teeth dimly reflected the light, but not all of them. Some of them had been ripped out, one still sticking out of his gum at an angle.

  "What's this?" Eve fastidiously exclaimed, having stepped with a bare foot on something soft, cold and sticky. Adam lit on it and bent down.

  "In my opinion, a human tongue," he asserted, looking at the floor.

  "What... cut off?"

  "More accurately bitten off."

  "And his arms! Look, what happened with his arms?"

  Adam pointed the beam at first one, then on the other arm of the dead man. Their appearance was horrifying. They looked as if they had been gnawed by an enraged animal, whole pieces of meat torn from the forearms, the lacerated veins and sinews clearly visible. Blood had covered the armrests and formed a big pool under the armchair.

  "They... have gone mad and butchered each other?" assumed Eve with a wobbling voice.

  "In my opinion, worse." Adam shook his head, squatting before the armchairs and exploring with the flashlight the blood-stained fingers of one and then the other corpse. "Each of them has done it to himself. He has gnawed his own arms and bled to death. And she...she tore apart her face to the bone with her nails, squeezed her eyes out and, I guess, forced her fingers through the eye-sockets directly into the brain.

  "Good Lord! What the hell happened here?" Eve's voice was close to hysterical. "Maybe... there’s shit in the local air which makes people mad?" She made movement to run away, but Adam caught her hand.

  "If so, it would have spred all over the building long ago, since the doors are opened."

  "And it did! As you told me, mangled corpses are everywhere here!"

  "But we are all right. If something were in the air, it has disappeared long ago."

  "All right? This you call ‘all right?’" She poked with the spread hand into her bandages.

  "At least, more all right than they are." He nodded toward the corpses. "By the way, they have no bandages. And when it happened to them, they were obviously in some kind of clothing, which the blood did not pass through."

  "Indeed. After all they ruled everything here."

  "I do not know. But, anyway, those who have undressed them have shown a certain respect for the bodies, setting them back in armchairs, instead of simply throwing them on the floor." He turned and shone the light on the console which was not revived by any spark. "No such regard was given the panel. Here the console was smashed with the same frenzy, as in other places. Only with the screen could they do nothing because the substance of a wall itself shows a picture, and it is, apparently, firm enough. Well, I do not know what has happened here, but at least it is clear what this place is."

  "And what is it?

  "A spaceship. We are not on Earth.”

  "Do you think so because this picture is similar to a star map?

  "It is a star map. But not only because of that," he put the light on armchairs again. "See these belts? Shoulder, waist... If it were a ground-based installation, it would not be necessary for operators at the panel to be fastened."

  "There is no weightlessness here."

  "Perhaps, we fly with acceleration. Or an artificial gravity works here. Or some other physical principle which we don't remember."

  "And may we have already landed?"

  "Maybe. But unlikely." Adam again looked at the big screen. He remembered almost nothing of astronomy but did not doubt that signatures under the bright circlets were the names of stars. And still this map was unusual. The density of stars decreased from edges to the center, and in the center there was a large enough spot, with outlines similar to a butterfly. It had no sharp edges but, the closer to the center the more light there was. On the periphery of the spot there still were some stars, but the middle was absolutely empty. At first this spot seemed to Adam just a defect of the screen–quite explainable, considering the condition of everything on the ship–but then he decided that this"defect" has too regular structure. Then his attention was drawn away by some blinking in the left bottom corner. There rhythmically flashed on and off a red circlet with a caption "Gliese 581." Still more to the left and lower a yellow circlet gleamed, labeled "Sun."

  "Does the name "Gliese 581" tell you anything?" Adam asked.

  "No... I don't know. It seems to me, I can remember..."

  "I think this is our destination. More precisely, was. But we flew by it a long ago and now are here," he pointed with a finger to the center of "butterfly."

  "Have people really already learned to fly between stars? I don't remember anything about it".

  "Nor I. But, seemingly, they have. We weren't abducted by aliens, it is obviously a human ship, judging at least by these signatures."

  "Also what do you think has happened here?"

  "I don't know. Some insanity. The devil only knows what could cause it, but it affected various crewmen differently. Some began to destroy equipment and to kill each other. Others killed themselves, and no less fanatically. The third sort were luckier. They only lost their memory."

  "And the bandages?"

  "Obviously, we were hurt in struggles with the first ones but nevertheless remained alive."

  "I'm not talking about that. There should be still a fourth category. Who bound us up? Who helped us? If somebody from the crew remained alive and healthy, where are they? Why don't they try to repair the ship? Why have left us? I was even locked in the room."

  "I don't think that anyone is still alive," Adam shook his head. "Anyway, anyone normal. Everything is too neglected here. Perhaps, someone has helped us, but later was killed. Or maybe, our memory loss was not instant, and we still had time to bind up each other. Now no more help is within reach."

  "And why was I locked in?"

  "To protect you from those who were still wandering outside." Adam shrugged his shoulders. "If it were done by me, then it is clear why I hadn't locked myself in. Probably, it could be done reliably only by breaking the lock, and I was afraid that I would not get out."

  "All the same, what if one of the madmen is still alive?

  "I don't know. Seems to me, there is nobody here except us, but nothing can be guaranteed. The ship is big."

  "And what about clothes?"

  "About clothes?" Adam didn't understand.

  "Suppose we were undressed for rendering medical aid - though it's hard to understand why clothing was not left in our rooms, especially if it was done by ourselves. I suppose also that madmen tore off the clothes of their victims. But you said the ones who had undressed the pilots showed respect for their bodies."

  "Well... I don't know. Perhaps, this madness did not overtake everyone simultaneously."

  "And I am not sure at all that your hypothesis about insanity is right. And that all these deaths and destructions are made by human hands."

  "By whose then? Are you trying to tell that we have an alien on board?" He grinned skeptically.

  "Why not? We apparently have visited this Gliese. And have found there a lifeform–or it has found us."

  "And a certain monster wanders till now in compartments and corridors?"

  "If nobody could wrest it down–and it seems that indeed
... And if it hasn't died by itself."

  "No, wait. Okay, it is possible to explain some of the deaths this way–especially if this monster is sentient. An animal can hardly crucify a person on a wire. But these pilots have obviously committed suicide, and not in the most pleasant way!"

  "We don't know," Eve objected. "The broken teeth and nails can be a result of struggle. And wounds too. That the shape of the bite marks are similar to human, proves nothing. We after all don't know what it looks like."

  "Or they."

  "Yes. Or they."

  Adam was silent for some time, looking at the mutilated body of the dead man. Then he moved the flashlight beam aside, unable to bear the view anymore. But it was even worse: Somewhere from the darkest depths of his consciousness, where even in the most sober-minded person the irrational is hidden, a feeling, almost a certainty, was rising that the dead man who had disappeared in a gloom, now, using his invisibility, would move, would start to rise silently in an armchair, would stretch the gnawed hands toward a victim for which he had long last waited. After all, it was not without reason written (in blood) across the staircase leading to the control room: "DO NOT GO THERE."

  Adam tried to drive away the delusion and to force himself to think rationally.

  "Perhaps you are right about landing on Gliese or somewhere else," he said slowly. "All these creatures–spiders and cockroaches–still could mutate from those on Earth, though I cannot imagine where they could come from on a starship. It obviously had to be disinfected before it started. But the others–these hybrids of worms and insects–there is nothing similar on Earth."

  "Do you remember so well–what is on Earth?"

  "No. But there is a difference between "forgot" and "never knew." Anyway, I vaguely feel it. And I am absolutely sure that these creatures are not from our world. Possibly we took them aboard as samples of local fauna, and then something happened so that they could creep away all over the ship. I don't know whether there is anything big among them. But even small insects can serve as transmitting agents for the disease which somehow affects the brain."