The Snail on the Slope

by Arkady Strugatsky

  “Oh, what’s there to understand? I want to live a full life. I want to see new places, have new experiences. Nothing ever changes here—”

  “Belay that!” roared a dull, clanging voice. “Enough chatter! No changes—that’s a good thing! A fixed sight. Is that clear? Repeat after me!”

  “Oh, stop ordering me around . . .”

  This was undoubtedly the machines talking. Peretz couldn’t see them, and he really couldn’t imagine them, but it kept seeming to him that he was hiding under a toy store shelf and listening to the toys he remembered from childhood talking among themselves—except that the toys were enormous and therefore scary. The high-pitched, hysterical voice clearly belonged to a fifteen-foot version of the doll named Joan. She was wearing a colorful dress made of tulle, and she had a fat, motionless pink face with eyes rolled up into her head, fat arms and legs spread absurdly wide, and fused fingers and toes. And the bass voice must be a humongous Winnie the Pooh who barely fit into his container—a shaggy, good-natured brown bear stuffed with sawdust, with glass buttons for eyes. And the rest were toys, too, but Peretz hadn’t yet figured out what sort.

  “I still think you should work,” rumbled Winnie the Pooh. “Keep in mind, dear, that there are those among us who are much less fortunate than you. Our Gardener, for example. He would really like to work. But he’s been sitting here thinking all day and night, because his plan isn’t complete yet. And he hasn’t complained once. Monotonous work is still work. Monotonous pleasure is still pleasure. It’s no reason to start talking about death and things like that.”

  “Oh, I can’t understand you,” said Joan. “First you tell me dreams are the culprit, then I don’t know what else. And I have premonitions. I’m constantly on edge. I know that there will be a terrible explosion, and that I’ll burst into tiny pieces and turn to steam. I’m sure of it, I’ve seen it happen—”

  “Belay that!” thundered the clanging voice. “This will not be tolerated! What do you know about explosions? You could run toward the horizon at any speed and at any angle. And somebody with the desire to do so could hit you at any distance, and that would create a real explosion, not some highbrow steam. But is that somebody me? No one would say so, and even if they wanted to say it, they wouldn’t get the chance. I know what I’m talking about. Is that clear? Repeat after me.” This entire speech was full of brainless confidence. This had to be the giant wind-up tank. It displayed this same brainless confidence as it clambered over a boot placed in its way.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Joan. “But even if I’ve come running to you, my only friends, that does not, in my opinion, mean that I’m planning to run toward the horizon at some angle for anybody’s pleasure. Besides, I would like you to note that I was not talking to you . . . And as for work, I’m not sick, and I’m not abnormal—I require pleasure just like the rest of you. But this work isn’t real, and the pleasure feels fake. I keep waiting for my true pleasure, but it never comes, never. And I don’t know what’s wrong, and when I start thinking about it, I only come up with nonsense.” She sobbed.

  “Weeell . . .” boomed Winnie the Pooh. “Yes, I see . . . Of course . . . But . . . Hmmm . . .”

  “She’s right!” observed someone new, in a very cheerful and sonorous voice. “The girl is right . . . There’s no real work.”

  “Real work, real work!” the old man rasped out venomously. “We’re surrounded by gold mines of real work! It’s a veritable El Dorado! King Solomon’s Mines! Look at them walking around with their diseased insides, with their sarcomas, with those glorious fistulas, with the most delectable adenoids and appendixes, not to mention the common but utterly fascinating tooth decay! Let me be frank: they get in the way; they don’t let you work. I don’t know what it is about them—it’s possible they produce a special smell or that they emit strange rays, but when they are near me, I go crazy. My personality splits. One half of me craves the delight, grabbing for it, yearning to carry out the essential, ambrosial, desired tasks, while the other sinks into a stupor and clogs everything with never-ending questions: Is it worth it, why am I doing it, is it the right thing to do? . . . Take you, I’m talking about you: Would you actually say that you work?”

  “Me?” asked Winnie the Pooh. “Of course I work . . . Certainly . . . I’m surprised to hear you say that, I wouldn’t have expected it . . . I’m almost finished designing a helicopter, and then . . . I told you, didn’t I, that I created an excellent hauler—it was such a delight . . . I don’t think I’ve given you any reason to doubt that I work.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it, I don’t doubt it,” croaked the old man. (A vile rag doll of an old man, either a goblin or an astrologer, wearing a plush black robe with gold sequins.) “Tell me something, though: Where is this hauler?”

  “Weeell . . . I just don’t understand . . . How would I know? And why would I care? I’m currently interested in the helicopter . . .”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” said the Astrologer. “You don’t care about anything. You’re satisfied with everything. No one interferes with you. They even help you! You bring forth a hauler, almost drowning in pleasure, and the humans immediately take it away so you won’t be distracted by trifles, and can instead experience delight on a larger scale. But if you asked this one whether humans help him—”

  “Me?” roared the Tank. “Bullshit! Belay that! When somebody enters the training ground and decides to get some exercise—to prolong the pleasure, to play a game, to bracket in the target, first in one coordinate direction, then the other—they raise a horrible hue and cry and kick up a disgusting fuss that would make anybody upset. But did I say that this anybody is me? No! You’ll never hear that from me. Is that clear? Repeat after me!”

  “Me too, me too!” burst out Joan. “How many times have I wondered why they exist? Because everything in the world has a reason, right? And in my opinion, they don’t. They probably aren’t real—they are simply hallucinations. When you try to analyze them, to take a sample from their lower section, from their upper section, from their middle, you always hit a wall or run past them, or you suddenly fall asleep.”

  “There’s no doubt they exist, you hysterical fool!” the Astrologer rasped out. “They have a top section, and a bottom section, and a middle, and all these sections are filled with disease. I can’t think of anything more exquisite. No other creature contains as many objects of delight as humans. What could you possibly know about the reasons for their existence?”

  “Stop overcomplicating things!” said the sonorous voice. “They are simply beautiful. Watching them is the one true pleasure. Not in every instance, of course, but imagine a garden. However beautiful it is, without humans it will not be complete—it will be unfinished. It absolutely has to be animated by at least one kind of human. It could be a small human with naked limbs who never walks but only runs and throws stones . . . or a medium-sized human who picks flowers . . . it doesn’t matter. Even a shaggy human that walks on all fours would do. Without them, a garden isn’t a garden.”

  “Listening to this crap makes somebody depressed,” declared the Tank. “Nonsense! Gardens decrease visual range, and as for humans, they constantly get in somebody’s way, and it’s impossible to say anything good about them. At any rate, let somebody only fire a good volley at a building that happens to contain humans, and their desire to work completely disappears, they get sleepy, and they immediately fall asleep. I’m not speaking of myself, of course, but if someone did say it about me, would you contradict them?”

  “You’ve been talking about humans a lot lately, for some reason,” said Winnie the Pooh. “However the conversation starts, you always turn it to humans.”

  “And why not, I ask?” The Astrologer immediately jumped on him. “What’s it to you? You’re nothing but an opportunist! If we want to talk, we’ll talk. Without requesting your permission.”

  “By all means, by all means,” Winnie the Pooh said sadly. “It’s just
that we used to mostly talk about living creatures, about pleasure, about our plans, and I’m simply observing that humans are increasingly dominating our conversations, and therefore also our thoughts.”

  A silence fell over the repository. Peretz shifted position, trying not to make any noise—he got onto his side and pulled his knees up to his stomach. Winnie the Pooh is wrong. Let them talk about humans; let them talk about humans as much as possible. It seems like they have an exceptionally poor understanding of humans, and therefore what they say will be fascinating. Out of the mouths of babes. When humans talk about themselves, they are always either bragging or confessing their sins. I’m sick of it . . .

  “All of your conclusions are fairly foolish,” said the Astrologer. “Take, say, the Gardener. I hope you’re aware that I’m sufficiently unbiased to empathize with the pleasures of my friends. You love to plant gardens and lay out parks. Wonderful. I empathize. But pray tell, what do humans have to do with it? What do the humans that lift their legs near trees, or the humans that accomplish the same thing in other ways, have to do with it? I sense an unhealthy aestheticism. It’s as if I could fully enjoy removing tonsils only if the patient were wrapped in a colorful rag . . .”

  “It’s just that you’re cold by nature,” noted the Gardener, but the Astrologer wasn’t listening.

  “Or take you,” he continued, “you’re constantly waving your bombs and rockets around, you calculate target leads, and you amuse yourself with predicted impact points. What do you care whether a building contains humans or not? You’d think you could consider your friends instead—me, for example. Oh, to suture wounds!” he said dreamily. “You can’t even imagine what it’s like to suture a good, ragged stomach wound . . .”

  “You’re talking about humans again,” Winnie the Pooh said regretfully. “This is the seventh night in a row that we’ve talked about nothing but humans. I feel strange saying this, but it looks like you and the humans have become linked by a currently unknown but fairly strong connection. The nature of this connection is completely unclear to me, excepting you, Doctor, for whom people are a necessary source of pleasure . . . To be honest, this all seems ridiculous to me, and I think it’s time that—”

  “Belay that!” growled the Tank. “It isn’t time.”

  “What?” Winnie the Pooh asked, perplexed.

  “I said it isn’t time,” the Tank repeated. “There are those, of course, who are not capable of knowing whether it’s time or not, there are those—I’m not naming names—who don’t even know that the time will eventually come, but somebody is absolutely certain that there will inevitably come a time when shooting at people inside buildings will be not only allowed but required! And those who refuse to shoot will be our enemies! Criminals! They will be destroyed! Is that clear? Repeat after me!”

  “I’ve been suspecting something like that,” said the Astrologer in an unexpectedly creamy voice. “Ragged wounds . . . Gaseous gangrene . . . Third degree radioactive burns . . .”

  “They are all ghosts,” sighed Joan. “How depressing! How disappointing!”

  “Since you just can’t stop talking about humans,” said Winnie the Pooh, “how about we try to figure out the nature of the connection between us? Let’s try to think logically . . .”

  “There are only two possibilities,” a new voice droned tediously. “If the aforementioned connection exists, then one of us must be dominant—either us, or the humans.”

  “This is silly,” said the Astrologer. “What do you mean, two possibilities? Of course we’re the dominant ones.”

  “And what does dominant mean?” Joan asked in a miserable voice.

  “In this context, dominant means in control,” explained the droning voice. “As for how I’ve formulated the question, it is not only not silly, it is uniquely correct, if we’re planning to think logically.”

  There was silence. Everyone was apparently waiting for him to continue. Finally Winnie the Pooh couldn’t take it anymore and said, “Well?”

  “I have not yet ascertained whether we’re planning to think logically,” said the droning voice.

  “Yes, yes, let’s think logically,” clamored the machines.

  “In that case, taking the existence of the connection as an axiom, they must either be made for you, or you must be made for them. If they are made for you, and they prevent you from acting in accordance with the laws of your nature, then they must be eliminated, like one eliminates any obstacle. If you are made for them, but you are not satisfied with this state of affairs, then they must also be eliminated, like one eliminates any source of an unsatisfactory state of affairs. That is all I have to say pertaining to the subject of your conversation.”

  No one said another word, then bustling, creaking, clicking sounds came from the containers, as if the giant toys were settling down to sleep. Peretz could also feel a general unease in the air, like at a party where people had spent the whole night gossiping, cracking wise at the expense of all their nearest and dearest, and suddenly realized that they’d gone too far and said too much.

  “Humidity is going up for some reason,” the Astrologer rasped out in an undertone.

  “I noticed a while ago,” squeaked Joan. “It’s so nice to see new numbers . . .”

  “My power source is acting up,” rumbled Winnie the Pooh. “Gardener, do you happen to have a spare twenty-two-volt battery?”

  “I don’t have anything,” responded the Gardener.

  Then Peretz heard a tearing noise, as if someone was ripping off plywood, and he suddenly saw something bright moving in the gap above him. He thought someone was looking into the dark space where he was sitting between the boxes, and terrified, he broke into a cold sweat, stood up, tiptoed into the moonlight, then tore off toward the road. He ran for dear life, and it kept seeming to him that dozens of strange, grotesque eyes were watching him go, seeing how small, pitiful, and defenseless he was in the bleak open plain, laughing about the fact that he was dwarfed by his shadow, and that he had forgotten to put his shoes back on in his fright, and that he was now too afraid to even think of coming back for them.

  He had crossed the bridge over the dry ravine, he could already see the houses on the outskirts of the Administration, he was starting to notice that he was out of breath and that his bare toes were unbearably painful, and he wanted to stop, when he heard something over the noise of his own breathing—it was the sound of many feet drumming behind his back. Then he again lost his head in terror and took off with his last ounce of strength, feeling neither the ground beneath him nor his own body, spitting out thick, sticky saliva, completely unable to think straight. The moon raced above the plain, staying by his side, and the sound kept getting closer and closer, and he thought, This is it, I’m done for. Then the drumming caught up to him, and someone appeared next to him, obscuring the moon—a huge, white someone, giving off heat like an overworked horse. Then he shot into the lead and began slowly increasing the distance between them, pumping his long bare legs in a furious rhythm, and Peretz saw that this was a man wearing a T-shirt with the number 14 on the back and white athletic shorts with a black stripe, and he got even more scared. There were still many feet drumming behind his back, and he could hear groans and cries of pain. They’re running, he thought hysterically. They’re all running! It’s started! And they’re running, but it’s too late, too late!

  He could dimly make out the villas alongside the main street, and people’s motionless faces, and he kept trying not to lose ground to the long-legged number 14, because he didn’t know which direction he was supposed to run or how to get to safety, and maybe they were already handing out weapons somewhere, but I don’t know where, and I’ll be left out again, but I don’t want that, I can’t be left out this time, because those things back there, in the boxes, they may be right in their own way, but they are still my enemies.

  He crashed into the crowd and it parted before him, and a square black-and-white-checkered flag flashed in front of his
eyes, and he heard cheering, and someone he knew began running next to him, repeating, “Don’t stop, Peretz, don’t stop . . . Breathe through your mouth if you have to . . . Deep breaths, deep breaths, but don’t stop . . .” Then he did stop, and people immediately surrounded him, throwing a satin robe over his shoulders. A booming voice announced from a speaker, “In second place is Peretz from the Scientific Guard Team, with a time of seven minutes and twelve point three seconds . . . Attention, here comes third place!”

  The person he knew, who turned out to be Proconsul, was saying, “Amazing job, Peretz, I would have never guessed it. When you were announced at the start of the race, I roared with laughter, and now I see that you absolutely have to join our team. You should go rest now, but please come to the stadium tomorrow at twelve. We must conquer the obstacle course. I’ll send you behind the metalworking shops . . . Don’t argue, I’ll settle it with Kim.”

  Peretz looked around. He saw lots of people he knew, and also a number of people wearing cardboard masks whom he didn’t recognize. A short distance away, people were tossing the long-legged man who had placed first into the air then catching him. He was flying all the way up to the moon, his body as straight and rigid as a log, hugging the big metal race cup to his chest. A banner with the single world FINISH was hanging across the street, and Claudius Octavian Bootlicherson was standing beneath the banner, wearing a severe black coat with a HEAD REFEREE armband on the sleeve and looking at his stopwatch.

  “. . . and if you had run in athletic gear,” droned Proconsul, “your time could have been recorded officially.” Peretz pushed him away with his elbow and trudged through the crowd on rubbery legs.

  “. . . instead of sitting at home, scared stiff,” someone was saying in the crowd, “may as well get some exercise.”

  “I was just saying that to Bootlicherson. But make no mistake, this wasn’t about being scared. The search parties had been running around in a very unsystematic fashion, and this addressed the issue. Since everyone was running anyway, may as well put it to good use.”