The brigadier asked her the usual questions. She didn’t answer. The plainclothes man reminded her about her child and about her husband, and she didn’t answer him either. She sat there, holding herself erect, and Maxim couldn’t see her face; all he could see was a tense, thin neck under tousled blonde hair.
Then she suddenly spoke in a calm, low voice. “You are all brain-dead blockheads and dopes. Murderers. You will all die. You, brigadier, I do not know you, this is the first and last time I shall see you. You will die a ghastly death. Not at my hands, unfortunately, but a very, very ghastly death. And you, you bastard from secret state security. I have already liquidated two like you myself. I’d kill you right now if not for this lackey standing behind me . . .” She caught her breath. “And you, you black-faced lump of cannon fodder, you butcher, you will fall into our hands. But you will die simply. Gel missed, but I know people who won’t miss. You’ll all die a long time before we knock down your cursed towers, and that’s good. I pray to God that you won’t survive your towers, because then you might wise up, and those who come later will feel pity for you and be loath to kill you.”
They didn’t interrupt; they attentively listened to her. Anyone might have thought they were willing to listen to her for hours, but she suddenly got up and took a step toward the table. However, Pandi caught her by the shoulder and flung her back down onto the stool. Then she spat with all her strength, but the gobbet fell short of the table, and she suddenly went limp and started crying.
For a while they watched her crying. Then the brigadier got to his feet and sentenced her to execution within forty-eight hours, and Pandi took her by the elbow and flung her out through the door, and the plainclothes man energetically rubbed his hands and told the brigadier, “Good job. An excellent outcome.”
But the brigadier told him, “Thank the cornet.”
And Cornet Chachu said only “Informers,” and they all fell silent.
Then the adjutant summoned Memo Gramenu, and they didn’t stand on ceremony with this prisoner at all. He was the man who was shooting in the corridor. His case was absolutely clear—he had offered armed resistance to arrest—and they didn’t ask him any questions. He sat there on the stool, corpulent and hunched over, and while the brigadier read out his death sentence, he indifferently looked up at the ceiling, using his left hand to cradle his right, with its dislocated fingers swaddled in a rag. Maxim fancied he detected a strange, unnatural calm in this man, a kind of no-nonsense confidence, a cold indifference to what was happening, but he couldn’t figure out his own feelings . . .
Before they had even led Gramenu out, the adjutant was already packing his papers away in his folder with an air of relief, the brigadier had struck up a conversation with the plainclothes man about the procedure for promotion, and Cornet Chachu had come across to Pandi and Maxim and ordered them to leave. In the cornet’s transparent eyes Maxim detected a clear hint of derision and menace, but he didn’t want to think about that. He thought with a strangely abstracted sense of commiseration about the man who would have to kill the woman. It was iniquitous, it was inconceivable, but somebody would have to do it in the next forty-eight hours.
8
Gai changed into his pajamas, hung his uniform in the wardrobe, and turned toward Maxim. Candidate Sim was sitting on his camp cot, which Rada had set up for him in a free corner; he had already pulled off one boot and was holding it in his hand but hadn’t set about tackling the other one yet. His eyes were directed straight at the wall and his mouth was half open. Gai crept up on him from the side and tried to flick him on the nose. And, as always, he missed—at the last moment Mak jerked his head away.
“What are you pondering?” Gai playfully asked. “Are you grieving because Rada’s not here? That’s just your bad luck, brother. She’s on the day shift today.”
Mak gave a faint smile and started pulling off his other boot. “Why do you say she’s not here?” he absentmindedly asked. “You can’t fool me.” Then he froze again. “Gai,” he said. “You always told me that they work for money.”
“Who? The degenerates?”
“Yes. You’ve often talked about it—to me, and the guys. Paid agents of the Hontians. And the cornet harps on about it all the time, the same thing day after day.”
“What else do you expect?” said Gai. He thought Mak must be launching into his old conversation about monotony again. “You’re a queer fish, after all, Mak. How could we start saying anything new, if everything always stays the same old way? The degenerates are still the same degenerates they always were. And they still get money from the enemy, the same way they always have. Last year, for instance, this crew outside the city was raided—they had an entire basement there stuffed with sacks of money. Where could an honest man get money like that from? They’re not industrialists and not bankers . . . and right now bankers don’t have that kind of money anyway, not if the banker’s a genuine patriot.”
Mak neatly set his boots down by the wall, stood up, and started unbuttoning his coverall. “Gai,” he said, “does it sometimes happen that people tell you one thing about a person, and you look at that person and feel that it just can’t be right? It’s a mistake. A mix-up.”
“Yes, it happens,” said Gai, knitting his brows. “But if you mean the degenerates . . .”
“Yes, that’s exactly who I mean. I watched them today. They’re people just like any others—some better, some worse, some brave and some cowardly, and not animals at all, not like I was thinking, and like you all think—Wait, don’t interrupt. And I don’t know if they do harm or they don’t—that is, from the look of things, they do, but I don’t believe that they’ve been bought.”
“What do you mean, you don’t believe it?” said Gai, knitting his brows even tighter. “Look, let’s accept that you can’t take my word for it, I’m only a little man. But what about the cornet? And the brigadier? And the radio, if it comes to that. How is it possible not to believe the Fathers? They never lie.”
Maxim took off his coverall, walked over to the window, and started looking out at the street, pressing his forehead against the glass and clutching the frame with both hands. “Why do they have to be lying?” he eventually said. “What if they’re mistaken?”
“Mistaken . . .” Gai repeated in bewilderment, gazing at Maxim’s bare back. “Who’s mistaken? The Fathers? You crackpot . . . The Fathers never make mistakes!”
“Well, maybe not,” said Maxim, turning around. “But we’re not talking about the Fathers right now. We’re talking about the degenerates. Let’s take you, for example . . . You’d die for your cause if you had to, right?”
“I would,” said Gai. “And so would you.”
“Exactly! We’d die. But we’d be dying for a cause—not for a guardsman’s rations and not for money. You could give me a billion of your banknotes, but I wouldn’t agree to die for that! And would you?”
“No, of course not,” said Gai. What a weirdo Mak was, always coming up with something.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, it’s obvious!” Mak said impatiently. “You’re not willing to die for money. I’m not willing to die for money. But the degenerates, it seems, are willing to. What sort of bullshit is that?”
“That’s just it, they’re degenerates!” Gai said with passionate feeling. “That’s what degenerates are like. For them, money’s more important than anything else; nothing’s sacred to them. For them it’s nothing to strangle a child—there have been cases like that . . . You must understand, if someone’s trying to destroy the system of ADTs, what kind of human being can he be? He’s just a cold-blooded killer!”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Mak. “Look at the ones who were interrogated today. If they had named their accomplices, they could have stayed alive, they would have gotten off with hard labor . . . But they didn’t name them! So their accomplices mean more to them than money? More than life?”
“We don’t know t
hat yet,” Gai objected. “By law they’re all condemned to death, without any trial—you’ve seen the way they’re tried. And if some of them are sent off to do hard labor, do you know why? Because we don’t have enough men in the South . . . and let me tell you, educational labor is even worse than death.”
Looking at Mak, Gai saw that his friend was hesitant and perplexed. He has a good heart, but he’s still green, he doesn’t understand that cruelty is necessary with the enemy, that right now kindness is worse than treason . . . I’d love to just smash my fist down on the table and shout, tell him to shut up and stop this idle talk, stop spouting all this crap and listen to his elders and betters until he learns to figure things out for himself. But Mak isn’t some kind of blockhead, is he? He only needs things to be properly explained and he’ll understand.
“No!” Mak stubbornly exclaimed. “It’s impossible to hate for money. But they do hate . . . The way they hate us, I didn’t even know people could hate that fiercely. You hate them less than they hate you. And what I’d like to know is: What for?”
“Just listen here,” said Gai, “and I’ll explain it to you again. In the first place, they’re degenerates, they hate all normal people anyway. They’re malicious by nature, like rats! And then, we get in their way. They’d like to just do their job, take the money, and live high on the hog. But we tell them, Stop! Hands behind your head! So are they supposed to love us for that?”
“If they’re all as malicious as rats, then why isn’t that . . . property owner malicious? Why did they let him go, if they’ve all been bought?”
Gai laughed. “The property owner’s a coward. There are plenty of that kind too. They hate us, but they’re afraid. The useful degenerates, the legal ones. It’s more convenient for them to live as our friends . . . And then, he’s a property owner, a rich man—he can’t be bought that easily. He’s not just some dentist or other . . . You’re funny, Mak, just like a child! People aren’t all the same, and degenerates aren’t all the same—”
“I already know that,” Mak impatiently interrupted. “But take that dentist, for instance. I’d stake my life that he hasn’t been bought. I can’t prove it to you, I just feel it. He’s a very courageous and good man—”
“A degenerate!”
“All right. He’s a courageous and good degenerate. I saw his library. He’s a very knowledgeable man. He knows a thousand times more than you or the cornet. Why is he against us? If our cause is just, why doesn’t he know that—an educated, cultured man like that? Why, on the brink of death, does he tell us to our faces that he is for the people and against us?”
“An educated degenerate is a degenerate to the second power,” Gai sententiously declared. “As a degenerate, he hates us. And his education helps him justify his hate and disseminate it. Education, my friend, is not always a boon either. Like an automatic—it all depends on who’s holding it.”
“Education is always a boon,” Maxim said with resolute conviction.
“Oh, no. I’d prefer it if all the Hontians were uneducated. Then at least we could live normal, human lives without expecting a nuclear strike all the time. We’d soon crush them.”
“Yes,” Mak said in a strange tone of voice. “We know how to crush people. We’ve got no shortage of cruelty, and that’s a fact.”
“There you go, talking like a kid again. We’re not cruel, it’s the times that are cruel. We’d be glad to make do with just persuasion—it would cost us less, and there’d be no bloodshed. But what would you have us do? If there’s no way to change their minds—”
“So they’re already convinced, then?” Mak interrupted him. “So they’re convinced? And if a knowledgeable man is convinced that he’s right, what does Hontian money have to do with it?”
Gai was fed up. As a last resort, he was on the point of throwing in a quotation from the Codex of the Fathers to put an end to this stupid, interminable quarrel, but at that very moment Mak interrupted himself with an impatient gesture and shouted, “Rada! No more sleeping! The Guards are famished and pining for some female company!”
Gai was absolutely amazed to hear Rada’s voice from behind the screen. “I’ve been awake for ages already. You gentlemen Guards have been screaming and shouting as if you were on the parade ground.”
“Why are you at home?” Gai snapped.
“I was given notice,” she explained. “Mama Tei has closed down her place—she came into an inheritance and she’s moving to the country. But she’s already recommended me for a good job . . . Mak, why are your things thrown all over the place? Put them in the wardrobe. Boys, I asked you not to come into the room in your boots! Where are your boots, Gai? . . . Set the table, we’re going to have lunch now . . . Mak, you’ve lost weight. What are they doing to you in there?”
“Come on, come on!” said Gai. “No more talking in the ranks! Bring in the lunch.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and walked out. Gai glanced at Mak. Mak was watching Rada go with the usual good-natured expression on his face.
“A fine girl, right?” Gai asked, and then took fright when Mak’s face suddenly turned to stone.
“Listen,” said Mak. “You can do anything. Even use torture, I suppose. All of you are in a better position to judge. But shooting women . . . torturing women . . .” He grabbed his boots and walked out of the room.
Gai cleared his throat, scratched the back of his head hard with both hands, and started setting the table. This entire conversation had left a bad taste in his mouth. A strange, schizophrenic kind of feeling. Of course, Mak was still green and not really of this world. But somehow, amazingly, he had done it again. And that was just it—when it came to logic, he was incredible. Like just now he was spouting nonsense, but how logically he had it all laid out! Basically, Gai was obliged to admit that if not for this conversation, he himself would probably never have arrived at what was essentially a very simple idea: the most important thing about degenerates is that they’re degenerates. Take that characteristic away, and all the other accusations against them—treason, cannibalism, and all the rest—are all reduced to drivel. Yes, the whole point is that they’re degenerates and they hate everything normal. That’s enough, and there’s no need for any Hontian gold . . . And the Hontians, are they degenerates as well, then? They don’t tell us that. But if they’re not degenerates, then our degenerates ought to hate them like they hate us . . . Ah, massaraksh! Damn this logic to hell!
When Mak came back, Gai pounced on him: “How did you know Rada was home?”
“What do you mean, how? It was just obvious.”
“But if it was obvious to you, massaraksh, why didn’t you warn me? And why, massaraksh, do you go blabbing about things in front of outsiders? Thirty-three massarakshes . . .”
Mak blew his top too. “Who’s an outsider here, massaraksh? Rada? Why, all of you and your cornet are more outsiders to me than Rada is.”
“Massaraksh! What does it say in the regulations about official secrets?”
“Massaraksh and massaraksh! What are you hassling me for? I didn’t know that you didn’t know she was home! I thought you were kidding me! And anyway . . . what official secrets are we talking about here?”
“Everything that concerns service activity.”
“You can all go to hell with your service activity that has to be hidden from your own sister! And from absolutely anybody at all, massaraksh! You’ve heaped every corner so high with secrets, there’s no room left to breathe—you can’t even open your mouth!”
“And now you’re shouting at me too! I’m trying to teach you, you fool, and you’re yelling at me!”
But Mak had already stopped being angry. Suddenly he was right up close, and before Gai could even stir a muscle, strong arms crushed his sides, the room swung around in front of his eyes, and the ceiling came hurtling toward him. Gai gave a strangled gasp, and Mak, carefully carrying Gai above his head with his arms fully extended, walked over to the window and said, “Right, where shal
l we put you and all your secrets? Want to go out the window?”
“What stupid sort of joke is this, massaraksh?” Gai yelled, frantically waving his arms around in search of support.
“You don’t want to go out the window? All right, then, stay here.”
Gai was carried to the screen and dumped onto Rada’s bed. He sat up, pulled down his hitched-up pajama jacket, and muttered, “Damn giant muscleman . . .” He wasn’t angry any longer either. And there wasn’t anybody to be angry with, except maybe the degenerates.
They started setting the table, and then Rada arrived with a saucepan of soup, followed by Uncle Kaan with his beloved flask—which, so he assured them, was the only thing that saved him from catching a cold and various other geriatric ailments. They sat down and started on the soup. Uncle downed a shot, sniffed in air through his nose, and began telling them about his enemy, his colleague Shapshu, who had written another article about the function of some bone or other in some ancient lizard or other, an article that was founded on nothing but stupidity from start to finish, and designed for stupid fools . . .
For Uncle Kaan, all the people around him were fools. His colleagues in his department were fools, some diligent and some indolent. The assistants were all born fools, who ought to be up in the mountains tending animals, and even then, if the truth be told, it wasn’t certain that they could manage that. As for the students, all the young people nowadays seemed to have been replaced by changelings, and apart from that, the ones who became students were the stupidest of all, the ones that a judicious entrepreneur wouldn’t even let near his machine tools and a knowledgeable officer would refuse to take as soldiers. And so the fate of the science of fossil animals had already been determined.
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