The Inhabited Island

by Arkady Strugatsky

  He stopped in the middle of the space, running the beam of the flashlight over the walls, over the rows of dials, over the switchboards. Glass, nickel, and discolored plastic glinted. “Well, congratulations, Mak. We found it after all. I was wrong not to believe in it . . . And what’s all this? Aha . . . It’s an electronic brain, and it’s all live, the power’s on. Ah, damn it, if we could just get Blacksmith in here . . . Listen. Do you understand anything at all about this?”

  “About what exactly?” asked Maxim, moving closer.

  “About all these mechanisms . . . This is the control room. If we can figure it out—the entire region is ours for the taking! All that technology on the surface is controlled from here! Ah, if we could just figure it out, massaraksh!”

  Maxim took the flashlight from him and set it down so that the light dispersed through the space, and looked around. Dust was lying everywhere, and it had been lying there for years: on the desk in the corner, on the spread-out sheets of decayed paper. There was a plate, stained with something black, with a fork beside it. Maxim walked along the consoles, touched the sliding gauges, and tried to switch on an electronic device—and was left holding the handle in his fingers.

  “Hardly,” he eventually said. “It’s not very likely that anything special could be controlled from here. In the first place, everything here is too simple. Most likely this is either an observation station or one of the control substations—everything here has some kind of auxiliary function—and it’s a weak machine, not big enough to control even ten tanks . . . And then, everything here has decayed, just touch anything and it falls apart. There’s electric current, but the voltage is lower than it should be; the atomic boiler’s probably completely decrepit. No, Zef, all this isn’t as simple as it seems to you.”

  Suddenly he noticed two long, slim pipes protruding from the wall, connected by a rubber eye mask. Pulling up an aluminum chair, he sat down and stuck his face into the mask. To his surprise, the optics turned out to be in excellent condition, but he was even more surprised by what he saw. His field of view was filled by an entirely unfamiliar landscape: a whitish-yellow desert, sand dunes, the skeleton of some kind of metal structure . . . A strong wind was blowing there, rivulets of sand were running across the dunes, and the murky horizon was curved up like a bowl.

  “Take a look,” he told Zef. “Where is that?”

  Zef leaned his grenade launcher against a control console, walked over, and looked. “Strange,” he said after a moment’s pause. “That’s the desert. And that, my friend, is about two hundred fifty miles away from us . . .” He moved back from the eyepiece and looked up at Maxim. “All the work they put into all this, the bastards . . . And what’s the point of it? The wind sweeps across the sands down there now, but what a land that used to be! They used to take me to a resort there as a kid before the war . . .”

  He got up. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said in a bitter voice, and picked up the flashlight. “The two of us won’t figure out anything here. We’ll have to wait until they grab Blacksmith and put him away . . . Only they won’t put him away, they’ll probably shoot him . . . Well, shall we go?”

  “Yes,” said Maxim. He was examining some strange tracks on the floor. “This here interests me a lot more,” he declared.

  “Don’t waste your time,” said Zef. “All sorts of animals must run around in here.” He slung his grenade launcher behind his shoulder and set off toward the exit from the hall. Maxim followed him, looking back at the tracks.

  “I want some grub,” said Zef.

  As they walked along the corridor. Maxim suggested breaking in one of the doors, but Zef’s opinion was that it would be pointless. “This business has to be handled seriously,” he said. “What’s the point of us wasting time here? We still haven’t fulfilled the norm, and we need to come here with someone who’s well informed . . .”

  “If I were you,” Maxim remarked, “I wouldn’t hope for too much from this Fortress of yours. In the first place, everything here has rotted, and in the second place, it’s already occupied.”

  “Who by? Ah, you mean the dogs again? You’re just like the others, they harp on about ghouls, and you—”

  Zef stopped. A guttural whooping sound hurtled along the corridor, reverberating off the walls in multiple echoes, and fell silent. And immediately, from somewhere far away, a voice exactly like it responded. These sounds were very familiar, but Maxim simply couldn’t recall where he’d heard them.

  “So that’s who calls at night!” said Zef. “And we thought they were birds.”

  “A strange call,” said Maxim.

  “I don’t know about strange,” Zef objected. “But it’s pretty scary all right. When they start yelling all the way across the forest at night, it sends your heart right down into your boots. They tell lots of stories about those calls. There was one jailbird, he used to boast about knowing that language of theirs. He used to translate it.”

  “And what did he translate?” asked Maxim.

  “Ah, garbage. That’s no kind of language . . .”

  “And where is this jailbird?”

  “He got eaten,” said Zef. “He was one of the builders, his gang lost its way in the forest, the guys got hungry, and you know the way it goes . . .”

  They turned left, and up ahead in the distance they saw a pale, hazy light-colored patch. Zef switched off the flashlight and put it away in his pocket. He was walking in front now, and when he abruptly halted, Maxim almost ran into him.

  “Massaraksh,” Zef muttered.

  Lying across the floor of the corridor was a human skeleton.

  Zef took the grenade launcher off his shoulder and looked around. “That wasn’t here before,” he muttered.

  “No,” said Maxim. “It’s just been put there.”

  In the underground depths behind them an entire chorus of lingering, guttural howls suddenly burst out. The howls mingled with their own echo, making it seem like a thousand throats were all howling in chorus, as if they were chanting a strange word with four syllables. Maxim could sense scorn, defiance, and mockery. Then the chorus fell silent as abruptly as it had begun.

  Zef noisily drew in his breath and lowered the grenade launcher. Maxim looked at the skeleton again. “I think this is a hint,” he said.

  “I think so too,” Zef muttered. “Let’s go quick.”

  They quickly reached the break in the ceiling, clambered onto the heap of earth, and saw Boar’s alarmed face above them. He was lying with his chest on the edge of the break, dangling a rope with a loop on it.

  “What happened down there?” he asked. “Was that you screaming?”

  “We’ll tell you in a minute,” said Zef. “Have you anchored the rope?”

  They clambered up. Zef rolled cigarettes for himself and the one-handed man, lit up, and said nothing for a while, apparently trying to piece together some kind of opinion about what had happened.

  “OK,” he said at last. “In brief, this is what happened. This is the Fortress. There are control panels in there, a brain and all the rest of it. It’s all in a sorry state, but there is power, and we’ll make good use of it, we just have to find people who know about these things . . . And then . . .” He dragged on his cigarette, opened his mouth wide, and released a cloud of smoke, exactly like a broken gas projector. “And then . . . It looks like dogs live there. Remember I told you about them? Those dogs with heads like a bear’s. It was them screaming . . . but, if you think about it, maybe it wasn’t them, because, you see . . . how can I put it? . . . while Mak and I were wandering about down there, somebody laid out a human skeleton in the corridor. And that’s all.”

  The one-handed man looked at him, and then at Maxim. “Mutants?” he asked.

  “Possibly,” said Zef. “I didn’t see anyone at all, but Mak says he saw dogs . . . only not with his eyes. How did you see them down there, Mak?”

  “I saw them with my eyes as well,” said Maxim. “And, by the way, I’d l
ike to add that there was nobody else there apart from what you’re calling dogs. I would have known. And these dogs of yours aren’t what you think. They’re not animals.”

  Wild Boar didn’t say anything. He got to his feet, coiled up the rope, hung it on his belt, and sat down beside Zef again.

  “Damned if I know,” Zef muttered. “Maybe they aren’t animals . . . Anything’s possible here. In this South of ours . . .”

  “Or maybe those dogs are mutants after all?” Maxim asked.

  “No,” said Zef. “Mutants are simply very ugly people. And the children of perfectly ordinary people. Mutants. Do you know what that means?”

  “I do,” said Maxim. “But the entire question is how far a mutation can go.”

  They all said nothing for a while, pondering. Then Zef said, “Well, if you’re so well educated, there’s no point in idle chatter. Let’s move on!” He got to his feet. “We don’t have much left to do, but time’s pressing. And I want to gorge myself. . .”—he winked at Maxim—“ . . . the desire’s downright pathological. Do you know what ‘pathological’ means?”

  Maxim said he did, and they set off.

  There was still the southwestern quarter of the quadrant to clear, but they didn’t try to clear anything. At some point in the past, something very powerful must have exploded here. All that remained of the old forest were half-rotten felled trunks and scorched stumps, looking as if they had been sheared off by a razor, and sparse young growth was already springing up on the site of the old forest. The soil was charred black and spiked with powdered rust. No kind of technology could have survived an attack like that, and Maxim realized that Zef had not brought them here to work.

  A shaggy-looking man in a dirty convict’s coverall clambered out of the undergrowth, coming toward them. Maxim recognized him: he was the first indigenous inhabitant that he had encountered, Zef’s old partner, the vessel of universal despondency.

  “Wait,” said Wild Boar, “I’ll have a word with him.

  Zef told Maxim to sit down where he was standing, then sat down himself and started rewinding his foot-cloths, whistling into his beard a sentimental criminal’s song: “I’m a wild boy, known throughout the neighborhood.” Wild Boar walked over to the vessel of despondency and they moved away behind the bushes and started talking in a whisper. Maxim could hear them perfectly well, but he couldn’t understand anything, because they were speaking some kind of argot, and the only word he could recognize was “mail,” repeated several times.

  Soon he stopped listening. He was feeling exhausted and dirty. Today there had been too much senseless work and senseless nervous stress, today he had breathed all sorts of garbage and been exposed to too many roentgens. And yet again in the course of the entire day nothing really genuine had been done, nothing truly necessary, and he really didn’t want to go back to the bunkhouse.

  Then the vessel of despondency disappeared and Wild Boar came back, sat down in front of Maxim, and said, “OK, let’s talk.”

  “Is everything in order?” Zef asked.

  “Yes,” said Wild Boar.

  “I told you,” said Zef, examining his foot cloth against the light. “I’ve got a nose for his kind.”

  “Well now, Mak,” said Wild Boar. “We’ve checked you out, as far as that’s possible in our situation. General vouches for you. Starting from today, you’ll be under my command.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it,” Maxim said with a crooked smile. He felt like saying, Only General hasn’t vouched for you to me, has he? but he only added, “I’m listening.”

  “General tells us that that you’re not afraid of radiation and you’re not afraid of the radiation towers. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you can swim across the Blue Serpent any time you like and it won’t do you any harm?”

  “I already told you I could escape from here right now.”

  “We don’t want you to escape . . . And as far as I understand, you’re not afraid of the patrol machines either?”

  “You mean the mobile radiation devices? No, I’m not afraid of them.”

  “Very good,” said Wild Boar. “Then your task for the immediate future is completely defined. You’ll be a messenger. When I order you to, you’ll swim across the river and send the telegrams I give you from the nearest post office. Is that clear?”

  “That’s clear,” Maxim said slowly. “But there’s something else that isn’t clear . . .”

  Wild Boar looked at him without blinking—a lean, sinewy, disfigured old man, a cool and merciless fighter, a warrior for forty years, maybe even a warrior since he was in diapers, a terrifying and exultant product of a world in which the value of human life is equal to zero, knowing nothing except fighting, rejecting everything except the fight—and in his keenly narrowed eyes Maxim read his own fate for the next few years as clearly as in a book.

  “Yes?” asked Wild Boar.

  “Let’s agree straightaway,” Maxim firmly said. “I don’t want to act blindly. I don’t intend to do work that, in my view, is absurd and unnecessary.”

  “For instance?” asked Wild Boar.

  “I know what discipline is. And I know that without discipline all our work is completely worthless. But I believe that discipline must be rational, and a subordinate must be certain that an order is rational. You are ordering me to be a messenger. I’m willing to be a messenger. I’m good for more than that, but if it’s necessary, I’ll be a messenger. Only I have to know that the telegrams I send will not facilitate the senseless death of people who are wretched enough already—”

  Zef jerked up his massive beard, but Wild Boar and Maxim stopped him with identical gestures.

  “I was ordered to blow up a tower,” Maxim continued. “Nobody explained to me why it was necessary. I could see it was a stupid, disastrous idea, but I carried out the order. I lost three comrades, and then it turned out that the whole thing was a trap, set by the state prosecutor’s office. And I say: no more! I don’t intend to attack the towers anymore. And what’s more, I intend to impede operations of that kind in every way I can.”

  “Why, you fool!” said Zef. “You snot-nosed kid.”

  “Why?” asked Maxim.

  “Wait, Zef,” said Wild Boar, still keeping his eyes fixed on Maxim. “In other words, Mak, you want to know all of HQ’s plans?”

  “Yes,” said Maxim. “I don’t want to work blindly.”

  “Well, brother, you’ve got some nerve,” Zef declared. “I don’t even know the words to describe the kind of brass balls you’ve got! Listen, Boar, I like him. Yeeeah, I’ve got a keen eye all right . . .”

  “You’re demanding too much trust,” Wild Boar said in a cold voice. “Trust like that has to be earned in rank-and-file work.”

  “And does rank-and-file work consist of knocking down those idiotic towers?” asked Maxim. “Of course, I’ve only been in the underground for a few months, but in all that time the only thing I’ve heard is towers, towers, towers . . . But I don’t want to knock down towers—it’s senseless! I want to fight against tyranny, against hunger, ruin, corruption, and lies . . . against the system of falsehood and not against the system of towers. Of course, I understand that the towers cause you torment, sheer physical torment . . . But even the action you take against the towers is pretty foolish. It’s absolutely obvious that the towers are only relay stations, so you have to strike at the Center, and not pick them off one by one.”

  Wild Boar and Zef started speaking simultaneously. “How do you know about the Center?” asked Wild Boar.

  “And where are you going to find this Center of yours?” asked Zef.

  “The fact that a Center must exist is obvious to any even slightly competent engineer,” Maxim said with a condescending air. “And how we can find the Center is the task we should be working on. Not running at machine guns, not pointlessly wasting peoples’ lives, but searching for the Center.”

  “In the first place, we know all that withou
t you,” said Zef, seething. “And in the second place, massaraksh, nobody has died for nothing. It should be obvious to any even slightly competent engineer, you snot-nosed twerp, that by bringing down a number of towers, we disrupt the relay system, and we can liberate an entire region! For that, we have to be able to knock down towers. And we’re learning to do that, do you understand that or not? And if you ever again, massaraksh, say that our guys are dying in vain—”

  “Wait,” said Maxim. “Put your hands down. Liberate a region? So OK, and then what?”

  “Every snot-nose comes here and tells us we’re dying in vain,” said Zef.

  “And then what?” Maxim insistently repeated. “The Guards ship in mobile radiation devices and you’re done for?”

  “Damn it all!” said Zef. “In that time the population of the region will come over to our side, and it won’t be that easy for them to stick their noses in. A dozen so-called degenerates is one thing, but ten thousand enraged peasants is another—”

  “Zef, Zef!” Wild Boar admonished him.

  Zef gestured at him impatiently. “Ten thousand enraged peasants who have realized, and now will never forget, that they were shamelessly duped for twenty years.”

  Wild Boar despairingly gestured and turned away.

  “Wait, wait,” said Maxim. “What are you saying? Why the hell should they suddenly realize that? Why, they’ll tear you to pieces. They think the towers are for antiballistic defense . . .”

  “And what do you think?” Zef asked, chuckling strangely.

  “Well, I know,” said Maxim. “They told me.”

  “Who did?”

  “Doc . . . and General . . . Why, is it a secret?”

  “Maybe that’s enough on this subject?” Wild Boar said in a quiet voice.

  “Why is that enough?” Zef objected in an equally quiet voice, and in a very cultured manner. “Why exactly is that enough, Boar? You know what I think about this. You know why I stay here and why I’ll be here until my dying day. And I know what you think about this subject. So then why is that enough? We both believe that this should be shouted from all the rooftops. But when it comes to doing anything about it, we suddenly remember our underground discipline and go on meekly playing into the hands of all those leaderist types, liberals and enlighteners, all those failed Fathers . . . And now we have this boy right here in front of us. You can see what he’s like. Why on earth aren’t guys like him allowed to know?”