The Inhabited Island

by Arkady Strugatsky

  Gai completely tensed up as he turned over the page, and his expectations were met. A crowd of mutants, about twenty people, all naked, a whole heap of freaks, tied together with a single rope. Several brisk-looking pirates in pointed hoods, holding smoking torches, and that character again at one side, obviously giving an order, with his right hand extended and his left resting on the handle of a cutlass. How repulsive those freaks were, it was horrifying just to look at them . . . But what came next was even more horrifying.

  The same heap of mutants, but already burned. The same character standing a short distance away, with his back to the corpses, sniffing a flower and chatting with another character . . .

  A huge tree in the forest, hung all over with bodies. Some suspended by the hands, some by the feet—and these weren’t freaks; one was wearing the check coverall of an educatee, another was in the black jacket of a guardsman.

  A burning street, a woman with a baby lying in the road . . .

  An old man tied to a post. His face was contorted, he was shouting, his eyes were squeezed shut. And the same character was right there, checking a medical syringe with a preoccupied air.

  And then more hanged, burning, burned mutants, convicts, guardsmen, fishermen, peasants, men, women, old people, little children . . . an entire beach full of little children and the same character squatting down behind a heavy machine gun . . . women being dragged along . . . the same character again with a syringe, the lower half of his face covered by a white mask . . . a heap of severed heads, and the same character rummaging in this heap with a cane—in this image he was smiling . . . a panoramic shot: the line of the beach with four tanks on the dunes, all burning, and in the foreground two small figures in black with their hands raised . . .

  Enough. Gai slammed the album shut and tossed it away, sat there for a few seconds, and then flung all the albums onto the floor with a curse.

  “And you want to reach an agreement with them?” he yelled at Maxim’s back. “You want to bring them here, to us? That butcher?” He jumped up, rushed over to the albums, and lashed out at them with his foot.

  Maxim turned off the radio. “Don’t get into a rage,” he said. “I don’t want anything to do with them anymore. And don’t yell at me, you people are the ones to blame, you just let your world be destroyed, massaraksh, you devastated everything, plundered everything, sank to the level of vile, depraved animals. Now what can I do with you?” Suddenly he was there, close beside Gai, and he grabbed him by the sides of his chest. “Now what am I supposed to do with all of you?” he barked. “What? What? You mean you don’t know? Come on, tell me!”

  Gai shifted his neck about without speaking, feebly trying to push Maxim off.

  Maxim let him go. “I know myself,” he said morosely, “that I can’t bring anyone here. We’re surrounded by ravening beasts . . . We should be sending out armies against them . . .” He grabbed one of the albums off the floor and started jerkily turning the pages. “What a world you’ve fouled up,” he said. “What a world! Here, look, what a world!”

  Gai looked over his arm. In this album there were no horrors, only landscapes from various places, astoundingly beautiful and clear color photographs: blue bays framed in luxuriant greenery, blindingly white cities above the sea, a waterfall in a mountain gorge, a magnificent highway with a stream of different-colored automobiles on it. And ancient fortresses, and snowy mountain peaks above the clouds, and someone merrily hurtling down a snowy mountain slope on skis, and laughing girls playing in the sea surf.

  “Where is all of this now?” Maxim asked. “What have you done with all of this, you damned children of those damned Fathers? Smashed it, befouled it, betrayed and exchanged it for iron . . . Ah, you . . . little people . . .”

  He flung the album onto the table. “Let’s go.” He furiously fell against the door, it flew open with a screech and a squeal, and he strode off along the corridor.

  On the deck he asked, “Are you hungry?”

  “Uh-huh,” Gai replied.

  “OK,” said Maxim. “We’ll eat right away. Let’s swim for it.”

  Gai clambered out onto the shore first, immediately took off his boot, got undressed, and laid out his clothes to dry. Maxim was still swimming around, and Gai felt alarmed as he watched him. His friend Mak was diving very deep and staying underwater for a really long time. He shouldn’t do that, it was dangerous—how could he have enough air? Eventually Maxim came out, dragging a huge, powerful fish by the gills. The fish looked dazed, as if it just couldn’t understand how it had been caught with bare hands.

  Maxim tossed it away from himself into the sand and said, “I think that will do. It’s hardly radioactive at all. Probably a mutant as well. Take your tablets, and I’ll prepare it. We can eat it raw, I’ll teach you how it’s done—it’s called sashimi. Never tried it? Come on, give me a knife . . .”

  When they had eaten their fill of sashimi—Gai had to admit it had turned out pretty tasty—they stretched out naked on the hot sand, and after a long pause Maxim asked, “If we got picked up by the patrols and surrendered, where would they send us?”

  “Where? They’d send you to your place of reeducation and me to my place of service . . . Why?”

  “Is that certain?”

  “It couldn’t be more certain . . . The instructions of the commandant-general himself. But why do you ask?”

  “Now we’ll go and look for the Guards,” said Maxim.

  “To capture a tank?”

  “No, we’ll use your cover story. You were kidnapped by degenerates, and an educatee rescued you.”

  “Surrender?” Gai sat up. “But how can we? Me too? Go back into the radiation field?”

  Maxim didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll turn into a blockheaded dummy again . . .” Gai said in a helpless voice.

  “No,” said Maxim. “That is, yes, of course . . . but it won’t be the same as it was before . . . Of course, you will be bit of a blockhead. But now you’ll believe in something else, won’t you? In something that’s right . . . Of course, that’s still not really very good . . . but it’s still better, a lot better.”

  “But what for?” Gai shouted in despair. “What do you need to do it for?”

  Maxim ran his hand over his face. “You see, Gai, my old friend,” he said. “A war has broken out. Either we’ve attacked the Hontians, or they’ve attacked us . . . Anyway, in short, a war.”

  Gai looked at him in horror. A war means nuclear war—there isn’t any other kind now . . . Rada . . . Oh Lord, why does this have to happen? Everything all over again from the beginning: the hunger, the grief, the refugees . . .

  “We have to be there,” Maxim went on. “General mobilization has already been declared, everyone’s being called up, even the educatees are being amnestied and enlisted into the ranks . . . And we have to be together, Gai. You’re a penal unit officer, after all . . . It would be good if I could end up under your command . . .”

  Gai was hardly even listening to him. He swayed on his feet, clutching at his hair and repeating to himself, “What for, what for, damn you and curse you! Curse you, curse you thirty-three times over!”

  Maxim shook him by the shoulder. “Come on, get a grip on yourself!” he said in a harsh voice. “Don’t start falling to pieces. We’ll have to fight now, there’s no time for falling to pieces . . .” He got up and rubbed his face again. “Of course, with those cursed towers of yours . . . But a war means nuclear war! Massaraksh, no towers will be any help to them now . . .”

  “Get a Move On, Fank, Get a Move On!”

  “Get a move on, Fank, get a move on. I’m late.”

  “Yes, sir. Rada Gaal . . . She has been removed from the custody of the state prosecutor and is now in our hands.”

  “Where?”

  “In your mansion the Crystal Swan. I regard it as my duty to express once again my doubts concerning the rationality of this action. A woman like that is hardly going to be of any help to us in contr
olling Mak. Her kind are easily forgotten, and Mak—”

  “Do you think Egghead is stupider than you?”

  “No, but—”

  “Does Egghead know who kidnapped the woman?”

  “I’m afraid that he does.”

  “All right, so he knows . . . That’s all about that matter. Next?”

  “Sandy Chichaku has met with Twitcher. Twitcher has apparently agreed to get him together with Brother-in-Law.”

  “Stop. Which Chichaku? Highbrow Chik?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not interested in underground matters right now. Is that all you have on Mak’s case? Then listen. This damn war has screwed up all our plans. I’m going away and I’ll be back in thirty or forty days. In that time, Fank, you have to wrap up Mak’s case. By the time I get back Mak must be here, in this building. Give him a job, let him work, don’t restrict his freedom, but make it clear to him—very, very gently!—that Rada’s fate depends on how he behaves . . . Under no circumstances allow them to meet . . . Show him the institute, tell him what we’re working on . . . within reasonable limits, of course. Tell him about me, describe me as an intelligent, benign, just individual, a major scientist. Give him my articles . . . apart from the top secret ones. Hint at my being in opposition to the government. He mustn’t feel even the slightest desire to leave the institute. That’s all I have to say. Any questions?”

  “Yes. Security, guards?”

  “None. It’s pointless.”

  “Surveillance?”

  “Very cautious . . . But better not. Don’t frighten him off. The vital thing is that he mustn’t want to leave the institute . . . Massaraksh, and I have to go away at a time like this! Well, is that everything now?”

  “One final question. I’m sorry, Wanderer.”

  “Yes?”

  “Just who is he, after all? What do you need him for?”

  Wanderer got up, walked over to the window and, without looking around, said, “I’m afraid of him, Fank. He’s a very, very, very dangerous man.”

  17

  A hundred miles from the Hontian border, when the troop train was stuck for a long time on a siding at a dingy, scruffy station, newly appointed Private Second Class Zef, having come to an amicable arrangement with a security guard, ran to the station’s water heater to get some boiling water and returned with a portable radio. He told everyone that there was absolute bedlam at the station: two brigades were entraining at the same time, and the two generals had started squabbling and swearing at each other and became careless, so he had mingled with the crowd of orderlies, valets, and adjutants surrounding the generals and borrowed this radio from one of them.

  The heated freight car greeted this announcement with an outburst of loud, zesty, patriotic guffaws. All forty men immediately crowded around Zef, but they took a long time to get settled—someone got smacked in the teeth to stop him from shoving, someone else got poked with an awl in a soft spot, and they all cursed and complained about each other, until Maxim finally barked, “Quiet, you scumbags!” Then they all settled down. Zef switched on the radio and started tuning in to all the stations, one after another.

  Certain curious things immediately came to light. First, it turned out that the war hadn’t started yet, and the Voice of the Fathers radio station, which for the last week had been howling about bloody battles on their own territory, had been lying in a most blatant fashion. There hadn’t been any bloody battles yet. The Hontian Patriotic League was clamoring in horror for the whole wide world to hear that these bandits, these usurpers of power, these so-called Unknown Fathers had capitalized on the acts of heinous provocation by their own hirelings in the form of the notorious so-called Hontian Union of Justice and were now concentrating their armor-clad hordes on the borders of poor, persecuted Hontia. In turn, the Hontian Union of Justice castigated the Hontian Patriots, those paid agents of the Unknown Fathers, in the most emphatic terms possible and recounted in exhaustive detail how someone’s vastly superior forces had forced someone else’s units, exhausted by preceding battles, across the border and were preventing them from returning, and this circumstance had provided the so-called Unknown Fathers with a pretext for a barbarous invasion, which could be expected at any moment. And in addition, both the League and the Union declared in almost identical terms that it was their sacred duty to warn the brazen aggressor that the counterblow would be devastating, and they hinted in vague terms at the use of atomic traps of some kind.

  Pandeian radio summed up the situation in very calm tones and announced without the slightest embarrassment that any way in which this conflict developed would suit Pandeia. The private radio stations in Hontia and Pandeia amused their listeners with jolly music and ribald trivia games, while both of the Unknown Fathers’ government radio stations continuously broadcast coverage of hate rallies, interspersed with martial music. Zef also picked up some broadcasts in languages that only he knew, and informed everyone that the principality of Ondol apparently still existed and was still carrying out piratical raids on the island of Hassalg. (Apart from Zef, not a single man in the railcar had ever heard of this principality or this island.) For the most part, however, the airwaves were choked with mind-boggling invective exchanged between commanders of the military units and formations straining hard to squeeze their way through to the Steel Staging Area along the slim threads of two rickety railroad lines.

  “We’re not ready for war this time either, massaraksh,” Zef remarked, switching off the radio and opening the debate.

  The others didn’t agree with him. In the opinion of the majority, the immense force that was now lumbering on its way spelled the end for the Hontians. The criminal convicts thought the most important thing was to get across the border, and then every man would be his own master and every occupied city would be handed over to them for three days. The political convicts—that is, the degenerates—took a gloomier view of the situation and didn’t expect the future to bring anything good; they openly declared that they were all being sent to the slaughter, to set off the atomic mines, that none of them would be left alive, so it would be a good idea to get as far as the border and go to ground there, somewhere where they wouldn’t be found. The contesting viewpoints were so diametrically opposed that a genuine discussion failed to develop, and the patriotic debate very rapidly degenerated into monotonous abuse and revilement of the lousy, stinking creeps in the rear, who hadn’t given the men any chow yesterday or today and had probably already stolen all the vodka that was due to the men. The military convicts were prepared to carry on talking about this subject right through the night, so Maxim and Zef elbowed their way out of the crowd and clambered up onto the crooked bunks that had been crudely cobbled together out of unplaned planks.

  Zef was hungry and angry. He settled down to fall asleep, but Maxim didn’t let him. “You’ll sleep later,” he sternly admonished him. “Tomorrow, maybe, we’ll be at the front, and we haven’t properly agreed about anything yet . . .” Zef grumbled that there was nothing to agree about, that they could sleep on it, that Maxim wasn’t blind and he must be able to see for himself what deep shit they were in, that there was no way you could get any decent kind of operation together with this petty trash, with these thieves and bookkeepers. Maxim objected that they weren’t talking about any kind of operation yet. It still wasn’t clear what this war was needed for, and who needed it, and would Zef please be polite enough not to sleep when he was being spoken to, and to share his own considerations on the subject. Zef, however, had no intention of being polite, and he didn’t conceal the fact. Why the hell, massaraksh, should he be polite, when he was so hungry and he was dealing with a snot-nosed kid who was incapable of drawing elementary conclusions and still insisted on trying to interfere in the revolution . . . He snarled, yawned, scratched, rewound his footcloths, and swore at Maxim, but after being goaded, exhorted, and lashed, he finally started talking and expounded his ideas concerning the causes of the war.

  In his
opinion, there were at least three possible causes of the war. Maybe they were all operating together, or maybe one of them was predominant. Or maybe there was a fourth cause that had not yet occurred to Zef. First of all, the economy. Information about the economic situation in the Land of the Fathers was kept strictly secret, but everybody knew that the situation was shitty, massaraksh and massaraksh, and when the economy is in a shitty condition, the best thing to do is to start a war with someone in order to immediately stop everybody’s mouths. Wild Boar, who was an old hand and quite a specialist on the influence of economics on politics, had already forecast this war five years ago. Towers were all very well, but poverty was still poverty. You couldn’t carry on for very long instilling into a hungry man’s mind the idea that he’s full—his mind couldn’t take the strain, and there wasn’t much fun in ruling a nation of madmen, especially since the insane were not susceptible to the radiation . . .

  Another possible cause was ideological. State ideology in the Land of the Fathers was based on the idea of an external threat. At first this had simply been a lie, invented in order to impose discipline on the lawless anarchy of the postwar period, but then the individuals who had invented this lie had quit the stage, and their successors believed it and genuinely thought that Hontia was simply itching to get its hands on our wealth. And if you bore in mind that Hontia was a former province of the old empire that had declared independence in difficult times, then that added colonial ideas into the mix: bring the bastards back into the fold, after punishing them in exemplary fashion first . . .