He put down the receiver and glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to ten. He gave a loud groan and dragged himself off to the bathroom. This nightmare again . . . half an hour of nightmare. Against which there is no defense. From which there is no salvation . . . Which destroys the very desire to live . . . How very annoying it is that I’ll have to spare Wanderer.
The bath was already full of hot water. The prosecutor flung off his robe, tugged off his nightshirt, and stuck a painkiller under his tongue. The same thing all my life. One twenty-fourth of my entire life is hell. More than 4 percent . . . And that’s not counting the summonses from on high. Well, the summonses will end soon, but this 4 percent will remain until the very end . . . But then, we’ll see about that. When everything is settled, I’ll deal with Wanderer myself . . . He clambered into the bath, arranged himself as comfortably as possible, relaxed, and started thinking about how he would deal with Wanderer. But he didn’t have time to think of anything. The familiar pain struck him on the top of his head, traveled down along his spine, sinking a claw into every cell and every nerve, and started fiercely and methodically shredding him to pieces, in time to the wild jolting of his heart.
When it was all over, he continued lying there for a while in languid exhaustion—the torments of hell also had their compensations: a half hour of nightmare presented him with several minutes of heavenly bliss—then he climbed out, rubbed himself down in front of the mirror, opened the door a little, accepted some clean underwear from his valet, got dressed, went back into his office, drank another glass of warm milk, this time mixed with medicinal water, ate some sticky mush with honey, simply sat there for a little while, finally recovering his wits, then called his day secretary and ordered the car to be made ready.
The way to the Department of Special Research lay along the Government Highway, which was empty at this time of day. It was lined with curly trees that looked as if they were artificial. The driver drove hard, without stopping at the traffic lights, occasionally turning on a booming, bass siren. They drove up to the tall iron gates of the department at three minutes to eleven. A guardsman in dress uniform walked up to the car, leaned down, glanced in, recognized the prosecutor, and saluted. The gates immediately swung open to reveal a view of a rich, green park with white and yellow blocks of apartment buildings, and behind them the gigantic glass parallelepiped of the institute. They slowly drove along the narrow road with its forbidding warnings about speed, past a children’s playground, past the squat building of the swimming pool and the cheerful, brightly colored building of the restaurant. And all of this was surrounded by greenery, billowing clouds of greenery, and wonderful, absolutely pure air and—massaraksh!—what an amazing smell hung in the air here; there was nothing like it absolutely anywhere else, not in any field or any forest . . .
Oh, that Wanderer—all of this is his initiative, immense damned sums of money have been blown on all of it, but how everyone loves him here! This is the right way to live; this is the right way to set yourself up. Immense damned sums of money were blown on it and Stepfather was terribly displeased, and he’s still displeased now . . . Risk? Yes, of course there was a risk, but Wanderer took the risk, and now his department is his own, the people here won’t betray him, they won’t try to squeeze him out . . . He has five hundred people here, most of them young, they don’t read the newspapers, they don’t listen to the radio; they have no time, you see, they have important scientific research work . . . so here the radiation misses the target completely, or rather, the target it strikes is a completely different one.
Yes, Wanderer, if I were you, I would drag out the development of those protective helmets for a long time. Perhaps you are dragging it out? You almost certainly are. But damn it all, how can I get a serious grip on you? Now, if only a second Wanderer would just turn up. . . But there isn’t another mind like that one in the entire world. And he knows it. And he keeps a very close watch on any man with even a modicum of talent. He takes him in hand when he’s still young, coddles him and estranges him from his parents—and the parents, the fools, are utterly delighted!—and there, look, he has another little soldier in his ranks . . . Oh, what a great thing it is that Wanderer isn’t here right now, what a stroke of luck!
The car stopped and the day secretary swung the door open. The prosecutor clambered out and walked up the steps into the glass-walled vestibule. Brainiac and his minions were already waiting for him. With an appropriate expression of boredom on his face, the prosecutor flaccidly shook Brainiac’s hand, glanced at the minions, and allowed himself to be escorted to the elevator. They entered the cabin in regulation order: Mr. State Prosecutor, followed by Mr. Deputy Head of the Department, followed by the state prosecutor’s minion and the deputy head of the department’s senior minion. They left the others in the vestibule. They entered Brainiac’s office in regulation order too: the state prosecutor was followed in by Brainiac, and Mr. Prosecutor’s minion and Brainiac’s senior minion were left outside the door in the reception office. The prosecutor immediately lowered himself into an armchair in a state of exhaustion, and Brainiac immediately started fussing about, pressing buttons at the edge of the desk with his fingers, and when an entire mob of secretaries came running into the room, he ordered tea to be served.
The prosecutor spent the first few minutes amusing himself by studying Brainiac. Brainiac was looking incredibly guilty. He avoided looking the prosecutor in the eyes, kept smoothing down his hair, pointlessly rubbing his hands together, unnaturally coughing, and making a large number of meaningless, fussy movements. He always looked this way. His appearance and behavior were his main assets. He constantly roused suspicions that he had a guilty conscience and drew down constant, thoroughgoing checks and audits on himself. The Department of Public Health had studied his life hour by hour. And since his life was irreproachable, and each new check merely confirmed this rather unexpected fact, Brainiac’s rise up the professional ladder had proceeded at record speed.
The prosecutor knew all of this perfectly well—he himself had personally checked Brainiac three times, each time in the most thorough manner possible, and each time raising him one rung higher—and nonetheless at this moment, as he amused himself by scrutinizing Brainiac, he suddenly caught himself thinking that, by God, Brainiac, the artful rogue, knew where Wanderer was and was terribly afraid that this information would be dragged out of him now. And the prosecutor couldn’t resist it. “Greetings from Wanderer,” he casually said, tapping his fingers on the armrest of his chair.
Brainiac cast a quick glance at the prosecutor and immediately looked away. “Mm . . . uh . . . yes,” he said, biting his lip and clearing his throat. “Um . . . In just a moment . . . um . . . they’ll bring the tea . . .”
“He asked you to give him a call,” the prosecutor said even more casually.
“What? Uhhh . . . OK . . . The tea today will be quite exceptional. My new secretary is a genuine connoisseur of teas . . . That is . . .”—he cleared his throat again—“. . . where should I call him?”
“I don’t understand,” the prosecutor said.
“No, well, it’s just that . . . um . . . in order to call him, I have to know the . . . the telephone number . . . but he never leaves a number . . .” Brainiac suddenly started fussing about, blushing in his distress, and slapping his hands around on the table. He found a pencil and asked, “Where did he say I should call?”
The prosecutor backed off. “I was joking,” he said.
“Eh? What?” A range of suspicious expressions instantly started flickering across Brainiac’s face in rapid succession. “Ah! Joking?” He guffawed in sham laughter. “You really caught me there . . . How amusing. And I was thinking . . . Ha-ha-ha! And here’s the tea!”
The prosecutor accepted a glass of hot, strong tea from the pampered hands of the pampered secretary and said, “OK, I was just joking, enough of that. There’s not much time. Where’s your piece of paper?”
After performing a whole
heap of unnecessary movements, Brainiac extracted the draft of a certified report of inspection from the desk. If the way in which he shrank and cringed as he did this was anything to go by, the draft simply had to be crammed absolutely full of false information that was intended to lead the inspector astray, and in general must been composed with subversive intentions.
“Riiight then,” said the prosecutor, smacking his lips on a small lump of sugar. “What’s this you have here? ‘Report of Verificatory Investigation’ . . . Riiight . . . The interference phenomena laboratory . . . the spectroscopic research laboratory . . . the integral radiation laboratory . . . I don’t understand a thing, can’t make head or tail of it. How do you make any sense out of all this?”
“Well, I . . . hmm . . . You know, I don’t really know anything about it either—after all, my professional background is as . . . a manager, I don’t interfere in these matters.” Brainiac kept hiding his eyes, biting on his lip, and vigorously ruffling up his hair, making it absolutely clear beyond the slightest possible doubt that he wasn’t any kind of manager but a Hontian spy with specialized higher education. Well, what a character!
The prosecutor turned his attention back to the report. He made a profound remark about the excessive expenditure of the power amplification group, asked who Zoi Barutu was, and whether he was related to Moru Barutu, the well-known propaganda writer, passed a reproachful comment with regard to the lensless refractometer, which had cost absolutely crazy money although they hadn’t even gotten a handle on it yet, and summed up the work of the radiation research and improvement sector by saying that there was no substantial progress to be observed (and thank God, he added to himself ), and that his opinion on this point definitely must be included in the final draft of the report.
He looked through the section of the report dealing with protection against radiation even more casually. “You are merely marking time,” he declared. “In terms of physical protective measures, absolutely nothing had been achieved, and in terms of physiological protective measures, even less than that . . . In any case, physiological measures aren’t what we need at all: why would I want to let myself be hacked to pieces, you could reduce me to an idiot . . . But the chemists have done well—they’ve won us another minute. A minute last year, and a minute and a half the year before last . . . What does that mean? It means that now I can take a pill, and instead of thirty minutes, I’ll be in agony for twenty-two. Well, now that’s not bad. Almost thirty percent . . . Make a note of my opinion: increase the tempo of work on physical protection and pay the staff of the chemical protection division an incentive bonus. That’s all.”
He tossed the sheets of paper across to Brainiac. “Have a clean copy typed out . . . and my opinion too . . . And now, strictly pro forma, show me around . . . well now, let’s say . . . uh . . . I visited the physicists last time, take me to see the chemists, I’ll have a look at what they’re up to.”
Brainiac jumped to his feet and pressed more buttons, and the prosecutor got up with an air of extreme exhaustion.
Accompanied by Brainiac and his own day secretary, the prosecutor took a leisurely stroll through the laboratories of the division of chemical protection, politely smiling at people with a single chevron on the sleeve of their white coats, sometimes slapping on the shoulder those who didn’t have any chevrons, and halting beside those who had two chevrons to shake their hands, sagely nod his head, and inquire if they had any complaints.
There weren’t any complaints. They were all apparently working, or pretending to work—in this place you couldn’t tell. Little lights were blinking on various instruments, liquids were boiling in various vessels, there was a smell of some kind of garbage, and in some places they were torturing animals. Everything here was clean, bright, and spacious, the people looked well fed and calm, and they didn’t manifest any enthusiasm, behaving perfectly correctly with the inspector—but without any warmth at all, and in any case without the appropriate obsequiousness.
And hanging in almost every room—whether it was an office or a laboratory—was a portrait of Wanderer: above a desk, beside tables of figures and graphs, above a door, sometimes under glass on a desk. The portraits were amateur photographs and pencil or charcoal sketches, and one of them was even painted in oils. In this place you could see Wanderer playing ball games, Wanderer giving a lecture, Wanderer gnawing on an apple, Wanderer looking severe, thoughtful, weary, or infuriated, and even Wanderer laughing his head off. These sons of bitches even drew cartoons of him and hung them in the most obvious places! . . . The prosecutor imagined himself walking into the office of the junior counselor of justice, Filtik, and discovering a caricature of himself there. Massaraksh, it was unimaginable, absolutely impossible!
He smiled, slapped shoulders, and shook hands, but all the time he was thinking that this was the second time he had been here since last year, and everything seemed to be the same as before, but previously he somehow hadn’t taken any notice of it all . . . But now he had. Why only now?
Ah, that was why! What was Wanderer to me a year or two years ago? Formally, he was one of us, but in actuality he was merely an armchair presence who had no influence on politics, no place of his own in politics, and no goals of his own in politics. However, since then Wanderer had succeeded in doing a great deal. The statewide operation for the elimination of foreign spies was his initiative. The prosecutor had conducted those trials himself and had been astounded at the time to find that he was not dealing with the usual sham degenerate spies but with genuine, seasoned intelligence agents, planted by the Island Empire to gather scientific and economic information. Wanderer had fished them all out, every last one, and after that he had become the regular chief of special counterintelligence.
And moreover, it was Wanderer who had exposed the conspiracy led by bald Blister, an appalling character, who had been very firmly entrenched and vigorously and dangerously undermined Wanderer’s stewardship of counterintelligence. And he had whacked Blister himself—he didn’t trust anybody else to do it. He always acted openly, never used any kind of camouflage, and only acted alone—no coalitions, no unions, no temporary alliances. In this way he had brought down three heads of the Military Department, one after another—they were summoned to the top before they even had an inkling of what was happening—and then managed to get Twitcher, a man whose fear of war amounted to panic, appointed . . .
It was Wanderer who had hacked down Project Gold a year ago, when it presented to the top level by the Patriotic Union of Industry and Finance . . . At the time Wanderer had seemed to be on the verge of being toppled himself, because the project had aroused Dad’s enthusiasm, but Wanderer had somehow managed to persuade him that all the advantages of the project were strictly temporary, and in ten years’ time there would be a general epidemic of insanity and a total collapse . . .
He always somehow contrived to persuade them; nobody else could ever persuade them of anything, only Wanderer could. And basically it was clear why. He was never afraid of anything. Yes, he did spend a long time sitting in his office, but eventually he realized his own true worth. He realized that we needed him, whoever we might be, and no matter how fiercely we might fight among ourselves. Because only he can create protection, only he can free us from our torments . . . And snot-nosed kids in white coats draw caricatures of him, and he allows them to do it . . .
The day secretary opened the next door for the prosecutor, and the prosecutor saw his Mak. Wearing a white coat with a single chevron on the sleeve, Mak was sitting on the windowsill looking out. If a counselor of justice took the liberty of lounging on the windowsill and counting crows during work hours, he could with a clear conscience be dispatched under armed guard to the labor camps as an obvious idle parasite and even a saboteur. But in this particular case, massaraksh, it was quite impossible to say anything. Take him by the scruff of the neck and he would tell you, I beg your pardon! I am conducting a thought experiment here! Go away and don’t interfere!
&
nbsp; The great Mak was counting crows. He briefly glanced at the men who had come in and returned to this occupation, but then he turned back and looked more closely. You recognized me, thought the prosecutor. You did, my smart fellow . . . He politely smiled at Mak, slapped the young lab assistant who was twirling the handle of an arithmometer on the shoulder, stopped in the middle of the room, and looked around.
“Well now . . .” he said into the space between Mak and Brainiac. “What do we have going on here?”
“Mr. Sim,” said Brainiac, blushing, blinking, rubbing his hands together, and clearing his throat, “explain to the inspector what you . . . uh . . . hmm . . .”
“But I know you, don’t I?” said the great Mak, somehow or other popping up with startling suddenness only two steps away from the prosecutor. “Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but aren’t you the state prosecutor?”
Yes, dealing with Mak wasn’t easy—the entire thoroughly thought-out plan had immediately gone up in smoke. Mak hadn’t even thought of trying to hide anything, he wasn’t afraid of anything, he was curious, and from the elevation of his own immense height, he peered down at the prosecutor as if he were examining some kind of exotic animal . . . The prosecutor had to regroup and think on his feet.
“Yes,” he said in a tone of cold surprise, ceasing to smile. “As far as I am aware, I am indeed the state prosecutor, although I don’t understand . . .” He frowned and peered into Mak’s face. Mak gave a broad smile. “Ah!” the prosecutor exclaimed. “Why, of course . . . Mak Sim, also known as Maxim Kammerer! However, pardon me, but I was informed that you had been killed while serving penal labor . . . Massaraksh, how did you come to be here?”
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