While the old man was packing his bedding into his traveling bag, Artyom worked on his self-charging torch, squeezing and releasing the handle and listening to the buzzing of the mechanism as he filled up the battery. That was all he was interested in. Then he broke off.
“Explain this to me. That book of yours. What’s it for?”
“The book? Well, the way things are, we’re living here and time has stopped, you understand? There aren’t any historians. There’s no one to record that we also lived, and how, so it’s as if our lives are pointless. But that not true, is it?” Homer froze, holding a gray, crumpled pillowcase.” They’ll dig us up in ten thousand years, and we didn’t write a single line. They’ll try to read our bones and our soup bowls to tell who we believed in and what we dreamed about. And they’ll get everything wrong.”
“Who’ll dig us up, granddad?”
“Archaeologists, our descendants.”
Artyom shook his head hard. He licked his lips and tried to restrain the fury seething up in him, but it seared him, as if he had puked up bile.
“But maybe I don’t want them to dig you and me up here. I don’t want to be bones and bowls in a common grave. I’d rather do the digging myself, and not be dug up. There are enough people here who want to while away their lives in a burial mound as it is. I’d rather kick the bucket from an overdose up on the surface than be stuck here in the Metro until I’m old and gray. That’s no human destiny, granddad. That’s not for human beings. The Metro. Descendants, fuck it. Descendants! I don’t want my descendants to be stuck underground all their lives. I don’t want my descendants to be food for tuberculosis microbes! I don’t want that! Or to slit each other’s throats over the last tin of food? I don’t want that. Or grunt and sprawl around with the pigs? I don’t want that! You’re writing a book for them, granddad, but they won’t even be able to read. Their eyes will wither away because they’re not needed, do you understand? But their sense of smell will be as keen as a rat’s! They won’t be people!
“Should we breed creatures like that? If there’s even just one chance in a million that somewhere out there, at least somewhere, it’s possible to live on the surface, under a sky with stars, under the sun, if at least somewhere in this fucking world it’s possible just to breathe through your mouth and not through a rubber trunk, then I’m going to find that place, got that? If there is a place like that, then yes! That’s where we’ll be able to build a new life! And have children! So that they won’t grow up to be rats or Morlocks, but human beings! For that we have to fight! But we mustn’t bury ourselves alive in the ground in advance, curl up in a tight little ball and meekly snuff it—we mustn’t do that!”
Irradiated and stunned by Artyom’s forcefulness, Homer didn’t say anything. Artyom really wanted the old man to argue; he wanted to take at least one more hard swing. But instead of that the old man just smiled—honestly and warmly, with half his teeth missing.
“It wasn’t a waste of time coming here. I sensed that it wasn’t.”
Artyom just spat. But it was the poison he spat out, the bile: For some reason the old man’s gap-toothed smile made him feel better, it eased his tension. The old man was ludicrous and awkward, but Artyom suddenly had the feeling that they were on the same side. Homer felt something similar and waved to Artyom like a boisterous youngster.
“I’m ready.”
They walked stealthily through the station. Hanging above the blank opening of the tunnel, the station clock, a local sacred relic, showed that it was night. So it was night for everyone. Artyom was the only one who could have disagreed with it, but Artyom was already leaving the station. The hall was almost deserted, except for someone having a late cup of tea in the kitchen. The crimson public lighting was dimmed; people had packed themselves away in their tents, lit up the weak little light diodes inside, and transformed their tarpaulin into a theater of shadows. Each stage offered its own performance. As they walked past Sukhoi’s tent it was a figure leaning over a table; and then they walked past the one where Anya was sitting with her face buried in her hands.
The old man asked cautiously:
“Don’t you want to say goodbye?”
“No one to say it to, granddad.”
Homer didn’t argue.
“To Alekseevskaya!” Artyom announced to the sentries at the entrance to the southern tunnel.” SukhoI knows about it.”
The sentries saluted: If he knew, then he knew. Thanks for not going up on the surface again.
They climbed down the welded iron ladder onto the tracks.
“The pipe,” Artyom said to himself as he stepped into the darkness, tenderly touching the rough, moldy cast iron of a tunnel liner, measuring with a glance the five-meters-high ceiling of the tunnel and its fathomless depth.” The pipe is calling.”
CHAPTER 4
— PAYMENT —
Alekseevskaya was like Exhibition, only a crummier version. They tried to cultivate mushrooms and made bungled efforts with pigs here too, but as luck would have it the mushrooms and the pigs always turned out half-dead. So there was hardly enough for the locals and nothing was left for trading. But the locals were a good match for their own pigs—sickly and resigned to the fact that in their fairytale the beginning and the end were both boring and everyone knew them in advance. The walls here used to be white and marble, but now it was impossible to say what they used to be like. Everything that could be pried off and sold had been. All that remained was a concrete shell and a few human lives. Scraping away concrete was difficult, and no one in the Metro needed goods of that sort; so most of the trading that took place concerned who the Alekseevans were going to die for in battle. If there was any choice, the price would have been higher. But apart from Exhibition there were no buyers to be found. So now the main purpose of Alekseevskaya Station’s existence was to protect Exhibition Station.
And therefore at Exhibition the tunnel leading to Alekseevskaya was regarded as calm. It could take a week to make your way through some stretches of tunnel, but even with all the compulsory precautions it took them perhaps thirty minutes to get through this one. Although the minutes were left behind on the clock at Exhibition. It was ten years now since the clock at Alekseevskaya had been stolen, and since then everyone there lived according to his own intuition. If someone wanted night, then for him it was night. After all, in the Metro night never ended; it was the day that had to be imagined.
The guard detail glanced listlessly at the walkers, their pupils as tiny as the eyes of needles. There was a somber little white cloud hanging over the sentry post, and the air smelled of foot-wrappings: They had been smoking dope. The officer of the watch heaved a sigh and made an effort.
“Where to.”
“Peace Prospect. To the market,” said Artyom, with making any effort to slip in through eye of that needle.
“They won’t let you through. There.”
Artyom gave him a warm smile.
“That’s no concern of yours, uncle.”
“The tangent times the tangent gives the cotangent,” the old man replied, infected by Artyom’s genial mood and wishing to something agreeable too.
And with that they parted.
“Which way shall we go?” Homer asked Artyom.
“From the Prospect? If they let us into Hansa, round the Circle. Anything’s better than going straight down along our line. Unpleasant memories, you know. Hansa will be safer. I have a visa stamped in my passport. Miller fixed that up for me. Will they let you in?”
“There’s a quarantine, isn’t there?”
“They always have some kind of quarantine. We’ll break through somehow. All the problems will start after that. Teatralnaya—no matter which side you come at it from … You chose a fine place for your radio operator to live, granddad. In the middle of a minefield.”
“What do you—”
“I’m joking.”
The old man squinted in a special kind of way—looking in under his forehead, inside him
self, where he evidently had a map of the Metro laid out. Artyom always had his own map in front of his eyes; he’d learned to look straight through it. He’d learned that in a year of serving with Miller.
“I’d say … It’s best to go to Pavelets. It’s longer, but quicker. And from there up along the Green Line. If we’re lucky we can get there in a day.”
They moved on through the pipe.
Swishing quietly, the torch worked as hard as it could—but its spot of light only reached ten steps ahead, and after that it was eaten up by the darkness. Water dripped from the ceiling, the walls gleamed damply, something gurgled hollowly, and the drops falling on their heads irritated their skin, as if they weren’t water, but stomach acid.
Doors of some kind appeared in the walls, and sometimes the black openings of side tunnels—mostly boarded over or covered with welded gratings of steel reinforcement bars.
After all, everyone knew that the bright-colored passenger maps didn’t show even a third of the whole Metro, the real one. Why confuse people with all that? They just hurtled from one marble station to the next with their noses stuck in their mobile phones, leapt forward an hour, and that was it, they had arrived. They had no time to go thinking about what depths of the earth they had plumbed. And why wonder about what lay there, behind the walls of the stations and where the barred-off branches of the tunnels led to? It was just good that you got where you were going in good time. Gaze at your phone; think about something important to you; don’t stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong.
They walked with the special tunnel stride—docked to three-quarters size, to coincide neatly with the sleepers. It took a lot of walking to teach your legs to do that. Those who were stuck at the station all the time couldn’t do it; they lost the rhythm and stepped into the gaps.
“Well, what about you, granddad? Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
All the light went forward, and Artyom couldn’t make out the expression on the old man’s face. Probably there wasn’t one: just a beard and wrinkles.
They walked on for about another fifty strides. The knapsack with the radio set started getting heavy, really making its presence felt. Artyom’s temples were soaked, and sweat started running down his back.
“I had a wife. At Sebastopol.”
“Do you live way out at Sebastopol?”
“I used to, yes.”
“Did she leave you?” Somehow that seemed the most likely thing to Artyom.” Your wife?”
“I left. To write the book. I thought the book was more important. And my wife wasn’t going anywhere anyway. Do you understand?”
“You left your wife to write a book?” Artyom asked.” How’s that possible? And she … She let you go?”
“I ran off. When I came back she wasn’t there.”
“She left?”
“She died.”
Artyom shifted the bundle with the protective suit from his right hand to his left.
“I don’t know.”
“Eh?”
“I don’t know if I understand or not.”
“You do, you understand,” the old man said wearily but confidently.
Artyom suddenly felt afraid. Afraid of doing something irrevocable.
After that they counted off the sleepers in silence. They listened to the rumbling echo and distant groaning: It was the Metro digesting someone.
* * *
They weren’t expecting any danger from behind: they stared hard straight ahead, trying to spot that faint ripple on the surface of the tunnel, following which something appalling and nameless would emerge, splashing out of that well of black ink. But they didn’t watch with the backs of their heads.
They should have.
Squea-eak-squeak. Squea-eak-squeak.
The sound stole into their ears like that, gradually.
And it only became noticeable when it was already too late to swing around and point their gun barrels.
“Ahoy!”
If whoever it was had wanted to nudge them in the back with lead and topple them over facedown onto the rotten sleepers, they could easily have had time to do it. A lesson: You should never think your own thoughts in the tube; it might start getting jealous. You’re forgetting things, Artyom.
“Halt! Who are you?”
The knapsack and the bundle pulled his arms down, preventing him from taking aim.
A trolley trundled out of the darkness.
“Ahoy. Ahoy. Friends.”
It was that sentry, the cotangent. Alone on the trolley, a fearless man. He had abandoned his post and set off into nowhere. The dope had urged him on.
What the hell did he want?
“Lads. I just thought. Maybe I could give you a lift. To the next station.”
And he smiled his very best smile at them. Gap-toothed and craggy.
Of course Artyom’s back was begging for a ride, instead of slogging on by foot.
He studied their benefactor: padded jacket, receding hair, puffy under the eyes, but there was light coming out through the pinpricks of his pupils, as if it was shining through a keyhole.
“How much?”
“Don’t insult me. You’re Sukhoi’s son, right? The station master. I’m doing it for free. For peace throughout the world.”
Artyom shook himself; the knapsack skipped and sat on his shoulders more comfortably.
“Thanks,” he said, making up his mind.
“All right, then,” the watchman said delightedly, and waved his arms, as if he was dispersing all the fog he had smoked over the years.” You’re a big boy; you’ve got to understand the subtle points! No way you can manage without a beam-compass in these matters!”
He didn’t shut up all the way to Riga.
* * *
“Have you brought us a bit of shit?”
The first person to meet them—ahead of the sentries—was a young guy with short-cropped hair and folded-down ears. He had slightly slanting eyes, but they were concrete-colored, like the sky. His leather coat didn’t close over his chest, and gazing out calmly and confidently at Artyom from among the curls and blue drawings behind the open shirt was a rather hefty Jesus.
The young guy had a tin bucket securely perched between his feet and a bag hanging over his shoulder, and he repeatedly slapped the bag to make it give out a tempting jingling sound.
“I’ll give top price!”—and then a thin jingle.
In the old times the Riga market, famous throughout Moscow for its cheap roses, used to be above this station. When the sirens started howling, people had only seven minutes to grasp what was happening, believe it, fumble for their ID, and run to the nearest way down into the Metro. And the shrewd flower traders, who only had to go a few steps, crowded inside first, elbowing aside the other people about to be killed.
When the question arose of how to earn a living underground, they opened the hermetic doors, shoved aside the bodies heaped up outside and went back to the market for their roses and tulips: they were withered already, but perfectly good for a herbarium. And for a long time the inhabitants of Riga Station traded in dried flowers. The flowers were damaged by mold and they were radioactive, but people took them anyway: There was nothing better to be found in the Metro. They had to carry on loving and grieving, didn’t they? And how could they do that without flowers?
Those dried roses and the memory of a happiness that seemed to have been here only yesterday but had now vanished forever allowed Riga to spread it wings. But new flowers couldn’t be grown underground: Flowers aren’t mushrooms or people; they want sunlight. And although the market above the station had seemed inexhaustible, it dried up.
There was a crisis.
Everyone expected that the Rigans, accustomed to the good life, would have to switch to short rations and basically eat rats, like the other poor devils at ordinary stations without any special blessings. But their business acumen saved them.
They thought over the possibilities, took stock of the advantages
of their location, and suggested a deal to their neighbors to the north; to buy the surplus pig dung and then sell it on as manure to all the stations who cultivated mushrooms. Exhibition accepted the offer. They had more than enough of that particular asset.
And Riga, already on the wane, already gray with imminent poverty, acquired a new lease of life. Of course, the new commodity didn’t smell the same, but it was more reliable. And in this difficult new age they didn’t really have much choice.
“Lads, aren’t you carrying anything, then?” the young guy asked with a short, sharp sniff, disillusioned with his visitors. And at that moment other men with buckets, just like him, came flying up just a little bit too late—a whole throng of them, shouting across each other:
“Shit!”
“Got any shit? Good money!”
“I’ll give a bullet for a kilo.”
Like everywhere else in the Metro, they paid here in Kalashnikov cartridges, now the only hard currency. Roubles had become meaningless from the very beginning. What could they be backed with in a world where a word of honor was meaningless and there was no state? Cartridges were far better.
The banknotes had been rolled into cigarettes and smoked long ago: Large denominations were more highly prized than low ones—they were cleaner, they burned better, and they produced less tar. The poorer children, who hadn’t gotten any empty cartridge cases, played with coins. But the real price of everything now was in “bullets,” as cartridges were affectionately known.
A cartridge for a kilogram at Riga—and somewhere on the Sebastopol Line, a kilogram cost three. Of course, not everyone would want to take up this business. That was fine: There was less competition.
“Hey you, Lyokh, shove off! I’m first in line here,” said a swarthy, fidgety man with a mustache, shoving the young tattooed guy on his Christ figure; the young guy snarled back, but retreated anyway.
“Where were you going, fuck it? D’you think if you meet ’em in the tunnel, all the shit’s yours?” a gray-cheeked, bald man asked, darting up to the first two.
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