The door opened slightly and a vaguely familiar pale face with sour little eyes was thrust into the office.
“Wait!” Andrei said curtly. “I’ll call you.”
The face disappeared.
“You understand?” Andrei asked. “There was a big bang outside, and you don’t know anything else. The official version is this: a drunk worker, carrying explosive from the depot, the culprits are being identified.” He paused for a moment, pondering. Where have I seen that ugly mug before? And the name’s familiar . . . Cvirik . . . Cvirik . . .
“Why did he do it?” Amalia asked in a quiet voice. Her eyes turned suspiciously damp again.
Andrei frowned. “Let’s not talk about that now. Later. Go and call that lackey in.”
2
When they were seated at the table, Heiger said to Izya, “Help yourself, my Jew. Help yourself, my dear fellow.”
“I’m not your Jew,” Izya objected, heaping salad onto his plate. “I’ve told you a hundred times that I’m my own Jew. That’s your Jew there.” He jabbed his finger in Andrei’s direction.
“Is there any tomato juice?” Andrei asked sullenly, looking around the table.
“You want tomato juice?” Heiger asked. “Parker! Tomato juice for Mr. Counselor!”
A burly, ruddy-cheeked individual—Heiger’s personal adjutant—appeared in the doorway, jangling his spurs mellifluously, approached the table, gave a shallow bow, and set down a dew-spangled carafe of tomato juice in front of Andrei.
“Thank you, Parker,” said Andrei. “It’s all right, I’ll pour it myself.”
Heiger nodded, and Parker was gone.
“Great training!” Izya mumbled with his mouth stuffed full.
“A fine young man,” Andrei said.
“But at Manjuro’s place they serve vodka with lunch,” said Izya.
“You stoolie!” Heiger told him reproachfully.
“Why’s that?” Izya asked in astonishment.
“If Manjuro swigs vodka during working hours, I have to punish him.”
“You can’t shoot everyone,” Izya said.
“The death penalty has been abolished,” said Heiger. “Actually, I don’t exactly remember. I should ask Chachua . . .”
“And what happened to Chachua’s predecessor?” Izya inquired innocently.
“That was a complete accident,” said Heiger. “An exchange of fire.”
“He was an excellent administrator, by the way,” Andrei observed. “Chachua knows his job, but his boss! . . . He was phenomenal.”
“Yep, yep, we were pretty reckless back then,” Heiger said pensively. “Young and green . . .”
“All’s well that ends well,” Andrei said.
“Nothing’s ended yet!” Izya objected. “What makes you think everything’s already over?”
“Well, the shooting’s all over, anyway,” Andrei growled.
“The real shooting hasn’t even started yet,” Izya declared. “Listen, Fritz, have there been any attempts on your life?”
Heiger frowned. “What sort of idiotic idea is that? Of course not.”
“There will be,” Izya promised.
“Thank you,” Heiger said frostily.
“There’ll be assassination attempts,” Izya continued. “There’ll be an explosion of drug addiction. There’ll be affluence riots. The hippies have already appeared, I won’t even mention them. There’ll be protest suicides, self-immolations, people blowing themselves up . . . In fact, this has already happened.”
Heiger and Andrei exchanged glances.
“There, you see,” Andrei said. “He knows already.”
“I wonder how,” said Heiger, peering at Izya through narrowed eyes.
“What do I know?” Izya asked quickly. He put down his fork. “Hang on, now! Ah! So that was a protest suicide! I was wondering about all that bullshit! Blasters staggering around drunk with dynamite . . . So that’s it! But to be honest, I imagined it was an assassination attempt . . . Now I get it . . . And who was it really?”
“A certain Denny Lee,” Heiger said after a pause. “Andrei knew him.”
“Lee . . .” Izya said thoughtfully, absentmindedly smearing splashes of mayonnaise across the lapel of his jacket. “Denny Lee . . . Wait, he’s a skinny guy . . . A journalist?”
“You knew him too,” said Andrei. “Remember, in my newspaper . . .”
“Yes, yes, yes!” Izya exclaimed. “That’s right! I remember now.”
“Only, for God’s sake, keep your mouth shut,” said Heiger.
Wearing his habitual frozen smile, Izya started plucking at the wart on his neck. “So that’s what it was . . .” he muttered. “I get it . . . I get it . . . So he wrapped himself in explosives and went out onto the plaza . . . He probably sent letters to all the papers, the freak . . . Right, right, right. And what measures do you intend to take?” he asked, addressing Heiger.
“I’ve already taken them,” said Heiger.
“Right, of course you have!” Izya said impatiently. “You’ve classified it, put out the official lies, let Ruhmer off the leash—that’s not what I meant. What do you think about this in general? Or do you assume that it’s an isolated incident?”
“Uh-uh. I don’t assume that it’s an isolated incident,” Heiger said slowly.
“Thank God!” Izya exclaimed.
“And what do you think?” Andrei asked him.
Izya quickly turned to face Andrei. “And you?”
“I think that any orderly society is bound to have its own psychos. And Denny was a psycho, that’s for sure. His philosophy had clearly driven him crazy. And of course, he’s not the only one in the City.”
“And what did he say?” Izya asked avidly.
“He said he was bored. He said we hadn’t found our true goal. He said all our work on improving the standard of living was garbage and it solved nothing. He said lots of things, but he couldn’t propose anything worthwhile himself. A psycho. Hysterical.”
“But what would he really have wanted to see?” asked Heiger.
Andrei gestured dismissively. “The usual populist nonsense. Like Nekrasov: ‘With its broad, radiant chest, the people will bear whatever the Lord may send . . .’”
“I don’t understand,” said Heiger.
“Well, he believed it was the task of enlightened people to raise up the people to their own enlightened level. But of course, he didn’t know how to go about it.”
“And why did he kill himself ?” Heiger asked doubtfully.
“I told you, he was a psycho.”
“And what’s your opinion?” Heiger asked Izya.
Izya didn’t take even a second to ponder. “If a psycho is what you call a man who wrestles with a problem that has no solution,” he said, “then yes, he was a psycho. And you”—Izya jabbed his finger at Heiger—“will never understand him. You’re one of those people who only take on problems that have solutions.”
“Let’s assume,” said Andrei, “that Denny was absolutely certain his problem did have a solution.”
Izya brushed his opinion aside. “Neither of you understand a damned thing,” he declared. “You believe you’re the technocratic elite. Democrat is a dirty word for you: the cobblers should stick to their lasts. You have appalling contempt for the broad masses and you’re appallingly proud of the way you despise them. But in reality, it’s you who are the genuine, one hundred percent slaves of those masses! Everything you do, you do it for the masses. Everything you rack your brains over—the whole kit and caboodle, above all else it’s what the masses need. You live for the masses. If the masses disappeared, your lives would lose all meaning. You’re pathetic, pitiful applications engineers. And that’s why you’ll never be psychos. After all, rustling up everything the broad masses need is relatively simple, isn’t it? So your problems are by definition problems that have solutions. You’ll never understand people who kill themselves as a gesture of protest.”
“Why won’t we?” Andrei asked ir
ritably. “What is there really to understand here? Of course we do what the overwhelming majority wants. And we give, or try to give, that majority everything short of flying pigs—which, by the way, are not actually required by the majority. But there’s always an insignificant minority that wants flying pigs and nothing else. Because it’s an idée fixe for them, you see. A morbid obsession. They have to have flying pigs! Simply because it’s impossible to find flying pigs anywhere. And that’s how the social psychos appear. What’s so hard to understand about that? Or do you really believe that all this rabble can be raised up to the level of the elite?”
“We’re not talking about me,” said Izya, baring his teeth in a grin. “I don’t consider myself a slave of the majority, a.k.a. a servant of the people. I’ve never worked for the majority and I don’t consider myself under any obligation to it.”
“All right, all right,” said Heiger. “Everyone knows you’re a case apart. Let’s get back to our suicides. You believe that suicides will happen, no matter what political line we pursue?”
“They’ll happen precisely because you pursue an entirely definite political line!” said Izya. “And the longer it goes on, the more of them there’ll be, because you take away from people the onus of providing their own daily bread and you don’t give them anything in return. People get sick of it all and start feeling bored. That’s why there’ll be suicides, drug addiction, sexual revolutions, fatuous revolts over paltry nonsense . . .”
“That’s bullshit!” Andrei said furiously. “Think before you spout that kind of drivel, you lousy experimenter! ‘Spice his life up a bit, add a little pepper!’ Is that it? Are you suggesting we create artificial shortages? Just think where what you’re saying leads to!”
“It’s not what I’m saying that leads there,” said Izya, reaching right across the table with his mutilated arm to take the pan of meat sauce. “It’s what you’re doing. But it’s a fact that you can’t give them anything in exchange. Your Great Construction Sites are nonsense. The experiment on the experimenters is hogwash, no one gives a damn about it . . . And stop attacking me, I’m not saying this to condemn you. It’s just the way things are. It’s the fate of every populist, whether he poses as a technocratic benefactor or vainly attempts to inculcate certain ideals in the people—ideals which, in his opinion, the people can’t live without . . . Two sides of the same coin, heads or tails. In the end, you get food riots or affluence riots, take your choice. You’ve chosen affluence riots, and good luck to you—why attack me over it?”
“Don’t pour sauce on the tablecloth,” Heiger said angrily.
“Sorry . . .” Izya absentmindedly smeared the puddle across the tablecloth with a napkin. “But the arithmetic’s quite clear,” he said, “even if the discontents only make up one percent. If there are a million people in a city, that means ten thousand discontents. Even if it’s a tenth of a percent—that’s a thousand discontents. And when that thousand starts clamoring under your windows! And then, note, there’s no such thing as completely contented people. There’s something everyone wants that he doesn’t have, right? You know, he’s quite happy with everything, but then he doesn’t have a car. Why not? You know, he got used to having a car on Earth, but here he hasn’t got one, and what’s even more important, there’s no way he can expect to get one . . . Can you imagine how many people like that there are in the City?” Izya broke off and started greedily gobbling down macaroni, drowning it in sauce. “The chow here’s delicious,” he said. “With my modest level of affluence the Glass House is the only place I can really fill my belly.”
Andrei watched him guzzling, snorted, and poured himself some tomato juice. He drank it and lit a cigarette. It’s always the apocalypse with him . . . Seven chalices of the wrath of God and the seven last plagues . . . The rabble is the rabble. Of course they’ll rebel, that’s what we keep Ruhmer for. Affluence riots are something new though, a kind of paradox. There’s probably never been anything like that on Earth. At least not in my time. And the classics don’t say anything about it. But rebellion is rebellion . . . The Experiment is the Experiment, soccer is soccer . . . Dammit!
He looked at Heiger. Fritz was leaning back in his chair, absentmindedly and yet intently picking his teeth with his finger, and Andrei was suddenly stunned by a simple thought that was terrifying in its simplicity: Fritz was nothing more than a noncommissioned officer of the Wehrmacht, wasn’t he? A semi-educated drillmaster who hadn’t read ten worthwhile books in his entire life, and yet he was the one who decided things. As a matter of fact, I decide things, too, Andrei thought.
“In our situation,” he said to Izya, “any decent man simply had no choice. People were hungry, people were being victimized, they lived with fear and physical torment—children, old people, women . . . It was our duty to create decent living conditions.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” said Izya. “I understand all that. You were motivated by pity, compassion, etc., etc. That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s not hard to feel pity for women and children who are weeping from hunger—anyone can do that. But will you be able to feel pity for a burly hunk of a guy with a sex organ this big”—Izya demonstrated with his hands—“a man pining away from boredom? Denny Lee clearly could, but will you be able to do it? Or will you take the horsewhips to him?”
He paused, because ruddy-cheeked Parker had come into the dining room, accompanied by two pretty girls in white aprons. They cleared the table and served coffee with whipped cream; Izya immediately smeared it across his face and proceeded to lick himself clean, like a cat, all the way out to his ears.
“And anyway, do you know what I think?” he said thoughtfully. “As soon as society has solved some problem that it has, it immediately comes face-to-face with a new problem of the same magnitude . . . no, of even greater magnitude.” Then he livened up. “And that, by the way, gives rise to an interesting little point. Eventually society will come face-to-face with problems of such complexity that it will be beyond mankind’s power to solve them. And then so-called progress will stop.”
“Nonsense,” said Andrei. “Mankind doesn’t set itself problems that it can’t solve.”
“But I’m not talking about the problems mankind sets itself,” Izya objected. “I’m talking about the problems mankind runs into. They just come up on their own. Mankind never set itself the problem of famine. It simply used to starve.”
“Oh, here we go!” said Heiger. “That’s enough. You’ve got carried away with your fancy verbiage. Anyone would think we had nothing to with our time but gab.”
“What do we have to do with our time?” Izya asked in surprise. “I, for instance, am on my lunch break.”
“As you wish,” said Heiger. “I wanted to talk about your expedition. But of course, we can always defer that.”
Izya froze with a coffee cup in his hand. “Oh, come now,” he said dourly. “Why defer it? Let’s not defer it—we’ve deferred it so many times already.”
“Well then why are you gabbling like that?” asked Heiger. “It makes me feel sick listening to you.”
“What expedition is that?” Andrei asked. “For the archives, or what?”
“The great expedition to the north!” Izya proclaimed, but Heiger stopped him by holding up his large, white, open hand.
“This is a preliminary discussion,” he said. “But I’ve already made the decision to go ahead with the expedition, and funds have been allocated. Transport will be ready in three or four months. But at this point we need to define the general goals and program of action.”
“You mean it will be an expedition with multiple goals?” asked Andrei.
“Yes. Izya will get his archives, and you’ll get your observations of the sun and whatever else it is you want . . .”
“Thank God!” Andrei said, “At last!”
“But we shall have at least one other goal,” said Heiger. “Long-range reconnaissance. The expedition must travel very far to the north. As far as po
ssible. As far as the fuel and water last. And therefore the members of the team must be specially selected, with great discrimination. Only volunteers, and only the very best of the volunteers. No one really knows what might be up there, in the north. It’s quite possible that apart from searching for papers and gazing through your tubes, you’ll have to shoot, sit out a siege, break out, and so on. So there will be soldiers in the group. We’ll specify who and how many of them later.”
“Oh, as few as possible!” Andrei said, wincing. “I know your soldiers; working with them would be intolerable.” He pushed his cup away in annoyance. “And anyway, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why we need soldiers. I don’t understand what kind of gun battles there can be out there. It’s a desert out there, ruins—how could there be any gun battles?”
“There could be anything at all out there, my brother,” Izya said merrily.
“What does ‘anything’ mean? So maybe the place is swarming with devils—do you want us to take priests along with us?”
“Maybe I could be allowed to finish what I was saying?” Heiger asked.
“Say what you have to say,” Andrei replied, annoyed. That’s always the way, he thought. Like the story about the monkey’s paw. If a wish does come true, it always comes with the kind of add-on that means you’d be better off if it hadn’t. No, dammit. I won’t let the officers and gentlemen have this expedition. The leader of the expedition is Quejada—the head of the scientific section and the entire team. Otherwise you can go to hell, you won’t get any cosmography, and your sergeant majors can order Izya around all on his own. It’s a scientific expedition, so it has to be led by a scientist . . . At this point he recalled that Quejada was politically unreliable, and recalling it made him so furious that he missed part of what Heiger was saying.
“What was that?” he asked with a start.
“I asked you how far away from the City could the end of the world be?”
“More precisely—the beginning,” Izya put in.
Andrei shrugged angrily. “Do you read my reports at all?” he asked Heiger.
Doomed City Page 31