Snail on the Slope

by Arkady Strugatsky

  He sprang into the nearest automatic telephone, snatched the receiver, and listened eagerly. He could only hear the ringing tone. At once he was aware of a sudden fear, a nagging apprehension that he was missing something again, that somewhere everybody was getting something, and he, as usual, was going without. Leaping over the ropes and inspection pits, he crossed the construction site, gave a wide berth to a guard blocking the road with a pistol in one hand and a receiver in the other, and shinned up a ladder onto the partially-built wall. In all the windows he could make out people frozen to telephones in attitudes of concentration; just then something whined above his ear and almost at once he heard the sound of a revolver shot. He leaped down into a heap of rubbish and rushed to the service entrance. It was locked. He yanked at the handle several times until it came off. He flung it to one side and for a second debated what to do next. There was a narrow open window alongside the door and, covered in dust, his nails torn, he climbed in.

  There were two tables in the room in which he found himself. At one sat Hausbotcher with a telephone. His eyes were closed, his face stony. He was pressing the receiver to his ear with his shoulder and jotting something down with a pencil on a large notepad. The other was vacant, on it stood a telephone. Pepper took off the receiver and began to listen.

  Hissing. Crackling. An unfamiliar squeaky voice: "Directorate can in practice only control an infinitesimal area in the ocean of the forest, which laps the continent. The meaning of life does not exist, nor does the meaning of action. We can do an extraordinary amount, but up to now we have not understood what, out of what we can do, we really need. It does not resist, it simply takes no notice. If an action has brought you pleasure - well and good, if it hasn't - it was pointless." More hissing and crackling. "We oppose with millions of horsepower, dozens of land-rovers, airships, and helicopters, medical science and the finest logistics theory in the world. The Directorate has at least two major failings. At the present time similar actions can have far-reaching cipher communication in the name of Herostratus, so that he remains our dearly beloved friend. It cannot create at all without destroying authority and ingratitude..." Hooting, whistling, noises like an explosive cough. "... it is particularly fond of so-called simple solutions, libraries, internal communications, geographical and other maps. The ways it regards as shortest, so as to consider the meaning of life for everyone at once, and people don't like that. Personnel sit with their legs dangling over the cliff, each in his own place, tussle together, make jokes and hurl stones, each trying to hurl a heavier stone, at the same time, the expenditure on yogurt does not help grafting or eradication, nor the due amount of forest security. I am afraid that we have not realized what we really want, and nerves, let us face it also need to be trained, as capacity for receptivity can be trained. Reason does not blush or suffer from pangs of conscience, since a question from a scientific, a correctly posed one, becomes a moral one. It is deceitful and slippery, it is impermanent and dissimulates. But someone must irritate, not relate legends, and carefully prepare himself for a trial exit. Tomorrow I will receive you again and see how you have prepared yourself. Twenty-two hundred hours - radiological alarm and earthquake. Eighteen hundred - meeting of all off-duty personnel in my office, so to speak, on the carpet. Twenty-four hundred - general evacuation..."

  Through the receiver came a sound of pouring water. Then everything went quiet and Pepper noticed Hausbotcher watching him with sternly accusing eyes.

  "What's he saying?" asked Pepper in a whisper. "I can't understand a thing."

  "Hardly surprising," said Hausbotcher icily. "You picked up the wrong telephone." He dropped his eyes, noted something on his pad and went on: "That is, incidentally, an absolutely impermissable contravention of the rules. I insist that you replace the receiver and leave. Otherwise I shall summon official personnel."

  "All right," said Pepper. "I'll go. But where's my telephone? This isn't mine. Where's mine, then?"

  Hausbotcher made no reply. His eyes had closed again, and he once more pressed the instrument to his ear. Pepper could hear croaking noises.

  "I'm asking you, where's my phone?" shouted Pepper. Now he could hear nothing at all. There was hissing, there was crackling, then came the rapid beeps of the signing-off signal. He dropped the instrument and ran out into the corridor. He opened the doors of the offices one after another and everywhere saw staff familiar and unfamiliar. Some were sitting or standing, frozen into total immobility, like wax figures with glassy eyes; others were treading from one corner to another, stepping over the telephone wires they trailed after them; still others were feverishly writing in thick exercise books, on scraps of paper, or the margins of newspapers. And every one of them had the telephone clamped close to his ear, as if afraid to miss even a word. There were no spare telephones. Pepper attempted to take a receiver away from one of the entranced ones, a young man in a boiler-suit. He, however, at once came alive, began squealing and kicking, at which the others began shushing and waving their hands. Somebody shouted hysterically: "Disgraceful! Call the guard!"

  "Where's my telephone?" Pepper was shouting. "I'm a man like you and I have a right to know! Let me listen! Give me my telephone!"

  He was pushed out and the doors locked in his face. He wandered up to the last story, where, almost into the attic, next to the never-working elevator machinery, there sat two duty mechanics at a table, playing noughts and crosses. Pepper leaned against the wall, out of breath. The mechanics glanced at him, gave him an absent smile, and once more bent over the paper.

  "Haven't you got your own telephone?" asked Pepper.

  "Yes," said one. "Naturally. We haven't come to that yet."

  "Well, why aren't you listening?" "You can't hear anything. Why listen?" "Why can't you hear anything?"

  "Because we've cut the wire."

  Pepper wiped his face and neck with a crumpled handkerchief, waited till one mechanic defeated the other, then went downstairs. The corridors had become noisy; doors were open wide, staff were coming out for a smoke. Lively, excited, exhilarated voices exclaimed and buzzed. "I'm telling you the truth. Eskimos invented the Eskimo ice cream. What? Well, all right, I just read it in a book... You can't hear the assonance yourself? Es-ki-mos. Es-ki-mo. What? ..." "I saw it in the Hiver catalogue, a hundred and fifty thousand francs - and that was in fifty-six. Can you imagine what that would be today?" "Funny cigarettes. They say they aren't putting tobacco into cigarettes anymore. They get special paper, crush it, and saturate it in nicotine..." "You can get cancer from tomatoes as well. Tomatoes, a pipe, eggs, silk gloves..." "Did you sleep well? Imagine, I couldn't get to sleep all night: that piledriver keeps thumping all the time. Can you hear it? Like that all night. Hello, there, Pepper! They were saying you'd left... You're staying, good lad!" "They've found that thief at last, remember, all those things kept disappearing? It turned out to be the discus-thrower from the park, you know, the statue near the fountain. He had something filthy written on his leg, too." "Peppy, be a pal, lend me five till payday - tomorrow that is..." "But he wasn't after her. She kept throwing herself at him. Right in front of her husband. You won't believe this, but I saw it with my own eyes..."

  Pepper went down to his office, said hello to Kirn, and washed his hands. Kim wasn't working. He was sitting quietly with his hands on the table, gazing at the tiled wall. Pepper took the dust-cover off the Merce-des, plugged it in, and glanced expectantly at Kim.

  "Can't work today," said Kim. "Some goon is going around repairing everything. I'm sat here not knowing what to do."

  At this point a note on his desk caught Pepper's eye. "To Pepper. We are to advise you that your telephone is located in office 771." Signature illegible. Pepper sighed.

  "No use sighing," said Kim, "you should have got to work on time."

  "Well, I didn't know," Pepper said. "I was intending to leave today."

  "It's your own fault," Kim said shortly.

  "Anyway I did hear something. Kim, you know. I didn't
understand it at all. Why was that?"

  "Hear something! You're a fool. You're an idiot. You missed such an opportunity I can hardly bear to speak to you. I'll have to introduce you to the director. Out of pity."

  "Do that," said Pepper. "You know," he went on, "sometimes I thought I caught the sense of something, some scraps of ideas, I think very interesting ones, but I'm trying to recall them - and nothing."

  "Whose telephone was it?"

  "I don't know. Where Hausbotcher sits!"

  "Ah-h, yes, she's having a baby. Hausbotcher's out of luck. Gets a new assistant, works six months - and a baby. Yes, Pepper, you got a woman's telephone. So I don't know how I can help you... Nobody listens to it all right through, women either, I suppose. After all, the director is addressing everybody at once, but at the same time everybody separately as well. Understand?"

  "I'm afraid not."

  "I for instance, recommend listening like this. Put the director's speech into one line, omitting punctuation marks, and choose the words at random, mentally putting down dominoes. Then if the domino halves coincide, the word is accepted and noted down on a separate list. If it doesn't - the word is temporarily rejected, but remains in the line. There are a few other refinements to do with the frequency of vowels and consonants, but that is an effect of secondary significance. Get it?"

  "No," said Pepper. "That is, yes. Pity I didn't know that method. And what did he say today?"

  "It's not the only method. There is, for example, the

  intermittent spiral method. It's rather crude, but if the speech is only about equipment and economic problems, it's very convenient because it's simple. There is the Stevenson-Zade method, but that requires electronic gadgets... So that, all round, the domino method's the best, but when the terminology is specialized and narrow - the spiral method."

  "Thank you," said Pepper. "But what was the director talking about today?"

  "What d'you mean, what about?"

  "What? ... Well... what about? Well, what did he ,say?"

  "To whom?"

  "To whom? Well, you for instance." "Unfortunately, I can't tell you that. It's classified material, and after all. Peppy, you're not on permanent staff here. So don't get mad."

  "No, I'm not angry," said Pepper. "I'd have liked to know, that's all... He said something about the forest and free will... I'd recently been lobbing pebbles over the cliff, well, just like that for no real reason and he said something about it."

  "Don't you tell me about that," said Kirn nervously. "It's nothing to do with me. Or you either if it wasn't your telephone."

  "Now wait a minute, did he say something about the forest?"

  Kim shrugged.

  "Well, naturally. He never talks about anything else. Anyway, let's stop this sort of talk. Tell me how you meant to get away." Pepper told him.

  "You shouldn't beat him all the time," said Kim, thoughtful.

  "There's nothing I can do. I'm a pretty strong player, you know, and he's just an amateur. And he plays a queer game."

  "That doesn't matter. I'd have thought a bit in your shoes. I'm getting not to like you just lately... They're writing denunciations about you... You know what, I'll fix a meeting with the director for you tomorrow. Go to him and explain yourself fully. I reckon he'll let you go. Stress the fact that you're a linguist, an arts graduate, and got here accidentally. Mention, as if in passing, that you were very keen to get into the forest, but you've changed your mind, because you don't think you're competent." "All right."

  They were silent for a while. Pepper imagined himself face to face with the director and was terrified. Domino method, he thought, Stevenson-Zade...

  "Main thing, don't be afraid to cry," said Kim. "He likes that."

  Pepper sprang to his feet and paced the room in agitation.

  "Good lord," he said. "If I only knew what he looks like. What sort of a man he is."

  "What sort? He's not very tall, gingerish..."

  "Hausbotcher was saying that he was a real giant."

  "Hausbotcher's a fool. Boaster and liar. The director is a ginger sort of guy, stoutish, small scar on right cheek. Bit pigeon-toed when he walks, like a sailor. In fact that's what he used to be."

  "But Acey said he was skinny and had long hair because of his missing ear."

  "What Acey is this?"

  "Driver. I was telling you about him."

  Kim gave an irritated laugh.

  "How would driver Acey know about all that? Take my advice, Peppy, and don't be so trusting."

  "Acey said he'd been his driver and seen him several times."

  "Well, what of it? He's lying, probably. I was his personal secretary and never saw him once."

  "Who?"

  "The director. I was his secretary for ages till I got my further degree."

  "And never saw him once?"

  "Well, naturally! You imagine it's that easy?"

  "Wait a minute, how do you know he's ginger and so forth?"

  Kim shook his head.

  "Peppy," said he tenderly. "Dear lad. Nobody's ever seen a hydrogen atom, but everybody knows it has an electron shell having certain characteristics and a nucleus consisting in the simplest instance of one proton."

  "That's true enough," said Pepper limply. He felt weary. "So I'll see him tomorrow."

  "Now, now, ask me something easier," said Kim. "I'll fix you a meeting, that I can guarantee you. But what you'll see or who - that I don't know. Or what you'll hear, either. You don't ask me whether the director will let you go or not, do you? And rightly so, I can hardly know that, can I?"

  "That's a different matter, surely," said Pepper. "Same thing. Peppy," said Kim. "Believe me, the same."

  "I must seem very stupid," Pepper said sadly. "A bit." "I just slept badly, that's all."

  "No, you're not practical, that's all. Why did you sleep badly anyway?"

  Pepper told all and became alarmed. Kirn's kindly face flushed and his hair became disarranged. He snarled and grabbed the telephone, dialed furiously and barked:

  "Warden? What does this mean? How dare you turn Pepper out? Si-1-ence! I didn't ask what had run out. I'm asking you how you dared move Pepper out? What? Si-1-ence! You don't dare! What? Rubbish, blather! Si-1-ence! I'll walk all over you! You and your Claudius-Octavian! You'll clean out my toilet, you'll go into the forest in twenty-four hours, in sixty minutes! What? Yes ... yes... What? Yes ... that's right. Now you're talking. And the best sheets... That's your business. In the street if you like... What? All right. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Sorry to disturb you... Well, naturally. Thanks a lot. Bye." He replaced the receiver.

  "Everything's okay," he said. "Marvelous man when all's said. Go and lie down. You'll be living in his flat, he and his family are moving into the hotel room you had, otherwise, unfortunately, he can't... And don't argue, for heaven's sake, it's not at all our business. He decided himself. Go on, go, that's an order. I'll call you about the director."

  Pepper went out into the street, swaying. He stood for a moment, blinking in the sun, then set off for the park to look for his suitcase. He did not find it at once since it was firmly held in the muscular gypsum hand of the thieving discus-thrower by the fountain. The filthy inscription on his thigh was not as filthy as all that. A chemical pencil had written: "Girls, beware of syphilis."

  Chapter Four

  Kandid left before sunup so as to get back by dinner-time. It was about ten kilometers to New Village, the road was familiar, well-trodden, spotted with bald patches from spilled grass-killer. It was reckoned safe to travel on. Warm, bottomless swamps lay to right and left, rotten branches poked up out of the stinking rusty water, the sticky caps of enormous swamp toadstools thrust up their round shining domes. Sometimes by the very road could be found the crushed homes of water spiders. From the road it was hard to make out anything taking place on the swamps; myriads of thick green columns, ropes, threads as shimmering as gossamer hung down from the dense interlocking tree-crowns overhead and sank their qu
esting roots into the ooze. A greedy, relentless greenery stood like a wall of fog and concealed everything except sounds and smells. Every now and again something broke off in the yellow-green twilight and fell with an endless crashing, finishing with a thick, oily splash. The swamp sighed, rumbled, champed, and silence fell again, and a minute later, the fetid stench of the perturbed depths penetrated the green curtain and drifted onto the road. It was said that nobody could walk across these bottomless places, though the deadlings could walk anywhere, for the good reason thai they were deadlings - the swamp would not accept them. Just in case, Kandid broke off a branch for himself, not that he was afraid of deadlings, deadlings did no harm to men as a rule, but various rumors went the rounds concerning the fauna and flora of forest and swamp, and some of them might turn out to be true, with all their absurdity-He had gone about five hundred paces from the village, when Nava called him. He halted.

  "Why go without me?" asked Nava, somewhat breathlessly. "I told you I'd go with you, I shan't stay alone in that village, nothing for me to do on my own, nobody likes me there, you're my husband, you have to take me with you, it doesn't signify that we've got no children yet all the same, you're my husband, and I'm your wife, we'll have children sometime... It's just, I'll tell you honestly, I don't want children yet, I can't understand why they're necessary or what we could do with them... Never mind what that elder says or that old man of yours, in our village it was quite different: who wants to, has children, and who doesn't doesn't..."

  "Now, now, go back home," said Kandid. "Where did you get the idea I was going away? I'm just going to New Village, I'll be home for dinner all right..."

  "That's all right, I'll go with you then, and we'll come back for dinner together, the dinner's been ready since yesterday, I've hidden it so that even that old man of yours won't find it."

  Kandid walked on. It was useless to argue, let her come. He cheered up, even. He felt like tangling with somebody, swinging his stick and taking out on them all the frustration and anger and helplessness built up over how many years was it. On robbers. Or deadlings - it made no difference. Let the little girl come along. My wife, too, wants no children. He hit out with all his force, swung at a dank tree-root on the verge, and almost knocked himself over: the root had rotted completely and the stick went through it like thin air. Several sprightly gray animals leaped out and, gurgling, disappeared into the dark water.