The Dead Mountaineer's Inn: (One More Last Rite for the Detective Genre)

15.

Maybe it wasn’t by the book. But I had no reason to expect that help would come from anywhere, and the gangsters were liable to fly in at any minute. The only thing I could count on was that Beelzebub wasn’t the only problem Champ had to deal with right now. Having stumbled upon the blockage last night, he was probably confused, and in a hurry, which meant that he might easily have made some stupid mistake—like trying to commandeer a helicopter at the Mur airfield. I knew that the police had been following this felon for some time, which meant that I had some reason for hope there. Anyway, I could barely stand on my feet. That damned Finch had practically finished me off. I spread the newspaper and some kind of report out next to the safe, pulled the bureau in front of the door, and lay down, placing my Luger right beside me. I fell asleep instantly, and when I woke up, it was already past one o’clock.

There was a quiet but persistent knocking at the door.

“Who’s there?” I barked, frantically grabbing the handle of the Luger.

“It’s me,” came Simone’s voice. “Open the door, Inspector.”

“Is there a plane?”

“No. But we need to talk. Open the door. Now’s not the time to sleep.”

He was right. It wasn’t the time to sleep. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I got up—first to my hands and knees, then, supporting myself against the safe, onto my feet. My shoulder was hurting terribly. The bandage had slid down over my eyes; my chin was swollen. I turned the light on, pulled the bureau away from the door and turned the key. Then I stepped back, holding my Luger at the ready.

Simone looked unusually solemn and businesslike, although I could tell that he was trying to disguise some pent-up agitation.

“Jesus!” he said “It’s like a fortress in here. And for no reason: no one’s coming to attack you.”

“I don’t know that,” I said gloomily.

“Exactly. You don’t know anything in here,” Simone said. “While you’ve been dozing, Inspector, I’ve done your job for you.”

“Is that so?” I said sarcastically. “I suppose Moses is in handcuffs already, and his accomplice is in custody.”

Simone frowned. What had happened to the tiresome troublemaker who only yesterday had been running up and down the walls without a care in the world?

“There’s no need for that,” he said. “Moses isn’t guilty of anything. Things are quite a bit more complicated than you think, Inspector.”

“Just don’t talk to me about ghouls,” I asked, sitting down on the chair beside the safe.

Simone smiled.

“No ghouls. No mumbo-jumbo. Just solid science fiction. Moses is not a man, Inspector. In that regard, our inn owner was right. Moses and Luarvik are not of this world.”

“They came here from Venus,” I said knowingly.

“That I don’t know. Maybe from Venus, maybe from another solar system, maybe from a neighboring dimension… They haven’t said anything about that. The important part is that they aren’t human. Moses has been living on Earth for a while now, over a year. About six weeks ago he fell in with some gangsters. They blackmailed him, held him captive at gunpoint. He only barely managed to escape them and flee here. Luarvik is something like a pilot, he manages the transportation from there to here. They were supposed to leave yesterday at midnight. But at ten o’clock there was some kind of accident, a piece of their equipment blew up. That’s what caused the avalanche, and that’s why Luarvik had to walk here on his own two feet… They need help, Inspector. It’s our responsibility, really. If the gangsters get here before the police, they’ll kill them.”

“And us too,” I said.

“Possibly,” he agreed. “But that’s Earth business. If we allow visitors from another planet to be killed, that would be shameful.”

I looked at him sadly. No, I thought, at the end of the day there are just too many crazy people in this inn. And here’s one more nut.

“Let’s wrap this up. What do you want from me?”

“Give me the accumulator, Peter,” Simone said.

“What accumulator?”

“The one in the suitcase. The accumulator. It’s an energy source, for the two robots. Olaf isn’t dead. He’s not actually a living being. He’s a robot, and so is Mrs. Moses. These robots need energy in order to operate. Their power station was destroyed in the explosion, the source of their energy was cut off, and all the robots within a hundred kilometers were turned off, so to speak. A few were probably able to connect themselves to portable accumulator batteries. Moses connected Mrs. Moses to the battery himself… if you recall, I thought she was dead. But Olaf didn’t have time to hook himself up…”

“Aha,” I said. “He was unable to hook himself up. He fell, he was even good enough to wring his own neck. He must have wrenched it around a hundred and eighty degrees, by the way…”

“There’s no need for sarcasm,” Simone said. “It’s a quasi-agonic phenomenon. Their joints twist, their pseudo-muscles tense asymmetrically… I did not get a chance to tell you that Mrs. Moses also had a twisted neck when I burst in on her.”

“I see,” I said. “Quasi-muscles, pseudo-joints… You’re not a child, Simone, you need to grasp the fact that any crime can be explained away perfectly logically if you deploy enough fantasy and mystification. But reasonable people don’t believe in that kind of logic.”

“I expected you to raise this objection, Peter,” Simone said. “All of this is very easy to verify. Give them the accumulator, they’ll bring back Olaf in your presence. After all, you want Olaf to be alive again…”

“That’s not going to happen,” I said immediately.

“Why? You don’t believe it, they’re offering proof. What’s the problem?”

I cradled my poor, bandaged head.

What was the problem, really? Why was I listening to this nonsense? Give him a rifle and tell him to take up watch on the roof like a good citizen whose duty it was to uphold the law. Lock the Moseses in the basement. And Luarvik too. The basement was made of concrete, it would withstand a direct hit… Put the Barnstokers there too, and Kaisa. And then hunker down. As a last resort I could give them the Moseses. Champ wasn’t to be trifled with. That’s assuming, god willing, that he’d negotiate…

“Well, why are you being quiet?” Simone asked. “Nothing to say?”

But I did have something to say.

“I’m not a scientist,” I said slowly. “I’m a police officer. There are too many lies around this suitcase… Wait a second, don’t interrupt me. I didn’t interrupt you… I am ready to believe everything you say. Really. Let Olaf and the broad be robots. That makes it even worse. Mrs. Moses has already committed… that is to say, she’s been used to commit several crimes already. A terrible weapon like that in the hands of gangsters—no thank you. If I could, I would gladly deactivate Mrs. Moses too. And you’re suggesting that I, a police officer, return the murder weapon to these gangsters! Do you understand what you’re saying?”

Simone slapped his forehead. He was at a loss.

“Listen to me,” he said. “If gangsters fly in, we’re all done for. You lied about the carrier pigeons, right? There aren’t any police coming, are there? But if we help Moses and Luarvik escape, at least our consciences will be clean.”

“Your conscience will be clean,” I said. “But mine will be filthy. A police official would have directly helped criminals get away.”

“They aren’t criminals!” Simone said.

“They’re criminals!” I said. “They’re the real gangsters. You heard Hinkus’s confession. Moses was a member of Champ’s gang. Moses organized and executed several daring attacks, causing the government and many private individuals a huge amount of damage. To be totally frank, Moses has at least twenty-five years of hard labor coming to him, and I’m obligated to do everything I can to make sure he serves them.”

“Dammit,” Simone said. “Don’t you get it? They forced him! They blackmailed him into joining the band. He had no way out!”

“That’s up to the courts to decide,” I said coldly.

Simone leaned back in his chair and looked at me through narrowed eyes.

“You’re turning out to be a real goon, Glebsky,” he said. “I would have never expected it.”

“Watch your mouth,” I said. “You’ve got your own affairs to take care of, anyway. What’s on the menu tonight? Sensual pleasures?”

Simone bit his lip.

“There’s your first contact,” he muttered. “There’s your meeting of two worlds.”

“Get off my case, Simone,” I said angrily. “And get out of here. You’re starting to annoy me.”

He stood up and walked to the door. His head was drooping, his shoulders slumped. On the threshold he paused and half-turned, saying,

“You’ll regret this, Glebsky. You’ll be ashamed. Very ashamed.”

“Perhaps,” I said dryly. “That’s my business… By the way, can you shoot a gun?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Get a shotgun from the owner and go up on the roof. It’s possible that pretty soon we’ll all have to do a little shooting.”

He left without saying another word. I rubbed my swollen shoulder carefully. What a vacation. And as for how it would end, I still had no idea. What the hell, could they really be aliens? It all fits together so well… “You’ll be ashamed, Glebsky”… Who knows, maybe I would be. But what am I supposed to do? What difference did it make whether they were aliens or not? Where did it say that aliens are allowed to rob banks? Earthlings can’t, but aliens… oh well, that’s another matter. Okay. Then what am I supposed to do? The siege was about to start, and my troops were completely unreliable.

I picked the phone up, just in case. Nothing. The line was dead. Alek, that swine. Couldn’t get an alarm system, could you? And what if someone were to suddenly develop appendicitis? The miserable miser, all he wanted to do was charge his clients more…

There was another knock on the door, and once again I quickly grabbed the Luger. This time, I found myself face to face with Mr. Moses himself: the werewolf, the Venusian, the same old rutabaga with the same old mug in his hand.

“Sit by the door,” I said. “There’s the chair.”

“I can stand,” he grumbled, looking severely at me.

“Suit yourself,” I said. “What do you want?”

Still bristling, he took a sip from his mug.

“What more proof do you need?” he asked. “You’re killing us. Everyone understands. Everyone, except you. What do you need from us?”

“Whoever you are,” I said. “You’ve committed a series of crimes. And you will have to answer for them.”

He sniffed loudly, walked to the chair and sat down.

“Of course I should have taken my case to you a long time ago,” he said. “But I kept hoping the whole time that somehow it would work itself out, and that I could succeed in avoiding contact with the authorities. If it wasn’t for that damned accident, I would be long gone from here. There wouldn’t have been any sort of murder. You would have found the Finch tied up and unwound the whole tangle of crimes that Champion accomplished with my help. I swear that all the costs that have fallen to you due to my presence here will be reimbursed. Some of them I can pay right now—I’m ready to hand over official government currency totaling around a million crowns. The rest, your government will receive in gold, pure gold. What else do you require?”

Looking at him wasn’t doing me any good. It wasn’t doing me any good because I was starting to feel sorry for him. I was sitting face to face with an obvious criminal, feeling sorry as I listened to him. It was a sort of delusion, and in order to shake off this delusion, I asked dryly:

“So you were the one who ruined my table and stuck the note to it?”

“Yes. I was afraid that if I didn’t, a draft would blow the note away. More importantly, I wanted you to realize that this wasn’t a hoax.”

“The gold watch?…”

“That was also me. And the Browning. I needed you to believe, and to take an interest in Hinkus and arrest him.”

“It was sloppily done,” I said. “Everything worked out the opposite of what you intended. I didn’t think that Hinkus was a gangster: what I thought was that someone was trying to make me believe he was a gangster.”

“Is that so?” Moses said. “I see… Well, that was to be expected, I suppose. I am not able to pull such things off… that’s not why I’m here…”

Once again I felt a surge of sympathy, and once again I tried to shake it off.

“Nothing seems to have worked out for you, has it, Mr. Beelzebub,” I said. “What kind of an alien are you, anyway? You’re just a crook. A rich, exceedingly impudent crook. Not to mention a drunk…”

Moses took a sip from his mug.

“And as for your robots…” I continued. “The socialite hen… the Viking strongman… Did you think that I would believe for a second that they were robots?”

“What you’re trying to say is that our robots look too much like humans?” Moses asked. “But you have to admit, it would be impossible for us to do otherwise. They are very close copies of people who exist in real life. Near doubles…” He took another sip from his mug. “As for me, Inspector, I am unfortunately unable to appear to you in my true form. Unfortunately, because then you would believe me immediately.”

“Take a chance,” I said. “Try it. I’ll survive, somehow.”

He shook his head.

“First, I doubt you would survive it so easily,” he said dismally. “Second, I doubt I would survive it. The Mr. Moses that you see before you is a suit. The Mr. Moses that you’re listening to is the result of a transmitting device. Still, it’s possible that I’ll have to risk it—but I’ll leave that as the very last resort. If it turns out that it’s completely impossible to convince you in any other way, I will risk it. For me it would mean almost certain death, but then at least you might release Luarvik. He shouldn’t be here…”

At that point, at last, I got angry.

“Release him where?” I shouted. “How am I keeping you here? Why are you still lying to me? If you needed to leave, you would have left a long time ago! Stop lying and tell me the truth: what is in the suitcase? What’s it for? You’re trying to convince me that you’re extraterrestrials. But I’m inclined to believe that you’re just a band of foreign spies who have stolen a valuable piece of machinery…”

“No!…” Moses said. “No! It’s not like that at all. Our station has been destroyed, the only one who can fix it is Olaf. He’s the robot caretaker of that station—do you understand? Of course we would have left a long time ago, but where would we have gone? Without Olaf we are completely helpless, and Olaf has been deactivated, and you won’t give us the accumulator!”

“You’re lying again!” I said. “Mrs. Moses is also a robot, isn’t she? And as far as I can see, she also has an accumulator…”

He closed his eyes and shook his head, causing his ruddy cheeks to quiver.

“Olga is a simple working unit. She’s a porter, a digger, a bodyguard… How can you not understand that you can’t use the same power source… for, I don’t know… a heavy tractor, for example, and a television… They’re fundamentally different systems…”

“You’ve got an answer for everything,” I said gloomily. “But I’m not an expert: I’m just a police officer. I don’t have the clearance to carry on conversations with ghouls and aliens. I’m required to hand you over to the law, that’s it. Whoever you are really, you’re in my country and subject to its laws.” I stood up. “From this moment on, consider yourself under arrest, Moses. I don’t intend to lock you up, I suppose there’s no point. But if you attempt to run away, I will shoot you. And remember: anything that you say from this point on may be used against you in a court of law.”

“All right,” he said, after a pause. “You’ve made up your mind about me. So be it.” He took a sip from his mug. “But what about Luarvik, what has he done? You can’t have anything against him… Lock me up and give the suitcase to Luarvik. At least let him save himself…”

I sat down again.

“Save himself… What does he need saving from here? Why are you so sure that Champ is going to get you? Maybe he was buried in the avalanche… Maybe they’ve picked him up already… It’s not so easy to commandeer an airplane… If you really are innocent, then why are you so scared? Wait a day or two. The police will get here, I will hand you over to the authorities, the authorities will get the experts together, the specialists…”

His cheeks shook.

“That’s terrible, that won’t do. First of all, we don’t have permission to establish organized contact. I am here merely as an observer. I made mistakes, but they’re mistakes I can fix… Unprepared-for contact between your and my worlds could have the most terrible consequences… But that isn’t even the worst of it, Inspector. I’m afraid for Luarvik. He hasn’t been trained for your conditions, we never expected him to have to spend more than a day on your planet. Plus his suit has been damaged, you can see for yourself: it doesn’t have a hand… He’s already been poisoned… He’s growing weaker by the hour…”

I gritted my teeth. He had an answer for everything, all right. I couldn’t trip him up. He hadn’t made a single mistake. It was all impeccably logical. I was forced to admit that if it wasn’t for all this talk of spacesuits, first contact and pseudo-muscles, I would be completely satisfied by his testimony. I felt pity for him and was inclined to meet him halfway; I was losing my sense of detachment…

Realistically speaking, the only legal claim I had was against Moses. Luarvik was clean, officially. Of course, he could be an accomplice, but… Real criminals never offer themselves as hostages. Moses had. Well, all right, I’d lock up Moses and… and what? Give Luarvik the apparatus? What did I know about this apparatus? Only what Moses had told me. Yes, everything that Moses had said sounded true. And if it was just a very consistent picture of something whose truth was completely different? If I had only been unable to find the question that would have shattered this picture’s surface.

Two indubitable facts remained, regardless of all this talk. The law said that I had to continue to hold these people until it became clear what had happened. That was fact number one. And here was fact number two: these people wanted to leave. Why they wanted to leave—because of the law, because of gangsters, because of the fear of unprepared-for contact between worlds or something else—wasn’t important. They wanted to leave.

Two facts, which were absolutely opposed to one another.

“What happened between you and Champ?” I asked grimly.

He twisted his face up and gave me a dark glance. Then his eyes dropped and he told me.

Setting aside the pseudo-joints and zombie mumbo-jumbo, it was an utterly banal story of completely ordinary blackmail. Around two months ago, Mr. Moses, who had a very good reason to hide not only his true occupation, but also the very fact of his existence from the authorities, began to notice signs that he had been placed under continual surveillance, and was being followed. He tried changing where he lived. It didn’t help. He tried to scare off his tails. That didn’t work either. Finally, as always happens with these sorts of things, they came to him and offered him a deal. He would help them rob the Second National Bank to the best of his ability, they would pay him for it in silence. Of course they assured him that this would be the first and last time they ever bothered him. As usual, he refused. As usual, they insisted. As usual, he ended up agreeing.

Moses insisted that there had been no other way out of it. He wasn’t afraid of death itself: where he came from everyone had overcome the fear of death. At that point, he wasn’t even that afraid of being exposed: it wouldn’t cost him anything to strip back his operations and remain a simple idle rich man, and the testimony of Champ’s agents about their injuries sustained fighting robots wouldn’t be taken seriously. But death and exposure might threaten to suspend the great work that had been successfully begun a few years earlier. To make a long story short, he decided to risk going along with Champ, since it would not be difficult to pay back any losses incurred during the Second National Bank robbery in pure gold later.

They completed their little caper, and Champ really did fall out of sight. However, that lasted for only a month. After that month he reappeared. This time, it was an armored car full of gold. But the situation had changed. In order to rob Moses of any possibility of an alibi, Champ had wisely stashed away the testimony of eight eyewitnesses, plus he had filmed the whole robbery from start to finish—not just the three or four gangsters preparing to go in and rob it, but Olga with the safe under her arm, and Moses himself holding some sort of device (a “Force Generator”). Now, if he refused, Moses wasn’t just being threatened with a little tabloid talk. Now he was being threatened with formal legal charges, which meant premature contact under terribly unfavorable conditions. Like many other victims of blackmail, Moses had not foreseen this when he had said yes the first time.

It was a terrible situation. To refuse would have been a crime against his own people. To agree wouldn’t change his position, since now he understood what kind of iron grip had him by the throat. To flee to another city or country didn’t make any sense: he was convinced by this point that Champion’s grip was not just iron, but broad. To immediately leave Earth was also impossible: preparations for transport demanded ten to twelve days. He contacted his people and demanded evacuation in the shortest possible amount of time. Yes, he was forced to commit yet another crime, but at this point that only meant an increase in his debt, an extra three hundred thirty-five kilograms of gold, the price of the necessary delay. When the time came, he fled, having fooled Champion’s agents with his double. He knew that they would come after him; he knew that sooner or later one Hinkus or another would pick up his trail—he only hoped that he would be able to evade them long enough…

“You can believe this or not, Inspector,” Moses concluded. “But I want you to understand that there are only two possibilities. Either you give us the accumulator, and we try and escape—in which case, I repeat, all that we have cost your citizens will be repaid. Or…” He took a sip from his mug. “Please try to understand this, Inspector. I have no right to allow myself to be captured alive by the authorities. It’s my duty, you understand. I cannot risk the future of our worlds. This future is still just beginning. I have failed, but I am after all only the first, and not the last, observer on your Earth. Do you understand, Inspector?”

The only thing I understood was that this was a mess.

“What, really, are you doing here?” I asked.

Moses shook his head.

“I can’t tell you that, Inspector. I researched the possibilities for contact. I prepared the ground. But specifically speaking… And besides, it’s very complicated, Inspector. You aren’t a specialist.”

“Go,” I said. “And send Luarvik in.”

Moses stood up heavily and went out. I rested my elbows on the table and put my head in my hands. The cold Luger felt soothing against my right cheek. For a second I thought about how this Luger and I were joined together now, like Moses and his mug. I was ridiculous. I was pitiful. I hated myself. I hated Zgut with his friendly advice. I hated the entire gang that was gathering here. To believe or not to believe… That was the question, damn it, and the thing was, I believed. It wasn’t my first day on the job, I could tell when people were telling the truth. But that was people—people! And if I believe then they aren’t people to me anymore!… No, I had no right to believe them. To believe—that’s suicide! That would mean to assume a responsibility I have no right to, I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I don’t want it… It’ll crush me, like a bug! Well, at least I caught Hinkus. And I wasn’t letting Moses go, either. Let whatever was going to happen happen, the secret of the Second National robbery and the secret of the armored car’s gold had been uncovered. It was done. And if interplanetary politics were involved, then I—a simple police officer—would let the politicians take care of what it was their business to take care of… I wish I could just faint, I thought in despair. Let them do what they want…

The door creaked open, and I snapped out of it. But it wasn’t Luarvik. Simone came in with the owner. The owner set a cup of coffee in front of me, and Simone pulled the chair away from the wall and sat down in front of me. It seemed to me that he was looking very tired and indeed somehow yellowish.

“Well, have you made a decision, Inspector?” he asked.

“Where’s Luarvik? I asked for Luarvik.”

“Luarvik’s condition has gotten much worse,” Simone said. “Moses is treating him.” He grinned unpleasantly. “You’re going to destroy him, Glebsky, and it will be a terrible thing to do. It’s true, I’ve only known you for two days, but I would have never expected that you’d turn out to be nothing but a stuffed shirt.”

I picked up the cup with my free hand, brought it to my mouth and then put it back down. I couldn’t drink any more coffee. I was sick of it.

“Leave me. All you windbags. Alek only cares about his business, and you, Simone, are just a vacationing intellectual…”

“And what does that make you?” Simone said. “What do you care about? One more medal on your uniform?”

“Yes,” I said coldly. “A medal. I love medals.”

“You’re a small-time cop,” Simone said. “For once in your life, fate has thrown you something. For the first and last time in your life. Inspector Glebsky’s finest hour! A truly important decision is yours to make, and you’re acting like an utter idiot…”

“Shut up,” I said wearily. “Stop jabbering and think for just a minute. Let’s put aside for a minute the fact that Moses is simply a criminal. You, I see, have no understanding whatsoever about the law. You, it seems, imagine that there is one law that exists for people, and another one that exists for ghouls. But let’s forget all that for a second. Let’s say they’re aliens. Let’s say they’re victims of blackmail. The great first contact…” I waved the Luger feebly. “A friendship between worlds, and so on… Here’s a question: what are they doing here on Earth? Moses himself admitted that he was an observer. But what, actually, is he observing? What do they want here?… Don’t grin, don’t grin… We’re talking science fiction now, and in science fiction novels, so far as I remember it, aliens on Earth are usually spying in preparation for an invasion. In your opinion, how should I—a bureaucrat and stuffed shirt—behave in this situation? Should I do my duty, or not? And you, Simone, as an earthling, what do you think is your duty?”

Simone sat quietly, grinning and staring at me. The owner walked over to the window and opened the curtain. I glanced at him.

“Why did you do that?”

The owner didn’t answer immediately. He pressed his face to the glass and looked at the sky.

“I just keep looking, Peter,” he said slowly, without turning around. “I’m waiting, Peter, waiting… You should order the girl to go back to the house. There in the snow, she’s an easy target… She’s not listening to me…”

I set the Luger on the table, picked the mug up with both hands and, closing my eyes, took a few gulps. An easy target… We’re all easy targets here… Suddenly I felt strong hands grab my elbows from behind. I opened my eyes and jerked my arms. The pain in my collarbone was so sharp that I almost lost consciousness.

“Don’t worry, Peter, don’t worry,” the owner said soothingly. “Wait a second.”

Simone had already shoved the Luger into his pocket with a concerned and guilty look.

“Traitors!” I said, surprised.

“No, no, Peter,” the owner said. “You’ve got to be reasonable. Human conscience is not just a matter of law.”

Simone, approaching carefully from one side, patted down my pocket. The keys clinked. Sweating in anticipation of the intense pain, I attempted to break free with all my strength. It didn’t work, and when I came to my senses, Simone was already leaving the room with the suitcase in hand. The owner, who was still holding me by the elbows, called after him anxiously:

“Hurry up, Simone, hurry, he’s not doing well…”

I wanted to say something, but my throat was closing up, and I could only grunt. The owner leaned over me in alarm.

“Jesus, Peter,” he said. “You look awful…”

“Crooks,” I croaked. “I’ll arrest…”

“Yes, yes, of course,” the owner agreed. “You’ll arrest us all, as you should, only wait a little, don’t struggle… you’re in pain, and I still can’t let you go…”

No, he wasn’t letting me go. I had thought before that he looked strong as a bear, but I hadn’t expected this kind of a grip. I leaned back against the chair and stopped fighting. I felt like I had to throw up; a dull indifference was overwhelming me. At the very bottom of my soul a feeling of relief burnt feebly—for the situation no longer depended on me, someone else had seized responsibility. I must have lost consciousness again, because suddenly I found myself on the floor, and the owner was on his knees next to me, moistening my forehead with an icy wet washcloth. I had hardly opened my eyes when he raised a bottle to my lips. He was very pale.

“Help me sit up,” I said.

He did what I asked without question. The open door was letting in a draft, and I could hear raised voices, then something crashed and rustled. The owner winced in pain.

“Damned trunk,” he said in a choked voice. “They smashed my doorpost again…”

From beneath the window, Moses’s voice barked with inhuman loudness:

“Ready? Let’s go… Goodbye, people! Until next time! Until our true meeting!…”

Simone’s voice shouted something I couldn’t make out in answer, and then the window shook from some kind of shrill shriek and whistle. It grew quiet. I got to my feet and went to the door. The owner was fussing around next to me; his broad face was pale and puffy, like cotton balls, and there was sweat running down his forehead. He was moving his lips silently—praying, probably.

We went out into the empty lobby, which was full of a chilly breeze, and the owner muttered, “All right, let’s go, Peter, you need some fresh air…” I shrugged him off and walked towards the stairs. Along the way I noted maliciously that the front door was completely off its hinges. On the stairs, on the first steps, I began to feel sick and grabbed the railing. The owner tried to hold me up, but once again I shoved at him with my good shoulder and said, “Didn’t you hear me? I said shove off…” He disappeared. I slowly made my way upstairs, clinging to the railing, I passed Brun who was pressed terrified against the wall, I made my way to the second floor and reached my room. The door to Olaf’s room was wide open, it was empty inside, the sharp pharmaceutical smell was wafting into the corridor. Just let me get to the couch, I thought. Just let me get to the couch and lie down… And then I heard a scream.

“There they are!…” someone shouted. “Too late! Damn it, too late!…”

The voice cut off. Downstairs in the lobby people were stomping, something fell and rolled, and then suddenly I heard a steady hum in the distance. I turned around and ran stumbling to the attic stairs.

The entire breadth of the snow-covered valley lay spread out beneath me. I squinted from the sun, managing after a second to distinguish a pair of blueish, completely straight ski tracks. They were pointed north, diagonally from the inn; where they ended I saw clearly, as if they had been drawn on the white, the figures of the escapees. I have excellent eyesight, I saw them distinctly, and it was the most wild and strange sight that I remember.

Mrs. Moses was in front, racing along with a gigantic black trunk under her arm, and on her shoulders sat slouched over old Moses himself. To the right and slightly behind them was Olaf, making very regular Finnish strides, carrying Luarvik on his shoulders. Mrs. Moses’s wide skirt was flapping in the wind, Luarvik’s empty sleeve was waving, as old Moses, not hesitating for a second, drove them on fiercely and relentlessly with a many-tailed whip. They moved quickly, with supernatural speed, while from one side a helicopter, its blades and glass cockpit glistening in the sun, was moving to intercept them.

The whole valley was filled with a powerful and even hum, as the helicopter decelerated slowly, as if taking its time, made its way over the fugitives, passed them, turned around, came in closer as they continued to race furiously through the valley (looking as if they hadn’t seen or heard anything), at which point a new sound appeared in the midst of that powerful monotone, an angry sharp crack, and the escapees scattered, and then Olaf fell and lay motionless, and then Moses toppled head-over-heels into the snow, and Simone grabbed my collar and sobbed into my ear, “You see? You see? You see?…” And then the helicopter was hovering above the motionless bodies and slowly began to descend, hiding from us both those who had fallen and those who were still trying to crawl away… The snow spun like a whirlwind from its blades, a sparkling white cloud rose against the background of steep blue cliffs. The harsh crack of a machine gun resounded again, and Alek squatted down, covering his eyes with his hands, and Simone continued to cry, shouting at me: “You did it! You won, you idiot, murderer!…”

The helicopter slowly rose from within the snowy cloud and, rising obliquely into the piercing blue sky, disappeared over the ledge. At which point Lel let out a howl full of sadness and pity from below.