Roadside Picnic

1

^{REDRICK SCHUHRAT, 23 YEARS OLD, SINGLE, LABORATORY ASSISTANT IN THE HARMONT BRANCH OF THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL CULTURES.}

The other day, we’re standing in the repository; it’s evening already, nothing left to do but dump the lab suits, then I can head down to the Borscht for my daily dose of booze. I’m relaxing, leaning on the wall, my work all done and a cigarette at the ready, dying for a smoke—I haven’t smoked for two hours—while he keeps fiddling with his treasures. One safe is loaded, locked, and sealed shut, and he’s loading yet another one—taking the empties from our transporter, inspecting each one from every angle (and they are heavy bastards, by the way, fourteen pounds each), and, grunting slightly, carefully depositing them on the shelf.

He’s been struggling with these empties for ages, and all, in my opinion, with no benefit to humanity or himself. In his place, I would have bailed a long time ago and gotten another job with the same pay. Although on the other hand, if you think about it, an empty really is a puzzling and even a mysterious thing. I’ve handled them lots of times myself, but every time I see one—I can’t help it, I’m still amazed. It’s just these two copper disks the size of a saucer, a quarter inch thick, about eighteen inches apart, and not a thing between the two. I mean, nothing whatsoever, zip, nada, zilch. You can stick your hand between them—maybe even your head, if the thing has unhinged you enough—nothing but empty space, thin air. And despite this, there must be something there, a force field of some sort, because so far no one’s managed to push these disks together, or pull them apart either.

No, friends, it’s hard to describe this thing if you haven’t seen one. It looks much too simple, especially when you finally convince yourself that your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. It’s like describing a glass to someone or, God forbid, a wineglass: you just wiggle your fingers in the air and curse in utter frustration. All right, we’ll assume that you got it, and if you didn’t, pick up a copy of the Institute’s Reports—they have articles about these empties in every issue, complete with pictures.

Anyway, Kirill’s been struggling with these empties for almost a year now. I’ve worked for him from the very beginning, but I still don’t get what he wants with them, and to be honest, I haven’t tried too hard to find out. Let him first figure it out for himself, sort it all out, then maybe I’ll have a listen. But so far, one thing is clear to me: he’s absolutely determined to dismantle an empty, dissolve it in acid, crush it under a press, or melt it in an oven. And then he’ll finally get it, he’ll be covered in glory, and the entire scientific world will simply shudder in pleasure. But for now, as far as I know, he’s nowhere near this goal. He hasn’t yet accomplished anything at all, except that he’s exhausted himself, turned gray and quiet, and his eyes have become like a sick dog’s—they even water. If it were someone else, I’d get him totally wasted, take him to a great girl to loosen him up a bit, then the next morning I’d feed him more booze, take him to more girls, and by the end of the week he’d be A-OK—good as new and ready to go. Except this sort of therapy wouldn’t work on Kirill. There’s no point in even suggesting it; he’s not the type.

So, as I said, we’re standing in the repository, I’m looking at him, the way he’s gotten, how his eyes have sunk in, and I feel sorrier for him than I can say. And then I decide. Except I don’t really decide—it’s like the words tumble out themselves.

“Listen,” I say, “Kirill…”

He’s standing there, holding up the last empty, and looking like he wants to crawl right inside it.

“Listen,” I say, “Kirill. What if you had a full empty, huh?”

“A full empty?” he repeats, knitting his brows like I’m speaking Greek.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s your hydromagnetic trap, what’s it called? Object seventy-seven B. Only with some shit inside, blue stuff.”

I can tell—I’m starting to get through. He looks up at me, squints, and there in his eyes, behind the dog tears, appears a glimmer of intelligence, as he himself loves to put it. “Wait, wait,” he says. “A full one? The same thing, except full?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Where?”

My Kirill’s cured. Good as new and ready to go. “Let’s go have a smoke,” I say.

He promptly stuffs the empty into the safe, slams the door, gives the lock three and a half turns, and comes back with me to the lab. For an empty empty, Ernest would give four hundred bucks in cash, and I could bleed the bastard dry for a full one; but believe it or not, that doesn’t even cross my mind, because in my hands Kirill has come to life again—he’s buzzing with energy, almost bursting into song, bounding down the stairs four at a time, not letting a guy light his cigarette. Anyway, I tell him everything: what it looks like and where it is and how to best get at it. He immediately takes out a map, finds this garage, puts his finger on it, gives me a long look, and, of course, immediately figures me out, but then that isn’t so hard…

“You devil, Red!” he says, smiling at me. “Well, let’s get this over with. We’ll go first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll request a hoverboot and a pass at nine, and by ten we’ll be off. All right?”

“All right,” I say. “And who else will we take?”

“What do we need another guy for?”

“No way,” I say. “This is no picnic. What if something happens to you? It’s the Zone. Gotta follow the rules.”

He gives a short laugh and shrugs. “Up to you. You know better.”

No shit! Of course, that was him being generous: Who needs another guy, we’ll go by ourselves, we’ll keep the whole thing dark, and no one will suspect a thing. Except I know that the guys from the Institute don’t go into the Zone in pairs. They have an unwritten rule around here: two guys do all the work while the third one watches, and when they ask later, he vouches there was no funny business.

“If it were up to me, I’d take Austin,” Kirill says. “But you probably don’t want him. Or would he do?”

“No,” I say. “Anyone but him. You’ll take Austin another time.” Austin isn’t a bad guy, he’s got the right mix of courage and cowardice, but I think he’s already doomed. You can’t explain this to Kirill, but I know these things: the man has decided he’s got the Zone completely figured out, and so he’ll soon screw up and kick the bucket. And he can go right ahead. But not with me around.

“All right, all right,” says Kirill. “How about Tender?” Tender is his second lab assistant. He isn’t a bad guy, a calm sort.

“He’s a bit old,” I say. “And he has kids…”

“That’s OK. He’s been in the Zone already.”

“Fine,” I say. “Let it be Tender.”

Anyway, he stays there poring over the map while I race straight to the Borscht, because my stomach is growling and my throat is parched.

The next day I get to work at nine, as usual, and show my ID. The guard on duty is the beefy sergeant I pummeled last year when he made a drunken pass at Guta. “Hey,” he says. “They’re looking all over the Institute for you, Red—”

I interrupt him politely. “I’m not ‘Red’ to you,” I say. “Don’t you try to pal around with me, you Swedish ape.”

“For God’s sake, Red!” he says in astonishment. “But they all call you that!”

I’m anxious about going into the Zone and cold sober to boot. I grab him by the shoulder belt and tell him exactly what he is and just how his mother conceived him. He spits on the floor, returns my ID, and continues without any more pleasantries.

“Redrick Schuhart,” he says, “you are ordered to immediately report to the chief of security, Captain Herzog.”

“There you go,” I say. “Much better. Keep plugging away, Sergeant—you’ll make lieutenant yet.”

Meantime, I’m shitting my pants. What could Captain Herzog want from me during work hours? Well, off I go to report. He has an office on the third floor, a very nice office, complete with bars on the windows like a police station. Willy himself is sitting behind his desk, puffing on his pipe and typing some gibberish on his typewriter. Over in the corner, some sergeant is rummaging through a metal cabinet—must be a new guy; I’ve never met him. We have more of these sergeants at the Institute than they have at division headquarters, all of them hale, hearty, and rosy cheeked. They don’t need to go into the Zone and don’t give a damn about world affairs.

“Hello,” I say. “You requested my presence?”

Willy looks at me like I’m not there, pushes away his typewriter, puts an enormous file in front of him, and starts flipping through it. “Redrick Schuhart?” he says.

“That’s my name,” I answer, feeling an urge to burst into nervous laughter.

“How long have you worked at the Institute?”

“Two years, going on the third.”

“Your family?”

“I’m all alone,” I say. “An orphan.”

Then he turns to the sergeant and orders him sternly, “Sergeant Lummer, go to the archives and bring back case 150.” The sergeant salutes him and beats it. Willy slams the file shut and asks me gloomily, “Starting up your old tricks again, are you?”

“What old tricks?”

“You know damn well what old tricks. We’ve received information on you again.”

Aha, I think. “And who was the source?”

He scowls and bangs his pipe on the ashtray in annoyance. “That’s none of your business,” he says. “I’m warning you as an old friend: give up this nonsense, give it up for good. If they catch you a second time, you won’t walk away with six months. And they’ll kick you out of the Institute once and for all, understand?”

“I understand,” I say. “That much I understand. What I don’t understand is what son of a bitch squealed on me…”

But he’s staring through me again, puffing on his empty pipe, and flipping merrily through his file. That, then, signals the return of Sergeant Lummer with case 150. “Thank you, Schuhart,” says Captain Willy Herzog, nicknamed the Hog. “That’s all that I needed to know. You are free to go.”

Well, I go to the locker room, change into my lab suit, and light up, the entire time trying to figure out: where are they getting the dirt? If it’s from the Institute, then it’s all lies, no one here knows a damn thing about me and never could. And if it’s from the police… again, what could they know about except my old sins? Maybe the Vulture got nabbed; that bastard, to save his sorry ass, would rat on his own mother. But even the Vulture doesn’t have a thing on me nowadays. I think and think, can’t think of a thing, and decide not to give a damn. The last time I went into the Zone at night was three months ago; the swag is mostly gone, and the money is mostly spent. They didn’t catch me then, and like hell they’ll catch me now. I’m slippery.

But then, as I’m heading upstairs, it hits me, and I’m so stunned that I go back down to the locker room, sit down, and light up again. It turns out I can’t go into the Zone today. And tomorrow I can’t, and the day after tomorrow. It turns out the cops again have me on their radar, they haven’t forgotten about me, and even if they have, someone has very kindly reminded them. And it doesn’t even matter now who it was. No stalker, unless he’s completely nuts, will go anywhere near the Zone when he knows he’s being watched. Right now, I ought to be burrowing into some deep dark corner. Zone? What Zone? I haven’t set foot there in months, I don’t even go there using my pass! What are you harassing an honest lab assistant for?

I think all this through and even feel a bit of relief that I don’t need to go into the Zone today. Except how am I going to break it to Kirill?

I tell him straight out. “I’m not going into the Zone. Your orders?”

At first, of course, he just gawks at me. Eventually, something seems to click. He takes me by the elbow, leads me to his office, sits me down at his table, and perches on the windowsill nearby. We light up. Silence. Then he asks me cautiously, “Red, did something happen?”

Now what am I supposed to tell him? “No,” I say, “nothing happened. Well, I blew twenty bucks last night playing poker—that Noonan sure knows how to play, the bastard.”

“Hold on,” he says. “What, you mean you just changed your mind?”

I almost groan from the tension. “I can’t,” I say through my teeth. “I can’t, you get it? Herzog just called me to his office.”

He goes limp. Again misery is stamped on his face, and again his eyes look like a sick poodle’s. He takes a ragged breath, lights a new cigarette with the remains of the old one, and says quietly, “Believe me, Red, I didn’t breathe a word to anyone.”

“Stop it,” I say. “Who’s talking about you?”

“I haven’t even told Tender yet. I got a pass for him, but I haven’t even asked him whether he’d come or not…”

I keep smoking in silence. Ye gods, the man just doesn’t understand.

“What did Herzog say to you, anyway?”

“Oh, not much,” I say. “Someone squealed on me, that’s all.”

He gives me a funny look, hops off the windowsill, and starts walking back and forth. He’s pacing around his office while I sit there, blowing smoke rings and keeping my trap shut. I feel sorry for him, of course, and really this is rotten luck: a great cure I found for the guy’s depression. And who’s to blame here? I am, that’s who. I tempted a child with candy, except the candy’s in a jar, out of reach on the top shelf… He stops pacing, comes up to me, and, looking somewhere off to the side, asks awkwardly, “Listen, Red, how much would it cost—a full empty?”

I don’t get it at first, thinking he wants to buy one somewhere else, except good luck finding another one—it might be the only one in the world, and besides, he wouldn’t have enough money. Where would a Russian scientist get that much cash? Then I feel like I’ve been slapped: does the bastard think I’m pulling this stunt for the dough? For God’s sake, I think, asshole, what do you take me for? I even open my mouth, ready to shower him with curses. And I stop. Because, actually, what else could he take me for? A stalker’s a stalker, the money is all that matters to him, he gambles his life for the money. So it follows that yesterday I threw out the line, and today I’m working the bait, jacking up the price.

These thoughts shock me speechless. Meanwhile, he keeps staring at me intently, and in his eyes I don’t see contempt—only a kind of compassion. And so I explain it to him calmly. “No one has ever gone to the garage with a pass,” I say. “They haven’t even laid the route to it yet, you know that. So here we are coming back, and your Tender starts bragging how we made straight for the garage, took what we needed, and returned immediately. As if we went to the warehouse. And it will be perfectly obvious,” I say, “that we knew what we were coming for. That means that someone was guiding us. And which one of us three it was—that’s a real tough one. You understand how this looks for me?”

I finish my little speech, and we silently look each other in the eye. Then he suddenly claps his hands, rubs them together, and cheerfully announces, “Well, of course, no means no. I understand you, Red, so I can’t judge you. I’ll go myself. I’ll manage, with luck. Not my first time.”

He spreads the map on the windowsill, leans on his hands, hunches over it, and all his good cheer evaporates before my eyes. I hear him mumble, “Three hundred and ninety feet… or even four hundred… and a bit more in the garage. No, I won’t take Tender. What do you think, Red, maybe I shouldn’t take Tender? He has two kids, after all…”

“They won’t let you out on your own,” I say.

“Don’t worry, they will,” he says, still mumbling. “I know all the sergeants… and all the lieutenants. I don’t like those trucks! Thirteen years they’ve stood in the open air, and they still look brand-new… Twenty steps away, the gasoline tanker is rusted through, but they look fresh from the assembly line. Oh, that Zone!”

He lifts his gaze from the map and stares out the window. And I stare out the window, too. There, beyond the thick leaded glass, is our Zone—right there, almost within reach, tiny and toylike from the thirteenth floor…

If you take a quick look at it, everything seems OK. The sun shines there just like it’s supposed to, and it seems as if nothing’s changed, as if everything’s the same as thirteen years ago. My old man, rest his soul, could take a look and see nothing out of place, might only wonder why there isn’t smoke coming from the factories—Is there a strike on? Yellow ore in conical mounds, blast furnaces gleaming in the sun, rails, rails, and more rails, on the rails a locomotive… In short, the typical industrial landscape. Except there’s no one around: no one living, no one dead. Ah, and there’s the garage: a long gray tube, the gates wide open, and trucks standing next to it on the lot. Thirteen years they’ve stood, and nothing’s happened to them. Kirill got that right—he has a good head on his shoulders. God help you if you ever pass between those vehicles, you must always go around… There’s a useful crack in the pavement there, if it hasn’t filled with brambles. Four hundred feet—where’s he measuring that from? Oh! Must be from the last marker. Right, can’t be more than that from there. These eggheads are making progress after all… Look, they’ve laid a route all the way to the dump, and a clever route at that! There it is, the ditch where the Slug kicked the bucket, all of six feet away from their route. And Knuckles kept telling the Slug, “You idiot, stay away from those ditches or there will be nothing left to bury!” A real prophecy that was—nothing left to bury indeed. That’s the Zone for you: come back with swag, a miracle; come back alive, success; come back with a patrol bullet in your ass, good luck; and everything else—that’s fate.

I take a look at Kirill and see that he’s watching me out of the corner of his eye. And the look on his face makes me do another one-eighty. Screw them, I think, let them all rot in hell, what can those toads do to me after all?

He doesn’t need to say a thing, but he does. “Laboratory Assistant Schuhart,” he says. “From official—I emphasize ‘official’—sources I have received information suggesting that the inspection of the garage may be of great value to world science. I propose we inspect the garage. A bonus paycheck is guaranteed.” And he’s grinning from ear to ear.

“What official sources?” I ask, grinning like an idiot myself.

“These are confidential sources,” he answers. “But I am authorized to tell you.” Here he stops grinning and frowns. “Say, from Dr. Douglas.”

“Ah,” I say, “from Dr. Douglas. And which Dr. Douglas is that?”

“Sam Douglas,” he says drily. “He perished last year.”

My skin crawls. For God’s sake! Who talks about these things before setting out? These eggheads never have a grain of sense… I jab my cigarette butt into the ashtray. “Fine. Where’s your Tender? How long do we have to wait for him?”

Anyway, we drop the topic. Kirill calls PPS and orders us a hoverboot while I take a look at their map. It’s not bad at all—made from a highly magnified aerial photograph. You can even make out the ridges on the tire lying next to the garage gates. If we stalkers had maps like this… then again, much good it’d do at night, when you’re showing your ass to the stars and can’t see your own two hands.

And here Tender shows up. Red in the face, puffing and panting. His daughter got sick, he had to go fetch the doctor. He apologizes for being late. Well, we hand him quite the gift—a trip to the Zone. At first he almost forgets to puff and pant, the poor guy.

“What do you mean, the Zone?” he says. “Why me?” However, when he hears about the double bonus and that Red Schuhart is coming too, he calms down and starts breathing again.

Anyway, we go down to the “boudoir,” Kirill rushes off to get the passes, we show the passes to yet another sergeant, and this sergeant gives each of us a specsuit. Now these really are handy. Dye a specsuit any color other than the original red, and any stalker would put down five hundred for it without batting an eyelash. I’ve long since vowed to figure out a way to swipe one from the Institute. At first glance, it’s nothing special, looks like a diving suit, with a helmet to match and a large visor at the front. Maybe it’s not quite like a diving suit, actually, more like a space suit. It’s light, comfortable, not too tight, and you don’t sweat in it from the heat. You can go right through a fire in this thing, and no gas will penetrate it. It’s even bulletproof, they say. Of course, fire, toxic gas, and bullets—these are only Earth perils. The Zone doesn’t have those; in the Zone you have other worries. Anyhow, truth be told, even in their specsuits people drop like flies. On the other hand, without them it’d probably be even worse. These suits are completely safe from the burning fuzz, for example. And from Satan’s blossom and its spit… All right.

We pull on our specsuits, I pour some nuts and bolts from a bag into my hip pocket, and we plod across the Institute yard toward the Zone entrance. That’s how they always do it around here, so that everyone can see: There they go, the heroes of science, to lay themselves down on the altar to mankind, knowledge, and the Holy Spirit, amen. And sure enough, sympathetic mugs poke out of every window all the way up to the fifteenth floor; hankies waving good-bye and an orchestra are the only things missing.

“Keep your head high,” I tell Tender. “Suck in your gut, soldier! A grateful humanity won’t forget you!”

He gives me a look, and I see that he’s in no mood for jokes. He’s right—this is no joke. But when you’re leaving for the Zone, it’s one of two things: you start bawling, or you crack jokes—and I’m sure as hell not crying. I take a look at Kirill. He’s holding up OK, only mouthing something silently, as if praying.

“Praying?” I ask. “Pray, pray! The farther into the Zone, the closer to heaven.”

“What?” he says.

“Pray!” I yell. “Stalkers cut in line at the gates of heaven!”

And he suddenly smiles and pats me on the back, as if to say, Nothing will happen as long as you are with me, and if it does, well, we only die once. God, he’s a funny guy.

We hand our passes over to the last sergeant—this time, for a change of pace, he happens to be a lieutenant; I know him, his pop sells cemetery fencing in Rexopolis—and there’s the hoverboot waiting for us, the guys from PPS have flown it over and left it at the checkpoint. Everyone is gathered already: the ambulance and the firefighters and our valiant guards, the fearless rescuers—a bunch of overfed slackers with their helicopter. I wish to God I’d never set eyes on them!

We climb into the boot. Kirill takes the controls and looks at me. “Well, Red,” he says, “your orders?”

I slowly lower the specsuit zipper on my chest, pull out a flask, take a long sip, screw the lid back on, and put the flask back. I can’t do without this. God knows how many times I’ve been in the Zone, but without it—no way, can’t do it. They’re both looking at me and waiting.

“All right,” I say. “I’m not offering you any, since this is our first time going in together, and I don’t know how the stuff affects you. Here is how we’ll do things. Everything I say will be carried out immediately and unconditionally. If someone hesitates or starts asking questions, I’ll hit whatever is in reach, my apologies in advance. For example, say I order you, Mr. Tender, to walk on your hands. And at that very moment, you, Mr. Tender, must stick your fat ass up in the air and do as you are told. And if you don’t do as you are told, you may never see your sick daughter again. Got it? But I’ll take care that you do see her.”

“Just don’t forget to give the orders, Red,” croaks Tender, who is completely red, sweating already and smacking his lips. “I’ll walk on my teeth, never mind my hands. I’m no novice.”

“You are both novices to me,” I say, “and I won’t forget the orders, don’t you worry. Oh, just in case, do you know how to drive a boot?”

“He knows how,” says Kirill. “He’s good at it.”

“Glad to hear,” I say. “Then we’re off. Lower your visors! Low speed along the marked route, altitude nine feet! At the twenty-seventh marker, stop.”

Kirill lifts the boot to nine feet and puts it in low gear while I discreetly turn my head and blow over my left shoulder for luck. Looking back, I see our guards, the rescuers, are clambering into their helicopter, the firefighters are standing up in respect, the lieutenant at the door of the checkpoint is saluting us, the idiot, and above them all—an immense banner, already faded: WELCOME TO EARTH, DEAR ALIENS! Tender made a move to wave them all good-bye, but I gave him a sharp nudge in the ribs to knock the ceremonies out of him. I’ll show you how to bid farewell, you fat-assed fool!

We’re off.

To the right of us is the Institute, to the left the Plague Quarter, and we’re gliding from marker to marker down the middle of the street. Lord, it’s been a while since anyone’s walked or driven here. The pavement’s all cracked, grass has grown through the crevices, but here at least it’s still our human grass. On the sidewalk to the left, the black brambles begin, and from this we see how well the Zone sets itself apart: the black thicket along the road looks almost mowed. No, these aliens must have been decent guys. They left a hell of a mess, of course, but at least they put clear bounds on their crap. Even the burning fuzz doesn’t make it over to our side, though you’d think the wind would carry it around all four directions.

The houses in the Plague Quarter are peeling and lifeless, but the windows are mostly intact, only so dirty that they look opaque. Now at night when you crawl by, you can see the glow inside, as if alcohol were burning in bluish tongues. That’s the hell slime radiating from the basement. But mostly it looks like an ordinary neighborhood, with ordinary houses, nothing special about it except that there are no people around. By the way, in this brick building over here lived our math teacher, the Comma. He was a pain in the ass and a loser, his second wife left him right before the Visit, and his daughter had a cataract in one eye—I remember we used to tease her to tears. During the initial panic, he ran in nothing but underwear all the way to the bridge, like his neighbors—ran for four miles nonstop. After that he got a bad case of the plague, which peeled his skin and nails right off. Almost everyone who lived here got the plague. A few died, but mostly old folks, and not all of them either. I, for one, think it wasn’t the plague that did them in but sheer terror.

Now in those three neighborhoods over there, people went blind. That’s what people call them nowadays: the First Blind Quarter, the Second Blind Quarter… They didn’t go completely blind but rather got something resembling night blindness. Strangely, they say they weren’t blinded by a flash of light, though it’s said there were some bright flashes, but by an awful noise. It thundered so loudly, they say, that they instantly went blind. Doctors tell them: That’s impossible, you can’t be remembering right! No, they insist, there was loud thunder, from which they went blind. And by the way, no one else heard any thunder at all…

Yeah, it looks like nothing happened here. That glass kiosk over there doesn’t have a single scratch on it. And look at that stroller near the gates—even the linen in it looks clean. Only the TV antennas give the place away—they’re overgrown with wispy hairs. Our eggheads have long been hankering after these antennas: they’d like to know, you see, what this hair is—we don’t have it anywhere else, only in the Plague Quarter and only on the antennas. But most important, it’s right here, beneath our very own windows. Last year, they got an idea, lowered an anchor from a helicopter, and hooked a clump of hair. They gave it a pull—suddenly, a psssst! We looked down and saw that the antenna was smoking, the anchor was smoking, even the cable itself was smoking, and not just smoking but hissing poisonously, like a rattlesnake. Well, the pilot, never mind that he was a lieutenant, quickly figured out what’s what, dumped the cable, and hightailed it out of there. There it is, their cable, hanging down almost to the ground and covered with hair…

We glide slowly to the end of the street, at the bend. Kirill looks at me: Should I turn? I wave him on: Go in lowest gear. Our boot turns and drifts in lowest gear over the last few feet of human land. The sidewalk’s getting closer and closer, there’s the shadow of the boot inching over the brambles… Here’s the Zone! And instantly a chill runs down my spine. I feel it every time, but I still don’t know whether it’s the Zone greeting me or a stalker’s nerves acting up. Every time I figure I’ll go back and ask others if they feel it too, and every time I forget.

All right, so we’re drifting peacefully above the abandoned gardens, the motor under our feet is humming steadily and calmly—it doesn’t care, nothing can hurt it. And here my Tender cracks. We don’t even make it to the first marker before he starts babbling. You know, the way novices babble in the Zone: his teeth are chattering, his heart is galloping, he’s out of it, and though embarrassed he can’t get a grip. I think this is like diarrhea for them; they can’t help it, the words just keep pouring out. And the things they’ll talk about! They’ll rave about the scenery, or they’ll philosophize about the aliens, or they might even go on about something totally irrelevant. Like our Tender here: he’s started in on his new suit and now just can’t shut up about it. How much it cost and the fine wool it’s made of and how the tailor changed the buttons for him…

“Be quiet,” I say.

He gives me a sad look, smacks his lips, and goes on again, now about the silk he needed for the lining. Meanwhile, the gardens are ending, we’re already above the clay wasteland that used to be the town dump, and I notice a breeze. There was no wind a moment ago, but suddenly there’s a breeze, dust clouds are swirling, and I think I hear something.

“Quiet, asshole,” I tell Tender.

No, he just can’t shut up. Now he’s going on about the horsehair. All right, no help for it, then.

“Stop,” I tell Kirill.

He stops immediately. Quick reaction—good man. I take Tender by the shoulder, turn him toward me, and smack him hard on his visor. He slams nose first into the glass, poor guy, closes his eyes, and shuts up. And as soon as he quiets down, I hear: crack-crack-crack… crack-crack-crack… Kirill is looking at me, jaws clenched, teeth bared. I hold up my hand. Don’t move, for God’s sake, please don’t move. But he also hears the crackling and, like any novice, feels the need to immediately do something.

“Go back?” he whispers.

I desperately shake my head and wave my fist right in his visor—Cut that out. For God’s sake! You never know which way to look with these novices—at the Zone or at them… And here my mind goes blank. Over the pile of ancient trash, over the colorful rags and broken glass, drifts a tremor, a vibration, just like the hot air above a tin roof at noon; it floats over the mound and continues, cuts across our path right beside a marker, lingers over the road, waits for half a second—or am I just imagining that?—and slithers into the field, over the bushes, over the rotten fences, toward the old car graveyard.

Damn these eggheads, a great job they did: ran their road down here amid the junk! And I’m a smart one myself—what on Earth was I thinking while mooning over their stupid map?

“Go on at low speed,” I tell Kirill.

“What was that?”

“God knows! It came and went, thank God. And shut up, please. Right now, you aren’t a person, got it? Right now, you are a machine, my steering wheel, a lever…”

At this point I realize that I might be getting a case of verbal diarrhea myself.

“That’s it,” I say. “Not another word.”

Damn, I need a drink! What I’d give to take out my flask, unscrew the lid, slowly, deliberately put it to my mouth, and tilt my head back, so it could pour right in… Then swirl the liquor around and take another swig… I tell you, these specsuits are a piece of shit. I’ve lived for years without a specsuit, Lord knows, and plan to live for many more, but not having a drink at a time like this! Ah, well, enough of that.

The wind seems to have died down and there are no suspicious noises; all we hear is the engine humming steadily and sleepily. Meanwhile the sun is shining, the heat is pressing down… There’s a haze above the garage. Everything seems fine, the markers are floating by us one by one. Tender’s silent, Kirill’s silent—they are learning, the novices. Don’t worry, guys, even in the Zone you can breathe if you know how. Ah, and here’s the twenty-seventh marker—a metal pole with a red “27” on it. Kirill looks at me, I nod at him, and our boot stops.

The fun and games are over. Now the most important thing is to stay completely calm. We’re in no hurry, there’s no wind, and the visibility is good. Over there’s the ditch where the Slug kicked the bucket—you can make out something colorful in there, maybe some clothes of his. He was a lousy guy, rest his soul, greedy, stupid, and dirty; that’s the only kind that get mixed up with the Vulture, those the Vulture Burbridge spots a mile away and gets his claws into. Although, to be fair, the Zone doesn’t give a damn who the good guys and the bad guys are, and it turns out we gotta thank you, Slug: you were an idiot, and no one even remembers your real name, but you did show us smarter folks where not to go… OK. The best thing, of course, would be to get to the pavement. The pavement’s flat, you can see everything, and I know that crevice in it. Except I don’t like those mounds. If we head straight to the pavement, we have to pass right between them. There they stand, smirking and waiting for us. No, I’m not going between the two of you. That’s the stalker’s second commandment: it has to be clear for a hundred paces either to your left or to your right. Now what we could do is go over the left mound… Although I have no idea what’s behind it. According to the map there’s nothing there, but who trusts maps?

“Listen, Red,” whispers Kirill. “Let’s jump, eh? Fifty feet up and then right back down, and there we’ll be at the garage, eh?”

“Quiet, you,” I say. “Just leave me alone right now.”

Up, he says. And what if something gets you at that height? They won’t even be able to find the pieces. Or maybe there’s a bug trap around here—never mind the pieces, there will be nothing left at all. These risk takers really get me: he doesn’t like waiting, you see, so let’s jump… In any case, it’s clear how to get to the mound, and we’ll figure the rest out from there. I slip my hand into my pocket and pull out a handful of nuts and bolts. I put them on the palm of my hand, show them to Kirill, and say, “Remember the story of Hansel and Gretel? Read it in school? Well, here we’ll have that in reverse. Look!”

And I throw the first nut. It flies a short way, like I intended, and lands about twenty-five feet away. The nut goes fine.

“Did you see that?” I ask.

“So?” he says.

“Don’t ‘so’ me. I’m asking you, did you see that?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Now, take our boot over to that nut at low speed and stop six feet in front of it. Got it?”

“Got it. You looking for graviconcentrates?”

“Never you mind what I’m looking for. Give me a second, I want to throw another one. Watch where it falls, then don’t take your eyes off it.”

I throw another nut. Naturally, this one also goes fine and lands just ahead of the first one.

“Go ahead,” I say.

He starts the boot. His face has become completely calm; you can see he’s figured everything out. They are all like that, the eggheads. The most important thing for them is to come up with a name. Until he comes up with one, you feel really sorry for him, he looks so lost. But when he finds a label like “graviconcentrate,” he thinks he’s figured it all out and perks right up.

We pass the first nut, then the second and third. Tender keeps sighing, shifting from one foot to the other and yawning nervously with a slight whimper—he’s suffering, the poor guy. It’s all right, this will probably do him good. He’ll take ten pounds off today, this is better than any diet… I throw the fourth nut. It doesn’t go quite right. I can’t explain it, but I feel it in my gut—something’s off. I immediately grab Kirill’s hand.

“Stop,” I say. “Don’t move an inch.”

I take the fifth nut and throw it farther and higher. There it is, the bug trap! The nut goes up all right and starts going down fine, but halfway down it looks like someone tugged it off to the side, pulling it so hard that it goes right into the clay and disappears.

“Ever see that?” I whisper.

“Only in the movies,” he says, straining forward so far he almost falls off the boot. “Throw one more, eh?”

Jesus. One more! As if one would be enough. Lord, these scientists! Anyway, I throw out eight more nuts, until I figure out the shape of the trap. To be honest, I could have managed with seven, but I throw one especially for him, right into the center, so he can properly admire his graviconcentrate. It smashes into the clay as if it were a ten-pound weight instead of a nut, then goes right out of sight, leaving only a hole in the ground. He even grunts with pleasure.

“All right,” I say. “We’ve had our fun, but that’s enough. Look over here. I’m throwing one out to show the way, don’t take your eyes off it.”

Anyway, we go around the bug trap and climb to the top of the mound. It’s a puny little mound, I’ve never even noticed it until today. Right… OK, so we’re hanging above the mound, the pavement is a stone’s throw away, at most twenty paces from here. Everything’s visible—you can make out every blade of grass, every little crack in the ground. It ought to be smooth sailing from here. Just throw the nut and get on with it. I can’t throw the nut.

I don’t understand what’s happening to me, but I just can’t force myself to throw it.

“What is it?” says Kirill. “Why did we stop here?”

“Wait,” I say. “Just be quiet, for God’s sake.”

All right, I think, now I’ll throw the nut, nothing to it, we’ll glide right by, won’t disturb a single blade of grass—half a minute, and there’s the pavement… And suddenly I break into an awful sweat! Some even gets into my eyes, and I know right then I won’t be throwing a nut that direction. To our left—sure, as many as you like. That route is longer, and the stones over there look suspicious, but it’ll have to do; I just can’t throw a nut in front of us. And so I throw one to our left. Kirill doesn’t say a thing, just turns the boot, drives it over to the nut, and only then looks at me. I must look pretty bad, since he immediately looks away.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “You can’t always take the straight path.” And I throw the last nut onto the pavement.

Things get easier now. I find my crack in the pavement, which still looks good, isn’t overgrown with weeds, and hasn’t changed color; I feel happy just looking at it. And it takes us all the way to the gates of the garage better than any markers.

I order Kirill to take us down to five feet, and I lie on my stomach and peer into the open gates. At first, I can’t see a thing, just darkness, but then my eyes adjust, and I see that the garage seems unchanged. The dump truck is standing over the pit, just like before—in great shape, without any rust holes or spots—and the stuff on the floor around it also looks the same; that’s probably because there isn’t much hell slime in the pit, and it hasn’t splashed out since my last visit. Only one thing worries me: something silver is sparkling at the back of the garage, near the canisters. That wasn’t there before. Well, all right, let it sparkle; we aren’t going back because of that! It’s not even sparkling in an unusual way, just a tiny bit, mildly and almost gently… I get up, dust myself off, and look around. Ah, and here are the trucks parked on the lot, really just like new; since I’ve last been here, they’ve gotten even newer, while the gasoline tanker, poor thing, is now completely rusted through and about to fall apart. And there’s the tire lying beside the gates, that you can see on their map…

I don’t like the look of that tire. There’s something wrong with its shadow. The sun is at our backs, but the shadow is stretching toward us. Oh well, it’s far away from us. Anyway, everything’s fine; we’ll manage. But still, what could be sparkling there? Or am I imagining things? Now, the thing to do would be to light up, sit down quietly, and think it through—what’s that silver stuff above the canisters, why isn’t it also beside them? Why is that tire’s shadow like that? The Vulture Burbridge was telling us something about the shadows, which sounded strange but harmless… The shadows do funny things around here. But what about that silver stuff? It looks just like a cobweb. What sort of spider could have left it behind? I’ve yet to see a single bug in the Zone. And the worst thing is that my empty is lying right there, two steps away from the canisters. I should have just taken it last time, then I’d have nothing to worry about. But the damn thing is full, so it’s heavy—I could have managed to lift it, but to drag it on my back, at night, crawling on all fours… Yeah, if you’ve never carried an empty, go ahead and try: it’s like lugging twenty pounds of water without a bucket. Well, should I go in? I guess I should. A drink would sure help…

I turn to Tender and say, “Kirill and I are going into the garage now. Stay here with the boot. Don’t touch the controls without my permission, no matter what happens, even if the ground below you catches fire. If you chicken out, I’ll find you in the afterlife.”

He nods at me seriously: Don’t worry, I won’t chicken out. His nose looks like a plum—I really gave it to him. I carefully lower the emergency ropes, take one more look at the silver stuff, wave at Kirill, and start to climb down. I stand on the pavement, waiting for him to go down the other rope. “Take it slow,” I say. “Don’t rush. Don’t raise dust.”

We’re standing on the pavement, the boot is swaying next to us, the ropes are wriggling under our feet. Tender is sticking his head over the railings, looking at us with despair in his eyes. We have to go in. I tell Kirill, “Walk two steps behind me, keep your eyes on my back, and stay alert.”

And I go in. I stop in the doorway and look around. Damn, it sure is easier to work during the day! I remember how I lay in this same doorway. It was pitch black, the hell slime was shooting tongues of flame up from the pit, blue ones, like burning alcohol, and the most frustrating thing was that the damn flames didn’t even give off light but only made the garage seem darker. And now it’s a breeze. My eyes have gotten used to the gloom, I can see everything, even the dust in the darkest corners. And there really is something sparkling there, silver threads are stretching from the canisters to the floor—looks just like a cobweb. It might in fact be a cobweb, but better to stay away from it.

And here I screw up. I should have Kirill walk next to me, wait until his eyes get used to the dark, and show him this cobweb, point right at it. But I’m used to working alone—my eyes adjust to the light, and I don’t think about Kirill.

I step inside and head straight for the canisters. I squat by the empty; there aren’t any cobwebs stuck to it. I take one end of it.

“All right, grab hold,” I say, “and don’t drop it—it’s heavy.”

I look up at him, and my heart leaps into my throat—I can’t say a word. I want to yell Stop, don’t move! and can’t. And there probably isn’t enough time, anyway, it all happens so fast: Kirill steps over the empty, turns around, and his back goes right into the silver stuff. The only thing I can do is close my eyes. I feel weak all over, can’t hear a thing—just the sound of the cobweb tearing. With a faint crackle, like a regular cobweb, except louder, of course. I’m crouching there with my eyes closed, can’t feel my hands or my feet, then Kirill says, “Well, are we picking it up?”

“Let’s do it,” I say.

We pick up the empty and, walking sideways, carry it to the exit. The damn thing is heavy—it’s hard to carry even for the two of us. We go out into the sun and stop near the boot. Tender is reaching his paws toward us already.

“All right,” says Kirill, “one, two—”

“No,” I say, “wait. Put it down first.”

We put it down.

“Turn around,” I say.

He turns without a word. I look—there’s nothing on his back. I check this way and that. Still nothing. Then I look around and check the canisters. Nothing there either.

“Listen,” I say to Kirill, still looking at the canisters. “Did you see the cobweb?”

“What cobweb? Where?”

“Never mind,” I say. “The Lord is merciful.” Meanwhile, I think, Actually, that remains to be seen. “All right,” I say, “grab hold.”

We load the empty onto the boot and put it on its side so it won’t roll around. It’s standing there, looking lovely—spotless, new, the copper gleaming in the sun, the blue filling swirling slowly between the copper disks in cloudy streams. It’s now obvious that it isn’t an empty but a container, like a glass jar with blue syrup inside. We admire it for a bit, then clamber up onto the boot ourselves and without further ado are on our way back.

These scientists sure have it easy! First of all, they work in the daylight. And second, the only hard part is getting into the Zone—on the way back, the boot drives itself. It has this feature, a route memorizer, I guess, that takes the boot back along the exact same route it took here. We’re floating back, repeating each maneuver, stopping, hanging in the air a bit, then continuing; we pass over all the nuts, I could pick them up if I wanted to.

Of course, my novices immediately cheer up. They’re looking this way and that, their fear almost gone—only curiosity left, and joy that everything ended well. They begin to chatter. Tender is waving his arms and threatening to come right back into the Zone after dinner, to lay the path to the garage. Kirill takes me by the sleeve and starts explaining his gravicon-centrate to me—that is, the bug trap. Well, eventually I have to shut them up. I calmly explain to them how many idiots became careless with relief and kicked the bucket on the way back. Be quiet, I tell them, and keep your eyes open, or you’ll meet the fate of Shorty Lyndon. That works. They don’t even ask me what happened to Shorty Lyndon. Much better. In the Zone you can easily take a familiar route a hundred times and kick off on the hundred and first. We’re floating in silence, and only one thing is on my mind: how I’ll twist the cap off the flask. I keep visualizing how I’ll take the first sip, but the cobweb occasionally flickers before my mind’s eye.

In short, we make it out of the Zone, and they send us, still in our boot, into the delouser, or, as the scientists say, the sanitization hangar. They wash us in three boiling liquids and three alkaline solutions, smear some crap on us, sprinkle us with powder, and wash us again, then dry us and say, “Get going, guys, you’re free!” Tender and Kirill drag the empty along. People show up in droves—it’s hard to get through, and it’s so typical: everyone is staring and shouting greetings, but no one is brave enough to lend a hand to three tired men. Oh well, that’s none of my business. Nothing is my business anymore…

I pull the specsuit off and throw it on the floor—the sergeant lackeys’ll pick it up—then I head for the showers, since I’m soaked from head to toe. I lock myself in the stall, take out the flask, unscrew it, and attach myself to it like a leech. I’m sitting on the bench, my heart is empty, my head is empty, my soul is empty, gulping down the hard stuff like water. Alive. I got out. The Zone let me out. The damned hag. My lifeblood. Traitorous bitch. Alive. The novices can’t understand this. No one but a stalker can understand. And tears are pouring down my face—maybe from the booze, maybe from something else. I suck the flask dry; I’m wet, the flask is dry. As usual, I need just one more sip. Oh well, we’ll fix that. We can fix anything now. Alive. I light a cigarette and stay seated. I can feel it—I’m coming around. The bonus comes to mind. Here at the Institute that’s a given. I could go get the envelope this very minute. Or maybe they’ll bring it right to the showers.

I slowly undress. I take off my watch and look at it—my Lord, we were in the Zone for more than five hours! Five hours. I shudder. Yes, my friends, there’s no such thing as time in the Zone. Although, really, what’s five hours to a stalker? Nothing at all. You want twelve hours instead? Or maybe two whole days? When you don’t finish in one night, you stay in the Zone all day long facedown in the dirt; you can’t even pray properly but can only rave deliriously, and you don’t know if you are dead or alive. And the next night when you finish, you try to get out with the swag, except the guards are patrolling the borders with machine guns. And those toads hate you, they get no pleasure from arresting you, the bastards are scared to death that you might be contagious—they just want to shoot you down… And they are holding all the cards: go ahead and prove later that they killed you illegally. So there you are again, facedown in the dirt, praying until dawn, then until dusk, the swag lying beside you, and you don’t even know if it’s simply lying there or slowly killing you. Or maybe you’ll end up like Knuckles Isaac—he got stuck in an open area at dawn, lost his way, and wound up between two ditches—couldn’t go left or right. They shot at him for two hours, couldn’t hit him. For two hours he played dead. Thank God, they finally got tired of it, figured he was finished, and left. I saw him after that—I didn’t recognize him. They broke him, left only a shell of a man.

I wipe away my tears and turn on the water. I take a long shower, first in hot water, then in cold water, then again in hot water. I use up a whole bar of soap. Eventually I get sick of it. I turn the water off and immediately hear rapping on the door, and Kirill yelling cheerfully, “Hey, stalker, come on out! It smells like money out here!”

Money—that’s always good news. I open the door, Kirill’s standing there wearing only boxer shorts, in great spirits, no sign of melancholy, and he’s handing me an envelope.

“Take it,” he says, “from grateful humanity.”

“Screw grateful humanity! How much is it?”

“For extraordinary courage under danger, just this once—two months’ pay!”

Ah. That’s real money. If they paid me two months’ salary for every empty I brought in, I’d have told Ernest to fuck off a long time ago.

“So, are you happy?” says Kirill, beaming, grinning from ear to ear.

“I’m all right,” I say. “How about you?”

He doesn’t say anything. He grabs me around the neck, presses me to his sweaty chest, hugs me, then pushes me away and disappears into the next stall.

“Hey!” I shout after him. “Where’s Tender? Washing out his undies, I bet.”

“No way! Tender is surrounded by reporters, you should see how important he’s gotten. He’s giving them a real perspicuous account…”

“What kind of account?” I say.

“A perspicuous one.”

“All right,” I say, “sir. Next time I’ll bring a dictionary, sir.” Then I feel an electric shock go through me. “Wait, Kirill,” I say. “Come out here.”

“But I’m naked already,” he says.

“Come out, I’m not a girl!”

All right, he comes out. I take him by the shoulders and turn his back toward me. No, I imagined it. His back is clean, nothing on it except some rivulets of dried sweat.

“What’s with you and my back?” he asks.

I kick his naked ass, dive into my stall, and lock the door. Nerves, God damn it. I keep imagining things: first there, now here. To hell with it all! I’ll get plastered tonight. I gotta beat Richard, that’s the thing! The bastard sure knows how to play… You can’t win no matter what you’re dealt. I tried cheating, even blessing the cards under the table, nothing worked.

“Kirill!” I yell. “Are you going to the Borscht today?”

“It’s pronounced ‘borshch,’ not ‘borsht’—how many times do I have to tell you?”

“Cut it out! The sign says BORSCHT. Don’t you try to force your customs on us. Are you coming or not? I’d like to beat Richard.”

“I’m not sure, Red. You simple soul, you don’t even understand what we found today…”

“And you do?”

“To be honest, I don’t either. That’s fair. But at least we now know what these empties were used for, and if one of my ideas works out… I’ll write a paper and dedicate it to you personally: ‘To Redrick Schuhart, honored stalker, with reverence and gratitude.’”

“And then they’ll put me away for two years,” I say.

“But you’ll go down in science. This thing will forever be known as Schuhart’s jar. Sound good?”

While we’re joking around, I get dressed. I stuff the empty flask into my pocket, count the money again, and get on my way. “Have a good shower, you complicated soul.”

He doesn’t reply; the water’s very loud.

In the hallway I see Mr. Tender himself, completely red and strutting like a peacock. A crowd has formed around him—coworkers, journalists, even a few sergeants (fresh from dinner, picking their teeth), and he’s blathering on: “The technology we command practically guarantees a safe and successful expedition…” Here, he notices me and immediately dries up, smiling and waving tentatively. Shit, I think, I need to escape. I take off, but it’s too late. I hear footsteps behind me.

“Mr. Schuhart! Mr. Schuhart! A few words about the garage!”

“No comment,” I reply, breaking into a run. But I can’t get away: a guy with a mike is on my right, and another one, with a camera, is on my left.

“Did you see anything unusual in the garage? Please, just two words!”

“I have no comment!” I repeat, trying to keep the back of my head to the camera. “It’s just a garage.”

“Thank you. What do you think about the turbo-platforms?”

“They’re great,” I say, heading straight for the john.

“What’s your opinion about the goals of the Visit?”

“Talk to the scientists,” I say. And I slide into the bathroom.

I hear them scratching at the door. So I call out, “I highly recommend you ask Mr. Tender why his nose looks like a plum. He’s too modest to mention it, but that was our most exciting adventure.”

Man, they shoot down the hallway! Just like horses, I swear. I wait a minute—silence. I stick my head out—no one’s around. So I walk away, whistling. I go down to the lobby, show my ID to the beefy sergeant, then I see that he’s saluting me. Guess I’m the hero of the day.

“At ease, Sergeant,” I say. “I’m pleased with you.”

He flashes a huge grin at me, as if I paid him the greatest compliment. “Good job, Red,” he says. “I’m proud to know you.”

“Well,” I say, “you’ll have something to tell the girls back in Sweden, huh?”

“Hell yeah!” he says. “They’ll be all over me!”

Really, the guy is OK. To be honest, I don’t like these hale and hearty types. The girls go crazy over them, and for what? It can’t just be the height… I’m walking along the street, trying to figure out what it could be. The sun is shining, no one’s around. And suddenly I want to see Guta real bad. Not for any particular reason. Just to look at her, hold her hand. That’s about all you can manage after the Zone: hand holding. Especially when you remember the stories about the children of stalkers—how they turn out… No, I shouldn’t even be thinking about Guta; first I need a bottle, at least, of the strong stuff.

I pass the parking lot, then I see the checkpoint. Two patrol cars are waiting there in all their glory—wide, yellow, bristling with searchlights and machine guns. And, of course, a whole crowd of cops is blocking the street. I walk along, looking down so I won’t see their faces; it’s best if I don’t look at them in broad daylight. A couple of guys here I’m afraid to recognize; there’d be one hell of a scene if I did. I swear, they’re lucky that Kirill convinced me to work for the Institute, otherwise I’d have found the assholes and finished them off.

I’m pushing my way through the crowd, almost past it, when I hear, “Hey, stalker!” Well, that has nothing to do with me, so I keep walking, pulling a cigarette from the pack. Someone catches up with me and grabs my sleeve. I shake his hand off, turn halfway toward him, and inquire politely, “What the hell are you grabbing my sleeve for, mister?”

“Wait, stalker,” he says. “Two questions for you.”

I look up at him—it’s my old friend Captain Quarterblad. He has completely dried up and turned a shade of yellow. “Hello, Captain,” I say. “How’s the liver?”

“Don’t you try to distract me, stalker,” he says angrily, boring his eyes into me. “You better explain to me why you don’t stop immediately when called.”

And two cops instantly appear behind him, pawing their guns. You can’t see their eyes, just their jaws working away below the helmets. Where in the world do they find these guys? Did they send them to Harmont to breed or what? I’m not usually afraid of the guards in the daytime, but the toads could search me, and that wouldn’t suit me at all right now.

“I didn’t know you meant me, Captain,” I say. “You were yelling at some stalker.”

“Oh, and you aren’t a stalker anymore?”

“I’ve served my time, thanks to you—and I’ve given it up since,” I say. “I’m done with it. Thank you, Captain, for opening my eyes. If not for you—”

“What were you doing in the restricted area?”

“What do you mean? I work here. For two years now.”

And to finish this unpleasant conversation, I take out my ID and show it to Captain Quarterblad. He takes it, examines it, practically sniffs the seals, and seems almost ready to lick it. He returns my ID, looking satisfied; his eyes have lit up, even his cheeks colored.

“Sorry, Schuhart,” he says. “I didn’t expect this. That means my advice to you didn’t go to waste. Really, that’s great. Believe it or not, I always figured you’d make something of yourself. I just couldn’t imagine that a guy like you…”

And off he goes. Well, I think, just my luck to cure another melancholic. Of course, I listen to him, looking down in embarrassment, nodding, gesturing awkwardly, and even shyly toeing the pavement. The goons behind the captain listen for a while, then get queasy, I bet, and go off somewhere more exciting. Meanwhile, the captain drones on about my future: knowledge is light, ignorance is darkness, God always values and rewards honest labor. Anyway, he tries to feed me the same boring bullshit that the jail priest harassed us with every Sunday. And I need a drink—I just can’t wait. All right, I think, Red, you can endure even this. Patience, Red, patience! He can’t go on like this for long, he’s already out of breath… And then, to my relief, one of the patrol cars signals to us. Captain Quarterblad looks around, grunts in annoyance, and extends his hand to me.

“All right,” he says. “It was nice to meet you, honest man Schuhart. I would have been happy to drink with you to that. Can’t have anything too strong, doctor’s orders, but I could have had a beer with you. But you see—duty calls! Well, we’ll meet again,” he says.

God forbid, I think. But I shake his hand and keep blushing and toeing the pavement—doing everything he wants me to. Then he finally leaves, and I make a beeline for the Borscht.

The Borscht is always empty at this hour. Ernest is standing behind the bar, wiping the glasses and holding them up to the light. This is an amazing thing, by the way: anytime you come in, these barmen are always wiping glasses, as if their salvation depended on it. He’ll stand here all day—pick up a glass, squint at it, hold it up to the light, breathe on it, and get wiping; he’ll do that for a bit, take another look, this time through the bottom of the glass, and start wiping again…

“Hey, Ernie!” I say. “Leave that thing alone, you’ll wipe a hole through it!”

He looks at me through the glass, grumbles something indistinct, and without saying a word pours me a shot of vodka. I clamber up onto the stool, take a sip, grimace, shake my head, and take another sip. The fridge is humming, the jukebox is playing something quiet, Ernest is puffing into another glass—it’s nice and peaceful. I finish my drink, putting my glass on the bar. Ernest immediately pours me another one. “Feeling better?” he mutters. “Thawing a bit, stalker?”

“You just keep wiping,” I say. “You know, one guy wiped for a while, and he finally summoned an evil spirit. He had a great life after that.”

“Who was this?” asks Ernest suspiciously.

“He was a barman here,” I answer. “Before your time.”

“So what happened?”

“Oh, nothing. Why do you think we got a Visit? He just wouldn’t stop wiping. Who do you figure visited us, huh?”

“You’re full of it today,” says Ernie with approval.

He goes to the kitchen and comes back with a plate of fried sausages. He puts the plate in front of me, passes me the ketchup, and returns to his glasses. Ernest knows his stuff. He’s got an eye for these things, can instantly tell when a stalker’s fresh from the Zone, when he’s got swag, and Ernie knows what a stalker needs. Ernie’s a good guy. Our benefactor.

After I finish the sausages, I light a cigarette and try to estimate how much money Ernest is making on us. I don’t know the going prices in Europe, but I’ve heard rumors that an empty sells for almost two and a half thousand, while Ernie only gives us four hundred. The batteries go for at least a hundred, and we’re lucky to get twenty. That’s probably how it is for everything. Of course, getting the swag to Europe must cost a bundle. You gotta grease a lot of palms—even the stationmaster is probably paid off. Anyway, if you think about it, Ernest doesn’t pocket that much—fifteen to twenty percent at the most—and if he gets caught, that’s ten years of hard labor, guaranteed.

Here my generous meditations are interrupted by some polite type. I don’t even hear him come in, but there he is at my right elbow, asking, “May I sit down?”

“Of course!” I reply. “Go right ahead.”

It’s a skinny little guy with a pointy nose, wearing a bow tie. He looks familiar, I’ve seen him somewhere before, but I can’t remember where. He climbs onto a nearby stool and says to Ernie, “Bourbon, please!” And immediately to me, “Excuse me, I think we’ve met. You work at the International Institute, right?”

“Yes,” I say. “And you?”

He promptly pulls a business card out of his pocket and puts it in front of me. I read “Aloysius Macnaught, Immigration Agent.” Right, of course I know him. He pesters people to leave town. Someone must really want us all to leave Harmont. Almost half the population is already gone, but no, they have to get rid of everyone. I push his card away with one finger and tell him, “No, thanks. I’m not interested. I dream of living my entire life in my hometown.”

“But why?” he asks eagerly. “I mean no offense, but what’s keeping you here?”

Right, like I’ll tell him what it really is. “What a question!” I say. “Sweet childhood memories. My first kiss in the park. My mommy and daddy. The first time I got drunk, in this very bar. Our police station, so dear to my heart.” I take a heavily used handkerchief out of my pocket and put it to my eyes. “No,” I say. “No way!”

He laughs, takes a small sip of bourbon, and says thoughtfully, “I can’t understand you people. Life in Harmont is hard. The city is under military control. The provisions are mediocre. The Zone is so close, it’s like living on top of a volcano. An epidemic could break out at any moment, or something even worse. I understand the old folks. They’re used to this place, they don’t want to leave. But someone like you… How old are you? Can’t be more than twenty-two, twenty-three… You have to understand, our agency is a nonprofit, there’s no one paying us to do this. We just want people to leave this hellhole, to return to normal life. Look, we even cover the costs of relocation, we find you work after the move… For somebody young, like you, we’d pay for your education. No, I don’t get it!”

“What,” I say, “no one wants to leave?”

“No, not exactly no one. Some do agree, especially people with families. But not the young or the old. What is it about this place? It’s just a hole, a provincial town…”

And here I give it to him. “Mr. Aloysius Macnaught!” I say. “You are absolutely right. Our little town is a hole. Always was and always will be. Except right now,” I say, “it’s a hole into the future. And the stuff we fish out of this hole will change your whole stinking world. Life will be different, the way it should be, and no one will want for anything. That’s our hole for you. There’s knowledge pouring through this hole. And when we figure it out, we’ll make everyone rich, and we’ll fly to the stars, and we’ll go wherever we want. That’s the kind of hole we have here…”

At this point I trail off, because I notice that Ernie is looking at me in astonishment, and I feel embarrassed. In general, I don’t like using other people’s words, even if I do happen to like them. Especially since they come out kind of funny. When Kirill’s talking, you can’t stop listening, you almost forget to close your mouth. And here I’m saying the same stuff, but something seems off. Maybe that’s because Kirill never slipped Ernest swag under the counter. Oh well…

Here my Ernie comes to and hurriedly pours me a large shot: Snap out of it, man, what’s wrong with you today? Meanwhile, the pointy-nosed Mr. Macnaught takes another sip of bourbon and says, “Yes, of course. The perpetual batteries, the blue panacea… But do you actually think it’ll be like you said?”

“What I actually think is none of your business,” I say. “I was talking about the town. Now, speaking for myself, I’ll say: What’s so great about your Europe? The eternal boredom? You work all day, watch TV all night; when that’s done, you’re off to bed with some bitch, breeding delinquents. The strikes, the demonstrations, the never-ending politics… To hell with your Europe!”

“Really, why does it have to be Europe?”

“Oh,” I say, “it’s the same story all over, and in the Antarctic it’s cold, too.”

And you know the amazing thing: I’m telling him this, and I completely believe in what I’m saying. And our Zone, the evil bitch, the murderess, is at that moment a hundred times dearer to me than all their Europes and Africas. And I’m not even drunk yet, I simply imagine for a moment how I’d come home strung out after work in a herd of like-minded drones, how I’d get squashed on all sides in their subway, how I’d become jaded and weary of life.

“What do you say?” he asks Ernie.

“I’m a businessman,” Ernie replies with authority. “I’m not some young punk! I’ve invested money in this business. The commandant comes in here sometimes, a general, nothing to sneeze at. Why would I leave?”

Mr. Aloysius Macnaught starts telling him something with numbers, but I’m no longer listening. I take a good swig from my glass, get some change from my pocket, climb down from the stool, and go over to the jukebox to get things going. They have this one song here called “Don’t Come Back Unless You’re Ready.” It does wonders for me after the Zone… All right, the jukebox is screeching away, so I pick up my glass and go into the corner to settle scores with the one-armed bandit. And time begins to fly.

Just as I’m losing my last nickel, Gutalin and Richard Noonan barge into our friendly establishment. Gutalin is plastered already—rolling his eyes and looking to pick a fight—while Richard Noonan is tenderly holding on to his elbow and distracting him with jokes. A pretty pair! Gutalin is huge, curly haired, and as black as an officer’s boot, with arms down to his knees, while Dick is small, round, pink, and mellow, practically aglow.

“Hey!” yells Dick when he sees me. “Red’s here, too! Come here, Red!”

“That’s right!” bellows Gutalin. “There are only two people in this town—Red and me! All the others are pigs, spawn of Satan. Red! You also serve Satan, but you’re still human.”

I come over to them with my glass. Gutalin grabs me by the coat, sits me down at their table, and says, “Sit down, Red! Sit down, servant of Satan! I love you. Let us weep over the sins of humanity—weep in despair!”

“Let us weep,” I say. “Swallow the tears of sin.”

“Because the day is nigh,” proclaims Gutalin. “Because the pale horse has been saddled, and the rider has put a foot in the stirrup. And futile are the prayers of the worshippers of Satan. And only those who renounce him shall be saved. Thou, of human flesh, whom Satan has seduced, who play with his toys and covet his treasures—I tell thee, thou art blind! Awake, fools, before it’s too late! Stamp on the devil’s baubles!” Here he comes to an abrupt halt, as if forgetting what’s next. “Can I get a drink in this place?” he asks in a different voice. “Where am I? You know, Red, I got fired again. An agitator, they said. I was telling them, ‘Awake, you’re blind, plunging into the abyss and dragging other blind men behind you!’ They just laughed. So I socked the boss in the face and left. Now they’ll arrest me. And for what?”

Dick comes over and puts a bottle on the table.

“I’m paying today!” I yell to Ernest.

Dick looks sideways at me.

“It’s all aboveboard,” I say. “We’ll be drinking my bonus.”

“You went into the Zone?” asks Dick. “Did you bring anything out?”

“A full empty,” I say. “For the altar to science. And pocket-fuls of joy. Are you gonna pour or not?”

“An empty!” Gutalin rumbles sadly. “You risked your life for some empty! You’re still alive, but you brought another work of Satan into this world. And you just don’t know, Red, how much sin and grief—”

“Quiet, Gutalin,” I tell him sternly. “Eat, drink, and be merry, because I came back alive. A toast to success!”

That toast gets us going. Gutalin becomes completely depressed—sitting there sobbing, liquid gushing from his eyes like water from a faucet. It’s OK, I’ve seen him do this. It’s one of his stages—streaming tears and preaching that Satan put the Zone there to tempt us, that you can’t take anything out of it, and, if you do, put it back, and live your life as if the Zone didn’t exist. Leave Satan’s works for Satan. I like him, Gutalin. I like eccentrics in general. When he has enough money, he buys swag from anyone, without haggling, and then he sneaks into the Zone at night and buries it there… Lord, is he bawling! Oh well, he’ll cheer up yet.

“What’s a full empty?” asks Dick. “I’ve heard of empties, but what’s a full one? Never heard of it.”

I explain it to him. He nods, smacks his lips. “Yes,” he says. “That’s interesting. That’s something new. Who did you go with? The Russian guy?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “I went with Kirill and Tender. You know, our lab assistant.”

“You must have had your hands full with them.”

“Not at all. They both did pretty well. Especially Kirill, he’s a born stalker,” I say. “If he had more experience, learned some proper patience, I’d go into the Zone with him every day.”

“And every night?” he asks with a drunken laugh.

“Stop that,” I say. “Enough with the jokes.”

“I know,” he says. “Enough with the jokes, or I might get a punch in the face. Let’s say you can take a couple swings at me sometime…”

“Who’s getting punched?” Gutalin comes to life. “Which one of you?”

We grab his arms, barely getting him into his seat. Dick sticks a cigarette in his teeth and lights it. We calm him down. Meanwhile, people keep coming in. There’s no room left at the bar, and most tables are taken. Ernest has called up his girls, and they’re running around, fetching drinks—beer for some, cocktails or vodka for others. Lately I’ve been noticing a lot of new faces in town—young punks with colorful scarves down to the floor. I mention this to Dick, and he nods.

“That’s right,” he says. “They’re starting a lot of construction. The Institute’s putting up three new buildings, and they’re also going to wall off the Zone from the cemetery to the old ranch. The good times for stalkers are coming to an end.”

“Like we stalkers ever had them,” I say. At the same time, I think, What the hell is this? That means I won’t be able to work on the side. Oh well, might be for the best—less temptation. I’ll go into the Zone during the day, like an honest man; the money isn’t as good, of course, but it’s much safer. There’s the boot, the specsuits, and all that crap, and I won’t give a damn about patrols. I can live on my salary, and I’ll drink my bonuses.

Now I get really depressed. I’ll have to count every cent again: This I can afford, this I can’t. I’ll have to pinch pennies for Guta’s gifts… No more bars, only cheap movies… And everything’s gray, all gray. Gray every day, and every evening, and every night.

I sit there thinking this while Dick keeps buzzing in my ear. “Last night I go to the hotel bar for a late-night drink, and I see some new faces in there. I didn’t like them from the start. One of them comes over and starts working up to something, tells me he knows about me, knows who I am and what I do, and hints that he’ll pay good money for certain services…

“An informer,” I say. I’m not too interested in all this, I’ve seen my share of informers and heard plenty of talk about services.

“No, my friend, not an informer. You listen. I talked to him for a bit—being careful, of course, playing the fool. He’s interested in certain items from the Zone, and these items are no joke. Trinkets like batteries, shriekers, and black sparks aren’t for him. And he only hinted at what he does need.”

“So what exactly does he need?” I ask.

“Hell slime, if I understood correctly,” Dick says, and gives me a strange look.

“Ah, so he needs hell slime!” I say. “Maybe he’d like a death lamp as well?”

“I asked him about that, too.”

“Well?”

“Believe it or not, he does.”

“Yeah?” I say. “Then he can go get them himself. It’s easy as pie! We have basements full of hell slime, he can take a bucket and dip right in. It’s his funeral.”

Dick stays silent, looks at me from beneath his brows, and doesn’t even smile. What the hell, is he trying to hire me or something? And then it clicks.

“Wait,” I say. “Who could that have been? We aren’t even allowed to study the hell slime at the Institute.”

“Exactly,” says Dick deliberately, keeping his eyes on me. “It’s research that might pose a danger to humanity. Now do you understand who that was?”

I don’t understand a thing. “An alien?” I say.

He bursts out laughing and pats me on the arm. “Why don’t we have a drink, you simple soul?”

“Why don’t we?” I reply, although I feel mad. Screw this—enough of this “simple soul” business, bastards! “Hey, Gutalin!” I say. “Wake up, let’s have a drink.”

No, Gutalin’s asleep. He’s put his black face down on the black table and is asleep, arms hanging to the floor. Dick and I have a drink without Gutalin.

“All right,” I say. “I might be a simple or a complicated soul, but I’d report this guy. I have no love for the police, but I’d go and report him myself.”

“Yeah,” says Dick. “And the police would ask you: why, exactly, did this fellow come to you with his offers? Hmm?”

I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. You fat pig, you’ve spent three years in town, but you haven’t been in the Zone, and you’ve only seen the hell slime in movies. And if you saw it in real life—saw what it does to a man—you’d shit your pants right there. This is awful stuff, my friend, you shouldn’t take it out of the Zone… As you know, stalkers are crude men, they only care about the money, the more the better, but even the late Slug wouldn’t go for this. The Vulture Burbridge wouldn’t do it. I can’t even imagine who would want hell slime and what they’d want it for.”

“Well,” says Dick, “that’s all very admirable. But you see, I don’t want to be found dead in bed one morning with a suicide note beside me. I’m not a stalker, but I’m also a crude and practical man, and I happen to like life. I’ve been alive for a while, I’m used to it…”

Here Ernest suddenly hollers from behind the bar, “Mr. Noonan! Phone for you!”

“Damn it,” says Dick viciously. “It’s probably the claims department again. They always track me down. Give me a minute, Red.”

He gets up and goes to the phone. I stay with Gutalin and the bottle, and since Gutalin is of no use, I get real chummy with the bottle. Damn that Zone, there’s no getting away from it. Wherever you go, whoever you talk to—it’s always the Zone, the Zone, the Zone… It’s very nice for Kirill to argue that the Zone will help bring about world peace and eternal sunshine. Kirill is a great guy, no one would call him dumb—in fact, he’s as smart as they come—but he doesn’t know shit about life. He can’t even imagine the scum that gathers around the Zone. Here, take a look: someone wants hell slime. No, Gutalin might be a drunk and a religious fanatic, but sometimes you think about it and you wonder: maybe we really should leave Satan’s works for Satan? Hands off the shit…

Here some punk wearing a colorful scarf sits down in Dick’s seat. “Mr. Schuhart?” he asks.

“Yes?” I say.

“My name’s Creon,” he says. “I’m from Malta.”

“OK,” I say. “And how are things in Malta?”

“Things in Malta are all right, but that’s not why I’m here. Ernest referred me to you.”

Ah, I think. Ernest is a bastard after all. He’s got no pity, none at all. Look at this kid—dark skinned, innocent, good-looking, he’s probably never shaved and has never kissed a girl, but what’s that to Ernie? He just wants to herd us all into the Zone—if one out of three returns with swag, that’s a profit already. “Well, and how’s old Ernest doing?” I ask.

He turns around to look at the bar and says, “As far as I can tell, he’s doing pretty well. I’d trade with him.”

“I wouldn’t,” I say. “Want a drink?”

“Thank you, I don’t drink.”

“How about a smoke?”

“Sorry, I don’t smoke either.”

“God damn it!” I say. “Then what do you need money for?”

He reddens, stops smiling, and says softly, “That’s probably my own business, right, Mr. Schuhart?”

“Can’t argue with that,” I say, and pour myself a shot. By now my head is buzzing, and my limbs feel pleasantly relaxed; the Zone has completely let go. “Right now I’m drunk,” I say. “Celebrating, as you see. Went into the Zone, came back alive and with money. It’s not often that you come back alive, and the money is real rare. So let’s postpone the serious discussion.”

He jumps up, says he’s sorry, and I see that Dick is back. He’s standing next to his chair, and from his face I can tell that something happened.

“Well,” I ask, “are your containers leaking again?”

“Yeah,” he says, “them again.”

He sits down, pours himself a drink, and tops mine off, and I see that this isn’t about the claims department. To be honest, he doesn’t give a damn about them—a real hard worker.

“Let’s have a drink, Red,” he says. And without waiting for me, he gulps down his drink and pours another one. “You know,” he says, “Kirill Panov died.”

I don’t even understand through the stupor. So someone’s dead, that’s too bad. “All right,” I say, “let’s drink to the departed…”

He stares at me wide eyed, and only then do I feel my insides turn to mush. I get up, lean on my hands, and look down at him.

“Kirill!” And the silver cobweb is in front of me, and again I hear it crackle as it tears. And through this terrible sound, I hear Dick’s voice as if coming from another room.

“A heart attack, they found him in the shower, naked. No one understands a thing. They asked about you, and I said you were perfectly fine.”

“What’s there to understand?” I say. “It’s the Zone…”

“Sit down,” says Dick. “Sit down and have a drink.”

“The Zone…” I repeat, and I can’t stop. “The Zone… The Zone…”

I see nothing but the silver cobweb. The whole bar is tangled in the cobweb, people are moving around, and the web crackles softly as they touch it. And at the center of it is the Maltese boy, his face childlike and surprised—he doesn’t understand a thing.

“Kid,” I tell him tenderly, “how much money do you need? Is a thousand enough? Take it, take it!” I shove the money at him and shout, “Go to Ernest and tell him that he’s an asshole and a bastard, don’t be afraid, tell him! He’s nothing but a coward… Tell him and then go straight to the station, buy yourself a ticket back to Malta. Don’t stop anywhere!”

I don’t know what else I’m shouting. The next thing I know I’m in front of the bar. Ernest puts a drink in front of me and asks, “You got money today?”

“Yeah, I got money,” I say.

“Can you pay your tab? I have to pay taxes tomorrow.”

And now I see that I’m holding a wad of cash. I’m looking at this dough and mumbling, “Oh, I guess he didn’t take it, Creon from Malta… Too proud, probably. Well, the rest is fate.”

“What’s wrong with you?” asks my buddy Ernie. “Drank a bit much?”

“No,” I say. “I’m totally fine. Up for anything.”

“You should go home,” says Ernie. “You drank too much.”

“Kirill died,” I tell him.

“Which Kirill? The mangy one?”

“You’re mangy yourself, bastard,” I tell him. “You couldn’t make one Kirill out of a thousand of you. You’re an asshole,” I say. “A stinking hustler. You’re dealing in death, you jerk. You bought us all with your money. You want me to take this place apart for you?”

And just as I take a swing, someone suddenly grabs me and drags me away. And I’m no longer thinking and don’t even want to try. I’m screaming, punching, kicking someone, then finally I come to. I’m sitting in the bathroom, completely wet, and my face is bloody. I look in the mirror and don’t recognize myself, and there’s a tic in my cheek—that’s never happened before. And there are noises coming from the barroom, crashes and the sound of dishes breaking, girls are squealing, and I hear Gutalin roaring, like a polar bear in heat, “Get away, bastards! Where’s Red? What did you do with Red, Satan’s spawn?” Then the wail of a police siren.

And as soon as I hear it, everything becomes clear. I remember, know, and understand everything. And there’s nothing left in my soul except icy fury. All right, I think, now I’ll get even with you. You stinking hustler, I’ll show you what a stalker can do. I take a shrieker out of my pocket, a nice new unused one, squeeze it a few times to get it going, open the door to the barroom, and quietly throw it in. Then I open the window and climb out to the street. Of course, I really want to stay and watch the show, but I have to take off. I can’t stand shriekers; they give me nosebleeds.

As I run away, I hear my shrieker going at full blast. First, every dog in the neighborhood starts barking and howling—they always sense it first. Then an awful scream comes from the bar, loud enough to make my ears ring even at that distance. I can just imagine the people running to and fro—some becoming melancholy, some violent, some scared out of their wits… A shrieker is a terrible thing. It’ll be a while before Ernest gets a full bar again. Of course, the bastard will figure out who did it to him, but I don’t give a shit. I’m done. No more stalker Red—I’ve had enough. I’m finished going to my death and teaching other idiots to do the same. You were wrong, Kirill, my friend. I’m sorry, but it turns out that Gutalin was right, not you. We don’t belong here. There’s no good in the Zone.

I climb over the fence and slowly shuffle home. I’m biting my lip—I want to cry, but I can’t. And there’s nothing but emptiness ahead. Only boredom, melancholy, routine. Kirill, my only friend, how did we get here? What will I do without you? You painted the future for me, showed me a new world, a changed world. And now what? Someone in far-off Russia will cry for you, but I can’t cry. And this is all my fault, no one else’s! How could I, the damn fool, dare take him into the garage before his eyes got used to the dark? I’ve always been a lone wolf, never thought of anyone but myself. For once in my life I decided to help someone, to give someone a gift… Why the hell did I even tell him about this empty? And when I realize this, something grabs me by the throat, enough to make me actually want to howl like a wolf. I probably really start howling—people begin to shy away from me, and then I suddenly feel a little better: I see Guta coming.

She’s coming toward me, my beauty, my girl, showing her lovely legs, her skirt swaying above her knees as she walks; all the men ogle her as she passes by, while she keeps walking straight, without looking around, and for some reason I immediately figure out she’s looking for me.

“Hey, Guta,” I say. “Where are you heading?”

She looks me over and quickly takes everything in—my bloody face and my wet jacket and my bruised knuckles. She doesn’t mention any of this but says instead, “Hey, Red. Actually, I was looking for you.”

“I know,” I say. “Let’s go to my place.”

She stays silent, turns away, and looks to the side. Ah, what a head she has, what a neck—like a spirited young filly, proud but already loyal to her master. Then she says, “I don’t know, Red. Maybe you won’t want to see me anymore.”

My heart skips a beat—what does this mean? But I say calmly, “I don’t understand you, Guta. I’m sorry, I’ve had a bit much today, maybe I’m not thinking straight. Why wouldn’t I want to see you anymore?”

I take her arm, and we slowly walk to my house, and all the guys who were ogling her quickly hide their faces. I’ve lived on this street my entire life, and they all know Red Schuhart real well. And the ones who don’t know him would soon get a lesson, and they can feel it.

“My mom told me to get an abortion,” Guta says suddenly. “But I don’t want to.”

I have to walk another couple of steps before I get it.

Meanwhile, Guta keeps going. “I don’t want any abortions, I want to have your child. And you can do as you like. Take off if you want, I won’t keep you.”

I’m listening to her as she’s slowly getting mad, working herself up, listening then gradually tuning out. I can’t think straight at all. Only one stupid thought is spinning in my head: one person less in the world—one person more.

“She’s been telling me,” says Guta, “‘It’s a stalker’s child, why breed freaks? He’s a criminal,’ she says. ‘You two won’t have a family, nothing. Today he’s free—tomorrow he’s in jail.’ Except I don’t care, I’ll manage. I can handle everything myself. I’ll give birth myself, I’ll raise him myself, I’ll make him human myself. I don’t need you. Only don’t you come near me—I won’t let you in the door…”

“Guta,” I say, “my love! Just wait a minute…” And I can’t go on, I’m breaking into stupid, nervous laughter. “Honey,” I say, “why are you chasing me away, really?”

I’m shouting with laughter like a total idiot, while she stops, sticks her face into my chest, and starts bawling.

“What are we going to do now, Red?” she says through her tears. “What are we going to do now?”