Snail on the Slope

Chapter One

From this height, the forest was like foam, luxuriant and blotchy, a gigantic world - encompassing porous sponge, like an animal waiting in concealment, now fallen asleep and overgrown with rough moss. A formless mask hiding a face, as yet revealed to none.

Pepper shook off his sandals and sat down with his bare legs dangling over the precipice. It seemed to him that his heels at once became damp, as if he had actually immersed them in the warm lilac fog that lay banked up in the shadows under the cliff. He fished out the pebbles he had collected from his pocket and laid them out neatly beside him. He then selected the smallest and gently tossed it down into the living and silent, slumbering, all-enveloping indifference, and the white spark was extinguished, and nothing happened - no branch trembled, no eye half-opened to glance up.

If he were to throw a pebble every one and a half minutes, and if what the one-legged cook, nicknamed Pansy, said was true and what Madame Bardot, head of the Assistance to the Local Population Group, reckoned, if what driver Acey whispered to the unknown man from the Engineering Penetration Group was untrue, and if human intuition was worth anything at all, and if wishes came true once in a lifetime, then at the seventh stone, the bushes behind him would part with a crash, and the director would step out onto the soft crushed grass of the dew-gray clearing. He would be stripped to the waist in his gray garbardines with the lilac braid, breathing heavily, sleek and glossy, yellow-pink and shaggy, looking nowhere in particular, neither at the forest beneath him nor at the sky above him, bending down to bury his arms in the grass, then unbending to raise a breeze with his broad palms, each time the mighty fold on his belly bulging out over his trousers, while air, saturated with carbon dioxide and nicotine, would burst out of his open mouth with a whistling gurgle.

The bushes behind parted with a crash. Pepper looked around cautiously, but it wasn't the director, it was someone he knew, Claudius-Octavian Haus-botcher from the Eradication Group. He approached without haste and halted two paces away, looking Pepper up and down with his piercing dark eyes. He knew something or suspected something, something very important, and this knowledge or suspicion had frozen his long face, the stony face of a man who had brought here to the precipice a strange, alarming piece of news. No one in the whole world knew what this news was, but it was already clear that everything had altered decisively; what had gone before was no longer significant and now, at last, everyone would be required to contribute all he was capable of.

"And whose might these shoes be?" said he, glancing about him.

"They're not shoes, they're sandals," said Pepper. "Indeed?" Hausbotcher sneered and withdrew a large notepad from his pocket. "Sandals? Ver-ry good. But whose sandals are they?"

He edged toward the brink, peeped cautiously down and stepped back smartly.

"Man sits by the precipice," he said, "next to him, sandals. The question inevitably raises itself: whose sandals are they and where is their owner?" "They're my sandals," said Pepper. "Yours?" Hausbotcher looked doubtfully at the large notepad. "You're sitting barefooted, then? Why?"

"Barefoot because I've no choice," explained Pepper. "Yesterday I dropped my right shoe and decided from now on, I'll always sit barefoot." He bent down and looked between his splayed knees. "There she lies. I can just drop this pebble in.. "

Hausbotcher adroitly seized him by the arm and appropriated the pebble.

"It is indeed just a pebble," he said. "That, however, makes no difference as yet. Pepper, it's incomprehensible why you're lying to me. You can't possibly see the shoe from here - even if it's there, and whether it is or not is another question, which will be gone into later - and if you can't see the shoe, ergo you can't hit it with a stone, even if you possessed the necessary accuracy and actually did wish to do that and only that. I mean hitting... But we'll sort all that out presently." He hitched up his trousers and squatted down on his haunches.

"So you were here yesterday as well," he said. "Why? For what reason have you come a second time to the precipice, where the other Directorate personnel, not to mention temporary staff, only come to obey the call of nature?"

Pepper slumped. This is just plain ignorance, he thought. No, no, it's not a challenge, nor is it spite, no need to take it seriously. It's just ignorance. No need to take ignorance seriously. Ignorance excretes itself on the forest. Ignorance always excretes itself over something.

"You like sitting here, seemingly," Hausbotcher went on insinuatingly. "You like the forest a lot, seemingly. You love it, don't you? Answer me!" "Don't you?" asked Pepper.

"Don't you forget yourself," he said aggrieved and nipped open his notepad. "As you very well know, I belong to the Eradication Group and therefore your question, or rather your counterquestion is entirely devoid of meaning. You understand perfectly well that my attitude to the forest is defined by my professional duty; what defines your attitude to it is not clear to me. That's bad, Pepper, you need to think about that. I'm advising you for your own good, not for mine. You mustn't be so unintelligible. Sits on the edge of the cliff in bare feet, throwing pebbles... Why, one asks? In your place I'd tell me everything straight out. Get everything sorted out. Who knows, there could be extenuating circumstances. Nothing's threatening you anyway. Is it, Pepper?"

"No," said Pepper, "that is, of course, yes." "There you are. Simplicity disappears at once and never comes back. Whose hand? we ask. Whither the cast? Or, perhaps, to whom? Or, as it may be, at whom? And why? And how is it you can sit on the edge of the cliff? Is it inborn or have you done special training? I, for example, am unable to sit on the edge of the cliff, and I can't bear to think why I might train for such a thing. I get dizzy at the thought. That's only natural. Nobody needs to sit on the cliff edge. Especially if he doesn't have a permit to enter the forest. Show me your permit, if you please, Pepper." "I haven't got one." "So. Not got. Why is that?"

"I don't know... They won't give me one, that's all."

"That's right, not given out. This we know. And why don't they give you one? I've got one, he's got one, they've got one, plenty of people have them, but for some reason you don't get one."

Pepper stole a cautious glance at him. Hausbotcher's long emaciated nose was sniffing, his eyes constantly blinking.

"Probably it's because I'm an outsider," suggested Pepper. "Probably that's why."

"I'm not the only one taking an interest in you, you know," Hausbotcher confided. "If it were only me! People a bit higher up than me are taking an interest. Listen, Pepper, could you come away from the edge, so we can carry on. I get dizzy looking at you."

Pepper got up and began leaping about on one leg as he fastened his sandal.

"Oh dear, please come away from the edge!" cried Hausbotcher in agony, waving his notepad at Pepper.

"You'll be the death of me someday with your antics."

"That's it," said Pepper, stamping his foot. "I shan't do it again. Let's go, shall we?"

"Let's go," said Hausbotcher. "I assert, however, that you haven't answered a single one of my questions. You pain me, Pepper. Is this any way to go on?" He looked at the bulky notepad and placed it under his armpit with a shrug. "It's very odd, definitely no impressions, let alone information."

"All right, what should I answer?" said Pepper. "I just wanted to have a talk with the director here."

Hausbotcher froze, as if trapped in the bushes. "So that's how you go about it." His voice was altered.

"Go about what? There's no going about..."

"No, no," whispered Hausbotcher, gazing about him, "just keep silent. No need for any words. I realize now. You were right."

"What've you realized? What was I right in?"

"No, no, I haven't understood anything. I haven't understood, period. You may rest absolutely assured. Haven't understood a thing. I wasn't even here, I didn't see you."

They passed by the little bench, climbed the crumbling steps, turned into an alley strewn with red sand, and entered the grounds of the Directorate.

"Total clarity can exist only on a certain level," Hausbotcher was saying. "And everybody should know what he can lay claim to. I claimed certainty on my level, that was my right and I exercised it fully. Where rights end, obligations begin..."

They passed the ten flat cottages with tulle curtains at the windows, passed the garage, cut across the sports ground, and went by dumps and the hostel, in whose doorway stood a deathly-pale warden with motionless pop-eyes, and by the long fencing beyond which could be heard the snarling of engines. They kept quickening their pace and as there was little time left, they began to run. But all the same, they burst into the canteen too late, all the seats were taken. Only at the duty table in the far corner were there two places, the third being occupied by driver Acey, and driver Acey, observing them shuffling in indecision on the threshold, waved his fork at them, inviting them over.

Everybody was drinking yogurt and Pepper took the same, so that they had six bottles on the crusted tablecloth, and when Pepper moved his legs a bit under the table, making himself more comfortable on the backless chair, there was a clink of glass and an empty brandy bottle rolled out between the little tables. Driver Acey swiftly grabbed it and thrust it back under the table; more glass clinked.

"Careful with your feet," he said.

"I couldn't help it," said Pepper. "I didn't know."

"Did I know?" responded Acey. "There's four of them under there. Prove your innocence later if you can."

"Well I, for instance, don't drink at all," said Haus-botcher with dignity.

"We know how you don't drink," said Acey. "That's how we all don't drink."

"But I have liver trouble!" Hausbotcher was growing uneasy. "Look, here's the certificate." He pulled a crumpled exercise-book page out from somewhere; it had a triangular stamp. He shoved it under Pepper's nose. It was indeed a certificate written in an illegible medical hand. Pepper could only make out one word "antabus." "I've got last year's and the year before that as well, only they're in the safe."

Driver Acey didn't look at the paper. He drained a full glass of yogurt, sniffed the joint of his index finger, and asked in a tearful voice:

"Well, what else is there in the forest? Trees." He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "But they don't stand still: jump. Got it?"

"Well?" asked Pepper eagerly, "what was that - jump?"

"Like this. It stands still. A tree, right? Then it starts hunching and bending, then whoosh! There's a noise, crashing, I don't know what all. Ten yards. Smashed my cab. There it is standing again." "Why?" asked Pepper.

" 'Cos it's called a jumping tree," explained Acey pouring himself more yogurt.

"Yesterday, a consignment of new electric saws arrived," announced Hausbotcher, licking his lips. "Phenomenal productivity. I would go so far as to say that they weren't electrosaws but saw-combines. Our saw-combines of eradication."

All around they were drinking yogurt out of cut glasses, tin mugs, little coffee cups, paper cones, straight out of the bottle. Everybody's legs were stuck , under their chairs. And everyone probably could show his certificate of liver, stomach, small intestine trouble. For this year and for the last several.

"Then the manager calls me in," Acey went on, raising his voice, "and he asks why my cab's stove in. 'Again,' he says, 'sod, giving people lifts?' Now you, Mr. Pepper, play chess with him, you might put in a little word for me. He respects you, he often talks of you, 'Pepper,' he says, 'he's a character! I won't give a vehicle for Pepper and don't ask. We can't let a man like that go. Understand, all you zombies, we couldn't carry on without him!' Put in a word, eh?"

"All right," Pepper brought out in a low voice, "I'll try."

"I can speak with the manager," said Hausbotcher. "We served together. I was a captain and he was my lieutenant. He greets me to this day, bringing his hand to his headgear."

"Then there's the mermaids," said Acey, weighing his glass of yogurt. "In big clear lakes. They lie there, get it? Nothing on."

"Your yogurt's putting ideas into your head," said Hausbotcher.

"I haven't seen them myself," rejoined Acey. "But the water from those lakes isn't fit to drink."

"You haven't seen them because they don't exist," said Hausbotcher. "Mermaids, that's mysticism."

"You're another mysticism," said Acey, wiping his eye with a sleeve.

"Wait a bit," said Pepper, "wait a bit. Acey, you say they're lying ... is that all? They can't just lie and that's all."

"Maybe they live underwater and float up onto the surface, just like we go out onto the balcony to escape from smoke-filled rooms on moonlit nights and, eyes closed, bare our face to the chill, then they can just lie. Just lie and that's all. Rest. And talk lazily and smile at each other..."

"Don't argue with me," said Acey, looking obstinately at Hausbotcher. "Have you ever been in the forest? Never been in there once, have you, to hell."

"Silly if I did," said Hausbotcher. "What would I be doing there in your forest? I've got a permit into your forest. And you, Acey, haven't got one at all. Show me, if you please, your permit, Acey."

"I didn't see the mermaids myself," repeated Acey, turning to Pepper, "but I entirely believe in them. Because the boys have told me. So did Kandid even, and he was the one who knew everything about the forest. He used to go into that forest like a man to his woman, put his finger on anything. He perished there in his forest."

"If he did," said Hausbotcher significantly.

"What do you mean 'if'? Man flies off in his helicopter, three years no sight or sound. His obituary was in the paper, we held the wake, what more d'you want? Kandid crashed, that's for sure."

"We don't know enough," said Hausbotcher, "to assert anything with complete certainty."

Acey spat and went to the counter to order another bottle of yogurt. At this, Hausbotcher leaned over and whispered in Pepper's ear, his eyes darting:

"Bear in mind that touching Kandid there was a sealed directive... I consider it right for me to inform you, because you are a person from outside."

"What directive?"

"To regard him as alive," said Hausbotcher in a hollow whisper and moved away. "Nice, fresh yogurt today," he announced loudly.

Noise increased in the canteen. Those who had already breakfasted were getting up, scraping chairs, and making for the exit, lighting up and throwing match-sticks on the floor. Hausbotcher surveyed them malevolently and said to everyone as they passed: "Strange behavior, gentlemen, you can surely see we're having a discussion."

When Acey returned with his bottle, Pepper spoke to him.

"The manager didn't really say he wouldn't provide me with a vehicle, did he? He was just joking, wasn't that it?"

"Why should he? He likes you, Mister Pepper, bored without you and it's just not worth his while to let you go... Well if he lets you, what's in it for him? No joking."

Pepper bit his lip.

"How the devil can I get away? There's nothing more for me to do here. My visa's running out, and anyway I just want to get away."

"Anyhow," said Acey, "if you get three reprimands, they'll sling you out in two shakes. You'll get a special bus, they'll get a driver up in the middle of the night, you won't get time to collect your bits of things... Here the boys work it this way. First warning, a reduction in rank; second, you're sent to the forest to expiate your sins. Third reprimand, thank you and good night. If I wanted the sack, for example, I'd drink half a jar and sock this guy in the jaw," he indicated Hausbotcher. "They'd take away my privileges and transfer me to the crap-wagon. Then what do I do? Drink another half-jar and give him another one - got it? They'd take me off the crap-wagon and send me out to the biostation to catch some old microbes. But I don't go. I drink another half-jar and give it to him across the chops for the third time. Well that's the end of it. Sacked for hooligan conduct and deported in twenty-four hours."

Hausbotcher waved a threatening finger at Acey.

"Misinformation, misinformation, Ace. In the first place, at least a month must elapse between the actions, otherwise all the misdemeanors will be regarded as one and the transgressor will simply be put in jail without any further steps being taken within the Directorate. Secondly, following the second misdemeanor, they send the convicted man to the forest at once under guard, so that he will be deprived of any opportunity to carry out a third offense at his own discretion. Don't pay any attention to him, Pepper, he knows nothing about these matters."

Acey took a mouthful of yogurt, frowned, and wheezed out a confession.

"True, enough. I really ... well. I'm sorry, Mister Pepper."

"Doesn't matter, what the..." said Pepper sadly. "I still can't hit a man in the face whichever way you put it."

"It doesn't have to be the ... jaw," said Acey. "You can make it the ... the behind. Or just rip his suit." "No, I can't do it," said Pepper. "Too bad, then," said Acey. "That's your trouble, Mister Pepper. Here's what we'll do. Tomorrow morning around sevenish, come around to the garage, get in my truck, and wait. I'll take you." "You will?" Pepper was overjoyed. "Well I've got to take a load of scrap metal to the mainland. We'll go together."

Somebody suddenly gave a terrible shout in the corner. "What do you think you're doing? You've spilled my soup!"

"A man ought to be simple and straightforward," said Hausbotcher. "I don't understand, Pepper, why you want to get away from here. Nobody wants to leave,just you."

"I'm always like that," said Pepper. "I always do the opposite. Anyway, why should a man always be simple and straightforward?"

"A man ought to be teetotal," announced Acey, sniffing the joint of his index finger, "what d'you think, eh?"

"I don't drink," said Hausbotcher. "And I don't drink for a very simple reason, one that anyone can understand. I have a liver complaint. You can't catch me out, Ace."

"What gets me about the forest," said Acey, "is the swamps. They're hot, get me? It turns me around. I just can't get used to it. You plop in somewhere ... then you're off the brushwood road. There I am in my cab, can't climb out. Just like hot cabbage soup. There's steam coming off it and it smells of cabbage soup - I tried a mouthful once, but it's no good, not enough salt or something ... no, the forest is no place for a man. What more do they want to know about it? They drive their machines on and on into it, like a hole in the ice - and they still write if off, and down they go, and they still...

"Green odorous abundance. Abundance of colors, abundance of smells. Abundance of life. And all of it alien. Somehow familiar, a resemblance somewhere, but profoundly alien. The hardest part was to accept it as alien and familiar at one and the same time, derived from our world, flesh of our flesh - but broken away, not wishing to know us. An apeman might think the same way about us, his descendants, grieving and fearful ..."

"When the order comes out," proclaimed Hausbotcher, "we shall move some real stuff in there, not your lousy bulldozers and landrovers - in two months will turn it all into ... er ... a concrete platform, dry and level."

"You will turn it," said Acey. "If you don't cop one in the jaw, you'll turn your own father into a concrete platform. For straighforwardness sake."

The siren started up thickly. The glass in the windows rattled and above the door a massive bell hammered out, lamps flickered on the walls, while above the counter a large sign lit up: "Get up and leave!" Hausbotcher rose hastily, adjusted his watch and without a word went off at a run.

"Well, I'm off," said Pepper. "Work to be done."

"Time to go," agreed Acey. "Time's up."

He divested himself of his quilted jacket, rolled it up neatly, and moved the chairs so as to lie down, using the jacket as a pillow.

"Tomorrow at seven, then?" said Pepper.

"What?" asked Acey in a drowsy voice.

"I'll be here tomorrow at seven."

"What d'you say?" Acey asked, tossing about on the chairs. "Place is going to the dogs, bastards," he mumbled. "How many times have I told them to get a sofa in here..."

"To the garage," said Pepper. "Your truck."

"Ah-h... Well, to do that thing, we'll see. It's not that easy."

He tucked up his legs, stuck his palms under his armpits, and started snuffling. His arms were heavy and a tattoo could be glimpsed under the hair. "What destroys us" was written there, also, "Ever onward." Pepper made for the exit.

He crossed an enormous puddle in the backyard on a board, skirted a mound of empty jam-jars, crept through a hole in the fence, and entered the Directorate building via the service entrance. It was cold and dark in the corridors, which reeked of tobacco, dust, and old papers. There wasn't a soul anyway, no sound could be heard from behind the leatherette doors. Pepper went up to the second floor by way of a narrow staircase without a handrail, clinging to the dilapidated wall. He went up to a door above which a sign flickered on and off. "Wash your hands before work." A large black letter M showed up on the door. Pepper thrust at the door and experienced a slight shock on discovering it was his own office. That is, of course, it wasn't his office; it was Kirn's, chief of Science Security, but Pepper had put a table in there and now it stood sideways near the door by the tiled wall; half the table was, as usual, taken up with a mothballed Mercedes. Kirn's table stood by the large, well-cleaned window; he was already at work, sitting hunched-up and consulting a slide rule.

"I wanted to wash my hands," said Pepper, at a loss.

"Wash away, wash away," Kim nodded. "There's the washbasin. It's going to be very convenient. Now everybody will be coming to see us."

Pepper went over to the basin and began washing his hands. He washed them in hot and cold water, two kinds of soap, and special grease-absorbent paste, rubbed them with a bast whisp and brushes of varying degrees of stiffness. After that he switched the electric dryer on and for some time held his moist pink hands in the howling stream of warm air.

"They announced at four that they were transferring us to the second floor," said Kim. "Whereabouts were you? With Alevtina?"

"No, I was at the cliff-edge," said Pepper, seating himself at his table.

The door opened wide and Proconsul entered the room with a rush, waved his briefcase in greeting, and disappeared behind the curtain. The door of his study creaked and the bolt shot home. Pepper took the sheet off the Mercedes, sat without moving, then went over to the window and flung it open.

The forest wasn't visible from here, but it was there. It always was there, though it could only be seen from the cliff. Anywhere else in the Directorate something was in the way. In the way were the cream structures of the mechanical workshops and the four-story garage for staff cars. In the way were the cattle-yards of the farm area and the washing hung out near the laundry with its spin dryer permanently out of commission. In the way was the park with its flowerbeds and pavilions, its big-wheel and plaster-of-paris bathers, covered with penciled grafitti. In the way stood cottages with ivy-draped verandahs adorned with the crosses of television antennae. From here, however, the first-floor window, the forest was hidden by a high brick wall, incomplete as yet, but very high, which rose around the flat-roofed one-story Engineering Penetration building. The forest could only be seen from the cliff-edge.

However, even a man who had never seen the forest, heard nothing about it, never thought about it, wasn't afraid of it, and never yearned for it, even such a man could easily have guessed at its existence if only because of the simple existence of the Directorate. I, for example, have thought about the forest, argued about it, dreamed about it, but I never even suspected its actual existence. I became convinced of its existence not when I first went out onto the cliff-edge, but when I first read the notice near the entrance: "Forest Directorate." I stood before this notice with a suitcase in my hand, dusty and dehydrated after the long journey, reading and re-reading it, and felt weak at the knees, for now I knew that the forest existed and that meant that everything that I had thought about it up till now was the toyings of a feeble imagination, pale impotent falsehoods. The forest exists and this vast, somewhat grim building is concerned with its fate.

"Kim," said Pepper, "surely I'll get into the forest. I'm leaving tomorrow, after all."

"You really want to go there?" asked Kim absently. "Hot green swamps, irritable and timorous trees, mermaids, resting on the water under the moon from their mysterious activity in the depths, wary enigmatic aborigines, empty villages ..." "I don't know," said Pepper.

"It's not for you, Peppy," said Kim. "It's only for people who've never thought about the forest, who've never given a curse about it. You take it too much to heart. The forest, for you, is dangerous, it will trap you."

"Very likely," said Pepper, "but after all I came here just to see it."

"What do you want the bitter truth for?" asked Kim. "What'll you do when you've got it? What'll you do in the forest, anyway? Cry over a dream that's become your destiny? Pray for it to be different? Or, who knows, maybe start to re-work what there is and must be?"

"So why did I come here?"

"To convince yourself. Surely you realize how important it is - to be convinced. Other people come for different reasons. Maybe to see miles of firewood, or find the bacteria of life, or write a thesis. Or get a permit, not to go into the forest but just in case: come in handy sometime and not everybody's got one. The limit of their little intentions is to make a luxury park out of the forest, like a sculptor producing a statue from a block of marble. So they can keep it trim. Year in, year out. Not let it be a forest again."

"It's time I got away from here," said Pepper. "There's nothing for me to do here. Somebody's got to go, either me or all of you."

"Let's multiply," said Kim and Pepper seated himself at his table, found the wall-plug by feel, and plugged in the Mercedes.

"Seven hundred and ninety three, five hundred and twenty-two by two hundred and sixty-six, zero eleven."

The machine began to chatter and leap. Pepper waited for it to settle, then hesitantly read out the answer.

"All right. Clear it," said Kim. "Now, six hundred and ninety-eight, three hundred and twelve, divide for me by twelve fifteen..."

Kim dictated the figures, Pepper picked them out, pressed the multiplier and divider keys, added, subtracted, derived roots, everything proceeded as normal.

"Twelve by ten," said Kim. "Multiply."

"One oh oh seven," dictated Pepper automatically, then woke up and said: "Wait, it's lying. It should be a hundred and twenty."

"I know, I know," said Kim, impatient. "One zero zero seven," he repeated. "Now get me the root of ten zero seven..."

"Just a minute," said Pepper.

The bolt clicked again behind the curtain and Proconsul appeared, pink, fresh, and satisfied. He began to wash his hands, humming the while "Ave Maria" in a pleasant voice. After this he announced:

"What a marvel it is after all, this forest, gentlemen! It's criminal how little we talk and write about it! And it is indeed worthy of description. It ennobles, it arouses the highest feelings. It facilitates progress. We, however, are totally unable to stem the spread of unqualified rumors, stories, and jokes. There is no real forest propaganda being done. People talk and think about the forest hell knows..."

"Seven hundred and eighty-five multiplied by four hundred and thirty-two," said Kim.

Proconsul raised his voice. His voice was powerful and well modulated. The Mercedes became inaudible.

" 'As if we lived in the forest...' 'Forest people ...' 'You can't see the wood for the trees.' 'If you're in the forest, you're after firewood.' That's what we have to fight against! To eradicate! Let's say that you, Monsieur Pepper, don't fight against it, why not? After all, you could do a detailed, meaningful lecture on the forest at the club, but you do no such thing. I've been keeping tabs on you for quite a while, it's been wasted time waiting. What's the matter?"

"Well, I've never been there, have I?" said Pepper. "That doesn't matter. I haven't been there either, but I've read a lecture, and judging by the response, it was most useful. It's not whether you've been in the forest or not, it's a matter of ridding the facts of this encrustation of mysticism and superstition, laying bare the essence of things, having cleansed it of adornments placed upon it by philistines and utilitarians..."

"Twice eight divide into forty-nine minus seven times seven," said Kim.

The Mercedes got going. Proconsul once again raised his voice:

"I did it as a trained philosopher. You could do it as a qualified linguist. I'll give you the points and you can develop them in the light of the latest linguistic research ... if that's the theme of your thesis?"

"It's 'Stylistic and Rhythmic Characteristics of Feminine Prose in the Late Heian based on Makwa-no Sosi,' " said Pepper. "I'm afraid that ..."

"Ex ... cell ... ent! Just the thing. And emphasize the fact that it's not swamps, it's excellent therapeutic mud-baths; not jumping trees but the end product of high-power research; not natives or savages, rather an ancient civilization of proud, free, modest, and powerful people with noble intentions. And no mermaids. No lilac veils of fog, no veiled hints - forgive me for a poor pun - That will be excellent, mynheer Pepper, just splendid. It's a good thing you know the forest, so's you can introduce your own personal impressions. My lecture was good too, but, I fear, somewhat over-speculative. As the basis of my material, I made use of conference minutes. Whereas you as one who has researched into the forest ..."

"I'm not a forest researcher," said Pepper earnestly. "I'm not allowed into the forest. I don't know the forest at all."

Proconsul, nodding absently, wrote something swiftly on his shirt cuff.

"Yes!" said he. "Yes, yes. It is the bitter truth, alas. Alas, we still find pockets of formalism, bureaucracy, heuristic approach to the personality... You can talk about that as well, by the way. You can, yes you can, everybody talks about that. Meanwhile, I shall attempt to get your speech agreed with the higher-ups. I'm damned glad that you'll give us a hand in our work after all, Pepper. I've had a very careful eye on you for a very long time... There you are then. I've noted your name down for next week!"

Pepper unplugged the Mercedes.

"I won't be here next week. My visa has expired and

I'm going tomorrow."

"Well, we'll fix that somehow. I'll go to the director, he's a club member himself, he'll understand. You can reckon to stay another week."

"No," said Pepper. "That won't be necessary." "Oh, yes it will!" said Proconsul, looking him straight in the eye. "You know perfectly well it is, Pepper! Good day."

He brought two fingers to his temple and made off, waving his briefcase.

"It's like a spider's web!" said Pepper. "Am I a fly to them or what? The manager doesn't want me to leave, Alevtina doesn't and now this one..."

"I don't want you to leave either," said Kim.

"But I can't stand it here anymore!" "Seven hundred and eighty-seven, multiply by four hundred and thirty-two..."

"I'll leave all the same," thought Pepper, depressing the keys. "I'll leave anyway. You may not want it but I will. I shan't be playing ping-pong with you, or playing chess, or sleeping with you, or drinking tea with jam. I don't want to sing you any more songs or calculate for you on the Mercedes, sort out your arguments for you or now read you lectures you won't understand anyway. And I'm not going to think for you, either. Think for yourselves, and I'm leaving. Leaving. Leaving. You'll never understand that thinking isn't a pastime, it's a duty..."

Outside, beyond the incomplete wall, a piledriver thumped heavily, pneumatic hammers knocked, bricks spilled with a roar. Four workmen in forage caps were sitting side by side, stripped to the waist and smoking. As a finishing stroke, a motorcycle roared into life under his window and ticked over noisily.

"Somebody from the forest," said Kim. "Better multiply me sixteen by sixteen."

The door burst open and a man ran into the room. He had on a boiler-suit and an unbuttoned hood dangled on his chest from a length of radio flex. From boots to waist the boiler-suit bristled with the pale-pink arrows of young shoots while the right leg was entwined with an orange plaited liana of endless length and which trailed along the floor. The liana was still twitching a bit and it seemed to Pepper a very tentacle of the forest, which would reach out at any moment and drag the man back - through the corridors of the Directorate down the staircase, along the yard wall, past the canteen and the workshops, then down the dusty road, through the park, past the statues and pavilions, up to the entrance to the Serpentine, to the gates, but not into them, past them to the precipice, and down...

He was wearing motorcycle goggles, and with his face thickly powdered with dust, Pepper did not at once recognize Stoyan Stoyanov from the biostation.

He was holding a large paper bag. He made several steps on the tiled floor with its mosaic picturing a woman taking a shower, and halted in front of Kim, concealing the paper bag behind his back and making odd head movements as if his neck was itching.

"Kim," he said, "it's me."

Kim made no reply. His pen could be heard tearing and scratching the paper.

"Kimmy," Stogan said, ingratiating. "I'm asking you, on my knees."

"Get lost," said Kim. "Maniac."

"It's the very last time," said Stoyan. "The very, very last little time!"

He moved his head again and Pepper saw in the depression at the back of his skinny shaven neck a tiny little pink shoot, sharply pointed and already twining, trembling, avid.

"Just pass it over and say it's from Stoyan, that's all. If he starts telling you to go to the cinema, tell him you've got urgent overtime. If he offers you tea, say you've already had some. And don't accept any wine if he suggests it. Eh? Kimmikins! For the very last time for ever and ever!"

"What're you fidgeting about for?" Kim asked irritably. "Here, turn around!" "Got one again?" asked Stoyan, turning. "Well, it doesn't matter. Just so you hand that over, nothing else matters."

Kim, leaning forward over the table, was busy with his neck, kneading and massaging, elbows spread. He bared his teeth from squeamishness and muttered curses. Stoyan patiently shifted his weight from foot to foot, head bent and neck extended.

"Hello, Peppy," said he. "Long time no see. What're you doing here? I've brought some again ... what can I do? ... Very, very last time ever." He unwrapped the paper and showed Pepper a small bunch of poison-green forest flowers. "Boy, what a smell! What a smell!"

"Stop pulling, you," cried Kim. "Stand still. Maniac.

Useless."

"Maniac. Useless," agreed Stoyan ecstatically. "But! For the last time ever and ever!"

The pink shoots on his boiler-suit were already wilted and wrinkling, raining down on the brick face of the lady under the shower.

"There," said Kirn. "Now get out."

He moved away from Stoyan and threw something half alive, squirming and bloody into the waste-bin.

"I'm going," said Stoyan. "Right away. But, well, our Rita's acting up again. I'm afraid to be away from the biostation. Peppy, you might come over and have a word with them, eh?"

"What next!" said Kim. "Pepper's not needed there."

"What d'you mean, not needed?" Stoyan exclaimed. "Quentin's fading away before your eyes! Just listen. Rita ran off a week ago - all right. Okay, what can you do? But, she came back that night all wet, white, and icy cold. The guard was questioning her, unarmed, and she did something to him, so he's been senseless ever since. And the whole experimental compound has been invaded by grass."

"Well?" said Kim.

"Quentin cried all morning..."

"I know all about that," Kim broke in. "What I don't get is how Pepper comes into it."

"What d' you mean how? What're you talking about? Who else if not Pepper? Not me, eh? And not you... We're not calling in Hausbotcher, Claudius-Octavian."

"Stop it," said Kim, slamming his palm on the table. "Get back to work and don't let me see you here in working hours again. Don't make me lose my temper."

"All right," said Stoyan hastily. "Okay. I'm off. You'll hand it over?"

He placed the bouquet on the table and ran off, shouting as he left: "and the cess-pit's working again."

Kim picked up a broom and swept all the droppings into a corner.

"Mad fool," he said. "And that Rita... Now calculate the lot again. To hell with them and their love affairs..."

The motorbike started banging nerve-rackingly under the window, then all was quiet, with only the piledriver thudding behind the wall.

"Pepper," said Kim. "Why were you at the cliff this morning?"

"I was hoping to catch sight of the director. I was told he sometimes does physical jerks there. I wanted to ask him to send me but he didn't come. You know, Kim, I think everybody lies here. Sometimes I even think you do."

"Director," said Kim, ruminating, "you know that's an idea. You're on the ball. You've got guts..."

"All the same, I'm leaving tomorrow" said Pepper. "Acey's taking me, he promised. Tomorrow I shan't be here, official."

"I never expected that, no," continued Kim, unheeding. "Plenty of guts ... maybe we should send you over there, to sort things out..."