Snail on the Slope

Chapter Nine

Discomfort awakened Pepper, sadness, and an unbearable, as it seemed to him, weight on his mind and all his sense organs. Discomfort reached the pain threshold and he groaned involuntarily as he slowly came to.

The burden on his mind turned out to be despair and exasperation, since the truck was not going to the Mainland; once again it was not going to the Mainland - in fact it wasn't going anywhere. It was standing with its engine switched off, icy and dead, doors open wide. The windshield was covered in trembling droplets, which now and again coalesced and flowed in cold streams. The night beyond the glass was lit up by the dazzling flashes of searchlights and headlamps, nothing else could be seen but these continual flashes that made the eyes ache. Nothing could be heard either and Pepper initially even thought he'd gone deaf only realizing after a while that his ears were oppressed by a steady deep chorus of roaring sirens. He began flailing around the cab striking painfully against levers and projections and his blasted suitcase, tried to scrub the windshield, stuck his head out of one door, then the other. He simply couldn't make out where he was, what sort of a place it was and what was going on. War, he thought, my god, it's war! The searchlights beat into his eyes with malicious pleasure, he could see nothing apart from some large unfamiliar building in which all the windows on all the floors were flashing on and off in unison. He could also see an enormous number of patches of lilac mist.

A monstrous voice calmly pronounced, as if in complete silence: "Attention, attention. All personnel to stand by their posts according to regulation number six hundred and seventy-five point Pegasus omicron three hundred and two directive eight hundred and thirteen, for triumphal reception of padishah without special suite, size of shoe fifty-five. I repeat. Attention, attention. All personnel ..." The searchlights stopped racing about and Pepper was able to make out at last the familiar arch and the legend "Welcome," the main street of the Directorate, the dark cottages lining it and various individuals in underwear standing by them with paraffin lamps in their hands. Then he noticed quite close at hand a line of running men in billowing black capes. These were strung out across the whole width of the street as they ran, towing something strangely bright. Looking more closely, Pepper realized they were dragging something like a cross between a fishing net and one used in volleyball, and at once a cracked voice began screaming by his ear: "Why the truck? Why are you standing here?"

Swaying back, he saw next to him an engineer in a white cardboard mask marked on the forehead in indelible pencil "Libidovich," and this engineer crawled straight across him with his filthy boots, jabbing his elbow in his face, snuffling and stinking of sweat. Then he collapsed into the driver's seat and scrabbled for the ignition key; not finding it, he screamed hysterically and rolled out of the cab on the opposite side. All the street lamps went on and it became light as day, though the people with paraffin lamps went on standing in the cottage doorways. Everyone had a butterfly net in his hand and they waved these nets rhythmically, as if driving something unseen from their doors. Along the street toward and past him rolled four grim black machines one after another, like buses only without windows, their roofs were equipped with latticed vanes. After that an ancient armored car turned out of a side street and followed them. Its rusty turret swung around with a piercing squeal as its machine gun's slim barrel rose and fell. The armored car had trouble in squeezing past the truck; the turret hatch opened and a man in a calico nightshirt with dangling ribbons stuck his head out and shouted angrily at Pepper: "Now what's this, my dear? I've got to get by and you're stuck here!" At this Pepper dropped his head on his hands and closed his eyes.

I'll never get out of here, he thought dully. Nobody here needs me, I'm totally useless but they won't let me go even if it means starting a war or causing a flood...

"I'd like to see your papers," said a leisurely old man's voice. Pepper felt himself clapped on the shoulder.

"What?" said Pepper. "Your little papers. Got 'em ready?" It was an old man in an oilskin coat with an obsolete rifle slung across his chest on a worn metal chain. "What papers? What documents? Why?" "Ah, mister Pepper!" said the old man. "Why aren't you carrying out the procedure? All your papers should be in your hand, open for inspection, like in a museum..."

Pepper gave him his identity card. The old man placed his elbows on his rifle and studied the stamp closely, checked the photograph against Pepper's face, then said:

"Looks as if you've got thinner, Herr Pepper. Your face has lost a lot. You're working hard." He handed back the card.

"What's going on?" asked Pepper. "What's happening is what's supposed to be happening," the old man said, suddenly becoming sterner. "Regulation number six hundred and seventy-five point Pegasus is what's going on. That is, escape." "What escape? Where from?"

"Whatever escape the regulation states," said the old man, commencing to climb down the steps. "Anyway they'll be banging I expect, so protect your ears by keeping your mouth open."

"All right," said Pepper. "Thanks."

"What are you doing here, you old sod, creeping about?" came a bad-tempered voice below. It was driver Voldemar. "I'll give you your little documents! There you are, smell them! Right, got it? Now shove off, if you got it..."

A concrete-mixer was towed by amid a general racket. Driver Voldemar, disheveled and bristling, scrambled up into the cab. Muttering curses he started up the engine and slammed the door. The truck shot forward and roared down the street past the people in underwear waving their nets. To the garage, thought Pepper. Oh well, what difference does it make? But I'm not touching that case again. I just don't want to lug it around, to hell with it. He kicked it hatefully. The truck swerved sharply off the main street, slammed into a barricade of empty barrels and carts scattering them in all directions, and sped onward. For some time a splintered droshky board flapped about on the radiator, then whipped off, and crunched under the wheels. The truck was now traveling along narrow side streets. Voldemar, scowling, with his extinguished cigarette on his lip, bending and twisting his body, manipulated the enormous wheel. No, it isn't the garage, Pepper thought. Or the workshops. Or the Mainland. The side streets were dark and empty. Just once, cardboard faces with names, hands outstretched flickered in the headlights and disappeared.

"Hell's flames," said Voldemar. "I wanted to drive straight to the Mainland. I look, and there you are asleep, well thinks I, let's just drop by the garage, play a bit of chess... Then I came across Achilles, the fitter, ran off for some yogurt, brought it back, set up the pieces... I offer the Queen's gambit, he accepts, so far so good. I go P-K.4, he goes P-B6... I tell him: well now start praying. And then it all started... Haven't got a cigarette have you. Pepper?"

Pepper gave him one.

"What's this about an escape?" he asked. "Where are we driving?"

"The usual escape," said Voldemar, lighting up.

"We get them every year. One of the engineers' little machines got away. Order for all, catch it. There they are at it over there..."

The habitations fell away. People were wandering around over open country, lit by the moon. It looked as if they were playing blind-man's buff as they went about on bent legs with their arms spread wide. Everybody was blindfolded. One of them went full tilt into a post and probably uttered a cry of pain, for the others at once halted and cautiously began turning their heads.

"Every year the same game," Voldemar was saying. "They've got photoelements and acoustics of all sorts, cybernetics and layabout guards stuck up on every corner - all the same, every year one of their little machines gets away. Then they tell you: drop everything and go and look for it. Who wants to do that? Who wants to get involved, I ask you? If you just catch sight of it out of the corner of your eye - that's it. Either you get drafted into the engineers or they send you off into the forest somewhere, to the advance base to pickle mushrooms so's you can't talk about what you've seen, for God's sake. That's why the people get around it as best they can. Some of them blindfold themselves so's not to see what's going on. , ... The brighter boys just run around and shout as loud as they can. They ask people for documents, search people or just get up on the roof and howl as if they're taking part, no risk involved..."

"What about us, are we trying to catch anything?" Pepper asked.

"I'll say we are. The public here are out hunting and we're the same as everybody else. Six hours by the clock we'll be on the hunt. There's a directive: if in the course of six hours the runaway mechanism is not detected, it's blown up by remote control. So everything can stay hush-hush. Else it might fall into unauthorized hands. You saw what a mess-up there was in the Directorate? Well, that's heavenly peace - you see what it'll be like in six hours time. See, nobody knows where the machine's got to. It might be in your pocket. And the charge they use is pretty powerful, just to make sure. Last year, for example, the machine turned up in a bathhouse, and there were plenty of people packed in there - for safety. They think a bathhouse is a damp sort of place, out of the way... Well I was there as well. A bathhouse, that's the place, thinks I... So I was blown out of the window, nice and smooth like being on a wave. I hadn't time to blink before I was sitting in a snowdrift, burning beams flying by overhead..."

The land around was flat sickly grass, fitful moonlight, a tired white road. On the left stood the Directorate where lights were racing madly about again.

"What I don't understand," said Pepper, "is how we're going to lay hands on it. We don't even know what it is ... big or small dark or light-colored."

"That you'll see soon enough," Voldemar assured him. "That I'll show you in five minutes. How the clever lads do their hunting. Hell, where's that place... Lost it. Went left, didn't I? Aha, left... Yonder's the machine-depot, we need to be right of that."

The truck veered off the road and went bumping over the hummocks. The storage area was on the left - rows of enormous pale containers, like a dead city on the plain.

... Probably couldn't stand it. It was tested on the vibrostand; they set their minds to tormenting it, dug about in its innards, burned the subtle nerves with soldering-irons, it suffocating from the smell of rosin. They made it do stupid things, they created it to do stupid things, they went on perfecting it to perform stupider things, and in the evenings they left it, tortured, drained of strength in a hot dry cubicle. Finally it decided to go, although it knew everything - the pointlessness of flight, and its own doom. And it went, carrying within itself a self-destruct charge, and is now standing somewhere in the shadows. Softly picking about with its jointed legs, and watching, and listening and waiting... And now it understands with absolute clarity what before it only guessed at: that there is no freedom, whether doors are open before you or not, that everything is stupidity and chaos, there is loneliness alone...

"Ah!" said Voldemar, pleased. "There she is, the little beauty..."

Pepper opened his eyes but all he saw was a black pond of considerable extent, a swamp in fact. The engine roared, a wave of filth rose and crashed onto the windshield. The engine managed another crazy howl and died. It was very quiet.

"Now that's more like it," said Voldemar. "All six wheels spinning like the soap in a bathtub." He stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray and opened his door a little. "There's somebody else out here," he said, then a shout. "Ho, mate! How's it going?"

"Okay!" from somewhere outside.

"Caught it yet?"

"All I've caught is a cold!" from outside. "And five tadpoles."

Voldemar firmly shut his door, and switched on the light; he glanced at Pepper, gave him a wink, retrieved a mandolin from under the seat and commenced to pluck the strings, his head tucked into his right shoulder.

"You just make yourself at home," said he hospitably. "Till morning, till the tow gets here."

"Thank you," Pepper said meekly.

"This doesn't bother you?" asked Voldemar politely.

"No-no," said Pepper. "Don't mind me..." Voldemar leaned his head back, began rolling his eyes and singing in a sad voice:

I see no limit to my many woes. I wander here alone bereft of sense. Please tell me why you do not want my love. Why trample down a love that's so intense?

The mud was slowly slipping down the windshield and the swamp could be seen gleaming beneath the moon; a car of odd design was sticking up in the middle of the swamp. Pepper switched on the wind-shield wipers and after a while, to his amazement, he discovered that, sunk up to the turret in the quagmire, was an ancient armored car.

Another holds you in his arms tonight;

I stand here anxious, weary, and alone.

Voldemar struck the strings with all his might, sang falsetto, and started clearing his throat.

"Hey, mate!" a voice from outside. "Got a bite to eat?"

"What if?" cried Voldemar.

"We've got yogurt!"

"There's two of us!"

"Out you come! There's enough for everybody! We stocked up - we knew we'd have a job on!"

Driver Voldemar turned to Pepper.

"What d'you think?" he said, delighted. "Let's go, eh? We'll have yogurt, maybe a game of tennis ...eh?"

"I don't play tennis," said Pepper.

Voldemar gave a shout: "Okay we're coming! We'll just inflate the boat!"

Quick as a monkey, he clambered out of the cabin and set to work in the back of the truck, metal clanked, something dropped and Voldemar whistled gaily. Then came a splash, a scraping of legs along the side and Voldemar's voice calling from somewhere below: "Okay, Mister Pepper! Hop down here, and don't forget the mandolin!" Below, on the brilliant liquid surface of the mud, lay an inflated dinghy, and in it, legs wide apart, stood Voldemar like a gondolier with a sizeable engineer's shovel in his hand; he smiled delightedly as he gazed up at Pepper.

... In the old rusted armored car of Verdun vintage, it was sickeningly hot and stank of hot oil and gas fumes. A dim lamp burned over the iron command table scarred with indecent messages. Underfoot, squelching mud chilled the feet; a dented tin ammunition rack was packed tight with yogurt bottles, everybody was in pajamas and scratching their hirsute

chests with all five fingers, everybody was drunk, a mandolin was droning. The turret-gunner in a calico shirt, not finding room below, was dropping tobacco ash from up aloft and sometimes fell backward himself, saying each time: "Beg pardon, I took you for someone else..." and they propped him up again in an uproar...

"No," said Pepper. "Thanks, Voldemar, I'll hang on here. I've got some washing to get through... I haven't done my physical exercises yet either."

"Aha," said Voldemar, respecting this, "that's a different matter. I'll drift across then and as soon as you've finished your washing give us a shout and we'll come over for you ... just give us the mandolin."

He floated off with it and Pepper remained sitting and watching him trying at first to row across with his shovel. This just made the dinghy go around in a circle; after that, he began to use the shovel as a pole and all was well. The moon bathed him in its dead light; he was like the last man after the last Great Flood, sailing among the roofs of the highest buildings, very much alone, seeking rescue from loneliness, still full of hope. He poled up to the armored car and banged his fist on the carapace; somebody stuck his head out of the turret, guffawed cheerfully, and dragged him inside upside down. And Pepper was left alone.

He was alone, like the only passenger on a train at night, trundling along with its three battered carriages along some decayed branch line, everything creaks and sways inside the carriage, the smell of locomotive cinders wafts in through the shattered warped windows, cigarette butts leap about the floor along with screwed-up bits of paper. Somebody's forgotten straw hat swings on its hook, and when the train pulls into the terminus, the sole passenger steps out onto the rotting platform and nobody is going to meet him. He's certain nobody's going to meet him, and he'll wander home, brown himself a two-egg omelette on the stove along with a bit of sausage three days old and going green...

The armored car suddenly began to shake and was lit up with convulsive flashes. Hundreds of brilliant multi-colored threads extended from it across the plain, and the glare of the flashes and the moonlight showed circles welling out from the armored car across the smooth mirror of the swamp. Someone in white poked out of the turret; in a strained voice he proclaimed:

"Dear sirs! Ladies and gentlemen! Salute to tthe nation! With the most humble respect, your Excellency, I have the honor to remain, most respected Princess Diko-bella, your obedient servant, technical supervisor, signature indecipherable! ..." The armored car once more started shaking and emitting flashes, then subsided.

I will afflict you with vines to cling to yo"u, thought Pepper, and your accursed race will be swept away by the jungle, your roofs will crumble, the beams will fall, your houses will be grown about with wormwood, the bitter wormwood.

The forest was moving in closer, climbing the hairpins, scrabbling up the cliff overhang preceded by waves of lilac fog, and out of it came crawling, gripping, and crushing, myriads of green tentacles, cesspits gaped open on the streets and houses tumbled into bottomless lakes, jumping trees got up on the concrete runways in front of packed airplanes, where the people lay in piles, anyhow, with their yogurt bottles, slate-gray document-cases and heavy safes, and the ground beneath the cliff yawned and sucked it d'own. That would be so natural, so much to be expected, that no one would be surprised. Everybody would be afraid simply and accept annihilation as a vengeance long feared and expected. Driver Acey would be running like a spider between the swaying cottages looking for Rita, to get what he wanted at last, but be wouldn't have time...

Three rockets went soaring up from the armored car and a military voice bellowed: "Tanks on the right, cover on the left! Crew, under cover!" Someone at once added thickly: "Dames to the left, bunks to the right! Crew to your b-bunks!" Came sounds of neighing and stamping, quite unhuman by now, just as if a herd of pedigree stallions were kicking and thrashing about in that iron box searching for a door to liberty, to the mares. Pepper swung his door wide and peered out. There was swamp beneath his feet, deep swamp, since the truck's monstrous wheels were more than hub deep in the mire. The edge wasn't far off, however.

Pepper crawled onto the back and made the long walk to the tailboard, thudding and clanking as he strode the length of the immense steel trough in the rich moon-shadow. Once there he climbed onto the tailboard and descended by way of endless small ladders to the water. He remained suspended for a time over the icy slime, screwing up his courage, then, as a burst of machinegun fire once more came from the armored car, closed his eyes and jumped. The bog gave way beneath him and continued to do so for a considerable time, it seemed endless, and by the time he touched bottom, the mud was up to his chest. He pressed his whole body down onto the mud, trod with his knees, and used his palms to push off. At first he could only struggle on the spot, but he got the hang of it after a while and began making progress; to his surprise he soon found himself out of the wet.

It'd be a good idea if I could dig up some people somewhere, he thought, just people would do for a start - clean, shaved, considerate, hospitable. No high-flown ideas necessary, no blazing talents. No stunning ideals needed, or self-hatred. Just let them clap hands on seeing me and somebody can run and fill the bath, somebody else provide clean sheets and put the kettle on. Just don't let anybody request documents or demand signatures in triplicate with twenty pairs of fingerprints, let nobody spring to the telephone to report in a meaningful whisper that a stranger had appeared covered in filth, calling himself Pepper, but this could hardly be the truth since Pepper had left for the Mainland and a directive about it had already been issued and would be made public tomorrow... No need either for them to be supporters or opponents of anything in principle. They wouldn't have to be principled opponents of drinking as long as they weren't drunkards themselves. Nor would they have to be supporters of truth at all costs so long as they didn't lie or say spiteful things to anybody's face or behind their backs. They shouldn't demand that anyone conform fully to any set of ideals, just accept and understand him as he was... Good god, thought Pepper, is that too much to ask?"

He emerged onto the road and wandered for a long time toward the Directorate. Searchlights flashed on unremittingly, shadows flitted, clouds of multi-colored smoke continued rising. As Pepper walked on, water gurgled and squelched in his boots, his drying clothes hung like a tent and slapped together like cardboard; every now and again lumps of mud fell from his trousers and slopped onto the road, every time deceiving Pepper into thinking that he'd dropped his wallet and papers causing him to snatch at his pocket, panic-stricken. When he had almost reached the machine depot the frightful idea seized him that his papers had got wet and all the stamps and signatures had run and were now indecipherable and irretrievably suspicious. He came to a stop and opened his wallet with icy hands, he pulled out all his identity cards, passes, certificates, and chits and began examining them under the moon. It turned out that nothing terrible had happened; water had done some damage only to one prolix document on crested paper, certifying that the bearer had undergone a course of inoculations and was passed for work on calculating machines. He put the lot back in his wallet, inserting banknotes neatly between each, and was about to proceed on his way when he suddenly pictured himself coming out onto the highway and people in cardboard masks and beards stuck on anyhow grabbing his arms, blindfolding him, giving him something to smell.

"Search! Search!" they would order. "Remember the smell, employee Pepper?" "Cherchez, mutt, cher-chez" setting him on. Imagining all this; he turned off the road without checking his pace, and ran, stooping, to the machine depot, dived into the shadow of huge, pale containers, got his legs tangled in something soft, and fell full tilt on a pile of rags and tow.

Here it was warm and dry. The rough sides of the containers were hot, something that pleased him at first, but after a while caused him to wonder. Inside the cases all was silent, but he recalled the tale about the machines crawling out of their containers by themselves; he realized that another life was going on inside there and he wasn't afraid. He felt secure even. He eased his sitting position, took off his old boots, peeled off his wet socks, and used the tow to wipe his feet. It was so pleasant here, so warm and cosy, that he thought: Odd if I'm alone here - surely somebody's realized it's far better sitting here than crawling about the waste lands blindfold or hanging around some stinking bog? He leaned his back up against the hot plywood bracing his feet against the hot plywood opposite and felt a strong desire to purr. There was a tiny crack over his head through which he could see a strip of sky pale with moonlight, complete with a few dim stars. From somewhere came rumbling, crashing, the roar of engines, but all that had no connection with him.

Marvelous to stay here for always, he thought. If I can't make it to the Mainland, I'll stay here. Machines, so what? We're all machines. We are the failed machines, or just badly put together.

... The opinion exists, gentlemen, that man will never come to terms with the machine. We shan't argue that, citizens. The director feels the same. And in addition, Claudius-Octavian Hausbotcher takes the same view. What is a machine, after all? An inanimate mechanism, deprived of the full range of feelings and incapable of being cleverer than a man. Moreover its structure is not albuminous. Moreover life cannot be reduced to physical and chemical processes, therefore reason... Here, an intellectualyricist with three chins and a bow tie climbed to the stand, tore mercilessly at his starched shirt-front and sobbingly proclaimed:

"I cannot bear it ... I don't want that... A rosy babe playing with a rattle ... weeping willows bending over a pond ... little girls in white pinafores... They are reading poetry ... they weep ... weep! Over the poet's beautiful lines... I don't want electronic metal to quench those eyes... those lips ... these young modest cheeks... No, a machine will never be cleverer than a man! Because I ... because we ... We do not wish it! And it will never be! Never!!! Never!!!"

Hands reached out with glasses of water, while two hundred and fifty miles above those snow-white curls, silently, deathly, passed an automatic sputnik-interceptor, keen-eyed and unbearably brilliant, stuffed with nuclear explosive...

I don't want that either, Pepper thought, but you don't have to be such a stupid fool as that. You can, of course, announce a campaign to abolish winter, do a bit of shamanism after eating mushrooms full of drugs, beat drums, screech curses, but all the same, it's better to sew yourself a fur coat and buy warm boots... Anyhow, that grizzled protector of timid cheeks will have his little shout from the platform, then steal an oil can from his lover's sewing-machine case, steal up to some electronic giant, and start oiling its pinions, glancing at the dials and giggling respectfully when it gives him a shock. God preserve us from grizzled old fools. And while you're about it, God, save us from clever fools in cardboard masks.

"In my opinion, it's your dreams," someone announced up above in a kindly bass. "I know from experience that dreams can leave a really nasty feeling. Sometimes it's as if you were paralyzed. You can't move, can't work. Then it all wears off. You should work a bit. Why not? Then all the aftereffects disappear in the pleasure of it."

"Oh I can't bring myself to that," returned a thin fretful voice. "I'm sick of it all. Always the same:

metal, plastic, concrete, people. I'm fed up to here with them. I get no pleasure out of it anymore. The world's so beautiful and so full of different things and I sit in one place and die of boredom."

"You should have upped and transferred to another job," creaked some peevish oldster.

"Easily said - transfer! I've been transferred already and I'm bored stiff all the same. And it was hard getting away, let me tell you!"

"All right, now," said the bass judiciously. "Just what do you want? It almost passes understanding. What can one want if not to work?"

"Why can't you understand? I want to live life to the full. I want to see new places, have new experiences, it's always the same old around here..."

"Dismissed!" barked a leaden voice. "Idle chatter! Same old around - good thing. Constant aim. All clear? Repeat!"

"Ah, to hell with you and your orders..."

There could be no doubt it was the machines conversing. Pepper had never set eyes on them and couldn't imagine what they looked like, but he had the feeling that he was hiding under a toyshop counter and hearing the toys talking, toys he'd known since childhood, only huge, and by virtue of that, frightening. That thin hysterical voice belonged of course to a fifteen-foot doll called Jeanne. She had a bright-colored tulle dress on and a fat, pink unmoving face with rolling eyes, fat, foolishly spread arms, and legs with fingers and toes stuck together. The bass was a bear, an enormous Winnie the Pooh bursting out of the container, gentle, shaggy, sawdust-filled, brown, with glass-button eyes. The others were toys, too, but Pepper couldn't place them yet.

"All the same, I suggest you ought to work a bit," rumbled Winnie the Pooh. "Remember, my dear, that there are creatures who are a good deal less fortunate than yourself. Our gardener, for instance. He really wants to work, but he sits here thinking day and night, because he hasn't worked out a plan of action properly. But nobody's heard any complaints from him. Monotonous work's still work. Monotonous pleasure's still pleasure. No reason for talk of death and stuff like that."

"Oh, there's no making you out," said Jeanne the doll. "For you, everything's caused by dreams, or I don't know what. But I've got premonitions. I can't stay still. I know there's going to be a terrible explosion and I'll be blown to tiny pieces. I'll turn into steam. I know. I've seen..."

"Dismissed!" burst out the leaden voice. "I can't stand it! What do you know about explosions? You can run toward the horizon with any speed you like at any angle. But the one whose business it is can overtake you at any distance and that'll be a real explosion, not some intellectual vapor. But I'm not the one whose business it is, am I? Nobody will tell you that, and even if they wanted to tell, they wouldn't be able. I know what I'm saying. All clear? Repeat."

There was a good deal of blind self-assurance in all this. It was probably a huge wind-up tank speaking. With exactly the same blind self-assurance it used to move its rubber tracks forward, scrambling over a boot placed in its way.

"I don't know what you mean," said the Jeanne doll. "But if I fled here to you, the only creatures of my own kind, that doesn't mean, in my view, that I intend at whoever's pleasure to run off to the horizon at some angle. And anyway I would like you to observe that I'm not talking to you... If it's work we're discussing, well I'm not ill, I'm a normal creature, and I need pleasures just as all of you do. But this isn't real work, just a sort of unreal pleasure. I keep waiting for my real work, but there's no sign of it, no sign. I don't know what's the matter but when I start thinking, I think myself into all sorts of nonsense." She gave a sob.

"Well, well, now..." rumbled Winnie the Pooh. "On the whole, yes. Of course ... only... Hmm..."

"It's all true!" observed a new voice, ringing and cheerful. "The little girl's right. There's no real work..."

"Real work, real work!" creaked the old man venomously. "All of a sudden whole seams of real work. Eldorado! King Solomon's mines! They're all around me with their sick insides, sarcomas, delightful fistulas, appetizing adenoids and appendixes, ordinary but so attractive. Let us speak frankly. They get in the way, they prevent you from working. I don't know what the matter is here, perhaps they give off some sort of special odor or they radiate an unknown field, but whenever they're near I go schizophrenic. I become two persons. One half of me longs for enjoyment, yearns to seize hold of and accomplish the necessary, the sweet, the desirable, the other falls into prostration and hammers away at the eternal questions - is it worth it, why, is it moral? ... You, it's you I'm talking about, what are you doing, working?"

"Me?" said Winnie the Pooh. "Of course ... why not? It's odd to hear that from you, I didn't expect. I'm finishing a helicopter design and after that ... I was telling you I'd created a marvelous tractor, such pure enjoyment that was... I believe you have no grounds for doubting that I'm working."

"No, I don't doubt it, don't doubt it at all," the old one ground out. (Horrible boneless old man, between a goblin and an astrologer, wearing a black plush shawl with gold spangles.) "If you'll just tell me where this tractor is?"

"Well now ... I don't quite understand... How do I know? What business is it of mine? The helicopter interests me now..."

"That's just what I'm talking about!" said the Astrologer. "Nothing's your business, seemingly. You're satisfied with everything. Nobody's in your way. They even help you! You gave birth to a tractor, choking with sheer pleasure, and the people took it away from you at once, to keep you concentrating on your main job, so's you didn't enjoy yourself over much. You just ask him whether people help him or not..."

"You talking to me?" Tank bellowed. "Crap! Dismissed! Whenever somebody goes out on the testing area and decides to stretch his legs a bit, keeping his pleasure going, playing about, taking aim on the azimuth, or let's say the vertical bracket, they raise a racket and uproar, their shouting makes^you feel awful, anybody can get upset by it. But I didn't say that anybody was - me, did I? No! You'll have a long wait to hear that from me. Is that clear? Repeat!"

"Me, too, me as well!" Jeanne began chattering. "I've wondered lots of times, why do they exist? Now everything in the world has a meaning, hasn't it? I don't think they do. Probably they're not there, it's a hallucination. When you try to analyze them, and take a sample from the lower parts, then the upper, then the middle, you're sure to run into a wall or go right past them or you fall asleep all of a sudden..."

"Of course they exist, you stupid hysteric!" creaked the Astrologer. "They've got upper, lower, and middle parts, and all the parts are full of diseases. I know nothing more delightful than people, no other creature has so many objects of enjoyment within itself. What can you know about the meaning of their existence?"

"Oh, stop complicating matters!" said the gay, ringing voice. "They're simply beautiful. It's a genuine pleasure to look at them. Not always, of course, but just imagine a garden. It can be as beautiful as you like, but without people it won't be perfect, won't be complete. Just one sort of people would be enough to give it life, they can be little people with bare extremities that never walk but just run and throw stones ... or middling people picking flowers ... it doesn't matter. Even hairy people will do, running about on four extremities. A garden without them is no garden."

"That sort of nonsense could make somebody feel sick," announced Tank. "Bunkum! Gardens reduce visibility, and as for people, they get in a certain person's way all the time, and you can't say anything good about them. Anyhow, if a certain person were to send over a damn good salvo on a building where for some reason people were located, all his desire for work would disappear, he'd feel sleepy, and anybody would fall asleep. Naturally, I don't speak of myself, but if someone were to say it of me, would you object?"

"You've taken to talking a lot about people just lately," said Winnie the Pooh. "Whatever the conversation starts on, you get it around to people."

"Well why on earth not?" the Astrologer jumped in at once. "What's it to you? You're an opportunist! If we feel like talking, then we'll talk. Without asking your permission."

"Please, please," Winnie the Pooh said gloomily. "It's just that before we used to talk mainly about living creatures, enjoyments, plans, but now, I note that people are beginning to occupy a larger and larger part of our conversations and therefore of our thoughts."

A silence ensued. Pepper, trying to move noiselessly, altered his position to be on his side and draw his knees up into his stomach. Winnie the Pooh was wrong. Let them talk about people as much as ever possible. Apparently they had a very poor knowledge of them and it was therefore interesting to hear what they had to say. From out of the mouths of babes and sucklings... When people talked of themselves, they either shoot their mouths off or made you confessions. Sick of it...

"You are pretty silly in your judgments," said the Astrologer. "The gardener, for instance. I hope you realize I'm being reasonably objective so as to share the satisfaction of my friends. You enjoy planting gardens and destroying parks. Splendid. I'm with you. But be so good as to tell me what people have to do with it? What connection have those who lift their legs up against trees or those who do it another way? I sense here a certain unhealthy aestheticism. It's as if I were to operate on glands and demand for my fuller satisfaction that the patient be wrapped in a floral gown..."

"You're just cold by nature," the Gardener put in, but the Astrologer was unheeding.

"Or take yourselves," he went on. "You're forever slinging your bombs and rockets about, calculating corrections and playing about with range-finders. Aren't you indifferent whether there's people in there or not? It might be thought that you could spare a thought for your friends, me, for instance, sewing up wounds!" he spoke dreamily. "You can't imagine what that is - sewing up a really good jagged stomach wound."

"People again, people again," Winnie the Pooh said in a crushed voice. "This is the seventh night we've talked only about people. It's queer for me to talk about this but clearly some sort of link, vague as yet, but powerful, has sprung up between you and people. The nature of this link is totally obscure to me, if I don't count you, Doctor, for whom people are an essential source of satisfaction... All around, it all seems absurd to me, and in my opinion the time has come to ..."

"Dismissed!" roared Tank. "The time has not yet come." "Wh-a-at?" inquired Winnie the Pooh, at a loss. "I say the time has not come," Tank repeated. "Some, of course, are incapable of knowing whether the time has come or not, some - I don't name them - don't even know what time it is that's coming, but someone knows absolutely for certain that the time will inevitably come when it will not only be permissible but necessary to open fire on the people in the buildings! He who does not fire is an enemy! A criminal! Annihilate! That clear? Repeat!"

"I can guess at something like that," put in the Astrologer in an unexpectedly soft tone. "Jagged wounds. Gas gangrene... Third degree radiation burns."

"They're all ghosts," sighed doll Jeanne. "What a bore! How miserable!"

"Since there's no stopping your talk of people," said Winnie the Pooh, "let us try to elucidate the nature of this bond. Let us attempt to reason logically..." "One of the two," said a new voice, measured and dull. "If the bond mentioned exists, then either they or we are the dominant."

"Stupidity," said the Astrologer. "What's this 'or'? Of course we are."

"What's 'dominant'?" asked doll Jeanne, crestfallen.

"In the present context, 'dominant' means prevailing," the lackluster voice elucidated. "As far as the actual phrasing of the question goes, it's not stupid, it's the only true phrasing, if we intend to argue logically."

A pause. Everybody, seemingly, expected a continuation. At last Winnie the Pooh could stand it no longer and asked: "Well?"

"I am not clear if you intend to argue logically." "Yes, yes, we do," a general murmur. "In that case, accepting the existence of a bond as axiomatic, either they are for us, or you are for them. If they are for us and they hinder your work according to the laws of your nature, they should be eliminated, like any other interference. If you are for them, but that situation does not please you, they must similarly be eliminated like any other reason for an unsatisfactory situation. That is all I can say on the subject of your conversation."

Nobody said a word; from inside the containers came noises of scraping and clicking, just as if enormous toys were settling down to sleep, weary of talking. A general uneasiness hung in the air, as when a group of people who have let themselves go in conversation, not sparing anyone in their urge for eloquence, suddenly realize they've gone too far. "Humidity's rising a bit," creaked the Astrologer in a subdued voice. "I've noticed that for ages," squeaked doll Jeanne. "Its verv nice: new figures..."

"Don't know why, my input's acting up," mumbled Winnie the Pooh. "Gardener, you haven't got a spare twenty-two volt accumulator, have you?"

"I've not got anything," responded the Gardener. After this there came a crash as of splintering wood, then a mechanical whistle and Pepper suddenly saw something shining and moving in the crack above him; he seemed to see someone gazing at him in the shadow between the cases. He broke into a cold sweat, got up and tiptoed out into the moonlight and sprinted off toward the road. As he ran with all his strength he seemed to feel dozens of strange grotesque eyes following him and watching the small pitiful figure, defense-less on the plain exposed to every wind, laughing to see his shadow so much larger than himself; out of fear he had forgotten to don his boots and was now scared to go back for them.

He skirted the bridge across the dry gully and could already make out the outlying houses of the Directorate in front of him: he felt breathless and his toes pained him intolerably. He wanted to stop but heard through the noise of his own breathing the staccato clump of a multitude of feet behind him. At this, he lost his head again and raced on with his last strength, not feeling the earth beneath him, nor his own body, spitting out sticky lengths of saliva, all attempts at thinking gone.

The moon raced with him across the plain and the thudding was getting nearer and nearer. He thought, This is it, finish, and the thudding reached him and somebody white, huge, and hot as a driven horse appeared alongside, eclipsing the moon, drove past and began drawing slowly away, long naked legs pumping in furious rhythm. Pepper saw it was a man in a football shirt with number fourteen on it and white running pants with a dark stripe. Pepper was even more frightened. The multitudinous thudding behind him did not cease, groans and painful cries could be heard. They're running, he thought hysterically. They're all running! It's started! And they're running, but it's late, late, late! ..."

He caught vague glimpses of cottages along the main street and frozen faces as he strove to keep up with the long-legged number fourteen, since he had no idea where to run to or where safety lay, and maybe they were already distributing arms somewhere, and I don't know where, and I'm out of it again on the sidelines, but I don't want that, I can't be on the sidelines now, because those in the boxes might be right in their way, but they're my enemies too...

He rushed into the crowd, which gave way before him; a square checkered flag flashed in front of his eyes and exclamations of approval rose all around. Someone familiar ran alongside, speaking: "Don't stop, don't stop." Then he stopped, and everybody clustered around and an enormous wrap was thrown around his shoulders. A booming radio announced:

"Second place, Pepper of Science Security Department with a time of seven minutes twelve and three tenths seconds... Now here's the third man coming!"

The familiar figure turned out to be Proconsul: "You're a great lad, Pepper, I never expected anything like this. When your name was announced at the start I laughed, but I see now you should be included in the main group. Away you go and relax, be at the stadium tomorrow before twelve. We have to get over the assault course somehow. I'm entering you for the fitters workshop team... Don't argue, I'll fix it with Kirn."

Pepper looked around. All about him were crowds of familiar people in cardboard masks. Not far off they were tossing in the air and catching the long-legged man who came in first. He flew up to the very moon, stiff and straight as a log, clutching a large metal cup to his chest. Right across the street hung a sign "Finish," underneath it, glancing at a stopwatch, stood Claudius-Octavian Hausbotcher in a severe black coat with an armlet saying: "Ch. judge."

"... And if you'd taken part in sports dress," rumbled Proconsul, "it would have been possible to take that time into consideration for you officially." Pepper elbowed him aside and wandered off through the crowd on rubbery legs.

"... instead of sweating with fear sitting at home," someone was saying in the crowd, "better take up sport."

"Just said the same thing to Hausbotcher. It's not being scared though, you're not right there; The search groups should have been better organized. Since everybody's running around, let them at least run to some purpose..."

"Whose invention was it? Hausbotcher's! He never misses a trick. He knows what's what!"

"No need to run around in long underpants though. It's one thing to do your duty in long Johns, all respect due. But compete in them - in my view that's a typical organizational oversight. I shall write on the matter."

Pepper escaped from the throng, and wandered off, swaying along the murky street. He felt sick, his chest was hurting and he kept on imagining those things in the cases, extending their metal necks and staring at the road in amazement at the crowd of blindfolded people in underpants, earnestly striving to understand what link existed between them and the activity of this crowd and, of course, failing to do so; whatever served them as sources of patience must now be near exhaustion...

It was dark in Kirn's cottage. A baby was crying.

The hostel door was boarded up and the windows were dark but someone was walking around inside with a shielded lamp and Pepper could make out some pale faces at the first-floor windows warily peeping out.

An inordinately lengthy gun barrel with a thick muzzle-brake was sticking out of the library door, while on the opposite side of the street a shed was burning up; around the conflagration, men in cardboard masks were prowling about with mine detectors, lit up in crimson flame.

Pepper headed for the park. In a dark alley, however, he was approached by a woman who took his arm and led him off without a word. Pepper made no resistance, he was past caring. She was all in black, her hand was soft and warm, her white face shone through the dark.

Alevtina, thought Pepper. She's bided her time all right, he thought with frank lack of shame. Well, what's wrong in that? So she waited. Don't know why, or why I'm giving in to her, but it's me she waited for...

They entered the house. Alevtina switched on the light and said: "I've waited for you here a long time."

"I know," he said.

"So why were you walking past?"

Yes indeed, why? thought Pepper. Probably because I didn't care. "I didn't care," he said.

"Okay, never mind," she said. "Sit down, I'll make you something."

He perched himself on the edge of a chair, put his hands on his knees and watched her fling off the black shawl from her neck and hang it up on a nail - white, plump, warm. Then she disappeared into the recesses of the house and soon a gas heater began humming and there came a sound of water splashing. He experienced severe pain in the soles of his feet, drew up his leg and looked at the bare sole. The balls of his toes were bloody, and the blood had mixed with dust and dried in black crusts. He pictured himself submerging his feet in hot water, at first very painful, then the pain passing and being soothed. Today I'll sleep in the bath, he thought. And she can come in and pour in hot water.

"This way," Alevtina summoned him.

He rose with difficulty, all his bones seemed to creak together. He limped across the ginger carpet to the door that led into the corridor, in the corridor, along a black and white carpet to a dead end, where the bathroom door was already open wide. The businesslike blue flame in the geyser hummed, the tiles sparkled, and Alevtina bent over the bath sprinkling powder into the water. While he was getting undressed, stripping off his underclothes stiff with dirt, she fluffed up the water; above the water rose a blanket of foam, over the rim of the bath it came, white as snow. He sank into that foam closing his eyes from pleasure and the pain in his feet, while Alevtina seated herself on the edge of the bath and gazed at him, sweetly smiling, so kind, so welcoming, and not a word about documents.

She washed his head as he spat water out and snorted and brooded over her strong, expert hands just like his mother's, just as good a cook too, likely, then she asked: "Want your back rubbed?"

He slapped his ear to get rid of the soap and water and said: "Well of course, surely! ..." She scrubbed his back with a rough loofah and turned on the shower.

"Hold on," he said. "I want to lie just like this a bit longer. I'll let this water out now, let in fresh and just lie here, and you sit there. Please."

She turned the shower off, went out for a moment, and came back with a stool.

"Lovely!" said he. "You know, I've never felt so good here as now."

"There you are," she smiled. "And you never wanted to."

"How did I know?"

"Why did you have to know in advance? You could have just tried. What had you to lose? You married?"

"I don't know," he said. "Not now, seemingly."

"I thought as much. Loved her a lot, didn't you? What was she like?"

"What was she like? ... She wasn't afraid of anything. And she was kind. We used to daydream about the forest."

"What forest?"

"What d'you mean? There's only one."

"Ours, you mean?"

"It's not yours. It's its own. Anyway maybe it really is ours. Only it's hard to picture it like that."

"I've never been in the forest," said Alevtina. "They say it's frightening."

"The unknown always is. Everything would be simple if people learned not to be afraid of the unknown."

"Well I think you shouldn't invent things," she said. "If there was a bit less making things up, there wouldn't be anything unknown in the world. Peppy, you're always making things up."

"What about the forest?" he reminded her.

"Well, what about it? I've never got there, but if I did, I don't think I'd do too badly. Where there's a forest, there's paths, where there's paths, there's people, and you can always get by with people."

"What if there's no people?"

"If there's no people then there's nothing to do there. You have to stick to people, they won't let you down."

"No," Pepper said. "It's not as simple as that. I'm going downhill, people and all. I don't understand a thing about them."

"Lord, what on earth don't you understand?"

"Anything. That's what started me dreaming about the forest, incidentally. Only now I see that it's no easier in the forest."

She shook her head.

"What a child you still are," she said. "Why can't you ever understand that nothing exists in the world except love, food, and power. All rolled up together of course, but whatever thread you pull, you're sure to arrive at love, or power, or food..."

"No," said Pepper. "I don't want that."

"Darling," she said quietly. "Who's going to ask you whether you want it or not. Of course, I might ask you: what're you tossing about for, Peppy, what the hell more do you want?"

"I don't think I need anything," said Pepper. "To clear out of here as far as possible and become an archivist or a restorer. That's all the desires I have."

She shook her head again.

"Hardly. That's a bit too complicated. You need something simpler."

He didn't argue, and she got up.

"Here's your towel," she said. "I've put your under-things over here. Come out and we'll have some tea. You'll have all the tea and raspberry jam you want, then go to bed."

Pepper had already pulled the plug and was standing up in the bath rubbing himself down with a huge shaggy towel, when the windows rattled and there came the muffled thud of a distant explosion. Then he remembered the spares dump and Jeanne the silly, hysterical doll. He cried: "What's that? Where?"

"They've blown up the machine," replied Alevtina. "Don't be afraid."

"Where? Where'd they blow it up? At the depot?"

Alevtina was silent for a while, apparently looking out of the window.

"No," she said at last. "Why the depot? In the park... There's the smoke going up... There they all are, running, running..."