The Doomed City

1

The water flowed out lukewarm and tasted vile. The showerhead was set unnaturally high, beyond his reach, and the feeble jets watered absolutely everything except what they were meant to. The drain was blocked, as usual, and the water above the grating sloshed about under his feet. And anyway, it was outrageous that he’d had to wait. Andrei listened: they were still droning and jabbering in the locker room. He thought he heard his name mentioned. Andrei twisted around and started squirming with his back, trying to catch the flow on his spine—he slipped, grabbed hold of the rough concrete wall, and swore under his breath. Damn them all to hell, why didn’t they realize they ought to build a separate shower for government employees? I hate hanging around here like some kind of bad smell…

On the door in front of his nose someone had scratched, LOOK RIGHT. Andrei automatically looked to the right, where someone had scratched, LOOK BACK. Andrei got the idea. OK, we know the deal, we learned that in school, we used to write the same stuff ourselves… He shut off the water. It was quiet in the locker room. He cautiously opened the door and glanced out. Thank God, they’d gone…

He walked out, squeamishly turning up his toes as he hobbled across the dirty tiles toward his clothes. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted some kind of movement over by the wall. Peering in that direction, he discovered a pair of skinny buttocks, overgrown with black wool. So that was it, the usual picture: a naked man kneeling on the bench, staring into the women’s locker room through a chink in the corner. Frozen absolutely still in his intent concentration.

Andrei took a towel and started wiping himself down. The towel was a cheap one, government issue, impregnated with the smell of carbolic, and it didn’t really absorb the water but just smeared it across his skin.

The naked man was still ogling. His pose was unnatural, like a hanged man’s—the hole in the wall had evidently been made by a teenager, in a low, inconvenient spot. And then the moment must have come when there was nothing left for the man to watch, because he sighed loudly and sat down, lowering his feet onto the floor. And then he saw Andrei.

“She got dressed,” he announced. “A beautiful woman.”

Andrei didn’t say anything.

“I burst a blister again—there you go…” the naked man declared, examining the palm of his hand. “Yet again.” He unfolded a towel and examined it suspiciously on both sides. “I’ll tell you what I don’t understand,” he went on, toweling his head. “Why the hell couldn’t they send some excavators over here? All of us could be replaced by a single excavator, couldn’t we? And here we are scrabbling away with spades, like…”

Andrei shrugged and mumbled something that he didn’t even understand himself.

“Ah?” asked the naked man, freeing his ear from under the towel.

“I said, there are only two excavators in the City,” Andrei growled irritably. The lace on his right shoe had snapped, and now it was impossible to escape a conversation.

“That’s what I’m saying—they should send one over here!” the naked man protested, energetically scrubbing at one side of his hairy pigeon chest. “But with spades… Let me tell you, you have to know how to work with a spade, and how, I ask you, are we supposed to know that, if we’re from City Planning?”

“The excavators are needed somewhere else,” Andrei growled. The damned shoelace just wouldn’t tie.

“Where else is that?” asked the naked man from City Planning, pouncing immediately. “If I understand right, this here is the Great Construction Project. So where are the excavators? Gone to the Greatest Construction Project, have they? I haven’t heard about that one.”

Why the hell do I have to argue with you? Andrei thought balefully. And why am I arguing with him anyway? I ought to agree with him, not argue. If I’d backed him up a couple of times, he’d have left me in peace… No, he wouldn’t have left me in peace anyway, he’d have started talking about naked women—how good it is for his health to ogle them. Obsessive-delusional creep. “What are you beefing about, anyway?” he said, straightening up. “They only ask you to work one hour a day, but you’re whining like they were screwing a pencil up your ass… So he burst a blister! An industrial injury…”

Stunned, the naked man from City Planning stared at Andrei with his mouth half open. Skinny and hairy, with gouty little knees and a crooked little belly…

“You’re all working for your own sake, after all!” Andrei continued, furiously knotting his necktie. “They’re asking you to work for yourselves, not for someone else’s uncle! But no, they’re still dissatisfied, nothing’s right for them. Before the Turning Point he probably carted shit, but now he works in City Planning, and he’s still whining…”

He put on his jacket and started rolling up his overalls. And at that point the man from City Planning finally spoke up. “I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed resentfully. “I didn’t mean anything of the kind. I was only thinking of rationality, efficiency… You surprise me! If you’d like to know, I stormed City Hall in person! And I tell you that if this is the Great Construction Site, then the very best of everything ought to be sent here… and don’t you take the liberty of shouting at me!”

“Aah, it’s pointless trying to talk to you…” Andrei said, and walked out of the locker room, wrapping his overalls in newspaper as he went.

Selma was already waiting for him, sitting on a bench a short distance away. She was smoking pensively, looking in the direction of the foundation pit, with her legs crossed in her usual manner, fresh and pink after her shower. Andrei felt an unpleasant twinge—it could very easily have been her that the hairy little bastard was ogling and drooling over. He walked across, stopped beside her, and laid his palm on her cool neck. “Shall we go?”

She looked up at him, smiled, and rubbed her cheek against his hand. “Let’s just have a cigarette,” she suggested.

“Right,” he agreed, sitting down beside her and lighting up too.

In the foundation pit hundreds of people shuffled about, earth flew off spades, the sun flashed on polished iron. A line of drays loaded with dirt was moving across the opposite slope, and the next shift was gathering by the stacks of concrete slabs. The wind swirled around the reddish dust, carrying fragments of marches from the loudspeakers installed on concrete columns to their ears, and swaying immense sheets of plywood bearing faded slogans: “Heiger said: We must! The City replied: We shall!”; “The Great Construction Site is a blow struck at the nonhumans!”; “The Experiment—on the Experimenters!”

“Otto promised the rugs would come today,” said Selma.

“That’s good,” Andrei answered delightedly. “Take the biggest one there is. We’ll put it on the floor in the parlor.”

“I was going to put it in your study. On the wall. Remember, I said so last year, when we’d only just moved in?”

“In the study?” Andrei said thoughtfully. He imagined his study, the rug, and his guns. It looked great. “Good idea,” he said. “Right. Let’s put it in the study.”

“Only you have to call Ruhmer,” said Selma. “Get him to send a man.”

“You call him,” said Andrei. “I won’t have time… But then… OK, I’ll call. Where shall I get him to send the man? Our place?”

“No, straight to the depot. Will you be back for lunch?”

“Yes, probably. By the way, Izya’s been asking for a long time if he can come by.”

“Well, that’s great! Invite him this evening. It’s ages since we got together. And we should invite Wang, with Mei-lin…”

“Uh-huh… mmm…” said Andrei. Somehow he hadn’t thought of inviting Wang. “Apart from Izya, are you thinking of inviting anyone else from our crowd?” he asked cautiously.

“Our crowd? We could ask the colonel…” Selma said uncertainly. “He’s a really nice man… But anyway, if we do invite anyone from our crowd today, the Dolfusses should be first in line. We’ve been to their place twice already, it’s awkward.”

“If only it could be without his wife,” said Andrei.

“We can’t possibly invite him without his wife.”

“You know what,” said Andrei, “don’t call them yet, and we’ll see how things look this evening.” It was absolutely clear to him that there was no way Wang and the Dolfusses fitted together. “Maybe we ought to invite Chachua instead?”

“Brilliant,” said Selma. “We’ll set him on Madam Dolfuss. And everyone will have a good time.” She dropped her cigarette butt. “Shall we go?”

Raising dust, yet another crowd of Great Builders made its way from the foundation pit toward the shower block—sweaty, loud-voiced, chortling workers from the foundry.

“Yes, let’s,” said Andrei.

Following a grubby little sandy lane between two rows of puny, freshly planted lime trees, they came out at a bus stop, where two battered and peeling buses were still standing, absolutely packed. Andrei looked at his watch: there were seven minutes until the buses left. Red-faced women were pushing a drunk out of the first bus. The drunk was hollering in a hoarse voice, and the women were hollering too, in high, hysterical voices.

“Shall we ride with the louts or walk?” Andrei asked.

“Do you have time?”

“Yes. Let’s go. We’ll walk along the Cliff. It’s a bit cooler there.”

Selma took him by the arm and they turned left into the shade of a five-story building covered in scaffolding, then set off along a small, cobblestoned street toward the Cliff.

This was a desolate, abandoned district. The empty, shabby little houses stood at crooked angles; the roads were overgrown with grass. Before the Turning Point and immediately afterward, it wasn’t really safe to show your face here during the day, let alone at night—the whole area was full of thieves’ hangouts, shady dives, and dens of iniquity. It had been populated by moonshiners, fences handling stolen goods, professional gold hunters, prostitutes who fingered victims for muggers, and other lowlifes. And then measures had been taken: some of them were caught and sent to settlements in the swamps, to work as farm laborers; others—the petty riffraff—were simply scattered to the four winds. In the hurly-burly some of them were put up against the wall, and everything of value that was found here was requisitioned for the City. The city blocks were left deserted. At first, patrols still used to come in here, then they were canceled as unnecessary, and just recently it had been announced that the slums were due for demolition and would be replaced by a belt of recreational land running along the entire cliff edge within the city limits—a promenade and amusement park.

Selma and Andrei rounded the final tumbledown ruin and set off along the cliff top, walking up to their knees in tall, luscious grass. It was cool here—damp, cold air billowed up out of the Abyss. Selma sneezed, and Andrei put his arm around her shoulders.

The granite parapet didn’t extend as far as this stretch yet, and Andrei instinctively tried to keep a good distance away from the cliff edge—five or six steps.

Everyone felt strange on the cliff top. And apparently everyone got the same feeling here—that the world, if you looked at it from this spot, was clearly divided into two equal halves. Looking to the west, there was a boundless, blue-green void—not sea, and not even sky, but precisely a void of a bluish-greenish color. Blue-green Nothing. To the east, towering up vertically and blotting out the sky, was an unbounded expanse of solid yellow, with a narrow protruding terrace, along which the City stretched. The Yellow Wall. A solid, yellow Firmament.

Infinite Void to the west and infinite Solidity to the east. It was absolutely impossible to comprehend these two infinities. You could only grow accustomed to them. Those who couldn’t grow accustomed to them, who simply didn’t know how, tried not to come to the Cliff, so it was a rare thing to meet anyone here. Nowadays lovebirds were pretty much the only ones who came out here, and mostly at night. At night something in the Abyss glowed with a weak, greenish light, as if down there in the depths something was slowly rotting, century by century. This glow gave the black, ragged cliff edge a clearly defined outline, and everywhere here the grass was incredibly tall and soft…

“And when we build the airships,” Selma suddenly said, “what will we do then, go up into the air in them or go down into this Abyss?”

“What airships?” Andrei asked absentmindedly.

“You know, the airships!” Selma exclaimed in surprise, and Andrei realized what she meant.

“Ah, the airships!” he said. “Down. Down, of course. Into the Abyss.”

It was believed among the majority of the citizens working their daily hour at the Great Construction Site that a gigantic airship factory was being built. Heiger thought it best to encourage this opinion in every way that he could—without, however, specifically confirming anything.

“But why down?” Selma asked.

“Well, you see… We’ve tried sending up balloons—unmanned, of course. Something happens to them up there; they explode for some reason we don’t understand. So far not one has gone higher than a kilometer.”

“But what can there be down there? What do you think?”

Andrei shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Ah, you great scientist! Mr. Counselor.” Selma picked up a fragment of an old wooden board with a rusty nail in it out of the grass and tossed it into the Abyss. “To give someone down there a smack on the noggin,” she said.

“Don’t be such a hooligan,” Andrei said good-humoredly.

“But that’s the way I am,” said Selma. “Or had you forgotten?”

Andrei looked her over from head to toe. “No, I hadn’t forgotten,” he said. “Want me to tumble you over into the grass right now?”

“Yes,” said Selma.

Andrei looked around. Two characters in peaked caps were sitting and smoking on the roof of the nearest ruin, with their legs dangling. Right beside them, standing at a skewed angle on a mound of garbage, was a crudely made tripod with a wrecking ball dangling on a crooked chain. “They’re staring,” he said. “A pity. I’d have showed you, Mrs. Counselor.”

“Go on, tumble her over, stop wasting time!” someone shouted in a loud voice from the roof. “You young dork!”

Andrei pretended he hadn’t heard. “Are you going straight home now?” he asked.

Selma looked at her watch. “I’ve got to call in to the hair salon,” she said.

Andrei suddenly got an unfamiliar, exciting feeling. Suddenly he was very clearly aware that here he was, a counselor, an important member of the president’s personal chancellery and a highly respected man, who had a wife—a beautiful wife—and a gracious home, and here was his wife, about to go to the hair salon, because in the evening they would be receiving guests, and the guests would be not just anybody but all respectable and important people, the right kind of people, the best in the City. A sensation of sudden awareness of his own maturity, his own importance and responsibility—could that be it? He was a complete adult, a fully developed, independent individual, married. He was a mature man, standing firmly on his own two feet. The only thing missing was children—he had everything else that real adults had…

“Good day to you, Mr. Counselor!” a respectful voice declared.

They had already emerged from the derelict district. The granite parapet was there, running along on their left, there were patterned concrete slabs under their feet on their right, and ahead of them stood the colossal white bulk of the Glass House, and immediately in their path, standing to attention and holding two fingers to the visor of his uniform cap, was a young, dapper, black-skinned policeman in the light blue uniform of external security.

Andrei nodded to him absentmindedly and said to Selma, “I’m sorry, you were saying something, I got lost in thought…”

“I was saying, don’t forget to call Ruhmer. I’ll need the man for more than the rug now. We have to get in wine, and vodka… The colonel likes whiskey, and Dolfuss likes beer… I think I’ll get a whole crate.”

“Yes! Get him to change the ceiling lamp in the lavatory!” said Andrei. “And you make beef bourguignonne. Shall I send Amalia round?”

They parted at the path leading off from their road to the Glass House. Selma walked on, and Andrei savored watching her walk before he turned to the side and walked toward the west entrance.

The broad plaza, paved with concrete slabs, that surrounded the building was empty, with only the blue uniforms of security men dotted around here and there. As always, new arrivals were loitering idly under the trees bordering the plaza, avidly gawping at the seat of power, and pensioners with walking canes were giving them explanations.

Dolfuss’s old jalopy was already standing at the entrance with the hood raised as always and the bottom half of the driver, encased in glittering chrome leather, protruding from the engine. Standing right beside it was a filthy, stinking farm truck, straight out of the swamps, with grubby, scraped, red and blue legs of beef jutting up untidily above its sides. Flies circled around above the meat. The owner of the truck, a farmer, was arguing abusively with the security guard in the doorway. They had apparently been arguing for quite a long time: the duty head of security was already there, as well as three policemen, and another two were approaching at a leisurely pace, walking up the broad steps from the plaza.

Andrei thought the farmer looked familiar—a skinny beanpole of a man with dangling ends to his mustache. He reeked of sweat, gasoline, and stale alcohol fumes. Andrei showed his pass and walked through into the vestibule, and on the way he heard the farmer demanding to see President Heiger in person and the security guard trying to impress on him that this was the staff entrance and the farmer should go around the building and try his luck at the reception office. As they argued, the men’s voices gradually grew louder and louder.

Andrei rode up in the elevator to the fifth floor and stepped inside a door embellished with an inscription in gold and black: PERSONAL CHANCELLERY OF THE PRESIDENT FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. The couriers sitting at the entrance got to their feet when he entered, and all hid their smoking cigarette butts behind their backs with identical gestures. In the broad, white corridor there was no one else to be seen, but from behind the doors, exactly the way it used to be in the newspaper offices, he could hear telephones ringing, voices briskly dictating, and typewriters clattering. The chancellery was working at full tilt. Andrei opened a door with a plaque that said COUNSELOR A. VORONIN and stepped into his own reception office.

Here too people rose to their feet to greet him: the fat, constantly sweating head of the Geodesy Sector, Quejada; the apathetic, mournful-looking chief of the personnel department, Vareikis; a fidgety, aging woman from the finance office; and some unfamiliar, athletic-looking young boy—he had to be a new arrival, waiting to be presented. And his personal secretary, Amalia, smiling at him as she quickly got to her feet at her little desk with a typewriter by the window.

“Good day, good day, ladies and gentlemen,” Andrei said in a loud voice, putting on his most benign smile. “I beg your pardon! The damned buses are packed solid—I had to foot it all the way from the Construction Site…”

He started shaking hands: Quejada’s massive, sweaty paw, Vareikis’s flaccid fin, the finance lady’s bunch of dry bones (Why the hell has she come to see me? What could she possibly want here?), and the cast-iron blade of the sullen-looking new arrival.

“I think we’ll let the lady to the front of the line,” he said. “Madam, if you please…”—that was to the finance woman. “Is there anything urgent?”—that was to Amalia, in a low voice. “Thank you…” He took the phonogram that she held out to him and opened the door into his own office. “After you, madam, after you…”

He unfolded the telephonogram as he walked over to the desk. Glancing at the piece of paper, he pointed out a chair for the woman to sit on, then sat down and placed the phonogram in front of him.

“What can I do for you?”

The woman started jabbering. Andrei listened to her attentively, smiling with just the corners of his lips and tapping a little pencil on the telephonogram. Everything was clear to him from the first few words she uttered.

“Pardon me,” he said, interrupting her after a minute and a half. “I understand you. It is not actually our practice to hire people as a personal favor. However, in your case, we are undoubtedly dealing with an exception. If your daughter really is so interested in cosmography that she has studied it independently while still in school… Please call my head of personnel. I’ll have a word with him.” He stood up. “Such ambition in our young people should definitely be welcomed and encouraged in every possible way…” He showed her to the door. “This is entirely in the spirit of the new times… Don’t thank me, madam, I am simply performing my duty. All the very best to you…”

He went back to the desk and reread the phonogram: “The president invites Mr. Counselor Voronin to his office at 1400.” That was all. On what business? What for? What should I take with me? Strange… Probably Fritz is simply feeling bored and wants to chew the fat for a while. Fourteen hundred hours—that’s the lunch break. So we’re having lunch with the president…

He picked up the internal phone. “Amalia, let me have Quejada.”

The door opened and Quejada walked in, leading the athletic-looking youth after him by the sleeve. “Allow me to introduce you, Mr. Counselor,” he began straight from the doorway, “to this young man… Douglas Ketcher… He is a new arrival, who arrived here only a month ago, and he gets bored with being stuck in the same place all the time.”

“Well,” Andrei laughed, “we all get bored with being stuck the same place all the time. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Ketcher. Where are you from? And from what time?”

“Dallas, Texas,” the youth replied in a surprisingly deep voice, smiling shyly. “Sixty-three.”

“Have you graduated from anywhere?”

“A regular college. Then I went on a lot of expeditions with geologists. Oil prospecting.”

“Excellent,” said Andrei. “That’s just what we need.” He toyed with the little pencil. “Perhaps you don’t know this, Ketcher, but here it’s customary to ask: Why? Did you run away from something? Or were you seeking adventure? Or were you intrigued by the Experiment?”

Douglas Ketcher frowned, grasped the thumb of his left hand in his right hand, and looked out the window. “You could say I ran away,” he mumbled.

“Their president was shot,” Quejada explained, mopping his face with a handkerchief. “Right there in his home city.”

“Ah, so that’s it,” Andrei said in an understanding tone of voice. “Did you fall under suspicion for some reason?”

The youth shook his head, and Quejada said, “No, that’s not it. It’s a long story. He had very high hopes of this president, the president was his idol—in short, it’s psychological.”

“Goddamn country,” the youth declared. “Nothing will ever save them.”

“I see, I see,” said Andrei, nodding sympathetically. “But you do know that we no longer recognize the Experiment?”

The youth shrugged his powerful shoulders. “That’s all the same to me. I like it here. Only I don’t like being stuck in one place all the time. I get bored in town. And Mr. Quejada has suggested I could go on an expedition…”

“For a start I want to send him to Son’s group,” said Quejada. “He’s a strong youngster, he has some sort of experience, and you know how hard it is to find men to work in the jungle.”

“Well then,” said Andrei. “Very glad to have met you, Ketcher. I like the look of you, and I hope things will continue that way.”

Ketcher nodded awkwardly and got up. Quejada got up too, panting.

“One more thing,” said Andrei, raising his finger. “I’d like to warn you, Ketcher, that the City and the Glass House are interested in you continuing your studies. We don’t need people who simply do things—we have enough of them here. We need qualified people. I’m sure you’d make an excellent oil engineer… What’s his Intelligence Index like, Quejada?”

“Eighty-seven,” said Quejada, chuckling.

“There, you see… I have grounds for my confidence in you.”

“I’ll try my best,” Douglas Ketcher mumbled, and looked at Quejada.

“That’s all we have to say,” said Quejada.

“And that’s all I have to say,” said Andrei. “The best of luck to you… And let Vareikis in to see me.”

As usual, Vareikis didn’t walk in but advanced into the office one part at a time, repeatedly looking back through the crack of the half-open door. Then he closed the door firmly, hobbled soundlessly over to the desk, and sat down. The expression on his face became more emphatically doleful and the corners of his lips turned all the way down.

“Just so I don’t forget,” said Andrei. “That woman from the finance office was here.”

“I know,” Vareikis said quietly. “Her daughter.”

“Yes. Well then, I have no objections.”

“For Quejada,” Vareikis half-asked, half-stated.

“No, I think for the data processors.”

“All right,” said Vareikis, and pulled a notepad out of his inside pocket. “Regulation 017,” he said in a quiet voice.

“Yes?”

“The latest assessment has been completed,” Vareikis said in an even quieter voice. “Eight employees have been identified with an index below the required level of 75.”

“Why 75? According to the regulation the minimum intelligence index is 67.”

“According to a clarification from the President’s Personal Chancellery for Personnel”—Vareikis’s lips barely even moved—“the minimum intelligence index for employees of the President’s Personal Chancellery for Science and Technology is 75.”

“Ah, so that’s it…” said Andrei, scratching the top of his head. “Hmm… Well now, that’s logical.”

“In addition,” Vareikis continued, “five of the eight are even ranked below 67. Here is the list.”

Andrei took the list and looked through it. Half-familiar names, two men and six women… “Oh, come on now,” he said, frowning. “Amalia Torn… That’s my Amalia! What sort of hocus-pocus is this?”

“Fifty-eight,” said Vareikis.

“And the last time?”

“I wasn’t here the last time.”

“She’s a secretary!” said Andrei. “My secretary! My personal secretary!”

Vareikis remained dismally silent.

Andrei glanced though the list again. Rashidov… he’s a geodesist, I think… Someone praised him to me. Or did they lambaste him? Tatyana Postnik. A technician. Ah, she’s the one with the curls and that cute little face, Quejada had something going on with her… ah, no, that’s a different one… “All right,” he said, “I’ll deal with this and we’ll talk about it again. It would be good if you could request clarification through your own channels concerning posts such as secretary, technician… concerning auxiliary personnel. We can’t make the same demands of them as we do of the scientific workers. After all, we have couriers listed on our staff…”

“Very well,” said Vareikis.

“Anything else?” Andrei asked.

“Yes. Regulation 003.”

Andrei frowned. “I don’t recall that one.”

“Advocating the idea of the Experiment.”

“Ah,” said Andrei. “Well?”

“There are regular alarm signals concerning the following individuals.” Vareikis put another sheet of paper in front of Andrei. There were only three names on the list. All were men. All three of them were heads of sectors. Fundamental sectors. Cosmography, Social Psychology, and Geodesy. Sullivan, Butz, and Quejada. Andrei drummed his fingers on the list. What a damned disaster, he thought. Back to the same old dreck. But keep calm. We need to watch our step here. There’s no way to get through to this blockhead, and I still have to work with him for a long, long time… “Disturbing,” he declared. “Very disturbing. I assume the information has been checked? There are no errors?”

“Crosschecked and repeatedly confirmed information,” Vareikis said in a colorless voice. “Sullivan claims that the Experiment on the City is still going on. According to him, the Glass House is continuing the line of the Experiment, regardless of its own intentions. He claims that the Turning Point is only one stage of the Experiment.”

Hallowed words, thought Andrei. Izya says the same thing, and Fritz doesn’t like it at all. Only Izya is allowed to say it, and the unfortunate Sullivan isn’t.

“Quejada,” Vareikis continued. “Expresses admiration for the scientific and technical prowess of the hypothetical experimenters in the presence of his subordinates. Belittles the value of the president’s work and the work of the presidential council. Has twice compared these activities to the scrabbling of mice in a cardboard shoebox…”

Andrei listened with his eyes lowered, keeping a stony face.

“And finally, Butz. Makes hostile remarks about the president. In an inebriated state has referred to the current political leadership as the dictatorship of mediocrity over cretins.”

Andrei couldn’t restrain himself—he groaned. What the hell makes them say it, he thought irritably, pushing the sheet of paper away. The elite, they’re called, and they saw off the branch they’re sitting on… “But even so, you know,” he said to Vareikis. “But even so, you are aware…”

He shouldn’t have said that. It was stupid. Vareikis stared mournfully into his face, without blinking.

“Excellent work, Vareikis,” said Andrei. “I’ve got nothing to worry about with you there looking out for me… I assume this information”—he tapped his fingernail on the sheet of paper—“has already been forwarded through the usual channels?”

“It will be forwarded today,” said Vareikis. “I was obliged to inform you first.”

“Excellent,” Andrei said cheerfully. “Forward it.” He fastened both pieces of paper together with a pin and placed them in the blue folder with the title REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT. “We’ll see what our Ruhmer decides concerning this matter.”

“Since this is not the first time that we have received information of this kind,” Vareikis said, “I assume that Mr. Ruhmer will recommend removing these men from their senior positions.”

Andrei looked at Vareikis, trying to focus his eyes somewhere behind Vareikis’s back. “Yesterday I went to a screening of a new movie,” he said. “The Naked and the Bosses. We approved it, so it will soon be released for the big screen. I really, really do recommend you watch it. You know, it’s such…”

He launched into a leisurely, detailed exposition of this gruesome example of hideous banality, which Fritz had genuinely liked—and he wasn’t the only one. Vareikis listened in silence, nodding every now and then in the most unexpected places—as if suddenly recalling where he was. His face still expressed nothing but gloom and despondency. It was obvious that he had lost the thread long ago and didn’t understand a single thing. At the most crucial point in the plot, when Vareikis had clearly realized that he would have to listen right through to the very end, Andrei broke off with a blatant yawn and said complacently, “Well, and so on, in the same vein. You must watch it… By the way, what kind of impression did young Ketcher make on you?”

“Ketcher? So far I have the impression that he is all right.”

“And so do I,” said Andrei. He picked up the phone. “Do you have anything else for me, Vareikis?”

Vareikis got up. “No,” he said. “Nothing else. May I go?”

Andrei benevolently nodded to him and spoke into the receiver. “Amalia, is there anyone else?”

“Ellisauer, Mr. Counselor.”

“What Ellisauer?” Andrei asked, observing Vareikis cautiously exiting the office, one part at a time.

“The deputy head of the transport department. Concerning the subject of ‘Aquamarine.’”

“Let him wait. Bring in the mail.”

Amalia appeared in the doorway a minute later, and Andrei spent that entire minute moaning gently as he massaged his biceps and squirmed his waist about; everything ached pleasantly after an hour of intensive work with a spade in his hands, and as always he absentmindedly thought what good exercise it was for a man who led a mostly sedentary life.

Amalia closed the door firmly behind her, clattered across the parquet floor in her high heels, stopped beside him, and put the correspondence file on the desk. In a habitual gesture, he put his arm around her firm, narrow hips sheathed in cool silk and patted her on the thigh while he opened the file with his other hand.

“Right, then, what do we have here?” he said cheerfully.

Amalia simply dissolved under his palm—she actually stopped breathing. A funny girl, and devoted as a dog. And she knows her job. He looked up at her. As always happened in these tender moments, her face had turned pale and frightened. When their eyes met, she hesitantly laid her hot, slim hand on his neck below the ear. Her fingers were trembling.

“Well then, babe,” he said endearingly. “Is there anything important in this trash? Or shall we lock the door right now and assume a different position?” That was their code name for fun and games in the armchair and on the carpet. He could never have told anyone what Amalia was like in bed. He had never been in bed with her even once.

“Here are the draft budget figures,” Amalia said in a weak little voice. “Then all sorts of proposals and submissions… Well, and the personal letters—I haven’t opened them.”

“Quite right too,” said Andrei. “What if there was one from some little cutie…”

He let go of her and she gave a feeble sigh.

“Sit down for a moment,” he said. “Don’t go, I’ll be quick.”

He took the first letter that came to hand, tore open the envelope, rapidly glanced through it, and frowned. The technician Yevseenko informed Andrei that Yevseenko’s immediate superior, Quejada, “passes remarks concerning the administration and concerning Mr. Counselor Voronin personally.” Andrei knew this Yevseenko well. He was an extremely strange individual and a hopeless loser—nothing he tried ever went right. He had once stunned Andrei by singing the praises of life in the year 1942 near Leningrad. “Those were good times,” he had said in a strange, dreamy kind of voice. “Just living, without thinking about anything, and if you need something—just tell the men and they’ll get it.” He had served his time as a captain, and in the entire war he had killed only one man—his own political commissar. They were fighting their way out of encirclement at the time. Yevseenko saw the Germans had caught the political commissar and were rummaging through his pockets. He fired at them out of the bushes, killing the political commissar, and then took to his heels. He thought very highly of himself for this exploit: they would have tortured him to death.

Well, what can I do with this fool? This is the sixth denunciation he’s written. And he doesn’t write to Ruhmer, does he, or to Vareikis, but to me. A very amusing psychological twist, that. If he writes to Vareikis or Ruhmer, Quejada will be held accountable for his words. But I won’t touch Quejada—I know all about him, but I won’t touch him, because I value him and I forgive him, everyone knows that. So this way it turns out that Yevseenko has sort of fulfilled his civic duty but no one’s life has been ruined… God almighty, what a creep he is!

Andrei crumpled up the letter, flung it in the wastebasket, and picked up the next one. The writing on the envelope looked familiar to him; it was very distinctive. There was no return address. Inside the envelope was a sheet of paper with text written on a typewriter—a carbon copy, not the top sheet—and below the text a note had been added by hand. Andrei read it without understanding a thing, read it again, turned cold, and glanced at his watch. Then he grabbed the receiver off the white phone and dialed a number.

“Counselor Ruhmer, urgently!” he barked in an altered voice.

“Counselor Ruhmer is busy.”

“This is Counselor Voronin! I said—urgently!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Counselor, Counselor Ruhmer is with the president—”

Andrei flung down the receiver, pushed aside dumbfounded Amalia, and dashed for the door. He had already grabbed the plastic handle before he realized it was too late—he couldn’t get there in time anyway. If it was all true, of course. If it wasn’t all an idiotic hoax…

He walked slowly across to the window, took hold of the velvet-covered handrail, and started watching the plaza. It was empty, as it always was. Light blue uniforms hovering, idle onlookers mooching under the trees, an old woman hobbling past, pushing a baby stroller along in front of her. A car driving past. Andrei waited, clutching the handrail.

Amalia came up to him from behind and gently touched him on the shoulder. “What’s happened?” she asked in a whisper.

“Move away,” he said without turning around. “Sit in the chair.”

Amalia disappeared. Andrei looked at the time again. On his watch an extra minute had already gone by. Of course, he thought. It’s not possible. An idiotic hoax. Or blackmail… And just at that moment a man appeared from under the trees. He looked very small from this height and this distance, and Andrei didn’t recognize him. He remembered the man as being slim and erect, but this man looked bulky and swollen, and Andrei only realized why at the very last moment. He squeezed his eyes shut and backed away from the window.

A short, rumbling boom shattered the silence of the plaza. The windows shuddered and jangled and somewhere below him shards of glass scattered with an irritating tinkling sound. Amalia gave a stifled screech and down below in the plaza frantic voices started shrieking.

With one hand Andrei pushed aside Amalia, who was straining to get to him, or maybe to the window, then forced himself to open his eyes and look. Where the man had been there was a yellowish column of smoke, and he couldn’t see anything beyond it. From every direction light blue uniforms were running toward the spot, and farther away, under the trees, a crowd was rapidly gathering. It was all over.

Andrei walked back to the desk with no feeling in his legs, sat down, and picked up the letter again:

All this was typed with carbon paper—the third or even fourth copy. And below it was a note added by hand:

Andrei raised his eyes and saw Amalia. “Do you remember Denny?” he asked. “Denny Lee, our letters editor…”

Amalia nodded without speaking, then her face suddenly crumpled in horror. “It’s not possible!” she said hoarsely. “It’s not true…”

“He blew himself up,” said Andrei, finding it hard to move his lips. “Probably strapped dynamite around himself. Under his jacket.”

“What for?” said Amalia. She bit on her lip and tears welled up in her eyes, overflowing and running down her little white face and hanging from her chin.

“I don’t understand,” said Andrei. “I don’t understand anything…” He stared blankly at the letter. “We saw each other not long ago… Sure, we cussed and swore at each other; sure, we quarreled…” He looked at Amalia again. “Maybe he tried to get in to see me? Maybe I wouldn’t see him?”

Amalia put her hands over face and shook her head.

And suddenly Andrei felt anger. Not even anger but the same furious exasperation he had felt earlier that day in the locker room after his shower. What the hell! What more do they damn well want? What else do they need, these riffraff? The idiot! What has he proved with this? He doesn’t want to be a swine, he doesn’t want to be a swineherd… He’s bored! Well you can go to hell and take your damned boredom with you! “Stop bawling!” he yelled at Amalia. “Wipe off your nose and get back to your place.”

He tossed the sheet of paper away, jumped up, and went over to the window again.

A huge, dark crowd filled the plaza. At the center of the crowd was an empty, gray space, cordoned off by light blue uniforms, with people in white coats swarming about in it. An ambulance was hysterically howling with its siren, trying to clear a path for itself…

And just what have you really proved? That you don’t want to live with us? What did you have to prove that for, and to whom? That you hate us? You shouldn’t. We do everything that has to be done. It’s not our fault they’re swine. They were swine before us, and they’ll still be swine after us. We can only feed and clothe them, and relieve them of brutish animal suffering, but they’ve never known any spiritual suffering in their lives and they never can. Have we done so very little for them? Look what the City is like now. Clean and orderly, without a trace of the old shambles, chow to spare, duds to spare, soon there’ll be amusements to spare, just give us time—and what else do they need? And you, what have you achieved? Now the ambulance men will scrub your guts off the asphalt—and you’re done… But we have to keep on and on working, keeping the whole behemoth moving, because everything we’ve achieved so far is only the beginning—it still has to be secured, my friend, and once it has been secured, increased… Because maybe on Earth there’s neither God nor devil standing above people, but here there is… You stinking democrat, populist weasel, the brother of my brothers…

But Denny was still there in front of his eyes, the way he was the last time they met, a month or two ago—completely withered somehow, ground down, as if he were ill, and some kind of secret horror was lurking in his sad, extinct eyes—and the words he said right at the end of their rowdy, senseless argument, after he had already gotten up and tossed the crumpled bills onto the little silver dish: “God, what have you been bragging about to me? He’s laying his life on the altar… What for? To stuff people’s bellies! But is that really the goal? In crummy little Denmark they’ve known how to do that for years and years already. OK, so maybe I don’t have the right, as you put it, to crucify myself in the name of everyone. Maybe not everyone knows, but you and I certainly do—that’s not what people need; you’ll never build a genuinely new world that way!”

“And just how, damn and blast it, do you build it? How?” Andrei had bellowed, but Denny merely waved that aside and wouldn’t talk anymore after that.

The white phone rang. Andrei reluctantly went back to the desk and picked it up.

“Andrei? This is Heiger here.”

“Hello, Fritz.”

“Did you know him?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you think about this?”

“A hysterical wimp,” Andrei said through his teeth. “Trash.”

Heiger said nothing for a moment. “Did you get a letter from him?”

“Yes.”

“A strange man,” said Heiger. “All right, then. I’m expecting you at two.”

Andrei put down the receiver, and the phone rang again. This time it was Selma calling. She was badly shaken. Rumors of the explosion had already reached White Court; naturally, along the way they had been distorted beyond all recognition, and now all White Court was in a state of quiet panic.

“Fine, everyone’s safe and sound,” said Andrei. “I’m fine, and Heiger’s fine, and the Glass House is fine… Did you call Ruhmer?”

“To hell with Ruhmer!” Selma exclaimed, infuriated. “I ran back from the salon almost out of my mind—Madam Dolfuss burst in, as white as a ghost, and set the walls shaking, howling that someone had tried to kill Heiger and half the building had been blown to pieces…”

“Oh, come on,” Andrei said impatiently. “I haven’t got time.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Some psychopath—” Andrei stopped, realizing what he was saying. “Some blockhead was lugging explosives across the plaza and he dropped them, probably.”

“It definitely wasn’t an assassination attempt?”

“I don’t know, do I? Ruhmer’s handling it, but I don’t know anything.”

Selma breathed into the phone for a while. “You’re just lying, probably, Mr. Counselor,” she said, and hung up.

Andrei walked around the desk and glanced out into the reception office. Amalia was in her place—stern, with her lips pursed, absolutely unapproachable—and her fingers were flying over the keyboard at her usual furious speed; not a trace was left on her face of tears, snot, or any kind of emotion. Andrei looked at her tenderly. That’s my girl. Screw you, Vareikis, he thought with boundless malice. I’ll throw you out on your ass first… His view of Amalia was suddenly blocked off. Obsequiously looming over him at a superhuman height was a face, squashed in from both sides, that belonged to Ellisauer from the transport department.

“Ah,” said Andrei. “Ellisauer… I’m sorry, I won’t see you today. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, please.”

Without saying a word, Ellisauer bowed, breaking himself in half, and disappeared. Amalia was already standing with her notepad and pencil at the ready. “Mr. Counselor?”

“Come in for a moment,” said Andrei. He went back to his desk, and the white phone immediately rang.

“Voronin?” said a nasal voice, hoarse from smoking. “It’s Ruhmer here. Well, how are you doing?”

“Fine,” said Andrei, gesturing for Amalia to stay: Don’t go, I’ll just be a moment.

“How’s your wife?”

“Just fine—she told me to say hello. By the way, send her two men from the service department today, something needs to be done around the house.”

“Two? OK. Where to?”

“They can call her, she’ll tell them. Tell them to call right now.”

“OK,” said Ruhmer. “I’ll do it. Not immediately, but I’ll do it… I’m totally swamped, you know, with this garbage. Do you know the official version?”

“How could I?” Andrei asked angrily

“Basically, it goes like this. An accident with explosives. While explosive substances were being carried… Or let’s say someone was driving them somewhere. Drunk.”

“I get it, I get it,” said Andrei. “That’s right. Good move.”

“Aha,” said Ruhmer. “Well, then he stumbled, or… Anyway, the details are being clarified. The culprits will be punished. They’ll duplicate the information in a minute and bring it to you. Only you just answer me this. You got a letter, didn’t you? Who else there read it?”

“No one.”

“What about your secretary?”

“I told you: no one. I always open the personal letters myself.”

“That’s right,” Ruhmer said approvingly. “That’s the right arrangement you’ve got there. But, you know, some people have made a real rat’s nest of their letters… Absolutely anyone reads them… So no one read yours, then. That’s good. You keep it well hidden, that letter—the double-zero file. One of my flunkeys will drop by right now, you give it to him, OK?”

“What for?” Andrei asked.

Ruhmer was stuck for an answer. “Well, how can I put it…” he mumbled. “It might come in handy… Apparently you knew him.”

“Who?”

“You know, the guy.” Ruhmer giggled. “That worker… with the explosive…”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, we won’t talk about it on the phone; this lackey of mine will ask you a couple of questions, you answer him.”

“I’ve got no time for that,” Andrei said angrily. “Fritz has asked me to go to see him.”

“Ah, come on, just five minutes,” Ruhmer whined. “What bother is that to you, honest to God… You can’t even answer two questions now…”

“OK then, OK,” Andrei said impatiently. “Is that all?”

“I’ve already sent him over to you; he’ll be there in a minute. His name’s Cvirik. A senior adjutor…”

“All right, all right, agreed.”

“Just two questions, that’s all. He won’t hold you up.”

“Is that all?” Andrei asked again.

“That’s it. Now I’ve got to call around to the other counselors.”

“Don’t you forget to send those men to Selma.”

“I won’t forget. I’ve already noted it down here. See you.”

Andrei hung up and said to Amalia, “Don’t forget, you didn’t see or hear a thing.”

Amalia gave him a frightened glance and jabbed her finger toward the window without saying anything.

“Exactly,” said Andrei. “You don’t know any names and you don’t know anything about what happened.”

The door opened slightly and a vaguely familiar pale face with sour little eyes was thrust into the office.

“Wait!” Andrei said curtly. “I’ll call you.”

The face disappeared.

“You understand?” Andrei asked. “There was a big bang outside, and you don’t know anything else. The official version is this: a drunk worker, carrying explosive from the depot, the culprits are being identified.” He paused for a moment, pondering. Where have I seen that ugly mug before? And the name’s familiar… Cvirik… Cvirik…

“Why did he do it?” Amalia asked in a quiet voice. Her eyes turned suspiciously damp again.

Andrei frowned. “Let’s not talk about that now. Later. Go and call that lackey in.”

2

When they were seated at the table, Heiger said to Izya, “Help yourself, my Jew. Help yourself, my dear fellow.”

“I’m not your Jew,” Izya objected, heaping salad onto his plate. “I’ve told you a hundred times that I’m my own Jew. That’s your Jew there.” He jabbed his finger in Andrei’s direction.

“Is there any tomato juice?” Andrei asked sullenly, looking around the table.

“You want tomato juice?” Heiger asked. “Parker! Tomato juice for Mr. Counselor!”

A burly, ruddy-cheeked individual—Heiger’s personal adjutant—appeared in the doorway, jangling his spurs mellifluously, approached the table, gave a shallow bow, and set down a dew-spangled carafe of tomato juice in front of Andrei.

“Thank you, Parker,” said Andrei. “It’s all right, I’ll pour it myself.”

Heiger nodded, and Parker was gone.

“Great training!” Izya mumbled with his mouth stuffed full.

“A fine young man,” Andrei said.

“But at Manjuro’s place they serve vodka with lunch,” said Izya.

“You stoolie!” Heiger told him reproachfully.

“Why’s that?” Izya asked in astonishment.

“If Manjuro swigs vodka during working hours, I have to punish him.”

“You can’t shoot everyone,” Izya said.

“The death penalty has been abolished,” said Heiger. “Actually, I don’t exactly remember. I should ask Chachua…”

“And what happened to Chachua’s predecessor?” Izya inquired innocently.

“That was a complete accident,” said Heiger. “An exchange of fire.”

“He was an excellent administrator, by the way,” Andrei observed. “Chachua knows his job, but his boss!… He was phenomenal.”

“Yep, yep, we were pretty reckless back then,” Heiger said pensively. “Young and green…”

“All’s well that ends well,” Andrei said.

“Nothing’s ended yet!” Izya objected. “What makes you think everything’s already over?”

“Well, the shooting’s all over, anyway,” Andrei growled.

“The real shooting hasn’t even started yet,” Izya declared. “Listen, Fritz, have there been any attempts on your life?”

Heiger frowned. “What sort of idiotic idea is that? Of course not.”

“There will be,” Izya promised.

“Thank you,” Heiger said frostily.

“There’ll be assassination attempts,” Izya continued. “There’ll be an explosion of drug addiction. There’ll be affluence riots. The hippies have already appeared, I won’t even mention them. There’ll be protest suicides, self-immolations, people blowing themselves up… In fact, this has already happened.”

Heiger and Andrei exchanged glances.

“There, you see,” Andrei said. “He knows already.”

“I wonder how,” said Heiger, peering at Izya through narrowed eyes.

“What do I know?” Izya asked quickly. He put down his fork. “Hang on, now! Ah! So that was a protest suicide! I was wondering about all that bullshit! Blasters staggering around drunk with dynamite… So that’s it! But to be honest, I imagined it was an assassination attempt… Now I get it… And who was it really?”

“A certain Denny Lee,” Heiger said after a pause. “Andrei knew him.”

“Lee…” Izya said thoughtfully, absentmindedly smearing splashes of mayonnaise across the lapel of his jacket. “Denny Lee… Wait, he’s a skinny guy… A journalist?”

“You knew him too,” said Andrei. “Remember, in my newspaper…”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Izya exclaimed. “That’s right! I remember now.”

“Only, for God’s sake, keep your mouth shut,” said Heiger.

Wearing his habitual frozen smile, Izya started plucking at the wart on his neck. “So that’s what it was…” he muttered. “I get it… I get it… So he wrapped himself in explosives and went out onto the plaza… He probably sent letters to all the papers, the freak… Right, right, right. And what measures do you intend to take?” he asked, addressing Heiger.

“I’ve already taken them,” said Heiger.

“Right, of course you have!” Izya said impatiently. “You’ve classified it, put out the official lies, let Ruhmer off the leash—that’s not what I meant. What do you think about this in general? Or do you assume that it’s an isolated incident?”

“Uh-uh. I don’t assume that it’s an isolated incident,” Heiger said slowly.

“Thank God!” Izya exclaimed.

“And what do you think?” Andrei asked him.

Izya quickly turned to face Andrei. “And you?”

“I think that any orderly society is bound to have its own psychos. And Denny was a psycho, that’s for sure. His philosophy had clearly driven him crazy. And of course, he’s not the only one in the City.”

“And what did he say?” Izya asked avidly.

“He said he was bored. He said we hadn’t found our true goal. He said all our work on improving the standard of living was garbage and it solved nothing. He said lots of things, but he couldn’t propose anything worthwhile himself. A psycho. Hysterical.”

“But what would he really have wanted to see?” asked Heiger.

Andrei gestured dismissively. “The usual populist nonsense. Like Nekrasov: ‘With its broad, radiant chest, the people will bear whatever the Lord may send…’”

“I don’t understand,” said Heiger.

“Well, he believed it was the task of enlightened people to raise up the people to their own enlightened level. But of course, he didn’t know how to go about it.”

“And why did he kill himself?” Heiger asked doubtfully.

“I told you, he was a psycho.”

“And what’s your opinion?” Heiger asked Izya.

Izya didn’t take even a second to ponder. “If a psycho is what you call a man who wrestles with a problem that has no solution,” he said, “then yes, he was a psycho. And you”—Izya jabbed his finger at Heiger—“will never understand him. You’re one of those people who only take on problems that have solutions.”

“Let’s assume,” said Andrei, “that Denny was absolutely certain his problem did have a solution.”

Izya brushed his opinion aside. “Neither of you understand a damned thing,” he declared. “You believe you’re the technocratic elite. Democrat is a dirty word for you: the cobblers should stick to their lasts. You have appalling contempt for the broad masses and you’re appallingly proud of the way you despise them. But in reality, it’s you who are the genuine, one hundred percent slaves of those masses! Everything you do, you do it for the masses. Everything you rack your brains over—the whole kit and caboodle, above all else it’s what the masses need. You live for the masses. If the masses disappeared, your lives would lose all meaning. You’re pathetic, pitiful applications engineers. And that’s why you’ll never be psychos. After all, rustling up everything the broad masses need is relatively simple, isn’t it? So your problems are by definition problems that have solutions. You’ll never understand people who kill themselves as a gesture of protest.”

“Why won’t we?” Andrei asked irritably. “What is there really to understand here? Of course we do what the overwhelming majority wants. And we give, or try to give, that majority everything short of flying pigs—which, by the way, are not actually required by the majority. But there’s always an insignificant minority that wants flying pigs and nothing else. Because it’s an idée fixe for them, you see. A morbid obsession. They have to have flying pigs! Simply because it’s impossible to find flying pigs anywhere. And that’s how the social psychos appear. What’s so hard to understand about that? Or do you really believe that all this rabble can be raised up to the level of the elite?”

“We’re not talking about me,” said Izya, baring his teeth in a grin. “I don’t consider myself a slave of the majority, a.k.a. a servant of the people. I’ve never worked for the majority and I don’t consider myself under any obligation to it.”

“All right, all right,” said Heiger. “Everyone knows you’re a case apart. Let’s get back to our suicides. You believe that suicides will happen, no matter what political line we pursue?”

“They’ll happen precisely because you pursue an entirely definite political line!” said Izya. “And the longer it goes on, the more of them there’ll be, because you take away from people the onus of providing their own daily bread and you don’t give them anything in return. People get sick of it all and start feeling bored. That’s why there’ll be suicides, drug addiction, sexual revolutions, fatuous revolts over paltry nonsense…”

“That’s bullshit!” Andrei said furiously. “Think before you spout that kind of drivel, you lousy experimenter! ‘Spice his life up a bit, add a little pepper!’ Is that it? Are you suggesting we create artificial shortages? Just think where what you’re saying leads to!”

“It’s not what I’m saying that leads there,” said Izya, reaching right across the table with his mutilated arm to take the pan of meat sauce. “It’s what you’re doing. But it’s a fact that you can’t give them anything in exchange. Your Great Construction Sites are nonsense. The experiment on the experimenters is hogwash, no one gives a damn about it… And stop attacking me, I’m not saying this to condemn you. It’s just the way things are. It’s the fate of every populist, whether he poses as a technocratic benefactor or vainly attempts to inculcate certain ideals in the people—ideals which, in his opinion, the people can’t live without… Two sides of the same coin, heads or tails. In the end, you get food riots or affluence riots, take your choice. You’ve chosen affluence riots, and good luck to you—why attack me over it?”

“Don’t pour sauce on the tablecloth,” Heiger said angrily.

“Sorry…” Izya absentmindedly smeared the puddle across the tablecloth with a napkin. “But the arithmetic’s quite clear,” he said, “even if the discontents only make up one percent. If there are a million people in a city, that means ten thousand discontents. Even if it’s a tenth of a percent—that’s a thousand discontents. And when that thousand starts clamoring under your windows! And then, note, there’s no such thing as completely contented people. There’s something everyone wants that he doesn’t have, right? You know, he’s quite happy with everything, but then he doesn’t have a car. Why not? You know, he got used to having a car on Earth, but here he hasn’t got one, and what’s even more important, there’s no way he can expect to get one… Can you imagine how many people like that there are in the City?” Izya broke off and started greedily gobbling down macaroni, drowning it in sauce. “The chow here’s delicious,” he said. “With my modest level of affluence the Glass House is the only place I can really fill my belly.”

Andrei watched him guzzling, snorted, and poured himself some tomato juice. He drank it and lit a cigarette. It’s always the apocalypse with him… Seven chalices of the wrath of God and the seven last plagues… The rabble is the rabble. Of course they’ll rebel, that’s what we keep Ruhmer for. Affluence riots are something new though, a kind of paradox. There’s probably never been anything like that on Earth. At least not in my time. And the classics don’t say anything about it. But rebellion is rebellion… The Experiment is the Experiment, soccer is soccer… Dammit!

He looked at Heiger. Fritz was leaning back in his chair, absentmindedly and yet intently picking his teeth with his finger, and Andrei was suddenly stunned by a simple thought that was terrifying in its simplicity: Fritz was nothing more than a noncommissioned officer of the Wehrmacht, wasn’t he? A semi-educated drillmaster who hadn’t read ten worthwhile books in his entire life, and yet he was the one who decided things. As a matter of fact, I decide things, too, Andrei thought.

“In our situation,” he said to Izya, “any decent man simply had no choice. People were hungry, people were being victimized, they lived with fear and physical torment—children, old people, women… It was our duty to create decent living conditions.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” said Izya. “I understand all that. You were motivated by pity, compassion, etc., etc. That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s not hard to feel pity for women and children who are weeping from hunger—anyone can do that. But will you be able to feel pity for a burly hunk of a guy with a sex organ this big”—Izya demonstrated with his hands—“a man pining away from boredom? Denny Lee clearly could, but will you be able to do it? Or will you take the horsewhips to him?”

He paused, because ruddy-cheeked Parker had come into the dining room, accompanied by two pretty girls in white aprons. They cleared the table and served coffee with whipped cream; Izya immediately smeared it across his face and proceeded to lick himself clean, like a cat, all the way out to his ears.

“And anyway, do you know what I think?” he said thoughtfully. “As soon as society has solved some problem that it has, it immediately comes face-to-face with a new problem of the same magnitude… no, of even greater magnitude.” Then he livened up. “And that, by the way, gives rise to an interesting little point. Eventually society will come face-to-face with problems of such complexity that it will be beyond mankind’s power to solve them. And then so-called progress will stop.”

“Nonsense,” said Andrei. “Mankind doesn’t set itself problems that it can’t solve.”

“But I’m not talking about the problems mankind sets itself,” Izya objected. “I’m talking about the problems mankind runs into. They just come up on their own. Mankind never set itself the problem of famine. It simply used to starve.”

“Oh, here we go!” said Heiger. “That’s enough. You’ve got carried away with your fancy verbiage. Anyone would think we had nothing to with our time but gab.”

“What do we have to do with our time?” Izya asked in surprise. “I, for instance, am on my lunch break.”

“As you wish,” said Heiger. “I wanted to talk about your expedition. But of course, we can always defer that.”

Izya froze with a coffee cup in his hand. “Oh, come now,” he said dourly. “Why defer it? Let’s not defer it—we’ve deferred it so many times already.”

“Well then why are you gabbling like that?” asked Heiger. “It makes me feel sick listening to you.”

“What expedition is that?” Andrei asked. “For the archives, or what?”

“The great expedition to the north!” Izya proclaimed, but Heiger stopped him by holding up his large, white, open hand.

“This is a preliminary discussion,” he said. “But I’ve already made the decision to go ahead with the expedition, and funds have been allocated. Transport will be ready in three or four months. But at this point we need to define the general goals and program of action.”

“You mean it will be an expedition with multiple goals?” asked Andrei.

“Yes. Izya will get his archives, and you’ll get your observations of the sun and whatever else it is you want…”

“Thank God!” Andrei said, “At last!”

“But we shall have at least one other goal,” said Heiger. “Long-range reconnaissance. The expedition must travel very far to the north. As far as possible. As far as the fuel and water last. And therefore the members of the team must be specially selected, with great discrimination. Only volunteers, and only the very best of the volunteers. No one really knows what might be up there, in the north. It’s quite possible that apart from searching for papers and gazing through your tubes, you’ll have to shoot, sit out a siege, break out, and so on. So there will be soldiers in the group. We’ll specify who and how many of them later.”

“Oh, as few as possible!” Andrei said, wincing. “I know your soldiers; working with them would be intolerable.” He pushed his cup away in annoyance. “And anyway, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why we need soldiers. I don’t understand what kind of gun battles there can be out there. It’s a desert out there, ruins—how could there be any gun battles?”

“There could be anything at all out there, my brother,” Izya said merrily.

“What does ‘anything’ mean? So maybe the place is swarming with devils—do you want us to take priests along with us?”

“Maybe I could be allowed to finish what I was saying?” Heiger asked.

“Say what you have to say,” Andrei replied, annoyed. That’s always the way, he thought. Like the story about the monkey’s paw. If a wish does come true, it always comes with the kind of add-on that means you’d be better off if it hadn’t. No, dammit. I won’t let the officers and gentlemen have this expedition. The leader of the expedition is Quejada—the head of the scientific section and the entire team. Otherwise you can go to hell, you won’t get any cosmography, and your sergeant majors can order Izya around all on his own. It’s a scientific expedition, so it has to be led by a scientist… At this point he recalled that Quejada was politically unreliable, and recalling it made him so furious that he missed part of what Heiger was saying.

“What was that?” he asked with a start.

“I asked you how far away from the City could the end of the world be?”

“More precisely—the beginning,” Izya put in.

Andrei shrugged angrily. “Do you read my reports at all?” he asked Heiger.

“I do,” said Heiger. “You say there that as one moves farther to the north, the sun will decline toward the horizon. Obviously, somewhere far to the north it will set behind the horizon and completely disappear from sight. So I’m asking you how far it is to that place—can you tell me?”

“You don’t read my reports,” said Andrei. “If you did read them, you’d have realized that my whole idea for this expedition is precisely in order to discover where that ‘beginning of the world’ is.”

“I realized that,” Heiger said patiently. “I’m asking you for an approximation. Can you tell me that distance, at least approximately? How far is it—a thousand kilometers? A hundred thousand? A million? We’re determining the goal of the expedition, do you understand that? If that goal is a million kilometers away, then it’s no longer a goal. But if—”

“OK, that’s clear,” said Andrei. “Why didn’t you say so? Well then… The difficulty here is that we don’t know the curvature of the world or the distance to the sun. If we had numerous observations along the entire line of the City—not the present City, you realize, but from the beginning to the end—then we could determine these magnitudes. We need a large arc, you understand? At least several hundred kilometers. All the material we have so far only covers an arc of fifty kilometers. And that means the accuracy is negligible.”

“Give me the absolute minimum and absolute maximum,” said Heiger.

“The maximum is infinity,” said Andrei. “That’s if the world is flat. And the minimum is in the order of a thousand kilometers.”

“You lousy spongers,” Heiger said in disgust. “All the money I’ve put into you, and what do I get…”

“Ah, come on now,” said Andrei. “I’ve been trying to get this expedition out of you for two years. If you want to know what sort of world you live in, put up the money, the transport, the men. Otherwise, nothing will be done. All we need is an arc of about five hundred kilometers. We’ll measure the gravity, variations in brightness, variations in height—”

“All right,” Heiger interrupted. “We won’t talk about that now. Those are details. You just get it clear that one of the expedition’s goals is to reach the beginning of the world. Have you got that clear?”

“We have,” said Andrei. “But we don’t understand why you need that.”

“I want to know what’s there,” said Heiger. “There is something there. And it might be important for many reasons.”

“For instance?” Andrei asked.

“For instance, the Anticity.”

Andrei snorted. “The Anticity… You mean to say you still believe in it?”

Heiger got up, clasped his hands behind his back, and started striding around the dining room. “Believe in it, don’t believe in it,” he said. “I have to know for certain whether it exists or not.”

“It became clear to me a long time ago,” Andrei said, “that the Anticity is merely an invention of the former leadership.”

“Like the Red Building,” Izya said in a low voice, giggling.

Andrei frowned. “The Red Building has nothing to do with this. Heiger himself stated that the former leadership was preparing a military dictatorship, it needed an external threat—and there you have the Anticity.”

Heiger stopped in front of them. “But why exactly are you protesting against an expedition all the way to the very end? Surely you must be at least a little bit curious about what might be there? What kind of counselors has God given me?”

“But there isn’t anything there!” said Andrei, feeling disoriented. “There’s fierce cold, eternal night, a desert of ice… The far side of the moon, do you understand?”

“I am in possession of different information,” said Heiger. “The Anticity exists. There isn’t any desert of ice, or if there is, it can be crossed. There’s a city, exactly like ours, but what goes on there, we don’t know, and what they want there—we don’t know that either. But they say, for instance, that everything there is the other way round. When things are good for us here, things are bad for them there…” He broke off and started walking around the dining room again.

“Oh God,” said Andrei. “What is this mumbo jumbo?”

He glanced at Izya and bit his tongue. Izya was sitting there with his arms thrown back behind his chair. His necktie had slipped around under his ear; he was looking triumphantly at Andrei, with a greasy, beaming smile on his face.

“I see,” said Andrei. “Might I be informed from which sources you drew this information?” he asked Izya.

“The same ones as ever, my dear man,” said Izya. “History is a great science. And in our City it has an especially large number of tricks up its sleeve. After all, in addition to all the other things, what is really great about our City? The archives in it don’t get destroyed, do they? There are no wars, no invasions, what is written with the pen is not hacked apart with the ax…”

“Those archives of yours…” Andrei said in annoyance.

“Yes indeed! Fritz will tell you I’m not lying—who found coal? Three hundred thousand tons of coal in an underground storage facility. Did your geologists find it? No, Katzman found it. Without even leaving his little study, mind you.”

“In brief,” said Heiger, sitting down on his chair again, “setting aside the science and the archives, I want to know the following. One. What lies in our rear? It is possible to live there? What useful materials can we extract there? Two. Who lives there? Along the entire distance: from this place”—he tapped his fingernail on the table—“all the way to end of the world, or the beginning, or as far as you get… What kind of people are they? Are they people? Why are they there? How did they get there? And three. Everything you can manage to find out about the Anticity. This is the political goal that I have set myself. And this is the genuine goal of the expedition, Andrei, you have to understand that. You’ll take this expedition, explore everything that I’ve mentioned, and report the results to me here, in this room.”

“What did you say?” Andrei asked.

“You’ll report. Here. In person.”

“You want to send me there?”

“Naturally. What did you think?”

“I’m sorry,” said Andrei, flustered. “What on Earth for? I wasn’t planning on going anywhere… I’m up to my eyes with work here in the City—who can I dump that on? And I don’t want to go anywhere!”

“What do you mean by that—you don’t want to go? Why have you been pestering me? If not you, then who can I send?”

“My God,” said Andrei. “Anyone at all! Appoint Quejada to lead it… a highly experienced prospector… or Butz, for example…”

He fell silent under Heiger’s intent stare. “Let’s not talk about Quejada or Butz,” Heiger said in a quiet voice.

Andrei couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and an awkward silence fell.

Then Heiger poured himself some cold coffee. “In this City,” he said in the same quiet voice, “there are only two or three men I trust. Out of them, you’re the only one who can lead the expedition. Because I’m certain that if I ask you to go all the way to the end, you’ll go all the way to the end. You won’t turn off halfway down the road and you won’t allow anyone else to turn off halfway down the road. And when you present your report to me afterward, I’ll be able to believe that report. I could trust Izya’s report, for instance, too, but Izya’s goddamned worthless as an administrator and a totally useless politician. Do you understand me? Either you lead this expedition or the expedition won’t happen.”

Silence fell again. Izya said awkwardly, “Oh-ho-ho-ho… Maybe I should step outside, administrators?”

“Stay in your seat,” Heiger ordered, without even turning toward him. “There, eat the cakes.”

Andrei feverishly tried to make sense of things. Abandon everything. Selma. The house. My calm, smooth-running life. Why the hell has this been landed on me? Amalia. Trudging all that way to God knows where. Heat. Filth. Lousy food… Have I gotten old, then? A couple of years ago I’d have been thrilled with an offer like this. But now I don’t want it. I just don’t want it at all… Izya every day—in Homeric doses. Soldiers. And we’ll probably travel on foot, won’t we, for the whole thousand kilometers, carrying sacks over our shoulders, and not empty sacks either, dammit… And guns. Mother of God, we might have to shoot out there! What the hell do I want with that—facing up to bullets? What the hell does a goat want with an accordion? Why the hell would a wolf want a waistcoat—to fray it on the bushes? I’ll definitely have to take Uncle Yura—I don’t trust those soldiers an inch… Heat, and blisters, and stench… And then right at the very edge—hellish damned cold, probably… At least the sun will be behind us all the time… And I have to take Quejada, I won’t go without Quejada, and that’s that—never mind that you don’t trust him, with Quejada at least I can feel confident about the science part… And all that time without a woman, enough to drive you crazy, I’m not used to that anymore. But you’ll pay me for this. You’ll let the chancellery have something, for a start, give me some full-time positions for the Social Psychology department… and a few for Geodesy wouldn’t do any harm… And second, you’ll rap Vareikis over the knuckles. And in general, all these ideological restrictions—I won’t have them anywhere near my science. In the other departments, by all means, that’s no concern of mine… There isn’t even any water there! That’s why the City keeps creeping southward, isn’t it—in the north the springs are drying up. So will you order us to carry water with us? For a thousand kilometers? “So am I going to lug the water on my back?” he asked irritably.

Heiger jerked up his eyebrows in amazement. “What water?”

Andrei realized he’d spoken out loud. “Well, all right, then,” he said. “Only I’ll choose the soldiers myself, since you insist on them so firmly. Or else you’ll hand me all sorts of boneheads… And there has to be a unified command!” he said threateningly, raising his finger. “I’m the one in charge!”

“You, you,” Heiger said reassuringly, and smiled, leaning back in his chair, “You’ll select everybody, in fact. The only man I impose on you is Izya. The others are up to you. Make sure to get good mechanics, select a doctor—”

“Yes. By the way, will I have some kind of transport?”

“You will,” said Heiger. “And it will be genuine transport. Like we’ve never had here before. You won’t have to lug anything around yourself, except maybe your gun… But don’t get distracted; these are all details. We’ll have a special discussion about them later, when you’ve selected the heads of the subunits… What I want to focus your attention on is this… Secrecy! Make sure you give me that, guys. Of course, it’s impossible to completely conceal an undertaking like this, so we have to put out disinformation—say you’ve gone prospecting for oil, for instance. Out on the 240 kilometer line. But the political goals of the expedition must remain known only to you. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Andrei responded.

“Izya, that especially applies to you. Do you hear?”

“Ughu,” Izya said with his mouth stuffed full.

“But why all the secrecy?” asked Andrei. “What are we going to do that means we have to shroud it in secrecy like this?”

“You don’t understand?” Heiger asked, making a wry face.

“No, I don’t,” said Andrei. “I absolutely cannot see anything about this that is a threat to the system.”

“Not to the system, you blockhead!” said Heiger. “To you! It’s a threat to you! Surely you can understand that they’re just as afraid of us as we are of them?”

“Who are they? Your Anticitizens, is it?”

“But of course! If we’ve finally gotten around to sending out a reconnaissance party, why not assume that they did it ages ago? That the City is simply crawling with their spies? Don’t smile, don’t, you stupid fool. I’m not joking here! You run into an ambush and they’ll slaughter you all like little chicks.”

“OK,” said Andrei. “You’ve persuaded me. I say no more.”

Heiger contemplated him doubtfully for a moment, then said, “All right, then. So you’ve grasped the goals. And the need for secrecy too. So, basically, that’s all. Today I’ll sign the decree appointing you the leader of Operation… mmm… Let’s say…”

“Murk and Gloom,” Izya prompted, opening his eyes innocently wide.

“What? No… Too long. Let’s say… Zigzag. Operation Zigzag. That has a good ring to it, doesn’t it?” Heiger took a notepad out of his breast pocket and jotted something down. “Andrei, you can get started on the preparations. I’m only talking about the scientific part for now. Select the people, define your tasks… order equipment and tackle… I’ll make sure your orders get the green light. Who’s your deputy?”

“In the chancellery? Butz.”

Heiger frowned. “Well, OK,” he said. “Let it be Butz. Dump the entire chancellery on him, and you switch over completely to Operation Zigzag… And warn that Butz of yours not to shoot his mouth off so much!” he suddenly barked out.

“I tell you what,” said Andrei. “Let’s agree between the two of us—”

“Dammit, dammit!” said Heiger. “I don’t wish to talk about these matters. I know what you want to say to me! But a fish rots from the head, Mr. Counselor, and in your chancellery you’ve created a gang of… ah, dammit!”

“Jacobins,” Izya suggested.

“And you keep quiet, Jew!” Heiger roared. “Damn you all to hell, you blabbermouths! You’ve completely put me off… What was I saying?”

“That you don’t wish to talk about these matters,” said Izya.

Heiger stared at him blankly, and then Andrei said in an emphatically calm voice, “Fritz, I ask you please to protect my staff from all sorts of pompous ideological nonsense. I selected those people myself, I trust them, and if you really want to have any science in the City, leave them in peace.”

“Well, all right, all right,” Heiger growled, “we won’t discuss this today.”

“Yes we will,” Andrei said meekly, amazed at himself. “You know me—I’m behind you a hundred percent. Please understand that these people can’t help grouching. It’s just the way they are. The ones who don’t grouch aren’t worth a damn. Let them grouch! I’ll take care of ideological morals in my own chancellery somehow. You don’t need to worry. And please tell our dear Ruhmer to remember once and for all—”

“Can we manage without the ultimatums?” Heiger inquired haughtily.

“Yes,” Andrei said with absolute meekness now. “We can manage without anything. Without any ultimatums, without any science, without any expedition…”

Breathing noisily through flared nostrils, Heiger stared at him point-blank. “I do not wish to talk about this subject now!” he said.

Andrei realized that that was enough for today. Especially since it really was better to talk about these subjects one on one. “If you don’t wish to, then we won’t,” he said in a placatory tone. “It just happened to be an appropriate moment. You see, Vareikis really got under my skin today… Listen, here’s a question for you. What’s the total load I can take with me? At least approximately.”

Heiger forced the breath out through his nostrils a few more times, then squinted at Izya and leaned back again in his chair. “Count on five tons, or six… maybe even more,” he said. “Get in touch with Manjuro… Only bear in mind that he might be the fourth figure in the state but he knows nothing about the genuine goals of the expedition. He’s responsible for transport. You can find out all the details from him.”

Andrei nodded. “All right. And as for the soldiers, you know who I want to take? The colonel.”

Heiger started. “The colonel? You’ve got expensive tastes! Who will that leave me with? The entire general staff revolves around the colonel.”

“Well, that’s excellent,” said Andrei. “Then the colonel can carry out deep reconnaissance at the same time. Make a personal study, so to speak, of the potential theater of operations. And we already get along well together… By the way, guys, I’m having a little party this evening. Beef bourguignonne. How are you fixed?”

A preoccupied expression immediately appeared on Heiger’s face. “Hmm… Today? I don’t know, my old friend, I can’t say for certain… I simply don’t know. Maybe I’ll drop by for a minute or two.”

Andrei sighed. “Oookay. Only if you don’t come, please don’t send Ruhmer to take your place like the last time. I’m not inviting the president to my house, you know, but Fritz Heiger. I don’t need any official substitutes.”

“Well, we’ll see, we’ll see…” said Heiger. “How about another cup? There’s still time. Parker!”

Ruddy-faced Parker appeared in the doorway and listened to the order for coffee, inclining his head with an ideal part in the hair, then said in a deferential voice, “Counselor Ruhmer is waiting on the phone for Mr. President.”

“Speak of the devil,” Heiger growled, getting up. “Sorry, guys, I’ll be right back.”

He walked out, and immediately the girls in white aprons appeared. They rapidly and soundlessly organized a second round of coffee and disappeared, together with Parker.

“Well, will you come?” Andrei asked Izya.

“Glad to,” said Izya, gulping his coffee with whistling and champing sounds. “Who’ll be there?”

“The colonel will be there. And the Dolfusses, maybe Chachua… Why, who would you like?”

“To be honest, I could do without Madam Dolfuss.”

“Never mind, we’ll set Chachua on her.”

Izya nodded, and then suddenly said, “It’s a pretty long time since we got together, eh?”

“Yes, brother, work…”

“Lies, lies, what kind of work do you do? You just sit there, polishing your collection… make sure you don’t accidentally shoot yourself… Oh yes, by the way, I got hold of a pistol for you. A genuine Smith & Wesson, from the prairies.”

“Honestly?”

“Only it’s rusty, completely covered in rust—”

“Don’t even think of cleaning it!” Andrei shouted, bouncing up and down on his chair. “Bring it just the way it is—you’ll ruin everything, your hands are like grappling hooks… And it’s not a pistol, it’s a revolver. Where did you find it?”

“In the right place to look, that’s where,” said Izya. “Just wait, on the expedition we’ll find so many you won’t be able to lug them back home.”

Andrei put down his coffee cup. This aspect of the expedition hadn’t occurred to him, and he instantly felt his mood lift tremendously as he imagined a unique collection of Colts, Brownings, Mausers, Nagants, Parabellums, Sauers, Walthers… and moving further back into the depths of time, Lefaucheux and Lepage dueling pistols… immense boarding pistols with bayonets… magnificent homemade specials from the Far West… all those indescribably valuable items that he hadn’t even dared to dream of having as he read and reread the catalog of the private collection of the millionaire Brunner, which had ended up in the City in some miraculous fashion. Cases, crates, warehouses of firearms… Maybe he’d get lucky and find a Česká zbrojovka, with a silencer… or an Astra 900, or maybe even, dammit, a “Number Nine”—the Mauser 08, a real rarity, a dream of his… Yesss…

“Do you collect antitank mines?” Izya asked. “Or culverins, maybe.”

“No,” Andrei said, smiling joyfully. “I only collect personal firearms.”

“Well, there happens to be a bazooka on offer,” said Izya. “They don’t want much—only two hundred tugriks.”

“You’d better offer the bazooka to Ruhmer, brother,” said Andrei.

“Thanks. I’ve been at Ruhmer’s place before,” Izya said, and his smile froze.

Ah, dammit, thought Andrei, feeling awkward, but fortunately just then Heiger came back in. He was pleased.

“Come on then, pour the president a cup,” he said. “What were you talking about here?”

“Art and literature,” said Izya.

“Literature?” Heiger took a sip of coffee. “Come on then, out with it! What exactly do my counselors say about literature?”

“Oh, he’s just babbling,” said Andrei. “We were talking about my collection, not literature.”

“And what’s suddenly got you interested in literature?” asked Izya, giving Heiger a curious look. “You’ve always been such a practical president.”

“That’s why I’m interested, because I’m practical,” said Heiger. “Look at the figures,” he told them, starting to count on his fingers. “In the City we publish two literary journals, four literary supplements to newspapers, at least ten regular series of rubbishy adventure stories… and I think that’s all. And also about fifteen books a year. And in all that there’s nothing that’s even halfway decent. I’ve spoken to people who know about these things. Neither before the Turning Point nor after it has a single even slightly significant work of literature appeared in the City. Nothing but trash. What’s wrong?”

Andrei and Izya exchanged glances. Yes, Heiger could always spring a surprise, no denying that.

“I don’t quite understand what you’re saying here,” Izya told Heiger. “What does it matter to you anyway? Are you looking for a writer so he can write your life story?”

“Just drop the jokes, will you?” Heiger said patiently. “There are a million people in the City. More than a thousand are registered as writers. And they’re all third-rate hacks. That is, I don’t read them, of course.”

“Third-rate hacks, third-rate hacks,” Izya said, nodding. “The information you’ve been given is correct. No Tolstoys or Dostoyevskys anywhere in sight. Neither Leos nor Alexeis…”

“But seriously, why aren’t there?” Andrei asked.

“No outstanding writers,” Heiger continued. “No artists. No composers. No… what are they called… sculptors either.”

“No architects,” Andrei put in. “No movie directors…”

“None of all that,” said Heiger. “A million people! At first I was simply surprised, and then, to be honest, I felt alarmed.”

“Why?” Izya immediately asked.

Heiger indecisively chewed on his lips. “It’s hard to explain,” he confessed. “I personally don’t know what it’s all needed for, but I’ve been told that every decent society has all this. And if we don’t, it means something’s out of order… That’s the way I think about it. All right, then: before the Turning Point life in the City was hard, it was a shambles, and let’s assume no one had any time for the fine arts. But now life is basically coming together—”

“No,” Andrei interrupted pensively. “That has nothing to do with it. As far as I know, the greatest artists in the world actually worked in incredibly messy circumstances. There isn’t any general rule here. An artist could be a beggar, a madman, or a drunk, or he could be a really prosperous man, even rich, like Turgenev for instance… I don’t know.”

“In any case,” Izya said to Heiger, “if you’re planning, for instance, to abruptly improve the living standards of our writers—”

“Yes! For instance!” said Heiger taking another sip of coffee. He licked his lips and started looking at Izya through narrowed eyes.

“Nothing will come of it,” Izya said with some satisfaction. “And there’s no point in hoping it will.”

“Hang on,” said Andrei. “Perhaps artistic and creative people simply don’t end up in the City? They don’t agree to come here?”

“Or, let’s say, they’re not invited,” said Izya.

“No way,” said Heiger. “Fifty percent of the City’s population are young people. On Earth they were nobody. How would it be possible to tell if they were creative types?”

“Maybe it is possible to tell,” said Izya.

“Even so,” said Heiger, “there are tens of thousands of people in the City who were born and grew up here. What about them? Or does talent have to be inherited?”

“Yes, that really is rather strange,” said Andrei. “The City has excellent engineers. And pretty good scientists. No Mendeleyevs, maybe, but solid, world class. Take Butz, for instance… There are heaps of talented people—inventors, administrators, craftsmen, professionals… all sorts of applied specialists, in fact.”

“That’s just it,” said Heiger. “That’s what surprises me.”

“Listen, Fritz,” said Izya. “What do you want with unnecessary hassle? Say talented writers do appear here, and say they start lambasting you in their brilliant works—you, and the way you do things, and your counselors… Then you’ll have really bad problems. First you’ll try to persuade them, then you’ll threaten them, then you’ll have to jail them.”

“And why would they definitely lambaste me?” Heiger asked indignantly. “Maybe just the opposite—they’d sing my praises?”

“No,” said Izya. “They won’t sing your praises. Andrei already explained to you today about the scientists. Well, great writers are always grouching too. It’s their normal condition, because they are society’s sick conscience, although society doesn’t have the slightest suspicion that they even exist. And since in this case you are the symbol of society, you’ll be the first one they start throwing tin cans at.” Izya giggled. “I can just imagine what a roasting they’ll give your Ruhmer!”

Heiger shrugged. “Of course, if Ruhmer has shortcomings, a genuine writer is obliged to depict them. That’s what a writer does: he heals the open sores.”

“Writers have never, ever healed any open sores,” Izya objected. “A sick conscience simply hurts, that’s all—”

“But after all, that’s not the question,” Heiger interrupted. “You give me a straight answer: Do you consider the current situation to be normal or not?”

“Well, what do you take as the norm?” Izya asked. “Can we regard the situation on Earth as normal?”

“Away he goes!” Andrei said, screwing up his face. “You’re being asked a simple question: Can a society exist without creative talents? Have I got that right, Fritz?”

“I’ll ask even more precisely,” said Heiger. “Is it normal for a million people—it doesn’t matter if they’re here or on Earth—not to produce a single creative talent in decades?”

Izya said nothing, absentmindedly plucking at his wart, and Andrei said, “If we judge by ancient Greece, for example, it’s very far from normal.”

“Then what’s wrong?” asked Heiger.

“The Experiment is the Experiment,” said Izya. “But if we judge by the Mongols, for instance, then everything here is in fine shape.”

“What do you mean by that?” Heiger asked suspiciously.

“Nothing special,” Izya said in surprise. “Just that there are a million of them, or maybe even more. We could also take the example of the Koreans, say… and almost any Arab country…”

“Why not take the gypsies?” Heiger asked peevishly.

Andrei suddenly brightened up. “Yes, by the way, guys,” he said. “Are there any gypsies in the City?”

“You can all go to hell!” Heiger said angrily. “It’s absolutely impossible to talk seriously about anything with you…”

He was about to add something else, but at that point ruddy-cheeked Parker appeared in the doorway, and Heiger immediately looked at his watch.

“Well, that’s it,” he said, getting up. “Got to go!” He sighed and started buttoning up his military tunic. “To your posts, Counselors!” he said, “To your posts!”

3

Otto Friese hadn’t lied to them: the rug was genuinely luxurious. It was black and crimson, with aristocratic tones, and it occupied the entire wall on the left of the study, opposite the windows. Hanging there, it gave the study an absolutely special look. It was devilishly beautiful, it was elegant, it was significant.

Absolutely delighted, Andrei gave Selma a peck on the cheek, and she went back to the kitchen to give the maid orders while he walked around his study, examining the rug from every possible viewpoint, gazing at it straight on first, then at a steep angle with his peripheral vision. Then he opened his cherished cupboard and took out a massive Mauser—a ten-round monster, born in the special section of the Mauserwerke, which became famous during the Russian Civil War as the beloved weapon of commissars in dusty helmets, and also of Japanese imperial officers in greatcoats with dog-fur collars.

The Mauser was clean and burnished to a high gleam—it looked completely combat ready—but unfortunately the firing pin had been filed down. Andrei held the gun, weighing it in both hands, then took hold of the rounded, fluted handle, lowered the gun, raised it again to eye level, and aimed it at the trunk of an apple tree outside the window, like Heiger at the shooting range.

Then he turned to face the rug and started choosing a spot. It didn’t take long to find one. Andrei kicked off his shoes, climbed up onto the couch, and held the Mauser at that spot. Pressing it against the rug with one hand, he leaned back as far as he could and admired it. It was superb. He skipped down onto the floor, impetuously ran out into the hallway in his socks, pulled a toolbox out of the wall cupboard, and went back to the rug.

He hung the Mauser, then a Luger with an optical sight (Tailbone had shot two militiamen dead with that Luger on the last day of the Turning Point), and he was fiddling with a 1906 model Browning—small and almost square—when a familiar voice spoke behind his back:

“Farther to the right, Andrei, a little farther to the right. And a centimeter lower.”

“Like that?” Andrei asked, without turning around.

“Yes.”

Andrei secured the Browning, jumped down backward off the couch, and backed away as far as the desk, surveying the work of his own hands.

“It’s beautiful,” the Mentor said approvingly.

“Beautiful, but not enough,” Andrei said with a sigh.

Without making a sound, the Mentor walked over to the cupboard, squatted down, rummaged around, and took out a Nagant army revolver. “What about this?” he asked.

“No wooden grips on the handle,” Andrei said regretfully. “I keep meaning to order some and I always forget.” He found his shoes, sat on the windowsill beside the desk, and lit a cigarette. “I’ll put my dueling arsenal at the top. Early nineteenth century. You come across some incredibly beautiful examples, with incised silver work, and the shapes are quite amazing—from tiny little ones like this to huge ones with long barrels…”

“Lepages,” said the Mentor.

“No, in fact the Lepages are small… And at the bottom, just above the couch, I’ll hang the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century combat weapons.”

He fell silent, picturing to himself how beautiful it would be. The Mentor, squatting on his haunches, rummaged in the cupboard. Somewhere close by outside the window a motorized lawn mower spluttered. Birds twittered and whistled.

“A good idea—to hang the rug here, wasn’t it?” Andrei asked.

“An excellent idea,” said the Mentor, getting up. He tugged a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his hands. “Only I’d put the floor lamp over in that corner, beside the phone. And you need a white phone.”

“I’m not entitled to a white phone,” Andrei said with a sigh.

“Never mind,” said the Mentor. “When you get back from the expedition, you’ll have a white one.”

“So I did the right thing by agreeing to go?”

“Did you have any doubts about it?”

“Yes,” Andrei said, and stubbed out his butt in the ashtray. “In the first place, I didn’t want to go. I just didn’t want to. And in the second place, to be quite honest, it’s a bit frightening.”

“Oh, come on,” said the Mentor.

“No, really. You—can you tell me what I’ll come up against out there? There, you see! Total uncertainty… A dozen of Izya’s terrifying legends and total uncertainty… Plus all the charms of life on the march. I know these expeditions. I’ve been on archeological expeditions, and all sorts of other kinds…”

At this point, just as Andrei was expecting, the Mentor asked curiously, “What is it about these expeditions… how can I put it… what’s the most frightening thing about them, the most unpleasant thing?”

Andrei really loved this question. He’d invented the answer to it a very long time ago, and even written it down in his notebook, subsequently using it repeatedly in conversations with various girls.

“The most frightening thing?” he repeated, to pick up momentum. “The most frightening thing is this. Imagine it: the tent, the night, desert all around, absolutely no one, wolves howling, hailstones falling, a stormy wind…” He paused and looked at the Mentor, who was leaning forward, listening. “Hailstones, you understand? The size of a hen’s egg… And you have to go out to relieve yourself.”

The tense anticipation on the Mentor’s face was replaced by a rather perplexed smile, and then he burst into laughter. “Very funny,” he said. “Did you make that up yourself?”

“Yes, I did,” Andrei said proudly.

“Good for you, that’s funny…” The Mentor laughed again, wagging his head. Then he sat down in the armchair and started looking at the garden. “This is a nice place you have here, in the White Court,” he said.

Andrei turned around and also looked at the garden: green foliage drenched in sunlight, butterflies fluttering above flowers, apple trees standing motionless, and about two hundred meters away, behind some lilac bushes, the white walls and red roof of the next cottage… And Wang in his long white shirt, striding along, calm and unhurried, behind the spluttering lawn mower, with his youngest toddling along beside him, clutching his trouser leg…

“Yes, Wang has found peace,” the Mentor said. “Perhaps he really is the happiest man in the City.”

“That could very well be,” Andrei agreed. “In any case, I wouldn’t say that about my other acquaintances.”

“Well, that’s the circle of acquaintances you have now,” the Mentor rejoined. “Wang is the exception among them. I’d even say quite simply that he’s a man of a different circle. Not yours.”

“Uh-huh,” Andrei drawled pensively. “But after all, there was a time when we toted garbage together, sat at the same table, drank from the same mugs…”

The Mentor shrugged. “Everyone receives what he deserves.”

“What he achieves,” Andrei muttered.

“You can put it that way if you like—it’s the same thing. After all, Wang always wanted to be right down at the bottom. The East is the East. Beyond our comprehension. And so your paths have parted.”

“The most amusing thing,” said Andrei, “is that I still enjoy being with him as much as I used to. We always have something to talk about, something to remember… When I’m with him, I never feel awkward.”

“But does he feel awkward?”

Andrei thought for a moment. “I don’t know. But probably yes. Sometimes I get the feeling he makes a great effort to keep well away from me.”

The Mentor stretched, cracking his fingers. “But is that really the point?” he asked. “When you and Wang sit down with a bottle of vodka and you recall how things used to be, Wang relaxes, you must agree. But when you and the colonel sit down with a bottle of scotch, do either of you really relax?”

“Relaxation’s irrelevant,” Andrei mumbled. “What relaxation? I simply need the colonel. And he needs me.”

“And when you have lunch with Heiger? And when you drink with Dolfuss? And when Chachua tells you his new jokes over the phone?”

“Yes,” said Andrei. “That’s the way it all is. Yes.”

“Probably Izya’s the only one you’re still on the same terms with, and even then…”

“Precisely,” said Andrei. “And even then.”

“Uh-uh, there’s no question about it!” the Mentor exclaimed emphatically. “Just picture it to yourself: the colonel’s sitting right here, the deputy chief of staff of your army, an old English aristocrat from a glorious noble line. Dolfuss is sitting here, the counselor for construction, once a famous engineer in Vienna. And his wife, a baroness, a Prussian Junker. And sitting facing them is Wang. A caretaker.”

“Yep, yep,” said Andrei. He scratched the back of his head and laughed. “It does seem kind of tactless.”

“No, no! Forget about the official tact, that doesn’t matter. Just imagine what Wang will feel in this situation—what will it be like for him?”’

“I understand, I understand…” said Andrei. “I understand… It’s all a load of hokum anyway! I’ll invite him tomorrow, we’ll sit down and spend some time together, just the two of us, Mei-lin and Selma will rustle up some kind of ch’ih-fan for us, and I’ll give the little boy a Bull Dog—I have one without a firing hammer…”

“You’ll have a drink together!” the Mentor continued. “Tell each other something about your lives—he has plenty that he could tell you, and you’re good at telling a story too, and he doesn’t know anything about Penjikent, or Kharbas… It will be wonderful! I even slightly envy you.”

“You come as well,” Andrei said, and laughed.

The Mentor laughed too. “I shall be with you in my thoughts,” he said.

Just then the front doorbell rang. Andrei looked at his watch—it was precisely 7:00. “That has to be the colonel,” he said, and jumped to his feet. “Shall I go?”

“Why, naturally!” said the Mentor. “And I ask you, please, in the future never forget that there are hundreds of thousands of Wangs in the City, but only twenty counselors…”

It really was the colonel. He always arrived precisely at the agreed-upon time, and consequently was always first. Andrei met him in the hallway, shook his hand, and invited him into the study. The colonel was in civilian dress. His light gray suit sat on him as dapperly as on a mannequin, his sparse gray hair was neatly combed, his shoes gleamed, and so did his smoothly shaved cheeks. He was short and lean, with good posture, but at the same time slightly relaxed, without the woodenness so typical of the German officers that the army was awash with.

Once inside the study, he stopped in front of the rug, clasped his dry, white hands behind his back, silently surveyed the crimson and black magnificence in general and the weapons hanging on that background in particular. Then he said “Oh!” and gave Andrei an approving look.

“Have a seat, Colonel,” said Andrei. “A cigar? Whiskey?”

“Thank you,” said the colonel, sitting down. “A little drop of good cheer wouldn’t come amiss.” He took a pipe out of his pocket. “Today has been a frantic day,” he declared. “What happened on the plaza outside your place? I was ordered to put the barracks on alert.”

“Some blockhead or other,” said Andrei, rummaging in the bar, “collected some dynamite from the depot and couldn’t find any better place to stumble than under my window.”

“So there wasn’t an assassination attempt, then?”

“Good Lord, Colonel!” Andrei said, pouring the whiskey. “This isn’t Palestine, after all.”

The colonel chuckled and accepted a glass from Andrei. “You’re right. In Palestine no one was surprised by incidents of that sort. Or in Yemen either…”

“So they put you on alert?” Andrei asked, sitting down with his glass opposite the colonel.

“Oh yes indeed.” The colonel took a sip from his glass, thought for a moment with his eyebrows raised, carefully set down the glass on the telephone table beside him, and started filling his pipe. He had old man’s hands, covered in silvery fluff, but they didn’t tremble.

“And what was the force’s combat readiness like?” Andrei inquired, also sipping from his glass.

The colonel laughed again, and Andrei felt a momentary envy—he would really love to know how to laugh in the same way. “It’s a military secret,” said the colonel. “But I’ll tell you. It was terrible. I never saw the like, even in the Yemen. Ah, never mind the Yemen! I never saw the like, even when I was training those black chappies in Uganda! Half the men weren’t even in the barracks. Half of the other half turned out for the alert without their weapons. And those who did turn out with their weapons didn’t have any ammunition, because the commanding officer of the munitions store had gone off with the keys to work his hour at the Great Construction Site.”

“You’re joking, I hope,” said Andrei.

The colonel puffed on his pipe, flapping away the smoke with his hand, and looked at Andrei with his colorless old man’s eyes. His eyes were surrounded by droves of wrinkles, and it looked as if he were laughing. “Perhaps I am exaggerating slightly,” he said, “but judge for yourself, Counselor. Our army was created without any definite purpose, simply because a certain individual known to both of us cannot imagine the organization of a state without an army. It is obvious that no army is capable of functioning normally in the absence of a real enemy. Even if only a potential one. From the chief of staff down to the last cook, our army is presently imbued with the conviction that this undertaking is merely a game of little tin soldiers.”

“And if we assume that a potential enemy does exist after all?”

The colonel shrouded himself in honeyed smoke once again. “Then tell us who he is, Messrs. Politicians!”

Andrei took another sip from his glass, thought for a moment, and asked, “Tell me, Colonel, does the general staff have any operational plans in case of an invasion from the outside?”

“Well now, I wouldn’t call them operational plans as such. Imagine, say, your Russian general staff on Earth. Does it have operational plans in case of an invasion, let’s say, from Mars?”

“Well now,” said Andrei. “I think it’s quite possible that something of the sort does exist…”

“We also have ‘something of the sort,’” said the colonel. “We’re not expecting an invasion from above or below. We don’t concede the possibility of a serious threat from the south… apart, naturally, from the possibility of a successful revolt by the criminals working in the settlements, but we’re ready for that… That leaves the north. We know that during the Turning Point and afterward, quite large numbers of supporters of the old regime fled to the north. We accept—in theory—that they could organize themselves and attempt some kind of sabotage or even a restoration of the old regime…” He took a pull on his pipe, wheezing hoarsely. “But what is an army needed for here? It’s obvious that in the event of all these menaces, Counselor Ruhmer’s special police are perfectly adequate, and in tactical terms, the most basic cordon and search tactics will serve.”

Andrei waited for moment and then asked, “Should I understand you, Colonel, to mean that the general staff is not prepared for a serious invasion from the north?”

“You mean a Martian invasion?” the colonel asked thoughtfully. “No, it is not. I understand what you mean. But we have no reconnaissance. No one has ever seriously considered the possibility of such an invasion. We simply have no data for that. We don’t even know what’s going on fifty kilometers away from the Glass House. We have no maps of the northern environs…” He laughed, exposing his long, yellow teeth. “The city archivist, Mr. Katzman, provided the general staff with something like a map of those areas… As I understand it, he drew it himself. This remarkable document resides in my safe. It gives the quite distinct impression that Mr. Katzman made the map while he was eating and repeatedly dropped his sandwiches and spilled his coffee on it…”

“Come now, Colonel,” Andrei said reproachfully, “my chancellery has provided you, I think, with some rather good maps.”

“Definitely, definitely, Counselor. But for the most part those are maps of the inhabited City and the southern environs. According to the basic setup, the army must be in a state of combat readiness in case of public disorders, and public disorders can only occur in the aforementioned areas. This makes the work you have done absolutely indispensable, and thanks to you we are prepared for disorders. But as for an invasion…” The colonel shook his head.

“As far as I’m aware,” Andrei said significantly, “my chancellery has never received any requests from the general staff to map the northern areas.”

The colonel looked at Andrei for some time, and his pipe went out. “I should tell you,” he said slowly, “that we have addressed such requests to the president in person. The answers were, I must admit, entirely indefinite…” He paused again. “So you believe, Counselor, that for the good of the cause we should address such requests to you?”

Andrei nodded. “I had lunch with the president today,” he said. “We talked a lot about this subject. It has been decided in principle to proceed with mapping the northern regions. However, adequate participation by military specialists is required. An experienced operative… Well, no doubt you understand.”

“I understand,” said the colonel. “By the way, where did you dig up a Mauser like that, Counselor? The last time I saw such monsters, if I’m not mistaken, was in Batumi, in about 1918…”

Andrei started telling the colonel where and how he had obtained the Mauser, but at that point the doorbell rang again in the hallway. Andrei apologized and went to meet his guest.

He was hoping it would be Katzman; however, against all his expectations, it turned out to be Otto Friese, whom Andrei hadn’t actually invited at all. Somehow Friese had completely slipped his mind. Otto Friese was constantly slipping Andrei’s mind, although as the head of the Glass House’s housekeeping unit, Friese was an extremely useful man, even indispensable. But then, Selma never, ever forgot this circumstance. And so now she accepted from Otto a neat little basket, thoughtfully covered with a supremely fine batiste napkin, and a little bouquet of flowers. Otto was graciously permitted to kiss her hand. He clicked his heels, blushed red to his ears, and was quite obviously happy.

“Ah, my old friend,” he said to Andrei. “There you are!”

Otto was still the same as ever. It suddenly occurred to Andrei that of all the old-timers, Otto had changed least. In fact, he simply hadn’t changed at all. Still with the same scrawny neck and huge, protruding ears, with the same expression of constant uncertainty on his freckled features. And the clicking heels. He was in the pale blue uniform of the special police, wearing his square Medal of Merit.

“Thanks a million for the rug,” said Andrei, putting his arm around Otto’s shoulders and leading the guest into his study. “Now I’ll show you how it looks in here… It’s the bee’s knees, you’ll just die of envy…”

However, on finding himself in the study, Otto Friese didn’t give any signs of dying of envy. He saw the colonel.

Otto Friese, a lance corporal in the Volkssturm, harbored feelings bordering on awe for Colonel St. James. In the colonel’s presence he was struck absolutely dumb, fettered his features into a smile with steel bolts, and was ready to click heel against heel at any moment, to click continuously and with constantly increasing force.

Turning his back to the illustrious rug, he stood to attention, thrust out his chest, squeezed his palms against his thighs, stuck out his elbows, and bobbed his head so abruptly in a bow that the crack made by his neck vertebrae rang round the study. Smiling lazily, the colonel got up to meet him and held out his hand. In the other hand he was holding his glass.

“Very pleased to see you…” he said. “Welcome, Mr.… mmm…”

“Lance Corporal Otto Friese, Colonel!” Otto squealed ecstatically, then he bent over double and tremulously touched the colonel’s fingers. “I have the honor to report!”

“Otto, Otto!” Andrei said reproachfully. “We don’t have any ranks here!”

Otto giggled piteously, took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead, then immediately took fright and started trying to stuff the handkerchief back in the pocket, but kept missing.

“At El Alamein, I recall,” the colonel said good-naturedly, “my lads brought me a German lance corporal…”

The bell rang in the hallway again; Andrei apologized once more and went out, leaving the unfortunate Otto to be devoured by the British lion.

Izya had shown up. While he was kissing Selma on both cheeks, and wiping his shoes at her insistence, and being subjected to processing by clothes brush, Chachua and Dolfuss, with Madam Dolfuss, all tumbled in together. Chachua was holding Madam Dolfuss by the arm, dragging her along and deluging her with jokes as they walked, while Dolfuss trailed along behind with a wan smile on his face. In contrast with the temperamental head of the Chancellery for Legal Affairs, he seemed especially gray, colorless, and insignificant. He had a warm raincoat over each arm, in case it turned cold at night.

“Everyone to the table, to the table!” Selma chimed like a delicate little bell, clapping her hands.

“My dear,” Madam Dolfuss protested in a deep bass voice. “But I must tidy myself up!”

“What for?” Chachua asked, rolling his bulging eyes in astonishment. “Such great beauty—and you want to tidy it up? In accordance with article 218 of the Criminal Procedural Code, the law is resolutely opposed…”

The usual hubbub started up. Andrei couldn’t smile fast enough at everyone. Izya was seething and bubbling in his left ear, recounting something about a total screwup at the barracks during today’s combat alert, and right off the bat Dolfuss was droning in his right ear about lavatories and the main sewer, which was close to being blocked… Then they all piled into the dining room. As he invited, seated, cracked gags, and passed compliments, out of the corner of his eye Andrei saw the door of the study open and the smiling colonel emerge from it, stuffing his pipe into his side pocket. Alone. Andrei’s heart sank, but then Lance Corporal Otto Friese appeared—evidently he was simply maintaining a distance of five meters behind a senior officer, as prescribed by the drill regulations. A staccato clicking of heels began.

“Now we’ll drink and have a good time!” Chachua bellowed in a gravelly voice.

Knives and forks started clattering. After inserting Otto between Selma and Madam Dolfuss with some difficulty, Andrei sat down in his own seat and looked around the table. Everything was fine.

“And just imagine it, my dear, there was a hole this size in the rug! That’s a swipe at you, Mr. Friese, you beastly little boy!”

“They say that you shot someone in front of the ranks, Colonel?”

“And mark my words, it’s the sewerage system, the sewerage system that will be the ruin of our City some day!”

“So much beauty and such a small glass?”

“Otto, darling, stop worrying that bone… Here’s a good piece for you!”

“No, Katzman, it’s a military secret. I had more than enough bother with the Jews in Palestine.”

“Vodka, Counselor?”

“Thank you, Counselor!”

And heels clicked under the table.

Andrei drank two shots of vodka in quick succession—to get up steam—savored the snack that he followed it with, and joined everyone else in listening to a never-ending and fantastically indecent toast proposed by Chachua. When it finally turned out that the counselor of legal affairs was raising this tiny little glass with great big feelings, not in order to commend all the above-mentioned sexual perversions to the present company but merely to honor “my fiercest and most merciless enemies, with whom I have done battle throughout my life, and from whom I have suffered defeats throughout my life, that is—here’s to beautiful women!” Andrei burst into relieved laughter along with everyone else and downed a third shot. Madam Dolfuss gurgled and sobbed in absolute prostration, covering her face with a napkin.

Somehow everyone got tanked very quickly. “Yes! Oh, yes!” a familiar voice intoned at the far end of the table. Chachua, with his twitching nose suspended over Madam Dolfuss’s dazzling décolleté, kept talking without breaking off for a single second. Madam Dolfuss gurgled in total collapse, playfully shrinking away from him and heavily leaning her immensely broad back against Otto, who had already dropped his fork twice. Right beside Andrei, Dolfuss had finally left the sewerage system in peace, and lapsed into a state of official departmental elation at precisely the wrong time and in precisely the wrong place: he started recklessly giving away state secrets. “Autonomy!” he mumbled menacingly “The key to aun-… to aumon-… autonomy is chlorella! The Great Construction? Don’t make me laugh. What damned airships? It’s chlorella!”

“Counselor, Counselor,” said Andrei, trying to reason with him. “For goodness’ sake! There’s absolutely no need for everyone to know that. Why don’t you tell me how things are going with the laboratory block?” The maid took away the dirty plates and brought clean ones. The hors d’oeuvres had already been swept away, and the beef bourguignonne was served.

“I raise this tiny little glass!”

“Yes, oh yes!”

“Beastly little boy! It’s quite impossible not to love you.”

“Izya, stop pestering the colonel! Colonel, would you like me to sit beside you?”

“Fourteen cubic meters of chlorella is zero… Autonomy!”

“Whiskey, Counselor?”

“Why, thank you, Counselor!”

At the height of the merriment ruddy-faced Parker suddenly appeared in the dining room. “The president sends his apologies,” he reported. “An urgent meeting. He sends his very warmest greetings to Mr. and Mrs. Voronin and likewise to all their guests…” They forced Parker to drink a shot of vodka—for that the efforts of all-crushing Chachua were required. A toast was proposed to the president and the success of all his undertakings.

Things got a bit quieter and coffee was served with ice cream and liqueurs. Otto Friese tearfully lamented his failures in love. Madam Dolfuss told Chachua about darling Königsberg, at which Chachua nodded his nose and passionately intoned, “But of course! I remember… General Chernyakhovsky… They battered it with cannon for five days…”

Parker disappeared, and it was dark outside. Dolfuss greedily drank coffee and unfolded to Andrei’s gaze phantasmagorical projects for the reconstruction of the northern districts. The colonel was telling Izya a joke: “…He was given ten days for disorderly conduct and ten years’ hard labor for disclosing a state and military secret.” Izya sprayed, gurgled, and replied, “But that’s old stuff, St. James. In Russia they used to tell that one about Khrushchev!”

“Politics again!” shouted Selma, offended. She managed somehow to squeeze in between Izya and the colonel, and the old soldier paternally patted her little knee.

Andrei suddenly felt sad. He apologized into empty space, got up on numbed legs, and walked through into his study, where he sat on the windowsill, lit a cigarette, and started looking at the garden.

It was pitch dark in the garden, and the windows of the next cottage shone brightly through the black foliage. It was a warm night, with fireflies stirring in the grass. And what about tomorrow? Andrei thought. So I’ll go on the expedition, so I’ll reconnoiter… I’ll bring back a heap of guns, sort them out, hang them up… and then what?

In the dining room they were making a din. “Do you know this one, Colonel?” Izya yelled. “The Allied command is offering twenty thousand for Chapaev’s head!” And Andrei immediately remembered how it went on: “The Allied command, Your Excellency, could pay more. After all, they have the city of Guriev behind them, and Guriev has oil. Ha-ha-ha.”

“Chapaev?” the colonel asked. “Ah, that’s your cavalryman. But I think they executed him, didn’t they?”

Selma suddenly started singing in a high voice, “And next morning Katya was awoken by her mother… Get up, get up, Katya. The ships at anchor ride…” But she was immediately interrupted by Chachua’s velvety roar: “I brought you flowers… Oh, what wonderful flowers… You didn’t take those flowers from me. Why didn’t you take them?”

Andrei closed his eyes and suddenly remembered Uncle Yura with an unusually keen pang of yearning. Wang wasn’t here at the table, and Uncle Yura wasn’t here… And what the hell, I wonder, do I need this Dolfuss for? He was surrounded by ghosts.

Donald was sitting on the couch in his battered cowboy hat. He crossed one leg over the other and firmly clasped his fingers around his pointed knee. Grieve not in leaving, rejoice not in arriving… And Kensi sat down at the desk in his old police uniform, propping his elbow on the table and setting his chin on his fist. He looked at Andrei without condemnation, but there was no warmth in that glance either. And Uncle Yura kept slapping Wang on the back and intoning, “Never mind, Wang, don’t you grieve now, we’ll make you a minister, and you’ll ride around in a swanky ‘Victory’ automobile…” There was a familiar, heart-wrenching smell of coarse tobacco, healthy sweat, and moonshine. Andrei managed to catch his breath with an effort, rubbed his numbed cheeks, and looked at the garden again.

The Building was standing in the garden.

It stood there solidly and naturally among the trees, as if it had been there for a very long time, since forever, and it intended to stand there until the end of time: four stories of red brick, and just like the other time, the windows of the first floor were covered over with shutters, the roof was covered with galvanized sheeting, a flight of four stone steps led up to the door, and a strange, cross-shaped aerial stuck out beside the only chimney. But now all the Building’s windows were dark, in some places on the ground floor the shutters were missing and the windowpanes were streaked with dirt and cracked, in some places the panes had been replaced with warped sheets of plywood, and in some places they were crisscrossed with strips of paper. And there was no more solemn, somber music—a heavy, stifling silence crept out of the Building like an invisible mist.

Not taking even a second for reflection, Andrei flung his legs over the windowsill and jumped down into the garden, into the soft, thick grass. He walked over to the Building, frightening away the fireflies, burrowing deeper and deeper into the dead silence, keeping his eyes fixed on the familiar brass handle on the oak door, only now that handle was dull and covered in greenish splotches.

He walked up onto the porch and looked back. In the brightly lit windows of the dining room, human shadows merrily leaped about, twisting into fantastic poses, the sounds of dance music reached him faintly, and for some reason there was a clatter of knives and forks again. Dismissing all that, he turned away and took hold of the damp chased brass. The hallway was dimly lit, damp, and musty now; the branching coat stand protruded from the corner, as naked as a withered tree. There was no carpet on the marble stairway; there were no metal rods—all that was left on the steps were the green, tarnished rings, old yellowed cigarette butts, and some indefinite kind of trash. Treading heavily and hearing nothing but his own steps and his own breathing, Andrei slowly walked up to the top landing.

The long-extinct fireplace gave out a smell of old soot and ammonia, and something was stirring about in it with a faint rustling and scurrying. The immense hall was just as cold—he felt a draft on his legs—black, dusty rags hung down from the invisible ceiling, the marble walls were covered with dark, messy, suspicious-looking patches and glinted with dribbles of damp, the gold and purple had sloughed off them, and the haughtily modest busts of plaster, marble, bronze, and gold looked blindly out of their niches through clumps of dirty cobwebs. The parquet under Andrei’s feet creaked and yielded at every step, squares of moonlight lay on the littered floor, and ahead of him a gallery he had never been in before stretched onward and inward. And suddenly an entire swarm of rats shot out from beneath his feet, darted along the gallery with a pattering of paws, and disappeared into the darkness.

Where are they all? Andrei thought in confusion as he wandered along the gallery. What has become of them? he thought as he walked down rumbling iron steps into the musty inner depths. How did all this happen? he thought as he walked from room to room, with crumbled plaster crunching, broken glass squeaking, and dirt, covered in fluffy little mounds of mold, squelching under his feet… and there was a sweet smell of decomposition, and somewhere water was ticking, falling drop by drop, and on the tattered walls there were huge black pictures in mighty frames, but he couldn’t make out anything in them…

Now it will always be like this here, Andrei thought. I’ve done something—we’ve all done something—that means it will always be like this here. It won’t move from this spot again, it will stay here forever, it will rot and decay, like an ordinary dilapidated building, and in the end they’ll smash it apart with iron balls, they’ll burn the garbage, and take the burnt bricks off to the garbage dump… There isn’t a single voice. Not even a single sound, apart from rats squealing in despair in the corners…

He saw a huge cupboard with shelves and a rolling shutter and suddenly remembered there used to be a cupboard exactly like it standing in his little room—six square meters of floor space, with a single window looking out into an enclosed yard like a well shaft, and with the kitchen beside it. There were lots of old newspapers lying on the cupboard, and rolled-up posters that his father used to collect before the war, and some other old paper trash… and when a mousetrap smashed the face of a huge rat, it somehow managed to climb onto that cupboard and rustled and scrabbled up there for a long time, and every night Andrei was afraid that it would fall off onto his head, and one day he took a pair of binoculars and looked from a distance, from the windowsill, to see what was going on there, in among the paper. He saw—or did he imagine that he saw?—two jutting ears, a gray head, and an appalling bubble, gleaming as if it had been varnished, instead of a face. This was so terrifying that he darted out of his room and sat on the trunk in the corridor for a while, feeling the weakness and nausea inside him. He was alone in the apartment, there was no one there to make him feel embarrassed, but he was ashamed of his fear, and eventually he got up, went into the large room and put “Rio-Rita” on the gramophone… And a few days later a sweetish, nauseating smell appeared in his little room. The same smell as here…

In a vaulted chamber as deep as a well shaft he glimpsed the strange, surprising gleam of the leaden gray pipes of a huge organ, long since dead, cold, and dumb, like some abandoned graveyard of music. And close to the organ, beside the organist’s chair, a little man was lying, huddled up tight and shrouded in a ragged carpet, with an empty vodka bottle glinting by his head. Andrei realized that everything really was over, and hurried back to the way out.

He walked down from the porch into his garden and saw Izya, who was exceptionally drunk and somehow especially disheveled and mussed. He was standing there, swaying, holding on to the trunk of an apple tree with one hand and looking at the Building. In the twilight his bared teeth glittered in a frozen smile.

“It’s over,” Andrei told him. “It’s the end.”

“The delirium of an agitated conscience!” Izya mumbled indistinctly.

“Nothing but rats running around,” said Andrei. “Rotten.”

“The delirium of an agitated conscience…” Izya repeated, and giggled.