Unable to contain himself, Artyom snorted. Angry looks shot in his direction, and Brother Timothy raised a threatening finger.
‘The first human beings, Adam and Eve, sinned, deliberately violating God’s law,’ continued the orator. ‘Therefore Jehovah expelled them from paradise, and paradise was lost. But Jehovah did not forget the purpose for which he had created the earth. He promised to transform it into a paradise, in which people would live forever. How did God fulfil his plan?’ The elder posed the question to himself.
A lengthy pause indicated that the key moment of the sermon was about to arrive. Artyom was all ears.
‘Before the earth could become a paradise, the evil people would have to be eliminated.’ John pronounced the words forebodingly. ‘It was promised to our forefathers that a cleansing would take place through Armageddon - a divine war for the annihilation of evil. And then Satan would be enfettered for a thousand years. There would be nobody left to harm the earth. Only God’s people would remain alive! And King Jesus Christ will rule the earth for a thousand years!’ The elder turned his burning gaze to the front ranks of the people who were taking in his words. ‘Do you understand what this means? The divine war for the annihilation of evil has already ended! What happened to this sinful earth was Armageddon! Evil was incinerated! According to what was prophesied, only God’s people would survive. We who live in the metro are the people of God! We survived Armageddon! The Kingdom of God is at hand! Soon there will be neither old age, nor illness, nor death! The sick shall be freed of their ailments, and the old shall become young again! In the thousand-year reign of Jesus, the people who are faithful to God shall turn the earth into a paradise, and God shall resurrect millions of the dead!’
Artyom recalled Sukhoi’s conversation with Hunter about how the level of radiation on the surface would not drop for at least fifty years, and that mankind was doomed, and other biological species were on the rise . . . The elder did not explain exactly how the surface of the earth would turn into a flowering paradise.
Artyom wanted to ask him what weird kind of plants were going to bloom in that burned-out paradise, and what kind of people would dare to go up above and settle it, and if his parents had been children of Satan, and if that were why they had perished in the war to annihilate evil. But he didn’t say anything. He was filled with such bitterness and such mistrust, that his eyes burned, and he was ashamed to feel a tear run down his cheek. Mustering his strength, he said just one thing:
‘Tell me, what does Jehovah, our true God, say about headless mutants?’ The question hung in the air. Elder John did not deign even to glance at Artyom, but those standing next to him looked around with fright and repulsion, and they moved away from him, as if he had let out a foul smell. Brother Timothy tried to take him by the hand, but Artyom tore away and, pushing aside the brethren who were crowded around, began to make his way to the exit.
He made it out of the Hall of the Kingdom and went through the dining carriage. There were a lot of people at the tables now, with empty aluminium bowls in front of them. Something interesting was going on in the middle of the room, and all eyes were turned in that direction.
‘Before we partake of this repast, my brethren,’ a skinny, homely fellow with a crooked nose was saying, ‘let us listen to little David and his story. This will fill out the sermon we heard today about violence.’
He moved aside, his place being taken by a chubby, snub-nosed boy with carefully combed, whitish hair.
‘He was mad at me and wanted to give me a drubbing,’ David began, speaking with the intonation children use when reciting verses they have learned by heart. ‘Probably only because I was short. I backed away from him and cried out: “Stop! Wait! Don’t beat me! I haven’t done anything to you. What did I do to offend you? You’d better tell me what happened!” ’ A well-rehearsed expression of exaltation came over David’s face.
‘And what did that awful bully say to you?’ the skinny fellow jumped in excitedly.
‘It turned out that somebody had stolen his breakfast, and he was only taking out his annoyance on the first person he ran into,’ David explained, but something in his voice made it seem doubtful that he himself understood very well what he had just said.
‘And what did you do?’ asked the thin man, stoking the tension.
‘I just said to him, “If you beat me, it won’t bring your breakfast back,” and I suggested to him instead, to go to Brother Chef and tell him what had happened. We asked for another breakfast for him. After that he shook my hand and was always friendly to me.’
‘Is the man who offended little David present in this room?’ asked the skinny fellow in the voice of a prosecutor.
A hand shot up, and a strapping twenty-year-old with a doltish and malevolent-looking face began to make his way toward the improvised stage, to tell about the miraculous effect of little David’s words upon him. It wasn’t easy. The boy was obviously more adept at memorizing words whose meaning he didn’t understand. When the presentation was over, and little David and the repentant thug left the stage to the approving sound of applause, the stringy fellow took their place again and addressed the seated audience in an impassioned voice:
‘Yes, the words of the meek possess enormous power! As it says in Proverbs, the words of the meek break bones. Softness and meekness are not weakness, o my beloved brethren, for softness conceals an enormous strength of will! And examples from the Holy Bible give us proof . . .’ Flipping through the well-thumbed book for the page he wanted, he began to read aloud some story, in tones of rapture.
Artyom moved ahead, followed by surprised looks, and finally made it into the lead car. Nobody stopped him there, and he was about to go out onto the tracks, but Bashni the senior guard, that amiable and unflappable hulk of a man, greeted him cordially at the door, now blocking the way with his torso and, knitting his thick brows, sternly asked if Artyom had permission to exit. There was no way to get around him.
Waiting half a minute for an explanation, the guard kneaded his enormous fists with a dry crackle, and moved towards Artyom. Looking around in all directions, trapped, Artyom remembered little David’s story. Maybe, instead of hurling himself against the elephantine guard, it would be worth finding out if maybe somebody stole his breakfast.
Fortunately, just then Brother Timothy caught up with him. Looking at the security man tenderly, he said, ‘This young man may pass. We don’t hold anybody here against their will.’ The guard, looking at him in surprise, obediently stepped aside.
‘But allow me to accompany you even just a little way, o my beloved Brother Artyom,’ Brother Timothy sang out, and Artyom, unable to resist the magic of his voice, nodded. ‘Perhaps the way we live here was something unaccustomed for you, the first time,’ Timothy said in soothing tones, ‘but now the divine seed has been implanted in you as well, and it is clear to my eyes, that it has fallen into favoured soil. I only want to tell you how you should not act, now that the Kingdom of God is near as never before, lest you be turned away. You must learn to hate evil and to avoid the things which God abhors: fornication, which means infidelity, sodomy, incest and homosexuality, gambling, lying, thievery, fits of rage, violence, sorcery, spiritualism, drunkenness.’ Brother Timothy reeled them off in a rush of words, nervously looking Artyom in the eye. ‘If you love God and wish to please Him, free yourself from those sins! Your more mature friends will be able to help you,’ he added, evidently alluding to himself. ‘Honour the name of God, preach the Kingdom of God, take no part in the affairs of this evil world, abjure people who tell you otherwise, for Satan speaks through their mouths,’ he muttered, but Artyom didn’t hear anything. He was walking faster and faster, and Brother Timothy couldn’t keep up. ‘Tell me, where shall I be able to find you next time?’ he called out from quite a distance, panting, and almost lost in the semi-darkness.
Artyom remained silent, and broke into a run. From behind, out of the darkness, a desperate cry reached him:
‘Give the cassock back . . . !’
Artyom ran on ahead, stumbling, unable to see anything in front of him. Several times he fell down, scraping his palms on the concrete floor and skinning his knees, but there was no stopping. He had too clear an image of the black pedestal-mounted machine gun, and now he didn’t much believe that the brethren would prefer a meek word to violence, if they could catch up to him.
He was a step nearer to his goal, being not far away at all from Polis. It was on the same line, and only two stations away. The main thing was to go forward, not deviating one step from his route, and then . . .
Artyom entered
Serphukhovskaya
. He didn’t pause for a second, only checked his direction, and then dived back into the black hole of the tunnel leading ahead.
But, at this point, something unexpected happened to him.
The feeling of terror of the tunnel, which he had already forgotten, came crashing back down upon him, pressing him to the ground, making it difficult for him to walk, or think, or even breathe. It had seemed to him that, by now, he had formed some habits, and that, after all his wanderings, the horror would leave him and would not dare to bother him again. He had felt neither fear nor alarm when moving from Kitai Gorod to Pushkinskaya, nor when riding from Tverskaya to Paveletskaya, nor even as he trudged, completely alone, from Paveletskaya to Dobryninskaya. But now it had returned.
With each step forward, the feeling assailed him more and more. He wanted to turn around immediately and plunge headlong back to the station, where there was at least a little bit of light, and some people, and where his back would not be constantly tickled by the sensation of an intent and malevolent gaze.
He had been interacting with people so much, that he had stopped feeling what had rushed over him when he first left Alekseevskaya. But now, once again, he was engulfed by the understanding that the metro was not merely a transportation facility, built at a certain point in time, that it was not merely an atomic bomb shelter, or home to some tens of thousands of people . . . Rather, somebody had breathed into it their own, mysterious, incomparable life, and it possessed a certain extraordinary kind of reason, which a human being could not fathom, and a consciousness that was alien to him.
This sensation was so precise and clear, that it seemed to Artyom as if the terror of the tunnel, which people wrongly took to be their ultimate place of refuge, were simply the hostility of this huge being towards the petty creatures who were burrowing into its body. And now, it did not want Artyom to go forward. Against his drive to reach the end of his path, to reach his goal, it was pitting its ancient, powerful will. And its resistance was growing, with every metre Artyom advanced.
Now he was walking through impenetrable darkness, unable to see his own hands, even if he lifted them right up to his face. It was as if he had fallen out of space and out of the currents of time, and it seemed to him as if his body had ceased to exist. It was as if he were not stepping his way through the tunnel, but soaring as a substance of pure reason in an unknown dimension.
Artyom could not see the walls receding behind him, so it appeared as if he were standing still, not moving forward a single step, and that the goal of his journey were just as unattainable as it had been five or ten minutes earlier. Yes, his feet were picking their way through the cross-ties, which could have told him that he was changing his spatial position. On the other hand, the signal which advised his brain of each new cross-tie, onto which his foot stepped, was absolutely uniform. Recorded once and for all, now it was repeating to infinity. That also made him doubt the reality of his motion. Was he nearing his goal by moving? Suddenly he remembered his vision, which provided an answer to the question tormenting him.
And then, whether from terror of the unknown, evil, hostile thing that was bearing down on him from behind, or in order to prove to himself that he really was still moving, Artyom rushed ahead with triple the force. And he barely managed to stop, guessing by some sixth sense that an obstacle lay ahead, and miraculously he avoided crashing into it.
Carefully probing with his hands along the cold, rusted metal, and then fragments of glass sticking out from rubber gaskets, and steel pancakes which were wheels, he recognized that the mysterious obstacle was a train. This train had been abandoned, apparently. In any case, there was only silence around it. Remembering Mikhail Porfiryevich’s horrible story, Artyom made no attempt to climb into it, but rather skirted the chain of subway cars, keeping close to the tunnel wall. Getting past the train at last, he breathed a sigh of relief and hurried onward, again breaking into a run.
In the darkness this was really difficult, but his legs caught on, and he ran, until there appeared ahead, and slightly to one side, the reddish glow of a bonfire.
It brought indescribable relief to know that he was in the real world, and that there were real people nearby. It didn’t matter how they would relate to him. They could be murderers or thieves, sectarians or revolutionaries - it didn’t matter. The main thing was that they were creatures of flesh and blood, like him. He did not doubt for one second that he would be able to find refuge with these people and to hide from that invisible, huge being which wanted to suffocate him. Or, was he seeking refuge from his own deranged mind?
Such a strange picture came into view that he could not say for certain if he had returned to the real world, or was still roaming the nooks and crannies of his own subconscious.
At Polyanka station, only a single small bonfire was burning, but the absence of any other source of light here made it seem brighter than all the electric lights of Paveletskaya. Two people were sitting by the bonfire, one with his back turned toward Artyom and one facing him, but neither of them noticed or heard him. It was as if they were separated from him by an invisible wall that cut them off from the outside world.