‘I’ll have to go with you,’ continued Melnik in a dull voice, ignoring the question. ‘I answer to Hunter for you now, whatever’s happened to him. And there’s no backing out on an agreement with the Brahmins. Nobody’s done it yet. And above all, don’t think about blabbing to the military.’ He got up, shook his head, and added: ‘If you only knew what you’re getting into . . . I’m going to sleep. We’ll be getting up tonight.’
‘But aren’t you in the military?’ asked Artyom, catching up to him. ‘I heard them call you “Colonel”.’
‘Yeah, I’m a colonel, just not in their chain of command,’ answered Melnik grudgingly, and left.
Artyom spent the rest of the day learning about Polis, walking about aimlessly through the limitless space of stairs and passages, examining the majestic colonnades and marvelling at how many people this underground city could accommodate. He studied the whole of the ‘Metro News’ penny sheet, which was printed on brown wrapping paper, listened to vagrant musicians, leafed through books at stalls, played with puppies that were being offered for sale, listened to the latest gossip, and could not shake the feeling that he was being followed all this time and was under constant observation. Several times, he even wheeled around suddenly, hoping to catch someone’s attentive look, but it was no use. He was surrounded by a swarming crowd, and nobody paid any attention to him.
Finding a hotel in one of the passages, he slept for several hours before appearing at ten in the evening, as had been agreed, at the gate of the exit into the city at Borovitskaya. Melnik was running late, but the sentries had been informed and offered Artyom a cup of tea while he waited.
Interrupting himself for a minute to pour boiling water into an enamelled cup, the elderly sentry continued his story:
‘So . . . I was assigned to listen to the radio. Everyone hoped to catch a transmission from government bunkers beyond the Urals. But it was no use, because the first thing they hit was the strategic targets. That’s how Ramenki got smeared, and all of the out-of-town summer residences, with their basements thirty metres deep, how they got smeared, too . . . They might have even spared Ramenki . . . They didn’t try too hard to hit the peaceful population . . . Nobody knew then that this war was to the very end. So, maybe they might have spared Ramenki, but there was a command point right next to it, so they slammed it . . . And as far as civilian casualties were concerned, it was all, as they say, collateral damage, you should pardon the expression. But at that time nobody believed that yet, so the brass had me sit and listen to the airwaves over next to Arbatskaya, in a bunker. And initially, I heard a lot of strange stuff . . . Siberia was quiet, though other parts of the country were broadcasting. Submarines - strategic, nuclear - went on the air. They’d ask whether to strike or not . . . People didn’t believe that Moscow no longer existed. Full captains were sobbing like kids over the radio. It’s strange, you know, when salty naval officers, who hadn’t uttered a swear word in their entire lives, are crying and asking for someone to check and see if their wives or daughters are among the survivors . . . “Go, look for them here,” they’d say . . . And later, they’d all react differently. There were those who said, “That’s it! The hell with it, it’s an eye for an eye!” and they’d get in close to their shores and launch everything against the cities. Others, on the contrary, decided that since everything was already going to hell in a hand basket, there wasn’t any sense in continuing to fight. Why kill more people? But that didn’t have any effect. There were enough out there who wanted to avenge their families. And the boats answered for a long time. They could run under water for half a year while on station. They found some of them, of course, but they couldn’t find all of them. Well, that’s an earful of history. To this day, when I think about it, I get the shakes. But that wasn’t the point. I once picked up a tank crew that miraculously survived a strike; they were ferrying their tank from their unit, or something . . . It was a new generation of armour technology that protected them from the radiation. So, here were these three guys in this tank, and they light out at full speed from Moscow, headed east. They drove through some burning villages, picked up some broads, and went on, stopping to top off with some straw distillate and then getting back on the road. When the fuel finally ran out, they were in some backwater, where there wasn’t anything left to bomb. The background radiation there, too, remained pretty high, of course, but still it was nothing like it was next to the cities. They laid out a camp, dug their tank in hull-down, and ended up with a sort of fortification. They pitched tents nearby, eventually built mud huts, set up a manual generator for electricity, and lived for a fairly long time around that tank. For two years, I spoke to them almost every night and knew all of what was going on in their personal lives. Everything was quiet at first, they set up a farmstead, and two of them had kids that were . . . almost normal. They had enough ammo. They saw some weird stuff there, and creatures were coming out of the forest the likes of which the lieutenant we were talking to couldn’t even describe properly. Then they went off the air. I spent another half year trying to raise them, but something happened out there. Maybe their generator or transmitter broke down, or maybe they ran out of ammo . . .’
‘You were talking about Ramenki,’ recalled his partner, ‘about how it got bombed, and I thought, for as long as I’ve been serving here, nobody can tell me anything about the Kremlin. How is it that it remained whole? Why didn’t it get hit? I mean, that’s where’d you expect to find right proper bunkers . . .’
‘Who told you it didn’t get hit? Man, did it get hit!’ the sentry assured him. ‘They just didn’t want to demolish it, because it’s an architectural monument, and also because they were testing new weapons against it. So that’s what we got . . . It would’ve been better if they’d wiped it off the earth from the beginning.’ He spat and fell silent.
Artyom sat quietly, trying not to distract the veteran from his reminiscences. It was rare that he was able to hear so many details of how everything had come about. But the elderly sentry remained quiet, lost in some private thought, and eventually Artyom seized the moment and decided to ask a question that had preoccupied him earlier, too:
‘But there’s subway systems in other cities, aren’t there? At least, I heard there were. Is it true there’s no people left anywhere? When you were a radio operator, didn’t you hear any signals?’
‘No, I didn’t hear anything. But you’re right. People in Petersburg, for example, should have been able to save themselves. Their subway stations are deeply embedded, some even deeper than what we’ve got here, and the setup was the same. I travelled there when I was young, I remember. On one line, they had no exits onto the tracks. Instead, they had these hefty iron portals. When the train arrived, the portal doors would open together with the doors of the train. I remember this quite me surprised at the time. I asked everyone, but nobody could properly explain why things were set up that way. One told me it was to prevent flooding, another told me it saved a heap of money on finishing work. Later, I became friends with this one subway worker, and he told me that something had devoured half of one construction team, and that the same was going on with other teams. They were finding only the gnawed bones and the tools. Of course, the public was never told anything, but those iron doors were installed all along the line, just to be on the safe side. And that was, let me think, back when . . . Anyway, what the radiation may have spawned there is hard to imagine.’
The conversation broke off as Melnik and one other person, short and thickset, with deeply set eyes and a massive jaw overgrown by a short beard, came up to the gate. Both were already wearing their protective suits and had large haversacks slung on their backs. Melnik silently inspected Artyom, placed a large black bag next to Artyom’s feet, and motioned towards the army tent.
Artyom slipped inside and, opening the zipper on the bag, took out a black set of overalls like the ones Melnik and his partner wore, an unusual gas mask, with a full-face window and two filters on the sides, high laced boots, and most important, a new Kalashnikov assault rifle with a laser sight and folding metal stock. It was an exceptional weapon. The only thing Artyom had seen like it had been carried by the elite Hansa units who patrolled the line in railmotor cars. A long flashlight and round helmet with a fabric cover lay at the bottom of the bag.
He hadn’t had the time to finish dressing when the tent flap lifted and the Brahmin Daniel entered. In his hands, he held an identical zippered stretch bag. They stared at each other in amazement. Artyom was the first to realize what was what.
‘You’re going up? You’re our chaperone? You’re going to help us go look for I don’t know what?’ he asked, jeeringly.
‘I know what it is,’ snarled Daniel, ‘but I have no idea how you intend to look for it.’
‘Neither do I,’ admitted Artyom. ‘I was told it’d be explained later . . . So here I am, waiting.’
‘And I was told that a clairvoyant is being sent up to the surface, and that he’s supposed to feel where to go.’
‘I’m the clairvoyant?’ snorted Artyom.
‘The elders believe that you have a gift and that your destiny is special. Somewhere in the Testament is a prophecy foretelling the appearance of a youth, led by fate, who will find the hidden secrets of the Great Library. He will find that which our caste has attempted to find for this past decade without success. The elders are convinced that this person is you.’
‘Is it that book you told me about?’ asked Artyom.
For a long time, Daniel didn’t answer, then he nodded his head.
‘You’re supposed to feel it. It’s not hidden from everyone. If you’re really that same “youth, led by fate”, then you won’t even have to run around the stack archives. The book will find you,’ he said, running his eyes over Artyom searchingly, and then added, ‘What did you ask from them in exchange?’
There was no use keeping back the truth. Artyom was only unpleasantly surprised that Daniel, who was supposed to give him information capable of saving
VDNKh
from the ghoul invasion, knew nothing of this danger or of the conditions of his agreement with the Council members. He briefly summarized the agreement for Daniel and explained the catastrophe he was trying to prevent. Daniel attentively heard him out, and was still standing motionless and thinking about something when Artyom left the tent.
Melnik and the bearded stalker were already waiting in full combat dress, holding their gas masks and helmets in their hands. His partner now carried the light machine gun, while Melnik clasped a copy of the assault rifle that Artyom had been given. A night vision device was hanging around his neck.
When Daniel stepped out of the tent, he and Artyom looked at each other with a swagger, then Daniel gave a wink and both started to laugh. They both now looked like real stalkers.
‘We lucked out . . . Before rookies go on important missions, they spend two years training under stalkers, fetching firewood from the surface. But you and I, we’re sitting pretty!’ said Daniel, whispering, to Artyom.
Melnik looked at them disapprovingly, but said nothing. He motioned for them to follow. They came up to the passage arch and, after going up the stairs, stopped at the next cement block wall, where there was an armoured door guarded by a reinforced sentry detail. The stalker greeted the sentries and gave the sign to open the door. One of the soldiers got up from his seat, went to the door and pulled at the bolt heavily. The thick steel door moved smoothly to the side. Melnik let the other three pass, saluted the sentries, and went out last.
A short buffer zone about three metres in length began beyond the door, between the wall and the pressure doors. Another two heavily armed soldiers and an officer stood watch there. Before giving the order to raise the iron barrier, Melnik decided to brief the rookies.
‘Listen up. No talking en route. Either of you ever been on the surface? Never mind . . . Give me the map,’ he said to the officer. ‘Until we get to the vestibule, walk in my footsteps and don’t wander. Don’t look around, don’t talk. When we leave the vestibule, don’t even think about going through the turnstiles, or you’ll lose your legs. Keep following me. I don’t want to see any independent activity. Then I’ll go outside. Ten over there,’ he pointed at the bearded stalker, ‘will stay behind and cover the station vestibule. If everything is clear, then as soon as we’re on the street, we’ll immediately turn left. It’s not too dark right now, so don’t use your flashlights out there. We don’t want to attract attention. Did you get the word about the Kremlin? It’ll be on the right, but one tower can be seen above the buildings as soon as you come out of the metro. Don’t look at the Kremlin, no matter what! I’ll personally smack anyone who does upside the head.’
So it’s true, about the Kremlin and about the stalker’s rule not to look at it, no matter what, thought Artyom in amazement. Suddenly, something stirred within him, some fragmented thoughts and images . . . Stirred, and then calmed down.
‘We’re going up to the Library. We’ll go as far as the doors and steps. I’ll go in first. If the stairs are clear, Ten’ll keep his sights on ’em and we’ll go up; then we’ll cover Ten and he’ll come up. No talking on the stairs. If you spot danger, signal with your flashlight. Don’t shoot unless it’s absolutely necessary. Shots can attract them.’
‘Who?’ Artyom could not stay quiet.
‘What do you mean, “who”?’ repeated Melnik. ‘Who would you expect to meet in the Library? Librarians, of course.’
Daniel swallowed hard and paled. Artyom looked at him, then at Melnik and decided this was no time to pretend he was a know-it-all.
‘And who’s that?’
Melnik raised his eyebrows in surprise. His bearded partner put a hand over his eyes. Daniel looked at the floor. For a long time, the stalker looked at Artyom with eyebrows raised and when he finally understood that Artyom wasn’t joking, he coolly answered, ‘You’ll see for yourself. The main thing to remember is this: you can keep them from attacking if you look them straight in the eyes. Straight in the eyes, got it? Don’t let them get behind you . . . That’s all. Move out!’ He put on his gas mask, then his helmet, and gave the sentries the thumbs-up.