‘Honest, I have to,’ Artyom repeated. He couldn’t explain his feeling, but he knew that he had to get to
VDNKh
at any cost.
‘Well, if you have to, then you have to,’ the fighter replied, embarrassed. ‘You won’t have time to get back, especially if you intend to say goodbye to someone there. Here’s what we’ll do: we’ll ride from here along Prospect Mir in the vehicle with Pashka - that’s him with the cases. We had intended to go directly to the tower earlier, but we can take a detour and run by the old entrance to the
VDNKh
metro. Everything new has been turned upside-down, your people have to know that. We’ll wait for you there. In five hours and fifty minutes. Whoever doesn’t make it is late. Did you get a suit? Do you have a watch? Here, take mine, I’ll get one from Pashka.’ He unfastened the metal bracelet.
‘In five hours, fifty minutes.’ Artyom nodded, shook Ulman’s hand and raced towards the blockhouse. Seeing him again, the border guard shook his head.
‘And nothing else strange is happening in this crossing?’ Artyom asked. ‘Are you here about the pipes or what?’
‘It’s nothing. They patched them up. They say your head will spin when you are going by,’ the border guard answered.
Artyom thanked him with a nod, turned on his flashlight and walked into the tunnel. Different thoughts raced through his head for the first ten minutes: about the danger of the crossing laying ahead, about the considered and reasonable way of life at Byelorusskay, then about the ‘carriers’ and real trains. But gradually the tunnel’s darkness sucked these trivial thoughts, this confusion of flashing pictures and snatches of phrases, from him.
At first he grew calm, empty, then he began to think about something else. His journey was coming to an end. Even Artyom could not say how long he had been away. Maybe two weeks had passed, perhaps more than a month. How simple, how short the trip had seemed to him when, sitting on the handcar at Alekseevskaya, he had been looking at his old map in the light of the flashlight, trying to plan a route to Polis . . . An unknown world lay before him then, about which he knew nothing for certain. It had been possible to develop a route by considering only the length of the journey and not how it would change the traveller walking it. Life had turned out to be very different, confused and complex, mortally dangerous. Even casual companions, sharing small segments of his trip with him, had paid for it with their lives. Artyom remembered Oleg. Everyone has his own predestination, Sergei Andreyevich had told him at Polyanka. Could it have been that the terrible, nonsensical death spared other people and allowed them to continue their affairs? Artyom grew cold and uncomfortable. To accept such a proposition, to accept this sacrifice, meant that he had to believe that his journey could only be at the cost of somebody’s life . . . Could it be that in order to fulfil his predestined fate others had to be trampled, destroyed, crippled? Oleg, of course, had been too young to ask why he had been born. But if he had thought about it, he would hardly have agreed to a fate. The faces of Mikhail Porfirievich, Daniel and Tretyak passed before his eyes. Why did they die? Why did Artyom himself survive? What gave him this capacity, this right? Artyom was sorry that Ulman, who with one mocking remark could dispel his doubts, was not with him now. The difference between them was that the trip through the metro had forced Artyom to see the world as if through a multi-faceted prism, but Ulman’s Spartan life had taught him to view things simply: through the sight of a sniper’s rifle. He didn’t know which of the two of them was right, but Artyom no longer was able to believe that there can be only one, single true answer to every question. Generally in life, and especially in the metro, everything was unclear, changing and relative. Khan had explained this to him at first using the example of the station clock. If such a basis for perceiving the world, as time, turned out to be farfetched and relative, then just what could be said about other indisputable views of life? All of it: from the voice of the pipe in the tunnel through which he was walking, and the shining of the Kremlin stars to the eternal secrets of the human soul, had several explanations. And there were many answers to the question, ‘why?’ The people Artyom had encountered, from the cannibals at Park Pobedy to the fighters of the Che Guevara brigade, knew how to answer it. All of them had their own answers: the sectarians and the Satanists, the fascists and the philosophers with the machine guns, like Khan. It was for this reason that it was difficult for Artyom to choose and accept only one of them. Getting a new version of the answer every day, Artyom was unable to compel himself to believe what was true, because the next day another, no less precise and comprehensive one, might arise. Whom should he believe? And in what? In the Great Worm - the cannibalistic god, shaped like an electrified train and populating the barren, scorched earth with living beings; in the wrathful and jealous Jehovah; in his vainglorious reflection - Satan; in the victory of communism in the whole metro; in the supremacy of the fair-haired men with turned-up noses over curly haired, swarthy races Something suggested to Artyom that there were no differences in any of it. Any faith served man only as a crutch supporting him. When Artyom was young, his stepfather’s story about how a monkey took up a cane and became a man made him laugh. After that, apparently, the clever macaque no longer let the cane out of his hand because he couldn’t straighten up. He understood why man needs this support. Without it, life would have become empty, like an abandoned tunnel. The desperate cry of the savage from Park Pobedy when he realized that the Great Worm was only a contrivance of his people’s priests still resonated in Artyom’s ears. Artyom felt something similar, finding out that the Unseen Observers did not exist. But for him, repudiation of the Observers, the Snake and other metro gods made life easier. Did that mean that he was stronger than the others? Artyom understood that was not true. The cane was in his hands, and he was supposed to become brave enough to recognize it. His awareness that he was carrying out an assignment of huge importance, that the survival of the whole metro was in his hands and that this mission hadn’t been entrusted to him by chance, served as his support. Consciously or not, Artyom looked for proof in everything that he had chosen for carrying out this mission, but not like Hunter, but someone or something greater. To destroy the dark ones, to save his home station and those near and dear from them and to stop the destruction of the metro - that was his task. And everything that had happened to Artyom during his travels proved only one thing: he was not the same as everyone. Something special had been intended for him. He was supposed to make mincemeat of and destroy the vermin which otherwise would make short work of the remnants of mankind. While he was walking along this path, faithfully interpreting the signs being sent his way, his will for success was overcoming reality, playing with statistical probability, warding off bullets, blinding monsters and enemies, and compelling allies to be at the right location at the right time. How else could he understand why Daniel had turned over to him the plan of the missile unit’s location, and this unit by some miracle had not been destroyed decades ago? How else to explain that, against all common sense, he had met one of the few, maybe only living missile men in the whole metro? Had Providence placed powerful weapons into Artyom’s hands personally and sent him a man to help deliver a death blow to the inexplicable and merciless force, crushing it? How else could all the miraculous rescues of Artyom from the most desperate situations be explained? While he believed in his own predestination, he was invulnerable, although people who accompanied him perished one after the other. Artyom’s thoughts turned to what had been said by Sergei Andreyevich at Polyanka about fate. At that time those words had driven him forward, like a new, lubricated spring installed in the worn-out, corroded mechanism of a wind-up toy. But at the same time, they were unpleasant for him. Maybe it was because this theory deprived Artyom of his own free will and forced him to submit to the story line of his own fate. But, on the other hand, how was it possible for him to refute the existence of this line of thinking after everything that had happened to him? He could no longer believe that his whole life was only a succession of random events.
Too much already had happened, and it was impossible to get out of this rut just like that. If he had gone so far, then he had to go even further - such was the inexorable logic of the path chosen. Now it was already too late to hold any doubts. He must go forward, even if this meant bearing the responsibility not only for his own life, but also for the lives of others. All the sacrifices had not been in vain. He had to accept them, he was obligated to take his path to the end. That was his fate. Just how had he lacked this clarity earlier? He had doubted his own election, distracted by stupidity and hesitating all this time, but the answer always was right there. Ulman had been right: there’s no need to complicate life.
Artyom was walking now, briskly beating out the pace. And he hadn’t heard any noise from the pipes; nothing dangerous had been encountered at all in the tunnels all the way to
VDNKh.
However, Artyom had come across people who were going to Prospect
Mir:
he was moving against the flow of those unfortunates, who were exhausted, had cast off everything and were running from the danger. They viewed him as a madman: he alone was walking into the lair of terror itself at the same time the others were trying to abandon the cursed place.
There were no patrols at Rizhskaya or at Alekseevskaya. Immersing himself in his thoughts, Artyom didn’t notice when he had approached
VDNKh,
though not less than an hour and a half had passed. Climbing into the station and looking around, he unwillingly shuddered - how much it reminded him of that
VDNKh
he saw in his nightmares.
Half the lighting was not working, there was the odour of burning gunpowder in the air, and somewhere in the distance were heard the moans and the anguished crying of women. Artyom held the machine gun at the ready and moved ahead, carefully skirting the arches and examining the shadows closely. It was as if the dark ones had been able, at least once, to penetrate the fences and reach the station itself. Some of the tents had been cleared away, and in several places there were dried traces of blood on the floor. People were still living here and there, and a flashlight sometimes even shone through the canvas. Distant gunfire could be heard from the northern tunnel. The exit to it was covered with bags of dirt piled as high as a man. Three men were pressed against this breastwork, observing the tunnel through gun slots and keeping the approaches in their sights.
‘Artyom? Artyom! Where did you come from?’ a familiar voice hailed him. Turning around, he noticed Kirill - one of the men he had left
VDNKh
with at the very beginning of his journey. Kirill’s arm was in a sling, and the hair on his head seemed even more unkempt than usual.
‘Well, I’ve come back,’ Artyom answered vaguely. ‘How are you holding out here? Where’s Uncle Sasha, where’s Zhenka?
‘Zhenka? He was caught . . . They killed him, a week ago,’ Kirill said gloomily.
Artyom’s heart fell.
‘And my stepfather?’
‘Sukhoi is alive and well, he’s in charge. He’s in the infirmary right now.’ Kirill waved a hand in the direction of the staircase leading to a new exit from the station.
‘Thanks!’
Artyom raced away.
‘And just where have you been?’ Kirill cried after him.
The ‘infirmary’ was sinister. There weren’t many real wounded here, only five men. Other patients occupied the majority of the space. Diapered like infants and confined in sleeping bags, they were laid out in a row. All of them had their eyes wide open and they mumbled incoherently through their half-open mouths. It wasn’t a nurse watching over them, but a rifleman holding a phial with chloroform in his hands. From time to time one of those in diapers began to fidget along the floor, howling and transferring his agitation to the rest, and then the guard would place a rag soaked with chloroform to the man’s face. The man didn’t fall asleep, nor did he close his eyes, but he went quiet for some time and calmed down.
Artyom didn’t see Sukhoi right away: he was sitting in the office, discussing something with the station doctor. Leaving, he ran into Artyom and was stupefied.
‘You’re alive . . . Artyomka! Alive . . . Thank God . . . Artyom!’ he had begun to mutter, touching Artyom on the shoulder, as if wishing to convince himself that Artyom was indeed standing in front of him. Artyom embraced him. And he, like a child, was afraid in the depths of his soul that he would return to the station and his stepfather would begin to scold him: he would say, where did you disappear to, how irresponsible, how long were you going to behave like a little boy . . . But instead, Sukhoi just held him close and didn’t let go for a long time. When the fatherly embrace finally ended, Artyom saw that Sukhoi’s eyes were filled with tears and he blushed. Briefly, he told his stepfather where he had disappeared to and what he had managed to do during that time, and he explained why he had returned. Sukhoi only shook his head and criticized Hunter. Then he came to his senses, saying that he would not speak ill of the dead. Though, he didn’t know what had happened to Hunter.
‘Do you see what’s going on here?’ Sukhoi’s voice again hardened. ‘Every night they pour in and there aren’t enough bullets. A handcar arrived from Prospect Mir with supplies, but it’s peanuts.’
‘They want to blow up the tunnel at Prospect Mir to cut off both
VDNKh
and the other stations completely,’ Artyom reported.
‘Yes . . . They are afraid of the ground water. They aren’t venturing close to
VDNKh.
But this won’t help for long. The dark ones will find other entrances.’
‘When will you be leaving here? There’s only a little time left. Less than a day. You have to get everything ready.’