“What?”
“Letyaga, Artyom! It’s me! Group A minus! Come on now! It’s me!”
“What are you … ? Did you hear me? You heard me? The Reds were jamming all frequencies! I wasn’t out of my mind! The whole world! We’re the only idiots under the ground! I’m just going to demolish those fucking jammers right now! Tell Miller … Tell him … That I …”
“Wait! Do you hear me? Stop, Artyom, don’t … Wait!”
“I can’t! I can’t wait! The Reds are here! Reds all around us. They’ll storm us in a moment. They’ll grind us to pulp. But we’ll have time to smash those fucking …”
“No, they won’t grind you to pulp! We can … We’ll make a deal with them! Don’t touch anything!”
The machine gun exploded in another paroxysm, and thunder pealed inside the building: They were blazing away from the upper floor too.
“Who with? The Reds? Make a deal?”
“It’s not the Reds! Not the Reds, Artyom!”
There was an abrupt, mighty crash outside the window. And another. Artyom heard a long, infernal grating sound, like an iron curtain being raised from horizon to horizon. Weary steel groaned like an immense horn. And a toppled pylon tumbled over unhurriedly and majestically to lie alongside the building, almost right across the enclosed grounds; the earth shook.
“Too late! It’s all over here! We’re smashing the fucking lot!”
“No! You mustn’t smash them! I know! We know about the jammers! It’s not … It’s not what you think! I can stop those men! I will stop them! There won’t be any assault! Just wait for me, Artyom! Wait! I’ll explain everything!”
There was another clang and another groan.
“Who is it? Tell me! What’s it all for?” Artyom tore off the headphones and stuck his head out of the window.
A gray man was dangling on the wall, crucified on the barbed wire; he tried to free himself, but the strength had deserted his arms. The excavator screeched and raised its arm again.
“Cease fire! Stop. The assault! The Order! Miller!” Letyaga the mosquito squeaked somewhere off to one side. “Artyom! Artyom! They’ll wait! You wait too! I’m already on my way! Do you hear me? Artyom?”
The machine gun quieted down. had the gray men pulled back, or had a sniper found Lyokha?
Boom! And another baobab tree released the grip of its cement roots on the dry earth and its crown’s grip on the clouds, and started heeling over painfully and reluctantly.
We are one blood, thou and I, right Letyaga? One blood. If I’m not with you, who am I with?
“Stop! Sto-o-o-op!” Artyom leaned out as far as his waist, so that SaveliI could spot him.
The excavator started pondering. But the pylon was already felled anyway, and it started sinking down heavily past the window onto the ground. Artyom breathed out black smoke and believed what the headphones said. He couldn’t have done anything else.
“I’m waiting! I’m waiting, Letyaga!”
* * *
“How old are you?” Mikhail asked Artyom.
Igor was the one who was slightly shorter and a bit more delicate. Mikhail was more coarsely molded, with less care; and he was a bit slower because of his extra body weight. Artyom had finally begun to tell them apart.
“Twenty-six,” said Artyom. “In March, that was.”
“Your sign’s Aries, then?” Igor inquired.
“I wouldn’t have a clue. The thirty-first. One more day and I’d have been born on the first of April. April Fool’s day. I should have hung on for a bit, probably.”
“Aries. A ram. Stubborn.”
“Twenty-si-i-ix?” Mikhail raised his black eyebrows. “Oh, man! I’d never have said that.”
“How old would you have said?”
“I don’t know. Forty?”
“Thanks a fucking bunch.”
“Don’t listen to the little fools.” Arseny pulled a hair out of his beard. “For them, anything over twenty is forty already.”
“And how old are you two?”
“I’m seventeen.”
“I’m nineteen.”
“Strange,” Artyom remarked after thinking for a moment. “Neither of you is twenty yet, but you were both born on the surface.”
* * *
Was Artyom surprised when he stopped at the gates?
He certainly was.
The same armored off-roader that had blasted lead at him and chased him along Tverskaya Street. The very same one. The heavy door was moved aside, and Letyaga jumped down into the dust: without a mask.
“I’m alone! Let me in!”
The off-roader slammed itself shut, reversed, and set off back to where it had come from, towards Enthusiasts’ Highway.
Artyom took a look at the cameras, and only then opened up for Letyaga. Letyaga shook his head, puffed out his cheeks, and squinted at Artyom. Then he hugged him.
“You look lousy, brother.”
“That’s working in the open air.”
“Right. Fine work. You’ve stirred up trouble big-time.”
“Me?”
“The old man will give you a roasting. Let’s go to the radio.”
Artyom led his visitor inside. They were waiting there—Arseny and his sons. Lyokha was looking into the trees from the roof. Savelii had curled into a tight ball in the excavator, so that the snipers couldn’t get a bead on him. The gray men had promised a truce, but they hadn’t named the terms. He felt uneasy.
“Who’s this?” Letyaga nodded suspiciously at the outsiders.
“People. They’re people, brother. Live people from another town. From Murom. They came to save you and me.”
“From Murom?” Letyaga asked Arseny. “Is that somewhere north of here?’
“It’s to the east of Moscow,” Arseny replied.
“And who are you going to save us from, granddad?” Letyaga asked. “From the horned Devil?”
“Someone like you—maybe only from himself.” Arseny smiled at him.
“And where’s your Miller?” Artyom walked past the radio operator into the control room. “I’m itching to talk to him myself …”
He only turned his back on Letyaga for a second.
A flurry of hasty popping sounds.
Artyom swung round at the popping, at the sudden hoarfrost along his spine, at the gurgling—and there were the travelers, stretched out across the floor, all three of them. And Letyaga was strutting between them like a stork, finishing each one off with a shot in the head from above.
When he saw Artyom, he dropped his Stechkin pistol on the floor. Then he raised his hands.
Only half a minute—and he had killed three people forever.
“You … What have you … ? What for?”
The sight of Artyom’s automatic snagged on his protective suit, his hands were shaking, but Letyaga was a patient man—he waited for Artyom to take proper aim at him.
“People … from Murom. They came to us! You bastard!”
“Easy. Easy, Artyom. Don’t.”
“You scum! You traitor! You’ve turned traitor!”
“Listen. Calm down. It’s over. It’s over.”
“What’s over? What? What did you kill them for?”
The smiles were still on Arseny’s and Igor’s faces. Holes in their foreheads and smiles on their lips. Mikhail looked serious. The floor was completely flooded with sticky gunk now: impossible not to step in it.
“They’re spies. We have orders, Artyom.”
“What orders? Who has? Who from?”
“Concerning exposure. Countermeasures to exposure, that is. Miller … Let him explain it.”
“Down on your knees! Hands behind your head! Let me see them! Walk on your knees! Into the control room! This way! Come on! Where’s your Miller? Where is he?”
“Let me … There, see. I’m not doing anything. Nothing. Just a moment. I’ll tune in. It’s all over. Don’t get upset. I understand you. Comrade Colonel?”
“Put the headphones on t
he desk. And move away. Away into the corner.”
“Artyom?” a voice hissed in the speaker. “Artyom, are you there?”
“What is this? All of this, what is it? Tell me what it is! I’ll count to three, have you got that? You old … What’s going on here? Why is there this lid on Moscow? Why hide the world from us? Why did you lie to me? What for? You lousy rat … You old … Legless … Why did you lie to me all this time?”
“It’s not a lid, Artyom.” Miller had swallowed everything without choking. “It’s not a lid, it’s a shield.”
“A shield?”
“It’s a shield, Artyom. Those jammers don’t hide the world from Moscow, they hide Moscow from the world.”
“What for? What the hell is …”
“The war isn’t over, Artyom. We’re not the only ones who survived. Our enemies did too. America. Europe. The West. They still have their weapons. And the only reason they don’t finish us off—the only reason!—is because they’re sure that we all croaked and there’s nothing left here! That everything was destroyed. If we allow ourselves to be exposed … No matter how it happens … Radio, or infiltration … If they just find out some way—and they’re trying to—then they’ll pulverize us immediately. All of us. Do you hear? The jammers mustn’t be damaged! Don’t you dare touch them!”
“The war was over ages ago!”
“It was never over, Artyom. Never.”
CHAPTER 17
— ALL CORRECT —
They were still there in the rearview mirror: the radio center that they had left, the ten surviving pylons, the excavator with its arm raised for a blow that was never struck, the fateful turning off the Enthusiasts’ Highway onto the Bypass Highway and not three or four, but six armored trucks with overriders on their bumpers and machine guns on their roofs, a line of men without insignia and a line of propellers that had started working again in the fresh wind. A lot of things were behind him now, and somehow they had all fitted into that dusty little rectangle. It had all seemed huge, but it had turned out to be small. Arseny and his two sons were all that hadn’t fitted in.
“But what about them?” Artyom asked. “They could at least bury them.”
“They’ll tidy up without you,” said Letyaga. “After you and after me. Let it go. Relax.”
The dogs’ pit hadn’t fitted into the mirror either.
SaveliI and Lyokha were sitting together on the spacious backseat. When Artyom was buying his own immunity, he’d bought theirs into the bargain. Savelii’s little Japanese girl was raising dust behind them, tied to the off-roader, taken prisoner. Savelii had refused to abandon her.
“Suspicious characters,” SaveliI put in. “That’s the first thing I thought when I saw them on the highway.”
“They walked here from Murom,” said Artyom. “They have a monastery there, beautiful, so they said. White and sky-blue.”
“They said they were from Murom and they said they walked,” Letyaga corrected him. “Maybe a helicopter dropped them off ten kilometers from here. They gave them a cover story to elaborate on and let them get on with it. Someone’s always trying to get through. The bastards just keep on coming.”
“But it was them who called me to the radio …” Artyom thought out loud. “When you called me. What would they do that for?”
“I don’t know,” Letyaga confessed. “But my orders are clear.”
“The alarm bells went off in my head immediately, you know.” SaveliI shifted closer to the conversation. “The moment I heard English on the radio, they started up! The Yanks haven’t pegged it! Here we are thinking we pounded them until the last dog died, and they’re having a little singsong together. I think like you: What comes next? They’ll never let us breathe easy, will they? All they ever dreamed about was toppling us! Colonizing us! Those Rothschilds and the entire global shit-ass international. And honest to God, that’s what I thought: Maybe they’re the ones dragging us facedown through shit in the Metro?”
Lyokha smacked the lips of his toothless mouth. What did he mean? Was he missing home?
“Uh-huh,” Nigmatullin snarled from the driving seat. “If only. They wouldn’t dirty their hands with that. They’ll blast us with missiles the moment they sniff us out. And what can we intercept them with? There’s damn all left.”
“Yeah, it’s all clear now. As soon as you explained, everything fell into place!” SaveliI hissed through his teeth. “It all fitted together. These jammers. There I am driving along, dammit, and I think: What is this? What’s it all for? That yarn Artyom spun me—the Red Line, the people have been tricked and locked away underground—that’s just plain crazy, right? I’m sorry, brother, of course. But where’s the sense in it? I was driving along and I realized: You’re a good guy, but you’re talking nonsense. I just felt in my heart that it was bullshit. It just couldn’t be true. Our own people treating us that way for no good reason. But when you explained it, I just knew in my heart: That’s it. Bullseye. I just felt that it was too damn smooth altogether. Them leaving us alone for all these years. And us somehow surviving so cheerfully. Now it’s clear what’s what. Eh, Artyom?”
“Yes.”
They passed the Orbital Highway: Some vehicles going right, into the dead traffic jam, some going left, but all going to the same place, and they were going back to Moscow, to live out as many days as they each had left.
It was a good off-roader: leather seats, armor plate as thick as a finger, and some kind of special instrumentation. The motor purred cozily, Nigmatullin drove determinedly, and the mummies flashed by as fast as frames in a movie, like a single person.
“A good car,” said Artyom. “I didn’t know we had any like this.”
“We do now.”
Artyom chewed on his cheek—instead of asking Letyaga about everything else. He didn’t want to do it in front of the others. And then he gave in after all.
“I’ve already seen this car, you know. On Okhotny Ryad Street.”
“I know about that.”
“I thought I’d be left lying there.”
“But you weren’t.”
“Why?”
“You were recognized. One of us. How could we zap one of our own?”
“But if I hadn’t been recognized? If I’d been wearing a gas mask?”
“Then … You shouldn’t fucking wander around with a radio. Even the jammers can’t cut out the signal completely. They stifle everything coming in, but not always everything going out. So we have to work hands-on.”
“How do you search for people?”
“With this.” Letyaga slapped the instrument panel. “There’s a position finder in here. A good car.”
SaveliI squirmed. There was something on his mind that hadn’t been resolved yet.
“Why not tell people? So there wouldn’t be any hitches … The way we messed things up.”
“We have to avoid any panic,” Letyaga said. “And then … People have relatives, some in this place, some in that place … This is Moscow, after all. They’d start creeping off. Then we’d be exposed for sure. Not even everyone in the Order knows.”
“Not everyone.” Artyom nodded.
“Well, maybe I have relatives too,” SaveliI responded. “But in a case like this! We can’t plaster on the lube so those bastards can shaft us.”
Nigmatullin mumbled something unintelligible in his support from the driving seat.
“Don’t be angry with the old man.” Letyaga turned towards Artyom from the front seat. “So he didn’t tell you. I only found out myself a year ago. He was probably going to.”
“Probably.”
“You did everything right, brother,” said Letyaga. “You came away with us. So definitely. Everything will be fine.”
“And you keep tabs on all of Moscow?” Artyom asked. “You track everyone’s location?
“Yes, we do. Not you, Artyom. We do it, the Order. We keep tabs on them. We track their locations.”
“But I went up on the surface every
day … up to the forty-sixth floor … I broadcast every day. What about that?”
“What about it?”
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“We heard you, and we saw you.”
“But I was blowing your cover! Our cover! Everyone’s!”
Letyaga looked at Nigmatullin. Then he turned towards Artyom with his eyes squinting.
“Miller said not to touch you.”
“Why?”
“Well, you’re sort of … family. That’s awkward.”
“Pull up,” Artyom replied. “I’m feeling sick.”
Nigmatullin did as he’d asked. He let Artyom spill his insides out. It was all left at the roadside: the home-brew vodka with crushed teeth, an entire living, talkative world, and somewhere on it the dot of a snow-white fortress with sky-blue domes. Clearly there was no way he could have carried all that back home into the Metro with him.
Now he could get some sleep.
“Have you picked up a dose?” Letyaga asked sleepy Artyom suspiciously.
“It’s car sickness,” said Artyom.
* * *
When he opened his eyes, it was Moscow already. They were driving along the embankment. Night was falling.
Artyom didn’t recognize the city in the window. Moscow was the same as it had been in the morning. But someone had put new eyes in his head.
It was a strange feeling. Strange and stupid.
Everything around him had turned fake now: The abandoned buildings were stage scenery; the empty palaces were decoys; the dead bodies in the cars were mannequins. Once he used to look into the magical tube of a kaleidoscope and see a heart-wrenchingly beautiful mirage; and then something possessed him to take it to pieces, and the painted cardboard and multicolored crumbs of glass had fallen out into his hand. And how can you dream about cardboard?
He tried to love Moscow again and miss it again, but he couldn’t. It was a hoax. It was nothing but an empty cardboard cutout after all, and the dead people in it were only cardboard cutout people, and their grief was molded out of papier-mâché. Everything was arranged like this for an audience: Supposedly for the one underground, but really for the one across the ocean.
What a discovery he’d made. A truly great one. After all, he had discovered the entire world, all the continents at once. And a useless one—he couldn’t do anything with this knowledge in three weeks. And did he have three weeks anyway? The doses added up, and how much more radiation had he breathed in? Maybe it was two, not three.