He laid out in front of Artyom a piece of gray paper, on which the map of the Metro was shown as a cobweb; sitting in the center was a fat spider. Written on the spider was HANSA.
“And on the other side, turn it over—‘Pass it on to a comrade!’ or ‘Come to the meeting!’ So there now. They’re setting up cells. Now do we understand? They’re preparing a revolution right under our very noses, get it? Day and night. Have you ever been there, I’m afraid to ask? Do you realize what’s in store for us, if it comes to the worst? They won’t even bother to waste bullets on us. They’ll just beat us to death with metal rods. And the ones they coerce into happiness will end up eating each other—and then on ration cards. There! We’ll have Soviet power. And what can you do against a popular rebellion? How many men does the Order have left? Thirty! Forty! Oh, sure, you’re an elite force, sure, you’re heroes, sure, if not you, then who, who? But against a crowd that rabble-rousers have incited and wound up—what will you do then? Will you fire at the women? At the kids? Eh? No, my friend. Maybe you understand the tactics of close combat, or how to storm reinforced targets, but there’s more to life than just that. Do you know how many different situations there are in life?”
Tsik. Tsik. Tsik.
Boris Ivanovich clasped his hands together; that seemed to remind him of something, and he stared at his fingers—thick and strong—thoughtfully. Then his touched his cheek again.
“Why are you going to Teatralnaya?” he asked again, calmly.” And who’s this with you?” He nodded at Homer.
“I’m carrying out a mission for Miller,” Artyom replied.” If you want to, contact him and ask. I’m not authorized. The old man is my guide. We’re on our way to Pavelets.”
Homer started blinking. He heard Miller mentioned. He remembered where Miller had really sent Artyom. Crazy. But he didn’t know everything. The tattoo was still there, but if anyone told Miller that Artyom was still serving in the Order … If anyone really did pick up that angular handset and ask to be connected with Miller …” The old man’s guiding you,” the major drawled absentmindedly and laughed.” Good for granddad. And what about the broker?”
“The broker’s with us.”
“He was with you. Now he’ll be with us. He was the one who got you through the cordon and made the bargain, wasn’t he? In violation of the phytosanitary quarantine? After all, someone gave a bribe to an official of the Commonwealth of the Circle Line, didn’t they? To coin a phrase, if not you, then who?”
“No.” Artyom shook his head.” The broker’s with us.”
Svinolup didn’t hear anything.
“So the broker will have to … spend a bit of time … here with us. And I’ll send you to Novoslobodskaya by public transport. The shortest route. And that’ll be a weight off my mind.”
Homer gave Artyom a sideways squint. But Artyom couldn’t leave that fatuous young guy here. Not to Boris Ivanovich. Not in these worrying, difficult times.
“You let everyone go. Or let’s call Miller.”
Svinolup drummed his fingers on the desk, spun the heavy little Makarov like a top, clenched and unclenched his fist.
“Why are you trying to intimidate me with Miller?” he said eventually.” He’ll understand me. Miller’s an officer, and I’m an officer. It will just be stupid. We’ve got common enemies. We have to fight together, shoulder to shoulder. You in your way, me in my way. We defend the Metro against chaos. Preserve it from a bloodbath. Each as best as he can.”
It was hot. Suffocating. Murky water was pounding at Artyom’s ears. Suffocating—the thought span round in his head. The curtained-off bed in the corner. The slippers under the desk. Just grab hold of that cursed curtain … Open it.
“You let everyone go,” Artyom repeated.” All three of us.”
“To Novoslobodskaya. My stretch. After that it’s someone else’s. And I don’t want to explain to all and sundry about you and about the broker and about your Miller. Someone’s bound to snitch on me to my bosses. They’ll torture me to death with memorandums.”
“Right now,” Artyom pressed him.
“Right now for him …”
Tsik. Tsik. Tsik. The saints in the corner whispered, conferring. Both their swords were naked and ready. Homer tried to wipe the sweat off his bald forehead with the back of his hand, but there was too much to wipe it all off.
Eventually Boris Ivanovich picked up the receiver of the flat keypad phone.
“Agapov! Get the broker to the door. Yes. That’s all I have to say. What? What about Leonov? Well, give it to him. Work must be paid. Yes. Especially him! A God-given talent for fantasy! And especially good on the invisible observers … Spellbinding!” he laughed.” Yes. And let me have the broker.”
Artyom nudged Homer on the shoulder: We’re leaving. Homer started getting up, but slowly, as if he had gotten snagged on something.
“Give us back our things,” said Artyom.
“At the border,” Boris Ivanovich promised, turning serious.” Or else you can still run for it and hide. We never did clarify the details of your mission. Don’t worry. We’ll give everything back at the border.”
Before locking the office, he cast a proprietary glance around it. Everything there was in order. Boris Ivanovich shot a glance into the corner, shuffled his massive boots in front of the sword-bearers in haloes, parade-drill style, as if facing his commanding officer, and turned out the light. And Artyom looked back over his shoulder one last time—at the curtain. None of my business, he told himself.
“On the bo-o-order so-o-ombre clouds drift slo-o-owly …” Svinolup started singing quietly under his breath.
* * *
The Peace Prospect Circle Line station had a face that was quite different from its Siamese twin’s. The radial line station stared blindly into darkness. The Circle Line station had its eyes screwed up against the bright light. The radial line station was cluttered with stalls, kiosks, heaps of all sorts of junk and consumer crap, and basically it looked like a vagrant bum who had decked himself out in new threads at a garbage tip. The Circle Line station, despite being joined to its twin by the pedestrian passage, had managed to avoid being infected by its lice. The black-and-white checkered floor was scraped and licked spotless, the gilding on the ceiling had been touched up; and the ceiling itself—crisscrossed with an intricate, oblique patterning of lines, although rather soft-smoked—still hinted that it had once been snow white. Heavy bronze chandeliers with numerous lightbulbs hung suspended from it. On each chandelier only one lightbulb was lit, but even that was enough to leave not a single dark corner in the station.
Part of the platform was allocated to a goods terminal: Beside a crane leaning down to a trolley, loaders in blue overalls smoked something appetizing and rather pricy; crates of some kind had formed up in neat, disciplined ranks; a new goods wagon with bales of commodities was arriving out of the tunnel; profanities jangled vigorously. Work was going on, and life was moving with a swing.
The local inhabitants’ houses were built in the archways that led onto the platforms, in order not to occupy the central hall and spoil its beauty: The gaps had been bricked off and even plastered in white, and the little entrance doors were on the hall side. Little windows had even been made beside them, facing the chandeliers. Looking though the curtains you could probably imagine that evening was simply falling outside. And if there was a knock at the door, you could pull back the curtain and look to see who it was before opening the lock. The people here were washed, even dressed up, and no matter how you searched, no way could you trace even a single weak and weedy person in the crowd. If heaven was still possible in this world, Peace Prospect would definitely be one of its stations.
Boris Ivanovich took his leave of them before emerging into the light: he apologized, saying he had to go across to the medical casualty center. A little man with a mustache, decent and ordinary looking, came out of the office accommodation to replace him and led out the broker Lyokha. He had a split lip, but that
didn’t prevent him from smiling.
“You’re going to Novoslobodskaya with us,” Artyom told him.” And then to Mendeleev.”
“Anywhere you say!” said Lyokha.
The little man pulled down his washed-out sweater—not a uniform item, of course, but so congenial, with knitted snowflakes, and, after slapping Lyokha on the shoulder, beckoned for all three of them to follow him. From the outside they looked like four friends walking along the platform. Four friends, swapping jokes and smoking at the trolley stop.
The celebrated Hansa passenger trolley arrived right on time: a smoking motorized railcar with a passenger carriage attached. The passenger carriage, it’s true, was open-topped, but it was conveniently equipped with soft seats ripped out of some Metro train. The conductor collected two cartridges from everyone. The sweater paid for the entire group. They sat down facing each other, swayed and trundled off.
There were almost no more free places. To their left sat a woman with bleached hair and a goiter. To their right was a big-nosed, sullen, male individual in a random assortment of clothes. Behind was a sleepy young father with bags under his eyes and a snuffling little bundle, then a man with a simply indecent paunch and a dark-haired girl of about sixteen in a dress right down to the ground—playing it safe. And then more people, and at the back, just like at the head of the trolley, machine gunners in Kevlar bullet-proof vests, with titanium helmets on their knees. But they weren’t armed guards for Artyom: Even here, in Hansa, with its continuous traffic and never-extinguished lighting, tunnels were still tunnels, and all sorts of things could happen in them.
“And he had twenty kilos of rat poison with him!” the bleached woman continued her conversation from the previous stretch of track.” They caught him at the last moment.”
“They’ve gone berserk. Rat poison! They should kill that lousy snake with rat poison, make him guzzle it all himself,” the gutbucket grouched.” How many of them can we put up with! There’s that one who came over from the Reds, you-know-where … From Sokolniki. He says they’re gobbling their own children there already! That there man is the Antichrist, that Moskvin of theirs. And he wants all of us too! Satan!”
“Come on, children …” drawled the sleep-deprived father with bundle.” No one would eat their own children.”
“You don’t know much about life!” the gutbucket grunted.
“Not their own children—no one,” the other man said stubbornly.
“Well, when they get here, we’ll see,” the sweater joined in the conversation.
“It’s getting worse and worse, isn’t it! What about last year? With the bunker! The Order barely held out! What keeps driving them on?” the woman with the goiter panted.
“They’re starving to death, that’s what!” said gutbucket, rubbing his immense belly.” It’s so they can come swarming over us for you-know-what. To expropriate and share out.”
“May the Lord forbid!” some old-womanish individual implored behind them.
“But I was on the Red Line once where the lines cross. And they don’t have anything terrible like that there. Quite civilized. Everyone dressed the same way. They use them to frighten us!”
“And did you take even one step outside the buffer zone? Well I did! They grabbed me straight off, twisted my arms, almost put me up against the wall! The façade looks right enough, ah yeah.”
“They don’t want to work, the blackguards,” said big-nose.” We do everything here with our own labor. Twenty years in the galleys. But these … They’re like locusts. Of course, they’re after new stations now; they’ve already cleaned out everything in their own. They’ll gobble everything down in two sittings.”
“But why should we? What for?”
“We’ve only just started living a decent life!”
“If the war hadn’t happened … If only …”
“If they want to—let them devour their own children and not come interfering with us! What do we care about them.”
“Oh, the Lord forbid! Let it not be!”
All this time the trolley was trundling along calmly and unhurriedly, puffing out a light, pleasant smoke—petrol-smelling, from Artyom’s childhood—along an exemplary stretch of line that was dry, soundless, and illuminated every hundred meters by an energy-saving light bulb.
And then suddenly—bang!—everything went dark.
Right along the tunnel the little bulbs went out, and it was as if God had fallen asleep.
“Brake! Brake!”
The brakes squealed, and the goitrous woman, the man with the nose, and all the others went tumbling head over heels across each other, inseparable in the darkness. The infant started mewling, working itself up louder and louder. The father didn’t know how to calm it down.
“Everyone stay in their places! Don’t get down off the trolley!”
One torch clicked, lighting up, then another. In the skipping beams they could see the Kevlar warriors bustling awkwardly to pull on their helmets, and saw them getting down reluctantly onto the tracks, cordoning off the passenger trolley, planting themselves between the people and the tunnel.
“What?”
“What happened?”
Something scrabbled in one Kevlar man’s walkie-talkie. He turned away from the civilians and mumbled something in reply. He waited for an order. None came, and without an order he didn’t know what to do and froze in bewilderment.
“What’s going on?” Artyom asked too.
“Aw, drop it, we’re fine here!” the sweater replied jauntily.” We’re in no hurry to get anywhere, are we?”
“Actually, I’d like …” Lyokha hemmed and hawed, sucking on his lip.
Homer maintained a tense silence.
“I’m in a hurry to get somewhere!” said the father of the bundle, getting up.” I’ve got to get this child to its mother. I can’t give it the breast myself, can I?”
“Boys, what are they saying there, at least?” The peroxided woman swayed her goiter in the direction of the soldiers.
“Sit down, madam,” one Kevlar vest said firmly.” We’re waiting for clarifications.”
A minute stretched out like a string. And another.
The bundle, uncomforted by its inept father, worked itself up to squealing now. From the front of the trolley a million candles were shone into their eyes, seeking out the source of the crying.
“Shine that light up your ass!” the father shouted.” They can’t do a fucking thing. Let the Reds take everything here. Maybe they’ll introduce some order, at least! Every day they cut out the lights!”
“What are we waiting for?” someone supported him from the rear.
“Going far, are you?” There was a note of sympathy in the sweater’s voice.
“Culture Park! Half the Metro still to go! A-a-ah. Hush-a-bye.”
“Let’s move on at walking pace, at least!”
“We don’t run on electricity! Start it up! If we can least reach a station, then …”
“What if it’s sabotage?”
“And what’s up with our security service? Where is it when it’s needed? The state they’ve let things get into!”
“Hasn’t started already, has it, oh Lord!”
“At a walking pace, I said, come on! Little by little …”
“This is what we pay our taxes for!”
“We’re awaiting instructions,” a warrior muttered into his walkie-talkie, but it only coughed back at him.
“It’s definitely sabotage!”
“And what’s that there? Now then, shine the light …” The sweater screwed up his eyes and jabbed his finger into the darkness.
One Kevlar soldier aimed his torch where he pointed: at a black hole. Running off from the tunnel into the thickness of the earth was a passage, a narrow little corridor.
“Wha-at is that, then?” the sweater asked in amazement.
A Kevlar man slashed a torch beam across his eyes.
“Don’t meddle with it, you,” he snapped.” You nev
er know …”
The sweater didn’t take offense. He formed his palms into a visor and became invulnerable to the light.
“Puts you straight in mind of Invisible Observers … Have you heard that story?”
“Eh?”
“You know … about Metro-2. That the government—the leaders of that Russia that used to exist before, the Great Russia—that they never went anywhere. They didn’t run off. They weren’t killed. They didn’t escape to the Urals or anywhere.”
“But I’ve heard about the Urals. Yamandau there, or whatever it’s called. The city under a mountain. And they all went straight off there, the moment the commotion started. We can all rot here, but all the top dignitaries … That’s where they live.”
“Bullshit! They never went off and abandoned us. They wouldn’t have betrayed us, the people. They’re here. In bunkers that are beside us. Around us. We’re the ones who betrayed them. Forgot about them. And they … turned away from us. But somewhere here … They’re waiting. Keeping an eye on us all the same. Watching over us. Because for them we’re like children. Maybe these bunkers of theirs are behind the walls of our stations. And their tunnels, secret ones, are behind the walls of ours. They walk all around us. And watch over us. And if we deserve … to be saved. Then—they’ll remember us. They’ll save us. They’ll come out of Metro-2 and save us.”