Roadside Picnic, Page 2

  Kirill had been beating his brains out over the empties for almost a year. I’d been with him from the start, but I still wasn’t quite sure what it was he wanted to learn from them, and, to tell the truth, I wasn’t trying very hard to find out. Let him figure it out for himself first, and then maybe I’d have a listen. For now, I understood only one thing: he had to figure out, at any cost, what made one of those empties tick—eat through one with acid, squash it under a press, or melt it in an oven. And then he would understand everything and be hailed and honored, and world science would shiver with ecstasy. For now, as I saw it, he had a long way to go. He hadn’t gotten anywhere yet, and he was worn out. He was sort of gray and silent, and his eyes looked like a sick dog’s—they even watered. If it had been anyone else, I would have gotten him roaring drunk and taken him over to some hard-working girl to unwind. And in the morning I’d have boozed him up again and taken him to another broad, and in a week he would have been as good as new—bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Only that wasn’t the medicine for Kirill. There was no point in even suggesting it—he wasn’t the type.

  So there we were in the repository. I was watching him and seeing what had happened to him, how his eyes were sunken, and I felt sorrier for him than I ever had for anyone. And that’s when I decided. I didn’t exactly decide, it was like somebody opened my mouth and made me talk.

  “Listen,” I said. “Kirill.”

  And he stood there with his last empty on the scales, looking like he was ready to climb into it.

  “Listen,” I said, “Kirill! What if you had a full empty, huh?”

  “A full empty?” He looked puzzled.

  “Yeah. Your hydromagnetic trap, whatchamacallit… Object 77b. It’s got some sort of blue stuff inside.”

  I could see that it was beginning to penetrate. He looked up at me, squinted, and a glimmer of reason, as he loved to call it, appeared behind the dog tears.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Full? Just like this, but full?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “Where?”

  My Kirill was cured. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. “Let’s go have a smoke.”

  He stuffed the empty into the safe, slammed the door, and locked it with three and a half turns, and we went back into the lab. Ernest pays 400 in cash for an empty empty, and I could have bled him dry, the son of a bitch, for a full one, but believe it or not, I didn’t even think about it, because Kirill came back to life before my eyes and bounded down the steps four at a time, not even letting me finish my smoke. In short, I told him everything: what it was like, and where it was, and the best way to get at it. He pulled out a map, found the garage, put his finger on it, and stared at me. Of course, he immediately figured it out about me—what was there not to understand? “You dog, you,” he said and smiled. “Well, let’s go for it. First thing in the morning. I’ll order the passes and the boot for nine and we’ll set off at ten and hope for the best. All right?”

  “All right,” I said. “Who’ll be the third?”

  “What do we need a third for?”

  “Oh no,” I said. “This is no picnic with ladies. What if something happens to you? It’s in the Zone,” I said. “We have to follow regulations.”

  He gave a short laugh and shrugged. “As you wish. You know better.”

  You bet I did! Of course, he was just trying to humor me. The third would be in the way as far as he was concerned. We would run down, just the two of us, and everything would be hunky-dory, no one would suspect anything about me. Except for the fact that I knew that people from the institute didn’t enter the Zone in two’s. The rule is: two do the work and the third watches, and when they ask him about it later, he tells.

  “Personally, I would take Austin,” Kirill said. “But you probably don’t want him. Or is it all right?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Anybody but Austin. You can take Austin another time.”

  Austin isn’t a bad guy, he’s got the right mix of courage and cowardice, but I feel he’s doomed. You can’t explain it to Kirill, but I can see it. The man thinks he knows and understands the Zone completely. That means he’s going to kick off soon. He can go right ahead, but without me, thanks.

  “All right, then,” Kirill said. “How about Tender?”

  Tender was his second lab assistant. An all-right kind of guy, on the quiet side.

  “He’s a little old,” I said. “And he has kids.”

  “That’s all right. He’s been in the Zone before.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s take Tender.”

  He stayed to pore over the map and I made a beeline for the Borscht, because I was starving and my throat was parched.

  I got back to the lab in the morning as usual, around nine, and showed my pass. The guard on duty was the lanky bean pole of a sergeant that I beat the hell out of last year when he made a drunken pass at Guta.

  “Fine thing,” he said to me. “They’re looking for you all over the institute, Red.”

  I interrupted him right there, polite-like.

  “I’m not Red to you,” I said. “Don’t try that palsy-walsy stuff on me, you Swedish dolt.”

  “God, Red! Everybody calls you that.”

  I was all wound up before going into the Zone and cold sober to boot. I hauled him up by his shoulder belt and told him in precise detail just what he was and what maternal line he was descended from. He spat on the floor, returned my pass, and said without any of the niceties:

  “Redrick Schuhart, your orders are to appear immediately before Chief of Security Captain Herzog.”

  “That’s better,” I said. “That’s the ticket. Keep plugging away, sergeant, you’ll make lieutenant yet.”

  Meanwhile I was thinking, what was this curve coming my way? What did Captain Herzog need me for during working hours? All right, I went off to make my appearance. His office was on the third floor, a nice office, with bars on the windows just like a police station. Willy was sitting at his desk, puffing on his pipe, and typing some kind of gibberish. Some little sergeant was digging through the metal file cabinet in the corner. A new guy I’d never seen. We have more sergeants at the institute than at division headquarters. They’re all well-built healthy fellows. They don’t have to go into the Zone and they don’t give a damn about world issues.

  “Hello,” I said. “You called for me?”

  Willy looked right through me, moved away from the typewriter, laid a hefty file on the desk, and started leafing through it.

  “Redrick Schuhart?”

  “The same,” I answered, feeling a nervous laugh welling up. I couldn’t help it, it was funny.

  “How long have you been with the institute?”

  “Two years, starting my third.”

  “Family?”

  “I’m alone,” I said. “An orphan.”

  Then he turned to his little sergeant and gave him an order in a stern tone.

  “Sergeant Lummer, go to the files and bring back case number one-fifty.”

  The sergeant saluted and disappeared, and Willy slammed the file shut and asked gloomily:

  “Up to your old tricks again?”

  “What old tricks?”

  “You know what tricks. There’s new material on you here.”

  So, I thought.

  “Where from?”

  He frowned and banged his pipe against the ashtray in irritation.

  “That doesn’t concern you,” he said. “As an old friend, I’m warning you. Knock it off, knock it off for good. If they get you a second time, you won’t get off with six months. And they’ll kick you out of the institute once and for all, understand?”

  “I understand,” I said. “That I can understand. I just don’t understand what bastard could have squealed.”

  But he was looking through me again, puffing on his empty pipe and flipping through the file. That meant that Sergeant Lummer had returned with case #150.

  “Thank you, Schuhart,” said Capt. Willy Herzog, a
lso known as the Hog. “That’s all I wanted cleared up. You’re free to go.”

  So I went to the locker room, pulled on my lab clothes and lit up. All along I kept thinking where the rumor could have come from. It had to be all lies if it came from within the institute, because nobody there knew anything about me and there was no way that anyone could. If it had been a report from the police—again, what could they know there except for my old sins? Maybe they had gotten Buzzard? That bastard, he’d drown his own grandmother to save his skin. But even Buzzard didn’t know anything about me now. I thought and thought and didn’t come up with anything very pleasant. So I decided the hell with it. The last time I had gone into the Zone at night was three months ago, and I had gotten rid of most of the stuff and had spent almost all of the money. They hadn’t caught me with the goods, and I was too slippery for them to catch me now.

  But then, just as I was heading up the stairs, I suddenly saw the light, and saw it so well that I had to go back to the locker room, sit down, and have another cigarette. It meant that I couldn’t go into the Zone today. Nor tomorrow, nor the day after. It meant that those toads had their eye on me again, that they hadn’t forgotten me, or if they had forgotten, then somebody had reminded them. And now it no longer mattered who had done the reminding. No stalker, unless he was completely off his rocker, would go near the Zone even at gunpoint, not if he knew that he was being watched. I should have been burrowing into the deepest, darkest corner at that very moment. Zone? What Zone? I hadn’t been in any Zone, even with a pass, for months! What are you harassing an honest lab worker for?

  I thought the whole thing through and even felt a sense of relief that I wouldn’t be going into the Zone that day. But what would be the nicest way of informing Kirill of the fact?

  I told him straight out.

  “I’m not going into the Zone. What instructions do you have?”

  At first, of course, he just stared at me bug-eyed. Then he seemed to understand. He led me by the elbow into his little office, sat me down at his desk, and sat on the windowsill facing me. We lit up. Silence. Then he asked me, careful-like:

  “Has something happened, Red?”

  What could I tell him?

  “No,” I said. “Nothing happened. Yesterday I blew twenty bills at poker—that Noonan is a great player, the louse.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Have you changed your mind?”

  I made a choking noise from the tension.

  “I can’t,” I said to him through clenched teeth. “I can’t, do you understand? Herzog just had me up in his office.”

  He went limp. He got that pathetic look again and his eyes looked like they were a sick poodle’s again. He shuddered, lit a new cigarette with the butt of the old one, and spoke softly.

  “You can trust me, Red. I didn’t breathe a word to anyone.”

  “Skip it,” I said. “Nobody’s talking about you.”

  “I haven’t even told Tender yet. I made out a pass in his name, but I haven’t even asked him if he’ll go.”

  I said nothing and went on smoking. It was funny and sad. The man didn’t understand a thing.

  “What did Herzog say to you?”

  “Nothing in particular,” I said. “Someone squealed on me, that’s all.”

  He looked at me kind of strange, hopped off the sill, and started walking up and down. He ran around his office and I sat blowing smoke rings in silence. I was sorry for him, of course, and I felt bad that things hadn’t worked out better. Some cure I came up with for his melancholy. And whose fault was it? My own. I tempted a baby with a cookie, but the cookie was in a hiding place, and the hiding place was guarded by mean men… Then he stopped pacing, came up close to me, and looking off to the side somewhere, asked awkwardly:

  “Listen, Red, how much would a full empty cost?”

  At first I didn’t understand him. I thought at first that he was hoping to buy one somewhere. Where would you buy one? Maybe it was the only one in the world and besides he couldn’t possibly have enough dough for that. Where would he get the money from? He was a foreign scientist, and a Russian one at that. And then the thought struck me. So the bastard thinks that I’m doing it for the greenbacks? You so and so, I thought to myself, what do you take me for? I opened my mouth to tell him off. And I shut up. Because, actually, what else could he take me for? A stalker is a stalker. The more green stuff the better. He trades his life for greenbacks. And so it looked to him that yesterday I had cast my line and today I was reeling him in, trying to raise my price.

  The thought made me tongue-tied. And he kept staring at me intently, without blinking. And in his eyes I saw not contempt but a kind of understanding, I guess. Then I calmly explained it to him.

  “No one with a pass has ever gone to the garage before. They haven’t laid the tracks to it yet. You know that. So here we come back from the Zone and your Tender brags to everybody how we headed straight for the garage, picked up what we needed, and came right back. Like we just went down to the warehouse or something. And it will be perfectly clear to everyone,” I said, “that we knew ahead of time what we wanted there. And that means that someone set us on to it. And which of us three that could have been—well, there’s no point in spelling it out for you. Do you understand what’s in store for me here?”

  I finished my little speech. We sat staring into each other’s eyes, saying nothing. Suddenly he clapped his hands, rubbed his palms together, and announced in a hearty tone:

  “Well, if you can’t, you can’t. I understand you, Red, and I can’t pass judgment. I’ll go alone. Maybe it’ll go fine. It won’t be the first time.”

  He spread out the map on the windowsill, leaned on his hands, and bent over it. All his heartiness seemed to evaporate before my eyes. I could hear him muttering.

  “Forty yards, maybe forty-one, another three in the garage itself. No, I won’t take Tender along. What do you think, Red? Maybe I shouldn’t take Tender? He does have two kids, after all.”

  “They won’t let you out alone,” I said.

  “They will,” he muttered. “I know all the sergeants and all the lieutenants. I don’t like those trucks! They’ve been exposed to the elements for thirty years and they’re just like new. There’s a gasoline carrier twenty feet away and it’s completely rusted out, but they look like they’ve just come off the assembly line. That’s the Zone for you!”

  He looked up from the map and stared out the window. And I stared out the window, too. The glass in our windows is thick and leaded. And beyond the windows—the Zone. There it is, just reach out and you can touch it. From the thirteenth floor it looks like it could fit in the palm of your hand.

  When you look at it, it looks like any other piece of land. The sun shines on it like on any other part of the earth. And it’s as though nothing had particularly changed in it. Like everything was the way it was thirty years ago. My father, rest his soul, could look at it and not notice anything out of place at all. Except maybe he’d ask why the plant’s smokestack was still. Was there a strike or something?

  Yellow ore piled up in cone-shaped mounds, blast furnaces gleaming in the sun, rails, rails, and more rails, a locomotive with flatcars on the rails. In other words, an industry town. Only there were no people. Neither living nor dead. You could see the garage, too: a long gray intestine, its doors wide open. The trucks were parked on the paved lot next to it. He was right about the trucks—his brains were functioning. God forbid you should stick your head between two trucks. You have to sidle around them. There’s a crack in the asphalt, if it hasn’t been overgrown with bramble yet. Forty yards. Where was he counting from? Oh, probably from the last pylon. He’s right, it wouldn’t be further than that from there. Those egghead scientists were making progress. They’ve got the road hung all the way to the dump, and cleverly hung at that! There’s that ditch where Slimy ended up, just two yards from their road. Knuckles had told Slimy: stay as far away from the ditches as you can, jerk, or there won’t b
e anything to bury. When I looked down into the water, there was nothing. This is the way it is with the Zone: if you come back with swag—it’s a miracle; if you come back alive—it’s a success; if the patrol bullets miss you—it’s a stroke of luck. And as for anything else—that’s fate.

  I looked at Kirill and saw that he was secretly watching me. And the look on his face made me change my mind. The hell with them all, I thought. After all, what can those toads do to me? He really didn’t have to say anything, but he did.

  “Laboratory Assistant Schuhart,” he says. “Official—and I stress official—sources have led me to believe that an inspection of the garage could be of great scientific value. I am suggesting that we inspect the garage. I guarantee a bonus.” And he beamed like the June sun.

  “What official sources?” I asked, and smiled like a fool myself.

  “They are confidential. But I can tell you.” He frowned. “Let’s say, I found out from Dr. Douglas.”

  “Oh,” I said. “From Dr. Douglas. What Dr. Douglas?”

  “Sam Douglas,” he said drily. “He died last year.”

  My skin crawled. You so-and-so fool. Who talks about such things before setting out? You can beat these eggheads over the head with a two-by-four and they still don’t catch on. I stabbed the ashtray with my cigarette butt.

  “All right. Where’s your Tender? How long do we have to wait for him?”

  In other words, we didn’t touch on the subject again. Kirill phoned PPS and ordered a flying boot. I looked over his map to see what was on it. It wasn’t bad. It was a photographic process—aerial and highly enlarged. You could even see the ridges on the cover that was lying by the gates to the garage. If stalkers could get their hands on a map like that… but it wouldn’t be of great use at night when the stars look down on your ass and it’s so dark you can’t even see your own hands.