“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 Boor 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 be 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 dryly. “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.
Tender made his entrance. He was red and out of breath. His daughter was sick and he had gone for the doctor. Apologized for being late. Well, we gave him his little present: we’re off into the Zone. He even stopped puffing and wheezing at first, he was so scared. “What do you mean the Zone?” he asked. “And why me?” However, talk of a double bonus and the fact that Red Schuhart was going too got him breathing again.