The corporal returned the pass and said: “Please have your documents ready.”
Taking out the pink piece of cardboard, he opened the door and entered the room.
Massaraksh! Not one room. But three. A suite of rooms, green drapes at one end. A runner beneath his feet, leading directly to the green drape. Thirty meters, at least.
And not two officers, or three. Six!
In the first room, two in army gray. Guns already trained on him. In the second room, two in Legion black. Guns not aimed, but drawn. In the third room, two in civilian clothes, on either side of the drapes.
One turned his head.
“Go to it, Mac!”
He sprang forward with a tremendous leap and wondered in that split second if he would pull a tendon. Air rushed into his face.
“There it is: the green drapes.
“Civilian on the left is looking to one side. Give it to him—a chop in the neck.
“Civilian on the right blinks. His eyes freeze.
“Now, clobber him, and then into the elevator.
“The elevator is dark. Where’s the button? Massaraksh, where is it?”
Alone submachine gun clattered slowly, echoing through the corridors. Instantly, a second one joined in.
“But they’re still firing at the door, where they saw me last. They haven’t realized yet what happened. Purely a reflex.
“The button! Where is it? Massaraksh, here it is, in the most obvious place.”
He pressed the button and the car descended. The car moved rapidly: it was an express elevator. His foot began to hurt. “Did I sprain my ankle? Forget it, that’s unimportant now. Massaraksh, I got through!”
The car stopped, Maxim jumped out, and the shaft rumbled and rang as chips started to fly. Three guns kept firing from above at the roof of the car. “Fire away. You’ll realize in a minute that you’re wasting your time, that you have to get the elevator back upstairs so you can come down yourselves. You missed your chance.”
He glanced around. “Massaraksh, wrong again. Not one entrance, but three. Three absolutely identical tunnels. Aha, two are only spare generators. While one’s working, the others are being overhauled. Which one is working now? Looks like this one.”
He dashed into the middle tunnel. The elevator growled behind his back. “You guys are too late. You’ll never make it, even though the tunnel is long and my ankle hurts. Ah, here’s a turn. You turds will never get me now.” He reached the generators rumbling beneath a steel plate and rested for a few seconds. “Most of the job is finished; the rest is easy. In a few minutes they’ll come down in the elevator and barge into the tunnel. But they don’t know that the depression emitter will drive them back. What else could happen now? They might toss a tear-gas shell down the corridor. But I doubt it: they probably don’t have any. They’ve probably sounded the alarm by now. Of course the Creators could turn off the depression barrier. But they won’t bring themselves to do it. And they couldn’t do it in time even if they wanted to. Five of them would have to assemble with five keys, and all agree on a decision; first, they would have to consider whether one of their number is playing a trick, or some sort of provocation is involved. After all, who in this world could breakthrough the radiation barrier? Possibly Strannik, if he has secretly invented a protective device. But those six armed guards up-stairs would have stopped him. And there’s nobody else.”
Submachine guns were chattering away around the comer in the dark tunnel. “Fire away, jerks. I don’t mind.” He bent over the power switchboard, removed the casing carefully, and tossed it into the corner. “Yes, a very primitive device. It’s a good thing I read up on their electronics. Suppose I hadn’t? And suppose Strannik had returned two days ago? Yes, my fine friends, here I am like a novice mechanic who must troubleshoot in a big hurry. I don’t even know what to look for. Massaraksh, what kind of design is this—no insulation! Aha, there you are. Well, good luck, as the state prosecutor would say!”
He sat down on the floor in front of the power switchboard and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He had done his job: the powerful blows of a depression field were overwhelming the entire country, from the Outlands to the Khonti frontier, from the ocean to the Alebastro Mountains.
The guns were quiet. The guards had been laid low by the depression field. “I’ll have to see how they look when they’re sunk in depression.
“For the first time in his life the prosecutor is welcoming a radiation strike. But I’m really not interested in seeing how he looks. The Creators never knew what hit them and are now writhing in pain, hoofs up, as Captain Chachu used to say. He’s been laid low, too, with the rest of them. And I’m damn glad.
“Zef and the boys are lying there, too, hoofs up.
“Strannik! Great! That bastard Strannik is down, too, hoofs up, with those enormous ears of his spread out on the floor. The biggest ears in the whole country. Maybe they’ve shot him by now. That would be even better.
“Rada, my Rada, is lying somewhere in a fit of depression. Never mind, it probably isn’t painful, and it will soon be over.
“Vepr.”
He jumped up. How much time had passed? He dashed back through the tunnel. Vepr had probably been laid low, too. But if he had heard the shooting before the strike, he might not have stayed put.
He ran toward the elevator and paused briefly to glance at the officers laid out by the strike. It was a distressing scene: all three had flung down their guns and were crying; they were even too weak to wipe away their tears. “Fine, cry, it will do you some good. Cry over my buddy Guy; cry over Ordi; over Gel; over my friend Forester. From the looks of you, you haven’t cried since you were kids; in any case, you’ve never cried over those you’ve killed. So cry, at least, before your own death.”
The elevator carried him to the surface quickly. The suite of rooms was full of officers, noncoms, legionnaires, civilians—all armed, all sitting or lying and grieving. Sobbing, mumbling, shaking their heads, and beating their breasts. “Massaraksh, what a sight. The black radiation... I can see why the Creators were saving it for a rainy day.”
He ran into the lobby, leaping over bodies stirring feebly on the floor. After nearly toppling head over heels down the stone steps, he halted in front of his car and caught his breath. Vepr’s nerve shad held out after alclass="underline" he lay on the front seat with his eyes closed.
Maxim dragged the bomb from the trunk, removed it from the wrapping, and returned to the elevator unhurriedly. He examined the fuse thoroughly, set the timer, laid the bomb inside the elevator, and pressed the “down” button. The car vanished, carrying into the nether world a fiery spirit that would explode into freedom in ten minutes.
Returning to his car, he propped Vepr into an upright position and maneuvered the car from its parking space. The gray building rose above him, heavy, stupid, doomed, packed with doomed people who could neither walk nor understand what was happening.
“The place is a nest, a snake’s nest, full of the most choice trash, trash collected with great care, gathered here for the ex-press purpose of converting into more trash all those within reach of the emitters’ sorcery. All of them are enemies of the people, and not one of them would hesitate for a moment to shoot, betray, or crucify me, Vepr, Zef, Rada—all my friends. Still, it’s just as well that my thoughts didn’t run this way before. If they had, they would have gotten in my way. I would have remembered Fishface. She’s the only person in this doomed snake’s nest who—why am I so concerned about Fishface? What do I really know about her? That she taught me their language? And made my bed? Forget about her; you realize very well that there’s much more at stake here than Fishface. The point is that from now on, you must fight in dead earnest, as everyone else does. And you will have to struggle against fools, vicious fools created by the radiation strikes; against clever, ignorant, greedy idiots who directed the radiation strikes; against well-meaning idiots who, using the same emitters, would be glad to transform vicious, diabolic puppets into ingratiating, quasidecent puppets. And every one of them will try to wipe out you, your friends, and your cause. The Wizard said: ‘Don’t let your conscience interfere with clear thinking, and let your reason learn to stifle your conscience when circumstances demand it.’ He was right. A bitter truth. Yes, what I accomplished here today, my friends would call a feat! Vepr lived to see the day; and he believed in it as in a fairytale with a happy ending. So did Forester, Ordi, Green, and Gel Ketshef, and my buddy Guy, and dozens of others, and hundreds and thousands of people I’ve never laid eyes on. Yet, I feel bad. But if I want people to trust and follow me in the future, I must never tell anyone that the most courageous moment for me today was not when I leaped and ran through a hail of bullets, but now, right now, when there is still time to turn back and deactivate the bomb, and I’m speeding away from this accursed place.”