Hard to Be a God (6 page)

“Let us hope,” said Rumata, “that nobody saw you.”

“One legend more, one legend less,” Don Condor said irritably. “I don't have time to travel on horseback. Whatever happened to Budach? Where did he go? Do sit down, Don Rumata, I beg you! My neck hurts.”

Rumata obediently sat on the bench. “Budach has disappeared,” he said. “I waited for him in the Territory of Heavy Swords. But only a one-eyed ragamuffin showed up, who gave the password and handed me a bag of books. I waited for another two days, then got in touch with Don Gug, who informed me that he had accompanied Budach all the way to the border, and that from then on Budach was escorted by a certain noble don who can be trusted because he gambled away body and soul to Don Gug at cards. Therefore Budach must have disappeared somewhere in Arkanar. That's all that I know.”

“It's not a whole lot,” said Don Condor.

“Budach is not the point,” Rumata objected. “If he's alive, I'll find him and save him. I know how to do that. That's not what I wanted to talk to you about. I want to once again draw your attention to the fact that the situation in Arkanar is not within the scope of basis theory.”

A sour expression appeared on Don Condor's face. “No, you have to hear me out,” Rumata said firmly. “I have the feeling that I'll never explain myself over the radio. Everything in Arkanar has changed! Some new, systematic factor has appeared. And it looks like Don Reba is intentionally
inciting all the grayness in the kingdom against learned people. Everything that's even slightly above the average gray level is now in danger. Hear me out, Don Condor—these aren't emotions, these are facts! If you're smart, educated, a skeptic, if you say anything unusual—even if you simply don't drink wine!—you're in danger. Any shopkeeper has the right to hound you, even until death. Hundreds and thousands of people are declared outside the law. They are caught by troopers and strung up along the roads. Naked, upside down. Yesterday, they beat an old man with their boots after learning that he was literate. I hear they trampled him for two hours, the morons, with their sweaty animal mugs …” Rumata regained control of himself and ended calmly: “In short, there will soon be no literate people left in Arkanar. Like in the Region of the Holy Order after the Barkan slaughter.”

Don Condor stared at him intently, pursing his lips. “I don't like how you sound, Anton,” he said in Russian.

“I don't like a lot of things, Alexander Vasilievich,” said Rumata. “I don't like that we've tied our hands and feet with the very formulation of the problem. I don't like that it's called the Problem of Nonviolent Impact. Because under my conditions, that means a scientifically justified inaction. I'm aware of all your objections! And I'm aware of the theory. But here there are no theories, here there are typical fascist practices, here animals are murdering humans every minute! Here everything is pointless. Knowledge isn't enough, and gold is worthless, because it comes too late.”

“Anton,” said Don Condor. “Don't lose your head. I believe that the situation in Arkanar is absolutely exceptional, but I'm convinced that you don't have a single constructive suggestion.”

“Yes,” Rumata agreed, “I don't have any constructive suggestions. But it's very hard for me to control myself.”

“Anton,” Don Condor said. “There are two hundred and fifty of us on this entire planet. Everybody controls themselves, and everybody finds it very hard. The most experienced of us have lived here for twenty-two years. They came here as nothing more than observers. They were completely forbidden to do anything whatsoever. Imagine that for a moment: forbidden to do anything. They wouldn't even have had the right to save Budach. Even if Budach was being trampled before their eyes.”

“Don't talk to me as if I were a child,” Rumata said.

“You're impatient like a child,” Don Condor declared. “And we must be very patient.”

Rumata smiled bitterly. “And while we watch and wait,” he said, “calculating and planning, animals will be destroying humans every minute of every day.”

“Anton,” Don Condor said, “the universe has thousands of planets where we haven't come yet, where history is taking its course.”

“But we've come here already!”

“Yes, we have. But we've come here to help these people, not to satisfy our righteous rage. If you're weak, leave. Go home. After all, you really aren't a child, and you knew what you'd encounter here.”

Rumata stayed silent. Don Condor, slumping and seeming instantly older, walked up and down the table, dragging his sword by the hilt behind him like a stick, sadly nodding his head. “I understand,” he said. “I've gone through it myself. There was a time when this feeling of helplessness and my own culpability seemed to be the worst thing. Some of us, the weakest ones, went crazy from it, were sent back
to Earth, and are now being treated. It took me fifteen years, dear boy, to understand what the worst thing really is. The worst thing is to lose your humanity, Anton. To sully your soul, to become hardened. We're gods here, Anton, and we need to be wiser than the gods from the legends the locals have created in their image and likeness as best they could. And yet we walk along the edge of a swamp. One wrong step—and down you go in the dirt, and you won't be able to wash it off your whole life. Goran the Irukanian, in his
History of the Coming,
wrote, ‘When God, after descending from the heavens, appeared to the people from the Pitanian marshes, his feet were covered in mud.'”

“For which Goran was burned,” Rumata said grimly.

“Yes, he was burned,” Don Condor said, returning to his seat. “But that was said about us. I've been here for fifteen years. My dear boy, I've even stopped having dreams about Earth. One day, rummaging through my papers, I found a picture of a woman and for a long time couldn't figure out who she was. I occasionally realize with terror that I've long stopped being an employee of the Institute, that I'm now an exhibit in the Institute's museum, the chief justice of a feudal mercantile republic, and that there's a room in the museum in which I belong. That's the worst thing—to lose yourself in the role. Inside each one of us, the noble bastard struggles with the communard. And everything around us helps the bastard, while the communard is all alone—the Earth is thousands and thousands of parsecs away.” Don Condor paused, stroking his knees. “That's how it is, Anton,” he said in a firmer voice. “We must remain communards.”

He doesn't understand. And how could he? He's lucky, he doesn't know what gray terror is, what Don Reba is. Everything he's witnessed in his fifteen years of work on
this planet has in one way or another fit into the framework of basis theory. And when I tell him about fascism, about the gray storm troopers, about the incitement of the petty bourgeoisie, he interprets it as emotional expressions. “Don't abuse terminology, Anton! Terminological confusion brings about dangerous consequences.” He simply can't grasp the fact that in Arkanar, typical medieval brutality belongs to a happy past. For him, Don Reba is something like the Duke of Richelieu, a shrewd and farsighted politician, defending absolutism from feudal excesses. I'm the only one on this whole planet who's aware of the terrible shadow creeping over the country, but even I can't figure out whose shadow it is or where it's coming from. And how can I possibly convince him, when I can see in his eyes that he's almost ready to send me back to Earth for treatment?

“How's honorable Sinda?” Rumata asked.

Don Condor stopped eyeing him suspiciously and grumbled, “He's doing well, thank you.” Then he said, “To conclude, we must be firmly aware of the fact that neither you nor I nor any of us will see the tangible fruits of our labors. We're not physicists, we're historians. For us, time isn't measured in seconds but in centuries, and our work isn't even sowing, it's preparing the ground for sowing. Because occasionally we do get … enthusiasts, blast them—sprinters who can't go the distance.”

Rumata gave a crooked smile and started pointlessly fiddling with his boots. Sprinters. Yes, there've been sprinters.

Ten years before, Stephan Orlovsky, also known as Don Capata, the commander of a company of His Imperial Majesty's crossbowmen, ordered his soldiers to open fire on the executioners at a public torture of eighteen Estorian witches; he cut down the judge and two court bailiffs and was lanced
by the Imperial Guard. Writhing in agonies of death, he shouted, “But you're human! Get them, get them!”—but few heard him over the roar of the crowd: “Fire! More fire!”

Approximately at the same time, in another hemisphere, Carl Rosenblum, one of the leading experts on the peasant wars in France and Germany, also known as the wool-seller Pani-Pa, led a revolt of Murissian peasants, stormed two cities, and was killed by an arrow to the back of the head while trying to stop the looting. He was still alive when they came for him in the helicopter, but he couldn't speak and only looked on in guilt and bewilderment with his big blue eyes, which constantly streamed tears …

And shortly before Rumata's arrival, the magnificently placed confidant of the Caisan tyrant (Jeremy Tafnat, a specialist in the history of agrarian reforms) suddenly staged a palace coup, usurped power, and for two months attempted to start a golden age. He stubbornly refused to reply to furious queries from his neighbors and from Earth, earned the reputation of a lunatic, managed to avoid eight assassination attempts, and was finally kidnapped by an emergency team of Institute workers and transferred by submarine to an island base by the planet's southern pole.

“Just think!” muttered Rumata. “And all of Earth still imagines that the hardest problems are in null-physics.”

Don Condor looked up. “Finally!” he said quietly.

There was a clattering of hooves, the Hamaharian stallion let out an angry, shrill neigh, and they heard energetic swearing with a strong Irukanian accent. In the doorway appeared Don Gug, the Chamberlain of His Grace the Duke of Irukan, fat, ruddy, with a dashing upturned mustache, a smile from ear to ear, and merry little eyes underneath the chestnut curls of his wig. And once again, Rumata was about to jump up
and hug him, because this was actually Pashka, but Don Gug suddenly assumed a formal posture, an expression of cloying sweetness appearing on his plump-cheeked face. He bent slightly at the waist, pressed his hat to his chest, and pursed his lips. Rumata briefly glanced at Alexander Vasilievich—but Alexander Vasilievich had disappeared. On the bench sat the Chief Justice and Keeper of the Great Seals, his legs apart, his left hand on his hip, and his right hand holding the hilt of his gilded sword.

“You're very late, Don Gug,” he said in an unpleasant voice.

“A thousand apologies!” cried Don Gug, smoothly approaching the table. “I swear by the rickets of my duke, there were completely unforeseen circumstances! I was stopped four times by the patrols of His Majesty the King of Arkanar, and I got into two fights with various boors.” He gracefully lifted his left hand, wrapped in a bloody rag. “By the way, noble dons, whose helicopter is that behind the house?”

“That's my helicopter,” Don Condor said crossly. “I don't have time for roadside brawls.”

Don Gug smiled pleasantly, sat down on the bench, and said, “Well, noble dons, we're forced to acknowledge that the highly learned Doctor Budach mysteriously disappeared somewhere between the Irukanian border and the Territory of Heavy Swords—”

Father Cabani suddenly tossed in his bed. “Don Reba,” he said thickly, without waking up.

“Leave Budach to me,” Rumata said in despair, “and try to understand what I'm saying …”

R
umata started and opened his eyes. It was already light out. There was a commotion in the street underneath his window. Someone, probably a military man, was shouting, “Scum! You'll lick this dirt off with your tongue!” (Good morning, thought Rumata.) “Silence! By Holy Míca's back, you'll make me lose my temper!” Another voice, rough and hoarse, mumbled that this was the sort of street where a man ought to watch his step. “In the morning it rained, and God knows when they paved it last …” “He dares tell me what to do!” “You should let me go, noble don, don't hold on to my shirt …” “He dares order me around!” There was a ringing crack. This was apparently the second slap—the first had woken Rumata up. “You shouldn't hit me, noble don,” someone mumbled below.

A familiar voice—who could it be? Probably Don Tameo. I should let him win back his Hamaharian nag today. I wonder if I'll ever know much about horses. Although we, the Rumatas of Estor, have never known much about horses, we're experts in military camels. Good thing there are almost no camels in Arkanar. Rumata stretched, cracking his back, groped for a twisted silk cord by his head, and pulled on it a few times. Bells started jangling in the depths of the house. The boy is gawking at the scene outside, of course, thought Rumata. I could get up and dress myself, but that'll only breed rumors.

He listened to the profanity outside the window. What a powerful language! It has incredible entropy. I hope Don Tameo doesn't kill him. In recent years, certain enthusiasts in the Guard had announced that they reserved only one sword for noble battle, and used their other blades specifically for street trash—which, thanks to Don Reba, had really proliferated in glorious Arkanar. Although Don Tameo isn't one of those enthusiasts, Rumata thought. Our Don Tameo is a bit of a coward, and a well-known politician too.

How rotten when the day starts with Don Tameo. Rumata sat up and hugged his knees under his splendid torn blanket. That's the kind of thing that gives you a feeling of leaden hopelessness and makes you want to mope around and ponder how you are weak and helpless in the face of circumstances. This didn't occur to us on Earth. Over there, we are healthy, confident men who have gone through psychological conditioning and are ready for anything. We have excellent nerves; we know how not to flinch when faced with beatings and executions. We have amazing self-control; we're capable of putting up with the blathering of the most hopeless idiots. We've forgotten how to be fastidious—we
can make do with dishes that, according to the custom, have been licked by dogs and then wiped with a dirty hem for the sake of beauty. We're fantastic impersonators—even in our dreams we do not speak the languages of Earth. We have a foolproof weapon—the basis theory of feudalism, developed in quiet offices and laboratories, at dusty archaeological digs, in thoughtful discussions.