METRO 2033 (21 page)

In Artyom’s opinion, the exchange was actually unusually advantageous. What did he need with a map with mystical properties, if he was deaf to its voice? He would have thrown it away anyway, after turning it over again and again and vainly attempting to read the curlicues painted on it.

‘So now, the route which you sketched out won’t take you anywhere except into an abyss.’ Khan continued the interrupted conversation, holding the map with great care in his hands. ‘Here you go, take my old one and follow it.’ He held out a tiny map, printed on the other side of an old pocket calendar. ‘You were talking about the passage from Turgenevskaya to Sretensky Bulvar? Don’t tell me you don’t know the evil reputation of this station and the long tunnel that goes from here to Kitai
Gorod?’

‘Well, I have been told that you mustn’t go into it alone, that it’s only safe to go through in a caravan, and I was thinking to go in a caravan until Turgenevskaya and then to run off from them into the transfer passage - they’re not going to run after me after all . . .’ Artyom answered, feeling vague thoughts swarming in his head.

‘There isn’t a transfer passage there. The arches are walled up. You didn’t know that?’

How could he have forgotten! Of course, he had been told about this before but it had flown out of his head . . . The Reds were frightened of the demons in that tunnel and they walled up the only way to Turgenevskaya.

‘But is there no other passage there?’ he asked carefully.

‘No, and the map is silent about it. The passage to lines that are actually constructed doesn’t begin at Turgenevskaya. But even if the passage did exist I’m not sure that you have enough courage to separate from the group and go into it. Especially if you listen to the latest rumours about that lovely little place while you’re waiting to join the caravan.’

‘So what should I do?’ Artyom asked despondently, scrutinizing the little calendar.

‘It’s possible to get to Kitai Gorod. Oh, now that’s a curious station, and the morals there are very amusing - but there, at least, you won’t disappear without a trace in such a way that your closest friends wonder to themselves if you ever existed at all. At Turgenevskaya that can happen . . . From Kitai Gorod, follow me now,’ he was tracing a finger on the map, ‘it’s only two stations to Pushkinskaya, and there there’s a passage to Chekhovskaya, and another one there, and then you’re at Polis. That would be shorter than the route which you were planning.’

Artyom was moving his lips, counting the stations and transfers on each route. However he counted though, the route that Khan suggested was much shorter and less dangerous and it wasn’t clear why Artyom hadn’t thought of it himself. So there was no choice left.

‘You’re right,’ he said finally. ‘And how often do caravans go there?’

‘I’m afraid not often. And there is one small but annoying detail: in order to go into the southern tunnel to Kitai Gorod, you have to come to our little half-station from the north,’ and he pointed at the damned tunnel which Artyom had only barely made it out of. ‘Basically, the last caravan to the south left a while ago now, and we’re hoping that there’s another group planning on coming through soon. Talk to some people, ask around, but don’t talk too much. There’re some cutthroats around here and they can’t be trusted . . . OK, I’ll go with you so you don’t get into anything stupid,’ he added after thinking it over.

Artyom was going to put on his rucksack when Khan stopped him with a gesture: ‘Don’t worry about your things. People are so scared of me here that no riff-raff would dare even look at my lair. And while you’re here, you’re under my protection.’

Artyom left his rucksack by the fire but he took his machine gun with him anyway, not wanting to be separated from his new treasure, and he hurried to follow Khan who was walking in a leisurely fashion towards the fires that were burning on the other side of the hall. He noticed with surprise how under-nourished tramps, wrapped in stinking rags scuttled away from them as they passed and Artyom thought that people really were probably afraid of Khan here. He wondered why . . .

The first fire swam by but Khan didn’t slow his pace. It was a very tiny little fire, barely burning, and there were two figures sitting next to it, tightly pressed to each other, a man and a woman. They were whispering quietly in an unknown language, and their whispers dispersed, not quite reaching Artyom’s ears. Artyom was so fascinated that he almost turned his head. He could hardly resist looking at this pair.

In front of them was another fire, a big, bright one and a whole camp of people were settled around it. Fierce looking peasant types were sitting there, warming their hands. Loud laughter thundered and the air was so torn with the sound of noisy arguing that Artyom became a bit scared and slowed his pace. But Khan calmly and confidently walked up to the seated men, greeted them and sat down by the fire so that Artyom could do nothing else but follow his example and sit down next to him.

‘. . . He’s looking at himself and sees that he has the same rash on his hands, and something is swelling and hard and really painful in his armpits. Imagine the horror, fuck’s sake . . . Different people behave in different ways. Some shoot themselves straight away, some go crazy and start throwing themselves at other people trying to hug them so they won’t die alone. Some run into the tunnel beyond the Ring to the backwaters so they won’t infect other people . . . There are all sorts of people. So this guy, as soon as he sees all this, asks his doctor: is there any chance I can get better? The doctor tells him straight: none. After the appearance of this rash you have about two weeks to live. And the battalion commander, I see, is already quietly taking his Makarov out of its holster just in case the guy starts to get violent . . .’ The man speaking was a thin old guy with a bristly chin in a quilted jacket with a voice faltering out genuine anxiety as he looked at the grey watery eyes around him.

And though Artyom did not understand what it was all about, the spirit with which the story was told and the pregnant silence among the recently riotous group made him shudder and ask Khan quietly about it in order not to draw any attention to himself.

‘What’s he talking about?’

‘The plague,’ Khan answered heavily. ‘It’s started.’

Those words emitted the stench of decomposed bodies and the greasy smoke of cremation fires and echoes of alarm bells and the howl of manual sirens.

At
VDNKh
and its surroundings there had never been an epidemic; rats as carriers of infection were destroyed, and there were also several good doctors at the station. Artyom had only read in books about fatal infectious diseases. He came across some of them when he was very young and they had left a deep trace in his memory and long inhabited the world of his childhood dreams and fears. Therefore when he heard the word ‘plague’ he felt a cold sweat on his back and a little faint. He didn’t ask Khan anything more, but listened with an unhealthy attention to the story of the thin man in the quilted coat.

‘But Ryzhii wasn’t that type, he wasn’t a psycho. He stood there silently for a minute and says: “Give me some cartridges and I’ll go. I can’t stay here with you anymore.” I heard the battalion commander sigh with relief straight away. It was clear: there’s little joy in shooting one of your own even if he’s sick. They gave Ryzhii two horns. And he went to the north-east, beyond Aviamotornaya. And we didn’t see him again. But the battalion commander asks our doctor afterwards about how long it takes the disease to act. The doctor says the incubation period is a week. If nothing appears a week after contact with it then you’re not infected. So the battalion commander then decides: we’ll leave the station and stay there for a week and then we’ll see. We can’t be inside the Ring, basically - if the infection penetrates the Ring then the whole metro will die. And so they stayed away for a whole week. They didn’t even go up to each other - because how could we know who was infected among us. So there was this other guy, who we called Cup because he really liked to drink. Everyone kept away from him since he’d hung out with Rizhii a lot. When he approached anyone they would run to the other end of the station. Some guy even pointed his barrel at him, telling him to, like, push off. When Cup ran out of water, the guys shared with him of course - but they did it by putting it on the floor and then walking away and no one got near. After a week he went missing. Then people were saying different things, some were even telling lies and saying that some beast had dragged him off but the tunnels there are quiet and clean. I personally think that he noticed a rash on himself and his armpits were hurting so he ran off. And no one else from our forces was infected and we waited a little longer and then the battalion commander checked everyone himself. Everyone was healthy.’

Artyom noticed that despite this assurance, the space around the story-teller was empty even though there wasn’t much space at the fire altogether and everyone was sitting close together, shoulder to shoulder.

‘Did it take you a while to get here, brother?’ A thick-set bearded man in a leather waistcoat asked him quietly but clearly.

‘It’s about thirty days since we came out from Aviamotornaya,’ the thin guy replied looking at him uneasily.

‘So I have news for you. There’s plague at Aviamotornaya. There’s plague there - do you hear?! The Hansa have closed it as well as Taganskaya and Kurskaya. They’ve called a quarantine. I have acquaintances there, Hansa citizens. And there’s flame-throwers standing at the passages to Taganskaya and Kurskaya and everyone who comes within range is blasted. They’re calling it disinfection. Apparently, some have an incubation period of a week and for others it takes longer, so you obviously brought the infection back,’ he concluded, viciously lowering his voice.

‘What, oh come on guys? I’m healthy! See for yourself!’ the little guy jumped up from his place and started to convulsively strip off his quilted coat and to show the dirty body underneath it, hurrying, afraid that he wouldn’t convince them.

The tension mounted. There was no one left near the thin man, they’d all crowded at the other side of the fire. People were talking nervously and Artyom heard the quiet clanking of gun locks. He looked at Khan questioningly, pulling his gun from his shoulder to firing position, pointed forward. Khan kept his silence but stopped him with a gesture. Then he quickly got up and walked away from the fire without a sound, taking Artyom with him. At about ten paces he froze and continued to look at what was happening.

Quick and busy movements were visible in the light of the fire and they looked like some kind of primitive reckless dance. Talk in the crowd went silent and the action continued in ominous silence. Finally, the man succeeded in pulling off his undershirt and he exclaimed triumphantly:

‘See! Look! I am clean! I am healthy! There’s nothing there! I’m healthy!’

The bearded guy in the waistcoat pulled a board out of the fire that was burning on one end and carefully approached the thin guy looking at him with disgust. The skin of the overly talkative guy was dark with dirt and glossy with grease, but there was no trace of a rash as far as the bearded guy could see and so after a thorough inspection he commanded him:

‘Raise your arms!’

The unfortunate fellow quickly threw his arms up, giving the people crowded on the other side of the fire a view of his armpits which were overgrown with fine hairs. The bearded man made a show of holding his nose as he got closer, meticulously examining and looking for buboes, but he couldn’t find any symptoms of plague.

‘I am healthy! Healthy! Are you convinced now?’ The little man cried out, almost hysterical now.

There was a hostile whisper in the crowd. Taking stock of the overall mood and not wishing to succumb to it, the thickset man declared:

‘Well, let’s assume that you’re healthy. That still means nothing!’

‘Why does it mean nothing?’ The thin man was taken aback and immediately drooped.

‘That’s right. You might have not got sick yourself. You might be immune. But you can still carry the infection. You had contact with that Rizhii guy? Were you in the same force? Did you talk with him, share the same water? Did you shake his hand? You shook his hand, don’t lie brother.’

‘So what, what if I shook his hand? I didn’t get sick . . .’ The man replied at a loss of what to say. He was frozen powerless, and persecuted by the gaze of the crowd.

‘So. It isn’t impossible that you’re infectious, brother. So, I’m sorry but we can’t risk it. It’s a prophylactic brother, you see?’ The bearded man undid the buttons of his waistcoat, baring a brown leather holster. There were encouraging outbursts and more sounds of snapping gun-locks among the crowd at the fire.

‘Guys! But I’m healthy! I didn’t get sick! Look, see!’ The thin man again raised his arms but now everyone just winced disdainfully and with evident aversion.

The thickset man took his pistol from its holster and pointed it at the guy who it seemed couldn’t understand what was going on and he was muttering that he was healthy, squeezing his quilted coat to his chest: it was chilly and he had already started to get cold.

Then Artyom couldn’t stand it. Pulling at his gun-lock, he stepped toward the crowd, not exactly knowing what he was about to do. There was a lump in the pit of his stomach and one stuck in his throat too so he wouldn’t be able to utter a word. But something in this person, in his empty and desperate eyes, in the senseless, mechanical mutterings, had hooked into Artyom and had pushed him to take a step forward. It wasn’t clear what he was going to do next but there was a hand on his shoulder and God what a heavy hand it was!

‘Stop,’ Khan ordered him quietly, and Artyom was as frozen as a corpse, feeling that his brittle determination had been shattered against the granite of someone else’s will. ‘You can’t help him. You will either be killed or you will bring fury on yourself. Your mission will not be completed in either case and you should remember that.’