Roadside Picnic (2 page)

“There is a steady leak of materials from the Visitation Zones into the hands of irresponsible persons and organizations. We deal with the results of these leaks.”

“Could you be a little more specific, doctor?”

“Can’t we talk about the arts instead? Wouldn’t the listeners care to know my opinion of the incomparable Gôdi Müller?”

“Of course! But I would like to finish with science first. As a scientist, aren’t you drawn to dealing with the extraterrestrial treasures yourself?”

“How can I put it? I suppose so.”

“Then, we can hope that one fine day Harmonites will see their famous fellow citizen on the streets of his home town?”

“It’s not impossible.”

REDRICK
SCHUHART
,
AGE
23,
BACHELOR
,
LABORATORY
ASSISTANT
AT
THE
HARMONT
BRANCH
OF
THE
INTERNATIONAL
INSTITUTE
EOR
EXTRATERRESTRIAL
CULTURES

The night before, he and I were in the repository – it was already evening, all I had to do was throw off my lab suit and I could head for the Borscht to put a drop or two of the stiff stuff into my system. I was just standing there, holding up the wall, my work all done and a cigarette in my hand. I was dying for a smoke – it was two hours since I’d had one, and he was still puttering around with his stuff. He had loaded, locked, and sealed one safe and was loading up the other one – taking the empties from the transporter, examining each one from every angle (and they’re heavy little bastards, by the way, fifteen pounds each), and carefully replacing them on the shelf.

He had been struggling with those empties forever, and the way I see it, without any benefit to humanity or himself. In his shoes, I would have said screw it long ago and gone to work on something else for the same money. Of course, on the other hand, if you think about it, an empty really is something mysterious and maybe even incomprehensible. I’ve handled quite a few of them, but I’m still surprised every time I see one. They’re just two copper disks the size of a saucer, about a quarter inch thick, with a space of a foot and a half between them. There’s nothing else. I mean absolutely nothing, just empty space. You can stick your hand in them, or even your head, if you’re so knocked out by the whole thing – just emptiness and more emptiness, thin air. And for all that, of course, there is some force between them, as I understand it, because you can’t press them together, and no one’s been able to pull them apart, either.

No, friends, it’s hard to describe them to someone who hasn’t seen them. They’re too simple, especially when you look close and finally believe your eyes. It’s like trying to describe a glass to someone: you end up wriggling your fingers and cursing in frustration. OK, let’s say you’ve got it, and those of you who haven’t get hold of a copy of the institute’s
Reports
– every issue has an article or the empties with photos.

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, also 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: