‘Stand up, sonny, and look at these people,’ said the priest. The boy immediately got to his feet and turned toward Artyom. It was Oleg.

‘Go closer to him. Do you recognize any of them?’ the old man asked.

‘Yes.’ The boy nodded affirmatively, looking sullenly at Artyom.

‘It is my pop and I was listening to your songs with this one. Through the pipe.’

‘Your pop and his friend are bad people. They have been using machines and have been disparaging the Great Worm. Do you remember, you told me and Uncle Vartan what your papa did when the bad people decided to destroy the world?’

‘Yes.’ Again Oleg nodded.

‘So tell us again,’ the old man placed the lighter into his other hand.

‘My pop worked in the RVA. The rocket forces. He was a missile man. I wanted to be just like him, too, when I grow up.’

Artyom’s throat dried up. How had he not been able to work out this riddle earlier? So that’s where the lad had got that strange tab and so had declared that he was a missile man, just like the slain Tretyak! The coincidence was almost incredible. There remained in the whole metro people who had served in the rocket forces… And two of them had ended up in Kievskaya. Could this have been by chance?

‘As a missile man… These people created greater evil for the world than all the rest put together. They sent machines and equipment that burnt and destroyed the earth and almost all life on it. The Great Worm forgives many who stray, but not those who gave the orders to destroy the world and sow death in it, and not those who carried it out. Your father has caused intolerable pain to the Great Worm. Your father destroyed our world with his own hands. Do you know what he deserves?’ The old man’s voice had become stern.

‘Death?’ the boy asked uncertainly, while glancing first at the priest and then at his father, doubled up on the floor of the monkey cage.

‘Death,’ the priest confirmed. ‘He must die. The sooner the evil people who have imparted pain to the Great Worm die, the sooner his promise will be fulfilled, and the world will be reborn and delivered to the good people.’

‘Then papa must die,’ concurred Oleg.

‘That’s the boy!’ the old man tenderly patted the boy on the head.

‘And now run, play with Uncle Vartan and the kiddies again! Only, look out, be careful in the darkness, don’t fall! Dron, lead him and I’ll sit some more for a while with them. Return in half an hour with the others and grab the sacks, we’ll be ready.’

The light was extinguished. The swift, rustling steps of the savage and the light tread of the child faded into the distance. The priest gave a cough and said to Artyom, ‘I’ll have a little chat here with you if you aren’t opposed to it. We usually don’t take captives unless they are children, and then they are all puny and born sickly… But we are seeing more and more adults who are deaf. I would be glad to talk with them and maybe they would not mind, only, well, they eat them too quickly…’

‘Why then do you teach them that it is bad to eat people?’ Artyom asked.

‘The Worm will cry there and so on? Well, how can I put it? It is for them in the future. For you, of course, you will miss this moment, and even me, too, but now the basis of a future civilization is being laid down: of a culture which will live with nature in the world. Cannibalism is a necessary evil for them. There is nothing without animal protein, you see. But the legends will remain, and when the direct need to kill and stuff your face with those like you fades away, they will stop doing it. Only then will the Great Worm remember. It is unfortunate only to be living in this dandy time…’ The old man again began to laugh unpleasantly.

‘You know, I’ve already seen so many things in the metro,’ Artyom said. ‘At one station they believe that if you dig deeply enough, you can dig all the way to hell. At another, that we already are living on the threshold of paradise, because the final battle of good and evil is over and those who survived were chosen for entry into the Heavenly Kingdom. After that, the story about your Worm doesn’t sound all that convincing somehow. Do you at least believe in it yourself?’

‘What’s the difference what I or the other priests believe in?’ The old man grinned. ‘You won’t be alive much longer, just a few hours, so I’ll just tell you something. One cannot be so frank with someone as with he who will carry all his revelations to the grave. So, what I myself believe in is not important. The main thing is that the people believe. It is difficult to come to believe in a god whom I have created myself.’ The priest stopped for a short while, thinking, and then continued. ‘How could I explain it to you? When I was a student, I studied philosophy and psychology at the university, although I doubt that’s anything to you. And I had a professor: an instructor of cognitive psychology, a most knowledgeable man, who laid out the intellectual process systematically – he was a real pleasure to listen to. And then I put to him a question as all others do at that age: Does God exist? I had read various books, had conversations, as is customary, and I was inclined to the view that most likely He did not. And somehow I decided that this professor in particular, a great expert on the human soul, could answer for me precisely this question that so pained me. I went to see him in his office, on the pretext of discussing a paper, and then I asked, “In your opinion, Ivan Mikhalych, does God actually exist?” Then he really surprised me. For me, he said, this question isn’t worth asking. I myself was from a family of believers, used to the idea that He exists. From the psychological point of view, I did not try to analyze the truth because I did not want to. And generally, he said, for me it was not so much a question of knowledge based on principle, as everyday behaviour. My faith was not that I was sincerely convinced of the existence of a higher power, but that I was fulfilling the prescribed commandments, praying at night and going to church. I would be better for it, more at peace. And that’s it.’ The old man went silent.

‘And what?’ Artyom couldn’t contain himself.

‘Whether I believe in the Great Worm or not isn’t so very important. But commandments from divine lips live for centuries. Just one more thing: create a god and teach his word. And believe me, the Great Worm is no worse than other gods and has survived many of them.’

Artyom closed his eyes. Neither Dron nor the chief of this surprising tribe, nor even such strange creations as Vartan, had the slightest doubt that the Great Worm exists. For them it was a given, the only explanation of what they could see around them, the only authority for action and a measure of good and evil. What else could a man who had never seen anything except the metro believe in? But there was in the legends of the Worm something that Artyom was still unable to understand.

‘But why do you incite them so against machines? What’s so bad about these mechanisms? Electricity, lighting, firearms, and so on. Your teachings mean that your people live without them,’ he said.

‘What’s bad about machines?!’ the old man’s tone changed dramatically: the good nature and patience with which he had just set forth his thoughts evaporated. ‘You intend an hour before your death to preach to me the benefits of machines! Well, look around! Only a blind man won’t notice that if mankind owed some kind of a debt, then he wouldn’t rely so much on machines! How dare you snicker about the important role of equipment here, at my station? You nobody!’

Artyom hadn’t expected his question, way less seditious than the previous, about his belief in the Great Worm, to provoke such a reaction from the old man. Not knowing how to respond, he remained silent. The priest’s heavy breathing could be heard in the darkness, as he whispered some kind of curses and tried to calm himself. He resumed speaking only after several minutes.