‘And what, what can you do to me?’ he smiled. ‘Torture me? Kill me? Go ahead, I’m already old, and in our faith there are not enough martyrs. So just kill me, like you killed hundreds of millions of other people! As you killed my whole world! Our whole world! Go ahead, squeeze the trigger of your damned machine, as you pressed the triggers and buttons of dozens of thousands of different lethal devices!’ The old man’s voice, at first weak and hoarse, quickly turned steely. Despite his matted grey hair, tied hands and short stature, he no longer looked pathetic: a strange force emanated from him, his every new word sounded more convincing and menacing than the last. ‘You don’t have to smother me with your hands, you don’t even have to see my agony… You and all your machines will be damned! You have devalued both life and death… Do you consider me a madman? But the true madmen are you, your fathers and your children! Wasn’t it really a perilous madness to try to subjugate the whole earth to yourselves, throw a bridle on nature and cause it to cramp and convulse? Where were you when the world was destroyed? Did you see how it was? Did you see what I saw? The sky, at first melting, and then engulfed with lifeless clouds? Boiling rivers and seas, expelling onto the shores creatures boiled alive, and then converted into frozen custard? The sun, disappearing from the sky, not to reappear for years? Homes turned to dust in a split second, and the people living in them turned to ashes? Did you hear their cries for help?! And those who died from epidemics and maimed by radiation? Did you hear their curses?! Look at him!’ He pointed at Dron. ‘Look at all those without arms, without eyes, with six fingers! Even those who have obtained new capabilities!’
The savage fell to his knees and seized on every word of his priest with awe. And Artyom himself felt something similar. Even the other soldiers unwillingly took a step back. Only Melnik continued, screwing up his eyes, to look the old man in the eyes.
‘Have you seen the death of this world?’ the priest continued. ‘Do you understand who is to blame for it? Who converted boundless green forests into scorched deserts? What did you do with this world? With my world? Earth has not known a greater evil than your damned mechanized civilization. Your civilization is a cancerous tumour, it is a huge amoeba, greedily soaking up everything is useful and nourishing and belching out only fetid, poison wastes. And now you once more need missiles! You need the most frightful weapons created by a civilization of criminals! Why? In order to complete what you started? Murderers! I hate you, hate you all!’ he yelled in a rage, then had a coughing fit and fell silent. No one breathed a word until he stopped coughing and continued, ‘But your time is coming to an end… And even if I do not survive until then, others will come to replace me, those will come who understand the perniciousness of technology, those who will be able to manage without it! Your numbers are dwindling and you will not be here much longer. It’s sad that I will not see your agony! But we are nurturing sons who will! Man will repent that he destroyed everything of value to him in his arrogance! After centuries of deception and illusions, he finally will learn to distinguish between evil and good, between the truth and a lie! We are cultivating those who will populate the earth after you. And so that your agony is not dragged out, we soon will drive the dagger of mercy into your very heart! Into the flabby heart of your rotted civilization… That day is near!’
He spat at Melnik’s feet.
The stalker didn’t respond right away. He gave the old man, trembling in his rage, the once over. Then, folding his arms across his chest, asked with interest, ‘And what? You conceived some kind of worm and made up a tale just to inspire your cannibals to hate technology and progress?’
‘Shut up! What do you know of my hatred of your damned, of your diabolical technology! What do you understand about people, and of their hopes and goals and needs? If the old gods allowed man to go to hell and died themselves along with their world, it makes no sense to revive them… In your words I hear the bloody arrogance, the contempt, the pride, that brought mankind to the brink of disaster. So, though there be no Great Worm, though we dreamed him up, you will very soon be convinced that this fabricated underground god is mightier than your celestial beings, those idols that tumbled from their thrones and were broken asunder! You laugh at the Great Worm! Go ahead and laugh! But you will not have the last laugh!’
‘That’s enough. The gag!’ the stalker ordered. ‘Don’t touch him for now, he may come in handy for us again.’
They once more stuffed a rag into the mouth of the resisting old man as he cried out obscenities. The savage stood quietly, his shoulders drooped helplessly, but he did not take his lacklustre eyes off the priest.
‘Teacher! What’s it mean – there is no Great Worm?’ he uttered gravely at last. The old man didn’t even look at him. ‘What’s it mean? The teacher dreamt up the Great Worm?’ Dron spoke dully, shaking his head from side to side.
The priest did not answer. It seemed to Artyom that the old man had used up all his vital energy and will in his speech and was exhausted now.
‘Teacher! Teacher… There is a Great Worm… Are you misleading them! Why? You are speaking an untruth – to confuse the enemies! He exists… Exists!’ Unexpectedly, Dron began to howl. Such despair was heard in his half wailing, half crying, that Artyom wanted to approach him to comfort him. The old man, it seemed, already had said adieu to life and had lost any interest in his pupil, for now other questions troubled him.
‘He exists! He exists! He exists! We are his children! We all are his children! He is and always was and always will be! He exists! If there is no Great Worm… That means… We are completely alone…’
Something terrifying was happening to the savage who had been left bereft. Dron went into a trance, shaking his head, as if hoping to forget what he had heard, emitting the same note, and the tears dropping from his eyes mixed with the drool from his mouth. He didn’t even make an attempt to dry himself, snatching with his hands at his shaved skull. The soldiers released him, and he fell to the ground, covering his ears with his hands, striking himself on the head. He began to roll around wildly and uncontrollably, and his screams filled the whole tunnel. The fighters tried to quiet him, but even kicks and blows couldn’t stop the howls bursting forth from his breast.
Melnik looked with disapproval at the cannibal, then he unbuttoned the holster at his hip, pulled his Stechkin with the silencer from it, aimed at Dron and pulled the trigger. The silencer gave a quiet bang, and the savage went instantly limp. The inarticulate screaming he had been making stopped suddenly, but the echo repeated his last sounds for several more seconds, as if extending Dron’s life for a moment: ‘ooooooooooonnn…’ And only now did it begin to occur to Artyom what the savage had screamed before his death. ‘Alone!’
The stalker slid the pistol back into the holster. Artyom was unable to lift his eyes towards him, looking instead at the silenced Dron and the priest sitting not far away. He did not react in any way to the death of his pupil. When the clap of the pistol had sounded, the old man hardly twitched, then looked in passing at the savage’s body and turned away with indifference again.
‘Let’s go on,’ Melnik ordered. ‘Half the metro will come running here with all this noise.’
The party formed up instantly. They put Artyom at the rear, equipped with the powerful flashlight and bullet-proof vest of one of the fighters who was carrying Anton. A minute later they had moved deep inside the tunnel. Artyom was not fit for the role of last man. He moved his legs with difficulty, stumbling on the ties, looking helplessly at the fighter walking ahead. Dron’s dying bawling rang in his ears. His despair, disillusionment and unwillingness to believe that man had been left completely alone in this horrifying, gloomy world, had been transferred to Artyom. Strange, but only having heard the savage’s howl, the full hopeless nostalgia for an absurd, fabricated divine being, he began to understand the universal feeling of solitude that fed mankind’s faith.