‘Listen, Artyom – how are things going with Sukhoi?’ asked Andrey, drinking his tea with small, cautious sips and blowing on it carefully.

‘With Uncle Sasha? Everything’s fine. He came back a little while ago from a hike down the line with some of our people. An expedition. As you probably know.’

Andrey was about fifteen years older than Artyom. Generally speaking, he was a scout, and rarely stood at a watch nearer than the four hundred and fiftieth metre, and then only as a cordon commander. And here they’d posted him at the three-hundredth metre, with good cover, but all the same, he felt the urge to head deeper, and made use of any pretext, any false alarm, to get closer to the darkness, closer to the secret. He loved the tunnel and knew its branches very well but, at the station, he felt uncomfortable among the farmers, the workers, the businessmen and the administration – he felt unneeded, perhaps. He couldn’t bring himself to hoe the earth for mushrooms, or, even worse, stuff the fat pigs at the station’s farms with mushrooms, standing up to his knees in manure. And he couldn’t be a trader either – he’d been unable to stand traders from the day he was born. He had always been a soldier, a warrior, and he believed with all his soul that this was the only occupation worthy of a man. He was proud that he had done nothing his entire life but defend the stinking farmers, the fussy traders, the administrators who were business-like to a fault, and the women and children. Women were attracted to his arrogant strength, to his total confidence in himself, to his sense of calm in relation to himself and those around him (because he was always capable of defending them). Women promised him love, they promised him comfort, but he could only feel comfortable beyond the fiftieth metre, beyond the turning point, where the station lights were hidden. And the women didn’t follow him. Why not?

Now he’d warmed up nicely as a result of the tea, and he removed his old black beret and wiped his moustache, damp from the steam, with his sleeve. Then he began to question Artyom eagerly for news and rumours from the south, brought by the last expedition, by Artyom’s stepfather – by the very man who, nineteen years ago had torn Artyom from the rats at Timiryazevskaya, unable to abandon a child, and had raised him.

‘I myself might know a thing or two, but I’ll listen with pleasure, even for a second time. What – do you mind?’ insisted Andrey.

He didn’t have to spend any time persuading him: Artyom himself enjoyed recalling and retelling his stepfather’s stories – after all, everyone would listen to them, their mouths agape.

‘Well, you probably know where they went…’ began Artyom.

‘I know they went south. They’re so top-secret, those “hikers” of yours,’ laughed Andrey. ‘They are special missions of the administration, you know!’ he winked at one of his people.

‘Come on, there wasn’t anything secret about it,’ Artyom waved his hand dismissively. ‘The expedition was for reconnaissance, the collection of information… Reliable information. Because you can’t believe strangers, the traders who wag their tongues at us at the station – they could be traders or they could be provocateurs, spreading misinformation.’

‘You can never trust traders,’ grumbled Andrey. ‘They’re out for their own good. How are you supposed to know whether to trust one – one day he’ll sell your tea to the Hansa, and the next he’ll sell you and your entrails to someone else. They may well be collecting information here, among us. To be honest, I don’t particularly trust ours either.’

‘Well, you’re wrong to go after our own, Andrey Arkadych. Our guys are all OK. I know almost all of them myself. They’re people, just like people anywhere. They love money, too. They want to live better than others do, they’re striving towards something,’ said Artyom, attempting to defend the local traders.

‘There it is. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. They love money. They want to live better than everyone else does. And who knows what they do when they go off into the tunnel? Can you tell me with certainty that at the very next station they aren’t recruited by agents? Can you – or not?’

‘Which agents? Whose agents did our traders submit to?’

‘Here’s what I’ll say, Artyom. You’re still young, and there’s a lot you don’t know. You should listen to your elders – pay attention, and you’ll stick around a bit longer.’

‘Someone has to do their work! If it weren’t for the traders, we’d be sitting here without military supplies, with Berdan rifles, and we’d be tossing salt at the dark ones and drinking our tea,’ said Artyom, not backing down.

‘All right, all right, we’ve got an economist in our midst… Simmer down now. You’d do better to tell us what Sukhoi saw there. What’s going on there with the neighbours? At Alekseevskaya? At Rizhskaya?’

‘At Alekseevskaya? Nothing new. They’re growing mushrooms. And what is Alekseevskaya anyway? A farmyard, that’s all… So they say.’ Then Artyom lowered his voice in light of the secrecy of the information he was about to give: ‘They want to join us. And Rizhskaya isn’t against it either. They’re facing growing pressure over there from the south. There’s a sombre mood – everyone’s whispering about some sort of threat, everyone’s afraid of something, but of what, nobody knows. It’s either that there’s some sort of new empire at the far end of the line, or that they’re afraid of the Hansa, thinking they might want to expand, or it’s something else altogether. And all of these barnyards are starting to cuddle up to us. Rizhskaya and Alekseevskaya both.’

‘But what do they want, in concrete terms? What are they offering? ’ asked Andrey.

‘They want to create a federation with us that has a common defence system, to strengthen the borders on both ends, to establish constant illumination inside the inter-station tunnels, to organize a police force, to plug up the side tunnels and corridors, to launch transport trolleys, to lay a telephone cable, to designate any available space for mushroom-growing… They want a common economy – to work, and to help each other, should it prove necessary.’

‘And where were they when we needed them? Where were they when there was vermin crawling at us from the Botanical Gardens, from Medvedkov? When the dark ones were attacking us, where were they?’ growled Andrey.

‘Don’t jinx us, Andrey, be careful!’ interceded Pyotr Andreevich. ‘There aren’t any dark ones here for the time being, and all’s well. It wasn’t us who defeated them. Something happened that was of their own doing, it was something among themselves, and now they’ve quietened down. They might be saving up their strength for now. So a union won’t hurt us. All the more so, if we unify with our neighbours. It’ll be to their benefit, and for our good as well.’

‘And we’ll have freedom, and equality, and brotherhood!’ said Andrey ironically, counting on his fingers.

‘What, you don’t want to listen?’ asked Artyom, offended.

‘No, go ahead, Artyom, continue,’ said Andrey. ‘We’ll have it out with Pyotr later. This is a long-standing argument between us.’

‘All right then. And, they say that their chief supposedly agrees. Doesn’t have any fundamental objections. It’s just necessary to consider the details. Soon there’ll be an assembly. And then, a referendum.’

‘What do you mean, a referendum? If the people say yes, then it’s a yes. If they say no, then the people didn’t think hard enough. Let the people think again,’ quipped Andrey.

‘Well, Artyom, and what’s going on beyond Rizhskaya?’ asked Pyotr Andreevich, not paying attention to Andrey.

‘What’s next? Prospect Mir station. Well, and it makes sense that it’s Prospect Mir. That’s the boundary of the Hanseatic League. My stepfather says that everything’s still the same between the Hansa and the Reds – they’ve kept the peace. No one there gives a thought to the war anymore,’ said Artyom.