Artyom knew nothing about the local order of things and so he decided to hide his weapon. After wrapping it up in his vest, he pushed it deep into his rucksack.

Kuznetsky Most was an inhabited station, and about fifty metres before the entrance, in the middle of the path, there stood a sturdy checkpoint. It was only one checkpoint but it had a searchlight, though it was turned off at the moment since it wasn’t needed, and it was equipped with a machine-gun position. The machine gun was covered but next to it sat a very fat man in a threadbare green uniform. He was eating some kind of mash from a beaten-up soldier’s bowl. There were yet another couple of people in the same outfit with clumsy-looking army machine guns on their shoulders, who nitpickingly checked the documents of those who were coming out of the tunnel. There was a small line in front of them: all the fugitives who had come from Kitai Gorod, who had overtaken Artyom while he had walked slowly with Mikhail Porfirevich and Vanechka.

The people were slowly and reluctantly admitted. One guy had been rejected and he was now sitting in dismay, not knowing what to do and trying from time to time to approach the checkpoint guards who pushed him off each time and called up the next person in line. Each of the arriving people was thoroughly searched and they saw for themselves how a man on whom they’d found an undeclared Makarov pistol was thrown out of the line and, when he tried to argue with them, they tied him up and led him away.

Artyom felt a twirling inside, sensing that trouble was ahead. Mikhail Porfirevich was looking at him in surprise and Artyom quietly whispered that he was armed, but the man just nodded reassuringly and promised him that everything would be all right. It wasn’t that Artyom trusted him but thought that it would be very interesting to see how he intended to settle the matter. The old man merely smiled mysteriously.

Slowly, their turn approached. The border guards were now gutting the insides of some fifty-year-old woman’s coat, while she took to accusing them of being tyrants, and expressing surprise that people such as them could exist. Artyom agreed with her but he decided not to voice his solidarity audibly. Digging around, the guard, with a satisfied whistle, took several grenades from her dirty brassiere and looked for an explanation.

Artyom was sure that the woman would now tell a touching story about her grandson who needed these things for his work. You see, he works as a welder, and this is part of his welding equipment. Or she’d say that she had found these grenades along the road and she was, as it happens, rushing to give them to the relevant authorities. But, taking a couple of steps backwards, she hissed a curse and rushed back into the tunnel, hurrying to hide in the darkness. The machine gunner set aside his bowl of food and gripped his unit but one of the two border guards, apparently the older one, stopped him with a gesture. The fat one, sighed in disappointment, and turned back to his porridge, and Mikhail Porfirevich took a step forward, holding his passport at the ready.

It was amazing but the senior guard, without the slightest twinge of conscience, having upturned the whole bag belonging to the completely inoffensive-looking woman, quickly leafed through the old man’s notebook, and he didn’t pay a jot of attention to Vanechka, as though he wasn’t there. It was Artyom’s turn. He readily gave his documents over to the lean moustached guard and the man started meticulously scrutinizing each page of them, and shined his torch on his stamps for an especially long time. The border guard compared Artyom’s physiognomy no less than five times against the photograph, outwardly expressing his doubts, while Artyom gave a friendly smile, trying to portray himself as innocence itself.

‘Why is your passport a Soviet model?’ the guard finally asked with a stern voice, not knowing what else to pick on.

‘I was little, see, when there were still real ones. And then our administration corrected the situation with the first form they could find to fill in.’

‘That’s out of order.’ The man frowned. ‘Open your rucksack.’

If he detects the machine gun, Artyom thought, then he could run back. Otherwise they would confiscate it. He wiped perspiration from his forehead.

Mikhail Porfirevich went up to the guard and stood very close to him, and whispered quickly:

‘Konstantin Alexeyevich, you understand, this young man is my friend. He’s a very very decent youth, I can guarantee it personally.’

The border guard opened Artyom’s bag and pushed his hand inside it. Artyom went cold. Then the guard said dryly:

‘Five,’ and while Artyom figured out what he meant, the old man pulled a fistful of cartridges out of his pocket and, quickly counting out five, he put them into the half-open field bag that was hanging off the guard’s belt.

But Konstantin Alexeyevich’s hand had continued its rummaging in Artyom’s bag and, apparently, the worst had happened, because his face took on a suddenly interested expression.

Artyom felt his heart falling into a precipice and he shut his eyes.

‘Fifteen,’ the guard said impassively.

After nodding, Artyom counted off ten additional cartridges and poured them into the same bag. Not one muscle flickered on the face of the border guard. He simply took a step to the side and the path to Kuznetsky Most was free and clear. With admiration for the man’s iron restraint, Artyom went forward.

The next fifteen minutes were spent squabbling with Mikhail Porfirevich who stubbornly refused to accept five cartridges from Artyom, assuring him that his debt to Artyom was much greater.

Kuznetsky Most was no different from most of the other stations that Artyom had managed to see on his journey so far. It had the same marble on the walls and granite on the floors, but the arches here were unusually high and wide, creating an unusual sensation of spaciousness.

But the most surprising thing was that on each of the tracks stood entire trains that were incredibly long and so enormous that they took up almost all the room at the station. The windows were lit up with a warm light that shone through variously coloured curtains, and the doors were welcomingly open…

Artyom had not seen anything like it. Yes, he had half-erased memories of swiftly moving and hooting trains with bright squares of windows. The memories were from his early childhood, but they were diffuse, ephemeral, like the other thoughts about what had gone before: as soon as he tried to remember any details, to focus on something small, then the elusive image dissolved right away, and flowed like water through his fingers, and there was nothing left… But since he’d grown up he had only seen the train that had got stuck in the tunnel entrance at Rizhskaya, and some wagons at Kitai Gorod and Prospect Mir.

Artyom froze on the spot, captivated, looking at the train, counting the carriages that melted into the haze of the other end of the platform, near the entrance to the Red Line. There, a red calico banner hung down from the ceiling, snatched from the darkness by a distinct circle of electric light, and underneath it stood two machine gunners, in identical green uniforms and peak caps, who seemed small from far away and amusingly reminiscent of toy soldiers.

Artyom had three toy soldiers like them when he lived with his mother: one was the commander with a tiny pistol pulled out of its holster. He was yelling something, looking backwards – he was probably ordering his group to follow him into battle. The other two stood straight, holding their machine guns. The little soldiers were probably from different collections and there was no way to play with them: the commander was throwing himself into battle, and despite his valiant cries, the other two were standing in place, just like the border guards of the Red Line, and they weren’t particularly heading for battle. It was strange, he remembered these soldiers so well, and yet he couldn’t remember his mother’s face…