‘OK, and who was it?’ the husky fellow who sat by the searchlight interrupted impatiently.
‘I asked the men I was loading with. Do you know who? Satanists! Get it? They decided, you see, that the end of the world has already come, and the metro is the gate to hell. And he said something about a circle or something, I don’t remember.’
‘Gateway,’ the gunner corrected him.
‘OK. So the metro is the gateway to hell, and hell itself is a little bit deeper down; and the Devil, you see, is waiting there for them – they just have to reach him. So, they’re digging. It’s been four years since then. Maybe they’ve already hit bottom.’
‘And where is it?’ the gunner asked.
‘I don’t know! By God, I don’t know. Well, I sure got myself out of there: I threw myself into the wagon while the guard wasn’t watching, and sprinkled some dirt over me. I rolled along somewhere for a long time; then they dumped out the contents of the wagon, from high up; I passed out, then came to, crept along, crawled out by some sort of tracks, just keeping on, straight ahead; but these tracks kept crossing other tracks, and my sense of direction deserted me. Then somebody picked me up, and when I woke up I was only at Dubrovka, get it? And the guy who had picked me up, had gone off already, such a nice guy. So I thought, where am I…’
Then they talked about rumours that at Ilich Square and the Rimskaya there was an epidemic of some kind and many people had died, but Artyom paid no attention.
The idea that the metro was the threshold to hell, or maybe even its first circle, mesmerized him, and a bizarre image arose before his eyes: hundreds of people crawling around like ants, endlessly digging a pit with their hands, a shaft leading nowhere, until one day one of their pieces of scrap metal sticks strangely out of the soil, without sinking down below, and then hell and the metro are finally merged into one. Then it occurred to him that at this station, people live almost just like at VNDKh: constantly attacking monstrous creatures from the surface, holding off the onslaught alone, and if Paveletskaya faltered, these monsters would spread throughout the line. Which meant that the role of VDNKh is not so unique as he had previously assumed. Who knew how many such stations there were in the metro, each covering its own turf, doing battle, not for the sake of general tranquillity, but for its own hide. You could go back, retreat to the centre, blow your tunnels up after you – but then you’d be left with less and less residential space, until all those who were still alive would be squeezed into a small patch of land, and would gnaw their way through one another’s gullets.
But if VDNKh was really nothing special, if there were other exits to the surface that it was impossible to conceal… That meant… Artyom decided to discontinue that line of thought. It was just the voice of weakness, of treasonous, sugary, seductive arguments not to continue the journey, to stop striving towards the goal. But he mustn’t give up. That was a dead end.
To distract himself, he resumed listening to the others’ conversation. At first they were talking about the chances of somebody named Pushka to win some sort of victory. Then the husky fellow started to talk about how some idiots attacked Kitai Gorod and shot loads of people, but the timely arrival of the Kaluga brotherhood overpowered them, and the cutthroats went back to Taganskaya. Artyom wanted to point out that it was not Taganskaya at all, but the Tretyakovskaya, but he was prevented from doing so by some scrawny guy whose face was hidden, and who said that the Kalugans had pretty much been kicked out of Kitai Gorod, and now a new group controlled it, which nobody had ever heard of before. The husky dude argued heatedly with him, and Artyom started to nod off. This time he dreamed about nothing at all, and slept so soundly that even when the alarm whistle went off and everyone jumped up, he just couldn’t wake up.
It was probably a false alarm, because no shots were fired.
When Mark finally woke him up, it was already a quarter to six.
‘Get up, time to go on duty!’ He cheerily shook Artyom by the shoulder. ‘Let’s go, I’ll show you the passageway that they wouldn’t let you into yesterday. Do you have a passport?’
Artyom shook his head.
‘Well never mind, we’ll smooth it over somehow,’ Mark promised, and indeed, after a few minutes, they were already in the passage, and the security officer whistled the go-ahead obligingly, fondling two cartridges.
The passageway was very long, even longer than the station itself. There were canvas tents along one wall, and rather bright little lamps burning (‘Hansa takes care of us,’ Mark smirked), and along the other was a partition – long, but not high, not more than a metre.
‘By the way, this is one of the longest passageways in the whole metro!’ Mark said proudly. ‘What’s behind the partition, you ask? And you don’t know? Why it’s a marvellous thing! Half of everything we earn goes there! Just wait, it’s still early. Things will start up later on. It’s almost always the same, in the evening, when the entrance to the station is closed and people don’t have anything else to do. Although there can be qualification rounds during the day. No really, you’ve never heard of it? Why we’ve got a Totalizator for rat races! We call it the Hippodrome. I thought everybody knew about it,’ he said with surprise, when he finally realized that Artyom was not joking. ‘Do you like to gamble much? I’m a gambler myself.’
Artyom was certainly interested in watching races, but had never been fanatical about it. Besides, now, having slept so long, a storm cloud of guilt was growing and darkening over his head. He couldn’t wait until evening, couldn’t wait at all. He had to get moving; too much time had already been wasted. But the way to Polis led through Hansa, and right now there was no way of getting there.
‘I probably can’t stay here until evening,’ said Artyom. ‘I have to go… to Polyanka.’
‘But then you’ll be going across Hansa,’ said Mark with a frown. ‘How are you going to get across Hansa if you have no visa, and no passport either? I can’t help you there, my friend. But wait, let me throw out an idea. The chief of Paveletskaya – not our Paveletskaya, but the one on the Ring – is a great fan of these races. His rat, Pirate, is a favourite. He comes here every night, with a security detail and full lighting. How about wagering yourself, personally, against him?’
‘But I haven’t got anything to wager with,’ Artyom objected.
‘Wager yourself, as a servant. Or if you want, I’ll wager you.’ Mark’s eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘If we win, you get a visa. If we lose – you’ll get there just the same, although of course it will be up to you how to get out. Is there an alternative?’
Artyom did not like this plan. It seemed somehow shameful to sell himself into slavery and, what’s more, to lose himself to a rat Totalizator. He decided to try to get to Hansa some other way. For a couple of hours, he hung around some stern border guards in dappled grey uniforms – they were dressed exactly like those at Prospect Mir – trying to strike up a conversation with them; but they kept mum. After one of them contemptuously called him One-Eye (that was unfair, because his left eye had already begun to open up, although it still hurt like hell) and told him to buzz off, Artyom finally abandoned that fruitless effort and started looking for the most sinister and suspicious people at the station, the weapon and drug traders – anyone who might be a contraband runner.
But no one wanted to convey Artyom to Hansa in exchange for his automatic weapon and his lamp.
Evening came on, and Artyom met it with quiet despair, sitting on the floor of the passageway and wallowing in self-flagellation. Around this time, the passage became more lively; the adults were returning from work, having dinner with their families; the children were making an uproar until time to go to bed; and finally, after the gate was locked, everyone poured out of their stalls and tents, toward the race course. There were lots of people here, at least three hundred, and finding Mark in such a crowd was no easy job. People were betting on how Pirate was running, whether Pushka would beat him just for once, mentioning various nicknames and other runners, but these two evidently had no competition.