“Let’s go,” she said, and Maxim jumped up.
They were unable to leave immediately. The old woman began to shout again. She was angry about something, demanding some-thing. She waved a pen and sheet of paper in the air. Rada argued with her for a while, but the other girl came over and took the woman’s side. Rada finally relented. Then the three of them con-fronted Maxim. At first they repeated the same question, singly and then in chorus, which Maxim, of course, didn’t understand. At last Rada ordered everyone to keep quiet; she clapped Maxim lightly on the chest.
“Mac Sim?”
“Maxim,” he corrected her.
“Max? Im?”
“Maxim. Max—must not. Im—must not. Maxim.”
Rada brought her finger to the tip of her nose and said, “Rada Gaal. Maxim.”
“Gaal?” he said. “Guy Gaal?”
Dead silence. They were stunned.
“Guy Gaal,” repeated Maxim, overjoyed. “Guy good man.”
Suddenly there was a commotion as the women all began to talk at once. Rada tugged at Maxim and asked something. Obviously she was terribly interested in learning how he knew Guy. “Guy, Guy, Guy” bobbed up in a stream of incomprehensible words.
“Massaraksh!” said the old woman as she burst into laughter. And the girls joined in. Rada took Maxim by the arm, and they went out into the rain.
They walked to the end of a poorly lit side street and turned into an even dimmer lane where rickety wooden houses lined a muddy road paved with uneven cobblestones. Then they made two more turns. The narrow crooked streets were deserted. Not a single pedestrian was out.
At first Rada chattered animatedly, repeating Guy’s name frequently. Maxim interjected occasionally that Guy was a fine per-son, but added in Lingcos that one should not beat people in the face, that this was a strange custom, and that he, Maxim, could not understand it. As the streets they passed through grew narrower, darker, and muddier, Rada’s chatter broke off more frequently. Sometimes she stopped and peered into the darkness. At first Maxim thought she was trying to find a drier path, but it was something else she was searching for, because she walked straight through the puddles. Maxim had to guide her away from them gently and lead her onto drier ground. Where there wasn’t any, he lifted her under the arms and carried her, which appeared to please her. But each time her delight would quickly be smothered by fear.
The farther they walked from the cafe, the more fearful she be-came. At first Maxim tried to establish nerve contact with her, but, as with Fank, he was unsuccessful. They left the slums and came out on a muddy unpaved road. An endless fence, topped with rusty barbed wire, extended along the right side, and on the left was a pitch-dark, putrid wasteland. Here Rada became completely unnerved and almost burst into tears. To boost her spirits, Maxim sang the most cheerful songs he knew, at the top of his lungs. For a short time it helped—until they reached the end of the fence. Here were more houses, long, low, with dark windows. The few street lights burned dimly, and in the distance, beneath a solitary archway, stood a group of rain-drenched, bunched-over, shivering figures. Rada halted.
Grasping his arm, she began to speak in a faltering whisper. She pulled him back and he obeyed, thinking it would make her feel better. Then, realizing that she had acted impulsively, out of desperation, he refused to budge.
“Let’s go,” he said to her gently. “Let’s go, Rada. Not bad. Good.”
Like a child, she obeyed. Although he didn’t know the way, he led her and suddenly realized that she was afraid of the wet figures. He was very surprised because they didn’t appear dangerous; they were ordinary natives, hunched over in the rain and shivering from the dampness. At first there were two of them; then a third and a fourth appeared with those glowing narcotic sticks hanging from their lips.
Maxim walked along the deserted street between the rows of yellow houses, directly toward them, and Rada kept pressing closer to him. He placed his arm around her shoulder. It suddenly occurred to him that he was mistaken, that Rada must be shaking from the cold and not from fear. There was certainly nothing dangerous about those rain-soaked figures. He walked past them. Hands thrust deep inside their pockets and stamping to warm themselves, those pitiful souls, poisoned by narcotics, didn’t appear to notice Rada or him, didn’t even raise their eyes, although he passed close enough to hear their sick, irregular breathing. Now, he thought, Rada could relax. But as they passed the arch-way another group of four, as wet and pitiful as the first, sprang out in front of them and blocked their path. Their leader held along thick cane. Maxim recognized both him and the cane. The stranger in the cafe.
From the top of the peeling archway a bare bulb dangled in the draft. The walls were covered with mold, and below his feet lay cracked concrete marked by the muddy tracks of many feet. Sounds of shuffling feet came from the rear. Maxim turned around. The first four were catching up, gasping for breath and tossing away those repulsive narcotic sticks. Rada let out a muffled cry and let go of his hand. Suddenly he was hemmed in, pressed against the wall. He could see two of them holding Rada by the arms. The one with the cane went up to her, shifted the cane to his left hand, and raising his right with a deliberate motion, struck her on the cheek.
Maxim lost all sense of reality. Something clicked in his brain and the people vanished. Only he and Rada were there. No one else. Near them dangerous animals stamped clumsily through the mud. City, archway, naked bulb—all were gone. For him there were only the impassable mountains in the Land of Oz-on-Pandora. And a cave, a trap set by naked apes. And a pale, yellow, apathetic moon looking into the cave. He had to fight for his life. And now he began to fight as he had fought then on Pandora.
Time slowed down obediently. Seconds became hours, and during the span of a single second he could perform many maneuvers, deliver many blows, and see all his adversaries simultaneously. The animals were not very agile. They were used to tangling with another kind of beast. They didn’t have time to realize that they had chosen the wrong victim and that it would have been wiser to run away. They tried to fight. Maxim seized one of the animals by the jaw, yanked up its pliant head, and chopped its pale pulsating neck with the edge of his hand. Instantly he turned to the next one and grabbed, jerked, and chopped, in a cloud of stinking, predatory breathing, in the cave’s echoing silence, in the yellow, dripping semidarkness. Dirty crooked claws tore at his neck and slid off; yellow fangs sank deep into his shoulder and slid off.
Now he was alone. Their leader was rushing toward the cave’s exit with his club because he, like all leaders, possessed the sharpest reflexes and was the first to realize what was happening. For an instant, Maxim felt sorry for him: how slowly he seemed to react—the seconds stretched out, and their fleet leader had scarcely moved his legs when Maxim, slipping between the seconds, caught up with him. Maxim hacked him on the run and halted.
Time resumed its normal flow again: the cave was now an archway; the moon, a bare bulb; and the Land of Oz-on-Pandora, an enigmatic city on an enigmatic planet. Even more enigmatic than Pandora.
Maxim stood there, resting. The leader crawled about painfully on the ground. Blood trickled from Maxim’s wounded shoulder. Sobbing, Rada took his hand and ran his palm across her wet face. He looked around; bodies lay like sacks on the dirty concrete. Mechanically, he counted them. Six, including the leader; two, he thought, had managed to escape. Rada’s touch felt indescribably pleasant, and he knew that he had taken the proper course; he had done what had to be done. No more, no less. He didn’t bother to pursue those who had escaped, although he could have overtaken them easily. Even now he could hear their heels clicking at the end of the street.