“We understand,” said Eddie.
Christobal looked us over one more time.
“They should take Modest with them,” he muttered. “Fight fire with fire.” He gave a hopeless wave of the hand. “All right, go. Good luck.”
We left, and Eddie said that now we had to drop into his lab and pick up the humanizer. He had been quite active in practical humanization lately. Six cabinets in his lab housed an experimental apparatus whose functional principle boiled down to the fact that it repressed primitive urges in the person subjected to its rays and brought to the surface and directed outward all that was rational, good, and eternal. With the aid of this experimental humanizer, Eddie managed to cure a philatelist, return two out-of-control hockey fans to the bosoms of their families, and bring a chronic slanderer under control. Now he was trying to cure our close friend Vitya Korneev of insolence, unsuccessfully thus far.
“How are we going to lug all this?” I asked, looking at the cabinets in horror.
But Eddie calmed me down. It seemed that his portable version was almost ready. It was less powerful, but adequate, Eddie hoped, for our needs. “I’ll finish soldering it there,” he said, putting the flat metal box in his pocket.
When we got back to the landing, Modest Matveevich was winding up his speech.
“We’ll put an end to this, too,” he maintained in a slightly hoarse voice. “Because, first of all, the elevator safeguards our lives. That’s point one. And it saves work time. The elevator costs money, and we categorically forbid smoking in it. Which of you are the volunteers?” he asked, turning to the crowd unexpectedly.
Several voices responded, but Modest Matveevich turned down the candidates. “You’re too young to ride around in elevators,” he announced. “This is no spectroscope, you know.” Eddie and I silently made our way to the front of the crowd.
“We want to go to seventy-six,” Eddie said quietly.
There was a respectful silence. Modest Matveevich looked us over from head to toe with great doubt.
“You look weak to me. Too green. Do you smoke?”
“No,” said Eddie.
“Occasionally,” said I.
Tikhon the house spirit ran out of the crowd and whispered in Modest Matveevich’s ear. Modest Matveevich pursed his lips.
“We’ll have to check that,” he said and took out his notebook. “What’s your business up there, Amperian?” he asked grumpily.
“The Talking Bedbug.”
“And you, Privalov?”
“The Black Box.”
“Hmm.” Modest Matveevich flipped through his book. “Correct, they are located there—The Colony of Unexplained Phenomena. Let’s see your requisitions.”
We showed him.
“Well, all right, go on up. You won’t be the first, and you won’t be the last.”
He saluted us. Sad music began playing. The crowd hushed. We entered the elevator cab. I was sad and scared and I remembered that I had not said good-bye to Stella. “They’ll wipe them out up there,” Modest Matveevich was explaining to someone. “Too bad, they’re nice guys. Amperian doesn’t even smoke; cigarettes don’t touch his lips.” The metal gate clanged shut. Eddie pushed the button for seventy-six without looking at me. The door closed automatically, a sign flashed saying “No smoking! Fasten your seatbelts!”—and off we went.
At first it moved slowly and lazily, at a half-hearted trot. You could tell that it did not like going anywhere. Familiar corridors, the sad faces of our friends, and the homemade posters saying “Heroes!” and “You won’t be forgotten!” floated down past us. On the thirteenth floor they waved to us for the last time, and the elevator headed for uncharted territories.
Seemingly uninhabited rooms appeared and disappeared, the jolts became less frequent and weaker, and it felt as though the elevator was falling asleep en route. It came to a complete halt on the sixteenth floor. We had barely exchanged a few words with some armed guards, who turned out to work in the Department of Enchanted Treasure, when the elevator reared up on its hind legs and galloped off wildly toward the zenith with a metallic whinny.
Lights lit up and relays clicked. The acceleration was pushing us into the floor. Eddie and I clung to each other to stay on our feet. The mirrors reflected our sweaty, tense faces, and we had prepared for the worst when the gallop changed to a canter and the force fell to one and a half g’s. We cheered up. Making our hearts skip, the elevator parked itself at the fifty-seventh floor. The door opened and a heavy-set middle-aged man came in, carrying an open accordion. He casually extended “Greetings to one and all!” and pushed sixty-three. When the elevator started moving, he leaned against the wall and, rolling his eyes, started playing “Little Bricks” softly.
“From below?” he inquired indolently, without turning to us.
“From below,” we replied.
“Kamnoedov still there?”
“Yes.”
“Well, say hello,” the stranger said and paid no more attention to us. The elevator rose slowly, trembling in time with the song.
Eddie and I were so embarrassed that we set ourselves to learning the “Rules of Operation” etched on a brass plate. We learned that it was against the rules: for bats, vampires, and flying squirrels to settle in the car; to exit through the walls in case of an emergency stop between floors; to transport flammable and explosive materials as well as vessels containing genies or dragons without fireproof muzzles; and for house spirits to use the elevator without accompanying humans. Also everyone without exception was forbidden to create mischief, be involved in sleeping, or to hop.
We did not have the chance to read all the rules. The car stopped, the stranger got out, and Eddie pressed seventy-six one more time. At that very second the elevator rushed up with a ferocity that made us blank out. When we came to, the elevator was motionless and the door was open. We were on the seventy-sixth floor. We looked at each other and went out bearing our requisitions over our heads like white flags. I do not know for sure what it was we expected, but it was bound to be bad.
However, nothing terrible happened. We found ourselves in a round, empty, and very dusty room with a low gray ceiling. A white boulder, looking like an antitank stake placement, grew out of the parquet floor. Old yellowed bones were scattered around the boulder. There was the smell of mice, and it was murky. Suddenly the elevator gate clanged shut. We shuddered and turned around, but all we saw was the roof of the descending car. An evil roar filled the room and died down. We were trapped. I desperately wanted to get back downstairs immediately, but the lost look that crossed Eddie’s face gave me strength. I stuck out my jaw, folded my hands behind my back, and headed for the boulder, maintaining an independent and skeptical air. Just as I had expected, the boulder was a road marker, often encountered in fairy tales. The sign over it looked something like this:
No.1. If you go to the right, you’ll lose your head.
No.2. If you go to the left, you’ll get nowhere.
No.3. If you go straight, you’ll
“They’ve scraped off the last part,” Eddie explained. “Aha. There’s something else written in penciclass="underline" ‘We are here … we consulted the people … and the opinion is … that we should go … straight. Signed: L. Vuniukov.’ ”
We looked straight ahead. Our eyes had adjusted to the diffused light, and we saw the doors. There were three of them. The doors leading to what might be considered the right and the left were boarded shut, and there was a path going around the boulder through the dust from the elevator to the middle door.