They had killed each other here in a fit of demented fury, like enraged predators, like frenzied tarantulas, like rats deranged by hunger. Like men.
Tevosyan was in the unpaved side street nearest to the camp, lying slantwise across the road on the dried-up excrement. He had been chasing the tractor, which turned into this alley and moved off toward the precipice, ripping up the hard-baked earth with its impatient caterpillar treads. Tevosyan chased it all the way from the camp, shooting as he ran, and they shot at him from the tractor, and here, at the intersection where the statue with the toadish face had stood that night, they got him, and he had been left lying here, grinning with his yellow teeth, in his army tunic, smeared with dust, excrement, and blood. But before he died, or maybe after he died, he hit the target too: halfway to the cliff edge, Sergeant Vogel was lying in a bloated heap, clutching with his gnarled fingers at the earth crushed to powder by the caterpillar tracks. From there the tractor had gone on without him—all the way to the cliff edge and down into the Abyss.
In the camp a burnt-out sled was smoldering. Little tongues of smoky orange flame were still flicking over the metal barrels, warped and battered by the bullets shot through them and turned bluish-black by the heat, and clouds of greasy smoke were rising up into the pale sky. Someone’s burnt legs protruded from a caked heap of slag on a trailer, and the appetizing odor that made Andrei feel nauseous hung in the air.
Roulier’s naked body was hanging out the window of the cartographers’ room—his long, hairy arms reached almost down to the sidewalk, where an automatic rifle was lying. The wall all around the window was gouged and chipped by bullets, and on the opposite side of the street Vasilenko and Palotti were lying together in a heap, cut down by a single burst of gunfire. There were no weapons anywhere near them, and Vasilenko’s shrunken face still wore an expression of boundless amazement and fear.
The other geologist, the other cartographer, and Ellisauer, the deputy expedition leader for technical matters, had all been stood up against that same wall and shot. They were lying there in row in front of a door riddled with bullet holes—Ellisauer in his shorts, and the other two naked.
And at the very center of this stinking hecatomb, right in the middle of the street, Colonel St. James, draped in the British flag, was calmly lying on a table with aluminum legs, with his hands folded on his chest. He was in full dress uniform, with all his medals. Still as prim and imperturbable as ever, and even smiling ironically. Beside him, with his gray-haired head nestling against the road, lay Duggan—also in full dress uniform, and clutching the colonel’s broken cane in his hands.
And that was all. Six soldiers, including Hnoipek, plus the engineer Quejada and the debauched girl Skank, and the tractor with its sled, had disappeared, leaving behind corpses, geological equipment dumped in a heap, and a few automatic rifles stacked in a pyramid. And a vile stench. And greasy soot. And a suffocating odor of roasted flesh from the sled that was still smoldering. Andrei stumbled into his room, collapsed into a chair, and lowered his head onto his hands with a groan. It was all over. Forever. And there was no salvation from the pain, no salvation from the shame, and no salvation from death.
I brought them here. I did it. I left them here on their own, like a stinking coward. I wanted to take a break. From their ugly faces—what a skunk, what a namby-pamby jerk, what a lousy wuss… Colonel, ah, Colonel! You shouldn’t have died, you shouldn’t have done that! If I hadn’t gone he wouldn’t have died. If he hadn’t died, no one here would have dared to lift a finger. Animals, animals… Hyenas! I ought to have shot them, shot them!
He gave another long, drawn-out groan and dragged his wet cheek across his sleeve. We’ve been idling away the time in libraries… making speeches to statues… You lousy bungler, you bag of wind, you screwed everything up, let everything unravel… So now croak, you bastard! No one will cry. What damned use are you to anyone anyway? But I’m afraid, aren’t I, afraid. But it’s so horrible, so horrible… They hunted each other down, they shot each other—they shot men lying on the ground, they shot dead men, they put them up against the wall, swearing and reviling them, punching and kicking them… How did it come to this, guys? What have I reduced you to? And for what? For what?
He slammed his fists down onto the tabletop, then straightened up and wiped his face with his open palm. Through the window he could hear Izya screeching inarticulately and the Mute cooing soothingly, like a pigeon. I don’t want to live, Andrei thought. I don’t want to. To hell with all this. He got up from the table to go out there, to Izya, to the men—and suddenly he saw the expedition log lying open in front of him. He pushed it away from him in disgust, but immediately noticed that the last page wasn’t written in his handwriting. He sat down again and started reading.
Quejada wrote:
Day 31. Yesterday, in the morning of day 30 of the expedition, Counselor Voronin, the archivist Katzman, and the emigrant Pak set off on a reconnaissance sortie, intending to return to the camp before taps, but did not come back. Today at 1430 Colonel St. James, the acting leader of the expedition, died of a sudden heart attack. Since Counselor Voronin has still not returned from the reconnaissance sortie, I am assuming command of the expedition. Signed: deputy expedition leader for scientific matters, D. Quejada, 1545.
Then came the usual gobbledygook about provisions and water expended, about the temperature and the wind, and also an order appointing Sergeant Vogel commander of the military unit, a reprimand to deputy expedition leader for technical matters Ellisauer for procrastination, and an order, also to Ellisauer, to expedite the repair of the second tractor. After that Quejada wrote:
Tomorrow I intend to hold a funeral with full military honors for the untimely deceased Colonel St. James and immediately after the ceremony dispatch a well-armed group of men to search for Counselor Voronin’s reconnaissance party. Should the missing party not be found, I intend to give the order to turn back, since I consider continuing our advance to be even more pointless that it was before.
Day 32. The reconnaissance party has not returned. For a shameful brawl that broke out last night, I am giving the cartographer Roulier and privates Hnoipek and Tevosyan a final warning and withdrawing their water ration for one day…
After that the page was streaked with black zigzags and spatters of ink, and the entries came to an end. Evidently shooting had broken out in the street, and Quejada had jumped up and never come back.
Andrei reread the entries twice. Yes, Quejada, this is what you wanted. You got what you wanted. And I blamed it all on Pak, may he rest in peace… He bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut when the bloated puppet in a faded blue jacket appeared in front of him again, and suddenly he realized. Day thirty-two? Thirty! Yesterday I wrote the entry for day twenty-eight… He flipped the page back hurriedly. Yes. Twenty-eight… And these bloated corpses—they’ve been lying here for days… My God, what is all this? One, two… What date is it today? We only left this morning!
And he remembered the hot square studded with empty pediments, and the icy darkness of the Pantheon, and the blind statues at the infinitely long table… That was a long time ago. It was a very long time ago. Yep, yep. Some unholy power must have swept me up and swirled me around, set my head spinning and addled my brains… I could have come back the same day. I would have found the colonel still alive, I wouldn’t have let it happen…