“Will you stop waffling, Ellisauer!” Izya said, closing in for the kill. “Everything’s perfectly clear: you’re afraid to go on, you’re conducting moral sabotage, you’ve demoralized your own subordinates, and now you’ve come running here to complain… And you, by the way, don’t even have to walk. You ride all the time…”
Go on, Izya, give it to him, buddy, Andrei thought lovingly. Whop him, the motherfucker, whop him! He’s already shit himself, now he’ll ask to go to the john…
“And I don’t understand at all what all this panic is about,” Izya continued without easing up. “So the geology’s come up short. To hell with the geology—we’ll get by without any geology. And we’ll get by even more easily without any cosmography… Surely it’s clear that our main job is reconnaissance, collecting information. I personally can vouch that to date the expedition has already achieved a great deal, and it can do even more. The tractor’s broken down? So fine, let them repair it here, two days or ten, I don’t know—let’s leave the sickest and most exhausted men and move ahead gently on the other tractor. If we find water, we’ll stop and wait for the others. It’s all very simple, you know; it’s no big deal…”
“Sure, it’s all very simple, Katzman,” Quejada said acidly. “How would you like a bullet in the back, Katzman? Or in the forehead? You’ve gotten too carried away with your archives, you don’t notice anything going on around you. The soldiers won’t go any farther. I know it. I heard them deciding for themselves…”
Ellisauer suddenly sprang up from behind him and dashed out of the room, mumbling incoherent apologies and demonstratively clutching his stomach. The rat, Andrei thought savagely. The cowardly swine. The gutless shit…
Quejada seemed not to have noticed anything. “Out of all my geologists, there’s only one man I can rely on,” he continued. “The soldiers and the drivers can’t be relied on at all. Of course, you can shoot one or two of them to frighten the rest… maybe that would help. I don’t know. I doubt it. And I’m not sure you have the moral right to do that. They don’t want to go on because they feel cheated. Because they’ve gotten nothing out of this expedition, and now they have no hope of getting anything. The wonderful legend that Mr. Katzman so opportunely invented—the legend of the Crystal Palace—doesn’t work anymore. Different legends have overshadowed it now, you know, Mr. Katzman…”
“What the hell do you mean?” said Izya, stammering from indignation. “I didn’t invent anything!”
Quejada brushed that off almost affably: “All right, all right, that’s immaterial now. It’s already clear that there’s not going to be any palace, so there’s nothing to talk about. You know perfectly well, gentlemen, that three-quarters of your volunteers came on this expedition for booty, and only for booty. And what have they received instead of booty? Bloody diarrhea and a vermin-ridden idiot for their nocturnal frolics… But even that’s not the point. As if the disappointment wasn’t enough, they’re scared too. Let’s thank Mr. Katzman. Let’s thank Mr. Pak, to whom we have so graciously offered bed and board with our expedition. Thanks to the efforts of these gentlemen, we have learned a vast amount about what lies in store for us if we continue our advance. The men are afraid of the thirteenth day. The men are afraid of talking wolves. The shark wolves weren’t enough for us, so we’ve been promised talking ones! The men are afraid of Ironheads. And together with what they’ve already seen—all these mutes with their tongues cut out, abandoned concentration camps, all these cretins who have reverted to savagery and pray to springs, and the well-armed cretins who fire at you out of the blue, without rhyme or reason… together with what they’ve seen today, here, in these houses—those bones in the barricaded apartments… it all makes a delightful and impressive combination! And if yesterday what the men were most afraid of in the entire world was Sergeant Vogel, today they couldn’t give a rotten damn for Vogel—they have more terrifying things to fear.”
Quejada finally stopped talking, caught his breath, and wiped away the sweat that had sprung out on his fat face. And then the colonel lifted one eyebrow ironically and said, “I have the impression that you are thoroughly frightened yourself, Mr. Quejada. Or am I mistaken?”
Quejada squinted at him with a red eye. “Don’t you worry about me, Colonel,” he growled. “If I’m afraid of anything, it’s a bullet between the shoulder blades. Out the blue. From men I sympathize with, by the way.”
“So that’s it?” said the colonel. “Well now… I don’t presume to judge the importance of the present expedition, and I don’t presume to tell the leader of the expedition how he ought to act. My job is to carry out orders. However, I feel obliged to state that I consider all this discussion of mutiny and insubordination to be idle prattle. Leave my soldiers to me, Mr. Quejada! If you like you can also leave to me those of your geologists that you don’t trust. I’ll be glad to deal with them… I must point out to you, Counselor,” he continued with the same devastating politeness, “that today too much is being said about the soldiers by precisely those individuals who have no official connection with the soldiers—”
“The individuals talking about the soldiers,” Quejada interrupted angrily, “work round the clock with them, and eat and sleep beside them.”
In the silence that followed, a leather armchair quietly creaked as the colonel sat completely upright. He said nothing for a while. The door opened quietly and Ellisauer snuck back to his place with a sour smile, bowing slightly as he walked.
Come on, Andrei mentally urged the colonel, staring at him with all his might. Come on, whop him! Right on the mustache! Whop his ugly mug, whop it!
The colonel finally spoke: “I am obliged to draw to your attention, Counselor, that today a certain section of the command staff has evinced sympathy for and, even worse, connivance at perfectly understandable and ordinary but entirely unacceptable sentiments among the lower ranks of the army. As the senior officer, I have the following declaration to make: If the aforementioned connivance and sympathy should assume any practical forms, I shall deal with the connivers and sympathizers as is appropriate to deal with such individuals in field conditions. Other than that, Mr. Counselor, I have the honor to assure you that the army remains ready henceforth to carry out any commands you may give.”
Andrei quietly caught his breath and gave Quejada a jubilant look. Quejada was smiling crookedly as he lit a new cigarette from the butt of the old one. Andrei couldn’t see Ellisauer at all.
“And exactly how are connivers and sympathizers dealt with in field conditions?” Izya inquired with tremendous curiosity; he was jubilant too.
“They are usually hanged,” the colonel replied drily.
Silence fell again. So there now, thought Andrei. I hope that’s all clear. Mr. Quejada? Or perhaps you have questions? You don’t have any questions, no way! It’s the army! The army decides everything, my friends… But even so, I don’t understand anything, he thought. Why is he so confident? Or maybe it’s only a mask, Colonel? I look very confident right now too, don’t I? At least, that’s the way I’m supposed to look… I’m obliged to.
He squinted warily at the colonel, who was still sitting up very straight, with his extinct pipe firmly clutched in his teeth. And he was very pale. Perhaps it’s merely anger. Let’s hope it’s just down to anger… To hell with it, to hell with it, Andrei thought frantically. A long halt! Right now! And Katzman can find me water. Lots of water. For the colonel. Just for the colonel. And starting tonight the colonel gets a double ration of water!