“Oh!” he said. “Here’s something!
“What?” asked Andrei, looking around.
“Paper,” Izya replied tersely.
Without looking at either of them, he made a confident beeline for a building on the right side of the street. It was an ordinary-looking building, not distinguished in any way from the others nearby, except perhaps by a slightly more sumptuous entrance and a certain Gothic accent detectable in its general style. Izya disappeared through the entrance, and before they could even get across the street, he stuck his head back out and called excitedly, “Come in here, Pak! A library!”
Andrei merely shook his head in admiration. Attaboy, Izya.
“A library?” said Pak, lengthening his stride. “Impossible!”
The vestibule was cool and dark after the searing yellow heat of the street. Tall Gothic windows, filled with stained glass, obviously overlooking an internal courtyard. A floor paved with decorative tiles. A double staircase of white stone leading upward to the left and the right… Izya was already running up to the left; Pak easily overtook him and they disappeared, striding up three steps at a time
“Why the hell do we want to trudge all the way up there?” Andrei asked the Mute.
The Mute agreed with him. Andrei looked for a place to sit down, and lowered himself onto the cool, white steps. He took off his automatic and put it down beside him. The Mute was already squatting down by the wall with his eyes closed and his long, powerful arms wrapped around his knees. It was quiet, with only an indistinct murmur of voices coming from upstairs.
I’m sick of this, Andrei thought impatiently. I’m sick of the dead city blocks. Of this silence. Of these riddles… If only we could find people, stay with them for a while, ask them a few questions… and if only they would feed us something… Anything at all, just not that gruesome oatmeal… and give us cool wine! Lots of it, as much as we want… or beer. His stomach started gurgling and he tensed up in fright, listening. No, it’s OK. Today I haven’t had to run even once—knock on wood, so far, so good! And it seems like my heel’s grown new skin…
Upstairs something tumbled over with a heavy, rumbling crash, and Izya yelled, articulating in a clear voice, “Hey, what do you think you’re doing, God almighty!” There was a laugh and the voices started murmuring again.
Rummage away, rummage away, Andrei thought to himself. You’re our only hope. You’re the only ones we can expect to come up with anything… And all that will come out of this wild goose chase will be my report and Izya’s twenty-four crates of documents!
He stretched out his legs and leaned back onto the steps, propping himself on his elbows. The Mute suddenly sneezed, and an echo replied clearly and brightly. Andrei threw back his head and started looking at the distant vaulted ceiling. They built well here, with style, better than us. And they obviously had a pretty good life too. But they still vanished anyway… Fritz won’t like all this at all—of course, he’d prefer a potential enemy. Or else what do we get? They lived here, they built here, they glorified some Heiger of their own… the Kindest and Simplest… And what’s the result? An empty void. As if no one had ever been here. Nothing but bones, and not very many of those for a population this large… So there you have it, Mr. President! Man proposes, but God sends down some mysterious shimmering. End of story.
He sneezed too and sniffed. It’s kind of cool in here… And it would be a good idea to have Quejada indicted when we get back… Andrei readily slipped into his habitual line of thought: how to pen Quejada into a corner so that he wouldn’t dare to open his mouth, how to make sure all the documentation was as clear as day and Heiger would immediately understand everything… But he put these thoughts aside—this was the wrong place and the wrong time. Right now he should only be thinking about tomorrow. And a bit of thinking about today wouldn’t do any harm. For instance, where did that statue go to, after all? Someone with horns on his head, some kind of stegosaur, came along, tucked it under his arm, and carried it away. What for? And it happens to weigh about fifty tons, by the way. If a beast like that wanted to, it could carry off a tractor under its arm. We’ve got to get away from here, that’s the point. If not for the colonel, we’d have pulled up stakes and moved out today… He started thinking about the colonel, and suddenly realized he was listening to something.
Some kind of vague, distant sound had appeared—not voices; the voices upstairs were still droning in the same way. No, out there in the street, outside the tall entrance doors standing ajar. The colored glass in the windows started audibly clinking and the stone steps under his elbows and backside started palpably vibrating, as if there were a railroad somewhere nearby and a train were rolling along it right now—a heavy freight train. The Mute suddenly opened his eyes wide and turned his head, listening warily.
Andrei cautiously pulled in his legs and got up, holding his automatic by the strap. The Mute immediately got up too, still listening and squinting sideways at Andrei with one eye.
Holding his weapon at the ready, Andrei silently ran to the doors and warily glanced out. The hot, dusty air scorched his face. The street was as yellow, scorching hot, and empty as before. Only the cotton-wool silence had disappeared. A huge, distant hammer was pounding on the road with dreary regularity, and the blows were clearly moving closer—heavy, crisp blows, crushing the cobblestones of the road into small fragments.
In the building across the street the cracked store window collapsed in a jangling shower of glass. Andrei started back in surprise, but immediately pulled himself together and drew back the bolt of his automatic, biting on his lip. Why the hell did I ever come here? some corner of his mind thought.
The hammer kept moving closer. It was absolutely impossible to tell which direction it was approaching from, but the blows grew heavier and heavier, crisper and crisper, and they had a strange, relentless ring to them, ineluctable and triumphal. The footsteps of fate, Andrei thought fleetingly. He looked around in confusion at the Mute.
He got a shock. The Mute was standing there, leaning his shoulder against the wall, focusing intently on trimming the nail on the little finger of his right hand with his machete. And he looked absolutely indifferent, even bored.
“What?” Andrei asked hoarsely. “What are you doing?”
The Mute looked at him, nodded, and went back to working on his fingernail. Boooom, boooom, boooom—the hammer blows were really close now; the ground under their feet was shaking. Then suddenly there was silence. Andrei glanced outside again. And he saw it: a dark figure standing at the nearest intersection, with its head towering up to third-floor level. A statue. An archaic metal statue. The same character he already knew, with the toadish face—only now he was standing there rigidly erect, with his heavy chin uplifted and one hand held behind his back, while the other was raised, with the index finger extended, either to threaten or to point to the sky…
Numb with fear, Andrei watched this monster as if he were having a bad dream. But he knew it was no nightmare. It was just a statue—an idiotic, mediocre contrivance of metal, covered in calx, or maybe ferriferous oxide, positioned grotesquely out of place. In the hot air rising from the road surface, its outlines trembled and wavered exactly like the outlines of the buildings along the street.
Andrei felt a hand on his shoulder and looked around—the Mute was smiling and nodding reassuringly at him. The boooom, boooom, boooom started up again outside. The Mute kept hold of his shoulder—fondling and caressing, kneading the muscles with affectionate fingers. Andrei pulled away sharply and glanced out again. The statue was gone. And once again there was silence.