Somehow, inconsistently with his own thoughts, Eddy charged straight from his knees at the castrate’s feet – the guy appeared to be surprisingly heavy – and threw him on the beefy one, roaring. The latter had excellent reflexes, he dodged, and the castrate flew out of “the neutral”, shrieking, and disappeared in “the ass”. Well done, beefy one, a sound mind in a sound body! And now – into “the gut”! Having jumped in quite a different direction, Eddy seized the arm holding an iron bar, which intended to crash the dark-haired guy’s skull, and thrust his whole weight upon the man’s elbow.
At first he thought he had broken his own arm – the sound of a shot was quite low. Eddy watched from the floor how the beefy one was raising his pistol again. The wounded shoulder ached badly, but it was scarcely likely it interested anyone. Apparently, it did. The shirt on the “angel’s” breast swelled with a bloody bubble, pieces of meat flew everywhere, and the beefy one fell to the floor with a quite surprised expression on his face. The rest of the team vanished immediately in the grey mist of the hatch.
The dark-haired guy, not hiding any longer, pulled out of his pocket a small cylinder and poked it into his right smoking sleeve – now his grenade launcher was loaded once again. Then the dark-haired guy picked up a pistol and thrust it to Eddy.
“Here. It may be useful.”
“Are you ok?”
“Almost. Got my leg stabbed with a knife.”
“And I have a shoulder hurt. But this is nothing. What’s your name?”
“Max.”
“And I’m Eddy. Can you walk?”
“I’ll try. If not – go alone.”
“Go to hell,” said Eddy kindly, unexpectedly for himself. He helped Max bandage his leg and they got up from the floor. The eighth circle was ahead.
Eddy vaguely remembered what came next. They dragged themselves along the platform, staggering, the platform was crumbling under their feet, the walls around were burning, it was hard to breathe; both of them intuitively dodged fly-breakers and ball-lightnings every now and then, avoided traps without even noticing them and went on and on...
Sometimes it seemed to Eddy that he was on the surface again, in the city, and there was fire around him again, everything was burning, and the Nobody’s Houses were writhing in the fire, and the fire-fighter’s trucks were extinguishing the flames with their acid blend, and it was hard to say what was worse – that blend or the flaming hell all around; and there, further on, behind the wall of fire there were the police cordons waiting for the hiding symbionts to run out towards them, and they wouldn’t investigate – they always shot first, and investigated later... Then there was a moment of clarity. They were in “the gut”, and “the merry men” were coming towards them from both sides. The niche was far away, and besides, there was no place for two in that niche. But Eddy already couldn’t leave Max. And then he did what wouldn’t have occurred to him only an hour earlier. He snatched out his reserve, hidden life-card that he had carried miraculously through the control automate – and stuck it into Max’s hand (Max had lighted his own one by then). Both cards blazed up simultaneously, and “the merry men” disappeared as if vanished into thin air. But here, at the eighth circle, the life-cards functioned for only a single minute, instead of the ten minutes at the other circles or half an hour at the usual Subway regime.
The minute was not enough. “The merry man” was rushing at them again, and the platform was still far away. And then both of them turned around and raised their right hands. It was forbidden, but they didn’t give a damn about all the bans! The shot flashes went one after another, and it didn’t even occur to them that the charges in their grenade launchers should have ended long before. Only when the howl had ceased did they lower their hands. “The merry man” turned into a heap of molten metal.
Then there was a lapse again. Eddy remembered only that Max had fallen and couldn’t get up, and then he’d lifted him on his back and had carried him. Max had protested weakly, electric discharges had been crackling around, some stupid violet cloud had been chasing them, and Eddy had been walking with what was left of his strength, cursing with just invented words...
Until he saw the light.
...Flashes were blinking from all sides, the barrels of TV cameras were openly aimed at them, and some guy in a white tuxedo and with a dazzling smile was shouting constantly into the microphone, and Eddy couldn’t get what this guy was talking about.
“Eddy McGrave... the winner... the pride of the nation... a prize of one thousand life-cards... progress of Mankind...”
“You idiot!” shouted Eddy, grabbing the man in the tuxedo by his lapels. “Max, tell this...”
Then he saw Eyeglasses in the crowd, smiling and waving at them, and finally fainted...
The three of them were sitting in Eyeglasses’ small flat (Eddy had never found the time to ask his name), drinking coffee and synth-Cognac. Eyeglasses was talking for about five minutes, but Eddy didn’t hear him. Only one thought was beating in his mind: “We did it!..”
Gradually, however, Eyeglasses’ voice made its way through this thought:
“Bastards! They themselves don’t understand what they have created! This is hell... and the satisfied, doomed devils in pyjamas, burdened with families and debts, are feasting their eyes upon the suffering of the dying sinners... before bedtime! As if there were no tomorrow.”
Eddy reached out for a glass of cognac – or rather, he wanted to but didn’t, because the glass slipped into his hand by itself. He didn’t even notice how it happened. “I’m going mad”, thought Eddy. But then he remembered the single-charge grenade launchers that were shooting a hundred shots, his own unmistakable choice of way in “the labyrinth”, Max’ “life line”...
They were supposed to die. But they are sitting and drinking coffee. They became human beings. Or not quite human beings. Or quite human beings. What did they become?
“This is not hell”, thought Eddy. “He is wrong. This is a purgatory. You didn’t pass it – you get into hell. You did...”
And then Eddy noticed that Eyeglasses was silent and was looking at him sadly.
“Eddy, my friend”, said Eyeglasses quietly. “Do you really want your children to become human beings only after they pass all the eight circles of the Subway?..”