“No, under no circumstances,” Gai adamantly declared.
“So we fire inaccurately?” Maxim asked in amazement.
“You fire as ordered,” Gai said in a stern voice. “In these last ten minutes, Mak, you’ve said enough for fifteen days in the punishment cell. Do you understand?”
“No, I don’t understand. What about in combat?”
“What about what in combat?”
“What if you give an incorrect aim? Eh?”
“Hmm…” said Gai, who had never commanded in combat. He suddenly remembered how Corporal Bahtu had gotten in a muddle with the map during a reconnaissance operation and herded the section into close-range fire from the next company. He didn’t come back, and he got half the section killed, and we knew that he’d gotten confused, but nobody even thought of correcting him.
For crying out loud, Gai suddenly thought, why, it could never even have occurred to us that we could correct him. A commander’s order is the law, and even higher than the law—laws are sometimes discussed, after all, but you can’t discuss an order; discussing an order is outrageous, harmful, simply dangerous when you get right down to it… But Maxim doesn’t understand that, and it’s not even that he doesn’t understand it—there’s nothing here to understand—he simply doesn’t accept it. It’s happened so many times already: he takes something self-evident and rejects it, and there’s no way I can convince him—in fact, the very opposite happens. In fact, I start doubting, my head starts spinning, and I end up totally stupefied. Yes, he really is an extraordinary person… a rare, totally unique kind of person… he learned our language in a month. He mastered the grammar in two days. And in another two days he read everything that I’ve got. He knows math and mechanics better than our teachers, and we have genuine specialists teaching our courses.
Or take Uncle Kaan, now. Just recently the old man had been directing all his monologues at the dining table exclusively at Maxim. More than that, he had made it plain on more than one occasion that in these hard times Maxim was probably the only person who demonstrated such impressive abilities and such a lively interest in fossil animals. Gai’s uncle sketched some terrifying animals for Maxim on a sheet of paper, and Maxim sketched some even more terrifying animals for him, and they argued about which of those animals was more ancient, and who they were descended from and why it happened. The scholarly books from the old man’s library were even brought into play, but there were still times when Maxim didn’t give the old man a chance to open his mouth. Gai and Rada didn’t understand a word of what they were saying, but their uncle either shouted himself hoarse or tore the sketches into scraps and trampled them underfoot, calling Maxim an ignoramus, worse than that fool Shapshu, or suddenly started furiously raking both hands through his sparse gray hair and muttering with a dumbfounded smile, “That’s audacious, massaraksh, audacious… You have a vivid imagination, young man!” One evening in particular had stuck in Gai’s memory, when one of Maxim’s pronouncements had struck the old man like a lightning bolt. Maxim said that some of these primordial monsters used to walk around on their hind legs, and apparently that proposition very simply and naturally resolved a protracted dispute that went back to before the war…
He knows math, he knows mechanics, he has a superlative knowledge of military chemistry, and he knows paleontology—good grief, who knows about paleontology these days, but he knows paleontology too… He draws like an artist, sings like a professional performer… and he’s good-natured, unnaturally good-natured. He scattered those bandits, massacred all eight of them, completely on his own, with his bare hands. In his place anybody else would have acted like the cock of the walk and gone around looking down on everybody, but he was in torment, he couldn’t sleep at night, and he was upset when people praised him for killing… Good grief, what a problem it was to persuade him to join the Guards! He understood everything, he agreed with everything, he wanted to join. “But I’ll have to shoot there,” he said. “At people.” I told him, at degenerates, not at people, at scum, worse than gangsters… Thank goodness, we agreed that at first, until he got used to it, he could simply disarm them…
It’s funny, and somehow frightening at the same time. Yes, no wonder he sometimes starts jabbering about coming from a different world. I know that world. My uncle even has a book about it: The Misty Land of Zartak. It says that the valley of Zartak, where happy people live, lies in the mountains to the east of here. According to the descriptions, everyone there is like Maxim. And the amazing thing is that if one of them ever leaves their valley, he immediately forgets where he’s from and what happened to him before; he can only remember that he comes from a different world. Of course, my uncle says there isn’t any such valley, that it’s all made up, there’s only the Zartak mountain range—and then, he says, during the war they blasted that mountain range with megabombs. So the Highlanders had their memories totally zapped out of them anyway…
“Why don’t you say anything?” Maxim asked. “Are you thinking about me?”
Gai looked away. “I tell you what,” he said. “There’s only one thing I ask of you: in the interests of discipline, never show that you know more than I do. Watch how the others behave, and behave exactly as they do.”
“I’m trying,” Maxim said in a sad voice. He thought for a while and added, “It’s hard to get used to it. Everything’s different where I’m from.”
“How’s your wound coming along?” Gai asked to change the subject.
“My wounds heal up quickly,” Maxim absentmindedly replied. “Listen, Gai, after the operation, let’s go straight home. Well, why are you looking at me like that? I really miss Rada a lot. Don’t you? We’ll take the guys back to the barracks and then go home in the truck. We’ll let the driver go…”
Gai drew as much air into his lungs as he could. But at that moment the silvery box of a loudspeaker on a pole almost right over their heads started growling, and the commanding voice of the brigade duty officer rang out, “Sixth company, turn out and form up on the parade ground! Attention, sixth company…”
And Gai only barked, “Candidate Sim! Stop talking and quick march into formation!” Maxim made to dart off, but Gai caught hold of the barrel of his automatic. “I implore you,” he said. “Like everybody else! Act like everybody else! Today the cornet himself will be keeping an eye on you.”
Three minutes later the company had already formed up. It had turned dark, and a floodlight flared to life above the parade ground. The motors of trucks murmured gently behind the formation. As always just before an operation, the brigadier, accompanied by Cornet Chachu, silently walked along the formation, inspecting every guardsman. He was calm, with his eyes narrowed and the corners of his lips amiably raised. Afterward, still not having said anything, he nodded to the cornet and walked away. The cornet, walking with a waddling gait and brandishing his maimed hand in the air, walked out in front of the formation and turned his dark, almost black face to the ranks of guardsmen.
“Guardsmen!” he croaked in the voice that sent shivers running up and down Gai’s spine. “We have an assignment to carry out. And we shall perform it in worthy fashion. Company, attention! To the trucks! Corporal Gaal to me!”
When Gai ran up and snapped to attention in front of him, the cornet said in a low voice, “Your section has a special assignment. On arriving at the destination, stay in the truck. I shall take command myself.”
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