Maxim listened as Uncle Kaan, who was once a prominent scientist, told him how the Academy of Sciences was dissolved in the first year of the war and His Imperial Majesty’s Academy Battalion was formed; how the originator of the theory of evolution went insane during the famine and hanged himself; how they had boiled up watery soup out of glue scraped off wallpaper; how a starving crowd had ransacked the zoological museum and seized the specimens preserved in alcohol for food…
Maxim listened to Gai’s artless stories about the building of ADTs, or antiballistic defense towers, on the southern border, and about cannibals creeping up to the construction sites and abducting the educatee workers and the guardsmen on watch; about merciless ghouls, half men and half bears, or half dogs, attacking without a sound in the night. Maxim also listened to Gai’s ecstatic praise of the system of ADTs, which had been constructed at the cost of incredible deprivations in the final years of the war, had essentially put an end to the military action by protecting the country against attack from the air, and even now was the only guarantee of safety from aggression by the country’s northern neighbors… But, said Gai, those bastards organized attacks on the defense towers—those sell-out rats, murderers of women and children, who had been bought with Hontia’s and Pandeia’s dirty money, those degenerates, that scum worse than any Rat Catcher… Gai’s high-strung face contorted in hatred. “The most important business is here,” he said, hammering his fist on the table, “and that’s why I went into the Guards and not into a factory, not into the fields or into a business but into the Battle Guards, who bear the responsibility for everything now…”
Maxim listened avidly, as if it was all some terrible, impossible fable, only all the more terrible and impossible because it was real, because so very much of it was still happening, and the most terrible and impossible things in all of this could be repeated at any moment. It seemed absurd and shameful to think about his own anxieties and problems, which suddenly became tiny—petty concerns about first contact, a null-transmitter, homesickness, wringing his hands…
The truck took a sharp turn onto a rather narrow street of brick buildings, and Pandi said, “We’re here.” People on the sidewalk drew back against the walls, shielding their faces from the light of the headlights. The truck halted and a long telescopic antenna extended to its full height above the driver’s cabin.
“Disembark!” the commanders of the second and third sections barked in unison, and guardsmen scrambled over the sides of the truck.
“First section, remain where you are!” Gai commanded.
Pandi and Maxim, who had jumped to their feet, sat back down.
“Divide up into groups of three!” roared the corporals on the sidewalk.
“Second section, forward march.”
“Third section, follow me!”
Steel-tipped boots clattered, a woman’s voice squealed rapturously, and someone yelled from the top floor in a piercing howl, “Gentlemen! The Battle Guards!”
“Hoorah!” shouted the pale-faced people, who were pressing themselves back hard against the wall in order not to get in the way. It was as if these passersby had been waiting here for the guardsmen and, now that they had arrived, were as glad to see them as if they were their best friends.
Candidate Zoiza, sitting on Maxim’s right, was still a complete boy, a long, skinny beanpole with white fluff on his cheeks. He nudged Maxim in the side with his sharp elbow and joyfully winked at him. Maxim smiled back. The other sections had already disappeared into their entrances, and only the corporals were left at the doors, standing there firmly and dependably, their faces immobile under their cocked berets. The door of the driver’s cabin slammed, and Cornet Chachu’s voice croaked, “First section, disembark and fall in!”
Maxim vaulted over the side of the truck. When the section had formed up, Cornet Chachu gestured to stop Gai, who had run up to report, then the cornet walked up close to the formation and commanded, “On helmets!”
The active privates seemed to have been waiting for this order, but the candidates hesitated. The cornet waited, impatiently tapping his heel, until Zoiza finally mastered his chin strap. Then he gave the orders “Right turn!” and “Forward on the double!” He himself ran ahead, with an awkwardly nimble gait, strenuously waving his maimed hand in the air as he led the section through a dark archway between iron containers of rotting refuse and into an inner yard that was as narrow and dark as a well shaft, crammed with stacks of firewood, before turning under another archway, as gloomy and foul-smelling as the first one, and stopping in front of a peeling door below a dim lightbulb.
“Attention!” he croaked. “The first group of three and Candidate Sim will go with me. The others will remain here. Corporal Gaal, at the whistle bring the second team of three upstairs to me, on the fourth floor. Do not let anyone out, take them alive, and shoot only as a last resort! First group and Candidate Sim, follow me!”
The cornet pushed the scruffy door open and disappeared inside. Maxim overtook Pandi and followed the cornet in. Behind the door was a steep stone stairway, narrow and dirty, with clammy iron banisters; it was illuminated by a sickly, sordid kind of light. The cornet friskily ran up it, three steps at a time. Catching up with him, Maxim saw a pistol in his hand and took his own automatic from around his neck as he ran, feeling nauseous for a second at the thought that now, perhaps, he would have to shoot at people, but he drove the thought out of his head: these weren’t people, they were animals, worse than Rat Catcher with his mustache, worse than spotted monkeys—and the repulsive sludge under his feet and the walls covered with gobs of spittle confirmed and supported this feeling.
The second floor. A suffocating reek of kitchen fumes and a frightened old woman’s face in the crack of a half-open door covered in tattered burlap. A demented cat meowed as it shot out from under their feet. The third floor. Some blockhead had left a bucket of kitchen slop in the middle of the landing. The cornet kicked over the bucket and the slop went flying into the stairwell. “Massaraksh,” Pandi growled below them. A young guy and a girl with their arms around each other had squeezed back into a dark corner with expressions of frightened delight on their faces. “Get out, down the stairs!” the cornet croaked as he ran. The fourth floor. A hideous brown door with peeling oil-based paint, a scratched tin plaque with the inscription GOBBI, DENTIST. CONSULTATIONS AT ANY TIME. On the other side of the door someone was shouting—a long, drawn-out yell.
The cornet stopped, with sweat coursing down his dark face, and wheezed, “The lock!” Maxim didn’t understand. Pandi ran up, pushed him aside, set the muzzle of his automatic to the door just below the handle, and fired a rapid burst. There was a shower of sparks, chunks of wood went flying into the air, and immediately, on the other side of the door, the protracted yell was punctuated by the popping sound of shots, splinters of wood went flying into the air again, and something hot and dense went hurtling just over Maxim’s head with an atrocious screech. The cornet threw the door open; it was dark inside and the yellow flashes of shots lit up eddying billows of smoke.