“To capture a tank?”
“No, we’ll use your cover story. You were kidnapped by degenerates, and an educatee rescued you.”
“Surrender?” Gai sat up. “But how can we? Me too? Go back into the radiation field?”
Maxim didn’t say anything.
“I’ll turn into a blockheaded dummy again…” Gai said in a helpless voice.
“No,” said Maxim. “That is, yes, of course… but it won’t be the same as it was before… Of course, you will be bit of a blockhead. But now you’ll believe in something else, won’t you? In something that’s right… Of course, that’s still not really very good… but it’s still better, a lot better.”
“But what for?” Gai shouted in despair. “What do you need to do it for?”
Maxim ran his hand over his face. “You see, Gai, my old friend,” he said. “A war has broken out. Either we’ve attacked the Hontians, or they’ve attacked us… Anyway, in short, a war.”
Gai looked at him in horror. A war means nuclear war—there isn’t any other kind now… Rada… Oh Lord, why does this have to happen? Everything all over again from the beginning: the hunger, the grief, the refugees…
“We have to be there,” Maxim went on. “General mobilization has already been declared, everyone’s being called up, even the educatees are being amnestied and enlisted into the ranks… And we have to be together, Gai. You’re a penal unit officer, after all… It would be good if I could end up under your command…”
Gai was hardly even listening to him. He swayed on his feet, clutching at his hair and repeating to himself, “What for, what for, damn you and curse you! Curse you, curse you thirty-three times over!”
Maxim shook him by the shoulder. “Come on, get a grip on yourself!” he said in a harsh voice. “Don’t start falling to pieces. We’ll have to fight now, there’s no time for falling to pieces…” He got up and rubbed his face again. “Of course, with those cursed towers of yours… But a war means nuclear war! Massaraksh, no towers will be any help to them now…”
“Get a Move On, Fank, Get a Move On!”
“Get a move on, Fank, get a move on. I’m late.”
“Yes, sir. Rada Gaal… She has been removed from the custody of the state prosecutor and is now in our hands.”
“Where?”
“In your mansion the Crystal Swan. I regard it as my duty to express once again my doubts concerning the rationality of this action. A woman like that is hardly going to be of any help to us in controlling Mak. Her kind are easily forgotten, and Mak—”
“Do you think Egghead is stupider than you?”
“No, but—”
“Does Egghead know who kidnapped the woman?”
“I’m afraid that he does.”
“All right, so he knows… That’s all about that matter. Next?”
“Sandy Chichaku has met with Twitcher. Twitcher has apparently agreed to get him together with Brother-in-Law.”
“Stop. Which Chichaku? Highbrow Chik?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not interested in underground matters right now. Is that all you have on Mak’s case? Then listen. This damn war has screwed up all our plans. I’m going away and I’ll be back in thirty or forty days. In that time, Fank, you have to wrap up Mak’s case. By the time I get back Mak must be here, in this building. Give him a job, let him work, don’t restrict his freedom, but make it clear to him—very, very gently!—that Rada’s fate depends on how he behaves… Under no circumstances allow them to meet… Show him the institute, tell him what we’re working on… within reasonable limits, of course. Tell him about me, describe me as an intelligent, benign, just individual, a major scientist. Give him my articles… apart from the top secret ones. Hint at my being in opposition to the government. He mustn’t feel even the slightest desire to leave the institute. That’s all I have to say. Any questions?”
“Yes. Security, guards?”
“None. It’s pointless.”
“Surveillance?”
“Very cautious… But better not. Don’t frighten him off. The vital thing is that he mustn’t want to leave the institute… Massaraksh, and I have to go away at a time like this! Well, is that everything now?”
“One final question. I’m sorry, Wanderer.”
“Yes?”
“Just who is he, after all? What do you need him for?”
Wanderer got up, walked over to the window and, without looking around, said, “I’m afraid of him, Fank. He’s a very, very, very dangerous man.”
17
A hundred miles from the Hontian border, when the troop train was stuck for a long time on a siding at a dingy, scruffy station, newly appointed Private Second Class Zef, having come to an amicable arrangement with a security guard, ran to the station’s water heater to get some boiling water and returned with a portable radio. He told everyone that there was absolute bedlam at the station: two brigades were entraining at the same time, and the two generals had started squabbling and swearing at each other and became careless, so he had mingled with the crowd of orderlies, valets, and adjutants surrounding the generals and borrowed this radio from one of them.
The heated freight car greeted this announcement with an outburst of loud, zesty, patriotic guffaws. All forty men immediately crowded around Zef, but they took a long time to get settled—someone got smacked in the teeth to stop him from shoving, someone else got poked with an awl in a soft spot, and they all cursed and complained about each other, until Maxim finally barked, “Quiet, you scumbags!” Then they all settled down. Zef switched on the radio and started tuning in to all the stations, one after another.
Certain curious things immediately came to light. First, it turned out that the war hadn’t started yet, and the Voice of the Fathers radio station, which for the last week had been howling about bloody battles on their own territory, had been lying in a most blatant fashion. There hadn’t been any bloody battles yet. The Hontian Patriotic League was clamoring in horror for the whole wide world to hear that these bandits, these usurpers of power, these so-called Unknown Fathers had capitalized on the acts of heinous provocation by their own hirelings in the form of the notorious so-called Hontian Union of Justice and were now concentrating their armor-clad hordes on the borders of poor, persecuted Hontia. In turn, the Hontian Union of Justice castigated the Hontian Patriots, those paid agents of the Unknown Fathers, in the most emphatic terms possible and recounted in exhaustive detail how someone’s vastly superior forces had forced someone else’s units, exhausted by preceding battles, across the border and were preventing them from returning, and this circumstance had provided the so-called Unknown Fathers with a pretext for a barbarous invasion, which could be expected at any moment. And in addition, both the League and the Union declared in almost identical terms that it was their sacred duty to warn the brazen aggressor that the counterblow would be devastating, and they hinted in vague terms at the use of atomic traps of some kind.
Pandeian radio summed up the situation in very calm tones and announced without the slightest embarrassment that any way in which this conflict developed would suit Pandeia. The private radio stations in Hontia and Pandeia amused their listeners with jolly music and ribald trivia games, while both of the Unknown Fathers’ government radio stations continuously broadcast coverage of hate rallies, interspersed with martial music. Zef also picked up some broadcasts in languages that only he knew, and informed everyone that the principality of Ondol apparently still existed and was still carrying out piratical raids on the island of Hassalg. (Apart from Zef, not a single man in the railcar had ever heard of this principality or this island.) For the most part, however, the airwaves were choked with mind-boggling invective exchanged between commanders of the military units and formations straining hard to squeeze their way through to the Steel Staging Area along the slim threads of two rickety railroad lines.