With help from the guardsmen, the corporals managed to form up the brigade into a column four men wide, after which the command “Attention” rang out again. Maxim found himself not far away from the brigade commander. The ex-colonel was blind drunk. He stood there, swaying, with his backside perched on his cane, occasionally shaking his head and wiping his furious blue-gray face with the palm of his hand. The battalion commanders, also blind drunk, stayed behind his back—one was senselessly giggling, another was attempting with obtuse stubbornness to light a cigarette, and yet another kept clutching at the peak of his cap and probing the ranks of men with his bloodshot eyes. Men in the ranks enviously sniffed and a muttered murmur of flattering approval could be heard.
“Come on, come on…” Zef muttered. “We’ll wage you lots of war today…”
Maxim irritably jostled Zef with his elbow. “Shut up,” he said through his teeth. “I’m sick of hearing it.”
At that moment two men walked up to the coloneclass="underline" a cornet with a pipe clenched in his teeth and heavyset individual, a civilian, wearing a long raincoat with the collar raised and a hat. The civilian seemed strangely familiar to Maxim, and he started looking at the man more intently.
The civilian said something to the colonel in a low voice. “Hah?” the colonel exclaimed, turning his murky gaze toward the civilian. The civilian started talking again, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb at the column of military convicts. The cornet indifferently puffed on his pipe. “What for?” the colonel barked.
The civilian took out a piece of paper, and the colonel waved it aside with his hand. “I won’t let you have him,” he said. “Every last one of them has to croak…” The civilian insisted. “And I don’t give a damn!” the colonel replied. “And I don’t give a damn for your department. They’re all going to croak… Aren’t I right?” he asked the cornet.
The cornet didn’t contradict him, but the civilian grabbed the sleeve of the colonel’s coverall and jerked him toward himself, and the colonel almost fell off his cane. The giggling battalion commander broke into peals of idiotic laughter. The colonel’s face darkened in indignation; he reached for his holster and pulled out a huge army pistol. “I’ll count to ten,” he announced to the civilian. “One… two…”
The civilian spat and walked away along the column, looking into the faces of the military convicts, but the colonel kept counting, and when he got to ten, he opened fire. At that point the cornet finally became alarmed and persuaded him to put his weapon away. “Everybody has to croak,” the colonel declared. “Along with me… Brigaaade! On my command! On the double… Forwaaard march!”
And the brigade set off. Tramping along a sloppy trail rutted by caterpillar tracks, slipping and grabbing at each other, the military convicts descended into a marshy hollow, then turned and marched away from the railroad. Here the column was overtaken by the platoon commanders. Gai started walking along beside Maxim; he was pale-faced, working his jaw muscles, and he didn’t say anything for a long time at first, although Zef immediately asked him what was new.
The hollow gradually broadened out, bushes appeared, and up ahead a patch of forest came into view. An immense, unwieldy tank of some ancient type was standing at the edge of the road, where one of its caterpillar tracks had foundered in a wet pothole; it was entirely unlike the patrol tanks of the coastal guard—it had a small, square turret and a little gun. Morose men in oil-stained jackets were tinkering with something beside the tank. The military convicts rambled along haphazardly with their hands stuck in their pockets and their rough collars raised. Many of them cautiously glanced around to see if they could cut and run. The bushes were very tempting, but dark figures with automatic rifles loomed up on the slopes of the hollow every two or three hundred paces.
Three tanker trucks came toward them, floundering through the potholes. The drivers were sullen faced and didn’t look at the military convicts. The rain was growing stronger and the men’s morale was sinking. They walked in silence, like cattle, looking around less and less.
“Listen, platoon commander,” Zef growled, “are they really not going to give us any grub?”
Gai took a hunk of bread out of his pocket and handed it to him. “That’s all,” he said. “Until you die.”
Zef submerged the bread in his beard and started precisely working away with his jaws. This is plain crazy, thought Maxim. They all know they’re going to certain death. But they keep walking. Does that mean they’re hoping for something? Does it mean they have some kind of plan? Yes, right, they don’t know anything about the radiation, do they… Every one of them is thinking, Somewhere farther along the road, I’ll turn off, jump out of the tank, and lie low, and let the other fools go into the attack…
That’s what we’ll start the struggle against the rightists with. We have to write leaflets about the radiation, shout about it in public places, organize radio stations… although the radios only work on two wavelengths… but even so, we can break in during the pauses. No more wasting people on the towers—use them for counterpropaganda instead… But then, all that only comes later, later. I mustn’t get distracted right now. Right now I have to take note of everything. Search for the slightest little cracks…
There were no tanks at the station, and no big guns either, only Guards sharpshooters everywhere. I have to bear that in mind. This is a good hollow, deep, and they’ll probably remove the guards once we get through… But no, no, the guards are irrelevant—the entire crowd will go running forward just as soon as they switch on the radiation emitters… With incredible clarity he pictured to himself how it would all be. The radiation emitters are turned on. The military convicts’ tanks go hurtling forward with a roar. The army men go surging after them in a great torrent. The entire area of the front line is emptied… It was hard to imagine how deep this area was, and he didn’t know the effective range of the radiation emitters, but it had to be at least one or two miles. In a strip of territory one or two miles across, not a single man will be left with a clear head. Apart from me.
Ah, no, not just one or two miles. More than that. All the permanent installations, all the towers—they’ll all be switched on, and probably at full power. The entire border zone will go insane… Massaraksh, what can I do about Zef? He won’t be able to stand it… Maxim squinted at the rhythmically moving ginger beard, at the morose, dirty face of the world-famous scientist. Never mind, he’ll cope. In a real emergency I’ll just have to help him, although I’m afraid I’ll be too busy for that. And then there’s Gai—I mustn’t take my eyes off him for a moment… Yes, I’ll have my work cut out for me. OK. But in the final analysis, in this murky whirlpool, I’ll still be completely in control, and nobody will be able to stop me, or even want to…