METRO 2033 (11 page)

The tea-factory was located in a dead-end, at a blocked exit from the underground, where there were escalators leading upwards. All the work in the factory was done by hand. It was too extravagant to waste precious electric energy on production.

Behind the iron screens that separated the territory of the factory from the rest of the station, there was a metal wire drawn from wall to wall, on which cleaned mushrooms were drying. When it was particularly humid, they made little fires underneath the mushrooms so that they would dry more quickly and wouldn’t get covered in mould. Under the wire there were tables where the workers first cut and then crushed the dried mushrooms. The prepared tea was packed into paper or polyethylene packages - depending on what was available at the station - and they added some extracts and powders to it, the recipe of which was only known to the head of the factory. That was the straightforward process of producing tea. Without the much-needed conversation while you worked your eight-hour shift of cutting and crushing mushroom caps, then it would probably be the most exhausting business.

Artyom worked this shift with Zhenya and a new, shaggy-haired guy called Kirill with whom he’d been on patrol too. Kirill became very animated at the sight of Zhenya - obviously they had met and spoken before - and he quickly took to telling him some story that had apparently been interrupted the last time they spoke. Artyom sat in the middle and wasn’t interested enough to listen so he plunged into his thoughts. The story about the Serpukhovskaya line, that Zhenya had just told him had started to fade in his memory, and his conversation with Hunter surfaced.

What could be done? The orders given to him by Hunter were too serious not to think them over. What if Hunter would not be able to do whatever it was that he intended? He had committed to a completely senseless act, having dared to venture into the enemy’s lair, right into the heat of the fire. The danger he was subjecting himself to was enormous, and he himself didn’t even know its true parameters. He could only guess at what awaited him at the five-hundredth metre where the light of the last fire at the border post grows dim - the last man-made flames to the north of
VDNKh.
All he knew about the dark ones was what everyone else knew - but no one else was thinking of going out there. In fact, it wasn’t even a known fact that there was a real passageway at the Botanical Gardens where beasts could enter the metro from above.

The likelihood was too great that Hunter wouldn’t be able to complete the mission he’d taken upon himself. Obviously, the danger from the north seemed to be so great and was increasing so quickly that any delay was inadmissible. Hunter probably knew something about its nature that he hadn’t revealed in his meeting with Sukhoi or his conversation with Artyom.

Therefore he probably was aware of the degree of the risk and understood that he would probably not be up to his task, otherwise why would he prepare Artyom for a turn of events? Hunter didn’t resemble an overcautious person, so that meant that the probability that he wouldn’t return to
VDNKh
existed and was rather significant.

But how could Artyom give up everything and leave the station without saying anything to anyone? Hunter himself was afraid of warning anyone else, afraid of the ‘worm-eaten brains’ here . . . How would it be possible to get to Polis, to the legendary Polis, all alone, through all the evident and mysterious dangers that awaited travellers in the dark and mute tunnels? Artyom suddenly regretted that he had succumbed to Hunter’s strong charms and hypnotizing gaze, that he had told him his secret, and agreed to such a dangerous mission.

‘Hey Artyom! Artyom! You sleeping there or what? Why aren’t you saying anything?’ Zhenya shook his shoulder. ‘Did you hear what Kirill was saying? Tomorrow night they’re organizing a caravan to Rizhskaya. They say that our administration has decided to make a pact with them, but meanwhile it looks like we’re sending them humanitarian aid, with a view to becoming brothers. Seems they have found some kind of warehouse containing cables. The leaders want to lay them down: they say they’re going to make a telephone system between the stations. In any case, a telegraph system. Kirill says that whoever isn’t working tomorrow can go. Want to?’

Artyom thought right there and then that fate itself was giving him an opportunity to fulfil his mission - if it came to that. He nodded silently.

‘Great!’ Zhenya was glad. ‘I’ll also go. Kirill! Sign us up, OK? What time are they going to set off tomorrow - at nine?’

Until the end of the shift, Artyom didn’t say a word, he wasn’t in the mood to extract himself from his distracting, gloomy thoughts. Zhenya was left to deal with the dishevelled Kirill by himself and he obviously felt hurt. Artyom continued to chop mushrooms with mechanical movements, and to crumble them into dust, taking the little caps down from the wire, and again chopping them, and so on, indefinitely.

Hunter’s face hovered in front of his eyes - frozen at the moment when he was saying that he might not make it back - the calm face of a person who is used to risking his life. And an ink stain marred his heart with the presentiment of trouble.

After work, Artyom went back to his tent. His stepfather wasn’t there anymore - he had clearly gone out to take care of business. Artyom fell onto the bed, and buried his face in the pillow, and went to sleep straight away, even though he had planned to think over his situation again in the peace and quiet.

His sleep was delirious after all the conversations, thoughts and worries of the preceding day, and it enveloped him and carried him away into an abyss. Artyom saw himself sitting next to the fire at Sukharevskaya station, next to Zhenya and the wandering magician with the unusual Spanish name of Carlos. Carlos is teaching Zhenya how to make weed out of mushrooms and he is explaining that you have to use it just like they use it at
VDNKh -
a clean crime, because these mushrooms aren’t mushrooms at all but a new type of rational life on earth, which may with time replace humans. That these mushrooms aren’t independent beings, but just elements connected by neurons to the whole unit, spread across a whole metro of a gigantic fungus. And that, in reality, the person who consumes the weed isn’t just using a psychotropic material, but is making contact with this new form of rational life. And if you do it right, then you can make friends with it, and then it will help the person that makes contact with it through the weed. But then Sukhoi appears and, threatening Artyom with his forefinger, he says that you absolutely mustn’t take weed because if you use it for an extended amount of time then your brain becomes worm-eaten. But Artyom decides to test it and see if it’s really true: and he tells everyone that he’s going out to get some air but he carefully goes behind the back of the magician with the Spanish name, and he sees that the magician doesn’t have a back to his head but his brains are visible, full of wormholes. Long whitish worms curling in circles are chewing into the fabric of his brains and are making new tunnels, and the magician just carries on talking as though nothing is happening . . . Then Artyom gets scared and decides to run away from him, he begins to tug at Zhenya’s sleeve, so that he would come with him but Zhenya just waves him away and asks Carlos to go on, and Artyom sees that the worms are crawling down from the magician’s head and towards Zhenya, and crawling up Zhenya’s back. They are trying to get into his ears . . .

Then Artyom jumps up and takes to his heels and runs from the station with all his might, but then remembers that this was the tunnel you’re not supposed to go through alone, and only in groups, so he turns around and runs back to the station but for some reason he can’t get to it.

Behind him, suddenly there is a light, and with a clarity and logic that is unusual for dreams, Artyom sees his own shadow on the floor of the tunnel. He turns around and from the bowels of the metro, a train is heading towards him without stopping, gnashing and rattling its wheels with deafening sound and blinding him with its headlights . . .

And his legs refuse to budge, they’ve lost all power, and they aren’t even legs anymore but empty trousers stuffed with rags. And when the train has almost reached Artyom, the visions suddenly lose their colour and disappear.

Instead, something new appears, something totally different: Artyom sees Hunter, dressed in snow-white, in an unfurnished room with blindingly white walls. He stands there, his head hanging down, his gaze drilling into the floor. Then he raises his eyes and looks straight at Artyom. The feeling is very strange, because in this dream Artyom can’t feel his own body, but it is as if he is looking at what is going on from all angles at once. When Artyom looks into Hunter’s eyes, he is filled with an incomprehensible uneasiness, an expectation of something very significant, something that might happen any second . . .

Hunter starts talking to him, and Artyom has the feeling that what has just happened was real. When he’d had nightmares before, he had told himself simply that he was sleeping, and that everything that was happening was only the fruit of an excited imagination. But in this vision, the knowledge that he could wake up at any moment if he wanted, was totally absent.

Trying to meet Artyom’s gaze - even though he had the impression that Hunter couldn’t actually see him and was blindly undertaking his task, the hunter slowly and gravely says, ‘The time has come. You have to do what you promised me. You have to do it. Remember - this is not a dream! This is not a dream!’

Artyom opened his eyes wide. And again in his head, he heard with horrifying clarity the gruff voice saying, ‘This is not a dream!’

‘This is not a dream,’ Artyom repeated. The details of the nightmare about the worms and the train were quickly wiped from his memory, but Artyom could remember the second vision perfectly in all its detail. Hunter’s strange clothes, the mysterious empty white room and the words: ‘You have to do what you promised me!’ He couldn’t get them out of his mind.

His stepfather came in and worriedly asked Artyom, ‘Tell me, did you see Hunter after our meeting together? It’s becoming evening already and he has gone missing, and his tent is empty. Did he leave? Did he tell you anything yesterday about his plans?’

‘No, Uncle Sasha, he was just asking about the conditions at the station and about what was going on,’ Artyom lied conscientiously.

‘I’m afraid for him. That he’s done something silly at his own expense and to our general harm.’ Sukhoi was clearly upset. ‘He doesn’t know who he’s been dealing with . . . Eh! What, you’re not working today?

‘Me and Zhenya signed up to join the caravan to Rizhskaya today, to help them get across, and we’ll start unwinding the cable from there,’ Artyom replied, suddenly realizing that he’d just decided to go. At that thought something broke inside him, he felt a strange lightening and also some kind of inner emptiness, like someone had taken a tumour out of his chest, which had been burdening his heart and interfering with his breathing.

‘The caravan? You’d do better to sit at home instead of wading through tunnels. I need to go there anyway, to Rizhskaya, but I’m not feeling all that great today. Another time, maybe . . . Are you going out now? At nine? Well, then we’ll get to say goodbye then. Get your things together in the meantime!’ And he left Artyom alone.

Artyom started to throw things into a rucksack, things which might be useful on the road: a small lamp, batteries, mushrooms, a package of tea, and liver and pork sausage, a full machine-gun clip which he once filched from someone, a map of the metro and more batteries . . . He needed to remember to bring his passport - it would be of no use at Rizhskaya of course, but beyond that station he’d be detained or put against a wall by the very first patrol of another sovereign station - depending on their politics. And there was the capsule given to him by Hunter. And that was all he needed.

He threw the rucksack on his back and Artyom looked back for the last time at his home, and walked out of the tent with resolve.

The group that was going with the caravan had gathered on the platform, at the entrance to the southern tunnel. On the rails, there was a cart loaded with boxes of meat, mushrooms and packages of tea. On top of them, there was some kind of clever device, put together by local experts - probably some kind of telegraph apparatus.

In the caravan, apart from Kirill, there was another pair: a volunteer, and a commander from the administration who would establish relations and come to an agreement with the administration at Rizhskaya. They had already packed and were playing dominoes while waiting for a departure signal. The machine guns that were assigned to them for the journey were piled beside them. They formed a pyramid with the barrels directed upwards and their spare clips attached to their bases with blue insulation tape.

Finally Zhenya appeared - he’d had to feed his sister and send her to the neighbours before he left since his parents were still at work.

At the very last second, Artyom suddenly remembered that he hadn’t said goodbye to his stepfather. Excusing himself and promising that he would be right back, he threw off his rucksack and ran home. There was no one in the tent and Artyom ran to the quarters where service personnel often hung around, but it now belonged to the station’s administration. Sukhoi was there, he was sitting opposite the duty officer of the station, the elected head of
VDNKh,
and they were talking about something animatedly. Artyom knocked on the door jamb and quietly coughed.

‘Greetings, Alexander Nikolaevich. Could I speak to Uncle Sasha for a minute?’

‘Of course, Artyom, come in. Want some tea?’ the duty officer said hospitably.

‘You off already? When are you coming back?’ Sukhoi asked while pushing his chair back from the table.

‘I don’t know exactly . . .’ Artyom mumbled. ‘We’ll see how it goes . . .’

And he understood that he might never see his stepfather again, and he really didn’t want to lie to him, the one man who truly loved Artyom, and say that he would be back tomorrow or the day after and everything would continue as it was.