At first, Artyom noticed nothing in particular, and didn't actually see the cross. Only when a giant winged shadow took flight from the crossbar with a lingering, bloodcurdling wail did he understand what Ten had meant. After a few flaps of its wings, the monster had gained alt.i.tude and began to glide downward in wide circles, searching for prey.

'That's where they nest,' said Ten with a wave of the hand.

Staying close to the wall, they moved to the entrance of the Library. Melnik led the group, staying several steps ahead while Ten was stepping backward, half-turned, covering the rear. It was precisely because both stalkers were distracted that Artyom was able, even before they had drawn even with the statue of the old man sitting in the armchair, to cast a glance at the Kremlin.

Artyom had not intended to do it, but when he saw the monument, it was as if he had been jolted, and something cleared up in his mind. A whole piece of yesterday's dream suddenly popped to the surface. But now it didn't seem to be only a dream, because the panorama and Library colonnade that he had seen exactly resembled the view that was before him now. Did that mean that the Kremlin looked the same as he had imagined in his visions?

n.o.body was looking at Artyom, even Daniel wasn't nearby, as he tarried behind with Ten. It was now or never, said Artyom to himself.

His mouth became dry and blood began to pound in his temples.

The star on the tower really did glitter.

'Hey, Artyom! Artyom!' Someone shook his shoulder.

A numb awareness came alive with difficulty. A bright flashlight beam a.s.saulted his eyes. Artyom started to blink his eyes and shaded them with his hand. He was sitting on the ground with his back against the granite base of the monument. Daniel and Melnik were bending over him. Both were looking into his eyes with worry.

'His pupils are constricted,' stated Melnik. 'How'd you manage to lose him?' he asked Ten, with annoyance. The latter stood at some distance and kept his eyes on the street.

'Something made a noise back there, and I couldn't turn my back to it,' explained the stalker. 'Who could guess he was so quick . . . Look, he almost made it to the Manezh within a minute . . . And he would have kept going. It's a good thing our Brahmin has a head on his shoulders,' he said and slapped Daniel on the back.

'It shines,' said Artyom to Melnik in a weak voice. 'It shines,' he said, looking at Daniel.

'It shines, OK, it shines,' repeated Daniel, rea.s.suringly.

'Weren't you told not to look over there, dumba.s.s?' said Melnik to Artyom, angrily, now convinced the danger had pa.s.sed. 'You going to obey your superiors?' he asked, and cuffed him on the back of his head.

The helmet reduced the educational value of the blow, and Artyom continued to sit on the ground, batting his eyes. Having finally run out of obscenities, the stalker grabbed him by the shoulders, shook him hard, and put him on his feet.

Artyom gradually recovered himself. He grew ashamed that he was not able to resist temptation. He stood, looking down at the toes of his boots, hesitating to look at Melnik. Luckily, Melnik didn't have time to read any sermons, as he had been distracted by Ten, who was standing in the intersection. He had signalled his partner to join him and was pressing his finger to a filter on his gas mask, indicating a need for silence. Artyom decided to stay out of trouble by now following Melnik everywhere and never to turn in the direction of the enigmatic towers.

Approaching Ten, Melnik also froze in his tracks. The bearded man was pointing into the distance, away from the Kremlin, to where the long-crumbling high-rises along Kalinin Prospekt gave the appearance of grinning, rotten teeth. Carefully drawing near to them, Artyom looked out from behind the stalker's broad shoulders and immediately understood the situation.

Right in the middle of the Prospekt, about sixty metres from them, he saw three human silhouettes standing motionless in the gathering dusk. Human? At such a distance, Artyom wouldn't have bet they were, indeed, people, but they were of medium height and stood on two legs. This was encouraging.

'Who's that?' Artyom asked hoa.r.s.ely, whispering, while trying to identify the distant figures through the fogged window of his gas mask. Were they people or some sp.a.w.n that he had heard spoken of?

Melnik silently shook his head, making it known that he didn't know any more than Artyom. He shone the beam of his flashlight at the motionless beings and made three circular motions. Then he switched his flashlight off. In answer, a bright spot of light came on in the distance, moved in a circle three times, and went out.

Tension eased immediately and the electrified atmosphere returned to normal. Artyom sensed this even before Melnik gave the all clear.

'Stalkers,' explained the guide. 'Remember, for next time: three circles with a flashlight is our recognition signal. If you get the same response, you can go forward without fear. You won't come to harm. If you get no response, or some other response, then run. Don't wait.'

'But if they have a flashlight, it means they're human and not some kind of monsters from the surface,' objected Artyom.

'I don't know what's worse,' said Melnik, cutting off Artyom. Without further explanation, he moved up the stairs to the Library entrance.

The heavy oak door, almost as tall as two people, gave slowly, almost unwillingly. The door's rusted hinges shrieked hysterically. Melnik slipped inside, put his night-vision unit to his eyes while holding his rifle level with one arm. After a second, he signalled the others to follow.

They could see a long corridor before them, with the twisted framework of iron coat racks along the sides. This was once a cloakroom. In the distance, in the fading day's light coming weakly in from the street, were the white marble steps of a wide, rising staircase. The ceiling was about fifteen metres high, and the wrought railing of the second floor gallery could be distinguished about halfway up the wall. There was a brittle silence in the hall, responding to their every step.

The walls of the vestibule were covered by moss that stirred slightly, as if it were breathing, and strange, vine-like plants as thick as one's arm hung from the ceiling almost to the floor. Their stalks shimmered with a greasy l.u.s.tre in the flashlight beams and were covered with large, malformed flowers that exuded a suffocating odour that made one's head spin. They also swayed ever so slightly, and Artyom didn't feel like venturing to find out if the wind blowing through the broken second-floor windows caused them to move, or whether they moved on their own.

'What's this?' asked Artyom, addressing Ten and touching the vine with his hand.

'Greenery,' came the filtered reply. 'House plants after being irradiated, that's what. Morning glories. Did a proper job of growing 'em, those botanists . . .'

Following Melnik, they reached the stairs and started to ascend, keeping to the left wall while Ten covered them. The lead stalker did not take his eyes off the black square of the entrance to other rooms that could be seen ahead of them. The others ran their flashlight beams over the marble walls and the rusty moss-pitted ceiling.

The wide marble stairs on which they stood led to the second floor of the vestibule. There was no ceiling above it, and thus both vestibule floors combined into a single huge s.p.a.ce. The vestibule's second level formed three sides of a rectangle. In the centre, there was a s.p.a.ce through which the stairs ascended, and there were areas along the edges with wooden cabinets. Most of them had either burned or rotted, but some looked as if people had used them just the day before. There were hundreds of small drawers in each section.

'The card catalogue,' said Daniel quietly, looking around with reverence. 'The future can be foretold using these drawers. The initiated know how. After a ritual, you blindly pick one of the cabinets, then randomly pull out a drawer and take any card. If the ritual is properly performed, then the name of the book will foretell your future, provide a warning, or predict success.'

For a second, Artyom wanted to go up to the nearest cabinet and find out what section of the card catalogue the fates had brought him to. But his attention was distracted by a giant cobweb which stretched several metres across a broken window in a far corner. A bird of considerable size was caught in thin filaments of apparently extraordinary strength. It was still alive, twitching weakly. To his relief, Artyom did not see whatever it was that had managed to spin this unnatural web. Besides them, there wasn't a soul in the vast vestibule.

Melnik signalled them all to stop.

'Now listen,' he said to Artyom. 'Don't listen to what's outside . . . Try to hear the sounds from inside you, in your head. The book is supposed to call you. The Brahmin elders think that it is most likely on one of the levels of the Main Stack Archives. But the folio can be any place at all, in one of the reading rooms, in a forgotten library cart, in a hall, in one of the matron's tables . . . So before we try to find a way into the archives, try to sense its voice here. Close your eyes. Relax.'

Artyom squeezed his eyes shut and started to listen intently. In the complete darkness, the silence fell apart into dozens of tiny noises: the creaking of wooden shelves, the noise of draughts pa.s.sing down corridors, vague murmurs, howls that carried from the street, and a noise like a geriatric cough that carried from the reading rooms . . . But Artyom was unable to hear anything that resembled a call or a voice. He stood like that, motionless, for five minutes, and then five more, ineffectively holding his breath, which might have obstructed his efforts to differentiate the voice of the living book from the farrago of dead book sounds.

'No,' he said, guiltily shaking his head and finally opening his eyes. 'There's nothing.'

Melnik said nothing, nor did Daniel, but Artyom caught his disappointed look, which was self-explanatory.

'Maybe it's really not here. So, we'll go to the stack archives. Or more precisely, we'll try to get there.' After a minute, the stalker made up his mind and signalled the others to follow him.

He stepped forward through the wide doorway where only one of the two original door panels remained on its hinges. It was charred along its edges and covered with strange characters. There was a small, round room on the other side, with a six-metre-high ceiling and four entrances. Ten followed Melnik and Daniel, taking advantage of the fact that they could not see him, took a step to the nearest surviving cabinet, pulled out one of the drawers, and took a card out of it. Running his eyes over the card, his face took on a puzzled look, and he shoved the card into his breast pocket. Understanding that Artyom had seen everything, he pressed a finger to his lips in a conspiratorial manner and hurried after the stalkers.

The walls of the round room were also covered with drawings and signs, and a sofa, with broken springs and upholstered in cut-up imitation leather, stood in a corner. In one of the four pa.s.sages, an overturned book stand lay near some spilled pamphlets.

'Don't touch anything!' warned Melnik.

Ten sat down on the sofa, causing the springs to squeak. Daniel followed his example. Artyom, as if under a spell, stared hard at the scattered books on the floor.

'They're untouched . . .' he mumbled. 'We have to put out rat poison at our station's library, or the rats would eat everything . . . So, what? There're no rats here?' he asked, again recalling what Bourbon had said, about how the time to worry wasn't when a place was crawling with rats, but when there weren't any rats around at all.

'What rats? Are you kidding?' Melnik made a discontented face. 'Where are you going to find rats around here? They ate them all a long time ago . . .'

'Who?' asked a puzzled Artyom.

'What do you mean "who"? The librarians, of course,' explained Ten.

'So are they animals or people?' asked Artyom.

'Not animals, that's for sure,' said the stalker, shaking his head pensively, and said nothing else.

A ma.s.sive wooden door located far down one of the pa.s.sages gave a long creak. Both stalkers immediately darted in different directions, taking cover behind the embedded columns at both ends of the arch. Daniel slipped from the sofa to the floor and rolled to the side. Artyom followed his example.

'Up further is the Main Reading Room,' whispered the Brahmin to Artyom. 'They show up there once in a while . . .'

'Cut the chatter!' interrupted Melnik, fiercely. 'Don't you know librarians can't stand noise? For them, noise is like waving a red rag in front of a bull?' He swore and indicated the door to the reading room to Ten.

Ten nodded. Staying close to the walls, they began to slowly move towards the huge oak door panels. Neither Artyom nor Daniel was less than a step behind. Melnik was the first to go in. Leaning with his back against one of the door panels and raising his rifle so that the barrel pointed up, he took a deep breath, let it out, and then sharply pushed the panel open with his shoulder, simultaneously pointing the barrel at the opened black mouth of the Main Hall.

They were all there in an instant. The hall was a room of incredible size, with a ceiling that disappeared twenty metres above the floor. Just as in the vestibule, heavy, thick vines with flowers hung from the ceiling. The walls of the hall were covered in the same unnatural morning glories. On each side of them there were six giant windows, where a part of the glazing remained unbroken. However, the illumination was very weak: light from the moon barely penetrated a dense tangle of fat, gleaming stalks.

Earlier, rows of tables had been arranged to the left and right, to accommodate readers. Much of that furniture had been hauled off, and some had been burned or broken, but about a dozen tables remained untouched. These stood closer to a decorated, cracked panel at the opposite wall, in whose exact centre rose a sculpture that was indistinct in the semi-darkness. Plastic signs reading 'Observe silence!' were screwed onto surfaces everywhere.

The silence here was completely different from that of the vestibule. Here it was so thick, you could almost touch it. It seemed to entirely fill this ancient, rough hall, and you felt afraid to disturb it.

They stood there, searching the s.p.a.ce in front of them with their flashlights, until Melnik concluded, 'Probably the wind . . .'

But at that very instant, Artyom noticed a grey shadow that crossed in front of them, between two broken tables, which disappeared into a black gap in the bookshelves. Melnik saw it, too. Placing his night-vision device to his eyes, he jerked his rifle up and, stepping carefully over the moss-overgrown floor, started to approach the mysterious access.

Ten moved after him. Even though Artyom and Daniel had been motioned to remain where they were, they couldn't stand it and also followed the stalkers. Remaining at the entrance alone was too spooky. At the same time, Artyom could not resist looking around with delight at the hall, which retained vestiges of its former grandeur. This not only saved his own life, but everyone else's, too.

Galleries encircled the entire perimeter of the room at a height of several metres; these were rather narrow walkways enclosed by wooden railings. You could look through the windows from the galleries, and furthermore, there were doors leading to office s.p.a.ces both in the wall they were standing next to and in the walls on both sides of the ancient panel. The gallery was accessible via twin stairs that were located on both sides of the reading sculpture or via an identical set of stairs that ascended from the entrance.

And it was down those stairs that humped, grey figures now descended, deliberately and silently. There were more than a dozen of them, creatures that did not quite melt into the gloom. They would have been about Artyom's height if they hadn't been bent over double so that their long forelegs, which amazingly resembled arms, all but touched the floor. The creatures moved on their hind legs, taking waddling steps, yet with surprising nimbleness and silence. From a distance, they most closely resembled gorillas, pictures of which Artyom had seen in his childhood in a biology book his stepfather had tried to teach from.

Artyom had no more than a second for all these observations because, as soon as his flashlight beam fell on one of the humped figures, casting a sharp, black shadow on the wall behind it, a diabolical chirring sound rang out all around them, and the creatures, no longer attempting stealth, rushed down.

'Librarians!' yelled Daniel, with all his strength.

'Down!' ordered Melnik.

Artyom and Daniel threw themselves to the floor. They chose not to fire, recalling the stalker's warning that shots, or any loud noises, would attract and aggravate librarians. Their hesitation was dispelled by Melnik, who threw himself to the floor next to them and was the first to open fire. Several creatures fell down with a roar; others threw themselves headlong into the darkness, but only in order to steal closer. After several instants, one of the monsters suddenly appeared two metres from them and made a long jump, attempting to seize Ten by the throat. Falling onto the floor, Ten managed to cut the creature down with a short burst.

'Run! Get back to the round room and try to get to the archives! The Brahmin should know how to get there; they teach them that! We'll stay here, cover you, and try to fight them off,' said Melnik to Artyom, and without a further word crawled off to join his partner.

Artyom motioned to Daniel and both bolted for the exit, staying low to the ground. One of the librarians sprang from the darkness to meet them, but it was swept away in a hail of lead. The stalkers were keeping an eye on the pair.

Exiting the Main Reading Room, Daniel darted back to the vestibule from where they had come. For an instant, Artyom thought that his partner had been frightened by the librarians so much that he was trying to run away. But Daniel wasn't running for the stairs that led to the exit. Going around them, he ran past the surviving card catalogue cabinets to the opposite end of the vestibule. There, the room narrowed and ended in three pairs of doors, in front and on both sides. The right-hand doors led to a staircase where absolute darkness prevailed. Here the Brahmin finally stopped to catch his breath. It took Artyom a few seconds to catch up, as he had never expected such agility from his companion. Standing still, they listened. They heard gunfire and cries from the Main Hall, so the fight was continuing. It wasn't clear who would get the upper hand in the battle, and they couldn't waste time waiting to see who won.

'Why are we going back? Why did we start out going the other way?' asked Artyom, catching his breath.

'I don't know where they were taking us.' Daniel shrugged. 'Maybe they intended to take us some other way. The elders taught us only one way, and it leads to the archives exactly from this side of the vestibule. Now we go up the stairs one floor, then along the corridor to another set of stairs, then through the duplicate card catalogue, and then we'll be in the archives.'

He pointed his rifle into the darkness and stepped into the stairwell. Artyom followed, lighting the way with his beam.

There was an elevator shaft in the middle of the stairs; it went down about three floors and went up about the same distance. Apparently, the shaft had once been gla.s.sed-in, as in places, sharp gla.s.s shards, now frosted with decades of dust, could still be seen poking out of the cast-iron structure. The square well of the shaft was girdled by rotted wooden stairsteps that were strewn with broken gla.s.s, spent bra.s.s cartridges, and dried piles of excrement. There was no trace of railings, and Artyom had to press himself against the wall and carefully watch where he stepped so as not to slip and fall into the opening.

They went up one floor and found themselves in a small square room. There were three outlets from here, too, and Artyom realized that, without his guide, it was unlikely he'd find his way out of this labyrinth. The left-hand door led to a wide, dark corridor whose end he could not see by the light of his flashlight. The right-hand door was closed and had been boarded up in criss-cross fashion for some reason. On the adjacent wall was written, in soot: 'Do not open! Deadly danger!'

Daniel led Artyom straight ahead, down a pa.s.sage that ran at an angle to another corridor that was narrower and full of new doors. The Brahmin did not move so quickly down this corridor, and stopped often to listen. The floor here was of inlaid parquet, and forbidding signs reading 'Observe silence!' hung on the walls, which were painted yellow as were the walls throughout the Library. Rooms and trashed offices could be seen behind doors that were wide open. Rustling could sometimes be heard from behind closed doors, and once, Artyom thought he heard steps. Judging from his partner's face, this spoke of nothing good, and both hurried to get out of there as quickly as possible.

Then, as Daniel had expected, a doorway to another stairwell appeared on their right. It was lighter here compared to the murk of the halls, as there were windows at each flight of stairs. From the fifth floor, you could see the courtyard, some outbuildings, and the burned-out skeletons of some technical equipment. But Artyom was not able to examine the courtyard for long, as two grey humped figures emerged from behind the corner of the building he and Daniel were in. They made their way slowly across the courtyard, as if they were searching for something. Suddenly, one of the creatures stopped and raised its head, and Artyom felt as if it was looking directly at the window at which he was standing. Recoiling, Artyom squatted on his heels. He didn't have to explain what had happened to his partner, who grasped everything.

'Librarians?' he whispered with alarm, also squatting so as not to be visible from the street.

Artyom nodded silently. Daniel then wiped the plexigla.s.s of his gas mask, as if this would help him dry his forehead, which was perspiring from worry. He then collected his thoughts and hurried up the stairs, dragging Artyom behind him. One flight up, and then another set of winding corridors . . . Finally, the Brahmin stopped uncertainly in front of several doors.

'I don't remember anything about this place,' he said, perplexed. 'There's supposed to be an entrance to the duplicate card catalogue. But n.o.body told us there'd be several doorways.'

He pondered, then half-heartedly jerked the handle of one of the doors. It was locked. The other doors were locked, too. Uncomprehendingly, as if he refused to believe it, Daniel shook his head and pulled the handles once more. Then Artyom tried as well, also without result.

'They're locked,' he said. There was despair in his voice.

Suddenly Daniel gave a little shudder, and Artyom, looking at him in alarm, took a step away from his partner, just in case. But Daniel only laughed.

'Why don't you knock?' he suggested to Artyom and added, with a sobbing laugh: 'Sorry, it's probably a fit of hysterics.'

Artyom felt the incongruous laughter filling him, too. The tension that had been building over the past hour was starting to show and, try as they might to control themselves, their silly giggling broke through to the outside. For a minute, both stood with their backs to the wall and laughed.

'Knock!' repeated Artyom, holding his belly and regretting not being able to take off his gas mask to wipe away his tears.

He stepped up to the closest door and knocked on it three times with his knuckles. After a second, three resounding knocks came in response from the other side of the door. Artyom's throat dried immediately and his heart started pounding frantically in his chest. Someone was standing behind the door, listening to their laughter and biding their time. What the . . . ? Daniel threw him a look that was mad with fear and backed away from the door. And from the other side, someone knocked again, louder and more demandingly.

And then Artyom did what Sukhoi had once taught him. Pushing off from the wall he kicked the lock of the next door over. He hadn't counted on it working, but the door opened with a crash. The lock's steel mechanism had torn out of the rotten door, together with some wood.

The room behind this door was unlike any of the other rooms or corridors of the Library through which they had pa.s.sed. For some reason it was very humid and oppressive here, and by the light from their flashlights, they could see a small hall that was densely overgrown with strange plants. Thick stalks, heavy oily leaves, a mixture of scents so intense it even penetrated their gas mask filters, a floor covered with tangled roots and trunks, thorns, flowers . . . The roots of some of them disappeared into preserved or shattered flowerpots or tubs. The now-familiar vines entwined and supported rows of wooden cabinets that were identical in appearance to those in the big vestibule, but rotted through entirely owing to the high humidity. This became clear as soon as Daniel tried to open one of the drawers.

'It's the duplicate card catalogue,' he told Artyom, with a sigh of relief. 'We're not far, now.'

They heard another knock on the door behind them, and then someone carefully tried the doork.n.o.b, as if testing it. Moving the vines aside with their rifles and trying not to trip over the roots that ran along the floor, they hurried to pa.s.s through the ominous secret garden hidden in the depths of the Library. There was another door at the other end of the hall, and this one was not locked. They pa.s.sed down the last corridor and finally stopped.

They were in the stack archive. They felt it immediately. There was book dust in the air. The library was breathing calmly, and the murmur of billions of pages could be heard ever so slightly. Artyom looked around, and it seemed to him he could smell the odour of old books, a favourite of his childhood. He looked at Daniel inquiringly.

'That's it, we're here,' confirmed Daniel then added, in a hopeful tone: 'Well?'

'Well . . . it's spooky,' admitted Artyom, not understanding immediately what his partner was expecting.

'Do you hear the book?' clarified the Brahmin. 'From here, its voice should be more distinct.'

Artyom closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. The inside of his head was empty and reverberated, as if inside an abandoned tunnel. Standing like that for a while, he again began to hear the little noises that filled the Library building, but he wasn't able to hear anything resembling a voice or a call. Worse, he felt nothing, and even if one a.s.sumed that the voice Daniel and the other Brahmins spoke of was some completely different type of sensation, that changed nothing.

'No, I don't hear anything.' He spread his hands.

'Never mind,' sighed Daniel after a silence. 'Let's go to another level. There're nineteen of them here. We'll keep looking until we find it. We better not go back with empty hands.'

Going out onto the service staircase, they went up several floors of concrete steps before stopping to again try their luck. At this level, everything looked like the place they came to initially: a medium-sized room with glazed windows, several office tables, the now-familiar growth on the ceiling and in the corners, and two corridors, going off in different directions, filled with endless rows of bookshelves along both sides of a narrow pa.s.sageway. The ceiling in both the room and the corridors was low, just over two metres in height, and after the incredible vastness of the vestibule and the Main Reading Room, it seemed that not only would it be difficult to squeeze between the floor and ceiling here, but to breathe as well. The stacks were densely packed with thousands of various books, and many of them appeared to be completely untouched and marvellously preserved, evidence that the Library was built so that even when people abandoned it, a special microclimate was preserved inside. Seeing such fabulous wealth even made Artyom forget, for a minute, why he was there, and he dived into one of the rows, looking at the spines and running his hand over them reverently. Concluding that his partner had heard what he had been sent here for, Daniel initially didn't interfere, but then finally realized what was going on. He grabbed Artyom rather roughly and pulled him further on.

There were three, four, six corridors; a hundred, two, of stacks; thousands and even more thousands of books, revealed in the impenetrable darkness of the stack archive by a yellow spot of light. The next level, and the next . . . All for nothing. Artyom felt nothing that could be said to be a voice or a call. Absolutely nothing unusual. He recalled that if the Brahmins at the meeting of Polis Council considered him to be the chosen one, endowed with a special gift and led by fate, then the military had its own explanation for his visions: hallucinations.

He had begun to feel something on the last few floors, but it wasn't what he had expected or wanted. It was the vague feeling of someone's presence that reminded him of the notorious fear of the tunnels. Although all of the levels they had visited seemed completely abandoned, and there were no signs here of librarians or other creatures, he nevertheless kept wanting to turn around and he had this crazy feeling that someone was attentively observing them through the bookshelves.

Daniel tapped him on the shoulder and directed the flashlight at his boot. A long lace, which the Brahmin wasn't too good at tying, dragged behind him on the floor.