'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 pa.s.sport - 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 a.s.signed 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, VDNKh, and they were talking about something animatedly. Artyom knocked on the door jamb and quietly coughed. 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.

Artyom suddenly felt a sting in his eyes and to his shame, he found that they were wet. He stepped forward and hugged his stepfather.

'Now, now, Artyom, what's the matter . . . You'll be back tomorrow after all . . . Well?' his surprised stepfather said rea.s.suringly.

'Tomorrow night if everything goes to plan,' Alexander Nikolaevich confirmed.

'Take care of yourself, Uncle Sasha! Good luck!' Artyom uttered hoa.r.s.ely, shaking his stepfather's hand, and he quickly left.

Sukhoi watched him leave in surprise.

'Why's he come unglued? It's not the first time he's been to Rizhskaya . . .'

'Nothing, Sasha, nothing, there will be a time when your boy will grow up. Then you'll be nostalgic for the days when he said goodbye to you with tears in his eyes when he was just going two stations away! So what were you saying about the opinion at Alexeevskaya about the patrolling of tunnels? It would be very handy for us . . .'

When Artyom ran back to the group, the commander had given each person a machine gun and said: 'So then, men? Shall we sit down for a moment before we go?' And he sat down on the old wooden bench. The rest of them followed his example silently. 'OK, G.o.d be with us!' The commander stood up and jumped down onto the path, taking his place at the front of the group.

Artyom and Zhenya, as the youngest members of the group, climbed up onto the cart and prepared themselves for hard work. Kirill and the second volunteer took their places behind, completing the chain.

'Let's go!' shouted the commander.

Artyom and Zhenya leaned on the levers, and Kirill pushed the cart from behind - and it squeaked, shunting forward and then started gliding ahead. The last two guys walked behind it and the group disappeared into the muzzle of the southern tunnel.

CHAPTER 4.

The Voice of the Tunnels

The unreliable light of the lantern in the hands of the commander wandered like a pale yellow stain on the tunnel walls, licking the damp floor and disappearing completely when the lantern was pointed into the distance. There was deep darkness ahead, which was greedily devouring the weak beams of their pocket flashlights from just ten paces away. The wheels of the cart squeaked with a whining and melancholic sound, gliding into nowhere, and the breathing and the rhythmic footfalls of the booted people walking behind it punctuated the silence.

The southern cordons were behind them now, the flickering light of their fires had died away long ago. They were beyond the territory of VDNKh. VDNKh. And even though the journey from And even though the journey from VDNKh VDNKh to Rizhskaya was considered safe, given the good relations between the stations and the fact that there was a sufficient amount of movement between the two, the caravan needed to stay on alert. to Rizhskaya was considered safe, given the good relations between the stations and the fact that there was a sufficient amount of movement between the two, the caravan needed to stay on alert.

Danger was not something that just came from the north or the south - the two directions of the tunnel. It could hide above them, in the airshafts or at the sides in the multiple tunnel branches behind the sealed doors of former utility rooms or secret exits. There were dangers waiting below too in mysterious manholes left behind by the metro-builders, forgotten and neglected by maintenance crews back when the metro was still just a means of transportation, where terrible things now lurked in their depths, things which could squeeze the mind of the most reckless of daredevils in a vice of irrational horror.

That was why the commander's lantern was wandering along the walls, and the fingers of the people at the back of the caravan stroked the safety locks of their machine guns, ready to fix them into firing mode at any moment and to lunge at their triggers. That's why they said little as they walked: chatting weakened and interfered with their capacity to hear in the breathing s.p.a.ce of the tunnel.

Artyom was starting to get tired already; he laboured and laboured but the handle, descending and then returning to its former place, gnashed monotonously, turning the wheels again and again. He was looking ahead without success, but his head was spinning to the beat of the wheels, heavily and hysterically, just like the phrases he heard from Hunter before he left - his words about the power of darkness, the most widespread form of government in the territory of the Moscow metro-system.

He tried to think about how he was going to get to Polis, he tried to make a plan, but slowly a burning pain and fatigue was spreading in his muscles, rising from his bent legs through the small of his back, into his arms and pushing any complicated thoughts right out of his head.

Hot, salty sweat dripped onto his forehead, at first slowly, in tiny droplets, and then the drops had grown and became heavier, flowing down his face, getting into his eyes, and there was no chance of wiping them away because Zhenya was on the other side of the mechanism, and if Artyom released the handle then it would land all the effort on Zhenya. Blood was pounding louder and louder in his ears, and Artyom remembered that when he was little he liked to adopt an uncomfortable pose in order to hear the blood pounding in his ears because the sound reminded him of the steps of soldiers on parade. And if he closed his eyes, he could imagine he was a marshal leading the parade and faithful divisions were pa.s.sing him, measuring their paces, and saluting him. That's how it was described in books about the army.

Finally, the commander said, without turning around: 'OK, guys, come down and change places. We've reached half way.'

Artyom exchanged glances with Zhenya and he jumped off the cart, and they both, without speaking, sat on the rails, even though they were supposed to be going to the rear of the cart.

The commander looked at them attentively and said sympathetically: 'Milksops . . .'

'Milksops,' Zhenya admitted readily.

'Get up, get up, there'll be no sitting here. It's time to go. I'll tell you a good little story.'

'We can also tell you a few stories!' Zhenya confidently declared, not wanting to get up.

'Yes, I know all your stories. About the dark ones, about the mutants . . . About your little mushrooms, of course. But there are a few tales you've never heard. Yes, indeed, and they might not even be tales - it's just that no one is able to confirm them . . . That is, there have been people who have tried to confirm the stories, but they couldn't tell us for sure.'

For Artyom, this short speech had been enough to give him a second wind. Now any information about what happened beyond the Prospect Mir station had great meaning for him. He hurried to get up from the rails and, transferring his machine gun from his back to his chest, he took up his place behind the cart.

With a little shove, the wheels started singing their plaintive song again. The group moved forward. The commander was looking ahead, peering watchfully into the darkness because not everything was audible.

'I'm interested, what does your generation know about the metro anyway?' the commander was saying. 'You tell each other such tales. Someone went somewhere, someone made it all up. One tells the wrong thing to the next who whispers it to a third, who, in turn, stretches the story over a cup of tea with a fourth person, who pretends that it was his own adventure. That's the main problem with the metro: there aren't any reliable communication lines. It isn't possible to get from one end to the other quickly. You can't get through in some places, it's part.i.tioned in others where some c.r.a.p is going on, and the conditions change every day. Do you think that this metro system is all that big? Well, you can get from one end to the other in an hour by train. And it takes people weeks to do that now, and that's if they make it. And you never know what is waiting for you at every turn. So, we've set off for Rizhskaya with humanitarian aid . . . But the problem is that no one - me and the duty officer included - no one is prepared to guarantee that when we get there, we won't be met with heavy fire. Or that we won't find a burnt-out station without a living soul in it. Or that it won't suddenly become clear that Rizhskaya has joined forces with the Hansa and therefore there's no pa.s.sage to the rest of the metro left to us anymore, ever again. There's no exact information . . . We received some data yesterday - but everything is out of date by evening and you can't rely on it the next day. It's just like going through quicksand using a hundred-year-old map. It takes so long for messengers to get through with the messages they carry that it often happens that the information's not needed anymore or it's already unreliable. The truth is distorted. People have never lived under these conditions . . . And it's scary to think of what will happen when there isn't any fuel for the generators, and there isn't electricity anymore. Have you read Wells' The Time Machine? Well, there they had these Morlocks . . .'

This was already the second such conversation in the last two days, and Artyom already knew about the Morlocks and about Herbert Wells, and he didn't want to hear about it all over again. So, disregarding Zhenya's protests, he resolutely turned the conversation back to its original direction.

'So, what does your generation know about the metro?'

'Mm . . . Talking about the devilry in the tunnels is bad luck . . . And about Metro- 2 and the invisible observers? I won't talk about that either. But I can tell you something interesting about who lives where. So, do you know, for example, that at the place that used to be Pushkinskaya station - where there's another two pedestrian pa.s.sages to Chekhovskaya and Tverskaya - that the fascists have now taken that?'

'What - what fascists?' Zhenya asked, puzzled.

'Real fascists. A while ago, when we still lived there,' the commander pointed upwards, 'there were fascists. There were also skinheads who called themselves the RNE, and others who were against immigration, and there were all kinds of different types, since that was the trend in those days. Only a fool knows what these acronyms mean, now no one remembers, and they themselves probably don't even remember. And then, it seemed, they disappeared. You heard and saw nothing of them. And suddenly, a little while ago, they turned up again. "The metro is for Russians!" Have you heard of that? Or, they say: "'Do a good deed - clean up the metro!" And they threw all the non-Russians out of Pushkinskaya, and then from Chekhovskaya and Tverskaya. In the end they became rabid and started punishing people. They have a Reich there now. The fourth or the fifth . . . Something like that. They haven't crawled any further yet, but our generation still remembers the twentieth century. And what fascists are . . . The mutants from the Filevskaya line, basically, exist in actual fact . . . And our dark ones, what are they worth? And there are various sectarians, satanists, communists . . . It's a chamber of curiosities. That's what it is.'

They went past the broken down door to an abandoned administrative room. Maybe it was a lavatory or maybe before it was a refuge . . . Full of furniture: iron bunk-beds and crude plumbing - it was all stolen long ago and nowadays no one tried to get into those dark empty rooms scattered along the length of the tunnels. There's nothing there . . . But truth is, you never know!

There was a weak blinking light ahead. They were approaching Alekseevskaya. The station was minimally populated, and the patrol consisted of one person, at the fiftieth-metre - they couldn't allow themselves to go any further. The commander gave the order to stop at forty metres from the fire that had been lit by the patrol at Alekseevskaya - and he turned his flashlight on and off several times in a precise sequence, giving the patrol a signal. A black figure was delineated by the light of the flames - a scout was coming towards them. From far off, the scout yelled, 'Halt! Don't approach!'

Artyom asked himself: Could it be possible that one day they wouldn't be recognized at a station with whom they considered themselves to have friendly relations, and they would be met with hostility?

The person was approaching them slowly. He was dressed in torn camouflage trousers and a quilted jacket which displayed the letter 'A' in bold - apparently from the first letter in the station's name. His hollow cheeks were unshaven, and his eyes gleamed suspiciously, and his hands were nervously stroking the body of an automatic machine gun that was hanging from his neck. He looked them right in the face and smiled - he recognized them and, with a little wave showing his trust, he pushed the machine gun onto his back.

'Great, guys! How are you doing? Is it you guys heading to Rizhskaya? Rizhskaya? We know, we know, they warned us. Let's go!' We know, we know, they warned us. Let's go!'

The commander started to ask the patrolman something but it was inaudible, and Artyom, hoping that he also wouldn't be heard, said quietly to Zhenya: 'He looks overworked and underfed. I don't think they want to join forces with us because they're having the good life.'

'Well, so what?' His friend responded. 'We also have our interests in the matter. If our administration is pursuing it then it means there's something they want from it. It's not out of charity that we are coming to feed them.'

They went past the campfire at the fiftieth-metre where a second patrolman was sitting, dressed just like the one who had met them, and their cart rolled towards the station. Alekseevskaya was badly lighted and the people that lived there looked sad and seemed to speak little. At VDNKh, VDNKh, they looked on guests with friendliness. The group stopped in the middle of the platform and the commander announced a smoking break. Artyom and Zhenya stayed on the cart to protect it and the others were called to the fireside. they looked on guests with friendliness. The group stopped in the middle of the platform and the commander announced a smoking break. Artyom and Zhenya stayed on the cart to protect it and the others were called to the fireside.

'I've never heard about the fascists and the Reich,' Artyom said.

'I've heard that there were fascists somewhere in the underground, ' Zhenya answered, 'but they only said that they were at Novokuznetskaya Novokuznetskaya.'

'Who told you?'

'Lekha did,' Zhenya admitted reluctantly.

'He's told you a lot of other interesting things,' Artyom reminded him.

'But there really are fascists there! The guy just got the wrong place. He wasn't lying OK?!' Zhenya said in defence. Artyom became silent and sank into thought. The smoking break at Alekseevskaya was supposed to last no less than a half hour. The commander was having some kind of conversation with the local leader - probably about the future cooperation. Afterwards, they were supposed to push on forward, so that they would make it to Rizhkaya by day's end. They would spend the night there, decide what needed deciding, and look at the newly discovered cable, and then they would send a messenger back to ask for their next instructions. If the cable could be used for communication between three stations then it made sense to unwind it and to open up a telephone connection. But if it looks unusable then it would be necessary to return to the station at once.

So Artyom had dispensation for no more than two days. During this time, it would be necessary to invent a pretext under which it would be possible to get though the external cordons of Rizhskaya, who were even more suspicious and nit-picking than the external patrols at VDNKh. VDNKh. Their lack of trust was totally understandable: there, in the south, the wider metro system began, and the southern cordon of Rizhskaya was subjected to attacks pretty often. And though the dangers that were threatening the population of Rizhskaya were not as mysterious and frightening as those hanging over Their lack of trust was totally understandable: there, in the south, the wider metro system began, and the southern cordon of Rizhskaya was subjected to attacks pretty often. And though the dangers that were threatening the population of Rizhskaya were not as mysterious and frightening as those hanging over VDNKh, VDNKh, they were different in their amazing variation. The fighters that defended the southern approach to Rizhskaya never knew what to expect, and therefore they had to be ready for everything. they were different in their amazing variation. The fighters that defended the southern approach to Rizhskaya never knew what to expect, and therefore they had to be ready for everything.

Two tunnels go from Rizhskaya to Prospect Mir. To collapse one of them for some reason didn't seem possible, and the Rizhskys had to put blockades up in both. But this took such a toll on their forces that it became vitally important for them to at least secure the northern tunnel. They joined forces with Alekseevskaya and more importantly, with VDNKh, VDNKh, and shifted the burden of defence in the northern direction onto them, which provided some peace in the tunnels between stations, so that they could focus on their domestic goals. And at and shifted the burden of defence in the northern direction onto them, which provided some peace in the tunnels between stations, so that they could focus on their domestic goals. And at VDNKh, VDNKh, they saw this as an opportunity to widen their sphere of influence. they saw this as an opportunity to widen their sphere of influence.

In light of the imminent union, the outposts of Rizhskaya were showing increased vigilance: it was necessary to prove to their future allies that they could be counted on to defend the southern borders. That's why it seemed a particularly difficult task to get through the cordons in either direction. And Artyom had a maximum of two days to figure it out.

However, despite the complexities, it didn't seem impossible. The question lay in what he would do after that. Even if he got through the southern outposts, it would be necessary still to find a sufficiently safe route to Polis. Since he had had to make an urgent decision, he hadn't had time in VDNKh VDNKh to think about his next moves to make it to Polis. At home, he could have asked traders he knew about the dangers out there, without raising suspicions. And he knew that he would raise suspicions immediately if he asked Zhenya or anyone else in the group about the way to Polis - and Zhenya would definitely know that Artyom was up to something. He didn't have friends at Alekseevskaya or at Rizhskaya, and he couldn't trust mere acquaintances with these questions either. to think about his next moves to make it to Polis. At home, he could have asked traders he knew about the dangers out there, without raising suspicions. And he knew that he would raise suspicions immediately if he asked Zhenya or anyone else in the group about the way to Polis - and Zhenya would definitely know that Artyom was up to something. He didn't have friends at Alekseevskaya or at Rizhskaya, and he couldn't trust mere acquaintances with these questions either.

Having taken advantage of the fact that Zhenya walked off to chat with a girl who was sitting nearby on the platform, Artyom furtively got a tiny map of the metro out of his rucksack. It was printed on the back of a card with charred edges that was advertising a market fair (that had been and gone long ago), and he circled Polis a few times with a pencil.

The way to Polis looked easy and short. In the ancient, mythical times that the commander had been describing when people didn't have to carry weapons, and they went from station to station, even if they had to change trains and take another line - in the times, when the journey from one end to the opposite end, didn't take more than an hour - in the times when the tunnels were only populated by rattling and rushing trains - back then the distance between VDNKh VDNKh and Polis would have been quick and clear. and Polis would have been quick and clear.

It was directly along the line to Turgenevskaya and from there a pedestrian tunnel to Chistye Prudy, as it was called on the old map, which Artyom was examining. Or take the Kirovskaya line and the Red Line, the Sokolnicheskaya Sokolnicheskaya line - straight to Polis . . . In the era of trains and fluorescent light, such a trip would take about thirty minutes. But ever since the words 'Red Line' had been written in capital letters, and the red calico banner had hung over the pedestrian tunnel to Chistye Prudy, there was no point even thinking of a short-cut to Polis. line - straight to Polis . . . In the era of trains and fluorescent light, such a trip would take about thirty minutes. But ever since the words 'Red Line' had been written in capital letters, and the red calico banner had hung over the pedestrian tunnel to Chistye Prudy, there was no point even thinking of a short-cut to Polis.

The leadership of the Red Line had abandoned attempts to force the population of the whole metro to be happy by forcing Soviet power on them, and it had adopted a new doctrine which established communism along a separate line of the metro system. Though it had been unable to dispense with its original dream and continued to call the metro system the 'V. I. Lenin Metropolitan' it had taken no practical steps to pursue the grand plan for a while.

But despite the seemingly peaceful behaviour of the regime, its internal paranoid nature hadn't changed at all. Hundreds of agents of the internal security service, like in the old days, with a certain nostalgia for the KGB, constantly and diligently watched the happy inhabitants of the Red Line, and their interest in guests from other lines was unending. Without the special permission of the management of the 'Reds' no one could get to any other station. And the constant monitoring of pa.s.sports, the total watching and a general clinical suspicion was imposed on the accidental travellers as well as the spies who were sent there. The former were equated with the latter and the fate of both was rather sad. So there was no point in Artyom thinking about getting to Polis through three stations that belonged to the Red Line.

Generally there wasn't an easy route into the very heart of the metro. To Polis . . . Just the mere mention of this name in a conversation made Artyom (and most others) fall into a reverential silence. He clearly remembered even now the first time he heard the word in a story told by one of his stepfather's friends. Afterwards when the guest had left, he asked Sukhoi quietly what the word meant. His stepfather then looked at him carefully and, with a vague sadness in his voice, he said, 'That, Artyom, is probably the last place on the earth where people live like people. Where they haven't forgotten what the word "person" means, and, moreover, how the word should sound.' His stepfather smiled sadly and added, 'That is a City.'

Polis was located where four metro lines crossed, and it took up four stations all by itself: Alexander's Garden, Arbatskaya, Borovitzskaya and the Lenin Library. That enormous territory was the last, genuine seat of civilization, the last place with such a large population that provincial types who happened upon it couldn't help but call it a city. It was given a name - but it meant the same thing anyway: Polis. And perhaps it was because this word had a foreign ring to it, an echo of a powerful and marvellous ancient culture which seemed to protect the settlement, that the name stuck.

Polis remained a unique phenomenon in the metro. There, and only there, you could still meet the keepers of old and strange knowledge, which in this severe new world, with its disappearing laws, you just couldn't find anymore. Knowledge for the inhabitants of almost all the other stations, and in essence for the whole metro, was slowly plunging into an abyss of chaos and ignorance, becoming useless along with those who carried it. Driven from everywhere, the only refuge they found was in Polis, where they were welcomed with open arms, because their colleagues were in power here. That's why in Polis, and only in Polis, you could meet decrepit professors, who at some point worked in the departments of famous universities, which were now empty and in ruins, crawling with rats and mould. And the last remaining artists lived there too - the actors, the poets. The last physicists, chemists, biologists . . . Those who stored the best of man's achievements in their skulls, and who knew a thousand years of history. Those whose knowledge would be lost when they died.

Polis was below what used to be the very centre of the city above. Right above Polis stood the building of Lenin's Library - the most extensive storehouse of information to come from all ages. There were hundreds of thousands of books in dozens of languages, covering probably all the areas in which human thought was directed. There were hundreds of tonnes of papers marked with all sorts of letters, signs, hieroglyphs, some of which no one could read anymore because the language had died with the last of their speakers. But the whole ma.s.sive collection of books could still be read and understood, and the people who died a hundred years ago and who wrote them still had a lot to say to the living.

Of all the confederations, empires and powerful stations who had the means to send expeditions to the surface, only Polis sent stalkers up to get books. It was the only place where knowledge was valued so much that people were willing to risk the lives of their volunteers for the sake of books, to pay enormous sums to those they hired to do it and forego material a.s.sets for the sake of acquiring spiritual a.s.sets.

And, despite the seeming impracticality and idealism of the administration, Polis stood strong year after year and troubles bypa.s.sed it. If any danger threatened it then the whole metro was ready to rally for its protection. The echoes of the last battle that took place there in living memory - between the Red Line and the Hansa - had died down and there was a magic aura of invulnerability and well-being surrounding Polis again.

And when Artyom thought about this wonderful city, it didn't seem strange to him at all that the journey to such a place wouldn't be easy. He would have to get lost, go through dangers and tests of strength, otherwise the purpose of the journey would have its charms wasted.

If the way through Kirovskaya along the Red Line to the Lenin Library seemed impenetrable and too risky, then he'd have to try overcoming the Hansa patrol and go along the Ring. Artyom peered into the charred map even more closely.

Now, if he could be successful in getting through the Hansa territory, by creating some sort of pretext, chatting to the guards at the cordons, breaking through with a fight or by some other means, then the trip to Polis would be short enough. Artyom pushed his finger into the map and drew it along the lines. If he went from Prospect Mir in the direction of the Ring, through the two stations that belonged to the Hansa, he would come out at Kurskaya. Then he could switch over to the Arbatsko-Pokrovsk line and from there he could get to Arbatskaya, which is to say, to Polis. True, Revolution Square was on the way, surrendered after the war to the Red Line in exchange for the Lenin Library, but the Reds guaranteed free transit to all travellers. This was one of the basic conditions of the peace agreement. And since Artyom was not planning on staying at that station but just going through it, he would ideally be let through freely. Having thought about it, he decided to stick with that plan and to try to iron out the details along the way about the stations he would have to pa.s.s through. If something didn't work out, he said to himself, he could always find an alternative route. Looking at the interlacing lines of the numerous pa.s.sages, Artyom thought that the commander went a bit too far in painting a picture of the difficulties of even the shortest trips through the metro. For example, you could get from Prospect Mir not from the right, but from the left - Artyom drew his finger down the map to the Ring - until you got to Kievskaya, and there you could go through a pedestrian pa.s.sage to the Filevskaya line or the Arbatsko-Pokrovskoi line with just two stops to Polis. The task didn't seem so impossible to Artyom anymore. This little exercise with the map had given him confidence in himself. Now he knew how to act, and no longer doubted that when the caravan got to Rizhskaya, he wouldn't be returning with the group back to VDNKh VDNKh but would go on with his journey to Polis. but would go on with his journey to Polis.

'Studying?' Zhenya asked him having walked right up to Artyom without his noticing.

Artyom jumped up in surprise and tried to hide the map in his confusion.

'Yes, no . . . I was . . . I wanted to find the station on the map where this Reich is, the one that the commander was telling us about before.'

'Well, then, did you find it? No? Oh come on, let me show you,' Zhenya said with a sense of superiority. He oriented himself in the metro much better than Artyom - better than their other contemporaries too, and he was proud of it. He put his finger on the triangle of Chekhovskaya, Pushkinskaya and Tverskaya straight away without mistake. Artyom exhaled with relief but Zhenya thought that it was out of envy.

He decided to console Artyom: 'Don't worry, one day you'll be as good as me in figuring it out.'

Artyom had an expression of grat.i.tude on his face and hurried to change the subject.

'How long are we stopping here?' he asked.

'Young men! Let's be off!' the booming ba.s.s of the commander's voice rang out, and Artyom understood that there would be no more resting and he hadn't managed to get anything to eat.

Again it was Artyom and Zhenya's turn to be on the cart. The levers started to grind, boots started to clatter against the concrete, and they were off again into the tunnel.

This time the group moved forward in silence, and only the commander spoke. He had called Kirill to the front and discussed something quietly with him. Artyom had neither the strength nor the desire to hear their conversation. All his energies were taken up by the accursed cart.

The man at the rear, left all alone, felt distinctly uncomfortable, and timidly looked behind himself again and again. Artyom was standing facing him in the cart and could see that there was nothing scary behind him but he was just as rea.s.sured when he glanced over his own shoulder to the front. This fear and mistrust followed him always, and it wasn't just him. Any lone traveller was familiar with this feeling. They even had a name for it: 'tunnel fear.' It was when you were going along a tunnel, especially if you had a bad flashlight, and it felt like there was danger right behind your back. Sometimes the feeling was so augmented that you felt someone's gaze at the nape of your neck - or not even a gaze but . . . Who knew who or what was there and how it perceived the world . . . And then, sometimes, it was so intolerably oppressive that you couldn't stand it, and you turned around lightning fast, poking your flashlight into the darkness - and there was no one there . . . Silence . . . Emptiness . . . All was quiet. But while you were looking behind you, and straining your eyes into the darkness until they hurt, and the darkness was condensing behind you again, you wanted to throw yourself in the other direction, to light the tunnel ahead. Was anyone there, had anyone stolen up on you while you were looking the other way? . . . And again . . . The main thing was not to lose control, not to give in to the fear, to convince yourself that it was all c.r.a.p and that there was nothing to be afraid of, and that you hadn't heard anything anyway . . .

But it was very hard to control yourself - especially when you were walking alone. People had lost their minds. They just couldn't calm themselves down, even when they reached inhabited stations. Then, of course, slowly, they came to themselves again, but they couldn't make themselves go into the tunnel again - or they would immediately be seized by the same feeling of alarm, familiar to every metro-dweller, and it could turn into a pernicious delusion.

'Don't be scared - I'm watching!' Artyom shouted to the man at the back. And the man nodded, but after a couple of minutes he couldn't help it and looked behind himself again. It was hard . . .

'A guy I know at Seregi also went a little crazy like that,' Zhenya said quietly, knowing what Artyom had been referring to. 'To be fair, he had a pretty serious reason for it. He decided to go through that tunnel at Sukharevskaya - remember I was telling you about it? Where you shouldn't ever go alone and you have to go in a caravan. Well, the guy lived. And, you know why he survived?' Zhenya smirked. 'Because he didn't have enough courage to go beyond the hundredth-metre. When he was heading in he was so brave and resolute. Ha . . . After twenty minutes he came back - his eyes goggling, his hair standing on end, and he couldn't p.r.o.nounce a single discernible word. So, they didn't get anything out of him - and since then, he speaks incoherently, mostly lowing like a cow. And won't put a foot in the tunnel - just stays at Sukhareveskaya begging. He's the local village idiot now. Is the moral of the story clear now?'

'Yeah,' Artyom said uncertainly.

The group moved along for a while in total silence. Artyom sunk into his thoughts again and walked like that for a while, trying to think up something plausible to say at the exit post to get out of Rizhskaya.

And so they continued until, after a while, he noticed some kind of strange sound that was getting louder and louder, coming from the tunnel ahead of them. This noise, which had been almost inaudible to begin with, was on the border of audible sound and ultrasound, slowly and imperceptibly gaining strength, so that you couldn't tell when you'd started hearing it. It reminded him of a whistling whisper more than anything - incomprehensible and inhuman.