But with this realization, Artyom also became scared, as if he had only had a peek through the key hole of the door hoping to find out what was behind it, and seeing only an unbearable light punching through it and singeing the eyes. And if you opened the door then the light would gush out irrepressibly and incinerate the audacious person who decided to open the forbidden door on the spot. However, this light is knowledge.

The whirlwind of all these thoughts, feelings and worries came whipping through Artyom too suddenly and he wasn't at all ready for anything like it and so he recoiled in fright. No, this was all just a fantasy. He hadn't heard anything and hadn't realized anything. It was just a game of his imagination. With mixed feelings of relief and disappointment, he observed how, for an instant, an amazing, indescribable vision was revealed to him. It instantly grew dim, melted, and the mind again was faced with its usual muddy haze. He was afraid of this knowledge and stepped back from it, and now the curtain was lowered again and perhaps forever. The hurricane in his head died down as quickly as it had come and he was left with a devastated and exhausted mind.

Artyom was shaken and sat there trying to understand everything - where his fantasy ended and where reality began - wondering if any of these sensations might be real after all. Slowly, slowly, his soul was filled with bitterness at the fact that he had stood a step away from enlightenment, from the most real enlightenment, but he hadn't been resolute, he hadn't dare give himself to the flow of the tunnel's ether, and now he would be left to wander in the darkness for his whole life because he was once too afraid of the light of authentic knowledge.

'But what is knowledge?' he asked himself again and again, trying to give value to the thing that he had just refused in a hurried and cowardly manner. Sunk in his thoughts, he didn't notice that he had said these words aloud a few times.

'Knowledge, my friend, is light - and non-knowledge is darkness!' one of the duty officers explained to him eagerly. 'Right?' He merrily winked at his friends.

Artyom was dumbstruck and stared at the guy and sat like that for a while until Bourbon returned and got him up and said goodbye to the officers, saying that he had been detained and that they were in a hurry.

'Watch it!' the commander of the post said to him threateningly. 'I'm letting you leave here with a weapon.' He waved a hand at Artyom's machine gun. 'But you won't be coming back through with it. I have clear instructions on that.'

'I told you, you blockhead . . .' Bourbon hissed to Artyom in irritation after they'd hastily walked away from the fire. 'So you can do what you want on the way back. But you'll get a fight. I don't care. I just knew it, I knew that this would happen, f.u.c.k you.'

Artyom said nothing, almost not hearing Bourbon chiding him. Instead, he suddenly remembered what his stepfather said that time when he was explaining about the uniqueness of every tunnel - that each one has its own melody and that you can learn to hear it. His stepfather probably wanted simply to express his thought beautifully but, remembering what he felt sitting at the fire moments ago, Artyom thought that he'd heard just such a melody. What he was listening to, really listening to - and hearing! - was the melody of the tunnel. However, the memory of what happened quickly faded and half an hour later Artyom could not be sure that it had all really happened, and that he hadn't imagined it, that it wasn't air blown about by the playing flames.

'OK . . . You probably didn't do it on purpose, you've just got s.h.i.t for brains.' Bourbon said in conciliation. 'If I'm, like, not very nice to you, I'm sorry. This is stressful work. But, OK, seems we got out so that's good. Now we have to trudge to Prospect Mir without being stopped. There we can, like, relax. If everything is quiet then it won't take much time. But beyond that, there's a problem.'

'So it's OK that we're just walking along like this? I mean that when we go in a caravan from VDNKh, VDNKh, if there's any less than three people then we don't leave, you need a rearguard, and basically . . .' Artyom said, looking behind himself. if there's any less than three people then we don't leave, you need a rearguard, and basically . . .' Artyom said, looking behind himself.

'Well, there are plusses of course to going in caravan with a rearguard and all that,' Bourbon started to explain. 'But listen here, there's a concrete minus to that too. I used to be afraid. And forget three people, we used to not go anywhere without at least five people. You think it helped? Doesn't help in the least. Once we were moving a cargo and so we had protection: two in front, three in the middle and a rearguard - everything as it should be. We were going from Tretyakovskaya to what's it called . . . used to be called Marxistskaya. The tunnel was OK. But something about it I didn't like straight away. A certain decaying . . . And there was a fog. You couldn't see for s.h.i.t, not five paces ahead - and the flashlights didn't help much. But we decided to tie a rope to the rearguard's belt, drawn from the belt of one of the guys in the middle, and up to the commander at the head of the group. So no one would get lost in the fog. And we're moving at an easy pace, and everything's normal, quiet, there was no need to rush, we hadn't encountered anyone yet (touch wood) and we have about forty minutes to go . . . Though we did it faster than that in the end . . .' His words twisted and he went silent for a little while.

'Somewhere in the middle, this guy Tolyan asks the rearguard something. But the guy doesn't answer. Tolyan waited and asked again. Nothing. Tolyan then pulls on the rope and the end of it appears. It's been bitten right through. Really - bitten through and there's even some wet gunk on the end of it . . . And the guy is nowhere to be seen. And they didn't hear a thing. Nothing at all. And I was walking with Tolyan myself. He showed me the end of the rope and my knees quaked. Of course we shouted back at him for the sake of it but didn't hear anything. There wasn't anyone there to answer. So we exchanged glances - and went forward so that we were at Marxistskaya in no time.'

'Maybe the guy was playing a joke?' Artyom asked hopefully.

'A joke? Maybe. But he hasn't been seen since. So, there's one thing I've understood: if it's your time, it's your time and no guard's going to help you. Only you go a little slower. And I go everywhere in a twosome, with a partner if you like, except in one tunnel - from Sukharevskaya to Turgenevskaya, which is a particular situation. If something happens then they'll drag you out. And quickly. Get it?'

'Got it. So, they'll let us into Prospect Mir? I still have this thing . . .' Artyom pointed to his machine gun.

'They'll let us onto the radial. But to the Ring - definitely not. They wouldn't let you in anyway, and with that cannon you don't have a hope. But we don't need to get in there. We don't need to hang around there for much time anyway. We'll just make a stop and then go on. You . . . have you ever been to Prospect Mir?' Mir?'

'Only when I was little. But otherwise not,' Artyom admitted.

'Well, why don't I get you up to speed then? Basically, there aren't any guard posts there, they don't need them. There's a market there, and no one lives there so everything is fine. But there's a pa.s.sage there to the Ring, which means to the Hansa . . . A radial station which doesn't belong to anyone, but the Hansa soldiers patrol it, to keep order. Therefore you have to behave yourself, got it? Or else they'll send you to h.e.l.l and they'll deny you access to all their stations. So when we get there, you crawl onto the platform and sit quietly. And that samovar of yours,' he nodded at Artyom's machine gun, 'don't go waving it around. I have a . . . I have to sort something out with someone so you'll have to sit and wait. We'll go to Prospect, we'll have a talk about how to get through that d.a.m.n pa.s.sage to Sukharevskaya.'

Bourbon went silent again and Artyom was left to himself. The tunnel wasn't too bad here, the ground was a little damp, and there was a dark, thin stream following the rails, headed in the same direction as they were. But, after a while, there was a quiet rustle and squeaking sound which sounded to Artyom like a nail scratching along gla.s.s and it made him wince in aversion. The little beasts weren't visible yet but their presence could already be felt.

'Rats!' Artyom spat out the vile word, feeling a chill pa.s.s along his skin. They still visited his nightmares, although his memories of that terrible dark moment when his mother and their entire station were drowned in a flood of rats were almost erased from his memory. Were they actually erased? No, they had just gone deeper, like a needle that wasn't pulled out but gets stuck in the body. It travels around, having been pushed in by an insufficiently trained doctor. At first it will hide and stay still but after a time an unknown force will set it in motion and it will make its pernicious way through the arteries, the nerve ganglions, ripping up vital organs and dooming its carrier to intolerable torment.

The memory of that time, of the blind fury and insatiable cruelty of those beasts, of the experiences of horror that the steel needle left deep in his subconscious only came to disturb Artyom at night. And the mere sight of them, even the vague smell of them, created a sort of electrical discharge in him, forcing his body to shudder in reflex. For Artyom and for his stepfather, and maybe for the other four who escaped with them on the trolley that day, rats were something much more frightening and loathsome than for the other inhabitants of the metro.

There were almost no rats at VDNKh: VDNKh: there were traps everywhere and poison had been spread around so Artyom had become unused to them. But they swarmed through the rest of the metro, and he'd forgotten about that or, rather, avoided thinking about it when he had taken the decision to go on this journey. there were traps everywhere and poison had been spread around so Artyom had become unused to them. But they swarmed through the rest of the metro, and he'd forgotten about that or, rather, avoided thinking about it when he had taken the decision to go on this journey.

'What's up boy - you afraid of rats?' Bourbon inquired maliciously. 'Don't like them? You're painfully spoilt . . . but get used to it. They're everywhere . . . But that's OK, it's good even: you won't go hungry,' he added and winked while Artyom was starting to feel nauseous. 'But really,' Bourbon continued seriously, 'you're better to be afraid where there's no rats. If there's no rats then there's been some bad trouble. And if there's no people either then you want to be afraid. But if the rats are running then everything's normal. Business as usual. Get it?'

There're people and there're people and Artyom definitely didn't want to share his suffering with this guy. So he nodded and didn't say anything. There weren't that many rats, and they ran away from the light of the flashlight and you hardly noticed them. But all the same one of them managed to get underfoot and Artyom stepped on something soft and slippery only to hear a shrill squeal. Artyom lost his balance and almost fell face down with all his equipment . . .

'Don't be afraid boy, don't be afraid,' Bourbon cheered him up. 'It gets worse. There's a couple of pa.s.sages in this s.h.i.t-hole teeming with them and you have to walk on the rails. And you're walking and crunching them underfoot.' And he snorted meanly for effect.

Artyom frowned. He was silent but he was squeezing his fists. He would have punched Bourbon right in his grinning face with pleasure!

Suddenly an indecipherable din came from far off and Artyom immediately forgot the insult and clasped the handle of his automatic weapon and looked at Bourbon questioningly.

'Don't worry. Everything's fine. We're coming up to Prospect,' Bourbon rea.s.sured him and patted him patronizingly on the shoulder.

Even though he'd warned Artyom that there were no guard posts at Prospect Mir, this was all very unusual for Artyom - to just go straight into another station without first seeing the weak light of a fire designating the border, without any obstacles along the way. When they got to the tunnel's exit, the din got louder and a glow of light became noticeable.

Finally, there were some cast-iron stairs to the left and a little bridge which took you up to the level of the platform. Bourbon's boots rattled up the iron steps and after a few steps the tunnel turned to the left and opened up and they were in the station.

There was a bright white beam of light in their faces: invisible from the tunnel, there was a little table on the side at which sat a man in a strange and unfamiliar old-fashioned, grey uniform, wearing a peak cap.

'Welcome,' he greeted them, averting the flashlight. 'Trading or transit?'

While Bourbon stated the purpose of their visit, Artyom peered at the Prospect Mir metro station before him. On the platform, along the pathways, twilight reigned, but there were arches lighted from the inside with a soft yellow light from which Artyom unexpectedly felt a squeeze in his chest. He wanted to be done with all the formalities and to look at what was going on in the station, there, where the arches were, from which this light was coming, so familiar and comforting that it almost hurt. And though it seemed to Artyom that he hadn't seen anything like it before, the sight of this light brought him back to the distant past and suddenly a strange image appeared to him: a small home, flooded with warm yellow light, a woman is half-reclined on a wide ottoman and she is reading a book but you can't see her face amidst the pastel wallpaper and the dark blue square of the window . . . The vision flashed in front of his mind but melted a second later, leaving him puzzled and excited. What had he just seen? Could it be that the weak light coming from the station could project an old slide of his childhood that had been lost in his subconscious onto an invisible screen? Could that young woman who was peacefully reading a book on the s.p.a.cious and comfortable ottoman be his mother?

Artyom impatiently thrust his pa.s.sport at the customs officer after agreeing, despite Bourbon's objections, to put his machine gun in their storage room for the duration of his visit. Then Artyom hurried along, attracted to the light behind the columns like a moth, towards the light and the din of a bazaar.

Prospect Mir was different from VDNKh, VDNKh, from Alekseevskaya, from Rizhskaya. The prosperity of the Hansa meant that they had better illumination than the emergency lights that gave light to the stations that Artyom had known during his conscious life. No, these weren't the same lamps that lighted the metro in the old days, they were weak, glowing lights which hung overhead every twenty feet, drawn along a wire that went across the whole station. But for Artyom, who was used to the cloudy-red emergency glow, to the unreliable light of fires, to the weak radiance from tiny pocket flashlights illuminating the inside of tents, the light at this station was totally strange. It was the same light that lit his early childhood, as far back as the time when life was at the surface, and he was charmed to be reminded of something that had long ago ceased to exist for him. So, arriving at the lighted part of the station, Artyom didn't rush into the rows of traders like the others but leant his back against a column and, partly covering his eyes with his hand, he stood and looked at the lamps, again and again, until there was a sharp pain in his eyes. from Alekseevskaya, from Rizhskaya. The prosperity of the Hansa meant that they had better illumination than the emergency lights that gave light to the stations that Artyom had known during his conscious life. No, these weren't the same lamps that lighted the metro in the old days, they were weak, glowing lights which hung overhead every twenty feet, drawn along a wire that went across the whole station. But for Artyom, who was used to the cloudy-red emergency glow, to the unreliable light of fires, to the weak radiance from tiny pocket flashlights illuminating the inside of tents, the light at this station was totally strange. It was the same light that lit his early childhood, as far back as the time when life was at the surface, and he was charmed to be reminded of something that had long ago ceased to exist for him. So, arriving at the lighted part of the station, Artyom didn't rush into the rows of traders like the others but leant his back against a column and, partly covering his eyes with his hand, he stood and looked at the lamps, again and again, until there was a sharp pain in his eyes.

'You what - gone crazy or something? Why are you staring at them so hard - you want to lose your eyes? You'll be as blind as a puppy, and what'll I do with you?' Bourbon's voice resounded in Artyom's ears. 'You've already gone and given them your balalaika, so you might as well go and have a look around . . . at what the lamps are trying to show you!'

Artyom cast a hostile look over at Bourbon but he obeyed him anyway.

There weren't all that many people at the station but they spoke so loudly, trading, beckoning, demanding, trying to out-yell each other, that it became clear why it was all so audible from afar, from the approach to the tunnel. On both tracks there were sc.r.a.ps of train structures - and some wagons were converted for habitation. Two rows of trays were arranged along the platform that displayed various utensils - some in orderly piles, others in sloppy heaps. On one side of the station there was an iron curtain which stood in the place where there was once an exit to the surface, and on the opposite side there was a line of grey bags which clearly demarcated a line of firing positions. An unnaturally white banner hung from this ceiling on which was painted a brown circle, the symbol of the Ring. Beyond the firing line were four escalators, which led to the Ring circuit, and that's where the territory of the powerful Hansa began (which was closed to foreigners). The frontier guards beyond the fences were dressed in waterproof overalls with the usual camouflage, but for some reason they were grey in colour.

'Why do they have grey camouflage?' Artyom asked Bourbon.

'They're fat animals, that's why,' he answered contemptuously. 'You, now . . . You go ahead and look around while I do a little trading here.'

There was nothing of particular interest to Artyom. There was tea, sticks of sausage, storage batteries for lamps, jackets and raincoats made from pig skin, some tattered books, most of which were p.o.r.nography, half-litre bottles of a suspicious looking substance with the inscription 'home-brew' written on crooked labels. And there really wasn't one trader selling weed which you used to be able to get hold of anywhere. Even the gaunt little man with the blue nose and watery eyes who was selling the dubious home-brew told Artyom to get lost when he asked if he had a little 'stuff'. There was a trader selling firewood, knotty logs and branches that some stalker had brought down from the surface. It was said to burn for a long time and produce little smoke. Here you paid for things in dimly gleaming Kalashnikov cartridges. A hundred grammes of tea was five cartridges; a stick of sausage was fifteen cartridges; a bottle of home-brew was twenty. They fondly called them 'little bullets': 'Listen, man, look at this, what a cool jacket, it's cheap, just thirty little bullets - and it's yours! OK, twenty-five and you'll take it now?'

Looking at the neatly arranged rows of 'little bullets' on the counters, Artyom recollected the words of his stepfather: 'I once read that Kalashnikov was proud of his invention, that his automatic weapon was the most popular gun in the world. They say that he was particularly happy that thanks to his device the borders of his homeland were kept safe. I don't know, if I had invented that thing I think I would have gone mad. To think that most murders have been committed with the help of your device! That's even scarier then being the inventor of the guillotine.'

One cartridge - one death. Someone's life removed. A hundred grammes of tea cost five human lives. A length of sausage? Very cheap if you please: just fifteen lives. A quality leather jacket, on sale today, is just twenty-five so you're saving five lives. The daily exchange at this market was equal in lives to the entire population of the metro.

'Well, so, did you find anything for yourself?' Bourbon came up and asked.

'Nothing interesting here for me.' Artyom brushed the question away.

'Aha, you're right, it's full of garbage. But, boy, this little station used to be the one place in this stinking metro station where you could find everything you want. You go there and they're all vying with one another: weapons, narcotics, girls, fake doc.u.ments.' Bourbon sighed dreamily. 'But these cretins,' he nodded at the Hansa flag, 'have made this into a nursery school: you can't do this, you can't do that . . . OK, let's go and get your hoe - we need to keep going.'

After getting Artyom's machine gun, they took a seat on the stone bench before entering the southern tunnel. It was murky there, and Bourbon had picked this spot especially in order to get their eyes used to the weaker light.

'Basically, this is the deal: I can't vouch for myself. I've never done this and so I don't know what I'm doing and if we'll run into trouble. Touch wood, of course, but even so, if we run into something . . . Well, if I start snivelling or go deaf, then that should be OK. As far as I heard, everybody goes crazy in their own way. Our boys didn't make it back to Prospect. I think that they didn't get far, and we might b.u.mp into them today . . . So you . . . get ready for that, because you're a little soft after all . . . And if I start to see red, I'll shut you up. That's the problem, you see? I don't know what to do . . . Well, OK.' Bourbon finally felt resolved after his hesitations. 'Boy, you're all right I guess, and you won't shoot a guy in the back. I'm going to give you my gun while we go through this pa.s.sage. Watch it,' he warned, looking Artyom tenaciously in the eyes, 'and don't be funny. I have a limited sense of humour.'

He shook some rags out of his rucksack, and then carefully pulled out a machine gun that was wrapped in plastic packaging. It was also a Kalashnikov but it was cut-off like the ones held by the Hansa border guards, with a hinged b.u.t.t and a short socket instead of the long one that Artyom had. Bourbon took the magazine out of it and put it back in his rucksack, throwing the rags in after it.

'Hold this!' he gave Artyom the weapon. 'And don't pack it away. It might prove useful. Though the pa.s.sage looks quiet . . .' And Bourbon didn't finish his sentence but jumped onto the pathway. 'OK, let's go. The sooner you go, the sooner you get there.'

It was frightening. When they went from VDNKh VDNKh to Rizhskaya, Artyom knew that anything could happen, but at least people went back and forth along those tunnels every day, and he knew that there was an inhabited station ahead of them where they were expected. It was just as unpleasant as it always was for anyone leaving a lighted and peaceful place. Even when they were headed for Prospect Mir from Rizhskaya, despite his doubts, he could amuse himself with the thought that ahead of him lay a Hansa station: that there was somewhere to go where he could relax in safety. to Rizhskaya, Artyom knew that anything could happen, but at least people went back and forth along those tunnels every day, and he knew that there was an inhabited station ahead of them where they were expected. It was just as unpleasant as it always was for anyone leaving a lighted and peaceful place. Even when they were headed for Prospect Mir from Rizhskaya, despite his doubts, he could amuse himself with the thought that ahead of him lay a Hansa station: that there was somewhere to go where he could relax in safety.

But it was terrifying here. The tunnel that lay before them was totally black, and an unusual, total, absolute darkness reigned - it was so thick you could almost touch it. As porous as a sponge, it greedily swallowed the rays of their flashlight, which was hardly sufficient to illuminate even a foot ahead. Straining to the limits of his hearing, Artyom attempted to distinguish the smallest germ of that strange and painful noise but it was in vain. Sounds probably had as hard a time getting through this darkness as light did. Even the bold crashing of Bourbon's boots sounded limp and mute in this tunnel.

On the right wall suddenly there was a gap - the flashlight beam sank into a black spot, and Artyom didn't immediately understand that it was simply a side-pa.s.sage which exited sideways from the main tunnel. He looked at Bourbon questioningly.

'Don't be scared. There was a transfer pa.s.sage here,' he explained, 'so that trains could get directly onto the Ring without transferring at other stations. But the Hansa filled it in - they're not fools. They wouldn't leave an open tunnel pointing straight at them . . .'

After that they walked in silence for quite a long time, but the silence was getting more and more oppressive and finally Artyom couldn't bear it.

'Listen, Bourbon,' he said, trying to disperse any hallucinations, 'is it true that some morons attacked a caravan here not long ago?'

Bourbon didn't answer at once and Artyom thought that perhaps he hadn't heard the question and was about to repeat it when Bourbon responded, 'I heard something like that. But I wasn't here then so I can't tell you for sure.'

His words made a dull sound and Artyom barely caught their sense, and had a hard time separating the words he heard from his own grinding thoughts about the fact that everything was so hard to hear in this tunnel.

'What? No one saw it? There're stations at either end - how could that be? Where could they have gone?' he continued, and not because he was especially interested in the answer but simply in order to hear his own voice.

Several minutes went by before Bourbon replied at last, but this time Artyom hadn't wanted to rush him, because there was an echo of the words he had just said resounding in his head and he was too busy listening to them.

'They say that somewhere here there's a . . . kind of hatch. It's covered over. It's not really visible. Well, how likely is it anyway that you'd see something in this darkness?' Bourbon added with a sort of unnatural irritation in his voice.

It took some time for Artyom to remember what they were talking about, and he agonizingly tried to catch hold of the sense of it all and to pose another question simply because he wanted to continue the conversation. Even if it was clumsy and difficult, it was saving them from the silence.

'And is it always so dark in here?' Artyom asked, feeling a bit spooked that his words made such little sound, as though there was something covering his ears.

'Dark? Yes, always. Everywhere is dark. It comes in . . . the great darkness, and . . . it shrouds the world and it will . . . dominate eternally,' Bourbon responded, making strange pauses.

'What's that? A book or something?' Artyom said, noticing that he had to make increasing efforts to catch the sound of his own words, and also paying attention to the fact that Bourbon's language had altered in a frightening way. But Artyom didn't have enough strength to be surprised by this.

'A book . . . Be afraid . . . of truths, concealed in ancient . . . volumes, where . . . words are embossed in gold on paper . . . slate-black . . . they don't decay,' Bourbon said ponderously and Artyom was struck by the thought that the man wasn't turning to speak to him as he had before.

'Beautiful!' Artyom almost yelled. 'Where does it come from?'

'And beauty . . . will be overthrown and crushed, and . . . the prophets will choke, endeavouring to p.r.o.nounce their premonitions . . . for a day . . . the future will be . . . blacker than their most ominous . . . fears and what they see . . . will poison their reason . . .' Bourbon continued quietly.

Suddenly he stopped and he turned his head to the left so sharply that Artyom could hear how his vertebrae cracked and and he looked Artyom straight in the eye.

Artyom started and stepped backwards, groping for his machine gun just in case. Bourbon looked at it with wide-open eyes, but his pupils were contracted into two tiny dots even though in the pitch black darkness of the tunnel they should have been thrown open to their limits in an attempt to capture as much light as possible. His face seemed unnaturally peaceful, not one muscle was tense, and there was even a contemptuous smile which had just disappeared from his lips.

'I've died,' Bourbon said. 'There is no more me.'

And as straight as a cross-tie, he fell face down.

And then that same terrible sound rushed into Artyom's ears but this time it did not expand and amplify gradually as it had the last time. No, it burst suddenly at full volume, deafening him and knocking him from his feet. The sound was more powerful here than it had been when he met it before, and Artyom, laid out on the ground, couldn't muster the will to stand for some time. But once he had covered his ears like before, and yelling as loudly as he could, he rushed and got up from the ground. Then he picked up the flashlight that had fallen from Bourbon's hands, he started feverishly to scan the walls, trying to find the source of the noise - the broken pipe. But the pipes were absolutely intact here, and the sound was coming from somewhere above.

Bourbon was lying there, immobile, still face down, and when Artyom turned him over, he saw that Bourbon's eyes were still open. Artyom tried hard to remember what to do in situations like this, and he put his hand on the man's wrist to look for a pulse. Even if it was as weak as a thread, or inconsistent, he wanted to feel it . . . But it was useless. Then he grabbed Bourbon by the hands and, pouring with sweat, he dragged his ever-heavier body forward, straight out of this place. It was fiendishly hard and made even more so because he had forgotten to remove his companion's rucksack.

After a few dozen steps Artyom suddenly stumbled on something soft and his nose was struck by a sickening and slightly sweet smell. He immediately remembered the words 'we might b.u.mp into them' and he redoubled his efforts, trying not to look underfoot, pa.s.sing bodies stretched out on the rails.

He pulled and pulled Bourbon along. Bourbon's head hung lifelessly and his hands were growing cold and slipping out of Artyom's sweaty hands but he didn't acknowledge it, he didn't want to acknowledge it, he had to get Bourbon out of there and he had promised him, they had an agreement!

The noise gradually began to die down and suddenly disappeared. Again there was a deathly silence and, feeling an enormous relief, Artyom allowed himself to finally sit down on the rails and catch his breath. Bourbon was lying motionless next to him and Artyom was looking with despair at his pale face as he breathed heavily. After about five minutes he made himself get up onto his feet and, taking Bourbon by the wrists, he moved forward stumbling. His head was absolutely empty apart from the vicious determination to drag this person to the next station.

Then his legs buckled and he tumbled onto the cross-ties but after lying there for a few minutes he crawled forward and grabbed Bourbon by the collar. 'I'll get there, I'll get there, I'll get there, I'll get there, I'llgetthereI'llgetthereI'llgetthereI'llgetthere,' he a.s.sured himself although he barely believed it. Having lost his strength entirely, he pulled his machine gun down from his shoulder and switched the safety lock to single shots and he directed the barrel to the south, let out a shot and called out: 'People!' But the last sound that he heard was not a human voice but the rustle of rat paws.

He didn't know how long he had lay there like that, gripping Bourbon by the collar, squeezing the handle of his machine gun, when his eyes perceived a ray of light. An unfamiliar old man with a flashlight in one hand and a strange gun in the other was standing above him.

'My young friend,' he was saying in a pleasant and sonorous voice. 'You can forget about your friend. He's as dead as Ramses the Second. Do you want to stay here and reunite with him in the heavens as soon as possible or can he wait for you for a little while?'

'Help me to take him to the station,' Artyom asked the man in a weak voice, covering his eyes from the light.

'I'm afraid that it's necessary for us to reject that idea,' the man said bitterly. 'I am resolutely against turning the metro station of Sukharevskaya into a tomb, it's not even that comfortable as it is. And then, if we take this lifeless body there then it's unlikely that anyone in the station will undertake to put him on his final path in a respectable way. What difference does it make whether the body decomposes here or at the station if its immortal soul has already returned to his Creator? Or to be reincarnated, depending on your religious views. Although all religions are mistaken to differing degrees.'

'I promised him . . .' Artyom sighed. 'We had an agreement . . .'

'My friend!' the unfamiliar man said frowning. 'I'm starting to lose my patience. My rules don't tell me to help the dead when there're enough living people that need help. I am returning to Sukharevskaya. I'm getting rheumatism from spending a long time in this tunnel. If you want to see your companion as soon as possible I advise you to stay here. The rats and the other lovely creatures will help you with that. And if you are concerned about the legal aspect of the question, then the contract is considered terminated if there is no objection from the other party.'

'But I can't just leave him here!' Artyom quietly tried to convince his rescuer. 'This was a living being. Leave him to the rats?'

'This, by the looks of it, was indeed a living person,' the man responded, inspecting the body sceptically. 'But now it is definitely a dead person and that isn't the same thing. OK, if you want, we can return here and you can make a cremation bonfire or whatever it is that you do in such circ.u.mstances. Now, get up!' he ordered and Artyom got to his feet reluctantly.

Despite his protests, the stranger decisively pulled the rucksack off Bourbon's back and threw it over his shoulder and, supporting Artyom, he quickly walked forward. At first Artyom had a hard time walking but it was as if with each step the old man was giving Artyom injections of his ebullient energy. The pain in his feet subsided, and his rational mind returned gradually. He was looking intently into the face of his rescuer. By the looks of him, the man was over fifty, but he looked surprisingly fresh and robust. His arms, which were supporting Artyom, were firm and didn't once tremble with fatigue the whole way back. His short hair was turning grey and his little, sculpted beard surprised Artyom - the man looked too well groomed for the metro, especially given the G.o.dforsaken place where it seemed this man lived.

'What happened with you, friend?' the unfamiliar man asked Artyom. 'It doesn't look like an attack, but more like he was poisoned . . . And I really want to hope that it's not what I think it is,' he added, not going into what exactly it was that he feared.

'No . . . He died by himself,' Artyom said, not having the strength to explain the circ.u.mstances of Bourbon's death, which he himself was only just starting to get his head around. 'It's a long story. I'll tell you later.'

The tunnel suddenly widened and they appeared to have arrived at the station. Something seemed strange to Artyom here, something unusual and a few seconds later he understood what it was.

'It's what - dark here?' he asked his companion in dismay.

'There's no authorities here,' the man replied. 'So there's no one to provide light for the people. That's why whoever needs light has to get it himself. Some can, some can't. But don't be afraid. Luckily I'm acquainted with the top ranks,' and he quickly climbed onto the platform and held out a hand to Artyom.

They turned into the first archway and went into a hall. There was only one long pa.s.sage, a colonnade with arches on both sides, and the usual iron walls, the stalled escalators. Barely lighted by weak little fires, and most of it plunged in darkness, Sukharevskaya was an oppressive vision and very sad. Crowds of people swarmed around the fires, some were sleeping on the floor, and strange half-bent figures in rags wandered from fire to fire. They were all cl.u.s.tered in the middle of the hall as far from the tunnels as they could be.

The bonfire to which the stranger led Artyom was noticeably brighter than the rest of them and it was located in the centre of the platform.

'One day this station will burn to the ground,' Artyom thought aloud, looking despondently at the hall.

'In four hundred and twenty days,' his companion said calmly. 'So, it's best you leave before then. In any case, that's what I plan to do.'

'How do you know?' Artyom asked and froze, remembering in a flash all that he had heard about magicians and psychics and scrutinizing the face of his companion - looking for the markings of unearthly knowledge.