looking closer, Redrick noted a dark gray spot between the two dry hills. He looked at the map. There was an X there, and it said “Whip” next to it in clumsy letters. The red dotted line of the path went to the right of the X. The name was sort of familiar, but who Whip was exactly, and what he looked like, and what he did, Redrick could not remember. For some reason, Redrick could only remember the smoky room of the Borscht, huge red paws holding glasses, thundering laughter, and open jaws filled with yellow teeth—a fantastic herd of titans and giants gathered at the watering hole, one of his most striking childhood memories—his first visit to the Borscht. What had I brought that time? An empty, I think. Straight from the Zone, wet, hungry, crazy, with a sack over my shoulder, I burst into the bar and clattered the sack on the counter in front of Ernest, looking around angrily, listening to the wisecracks, waiting for Ernest—young then and in a bow tie, as usual—to count the right amount of greenbacks. No, wait, it wasn’t green back then, we still had the square royal bills with some half-naked dame wearing a cape and a wreath. I waited, put away the money, and unexpectedly, even for myself, took a heavy mug from the counter and slammed it into the closest laughing face. Redrick smirked and thought: maybe that was Whip himself?
“Is it all right to go between the two hills, Mr. Schuhart?” Arthur asked in a low voice near his ear. He was next to him looking at the map, too.
“We’ll see when we get there.” Redrick kept looking at the map. There were two other X’s, one on the slope of the hill with the tree, the other on the rocks. Poodle and Four-eyes. The path was marked below them. “We’ll see,” he repeated, folding up the map and putting it in his pocket.
He looked Arthur over.
“Put the backpack on my back. We’ll go like before,” he said, shifting under the weight of the pack and arranging the straps more comfortably. “You go ahead, so that I can see you every second. Don’t look back and keep your ears open. My order is law. Keep in mind that we’ll have a lot of crawling to do, don’t suddenly be afraid of the dirt. If I tell you to, drop your face into the mud without any backtalk. And button your jacket. Ready?”
“Ready.” Arthur was very nervous; the rosiness of his cheeks had disappeared.
“First we go this way.” Redrick waved sharply in the direction of the nearest hill a hundred steps from the rocks. “Got it? Let’s go.”
Arthur heaved a sigh, stepped over the rails, and started down sideways from the embankment. The pebbles rained after him noisily.
“Easy, easy,” Redrick said. “There’s no hurry.”
He started down slowly after him, automatically adjusting his leg muscles to the weight of the heavy backpack. He watched Arthur out of the corner of his eye. He’s scared, he thought. He must sense it. If his sense is like his father’s, he does. If you only knew how things were turning out, Buzzard. If you only knew, Buzzard, that I took your advice this time. “This is one place, Red, that you can’t go to alone. Like it or not, you’ll have to take somebody with you. I can give you one of my people who’s expendable.” You talked me into it.
It’s the first time in my life that I agreed to something like this. Well, maybe it will turn out all right, he thought. Maybe, somehow, it will work out. After all, I’m not Buzzard Burbridge, maybe I’ll figure something out.
“Stop!” he told Arthur.
The boy stopped ankle-deep in rusty water. By the time Redrick got down to him, the quagmire had sucked him in up to his knees.
“Do you see that rock?” Redrick asked. “There, under the hill? Head for it.”
Arthur moved on. Redrick let him get ten paces ahead and then followed. The mud slurped underfoot. It was a dead swamp—no bugs, no frogs, even the willows were dry and rotten. Redrick looked around, but for now everything seemed to be in order. The hill slowly got closer, covering the sun, which was still low in the sky, and finally blocking the entire eastern sky. At the rock, Redrick looked back at the embankment. It was brightly lit by the sun. A train of ten ore cars stood on it. Some of the cars had fallen off the tracks and were lying on their sides, and the embankment above them was covered with the rusty red piles of the ore. Further on, in the direction of the quarry, north of the train, the air over the track shimmered and undulated, and tiny rainbows exploded and died in the air. Redrick looked at the shimmer, spat, and turned away.
“Let’s go,” he said. Arthur turned his tense face to him. “See those rags over there? You’re looking the wrong way! Over there, to the right.”
“Yes,” said Arthur.
“Well, that was a guy called Whip. A long time ago. He didn’t listen to his elders and now he lies there in order to show smart people the right way. Look just to the right of Whip. Got it? See the spot? Right where the willows are a little thicker. That’s the way. You’re off!”
Now they were moving parallel to the embankment. Every step brought them to shallower water, and soon they were walking on dry, springy hillocks. The map still showed this as solid swamp. The map’s old, thought Redrick, Burbridge hasn’t been here in a long time, and it’s gotten out of date. That’s bad. Of course, it’s easier to walk on dry land, but it would have been better for that swamp to be here. Look at Arthur go, he thought. He’s walking like he’s strolling down Central Avenue.
Arthur seemed to have perked up and was walking full speed. He had one hand in his pocket and he was swinging the other as if out on a stroll. Redrick rummaged in his pocket, took out a bolt weighing an ounce or so, and threw it at his head. The bolt hit Arthur in the back of the head. The boy gasped, grabbed his head, crouched, and fell into the dry grass. Redrick stood over him.
“That’s how it comes out here, Artie,” he pontificated. “This isn’t an avenue, we’re not on a promenade here, you know.”
Arthur got up slowly. His face was drained white.
“Everything clear?” Redrick asked.
Arthur gulped and nodded.
“Fine. And next time I’ll let you have it in the teeth. If you’re still alive. Go ahead!”
The boy could have made a stalker, after all, thought Redrick. They probably would have called him Pretty Boy Artie. We used to have another Pretty Boy, his name was Dixon, but now they called him Hamster. The only stalker to fall into the meatgrinder and live. He was lucky. The fool still thinks that it was Burbridge who pulled him out of it. The hell he did! You don’t get pulled out of the meatgrinder. He did pull him out of the Zone, that’s true enough. Burbridge performed a heroic deed like that. If he hadn’t… ! Everybody was getting fed up with his tricks, and the guys had told him: you better not come back if you come back alone. That was when they began calling him Buzzard, before they used to call him Winner.
Redrick felt a barely perceptible current of air on his left cheek and immediately, without thinking, he shouted: “Halt!”
He extended his hand to the left. The current was stronger. Somewhere between them and the embankment there was a mosquito mange, or maybe it extended along the embankment itself: there was a reason why the cars had tilted over. Arthur stood as though he had been planted, he did not even turn around.
“To the right. Let’s go.”
Yes, he would have made a good stalker. What the hell, do I feel sorry for him or something? That’s all I need. Did anyone ever feel sorry for me? I guess they did. Kirill felt sorry for me. Dick Noonan feels sorry for me. Of course, he might be more interested in Guta than in feeling sorry for me, but one doesn’t necessarily rule out the other. Only I don’t get to feel pity. My choice is always either/or. He finally understood the choice: either this boy, or my Monkey. There was no real choice, it was clear. If only miracles did happen, some voice said inside, and he repressed the voice with horror.
They went around the mound of gray rags. There was nothing left of Whip. Some distance away in the dry grass lay a long, completely rusted stick—a minesweeper. In those days many stalkers used minesweepers, buying them up on the quiet from army suppliers, and depended on them like on the Lord God himself, and then two stalkers were killed within a few days, killed by underground explosions. And that put an end to it. Who had this Whip been? Did Buzzard bring him here or had he come on his own? Why were they all drawn to this quarry? Why hadn’t I heard anything about it? Damn it, it’s hot! And this is so early in the morning, I can imagine what it will be like later.
Arthur, walking five paces ahead, wiped the sweat from his brow. Redrick squinted up at the sun; it was still low. And suddenly he realized that the dry grass was not rustling underfoot but squeaking like cornstarch, and it was no longer stiff and bristly, but soft and crumbly—it was falling apart under their shoes, like flakes of soot. And he saw Arthur’s clear footprints, and he threw himself down on the ground, shouting: “Hit the dirt!”
