Willy looked right through me, moved away from the typewriter, laid a hefty file on the desk, and started leafing through it.
“Redrick Schuhart?”
“The same,” I answered, feeling a nervous laugh welling up. I couldn’t help it, it was funny.
“How long have you been with the institute?”
“Two years, starting my third.”
“Family?”
“I’m alone,” I said. “An orphan.”
Then he turned to his little sergeant and gave him an order in a stern tone.
“Sergeant Lummer, go to the files and bring back case number one-fifty.”
The sergeant saluted and disappeared, and Willy slammed the file shut and asked gloomily:
“Up to your old tricks again?”
“What old tricks?”
“You know what tricks. There’s new material on you here.”
So, I thought.
“Where from?”
He frowned and banged his pipe against the ashtray in irritation.
“That doesn’t concern you,” he said. “As an old friend, I’m warning you. Knock it off, knock it off for good. If they get you a second time, you won’t get off with six months. And they’ll kick you out of the institute once and for all, understand?”
“I understand,” I said. “That I can understand. I just don’t understand what bastard could have squealed.”
But he was looking through me again, puffing on his empty pipe and flipping through the file. That meant that Sergeant Lummer had returned with case #150.
“Thank you, Schuhart,” said Capt. Willy Herzog, also known as the Hog. “That’s all I wanted cleared up. You’re free to go.”
So I went to the locker room, pulled on my lab clothes and lit up. All along I kept thinking where the rumor could have come from. It had to be all lies if it came from within the institute, because nobody there knew anything about me and there was no way that anyone could. If it had been a report from the police—again, what could they know there except for my old sins? Maybe they had gotten Buzzard? That bastard, he’d drown his own grandmother to save his skin. But even Buzzard didn’t know anything about me now. I thought and thought and didn’t come up with anything very pleasant. So I decided the hell with it. The last time I had gone into the Zone at night was three months ago, and I had gotten rid of most of the stuff and had spent almost all of the money. They hadn’t caught me with the goods, and I was too slippery for them to catch me now.
But then, just as I was heading up the stairs, I suddenly saw the light, and saw it so well that I had to go back to the locker room, sit down, and have another cigarette. It meant that I couldn’t go into the Zone today. Nor tomorrow, nor the day after. It meant that those toads had their eye on me again, that they hadn’t forgotten me, or if they had forgotten, then somebody had reminded them. And now it no longer mattered who had done the reminding. No stalker, unless he was completely off his rocker, would go near the Zone even at gunpoint, not if he knew that he was being watched. I should have been burrowing into the deepest, darkest corner at that very moment. Zone? What Zone? I hadn’t been in any Zone, even with a pass, for months! What are you harassing an honest lab worker for?
I thought the whole thing through and even felt a sense of relief that I wouldn’t be going into the Zone that day. But what would be the nicest way of informing Kirill of the fact?
I told him straight out.
“I’m not going into the Zone. What instructions do you have?”
At first, of course, he just stared at me bug-eyed. Then he seemed to understand. He led me by the elbow into his little office, sat me down at his desk, and sat on the windowsill facing me. We lit up. Silence. Then he asked me, careful-like:
“Has something happened, Red?”
What could I tell him?
“No,” I said. “Nothing happened. Yesterday I blew twenty bills at poker—that Noonan is a great player, the louse.”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Have you changed your mind?”
I made a choking noise from the tension.
“I can’t,” I said to him through clenched teeth. “I can’t, do you understand? Herzog just had me up in his office.”
He went limp. He got that pathetic look again and his eyes looked like they were a sick poodle’s again. He shuddered, lit a new cigarette with the butt of the old one, and spoke softly.
“You can trust me, Red. I didn’t breathe a word to anyone.”
“Skip it,” I said. “Nobody’s talking about you.”
“I haven’t even told Tender yet. I made out a pass in his name, but I haven’t even asked him if he’ll go.”
I said nothing and went on smoking. It was funny and sad. The man didn’t understand a thing.
“What did Herzog say to you?”
“Nothing in particular,” I said. “Someone squealed on me, that’s all.”
He looked at me kind of strange, hopped off the sill, and started walking up and down. He ran around his office and I sat blowing smoke rings in silence. I was sorry for him, of course, and I felt bad that things hadn’t worked out better. Some cure I came up with for his melancholy. And whose fault was it? My own. I tempted a baby with a cookie, but the cookie was in a hiding place, and the hiding place was guarded by mean men… Then he stopped pacing, came up close to me, and looking off to the side somewhere, asked awkwardly:
“Listen, Red, how much would a full empty cost?”
At first I didn’t understand him. I thought at first that he was hoping to buy one somewhere. Where would you buy one? Maybe it was the only one in the world and besides he couldn’t possibly have enough dough for that. Where would he get the money from? He was a foreign scientist, and a Russian one at that. And then the thought struck me. So the bastard thinks that I’m doing it for the greenbacks? You so and so, I thought to myself, what do you take me for? I opened my mouth to tell him off. And I shut up. Because, actually, what else could he take me for? A stalker is a stalker. The more green stuff the better. He trades his life for greenbacks. And so it looked to him that yesterday I had cast my line and today I was reeling him in, trying to raise my price.
The thought made me tongue-tied. And he kept staring at me intently, without blinking. And in his eyes I saw not contempt but a kind of understanding, I guess. Then I calmly explained it to him.
“No one with a pass has ever gone to the garage before. They haven’t laid the tracks to it yet. You know that. So here we come back from the Zone and your Tender brags to everybody how we headed straight for the garage, picked up what we needed, and came right back. Like we just went down to the warehouse or something. And it will be perfectly clear to everyone,” I said, “that we knew ahead of time what we wanted there. And that means that someone set us on to it. And which of us three that could have been—well, there’s no point in spelling it out for you. Do you understand what’s in store for me here?”
I finished my little speech. We sat staring into each other’s eyes, saying nothing. Suddenly he clapped his hands, rubbed his palms together, and announced in a hearty tone:
“Well, if you can’t, you can’t. I understand you, Red, and I can’t pass judgment. I’ll go alone. Maybe it’ll go fine. It won’t be the first time.”
He spread out the map on the windowsill, leaned on his hands, and bent over it. All his heartiness seemed to evaporate before my eyes. I could hear him muttering.
“Forty yards, maybe forty-one, another three in the
“They won’t let you out alone,” I said.
“They will,” he muttered. “I know all the sergeants and all the lieutenants. I don’t like those trucks! They’ve been exposed to the elements for thirty years and they’re just like new. There’s a gasoline carrier twenty feet away and it’s completely rusted out, but they look like they’ve just come off the assembly line. That’s the Zone for you!”
