'No,' he shook his head, 'talk to the priest.'

'Your Eminence,' Melnik addressed the priest tongue in cheek.

'You will excuse me, I am just an old soldier . . . How best to express it . . . I don't know haughty language. But here there is one place in your possession that we are searching for. Supposedly accessible . . . Things are kept there . . . Flaming arrows? Grapes of wrath?' He gazed into the old man's face, hoping that he would respond to one of his metaphors, but the priest stubbornly remained silent, sullenly staring at him from beneath his brows. 'The hot tears of the G.o.ds?' The stalker was continuing, to the surprised looks of Artyom and the others, to try get answers. 'Zeus' lightning bolts?'

'Stop playing the fool,' the old man finally interrupted him with contempt. 'There is nothing transcendental to trample with your dirty soldier boots.'

'Missiles,' Melnik at once became business-like. 'The missile unit just outside Moscow. An exit from the tunnel by Mayakovskaya. You must remember what I'm talking about. We have to get there right away, and it would be better for you to help.'

'Missiles . . .' the old man repeated slowly, as if testing the flavour the word.

'Missiles . . . You, probably, are about fifty years old, right? You still remember. They named the SS-18 "Satan" in the West. It was the only insight of a blind-from-birth human civilization.'

'Are you really so great?! You have destroyed the whole world. Are you really so great?'

'Listen, Your Eminence, we don't have time for this.' Melnik cut him off. 'I am giving you five minutes.' His fingers cracked as he stretched out his hands.

The old man made a face. It was as if neither the combat dress of the stalker and his fighters, nor the poorly concealed threat in Melnik's voice had the slightest impact on him.

'And what, what can you do to me?' he smiled. 'Torture me? Kill me? Go ahead, I'm already old, and in our faith there are not enough martyrs. So just kill me, like you killed hundreds of millions of other people! As you killed my whole world! Our whole world! Go ahead, squeeze the trigger of your d.a.m.ned machine, as you pressed the triggers and b.u.t.tons of dozens of thousands of different lethal devices!' The old man's voice, at first weak and hoa.r.s.e, quickly turned steely. Despite his matted grey hair, tied hands and short stature, he no longer looked pathetic: a strange force emanated from him, his every new word sounded more convincing and menacing than the last. 'You don't have to smother me with your hands, you don't even have to see my agony . . . You and all your machines will be d.a.m.ned! You have devalued both life and death . . . Do you consider me a madman? But the true madmen are you, your fathers and your children! Wasn't it really a perilous madness to try to subjugate the whole earth to yourselves, throw a bridle on nature and cause it to cramp and convulse? Where were you when the world was destroyed? Did you see how it was? Did you see what I saw? The sky, at first melting, and then engulfed with lifeless clouds? Boiling rivers and seas, expelling onto the sh.o.r.es creatures boiled alive, and then converted into frozen custard? The sun, disappearing from the sky, not to reappear for years? Homes turned to dust in a split second, and the people living in them turned to ashes? Did you hear their cries for help?! And those who died from epidemics and maimed by radiation? Did you hear their curses?! Look at him!' He pointed at Dron. 'Look at all those without arms, without eyes, with six fingers! Even those who have obtained new capabilities!'

The savage fell to his knees and seized on every word of his priest with awe. And Artyom himself felt something similar. Even the other soldiers unwillingly took a step back. Only Melnik continued, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his eyes, to look the old man in the eyes.

'Have you seen the death of this world?' the priest continued. 'Do you understand who is to blame for it? Who converted boundless green forests into scorched deserts? What did you do with this world? With my world? Earth has not known a greater evil than your d.a.m.ned mechanized civilization. Your civilization is a cancerous tumour, it is a huge amoeba, greedily soaking up everything is useful and nourishing and belching out only fetid, poison wastes. And now you once more need missiles! You need the most frightful weapons created by a civilization of criminals! Why? In order to complete what you started? Murderers! I hate you, hate you all!' he yelled in a rage, then had a coughing fit and fell silent. No one breathed a word until he stopped coughing and continued, 'But your time is coming to an end . . . And even if I do not survive until then, others will come to replace me, those will come who understand the perniciousness of technology, those who will be able to manage without it! Your numbers are dwindling and you will not be here much longer. It's sad that I will not see your agony! But we are nurturing sons who will! Man will repent that he destroyed everything of value to him in his arrogance! After centuries of deception and illusions, he finally will learn to distinguish between evil and good, between the truth and a lie! We are cultivating those who will populate the earth after you. And so that your agony is not dragged out, we soon will drive the dagger of mercy into your very heart! Into the flabby heart of your rotted civilization . . . That day is near!'

He spat at Melnik's feet.

The stalker didn't respond right away. He gave the old man, trembling in his rage, the once over. Then, folding his arms across his chest, asked with interest, 'And what? You conceived some kind of worm and made up a tale just to inspire your cannibals to hate technology and progress?'

'Shut up! What do you know of my hatred of your d.a.m.ned, of your diabolical technology! What do you understand about people, and of their hopes and goals and needs? If the old G.o.ds allowed man to go to h.e.l.l and died themselves along with their world, it makes no sense to revive them . . . In your words I hear the b.l.o.o.d.y arrogance, the contempt, the pride, that brought mankind to the brink of disaster. So, though there be no Great Worm, though we dreamed him up, you will very soon be convinced that this fabricated underground G.o.d is mightier than your celestial beings, those idols that tumbled from their thrones and were broken asunder! You laugh at the Great Worm! Go ahead and laugh! But you will not have the last laugh!'

'That's enough. The gag!' the stalker ordered. 'Don't touch him for now, he may come in handy for us again.'

They once more stuffed a rag into the mouth of the resisting old man as he cried out obscenities. The savage stood quietly, his shoulders drooped helplessly, but he did not take his lackl.u.s.tre eyes off the priest.

'Teacher! What's it mean - there is no Great Worm?' he uttered gravely at last. The old man didn't even look at him. 'What's it mean? The teacher dreamt up the Great Worm?' Dron spoke dully, shaking his head from side to side.

The priest did not answer. It seemed to Artyom that the old man had used up all his vital energy and will in his speech and was exhausted now.

'Teacher! Teacher . . . There is a Great Worm . . . Are you misleading them! Why? You are speaking an untruth - to confuse the enemies! He exists . . . Exists!' Unexpectedly, Dron began to howl. Such despair was heard in his half wailing, half crying, that Artyom wanted to approach him to comfort him. The old man, it seemed, already had said adieu to life and had lost any interest in his pupil, for now other questions troubled him.

'He exists! He exists! He exists! We are his children! We all are his children! He is and always was and always will be! He exists! If there is no Great Worm . . . That means . . . We are completely alone. . . .'

Something terrifying was happening to the savage who had been left bereft. Dron went into a trance, shaking his head, as if hoping to forget what he had heard, emitting the same note, and the tears dropping from his eyes mixed with the drool from his mouth. He didn't even make an attempt to dry himself, s.n.a.t.c.hing with his hands at his shaved skull. The soldiers released him, and he fell to the ground, covering his ears with his hands, striking himself on the head. He began to roll around wildly and uncontrollably, and his screams filled the whole tunnel. The fighters tried to quiet him, but even kicks and blows couldn't stop the howls bursting forth from his breast.

Melnik looked with disapproval at the cannibal, then he unb.u.t.toned the holster at his hip, pulled his Stechkin with the silencer from it, aimed at Dron and pulled the trigger. The silencer gave a quiet bang, and the savage went instantly limp. The inarticulate screaming he had been making stopped suddenly, but the echo repeated his last sounds for several more seconds, as if extending Dron's life for a moment: 'ooooooooooonnn. . . .' And only now did it begin to occur to Artyom what the savage had screamed before his death. 'Alone!'

The stalker slid the pistol back into the holster. Artyom was unable to lift his eyes towards him, looking instead at the silenced Dron and the priest sitting not far away. He did not react in any way to the death of his pupil. When the clap of the pistol had sounded, the old man hardly twitched, then looked in pa.s.sing at the savage's body and turned away with indifference again.

'Let's go on,' Melnik ordered. 'Half the metro will come running here with all this noise.'

The party formed up instantly. They put Artyom at the rear, equipped with the powerful flashlight and bullet-proof vest of one of the fighters who was carrying Anton. A minute later they had moved deep inside the tunnel. Artyom was not fit for the role of last man. He moved his legs with difficulty, stumbling on the ties, looking helplessly at the fighter walking ahead. Dron's dying bawling rang in his ears. His despair, disillusionment and unwillingness to believe that man had been left completely alone in this horrifying, gloomy world, had been transferred to Artyom. Strange, but only having heard the savage's howl, the full hopeless nostalgia for an absurd, fabricated divine being, he began to understand the universal feeling of solitude that fed mankind's faith.

If the stalker turned out to be right and they had been descending into the bowels of Metro-2 for more than an hour already, then the mysterious structure would turn out to be just an engineering design, cast off long ago by its proprietors and captured by semi-rational cannibals and their fanatical priests. The fighters began to speak in whispers. The party entered an empty station of an extremely unusual design. A short platform, low ceiling, enormously thick columns of ferroconcrete and tiled walls instead of the customary marble indicated that no one had asked that this station be easy on the eyes, and its singular mission consisted of protecting as effectively as possible those who used it. Bronze letters on the wall grown dim from time were formed into the incomprehensible word 'Sovmin.' In another place appeared 'Dom Pravitelstva RF.' Artyom knew that there were no stations under those names in the usual metro.

Melnik, it seemed, did not intend to hang about here. Quickly looking around, he spoke softly to his fighters about something and the party moved on. Artyom was overcome with a strange feeling that he was unable to express in words. Unseen Observers changed from menacing, wise and incomprehensible powers into phantasmagorical ancient sculptures ill.u.s.trating ancient myths and crumbling from the dampness and draft of the tunnels. At the same time, the other beliefs that he had b.u.mped into during this journey were lost in the gibberish of his consciousness. One of the greatest secrets of the metro was opening before him. He was walking through D-6, called by one of his companions the Golden Myth of the Underground. However, instead of a wave of happiness, Artyom was experiencing an incomprehensible bitterness. He was beginning to understand that some secrets should remain as secrets because they do not have any answers, and there are questions the answers to which it is better no one knows. Artyom was aware of the cold breath of the tunnels on his cheek, following the trail of his falling tears. He shook his head, just as Dron had done a little while ago. He began to shiver from the dank draft carrying the smell of dampness and desolation, as well as from his feelings of loneliness and emptiness. For a split second it seemed that nothing in the world made sense. His mission and man's attempts to survive in a changed world were worthless. There was nothing: just an empty, dark tunnel he was supposed to plod his way through, from 'Birth' station to 'Death' station. Those looking for faith had simply been trying to find the side branches in this line. But there were only two stations, and only tunnel connecting them.

When Artyom gathered his wits, it turned out that he had fallen several dozen paces behind the others. He didn't immediately understand what had forced him to come to his senses. Then, looking along the walls and listening closely, he realized: on one of the walls hung a loosely closed door, through which a strange, increasingly loud sound reached him. It was some kind of a dull murmur or dissatisfied rumbling. It probably hadn't been audible when the others were pa.s.sing the door. But now it was becoming difficult not to notice the noise.

The others had already moved a hundred metres beyond it. Overcoming the desire to dash after them, Artyom held his breath, approached the door and shoved it. A long, wide corridor revealed itself. It ended in the black square of an exit. The murmur was coming from there. Increasingly, it sounded like the roar of a huge animal. Artyom did not dare step inside. He stood, as if bewitched, staring into the dark emptiness and listened until the roar had intensified many times and he saw in the beam of his flashlight something incredibly huge hurtling towards him. He recoiled, slammed the door, and hurried to catch up with the others.

CHAPTER 18.

The Authority

They had already noticed his absence and had stopped. A white beam darted about the tunnel. When it fell on him, Artyom raised his hands just in case and screamed: 'It's me! Don't shoot!' The flashlight went out. Artyom hurried forward, expecting a dressing-down now. But, when he reached the others, Melnik only asked quietly, 'Didn't you hear anything just now?'

Artyom nodded. He didn't want to talk about what he had just seen. He thought it might just have been his imagination. He knew that he had to treat his impressions carefully in the metro. What was it? It had looked like a train racing by, but it couldn't have been. There hadn't been enough electricity in the metro to move the trains for dozens of years. The second possibility was even more improbable. Artyom recalled the warnings of the savages regarding the holy pa.s.sages of the Great Worm.

'So, the trains don't run any more, right?' he asked the stalker.

Melnik looked at him with displeasure.

'What trains? Once they stopped running, they never moved again until they were ransacked for parts. Do you know something about these sounds? I think it's subterranean water. There's a river quite near here. We pa.s.sed beneath it. Screw it! There are more important problems. We still don't know how to get out of here.'

Artyom didn't want to let the stalker think that he was dealing with a madman so he remained silent and let the subject drop. It was probably the river. The unpleasant sounds of flowing water and the babble of thin black tiny brooks along the edges of the rails had disturbed the sombre hush of the tunnel here. The walls and arches gleamed with moisture, a whitish film of mould covered them, and here and there were puddles. Artyom had become used to fearing water in the tunnels and this line made him particularly uncomfortable. His stepfather had told him about flooded tunnels and stations. Luckily, they lay deep or were located far away, so that a disaster was unlikely to spread to a whole branch. The further they moved, the dryer it became around them. The tiny brooks gradually disappeared, the mould on the walls was found more rarely, and the air became lighter. The tunnel went down, leaving everything empty. For the umpteenth time, Artyom recalled Bourbon saying that an empty line was most terrifying of all.

The others, it seemed, also understood this and often looked back at Artyom stumbling along last, but, having looked him in the eyes, they hastily turned back around. They walked straight ahead the whole time, not lingering at the grates cut away from the side branches and the thick cast-iron doors with locks that could be seen in the walls. Only now was it becoming clear to Artyom just how great were the dimensions of the labyrinth that had been dug into the earth beneath the city by dozens of generations of its inhabitants. The metro consisted of numerous pa.s.sages and corridors, spreading into the depths of a gigantic cobweb. Some of the doors the party pa.s.sed were open. The beam of a flashlight peeping into them for some seconds showed abandoned rooms and rusty bunk beds. Desolation reigned everywhere, and Artyom searched for even the slightest trace of human presence in vain. Even the metro had abandoned this grandiose structure very long ago.

The march seemed to go on forever. The old man was walking ever more slowly, he was all in, and neither jabs to his back nor the foul language of the fighters could force him to pick up the pace any longer. The party had not halted for longer than the half a minute the fighters carrying the stretcher with Anton needed to change hands.

Surprisingly, Oleg held on tenaciously. Although he was obviously tired, he didn't complain once. He only sniffled stubbornly, trying to keep pace with everyone. Up ahead, a lively discussion broke out.

Peeping from behind the broad backs of the fighters, Artyom understood what was going on. They had entered a new station. It looked almost the same as the previous one: low arches, columns thick as elephant legs, concrete walls coloured with oil paint. The platform was so wide that one was unable to see clearly what was on its other side. A cursory glance suggested that two thousand people could have waited here for a train. But there wasn't a soul here, and the last train had been sent to an unknown destination so long ago that the rails were covered with a black rust and the rotted ties were overgrown with moss. The station's name, made up of cast bronze letters, caused Artyom to shudder. It was that same mysterious word, 'Genshtab'. He immediately recalled the military personnel at Polis, and the poor lights wandering in the G.o.d-forsaken square near the demolished walls of the Defence Ministry building. Melnik lifted a gloved hand. The party froze at the same instant.

'Ulman, behind me,' the stalker spat out, and he nimbly climbed up to the platform. The robust fighter who was walking next to him followed the commander. The soft sounds of their stealthy steps dissolved at once in the quiet of the station. The other members of the party, as if on command, took up defensive positions, keeping the tunnel in their sights in both directions. Finding himself in the middle of them, Artyom decided that he might be able to examine the strange station under the cover of his comrades.

'Will Papa die?' He felt the boy pulling on his sleeve. Artyom lowered his eyes. Oleg was standing, staring at him pleadingly, and Artyom understood that the child was ready to cry. He shook his head in a calming manner and patted the boy on the head.

'Is it because I told where Papa worked? Did they hurt him for that?' Oleg asked. 'Papa always told me never to talk to anyone,' he sobbed. 'He said that people don't like missile men. Papa said that it wasn't shameful and bad and that the missile men had been protecting the country. That others just envy them.'

Artyom glanced at the priest apprehensively, but the old man, fatigued by the journey, had sat down on the floor and was staring blankly into the emptiness, paying no attention to their conversation.

Melnik and Ulman returned several minutes later. The party crowded around the stalker, and he put the others in the picture: 'The station is empty. But it has not been abandoned. In several places there are images of their worm. And something else . . . We found a diagram on the wall that was hand drawn. If one is to believe it, this branch leads to the Kremlin. The central station and transfer to the other lines is there. One of them goes off in the direction of Mayakovskaya. We have to move off in that direction. The track should be free. We won't poke our noses into the side pa.s.sages. Questions?'

The fighters glanced at each other, but no one said anything. Then the old man, who had been sitting indifferently on the ground until now, became upset at the word 'Kremlin,' and began shaking his head and mumbling something. Melnik bent down and tore the gag from his mouth.

'You can't go there! You can't! I won't go to the Kremlin! Leave me here!' the priest began to babble.

'What's wrong?' the stalker asked with displeasure.

'We can't go to the Kremlin! We can't go there! I won't go!' the old man kept repeating like a wind-up toy, fidgeting.

'Well, it's fine that you won't go there,' the stalker answered him.

'At least, your fellows won't be there. The tunnel is empty, clean. I don't intend to go into the branch lines. It's best that I go straight through, via the Kremlin.'

People started whispering. Recalling the sinister glow on the Kremlin towers, Artyom understood why it wasn't only the priest who was afraid to show himself there.

'Everyone!' Melnik said. 'We are moving forward. There's no time to waste. They have a taboo day today and there is no one in the tunnels. We don't know when it will end, so we have to press on. Get him up!'

'No! Don't go there! You can't! I won't go!' The old man, it seemed, had gone totally out his mind. When a fighter approached him, the priest slipped out of his hands with an imperceptible serpentine movement, then with feigned obedience froze at the sight of the machine gun muzzles aimed at him.

'Well, get lost!' His triumphant laughter turned into a choking wheeze after several seconds, a spasm twisted his body and he foamed profusely at the mouth. His face became a hideous mask, with his mouth sharply angled upwards. It was the most terrifying smile Artyom had seen in his whole life.

'Ready,' Melnik reported. He approached the old man who had fallen to the ground and, hooking him with the tip of his boot, turned him over. The stiffened body moved heavily and rolled over face downwards. At first Artyom thought that the stalker had done it so as not to see the dead man's face, but then he understood the real reason. Melnik illuminated the tightly drawn wires around the old man's wrists with his flashlight. The priest was squeezing the needle he had driven into his left forearm in his right fist. Artyom could not understand how he had contrived to do it, where he had hidden the poisoned dart and why he had not used it earlier. He turned away from the body and covered young Oleg's eyes with the palm of his hand. The party had stopped dead still. Although the order to move had been issued, not one of the fighters had stirred. The stalker looked them over. One could imagine what was going on in the fighters' heads: just what awaited them at the Kremlin if the prisoner preferred suicide to avoid going there? Not losing any time on opinions, Melnik stepped towards the stretcher with the groaning Anton, bent down and took one of the handles.

'Ulman!' he called. After a second of wobbling, the broad-shouldered scout took up position at the second handle of the stretcher. Submitting to an unexpected impulse, Artyom approached them and grabbed a rear handle. Someone else stood beside him. Saying not a word, the stalker straightened up and they moved forward. The others followed them, and the party once more a.s.sumed combat formation.

'It's not too far now,' Melnik said quietly. 'About two hundred metres. The main thing is to find the crossing to the other line. Then, on to Mayakovskaya. I don't know what's further ahead. There's no Tretyak . . . We'll think of something. Now we have one road. It's impossible to turn off it.'

His words about the road woke something in Artyom and he again recalled his own trip. Having thought about it, he didn't immediately recognize what Melnik was talking about but as soon as he heard the stalker's reference to the dead Tretyak, he started and loudly whispered to him: 'Anton . . . The wounded man . . . it seems he served in the RVA . . . So he's a missile man! That means we still will be able to do it! Won't we?'

Melnik looked over his shoulder at the watch commander on the stretcher.

He, it seemed, was really ill. The paralysis in Anton had pa.s.sed long ago, but now delirium tormented him. His groans were replaced by unclear but furious commands, desperate entreaties, sobbing and muttering. And the closer they approached the Kremlin, the louder the wounded man's cries became and the more intently he bucked on the stretcher. 'I said! Don't argue! They're coming . . . Hit the ground! Cowards . . . But just how . . . just how are the others?! No one will be able there, no one!'

Anton argued with comrades only he could see. His forehead was covered with perspiration, and Oleg, running alongside the stretcher, took advantage of a short respite while the fighters changed hands to dab at his father's forehead with a rag. Melnik shined his light at the watch commander, as if trying to understand whether he would come to his senses. His eyeb.a.l.l.s flashed back and forth beneath their lids and Anton clenched his teeth and his fists were clenched. He threw his body one way and then the other. Only the canvas straps stopped him from falling from the stretcher, but it was becoming increaingly difficult to carry him.

After another fifty metres, Melnik lifted his hand and the party again came to a halt. A crudely painted symbol was shown in white on the floor: the now customary twisting line thrust its thickened head at a fat, red mark that cut across the line lying ahead. Ulman gave a whistle.

'The red light's lit, it says there's no road,' someone laughed nervously from the rear.

'It's for the worms, it doesn't concern us,' the stalker cut him short. 'Forward!'

However, now they were moving ahead more slowly. Melnik, having put on the night vision device, took up the position at the head of the party. But it was not only out of caution they had stopped hurrying. At the 'Genshtab' station, the tunnel began to angle more sharply downward, and an invisible, but tangible haze of some presence was creeping from the Kremlin. Shrouding the people, it convinced them that something inexplicable, huge and evil was hidden there, in the pitch dark depths. It was not the same feeling as Artyom had experienced before. It wasn't like the dark vortex that had pursued him in the lines at Sukharevskaya, nor like the voices in the pipes, or the superst.i.tious fear generated and fed by the people in the tunnels leading to Park Pobedy. He felt more strongly that this time something inanimate, but alive nonetheless, was concealed. Artyom looked at the stalwart Ulman walking on the other side of the stretcher. He suddenly really wanted to talk with him. It wasn't important what they talked about. He just wanted to hear a human voice.

'And why do the stars at the Kremlin glow on the towers?' The question had been tormenting him.

'Who told you that they glow?' the fighter asked with surprise.

'There's no such thing there. It's like this with the Kremlin: each person sees what he wants to see. Some say that it hasn't been there for ages. It's just everyone hopes to see the Kremlin. They just want to believe that this holy of holies was left intact.'

'And what happened to it?' Artyom asked.

'No one knows,' Ulman replied, 'except your cannibals. I was still young, about ten years old then. And those who did the fighting say that they didn't want to destroy the Kremlin so dropped some kind of a secret development on it . . . Biological weapons. Right at the beginning. They didn't notice it right away and didn't sound the alarm, but when they understood what was what, it was already too late, because it had consumed everyone there, it even swallowed up the people from the neighbourhoods. They had been living outside the wall up to then and felt wonderful.'

'But how does it . . . swallow?' Artyom was not able to shake off a vision: of the stars shimmering with the unearthly light on the tops of the Kremlin towers.

'Did you know there was such an insect as the doodlebug? It would dig a funnel in the sand, and climb down to the bottom and open its mouth. If an ant ran past and accidentally touched the edge of the hole, that was it. End of its career. The doodlebug would move, the sand would pour to the bottom and the ant went straight down, falling into its mouth. Well, it's the same thing with the Kremlin. It stands on the edge of a funnel it can fall into and will suck you down,' the fighter smirked.

'But why do people go inside?' persisted Artyom.

'How would I know? Hypnosis, most likely . . . So take for example these cannibalistic illusionists of yours. They almost forced us to stay there . . .'

'So just why then are we making our retreat towards it?' Artyom asked with a puzzled look.

'Those aren't questions for me, but for the boss. But I understand that you have to be outside and look at the walls and towers for it to grab you. But it seems we're already inside . . . What is there to see here?'

Melnik turned round and angrily hissed at them. Ulman immediately stopped short and shut up. And a sound his voice had been covering up could be heard. Was it a soft gurgling coming from the deep? A rumbling? It didn't seem to presage anything terrible, but it was persistent and unpleasant, and there was no way of ignoring it. They pa.s.sed by a trio of powerful pressurized doors arranged one behind the other. All the doors were opened wide, invitingly, and a heavy iron curtain was raised to the ceiling. 'Doors,' Artyom thought. 'We are on a doorstep.'

The walls suddenly parted, and they ended up in a marble hall, so s.p.a.cious that the beam of the powerful flashlights hardly reached the opposite wall. The ceiling, in contrast to other secret stations, was high here and thick, richly adorned columns supported it. Ma.s.sive gilded chandeliers, turned black by time, still flashed brilliantly in the beam of a flashlight. The walls were covered with huge mosaic panels. They depicted an old man with a beard with people in work clothes smiling at him, and young girls in modest garments and light white headscarves, and soldiers in out-dated service caps, a squadron of fighters being carried along the sky, a rumbling tank column and finally the Kremlin itself. There was no name at this surprising station, but its absence was just enough to understand where they were. The columns and walls were covered with a thick layer of grey dust. It was obvious that no feet had encroached here for decades; and it was strange to think that even the intrepid savages had fled this place Further on there was an unusual train on the track. Its only two carriages were heavily armoured and painted in a protective dark green colour. The windows had been replaced with narrow slits resembling gun slots. The doors, one on each carriage, were locked. It occurred to Artyom that perhaps the inhabitants of the Kremlin had not been able to use their own secret track for escape. They got to the platform and stopped.

'So this is what it's like here . . .' The stalker lifted his head toward the ceiling, as far as his helmet allowed him. 'How many tales I've heard . . . But it's not like that at all . . .'

'Where to now?' Ulman asked.

'No idea,' Melnik confessed. 'We have to investigate.'

This time he didn't abandon them and the people slowly moved around all together. The station resembled a conventional one in some respects: along the edges of the platform two tracks had been built and an elongated hall ended in two escalators, forever stopped, that exited to magnificent rounded arches. The one closest to them went up and the other plunged to a quite unimaginable depth. Somewhere here, there had to be an elevator. The former residents of the Kremlin would hardly have had, as mortal beings have, two minutes to creep down an escalator.

Melnik was spellbound and so were the others. Trying to reach the high arches with their beams, scrutinizing the bronze sculptures installed inside the hall, admiring the magnificent panels and astonished by the grandeur of this station, a true underground palace, they even began to whisper so as not to violate its peace. Looking along the walls with admiration, Artyom completely forgot about the dangers and about the priest who had finished himself off, and about the intoxicating radiance of the Kremlin stars. Only one thought remained in his head: he was trying so hard to imagine how unspeakably beautiful this station must have been in the bright light of those magnificent chandeliers.

They were approaching the opposite end of the hall where the steps of the down escalator began. Artyom wondered what was concealed down there. Another station perhaps, from which trains were sent directly to secret bunkers in the Urals? Or tracks leading to countless corridors of dungeons? A deep fortress? Strategic reserves of weapons, medicines and foodstuffs? Or simply an endless dual ribbon of steps leading downward, as far as the eye could see? Wouldn't that deepest point of the metro of which Khan had spoken be located here? Artyom imagined the most improbable pictures, deferring that moment when, reaching the edge of the escalator, he would finally see just what really was located below. That's why he was not first at the handrail. The fighter who had just been telling him about the doodlebug had reached the arch earlier. Uttering a shriek, he shrunk back in fright. And a moment later it was Artyom's turn. Slowly, like certain magical creatures, which had been sleeping for hundreds of years, but were suddenly were awake and flexing muscles that had become numb from ages of sleep, both escalators began to move. The steps crawled downward with a strained creak. It was inexpressibly eerie . . . Something here did not add up, did not correspond to what Artyom knew and understood about escalators. He felt it, but was unable to grasp the slippery shadow of understanding by the tail.

'Do you hear how quiet it is? It's not the motor moving it, you know. The machine room is not working. Ulman facilitated it.'

But of course, that was it. The creak of the stairs and the grinding of the ungreased gears, and all the sounds that the revived mechanism emitted. Was that all? Artyom again heard the disgusting gurgling and slurp that had reached him in the tunnel. The sounds were coming from the depths where the escalators led. He gathered his courage and, approaching the edge, illuminated the inclined tunnel along which the blackish brown ribbon of steps crawled ever faster. For something like a moment it seemed that the Kremlin's secret had been opened up before him. He saw something dirty, brown, oily, overflowing and unambiguously alive oozing through the slits between the steps. It emerged from these slits in short spurts, rising and falling in step along the whole length of the escalator as far as Artyom could see. But it was not a meaningless fluctuation. All these spurts of a living substance were part of one gigantic whole, which was straining to move the steps. And somewhere far below, at a depth of several dozen metres, this very dirty and oily stuff spread freely about the floor, swelling and clearing away, overflowing and quivering, emitting those same strange and revolting sounds. The arch was like a monstrous jaw to Artyom, the domes of the escalator tunnel a throat, and the steps themselves, the greedy tongue of a terrible ancient G.o.d awakened by strangers. And then it was as if a hand touched his consciousness, stroking it. And his head emptied, as in the tunnel. And he wanted only one thing - to step onto the escalator and ride below, where the answer to all his questions waited. The Kremlin's stars once more flashed before his imagination's gaze . . .

'Artyom! Run!' A glove slapped him on the cheeks, burning his skin. He roused himself and was stupefied: the brown slush was creeping up through the tunnel, swelling visibly, expanding, frothing like steaming pig's milk. His legs would not obey, and his flash of consciousness was extremely short. Whatever controlled him set him free for only a flash in order to grasp him firmly and draw him back into the haze once more.

'Pull him!'

'The lad first! And don't cry . . .'

'Heavy . . . And the wounded guy is still here . . .'

'Drop it, drop the stretcher! Where are you going with the stretcher!'

'Wait a moment, I'll climb it too, it's easier with two . . .'