4.

By late evening Maxim had had it with the city. He was ravenous. He had been on his feet all day, seen a great deal but under-stood almost nothing. He did pick up several new words by eavesdropping on conversations and could now identify some of the letters on signs and posters, but that was it. The accident with Fank had disturbed him, yet he was relieved to be on his own again. Independence was very important to him; it was something he had lacked during his confinement in Hippo's fifth-floor termite's nest with its miserable ventilation. Reviewing the entire situation, he decided not to return to Hippo for the time being but to lose himself for a while. Sure, courtesy to your hosts was important, but the chance to gather information was something to be considered as well. Yes, it was damned important to establish communication with these people, but a better opportunity to gather information on his own would probably never turn up again. So communication would have to wait.

The city amazed him. It bugged the earth. All movement took place either along the ground or beneath it. The vast areas between buildings and the sky above them were filled only with smoke, rain, and fog. The city was gray, smoky, and drab. There was a sameness everywhere. Not in its buildings -- some were rather beautiful -- nor in the monotonous swarming of crowds on its streets; not in its eternal dampness, nor in the striking lifelessness of its solid mass of stone and asphalt -- its sameness resided in something all-embracing, something very basic. It resembled the gigantic mechanism of a clock in which every part is different, yet everything moves, rotates, meshes, and unmeshes in a single, endless rhythm; where a change in rhythm means only one thing -- faulty mechanism, breakdown, stoppage. A strange world, so unlike anything he had ever seen! It was probably a very complex society governed by many laws. But there was one that Maxim had already discovered for himself: conform, do as everyone else does in the same way as everyone else. And this was precisely what he was doing. Melting into the crowd, he entered gigantic stores under dirty glass roofs; together with the crowds he left them, descended into the earth, squeezed into jammed electric trains, and sped off somewhere amid incredible thundering; then, swept along by the crowd, he ascended to the surface again to streets identical to the ones he had just left.

Evening had fallen, and the feeble streetlights suspended high above the ground had gone on. The main streets were now congested. Retreating from the crowds, Maxim found himself in a half-deserted, poorly lit lane. He decided that he'd had enough of the city for the day and halted.

He noticed three luminous gold spheres, a blinking blue sign made of fluorescent glass tubes, and a door leading to a cellar cafe. He had already learned that the three spheres meant a place where food was available. Descending some chipped steps, he saw a small low-ceilinged room with a dozen tables, a floor thickly coated with clean sawdust, and glass shelves crammed with bottles of iridescent liquids. The cafe was almost empty. Behind a counter in front of the shelves a flabby elderly woman moved sluggishly; a short distance away, a short but strong-looking fellow with a thick black mustache sat casually at a small table.

Maxim entered, chose a table in a recess away from the counter, and sat down. The old woman glanced in his direction and said something in a hoarse but loud voice. The man looked at him vacantly, turned away, picked up a tall glass of transparent liquid, and took a sip. A door opened, and an attractive young girl wearing a white lace apron entered the room. Noticing Maxim, she went to his table, but instead of meeting his eyes, she stared over his head. She had clear delicate skin, light down on her up-per lip, and beautiful gray eyes. Maxim brought his finger to the tip of his nose gallantly and introduced himself: "Maxim."

The girl looked down at him in amazement as if seeing him now for the first time. She was so lovely that Maxim couldn't restrain a broad smile. Then she smiled and pointed to her nose: "Rada."

"Good," said Maxim. "Supper."

She nodded and asked a question. To be on the safe side, Maxim nodded and smiled. He watched her as she walked away. Her slim graceful figure reminded him that this world, too, had its beautiful people.

The old woman uttered a lengthy comment and vanished be-hind the counter. Maxim noticed that the man was staring at him. Rather hostilely, too. Oh, well, forget it. He probably didn't appear particularly friendly himself.

Rada reappeared and served Maxim a bowl of steaming porridge with meat and vegetables and a thick glass mug filled with a foaming liquid.

"Good," said Maxim. He motioned to her to join him.

If only she would sit with him and talk to him while he ate. What a pleasure it would be to hear her voice. He was anxious for her to know that he liked her and would enjoy her company.

But Rada merely smiled and shook her head. She said some-thing -- Maxim caught the words "to sit," and she returned to the counter. Too bad, thought Maxim. He picked up the two-pronged fork and began to eat, trying to compose a sentence from the thirty words he knew, a sentence that would express friendship and his need to communicate.

As she leaned against the counter with her arms folded across her chest, Rada glanced at him from time to time. Each time their eyes met, they smiled at each other, and Maxim was somewhat surprised when Rada's smiles grew progressively weaker and more hesitant. He had very mixed feelings. He enjoyed looking at Rada, although his pleasure was marred by a growing uneasiness. And he was pleased that the meal had turned out to be surprisingly tasty and nourishing, but at the same time he felt the man's oppressive sidelong glances and the disapproval in the eyes of the old woman. He took a sip from the mug. Yes, it was beer -- cold and fresh, but, he thought, too strong.

The man said something, and Rada went over to his table. Justas a smothered conversation began, a fly attacked Maxim and he had to struggle with it. Powerful, blue, and impudent, it seemed to jump in all directions at once; it buzzed and whined, as if declaring its love for Maxim. It insisted on staying with him and his plate. It walked on it, licked it. It was stubborn and verbose. The escapade ended with the fly falling into his beer when Maxim swung at the wrong moment. He set the mug down squeamishly on another table and continued eating. Rada returned, this time unsmiling; she looked away and asked him something.

"Yes," replied Maxim, playing it safe again. "Rada good."

She gazed at him in undisguised fright, moved off to the counter, and returned carrying a small glass of brown liquid on a saucer.

"Tasty," said Maxim, looking at the girl with warmth and concern. "What is bad? Rada, sit here. Talk. Must talk. Must not go."

To Maxim's surprise, his carefully prepared speech made a poor impression on Rada. He thought she was about to cry. She whispered something and ran from the room. The old woman be-hind the counter uttered several angry words. "I'm doing some-thing wrong," thought Maxim, upset. "But what?" Obviously the man and the woman did not care to have Rada sit and talk with him. But since they clearly were neither government officials nor guardians of the law, and since he apparently had not violated any laws, the best thing would be to ignore their hostile stares.

The man drained his glass, took a thick black polished cane from under the table, and walked slowly toward Maxim. He sat down opposite him, placed the cane across the table, and without looking at Maxim but obviously addressing him, spoke slowly and laboriously, repeating frequently "Massaraksh." The hostility and enmity in Ms speech were strangely diluted by the indifference in his intonation and facial expression and by the emptiness of his colorless glassy eyes.

"I don't understand," said Maxim angrily.

The man slowly turned a blank face to him and seemed to look right through him. Slowly and distinctly he asked Maxim a question, then suddenly whipped a long shiny knife out of his cane. Maxim was bewildered. Not knowing what to say or how to react, he picked up a fork and twirled it in his fingers. The effect was startling. The man jumped back, knocking over his chair. Holding his knife in front of him, he crouched down absurdly. The old woman let out a piercing shriek. Taken by surprise, Maxim jumped up. Suddenly the man was beside him. At that instant Rada appeared, planted herself between them, and shouted, first at the man, then at Maxim. At this point Maxim was totally con-fused. The man picked up his cane, returned the knife to its hiding place, and walked toward the exit quietly. He turned around in the doorway, muttered something, and vanished.

Rada, pale and trembling, picked up the overturned chair, wiped up the brown puddle on the table, and cleared away the dirty dishes. She returned and said something to Maxim, to which he replied, as usual, "Yes." It was hopeless. Rada repeated the same words, but this time she sounded angry, although Maxim felt that she was more frightened than angry. "No," he replied, and instantly the woman behind the counter began to yell so hard her cheeks shook. Finally Maxim admitted, "I don't under-stand."

The woman sprang out from behind the counter, flew over to Maxim, and planted herself in front of him. She grabbed him by his shirt and rummaged through his pockets. Maxim was so stunned that he didn't resist, but only repeated "Must not" and looked plaintively at Rada. The old woman, behaving as though she had suddenly come to a fateful decision, rushed back behind the counter and grabbed the telephone.

"Fank!" said Maxim with emotion. "Fank hurt! Go. Bad."

The tension broke suddenly. Rada said something to the old woman that convinced her to put down the phone. She sputtered a bit more, then calmed down. Rada sat Maxim down again, served him a fresh mug of beer, and to his delight and relief joined him. For a while everything went smoothly. Rada asked questions, and Maxim, beaming with pleasure, answered them with "I don't understand." Maxim laboriously constructed another sentence and declared: "Rain, massaraksh, bad, fog." Rada broke out laughing. Then another girl arrived and greeted them. Rada and she left the room, and after a while Rada re-turned, but without her apron. She was wearing a bright red cape and carrying a large handbag.

"Let's go," she said, and Maxim jumped up.

They were unable to leave immediately. The old woman began to shout again. She was angry about something, demanding some-thing. She waved a pen and sheet of paper in the air. Rada argued with her for a while, but the other girl came over and took the woman's side. Rada finally relented. Then the three of them con-fronted Maxim. At first they repeated the same question, singly and then in chorus, which Maxim, of course, didn't understand. At last Rada ordered everyone to keep quiet; she clapped Maxim lightly on the chest.

"Mac Sim?"

"Maxim," he corrected her.

"Max? Im?"

"Maxim. Max -- must not. Im -- must not. Maxim."

Rada brought her finger to the tip of her nose and said, "Rada Gaal. Maxim."

"Gaal?" he said. "Guy Gaal?"

Dead silence. They were stunned.

"Guy Gaal," repeated Maxim, overjoyed. "Guy good man."

Suddenly there was a commotion as the women all began to talk at once. Rada tugged at Maxim and asked something. Obviously she was terribly interested in learning how he knew Guy. "Guy, Guy, Guy" bobbed up in a stream of incomprehensible words.

"Massaraksh!" said the old woman as she burst into laughter. And the girls joined in. Rada took Maxim by the arm, and they went out into the rain.

They walked to the end of a poorly lit side street and turned into an even dimmer lane where rickety wooden houses lined a muddy road paved with uneven cobblestones. Then they made two more turns. The narrow crooked streets were deserted. Not a single pedestrian was out.

At first Rada chattered animatedly, repeating Guy's name frequently. Maxim interjected occasionally that Guy was a fine per-son, but added in Lingcos that one should not beat people in the face, that this was a strange custom, and that he, Maxim, could not understand it. As the streets they passed through grew narrower, darker, and muddier, Rada's chatter broke off more frequently. Sometimes she stopped and peered into the darkness. At first Maxim thought she was trying to find a drier path, but it was something else she was searching for, because she walked straight through the puddles. Maxim had to guide her away from them gently and lead her onto drier ground. Where there wasn't any, he lifted her under the arms and carried her, which appeared to please her. But each time her delight would quickly be smothered by fear.

The farther they walked from the cafe, the more fearful she be-came. At first Maxim tried to establish nerve contact with her, but, as with Fank, he was unsuccessful. They left the slums and came out on a muddy unpaved road. An endless fence, topped with rusty barbed wire, extended along the right side, and on the left was a pitch-dark, putrid wasteland. Here Rada became completely unnerved and almost burst into tears. To boost her spirits, Maxim sang the most cheerful songs he knew, at the top of his lungs. For a short time it helped -- until they reached the end of the fence. Here were more houses, long, low, with dark windows. The few street lights burned dimly, and in the distance, beneath a solitary archway, stood a group of rain-drenched, bunched-over, shivering figures. Rada halted.

Grasping his arm, she began to speak in a faltering whisper. She pulled him back and he obeyed, thinking it would make her feel better. Then, realizing that she had acted impulsively, out of desperation, he refused to budge.

"Let's go," he said to her gently. "Let's go, Rada. Not bad. Good."

Like a child, she obeyed. Although he didn't know the way, he led her and suddenly realized that she was afraid of the wet figures. He was very surprised because they didn't appear dangerous; they were ordinary natives, hunched over in the rain and shivering from the dampness. At first there were two of them; then a third and a fourth appeared with those glowing narcotic sticks hanging from their lips.

Maxim walked along the deserted street between the rows of yellow houses, directly toward them, and Rada kept pressing closer to him. He placed his arm around her shoulder. It suddenly occurred to him that he was mistaken, that Rada must be shaking from the cold and not from fear. There was certainly nothing dangerous about those rain-soaked figures. He walked past them. Hands thrust deep inside their pockets and stamping to warm themselves, those pitiful souls, poisoned by narcotics, didn't appear to notice Rada or him, didn't even raise their eyes, although he passed close enough to hear their sick, irregular breathing. Now, he thought, Rada could relax. But as they passed the arch-way another group of four, as wet and pitiful as the first, sprang out in front of them and blocked their path. Their leader held along thick cane. Maxim recognized both him and the cane. The stranger in the cafe.

From the top of the peeling archway a bare bulb dangled in the draft. The walls were covered with mold, and below his feet lay cracked concrete marked by the muddy tracks of many feet. Sounds of shuffling feet came from the rear. Maxim turned around. The first four were catching up, gasping for breath and tossing away those repulsive narcotic sticks. Rada let out a muffled cry and let go of his hand. Suddenly he was hemmed in, pressed against the wall. He could see two of them holding Rada by the arms. The one with the cane went up to her, shifted the cane to his left hand, and raising his right with a deliberate motion, struck her on the cheek.

Maxim lost all sense of reality. Something clicked in his brain and the people vanished. Only he and Rada were there. No one else. Near them dangerous animals stamped clumsily through the mud. City, archway, naked bulb -- all were gone. For him there were only the impassable mountains in the Land of Oz-on-Pandora. And a cave, a trap set by naked apes. And a pale, yellow, apathetic moon looking into the cave. He had to fight for his life. And now he began to fight as he had fought then on Pandora.

Time slowed down obediently. Seconds became hours, and during the span of a single second he could perform many maneuvers, deliver many blows, and see all his adversaries simultaneously. The animals were not very agile. They were used to tangling with another kind of beast. They didn't have time to realize that they had chosen the wrong victim and that it would have been wiser to run away. They tried to fight. Maxim seized one of the animals by the jaw, yanked up its pliant head, and chopped its pale pulsating neck with the edge of his hand. Instantly he turned to the next one and grabbed, jerked, and chopped, in a cloud of stinking, predatory breathing, in the cave's echoing silence, in the yellow, dripping semidarkness. Dirty crooked claws tore at his neck and slid off; yellow fangs sank deep into his shoulder and slid off.

Now he was alone. Their leader was rushing toward the cave's exit with his club because he, like all leaders, possessed the sharpest reflexes and was the first to realize what was happening. For an instant, Maxim felt sorry for him: how slowly he seemed to react -- the seconds stretched out, and their fleet leader had scarcely moved his legs when Maxim, slipping between the seconds, caught up with him. Maxim hacked him on the run and halted.

Time resumed its normal flow again: the cave was now an archway; the moon, a bare bulb; and the Land of Oz-on-Pandora, an enigmatic city on an enigmatic planet. Even more enigmatic than Pandora.

Maxim stood there, resting. The leader crawled about painfully on the ground. Blood trickled from Maxim's wounded shoulder. Sobbing, Rada took his hand and ran his palm across her wet face. He looked around; bodies lay like sacks on the dirty concrete. Mechanically, he counted them. Six, including the leader; two, he thought, had managed to escape. Rada's touch felt indescribably pleasant, and he knew that he had taken the proper course; he had done what had to be done. No more, no less. He didn't bother to pursue those who had escaped, although he could have overtaken them easily. Even now he could hear their heels clicking at the end of the street.

The ones who had failed to escape lay on the ground; some would die, and some were already dead. These, he realized, were people, too, not apes or armored wolves, although their breath was foul, their touch dirty, and their thoughts repulsive and predatory .He felt a certain regret, sensed that he had lost something, something fine and pure, a part of his soul, and he realized that the old Maxim had disappeared forever. In spite of this loss, he felt a kind of strange pride stirring within him.

"Let's go, Maxim," Rada said quietly.

He followed her submissively.

"In short, you let him slip through your fingers."

"What could I do, Strannik? You know how it is."

"Damn it, Fank'. You didn't have to do a damned thing. All you had to do was take a driver with you."

"All right, it was my fault. But who could have expected... ?"

"OK. Enough. What measures have you taken?"

"As soon as I was released, I phoned Megu. Megu didn't know anything about it. If he returns, Megu will let me know immediately. Next, I put all insane asylums under surveillance. He can't go far. He sticks out like a sore thumb."

"And?"

"I alerted our people in the police department. I ordered them to follow up every case, even petty traffic violations. He doesn't have documents. I'll be informed if anyone arrested doesn't have identification papers. He can't hide, even if he wants to. It's just a matter of two or three days. A simple matter."

"Simple, you say? What could be simpler than getting into a car, driving to the telecenter, and transporting a man here? But you couldn't even handle that."

"OK, it's my fault. But such a coincidence -- "

"Enough about coincidences. Do you really think he's crazy?"

"It's hard to say. He's more like a savage. Like a well-washed, well-groomed savage from the mountains. But I can easily imagine a situation in which he'd act like a lunatic. Then there's that idiotic smile, the imbecilic speech. And he's a complete fool."

"Of course. You've taken the proper steps. But there's something else, Fank. Contact the underground."

"What?"

"If you don't find him in the next few days, he'll undoubtedly turn up in the underground."

"I do not understand what a savage would be doing in the underground."

"There's lots of them in the underground. Don't ask stupid questions -- just do what I tell you. If you lose him again, you're fired."

"It won't happen again."

"Good. What else do you have for me?"