Escape Attempt

Chapter 2-1

“Today’s going to be a great day,” Vadim said aloud.

He was standing in front of the wide-open wall, slapping himself on Ins bare shoulders and looking out into the garden. It had rained (lining the night, and the grass was wet, the bushes were wet, and the roof of the neighboring house was wet. The sky was overcast, but the puddles shone on the path. Vadim hitched up his shorts, hopped down onto the grass, and started running along the path. Inhaling the raw morning air deeply and noisily, he ran past the drenched chaise longues, past the wet boxes and packages, past his neighbor’s wooden fence, where a half-disassembled Hummingbird was flaunting its innards, through wet, luxuriant bushes, between the trunks of wet pines. Without stopping, he plunged into the pond, swam across it, and clambered out on the opposite side, covered with sedge, and from there, flushed and very happy with himself, constantly increasing the tempo, he raced back, leaping over the enormous, calm puddles and startling the small gray frogs, straight to the lawn in front of Anton’s house, where the Ship was standing.

Ship The Ship was quite young, not yet two years old. Its dull black sides were completely dry and heaved barely noticeably, and its sharp-pointed nose was tilted at an extreme angle toward the point in the gray sky where the sun was hiding behind the clouds: out of habit the Ship was collecting energy. The tall grass around it was covered with frost, withered and turning yellow. All the same, it was a decent, well-behaved starship of the tourist type. During the night a passenger starship would have frozen the entire forest for ten kilometers around.

Ship Ship Vadim, sliding on the turns, ran around the Ship and headed home. While he was drying himself off with a furry towel, groaning with pleasure, his neighbor, Uncle Sasha, came out of the dacha across the way with a scalpel in his hand. Vadim waved to him with the towel. His neighbor was 150 years old, and he spent all his time monkeying around with his helicopter, but it was all in vain – the Hummingbird did not feel like flying. Uncle Sasha looked at Vadim thoughtfully.

Ship “Do you have any space bioelements?” he asked.

“Why, did they burn out?”

“I don’t know. They show an abnormal curve.”

“I can contact Anton, Uncle Sasha,” Vadim offered. “He’s in the city now. Let him bring you a few.”

Uncle Sasha walked up to the helicopter and tapped it on the nose with his scalpel.

“Why don’t you fly, you fool?” he said angrily. Vadim started to get dressed.

“Bioelements...” Uncle Sasha grumbled, plunging the scalpel into the Hummingbird’s innards. “Who needs it? Living mechanisms. Semiliving mechanisms. Almost dead mechanisms. No mechanics, no electronics. Just nerves! Excuse me, but I’m not a surgeon.” The Hummingbird had just had a spasm. “Take it easy, you animal! Stand still!” He withdrew the scalpel and turned toward Vadim. “When all’s said and done, it’s just not humane!” he declared. “The poor spoiled wreck is suffering! Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I feel sorry for it. Do you understand?”

“Me, too,” Vadim mumbled, pulling on his shirt. “What?”

“I asked if I could help.”

Uncle Sasha kept looking from the helicopter to the scalpel and back.

“No ” he said decisively. “I don’t want to give in to circumstances. I will get it to fly myself.”

Vadim sat down to breakfast. He turned on the stereovision and placed Recent Methods for Tracking Takhorgs in front of him. The book was ancient, made of paper, its pages worn by his grandfather. On the cover was a landscape of the planet-preserve Pandora, with two monsters in the foreground.

Recent Methods for Tracking Takhorgs Vadim ate, flipping through the book and glancing up with pleasure at the pretty announcer from time to time; she was saying something about the critical battles over emotiolism. The announcer was new, and she had pleased Vadim for a whole week already.

“Emotiolism!” Vadim said with a sigh and took a bite of a goat-cheese sandwich. “My lovely lass, the word itself is phonetically repulsive. Come along with us and leave emotiolism behind on Earth. It will have died out by the time we get back, you can be sure of it.”

“Emotiolism as a movement is very promising,” the announcer continued imperturbably, “since it alone now provides real deep perspective for a radical reduction in the entropy of emotional information in art, since it alone...”

Vadim stood up and, sandwich in hand, walked over to the open wall. “Uncle Sasha,” he called, “does the word emotiolism mean anything to you?”

emotiolism His neighbor, his hands behind his back, was standing in front of the disemboweled helicopter. The Hummingbird was quivering, like a tree in the wind.

“What?” Uncle Sasha asked without turning around.

“The word emotiolism” Vadim repeated. “In it I hear a funeral knell, see an elegant crematorium, smell the scent of faded flowers.”

emotiolism” “You were always a tactful child, Vadim,” the old man said with a sigh. “But the word is really terrible.”

“Completely illiterate,” Vadim asserted. “I’m glad you also feel it.... Wait a minute, where’s your scalpel?”

“I dropped it inside.”

Vadim stared at the helicopter, which was quaking in torment.

“Do you know what you’ve done, Uncle Sasha? The scalpel turned on its digestive system. I’ll get in touch with Anton right away, have him bring you another scalpel.”

“And this one?”

Vadim waved his hand with a sad smile.

“Look,” he said, showing Uncle Sasha the sandwich. “You see?” He put the sandwich in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

“So?” Uncle Sasha asked curiously.

“That is a visual representation of your scalpel’s fate.”

Uncle Sasha looked at the helicopter. It had stopped vibrating.

“That’s it,” Vadim said. “Your scalpel is no more. But your Hummingbird is now charged. For about thirty hours of uninterrupted flight.”

Uncle Sasha walked around the helicopter, aimlessly touching it in various places. Vadim broke out laughing and returned to his table. He was finishing a second sandwich and a second glass of yoghurt when the lock on the informator snapped open and a quiet, calm voice said, “No calls or visitors. Anton, upon leaving for the city, wished you a good morning and proposed that after breakfast you begin the renunciation of all earthly desires. The institute has received nine new problems...”

“No details,” Vadim requested.

“Problem nineteen has still not been solved. Pel Minchin proved the theorem on the existence of a polynomial operation over a ku-field of Simonian structures. Address: Richmond, seventeen-seventeen-seven. That is all.”

The informator clicked, was silent for a moment, and then added sententiously, “Envy is bad, envy is bad.”

“Blockhead!” Vadim said. “I’m not envious. I’m delighted. Great work, Pel!” He fell into thought, staring out into the garden. “No,” he said, “now is no time for that. I have to renounce all earthly desires.”

He shoved his dirty dish into the disposal and yelled out, “Bring on the takhorgs! We will adorn Pel Minchin’s study, at Richmond, seventeen-seventeen-seven with a takhorg skull!” And then he sang out:

Let takhorgs wail in holy fright,

Let takhorgs hide in fog and mist,

He stalks them all to war and fight,

The most structuralist-est linguist.

“So now,” Vadim said, “where’s the radiophone?” He dialed a number. “Anton? How are things?”

“I’m standing in line,” Anton answered.

“What’s up – everybody going to Pandora?”

“Many people are. There’s a rumor that hunting takhorgs is going to be prohibited.”

“Will we make it?”

Anton paused before answering. “We will.”

“Are there girls in line?” Vadim asked.

“How could there not be?”

“And are they going?”

“I’ll ask them.... They say they are.”

“Please relay to them the greetings of a well-known structural linguist, six feet in height, with a noble bearing. Oh, Anton, before I forget. Please bring Uncle Sasha a scalpel. And a couple of BE-6s. Are you might as well throw in a BE-7.”

“I might as well throw in a new helicopter. What did the old guy do with his scalpel?”

“What do you think? What can you do to a scalpel?”

“I have no idea,” Anton answered, after a pause to consider the question. “Scalpels last forever. Like the Baalbek platform.”

“He dropped it into his Hummingbird’s stomach.”

Several voices tittered. The people in line were having fun.

“All right, then,”Anton said.”I’ll be back soon. Be my forklift and start loading.”

Vadim shoved the radiophone into his pocket and estimated the distance, across three rooms, to the exit. “Feet’s spirit, weak,” he recited. “Hands’ might, evil.”

He stood on his hands and ran sprightly to the exit. On the front steps he did a somersault and fell on all fours in the grass, yelling out a mighty “Ah-hah!” He stood up and, dusting off his hands, proclaimed:

In battles, skirmishes, and duels,

He wins the prize, he heads the list,

Symbol of joy, and merriment’s jewels,

The most structuralist-est linguist.

Then he unhurriedly set off to the pathway where the packages and boxes were stacked. There was quite a lot of freight. They had to take weapons, ammunition, food supplies, clothing – two sets, one for hunting and one for visiting the famous Hunter Cafe on the flat peak of Everina, where a pungent breeze wafts through the little tables; where, over a three-hundred-meter cliff, impassable black thickets crowd together like thunderheads; where briar-lacerated hunters drain potbellied bottles of Takhorg’s Blood with loud laughter and wrench their shoulders in vain attempts to demonstrate the size of the takhorg skull they would have taken – if only they had known which end of a rifle was which; where in the dark green dawns couples glide along on tired legs to “Light Rhythm”; where tremulous flattened moans rise in the starless sky above the Range of the Bold.

Vadim squatted down with his back against the heaviest box, got set, and lifted the box with a jerk to his shoulder. The box contained weapons – three automatic rifles with sights for shooting in fog and six hundred cartridges in flat plastic clips. Bouncing with each step, Vadim carried the box across the garden to the Ship. He approached it on the receiving side and gave it a kick. The membrane covering the oval hatch split open, and Vadim dumped the box into the darkness, which gave off a smell of coldness.

Ship. Vadim walked back, picking huge berries off some new hybrid bushes as he went. Each bush discharged a cold heavy rain onto him. I’ve got to take no fewer than five takhorgs, he thought. One skull for Pel Minchin of Richmond. She should learn what a nice guy I am. One skull for Mama. She wouldn’t take – she’s a serious person – so then I can give it to the first girl who walks past me on the corner of Nevsky Prospect and Sadovaya Avenue – after ten o’clock in the morning. I"ll hit Samson with the third to moderate his skepticism; he acted strangely at Nelly’s when I was telling her about my last trip to Pandora. The fourth goes to Nelly, so she believes me and not Samson. And the fifth I"ll hang over the stereovision. He imagined with delight how marvelous the pretty announcer would look under the grinning skull of a takhorg.