Beetle in the Anthill

Beetle in the Anthill Arkady and Boris Strugatsky 1 June 78 Maxim Kammerer, a COMCON-2 Agent At 13:17, the Excellency called me in. He didn’t raise his head to look at me, so I only saw his bald skull, covered with pale old-age pigmentation spots. That meant a high degree of worry and displeasure. Not about anything I did though. “Have a seat.” I sat down. “We need to find a man,” he said and suddenly stopped talking for a while. He wrinkled his forehead angrily, then snorted. You’d think he didn’t like what he just said, whether it was the form or the content. The Excellency loves precise formulations. “Who exactly?” I asked to get him out of his philological stupor. “Lev V. Abalkin. A Progressor. Departed for Earth the day before yesterday from the polar station on Saraksh. Has not registered on Earth since. We need to find him.” He fell silent again and, for the first time since the beginning of our conversation, looked at me with his round, unnaturally green eyes. He clearly was worried, and I realized we are talking serious business. A Progressor who neglected to register on Earth upon return is, strictly speaking, a rule-breaker, but he wouldn’t be of interest to the Commission, not to mention the Excellency himself. Meanwhile, the Excellency was so obviously troubled that I had a feeling that he was about to lean back, sigh with a strange sort of relief, and say, “Never mind, I’ll handle it myself.” It’s been known to happen. Rarely, but it has happened. “There are reasons to believe,” said the Excellency, “that Abalkin is hiding.” Fifteen or so years ago, I would greedily ask, “From whom?”, but it’s been fifteen years, so the times of greedy questions were long gone. “Find him and let me know,” the Excellency went on, “do not attempt to apprehend. Don’t even contact him. Find him, observe, and report. No more no less.” I tried to make do with an understanding nod, but he looked at me so piercingly that I thought it best to repeat the order, slowly and thoughtfully. “I must locate him, initiate observation and report to you. I must not try apprehending him, nor be seen, nor initiate contact.” “That’s right,” said the Excellency, “on to the next part.” He reached into a side drawer of his desk, where a normal agent would keep a reference crystal library, and pulled out a bulky item, whose name I first recalled in Honti: zakkurapia, which literally translates as “document container.” Only when he put it on the desk in front of him and folded his long knobby fingers on top of it, I unwittingly uttered, zakkurapia“Wow! A paper file…” “Don’t get distracted,” the Excellency said severely. “Listen carefully. No one at the Commission knows that I have an interest in this man. Nor should they. So you will work alone. No help. Hand your entire group over to Claudius, and report directly to me. No exceptions.” I must admit, that shook me up. This kind of thing simply didn’t happen. On Earth, I have not seen a secrecy level like this before. And, in all honesty, I could not imagine it was possible. So I allowed myself a stupid question. “What do you mean, ‘no exceptions’?” “No exceptions means no exceptions. There are a few more people aware of the situation, but since you’ll never meet them, for practical purposes only the two of us know about it. Needless to say, during the search you’ll have to speak to many people. Each time, use a cover. Make up a few by yourself. Without a cover, you will speak only to me. “Yes, Excellency,” I replied humbly. “Now,” he went on, “looks like you’ll have to start from his associations. All we know about them is here,” he tapped the file with his finger, “Not a lot, but it’s a starting point. Take it.” I took the file. Another thing unseen on Earth in my lifetime. Covers of faded plastic held together by a metallic lock, and a bright red stamp on the front cover, Lev V. Abalkin. And below, for whatever reason, 07. Lev V. Abalkin07“Look, Excellency,” I said, “why in this format?” “Because this is the only format these materials exist in,” he replied coldly. “By the way, I am not authorizing copying to crystal. Any other questions?” Obviously, this wasn’t an invitation to ask more questions, just a small drop of poisonous sarcasm. At this stage, there were many questions, but asking them before reading through the file was pointless. However, I still allowed myself two. “Deadline?” “Five days. No longer.” No way I can make it in time, I thought. “Can I be sure he is on Earth?” “You can.” I got up to leave, but he hasn’t dismissed me yet. He stared up at me with his intent green eyes, and the pupils of his eyes were contracting and expanding, like a cat’s. Of course he clearly saw that I am not happy with the assignment, that the assignment appears to be not just strange, but nonsensical to say the least. So he didn’t want to let me go without saying something personal. “Do you remember,” he started, “how on a planet named Saraksh, someone named Sikorski and nicknamed Wanderer was chasing a fast-running little bastard named Mak?” I did remember. “So,” said Wanderer (aka the Excellency), “back then, Sikorski didn’t make it in time. Now you and I must make it. Because this time around, the planet isn’t called Saraksh; it’s Earth. And Lev Abalkin is far more than a fast-running little bastard.” “Are you speaking in riddles, boss?” I said just to hide the sudden uneasiness. “Get to work,” he said. 1 June 78 A Few Things about Lev Abalkin the Progressor Andrei and Sandro were waiting for me and were shocked to be told to report to Claudius. They even tried to argue, but my uneasiness wouldn’t go away, so I barked at them, and they departed muttering grudgingly and casting apprehensive sideways looks at the file. Those looks raised a new and unexpected concern: where am I supposed to keep this monstrous “document container”? I sat behind my desk, put the file in front of me, and automatically glanced at the register. Seven messages over a quarter hour I spent with the Excellency. I must admit, it felt good to switch my office communication channel over to Claudius. Then, I got busy with the file. Just as I expected, the file contained nothing but paper. Two hundred and seventy three numbered sheets of different color, quality, and wear. I haven’t worked with paper for good twenty years now, and my first impulse was to stick this entire pile into a translator, but I quickly caught myself. It’s on paper, so let it stay on paper. Whatever… All sheets were inconveniently, but solidly, bound by a convoluted device with magnetic clasps, so I almost missed a very common radio card stuck under the top clasp. This was a radio message the Excellency received today, sixteen minutes before he called me in. The content was: 01.06 @ 13:01. From Elephant to Wanderer. In response to your enquiry regarding Tristan dated 01.06 @ 31.05 @ 19:34, a message was received from the base commander of Saraksh-2.07:11: Quote: Huron (Abalkin, a cryptographer at the headquarters of the Island Empire’s Fleet Group C) blown. On 28.05, Tristan (Loffenfeld, the base’s outreach physician) flew out to give Huron a regular physical. Today, 29.05 @ 17:13, Huron retuned to base on Tristan’s bot. According to Huron, Tristan was captured and killed by counterintelligence of Group C. Trying to retrieve Tristan’s body to deliver it to base, Huron exposed himself. Body retrieval failed. During escape, Huron was unharmed physically, but is nearing mental collapse. At his request, he is returning to Earth on board flight 611. End of quote. Flight 611 arrived to Earth 30.05 @ 22:32. Abalkin has not contacted COMCON, nor has he registered on Earth or any of the flight 611 stopovers (Pandora, Resort) as of 12:53 today. Elephant. Hmm, Progressors… I’ll be honest, I don’t like Progressors, although I probably was a Progressor myself, back when the word was used only in theorizing. However, in my dislike of Progressors I am not original. The vast majority of Earth’s population is incapable of understanding that there are situations precluding (excluding) compromise. I get them before they get me, and there’s no time to figure out who’s right. For a normal person from Earth, this sounds barbaric, and I understand that; that’s how I was until I ended up on Saraksh. I remember this view of the world; any sentient being is a priori perceived as ethically equal, it doesn’t make sense to ask if they are better or worse than you, even if their ethics and morals are different from yours. It’s not enough just to study theory and undergo a model conditioning. You have to walk through the twilight of morals on your own, see a few things with your own eyes, get your hide seriously burned and accumulate a few dozens of truly revolting memories to finally understand, and not just understand, but to fuse into your very view of the world, a once-trivial thought that there are sentient beings who are way, way worse than you will ever be. And only then do you develop the skill of dividing the world into “us” and “them”, making quick decisions in dangerous situations. Only then do you become brave enough to act first and figure out the consequences later. The core skill of a Progressor, I think, is the ability to separate friend from foe. That’s why at home people view them with wary delight (or is it delightful wariness?) or even carefully hidden disgust. And there’s nothing to be done about it. Everyone tolerates it; we do, they do. Because either we have Progressors or we stay out of extraterrestrial affairs. Luckily, though, we at COMCON-2 rarely get to deal with Progressors. I re-read the radio message and carefully re-read it again. Strange… The Excellency enquired about a Tristan, aka Loffenfeld. In order to find out about this Tristan character, he got up at the c***k of dawn himself and had no qualms about waking up Elephant, who, as everyone knows, goes to bed at dawn… Another strange thing: it looks like he knew what the answer would be. It only took him a quarter of an hour to make the decision to find Abalkin and put the file together for me. You’d think he already had the file handy… And the strangest of all: granted, Abalkin is the last man to see Tristan alive or dead, but if the Excellency needs Abalkin only as a witness in Tristan’s case, why tell me the ominous parable of one Wanderer and one young bastard? Oh, but of course I had theories. Twenty theories. And among them, like a blinding diamond, shone one: Huron-Abalkin has been recruited by the imperial intelligence, so he kills Tristan-Loffenfeld and disappears to Earth with the goal of inserting himself into the World Council… I re-read the radio message yet again and then put it aside. Enough. On to page one. Lev V. Abalkin. Code number is such and such, genetic code is such and such. Born 6 October 38. Upbringing: boarding school #421, Syktyvkar. Teacher: Sergei P. Fedoseyev. Education: Progressor School #3 (Europe). Mentor: Ernst-Julius Horn. Professional aptitudes: animal psychology, theater, ethic linguistics. Professional indications: animal psychology, theoretical xenology. Career: February 58 through September 58, pre-graduation internship, planet Saraksh, contact with the race of Bigheads in their natural environment.