Half a Life

by Kir Bulychev

translated by Bill Bowler

Chapter 4

part 4 of 4

I have not written for several days. There was no time. This does not mean I had more to do than before, simply that my thoughts were occupied. I even cut my hair shorter, stood for a long time before the dark mirrors, chopping my hair with a scalpel. I would have given half my life for an iron. Surely no one could see me here. No one here knew what ironing was. No one but me knew what clothes were. And yet, how much time had I wasted figuring out what materials to make garments from, and what to use for a needle?

I was worse than Robinson Crusoe on his uninhabited island. And here I stood before a dark mirror thinking how I would never wear stylish clothes. If now I were to reappear on Earth, everyone would be astonished — where did they dig that up? By my calculations, it’s 1960 on Earth. What are women wearing now? It depends on where, I suppose. In Moscow, there are probably many fashionable women while Kalyazin is just a small town.

But I’m getting distracted. I’m thinking now of the slugs. Absurd? Bal, my very favorite slug, because he learned my language the best, got himself into trouble. He’d been cut horribly by something. The dummies did not summon me to help, and they recognize me as their “emergency medical service.”

I gave Bal a piece of my mind without considering that he has an excellent memory. And now he has learned all of my curse words. Of course, they’re not the worst ones — blockhead, pea brain, things like that. Since I have freedom of movement in our prison, it means I have now two duties: first, to maintain communications among the cells where the slugs are held, and second, to infiltrate the front line and find out where things are located. I thought back to the war years.

The next page was short, written hurriedly, slapdash.

Then the unspeakable happened. I stood behind the partition, waiting for Bal and counting to myself. I thought, if he makes it back before I can count to one thousand, then everything’s all right. But he didn’t make it. He was held up. The lamps started blinking and buzzing. It was always like that when there was a disturbance on the ship. Dummies rushed past me. I tried to shut the door and not let them by, but one of them gave me such a shot with its beam that I almost lost consciousness.

They killed Bal. He’s in the museum now. I had to hide in my room until everything quieted down. I was afraid they would lock me in, but for some reason they don’t take me seriously. When I came out into the corridor two hours later, I trudged down to the garden — it was time to give vitamins to my dragon — and the dummies were crowded by the slugs’ doors. I had to pass by without looking in that direction. I still didn’t know then that they had killed Bal. Only later did I manage to exchange a word or two with the slugs. And Dola told me they had killed Bal.

I suffered that night, remembering how dear Bal was, how kind and handsome. I was not pretending. I was truly distraught. I also thought that everything was ruined, that no one would be able to get through to the control room. But today Dola explained to me that all was not lost.

It turns out the slugs can communicate even when they can’t see each other. They can talk using some kind of waves, and even at a great distance. That’s why Bal was held up, in order to transmit to his comrades the whole layout of the ship’s steering deck and his own thinking about it. He even went into the machine room. He knew that most likely he would die, but he had to finish transmitting everything. And the machine killed him. Or maybe it didn’t — it’s only a machine, after all — but that’s how it turned out.

I thought of my ancestors, how they were peasants, completely uneducated. They thought that Earth was the center of the universe. They knew nothing of Giordano Bruno or Copernicus. They should have come here. But what difference was there between my grandfather and me? I read in the papers about the infinite universe, but it had no influence on my life. All the same, I lived at the center of the world. And this center was the town of Kalyazin, my home on Zimmermann Street. And it turns out, my Earth is a remote backwater...

Dag said something to Pavlysh, but Pavlysh didn’t hear it, although he replied incoherently, like a sleeper answering someone who wakes him too early.

For the first time in all these years, I woke up because of cold. It seemed difficult to breathe. Then it got better, it warmed up. But the slugs, when I went to them, told me there was something wrong with the ship. I asked them if Bal had done something to it. They answered, no. But they said we must hurry.

I had thought that the ship was eternal, like the sun. Dola said that now they knew a great deal about the ship’s systems, and how the machine operates. They said at home they had machines resembling these. But it was not easy for them to deal with this machine because the dummies had grabbed them unawares. And without me, they couldn’t manage. Was I ready to help them?

“Of course I’m ready,” I answered.

“But you’re taking a big risk,” Dola said and then explained: if they succeeded in turning the ship or found some other means to break out of here, they could get themselves home. But they couldn’t help me.

“But on the ship aren’t there some kind of notes or maps of the route to Earth?” I asked. They said they wouldn’t know where to find them and most likely they were hidden in the memory of the machine.

And then I explained my philosophy to them. If they would take me with them, I would go anywhere they liked, as long as we broke out of here. It would be better to live and die among the slugs than in prison. And if I didn’t make it out of here, at least I could be content that I had helped someone else. It would be easier to die that way. And the slugs agreed with me.

It got even colder on the ship. I touched the pipes in the small hall. They were barely warm. Two dummies were fussing with the pipes, fixing something. I was able to cooperate with the slugs, but the dummies, during all these years, had never said a word to me. And what would they have to say?

I have to go, and I have no idea if I will return to my notes. I want to write more, not even for whoever will read these lines, but for myself. If someone had told me that you could lock someone in a prison for years, where he would not see a single other person, would not even see the other prisoners, I would have said that this was certain death, or that a person would become an animal and go out of his mind. And here, it turns out, I did not go mad. I got worn out, got old, endured torment, but I’m alive.

I consider the past now, and think — but I was always, almost always busy, the same as in my real life on Earth. Probably I’m alive now because I knew how to find myself work, to find something or someone, for whom it was worth living.

At first I had hoped to return to Olyenka on Earth. And later, when this hope had been all but extinguished, it turned out that even here I could make myself useful.

And the last page. It was found in a stack of blank pages, those that Nadezhda was preparing, had cut, but had not had time to write on.

My Dear Timofei Fedorovich!

I bow deeply to you. Please accept my gratitude for what you did for me and for my daughter, Olga. How is life there? Do you feel longing sometimes, do you think of me? How is your health? Without you, at times I grow very sad, and please don’t think that your injury would have prevented...

There were two more lines, crossed out thickly. And a sketch of a pine tree, or a spruce. Poorly drawn, unskilled.

To be continued...