Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) (31 page)

“With one word: A dump.” Commented Leonid smiling oblique.

“It lies far away from any big cities, secret factories or military bases. All the important targets. All cities which our missile shield couldn’t protect went down in dust and ashes.

And the others with a shield and working missiles were …” Homer looked up. “Well we all know what happened to them. But there were places at those nobody was
aiming. Those that didn’t pose a threat. Like the Polyarnyye Sori”

“They don’t interest us anymore.” Said the musician.

“They should.” Said homer. “Because not far away from Polyarnyye Sori there is the nuclear reactor Kola. One of the most powerful in the entire country. Back then it probably supplied the entire north of Russia with electricity.

Millions of people. Hundredths of factories. I myself am from Archangelsk, so I know what I’m talking about. As a student I went there on an excursion once. It is a real fortress, a state inside a state. They’ve a small army there, their own farmers and factories. They were totally self-sufficient. Why should life have changed after the atomic war? He smiled sadly.

“You’re saying …”

“Petersburg is gone, Murmansk and Archangelsk as well. Millions of people destroyed, factories and cities burnt to dust and ashes. Polyarnyye Sori survived. And the reactor has been left untouched as well. For kilometers around it there is nothing but snow. Snow and fields of ice, wolves and polar bears. There was no connection to the central administration. And they have enough fuel to keep such a big city alive for some time. That means that they and the
surrounding area are taking care of for about one hundred years. They get over the winter easily”

“An ark.” Whispered Leonid. “And when the flood was over and the water had retreated, came from mountain Ararat …”

“Exactly.” The old man nodded his head.

“How do you know all that?” The voice of the musician didn’t sound sarcastic or bored anymore.

“I once have worked as a radio operator.” Homer danced around the question. “I had wanted to find survivors in the region where I was born”

“Are they going to last, so high up in the north?”

“I am sure of it. But the last contact I had with them is two years ago. But just think about it: Electricity and warmth for 100 years. With medical machines, computers and electronic libraries on CD-ROM’s. Why would you know it?

In the entire metro there are only two computers and they are just toys. And this is the capitol.” He smiled bitter.

“If some people survived somewhere, not just some a few but entire communities then they are in the 17
^th
century, if not in the stone age. Wood for fire, cattle and shamans.

Every third child dies at birth. Abacus and writing on the bark of a trees. There is nothing but a farm or two. A no-man’s-land without people. Wolves, bears and mutants.

Our entire civilization is built on electricity.” He cleared his throat and looked around. “If we have none the station here die and that’s it. Milliards of humans have built our civilization over hundredths of years and suddenly everything is gone. Homo sapiens can start again. But who knows if we can do it again? And now just imagine:

A handful of people get a hundredth year ultimatum!

You’re right, it’s an ark Noah. An almost unlimited supply of energy. Oil has to be refined and for gas you have to dig and pump it for kilometers. So back to steam powered machines? Or even further?”

He took Sasha’s hand. “I tell you the people there aren’t in any danger. They are as tough as roaches. But civilization … You have to defend it”.

“Is there still civilization there?”

“You don’t have to have any doubts. Atomic power is our greatest technical intelligence. The conditions are better there than here. In two centuries Polyarnyye Sori has grown a lot. They had continues radio contact: “To all survivors …”
and their coordinates. It’s said that there are still some people that make it to there”

“Why have I never heard of it?” Mumbled the musician.

“Only a few know of it. From here it is hard to get their wave length. But you could try it sometime when you have some days off.” Homer was smiling. “Codeword: >last harbor<”

“I should’ve known that. I collect those cases. Has everything really passed by them peacefully there?”

“How should I say that … Around it there nothing but snow and ice and if there were some villages and cities they turned wild very soon. It has happened that they have been attacked by some barbarians. And of course there are the wild animals, if you can even call them that. But they have enough weapons. A defense all around the clock and guard post everywhere. Electrical barb wire and watchtowers. Like I said, it’s a fortress. In the last thirty years they have built a palisade fence (
tree logs in the ground and sharpened on
the upper
end
). Also they have explored their surroundings. They got till Murmansk, at least two hundredth kilometers far.

Now the city is a giant smoking crater. They wanted to make an expedition to the south, into the direction of
Moscow but I talked them out of it. Why risk it? As soon as the radiation goes back they can conquer other pieces of land. But at the moment there is nothing to gained by comming here. It’s a graveyard and nothing else.” Homer sighed

“It is really strange.” Said Leonid. “When humanity after it had been destroyed by the atom now also has been saved by it”

“It’s like with Prometheus who stole fire. The gods had forbidden to bring fire to mankind. But he wanted to bring humanity out of the dirt, out of darkness and coldness …”

“I’ve read it.” Homer cut him of angrily. “>The myths and legends of old Greece<”

“A prophetic myth. The gods were against it because of nothing. They knew how it would end”

“But it was fire that made mankind, mankind”

“Do you want to say that without electricity humans turn back into animals?”

“I want to say that without power we are thrown back two hundredth years. And if you think about it that only one for every thousand has survived and everything has to be built again, connected and explored, probably it will take more then five hundredth years. Maybe we’ll never get back to how things were. Or do you think something else?”

“No, No.” Answered Leonid. “But is it really just about electricity?”’

“About what else?” Homer raised his arms over his head. The musician gave him a long and strange look and then he shrugged his shoulders.

The silence got longer. Homer had felt that the end of the conversation had been his victory: Finally the girl had stopped eating that boy with her eyes and was sunken in thoughts. It wasn’t far to the station when Leonid said: ”Well, then I think then it’s my time for a story now”

Homer made a tired face but nodded merciful.

“At the other side of the
Sportivnaya
, there where the destroyed
Sokolnitscheski
Bridge is, there a line that departs from the main line and ends in a dead end. There is a grid and a security door. Many times people have tried to open it but they’ve succeeded. Practically every adventurer who had gone there never returned. Their bodies were later found at other parts of the metro”

Homer made a grimace. “The emerald city?”

“It’s well known.” Continued Leonid unflustered.

“That the
Sokolnitscheski
metro bridge went down on the first day. That means that all stations behind it were
separated from the metro. Most people think that nobody survived there even though there is no evidence for that”

Homer made gesture with his hand. “The emerald city”

“Also it is known that the Moscow University was built on soft ground. That giant building was only stable because giant cold machines cooled the cellar and kept the swampy ground in its frozen condition. If not it would’ve slid down into the river long ago”

“That’s a farfetched argument.” Said the old man.

He knew what Leonid wanted to say.

“It has been over twenty years but the abandoned building is still standing at the same place”

“Because it’s a fable, that’s why!”

“Rumors say that under the university there isn’t just a normal cellar but a big gigantic bunker that is ten stories deep.

There are the cold machines and even more important, a nuclear reactor, living quarters and connections to the nearest metro stations and even to the metro 2.” Leonid was looking at Sasha with big, scary looking eyes so that she had to laugh.”

“That’s old coffee.” Commented Homer.

“It’s said that there is an entire city underground”

Continued the musician in his dreamy voice. “The inhabitants of this city didn’t die but have made it to their job to gather all knowledge and bring it back to the same level as before when all was beautiful. They don’t give up going on expeditions to still standing galleries, museums and libraries on the surface. They raise their children with a sense for beauty. There is peace and harmony there, their ideology is knowledge and their religion is art. There the walls aren’t just covered in ugly oil colors but with colorful frescos. From the loudspeakers no orders and alarm signals could be heard but Berlioz, Haydn and Tschaikovsky on
that
day. Just imagine every inhabitant can quote Dante out of their heads.

That’s the reason why the people have remained like back then. Well not like in the 21
^st
century but more like in antique times. Well, you’ve read >Myths and legends<”

Leonid smiled at the old man as if he thought that he was a bit slow. “Free, courage’s, beautiful and wise.

Righteous and noble”

“I’ve never heard of it!” Now he just hoped that that smart devil hadn’t caught the girl with his net already.

“In the metro the place is called >The emerald city<. Its inhabitants like to use another name”

“And that would be?” Said Homer angrily.

“The ark”

“Nonsense! Complete nonsense!” Yelled the old man and turned away.

“Of course.” Said the musician. “After all it is just a story”

At the
Dobryninskaya
chaos reigned. Homer looked from one side to the other, surprised and fearful at the same time: Was this an illusion? Could something like that happen at the ring line? It looked like somebody had declared war on Hanza. Out of the tunnel towered the transport railcar, a few bodies on it that were laying on top of.

Paramedics carried them down and put them on a piece of cloth, one was missing the head, another one had a mutilated face, intestines were quelling out of some …

Homer held his hand in front of Sasha’s eyes.

Leonid was breathing heavily and turned away.

“What happened?” He asked one of the men who were guarding the paramedics.

“Something hit our guards at the big distributor. All dead, to the last man. No survivors. And nobody knows who did it.” The paramedic cleaned his hands on his coat. “You got a smoke? My hands are shaking”

The big distributor, so Hanza’s shuttle, it was the spider web like system of tracks, that departed from the radial station at the
Pavelezkaya
and connected four lines with each other: The ring, the grey, the orange and the green line.

Homer had guessed that Hunter would take that way. It was the shortest. But it was always guarded by Hanza.

Why all this bloodshed? Had they opened fire first?

Or hadn’t they seen him coming out of the darkness? Where was he now? Oh god, there was another head … Why had he done this?

Homer thought about the broken mirror and Sasha’s words. Should she have been right? Maybe the brigadier was fighting against himself, maybe he had wanted to avoid unnecessary deaths, maybe he wasn’t in control of himself … And that was the reason he had broken the mirror, to destroy the ugly man into which he had transformed?

No. Hunter hadn’t seen a man in his reflection but a monster. He had tried to eliminate it but only broken the glass and one reflection had become a dozen.

But what if … Homer looked after the paramedics who had just loaded the last of the eight bodies from the railcar onto the platform … What if he had seen a desperate man starring back out of the mirror? The old hunter?

What if the other one, the monstrous one had already arrived and taken the lead?

What else? (Chapter 14)

What made a human to a human? More than a million
years
he
journeys
though the world. The
magical
transformation,
which
let this intelligent animal
become
something
totally
new,
had only happened in the last ten
thousand
years. You just had to think: 99 p
ercent
of
his
history
he
spent
cowering
in caves and chewing
on
raw meat,
un
able to warmth
himself
, develop tools or even weapons
and he
couldn’t even really talk. Even his feelings weren’t that far from apes or wolves: Hunger, fear,
companionship
, pleasure …