The Dead Mountaineer's Inn (29 page)

All the other participants in the aforementioned events are currently still alive. Not long ago I read about a commemoration held by the International Illusionists' Society honoring Du Barnstoker: the old man was celebrating his ninetieth birthday. Attending the commemoration was “his charming niece Brunhilde Cannes, with her husband, the famous astronaut Perry Cannes.” Hinkus is serving out his life sentence and petitions every year for amnesty. Early on in his sentence two attempts were made on his life; he was wounded in the head, but somehow managed to survive. They say that he is addicted to whittling and is earning decent money at it. The prison administration is satisfied with him. Kaisa got married and had four children. Last year Alek and I visited her. She lives in the suburbs of Mur and hasn't changed a bit—she's still just as chubby and dumb, and as easily amused. I'm convinced that the entire tragedy has completely fallen out of her consciousness without leaving any trace.

Alek and I are great friends. Business at the Interstellar Zombie Inn is booming: there are now two buildings in the valley, the second of which is built from modern materials, with a host of electrical amenities. I don't like it at all. When I visit Alek, I always stay in my old room, and at night we go to the den, as we used to, for a mug of hot port with spices. Alas, these days one mug is enough to last the entire evening. Alek has shrunk quite a bit and grown a beard; his nose is the color of Bordeaux, but he still loves to talk in a deep voice and is not averse to poking fun at his guests. He continues to dabble in invention and has even patented a new type of wind turbine. He keeps the patent certificate under glass above his old safe in his old office. Neither of his perpetuum mobiles have been put to use yet—but there are only a few small kinks
still to work out. So far as I understand it, in order for them to really work forever, he would have to invent a completely non-degrading plastic. I always have a good time with Alek: the inn is so calm and cozy. But one day he confessed to me in a whisper that to this day he keeps a Bren machine gun in the basement, just in case.

I completely forgot to mention the St. Bernard Lel. Lel died. From old age, nothing more. Alek loves to say that this astounding dog learned to read not long before his death.

And now, about me. Many many times during boring shifts, over the course of solitary walks or just sleepless nights, I've thought over everything that happened and asked myself a single question: did I do the right thing, or not? Technically, I did: the authorities found my actions appropriate—though the chief of our civil department did lightly rebuke me for the fact that I did not hand the suitcase over immediately, and therefore exposed my witnesses to unnecessary risks. For the capture of Hinkus and the return of over a million crowns I received an award, and retired as a senior inspector: the highest rank that I could have expected. It was not easy for me to write my report about these strange events. I had to exclude any hint of my personal feelings from the official document—a goal at which I must have succeeded, at the end of the day. At least I didn't become a laughingstock, or a man with a reputation as a daydreamer. Of course, I left a lot out of the report. How could I write about that final terrible ski race through the valley in an official police document? Whenever I come down with a fever, I witness again and again that wild inhuman spectacle, and hear that soul-chilling whistle and screech … No, formally speaking everything turned out okay. True, my coworkers sometimes make fun of me, but it's all a joke, they don't mean anything bad by it. I told Zgut more about it than I told the others. He thought it over a long time, scratched his
silver stubble, puffed his pipe, but then didn't say anything significant—just that he wouldn't let the cat out of the bag. More than once I've started to talk to Alek about it. Every time he's answered me in monosyllables—only once, hiding his eyes, he confessed that at the time he had been most interested in the reputation of his inn and the lives of his clients. It seems to me that after he'd said this he was ashamed of his words and regretted his confession. As for Simone, he didn't say a single word to me for the rest of his life.

Probably they really were aliens. I never talked about what I personally thought on the matter. In front of the commissions, I always adhered strictly to the simple facts and the report that I presented to my superiors. But now I have few doubts. Men have landed on Mars and Venus; why wouldn't there have been landings here, on Earth? And then it is simply impossible to think of another version of the story that throws light on all its shadows. But is that what it's really about—them being aliens? I have thought a lot about it and can now say: yes, that's what it's really about. The poor guys fell here like fish in a net and the way I treated them, I have to confess, was perhaps too cruel. Probably it's all because they came here at the wrong time and met the wrong people. They met gangsters and policemen … Well, all right, then. And if they had met with our counterintelligence, or the army? Would that have been better? Hardly …

The thing is, my conscience bothers me. This never happens to me: I act properly, I obey God, the law and the people, but my conscience bothers me. Sometimes it gets really bad, and I want to find one of them and ask them to forgive me. I have this idea that one of them, maybe, is still wandering around among us, in disguise, unrecognizable. It's an idea that won't leave me alone. I even joined a society called the Adam Adamites, and they got a lot of money from me before
I realized that it was all just talk and they'd never help me find the friends of Moses and Luarvik …

That's it, they came at the wrong time. We weren't ready to meet them. We're not ready now. Even now, if I—the very same man who lived through all that and thought it all over—found myself in the same situation, my very first thoughts would be, are they telling the truth, are they maybe hiding something, could their arrival be the sign of some gigantic catastrophe? I'm an old man, but you see, I have granddaughters …

When it gets really bad, my wife sits down beside me and tries to comfort me. She says that even if I hadn't made things so difficult for Moses and the rest of them, it would have still ended in a huge tragedy, because then the gangsters would have arrived at the inn and, most likely, killed all of us who were still there. All that is undoubtedly true. I myself have taught her to say these things, only by now she has forgotten that, and it seems to her that they are her own ideas. All the same, her attempts do make things a little easier for me. But not for long. Only until I remember that Simon Simone never said a word to me until his death. We met many times, after all: at Hinkus's trial, on television, in the meetings of the many commissions, and he never said a word to me. Not a single word. Not one.

Josh Billings would like to thank Elizaveta Prudovskaya for her assistance.

Jeff VanderMeer would like to thank his friend, the writer and reviewer Vlad Zhenevsky, for context, including English translations from the Boris Strugatsky memoir.

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