D A Novel (George Right)

THROAT





Steel locks clanked hollowly behind my back, cutting me off from the world of the living. In modern prisons, guards don't jingle keys on thick wire rings anymore–everything is done by automatics; the locks are controlled from a central location. No chance to escape, nor even that tiny hope that the prisoners of the past had... For a moment I felt something like an attack of claustrophobia. Behind me there was a tightly locked steel door, ahead of me–a corridor without windows, with pale green walls and caged lights on the ceiling. Yes, here even they are behind bars... At that moment they burned steadily, but I knew that there were moments when they dimmed or started to flicker. It means that one more inhabitant of this place leaves it–leaves in almost the only way possible here...

Alas, I had no way back. The jailer looked at me expectantly–without anger, but also without sympathy–and I obediently went forward, deep into death row.

The guard stopped at a gray door without a number and put his card into the slot. I knew that this card wouldn't work in anyone else's hands–some kind of biometrics scanning... The lock clicked, but the jailer didn't hurry to open the door. Instead, he decided to remind me of the rules once again.

"He's chained, and the furniture is screwed to the floor. Just the same, be careful. Don't let him provoke you, don't get too close to him, and don't give him anything in a way that could allow him to grab you. For example, don't bend down if he wants to mutter something in your ear. He'll sink his teeth in it without a second thought. Don't forget who he is."

"I studied the case materials well," I answered, bored by the third such lecture already.

"I'm sure," this time there was hostility in the jailer's voice. "But you think that if you are on his side, he is on yours. And that's a big mistake."

I understood the reason for his irritation, but I didn't try to remind him once again that I was doing my duty just as he was doing his and it was not a matter of personal sympathies.

"If anything goes wrong, call for help immediately," the guard finished, having gotten no reaction from me. "I'll be right behind this door."

Then he opened the door at last and I went in.

The small room was divided by a metal table. The person in orange coveralls, sitting on the other side of the table, was indeed chained to the chair armrests: his left hand–with a regular handcuff, while the chain for the right hand was longer, allowing him, if necessary, to take something from the table if it were moved close enough to him. I didn't see his ankles, but I didn't doubt that they were in shackles, too.

Except for all these accessories, his appearance was most ordinary. He seemed to be in his early fifties (actually he was 48), a receding hairline, grizzled, with an unremarkable face (such faces are a real nightmare for policemen, as no witnesses can describe them clearly), down-turned corners of his lips, faded eyes under puffy eyelids...

However, his ordinary appearance was, well, ordinary. No maniac looks like a maniac–otherwise catching them wouldn't be that hard. And even after all charges are proved, his neighbors, colleagues, even family members still cannot believe his guilt. “Oh, that can't be true, such a decent person! Perhaps a little unsociable, but...”

Nevertheless, this unremarkable middle-aged man with the appearance of a tired accountant from a third-rate office was the one whom journalists had named Jack-is-Back, alluding to Jack the Ripper. As a twist of fate, when he was caught at last, his surname appeared to be Jackson. "Jack's son," literally...

However, actually he had almost nothing in common with the Victorian serial killer, except for his extreme cruelty. Jackson didn't kill prostitutes. There were no sexual motives in his actions and no motive of punishment for sins. On the contrary, only decent people were his victims. Gender and age were not significant to him. By the way, he even wasn't unsociable–quite the opposite, he willingly made new acquaintances, easily ingratiated himself with people, making impression of a nice and harmless, though a little sad, person–and then...

Before he was stopped, he managed to kill twenty eight people–eviscerated them alive. Sometimes, he killed whole families. The most shocking episode was in Philadelphia, where he murdered a man, his wife, his elderly parents who had come to stay for a while with their son, and three children–a boy of eight and girls of five and three. After that the public went nuts, demanding that the police find the murderer. And not even just find, but "wipe the bastard out before some lawyer rats get him off the hook...”

Yes, members of my profession are often reproached as immoral. They say that, for enough money we are ready to defend anybody. I cannot say that these claims are absolutely groundless–though, in my opinion, justice demands, that, as there is the prosecution side, there must also be a defense side. And we have professional ethics, too. But after all we are still human beings, not just professionals. Nobody in my law office wanted to take this case. And not because–well, not only because–there wouldn't be a hefty fee (Jackson refused to take a lawyer). Nor even because the case looked absolutely hopeless: the evidentiary basis was more than convincing, the police had committed no violations about which to complain, and Jackson had admitted full guilt to all the charges against him. But the main reason was that nobody really wanted to save such a freak from the electric chair. Yes, there are murderers, and even repeated murderers, who deserve leniency–but obviously not in this case.

And then the boss foisted this case off on me, as the youngest attorney in the firm. Say, it's your chance to prove yourself. And if you fail, well, nobody expected miracles from a beginner anyway...

No, I, of course, didn't feel much sympathy for my client. But, after all, a job is a job.

"Hello, Mr. Jackson," I professionally smiled, taking the laptop from my attache case and unfolding it on my side of the table."I am your lawyer. My name is Mike..."

"I refused a lawyer," Jackson dully interrupted. "Besides, the sentence was passed already. What more do you need from me?"

"You probably don't know yet, but there were recent changes to the state law," I explained in the same confident tone. "Now in hearings on all death sentence cases, the participation of a lawyer is obligatory. And as the law has no retroactive effect only if it would worsen the situation of the convict, your case is subject to review."

"So you think that will improve my situation," he grinned.

"To tell the truth, your situation is very serious," I declared, continuing nevertheless to radiate confidence. "All the evidence is against you and we have no basis to suggest..."

"I killed all these people," he interrupted me again."And, if there is a new hearing, I will repeat my confession there. So can we just avoid all this bother?"

"In a democratic state, a confession is not the final proof of guilt," I reminded him. "There could be circumstances which compelled you..."

"Do you have hearing problem or don't you understand English? Nobody compelled me, tortured me, or threatened me. I killed twenty eight people absolutely willfully and purposely. And I confessed to it of my same free will after my arrest."

"But not before!" I noticed." If you, as you say, didn't want to hide your crimes, why didn't you give yourself up?"

"Because I wanted to continue to kill," he simply answered.

Damn... Well, after all, that's my job.

"Could you explain, why did you... and why do you want to continue to kill, Mr. Jackson?"

"Because I am a monster who likes to disembowel people alive."

Certainly, it was said in the same tone as "be damned and f*ck off." I tried to make my voice more heartfelt and looked into his eyes:

"But there is another reason, isn't there?"

He kept silent, trying to look indifferent as before, but nevertheless for an instant he withdrew his eyes.

"You can tell me only," I pressured. "As an attorney, I cannot reveal what you say."

He continued his silence and when I had already decided that he would say nothing, he suddenly muttered:

"You won't understand. Or will think that I am crazy."

"A psychiatric examination ruled you completely sane," I reminded.

"Well, of course."

"But, as far as we're concerned, it may be our only defense. You see, I've studied your biography. It was completely ordinary until three years ago when you had a car accident resulting in craniocereberal trauma and clinical death. You stayed in this condition for nearly eleven minutes. It is considered that irreversible brain damage occurs after six minutes. But it is, of course, an average. Specific features of a certain organism may... Anyway, doctors pulled you out from the next world. Then–several months of rehabilitation. Tests, tomograms, all that stuff. Eventually you completely recovered, healthy both physically and mentally. And a week later you started to kill."

"Well, there you are. Those doctors ruled me sane, too."

"Doctors can be mistaken. No, I don't want to say that you are crazy, Mr. Jackson. But it is more important for us not whether you are insane or not, but what the judge will think about it, do you understand me? Such a major head injury usually doesn't pass without consequences, and we have grounds to demand a new psychiatric examination. And there... I'm not saying that you should feign illness. Just, possibly, be more frank than before with the doctors, tell them more about your secret fears and fantasies, and..."

"What for?" he sneered. "To avoid the electric chair?"

"If you wish, yes," I replied with some note of irritation. That's bad, nonprofessional, I should watch myself better...

"And if I do not wish?"

"You mean you want to be executed?"

"I do."

"So, you regret your actions? Does your conscience bother you?"

"I did what I had a duty to do. And if I regret anything, it's that I didn't have time to do more."

Well, it looks like psychiatrists really missed the obvious. The duty, the mission, "voices in my head ordered me..." There are countless instances in criminal cases where a murderer feigned madness to escape punishment. But here, seemingly, the madman feigns (and successfully!) mental health in order to be executed. I haven't heard about such precedents before. How did he manage to deceive doctors, I wonder? Probably because forensic psychiatrists got too accustomed to dealing with the opposite situation...

And if all this is true, it not only gives me a chance to win a hopeless case, but also converts me from a person obliged to protect a bloody bastard into the savior of a sick man who, of course, cannot be blamed for becoming ill.

"Could you please explain what your duty consisted of, Mr. Jackson? And who imposed it on you?"

But he preferred to close up again, like a mollusk on a seabed to which a hand was stretched.

"What are all these conversations for? I've told you already, I don't need your help. If the law requires you to fulfill any formalities for my protection, do it, but without me."

"Yes, of course," I pretended that I turned off my laptop and was going to leave."That only reduces my workload and I'll do as you say if you insist. Just, you know, I had a thought–not as a lawyer but as a human being–that you will be executed... quite a nasty procedure, by the way. It is officially considered that death by an electric chair is immediate, but it is not always so. It sometimes happens that they have to turn the current on a second and even a third time... skin bursts and smokes, eyes literally jump out of the sockets, severe spasms break bones..."

"I know all this. If you want to frighten me..."

"No, no. I only want you to realize clearly what awaits you. But OK, maybe all this doesn't disturb you. However... you still know something very important, don't you? And your secret will die with you. Isn't that deplorable?"

"Tell me also that if I explain everything to you, you will fulfill my duty," he sneered.

"Certainly not. I won't tell you that."

"And you are right, as I wouldn't believe you. However... the secret... everyone should indeed know this secret. But it's useless even to try to explain. Nobody will believe me. Not even because they can't, but because they won't want to believe."

"Well... but can't you try? At least tell me only. Perhaps, I won't believe, either, but in any case, what do you lose?"

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Kept silent. Then suddenly he resolved to speak.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" he asked, looking somewhere aside.

Certainly not. I am not a superstitious idiot. But aloud I, of course, said differently:

"Well... as there is a lot of unknown in the world, I don't exclude the possibility of their existence. And you? Do you believe in them?"

"No," he dumbfounded me. And then added: "It is possible to believe only in what you do not know. And I saw them and communicated with them. Moreover–I was one of them."

Yes, yes. My diagnosis is proving to be true.

"You, in general, got everything right," he continued. "Everything really did begin with that accident. And I was indeed brought back from the next world. Only not by doctors."

"By whom then? Angels?" I probably managed to dispel any sign of irony from my intonation."Or maybe demons?"

"No, not at all. By people. Dead people."

"Zombies, you mean?"

He looked at me as at a fool, and then sighed and asked:

"What do you know about ghosts?"

"Well... it is considered that ghosts are souls of people who died a cruel death. And as a result, they got stuck between the two worlds, ours and... next one. Thirst for revenge, the need to fulfill an unfinished duty and so on can hold them here..."

"Well, well. And in your opinion, are ghosts unhappy?"

"It seems, yes. They are troubled by this unfinished business. Therefore they wander and groan at nights..." I couldn't restrain myself and said the last phrase with a theatrical howl. Jackson frowned in annoyance and asked the next question:

"And what is, as it is considered, the main desire of any ghost?"

"To go to eternal rest," I answered immediately.

"Indeed, I heard that since my childhood, too," he nodded. "And haven't you ever reflected, why?"

"Why what?"

"Why should ghosts so aspire to this rest? What's so bad in having an active afterlife? Why are all people so sure that ghosts want to replace it with... with what? With the final death, the non-existence–which the same people fear so much during their lifetime?"

"Probably, not after all," I assumed; it never came to my mind before to think about such things. "As far as I understand, the rest is a transition to a better world..."

"Who told you that it is better?"

"Well," I shrugged my shoulders, "it's just an expression..."

"And you didn't reflect where it came from?"

"Probably from people's hope for a better life at least after death. Though from the Christian point of view... and not only Christian... in the afterlife there can be either paradise or hell. But, probably, existence in a ghost form is some kind of purgatory... that is, when a soul stuck between worlds gets the opportunity to move on, it means that its sins are forgiven, and it is awaited in paradise..."

"Yes, paradise. Eternal pleasure, huh? Well, in some sense it really is... but it depends on for whom. In your opinion, what does the soul do in paradise?"

"Well, I don't know," I shrugged. "All these descriptions from the Middle Ages... such as walking in a garden and playing harps... always seemed to me too naive and primitive. In my opinion, such 'pleasure' will make you howl from boredom in just a week–let alone all eternity... Modern theologians, as far as I know, put it more vaguely, like paradise is the place where the soul reunites with its Creator... In any case, I am not an expert in this matter. I am, in fact, an agnostic."

"Agnostic", nodded Jackson. "A very apt word. It means–one who does not know. And those whom you call 'experts' should be called the same. Though they imagine that they know something, naive idiots..."

"And you?" I asked directly. "Do you know?"

"I know. I was there."

"In paradise? Ah, yes, the clinical death... Well, not only you..."

"Yes, certainly. Even books are written about it. Flight through a tunnel and so on... But don't forget, I was there for eleven minutes. I moved further down the tunnel than others, further than those who could return, certainly. And I saw what is there."

"And what is that?" I became interested.

I saw, how Jackson's face–which, according to the press, remained passionless when he told the court about his brutal murders and listened to his own death sentence–suddenly was distorted and turned pale, even gray, in just an instant. I have read about such things in fiction books and I always thought it was just a literary cliche, but now I saw it happen in reality. And it was not simply such a horror which can't be feigned, which can be produced only by reminiscence of real events (and what might those events be if only a single memory of them turns the face into a terrible mask of a corpse?!)–no, this grimace demonstrated also an insuperable disgust risen as a lump in the throat.

"There is He", dully said Jackson.

"Who? God?" I didn't understand. However, the look of my vis-a-vis suggested an opposite assumption: "the Devil?"

"Call Him what you want," Jackson returned to his former grumbling tone. "He deceived you into the belief that there are two beings. All dualistic religions keep repeating that, enticing new unfortunate idiots. But actually, He is one. Creator. Founder. He, or more likely It... The soul should return to its creator, huh? But why in the world do all of you think that it happens for your pleasure?!" now Jackson almost shouted. "That It is interested in anyone's pleasure, except Its own? And the main thing–everything is on the surface! Sometimes his servitors speak out clearly–however, even they are blind and don't understand WHAT they serve... they don't understand that there will be no reward and no exception for them either... Flock, oh yes. The favorite Christian image, what could be clearer. And if only anyone reflected–WHAT are sheep to the shepherd, or to be exact–to the owner of the flock? WHAT role does he prepare for them?"

"Are you saying..."

"We are Its food. For this purpose It created us, and it is the only meaning of our life. And sinners, saints, believers, non-believers–all these have no value. These are senseless labels with which we amuse ourselves in our pen. Really, who is interested in the beliefs of livestock?"

"Well, it's, of course, a curious hypothesis..." I allowed.

"It's not a hypothesis, you idiot!" Jackson bellowed, and his chains tinkled. "I saw it with my own eyes! Or what I had instead of eyes... there. The tunnel really exists and I flew through it almost up to the end. But do you know what it is actually?"

"What?"

"It's... it's a throat."

For some time he sat silently, looking at the smooth surface of the table in front of him. Then he continued:

"Actually, our fate is even more awful than a sheep's. For He devours alive not our bodies, but our souls. More precisely, even that's not so. A soul is immortal. This was not a lie. And He–It–feeds not on souls, but on their suffering. That horror and despair which souls produce in the process of digestion... eternal digestion," Jackson made a pause again. "I saw it. There, where the throat leads... in the stomach. There is... as if braided brown space, all consisting of a torn, dirty, shaggy web. And in this web people hang... millions, billions of people. Can you imagine old, exhausted corpses of flies–the victims of an ordinary spider? It looks similar from afar, but up close it's much worse. They hang there... semi-digested, dried, with tatters of flesh hanging down from their bones, many of them already have no extremities, or just gnawed stumps sticking out... Certainly, that's not real, corporeal bones and flesh–our consciousness simply perceives the mutilated soul this way. But, eventually, if we feel it to be so, what's the difference to us what their true nature is? And they shout. All of them eternally shout..."

"So 'semi-digested' or 'eternally'? If 'semi-', there should come also the moment when completely..."

"It is not necessarily true at all. Do you know what an asymptote is?"

"Seems to me, something mathematical..."

"Yes. The state to which it is possible to infinitely approach, but never to reach. The same is here. A certain core of a soul always remains. That core that is capable of feeling horror and pain..."

"And how did you manage to get out of there?"

"I, naturally, turned back when I saw all this. As well as billions before me. But usually the people who have fallen that deep can't return. Even if doctors manage to reanimate the body, the soul remains there. And on a hospital bed the next comatose 'vegetable' appears... But I was very lucky. There were those nearby who helped me."

"Who? You said something about ghosts."

"You see, it's also true that those who die a cruel death get stuck between the worlds. They don't fall into the throat. I don't know why and neither do they. Perhaps, from His point of view they are something like unripe or, on the contrary, spoiled fruit... Or the suffering which they endured when dying reduces their, so to say, productivity after death–then they are an analog of a squeezed orange... But, for some reason, suicide doesn't prevent souls from falling down Its throat. Here the legends are wrong–very few people are actually capable of committing suicide in a painful enough way... Most ghosts of course, prefer to keep close to our world, though in it they are almost powerless. They are shades and nothing more, almost incapable of interacting with living beings or with any material objects. The vast majority of ghost stories stating the opposite are myths. But ghosts still have the possibility of observing, traveling, and communicating with each other. That's not too bad, especially considering the alternative... But there are also those who venture into the throat. Not because of curiosity–there is nothing curious there. They simply try to rescue souls falling there. Most often, their relatives and beloved ones, but sometimes also strangers as well. Ghosts try to push souls back to the world of the living–which is of course possible only when the body still can be reanimated–or to turn into a ghost, which is possible even less often if the death was usual. Besides, it is dangerous. If the ghost gets in too deep, it is sucked into the bowels like all other souls... It cannot spit or vomit."

"Why don't those who return after a clinical death report the same experience as you?"

"I've said already–they come back from halfway, having seen nothing. The majority–due to the efforts of doctors only. But even those who were pushed out... there is no time for explanations there. If you begin to explain the person who is being sucked into a whirlpool what awaits him at the bottom–you both will be drawn in. My case is special... I was pulled out from there, from where usually nobody is. On the one hand, I happened to be stronger than others. Strength of mind, in literal sense... not that I have especially strong will and so forth, but simply as, you know, there are people resistant to poisons or to radiation... one on a billion... it's not a personal merit, just so I happened to be born. On the other hand, those who saved me took a terrible risk themselves... having taken my oath that if I return to the living world, I will fulfill their commissions. So it lasted longer than usual, and there was enough time for conversation."

Suddenly he literally shot a glance into my eyes.

"I know what you think. That all this are simply hallucinations produced by lack of oxygen in a dying brain. Exactly how scientists explain all stories told by people after clinical death, huh? But here is proof for you. Do you know who Daniel Dorn is?"

"I know who Diana Dorn is," said I, remembering again who was in front of me. "Your first victim. But there is no Daniel in the case materials..."

"Because he perished five years earlier," Jackson interrupted. "He is her father. He was one of those who pushed me out. And he... didn't get out himself. It's like in physics–force of action is equal to the force of counteraction... pushing someone upward, you fall deeper yourself."

"Well, in principle, you could learn this name without any..."

"Yes, of course," Jackson grinned."The name. The address. The arrangement of rooms. And in particular–the security system code. In a city where I never was before, where I had no acquaintances and whereto I had to travel through half of America. Couldn't indeed the cranky blood-thirsty maniac find a closer victim? And aren't the surnames of Kraut and Poplavsky also familiar to you? After all, the police still could not answer the question how I've got into their houses so easily."

"You mean that you killed your victims...at the desire of their relatives?"

"Not all of them. Only the first three cases–yes, I paid my debt. And then I understood that I should continue. I realized that to try to explain anything was useless, I would have only gotten into a sanitarium. And also I understood how religions would react to my revelations. The idiots thinking that it is possible to make an agreement with Him... There is nobody to agree with there. And not at all because He is infinitely cleverer than we are. On the contrary, I doubt that He–It–has any intelligence in general. Perhaps It had long ago when It created the world... but even that is unlikely. And now It is simply a glutton..." he paused again. "So I realized that I can not save everyone or even a large number. But I tried to rescue at least some good people whom I met. And the only rescue from the fate all of us face is..."

"Painful death."

"Yes. Well, or shameful one; it works, too. But I couldn't give it to them–it requires the hatred and contempt of a large number of people..."

Oh yes. As, for example, in case of execution of a bloody maniac.

"Didn't you think about mass acts of terrorism?" I asked aloud.

"Certainly I did," he nodded. "But during powerful explosions, the majority perish instantly, so it won't work. However, death from poisoning with certain gases can be painful enough... but I could neither buy nor make them. I am not a chemist."

"I see," I said.

"You don't believe me," he sighed.

"In any case, what you told me sounds rather..."

"It is not necessary to choose politically correct formulations. Let's use elementary logic. If my story is a lie, then I deserve execution as a monstrous serial killer. And if it is the truth–you understand why I want such a death. So simply don't interfere, OK? Do the formalities that the law requires of you, but nothing more. Eventually, it's just simpler for you, in all senses, isn't it?"

"It is."

"So, do we agree?" he stared into my eyes with hope.

"Don't worry, Mr. Jackson."



When "the New Ripper case" was heard for the first time, the court hall had overflowed; moreover, even outside in front of the building, a fair crowd gathered, shaking placards like "Fry the bastard!" over their heads. The second process attracted much less interest. Very few people doubted that it was a mere formality and with his guilt so incontestable, the sentence would be confirmed. Even most of the relatives of victims–excepting those who were called as witnesses for the prosecution–preferred not to come, probably having found it too hard to relive painful memories. Though I do not doubt that they were going to attend the execution.

The prosecution portion of the hearing rolled as on rails to its obvious ending. Evidence, protocols, testimony... "Does the defense have questions for the witness?" "No, Your Honor." "Produce the next witness..." What questions could there be to the undoubtedly proven facts? The artist carelessly struck a pencil on paper, drafting portraits of the participants of the hearing. Once I caught his derisive, but sympathetic glance as if to say, "Bad luck, guy. Though the case is headline-making, you definitely won't become famous for it..."

And here is, at last, my statement in pleading. I stood up, winked to the artist and, without hurrying, opened the papers.

"'The independent expert psychiatric appraisal which has been carried out... having considered the presented audio- and videorecord of the conversation..." (yes, yes–I recorded video, too, using a tiny directed camera lens in my top button, in the best traditions of spy movies) "using the techniques of analysis... on the basis... complex case... the conclusion... paranoid psychosis of traumatic genesis. Thus, on the question of whether the subject was sane at the moment of he committed certain criminal acts and whether he can bear responsibility for them, the answer is–negative.'"

Noise in the hall. Jackson looks at me with round eyes. Then he tries to move forward, but guards hold him:

"Son of a bitch! You promised me!"

The accused, known before for his equanimity–by the way, it's one of the signs of his disorder–has real hysterics. I smile indulgently to the judge. Informal, but quite indicative confirmation of the expert opinion...

The prosecution inertly demands yet another psychiatric examination. The judge rejects. Oh yes, certainly–experts can make mistakes (though the opinion I presented is decorated with very authoritative signatures). But any doubt is treated in favor of the accused. Especially when the matter is not feigned illness to save his life, but feigned health to go to the electric chair. In this case the pathology is obvious even without sophisticated medical terms...

The sentence. Everyone stands up.

"... not guilty of capital murder by reason of insanity and he shall be placed for compulsory treatment in the Greenhill psychiatric hospital until such time..."

"You bastard!"

It's not Jackson shouting now. This is a woman in a black scarf, the mother of one of the victims. And she shouts not at the murderer but at me. She believes that I saved the torturer of her child from his deserved punishment. Though, actually, a lifelong stay in a mental hospital is not a wonderful existence. And it is certain that Jackson will stay there for life; with his experience of successfully faking mental health nobody will believe him ever again. I think, at least thirty years... these institutions provide good care and very careful supervision, so they definitely won't allow him to die ahead of time. Some men try to calm the woman, then remove her from the hall. I can understand her feelings, but I'm only doing my duty, aren't I?

The artist gazes hard at me and his pencil flies fast across the paper. I do not doubt that behind a door TV reporters already wait.



* * *



"... right from the crime scene. The police department representative just confirmed that the body found belongs to Mike Goldman, a young, but already well-known lawyer who became famous for achieving a not guilty verdict in the case of serial killer 'Jack-is-Back Jackson.'” This event caused controversial reaction not only because so many people wanted Jackson executed, but also because Goldman achieved the verdict by making and using recordings of a private conversation against the will of his client. However, his actions were recognized as lawful since they were carried out in the interests of the client who was lately recognized as incapacitated. For the current cruel murder, the police have no official suspects yet, but the most likely motive is revenge by some friends or relatives of Jackson's victims; it is known that some of them continue to blame..."

"Bob, they're taking him away right now! Shoot!"

"Get away from the stretcher!"

"The people have a right to..."

"Officer!"

"Okay, okay, we're leaving..."

"V-vultures..."

"Cool! I managed to take a close up of his face!"

"Oh, what's the use? They won't allow it to be aired due to ethical-f*cking-reasons. Politically correct a*sholes, it's impossible to work nowadays... Well, show me what you have. Damn, turn the screen towards me, I can't see! Hmm..."

"What's wrong?"

"Well, nothing's wrong... But have you ever seen on the face of a corpse with fifteen knife wounds such a satisfied smile?”





DESPAIR


Yes, it is the absolute top, pinnacle of despair!
Michael Shcherbakov

What if, unsuspectingly wandering in the dark vaults of the universe, you find truths so horrible and disgusting, that even the knowing of them will turn your whole existence into an everlasting nightmare?

"Rilme Gfurku"

All the routes do lead the frozens

Into void and eternal cold.



Fleur


In the beginning there was nausea. Not the sharp nausea from poison, which rises to the throat by emetic spasms yet giving at the same time hope for subsequent relief, but rather the viscous, dreary nausea of weakness after a long leaden sleep in a stuffy room–a nausea that fills the chest with caustic wadding, the mouth with dry muck, and the brain with pulsing lead. On the one hand, in such a condition the last thing you want to do is to get up and move at all. On the other hand, you understand that if you continue to lie down, the headache will grow even worse. So it is necessary to overcome your instinct and to get up. And it would not be a bad idea to open a window, even if it were winter outside.

Those were his first conscious thoughts. After comprehension came astonishment: he understood that he actually didn't remember what season it was. While astonishment was turning into anxiety, and anxiety into fear, he realized that he didn't remember what the day before was... or the day before that... or... He vainly tried to snatch from his memory any fragment of his life, but came across only emptiness. Or (this sensation arrived a bit later) the blank wall which cut his past off. However, the situation with his present was no better. He didn't know where he was or how he got there.

He did not know who he was or even what his name was.

With an effort of sheer will he suppressed the growing panic. I need to analyze, he told himself. He can think: that's good. I think, therefore, I am... This phrase came from somewhere. He did not know where but most likely it was not born in his brain. That meant that in the blank wall cutting off his past there were some cracks through which something can leak through, and if he consistently expanded them... scratched wider... tore them apart...

He opened his eyes.

Sight confirmed what touch had already told him: He lay on a rather rigid cot with neither bed sheets, nor blanket, nor pillow–only something like oilcloth, a dirty, sticky oilcloth under his naked body. He was, however, not absolutely naked. Here and there on his body were some rags and flaps, but they were not cloth. It was difficult to inspect them in more detail. He needed to bend his chin down to his chest, which immediately made his neck ache and, besides, the light in the room was too dim. The light came from a rectangular ceiling fixture covered with dust, burning obviously at half power and unsteadily: a shivering, agonizing light.

Accumulators are giving out: another alien, off-the-wall thought came to him. Accumulators? Why accumulators? Shouldn't the house be connected to the local electricity grid?

Nevertheless, even such light allowed him to understand that the room was very small. Except for the cot, there was only a wardrobe on the opposite wall and a little table near a wall between them. On the fourth wall there was a door, and one more door to the right of the wardrobe. No windows at all. And it smelled musty, as if nobody had lived here for many years.

At last he sat up on the cot (a painful pulsation was felt at once in his temples and the back of his neck) and then stood on the floor, feeling with displeasure the dust and dirt under his bare feet. Even worse, when he took a step something revoltingly and damply crackled under his heel–something, seemingly, alive. More precisely, alive a moment before he stepped on it. A cockroach? Likely it was a cockroach... brrr, repulsive! He squeamishly dragged his heel through the dirty floor, trying to wipe off the remains of the creature. Then he approached the wardrobe and opened its door. Some plastic hangers were inside, but no clothing.

He stepped to a door near the wardrobe. Intuition told him that behind it there was not a corridor, but a bathroom. When he opened the door, a light automatically came on with a loud click that forced him to shudder. It was indeed a bathroom. It was very tiny but was more brightly lit than the room he had just left. On the left there was a toilet bowl, on the right a washstand, and directly ahead but behind an opaque blue curtain–the bath. Once everything here probably sparkled with radiance and chrome, but those days had long since passed. There was no stone or tile. They had been replaced with plastic. In brighter, though still unstable, light, the dirt on the floor and suspicious stains on the walls were even more clearly visible. It smelled of mold.

He turned to the toilet bowl–and frowned. Brown stains were on the seat and in the bottom. The stains, however, had dried up long ago. An association between an open toilet bowl and the bottom jaw of a skull suddenly flashed in his mind. For some time he stood, expecting the fulfillment of the usual physiological ritual, but not a drop came out. He just didn't need to urinate. But he wanted to drink–more precisely, not to drink, but to get rid of the brackish taste in the mouth.

He turned to the washbasin. It was in no better condition than the toilet bowl. At the bottom was either sand or scales of rust, and the tap was spattered with some dried residue. No, he definitely would not drink from this tap. But he could at least rinse his face and hands. He turned the faucet handle. A squeezed hiss, like from a throat of a dying asthmatic, came out, but no water. Instead, gray dust fell from the tap. Then the sound changed, as if the air met an additional obstacle. He had already reached to return the faucet to its initial position, but at that moment the tap sniffed and spat out a whole handful of cockroaches. They hit the basin bottom and scattered in all directions. Some, however, began to stupidly rush and spin in one place.

His first reflex reaction was to jump aside before the insects, gushing over the edge of the basin, would start falling on his feet. However, he immediately realized that it was necessary to close the tap which was still spilling out new cockroaches. Hardly had he time to do it when he felt the disgusting tickling touch from insects crawling on his ankles. He executed something like a convulsive dance, shaking them off, and then jumped aside to the toilet bowl, looking with disgust at the creatures running on the floor. If he were wearing shoes, he would squash them all, but now he could only move back as much as was possible in a tiny bathroom and hope that they wouldn't climb on him again.

Ridiculous, he thought. I, a human being, driven into a corner by some bugs. After all, they are not even poisonous. Nonetheless, he could not overcome his fastidiousness. These creatures always caused an insuperable loathing in him. Always? It seemed that one more remembrance broke out from his unknown past. But cockroaches, probably, were afraid of the man, too. Soon they spread out–some slipping from the room, some running under the curtain–but where the others went, he did not notice.

He raised his eyes from the floor and looked in the mirror over the washstand. It was dusty and dirty too, but in the middle there was an irregular oval seemingly of pure glass, as if someone had hastily wiped a window. The man looked at himself from a distance, then stepped closer, studying with displeasure the unfamiliar sickly pale rumpled face with deep shadows under the eyes and dissheveled tufts of hair sticking out over a bandage. A bandage, yes. His head at forehead level had been sloppily bandaged by something like a used compress. No–he leaned into the mirror even more closely–it was not a gauze bandage with an open weave, but some continuous, dense yellowish-gray fabric with torn, fringed edges. And some bandages somehow stuck–probably dried on–and rags were on many other places of his body, on his neck, his right shoulder, his left forearm, the left side of his breast, his stomach. And scars were on his fingers like marks from rings.

It seemed that something began to clear up. He had been in an accident, received a head injury (not only a head injury), and therefore he could not remember anything. But in that case, where was he? In a hospital? The architecture of the building looked to be government issue. But if it were a hospital, it was closed and abandoned, maybe fifty years ago.

There was no blood on the bandages, nor any pain under them. He touched them, at first delicately, then more firmly. An attempt, however, to tear off at least the long rag crossing his abdomen from top down failed. At first he just simply pulled it, increasing the effort until he felt pain, then sharply jerked several times, each time producing a new impulse of pain. But the bandage held firmly–as if... as if it had grown into his body. No, that was nonsense, he told himself. It will be necessary simply to soak it off. There should be water somewhere around here.

He again lifted his eyes to the person reflected in the mirror and then suddenly recoiled. A huge cockroach ran up the mirror just centimeters from his eyes (it seemed to him–for just a moment–directly on his face). And now he had clearly seen that something was wrong with this insect. First, the cockroach was neither red nor black, but pale, sickeningly whitish. Second, it was too big for a household cockroach. And, more importantly–it had seven legs. Not six, as all other insects, and not even eight, as spiders do–but seven. There were three on the left side and four on the right.

The disgusting creature suddenly stopped in the middle of the mirror, as if to study itself to be convinced that this was no illusion. Overcoming his revulsion, the man looked at the insect for some time. No leg had been torn off. The limbs really grew asymmetrically and, apparently, were even of different lengths. The man helplessly looked around in search of anything with which to kill the freak, then angrily reminded himself that he had much more important problems. He turned to the bath. After all he had already seen, he had no real hope of a working shower, but he still drew aside the curtain.

And stopped dead. The wall over the bath was crossed by a wide inscription obviously made by a finger, generously dipped in something dark red. Only one word: "DESPAIR.”

From sloppy letters, long ago dried, the stains limped downwards. Involuntarily tracking their direction, he lowered his eyes to the bath–and for the first time truly wanted to cry.

At the bottom of the bath, reddened from the dried blood (yes, he could not cowardly convince himself anymore that it was not blood), a naked corpse lay face down. It was a man, not old and in rather good physical shape–though it had not saved him. There was no doubt that it was a corpse and not very fresh. The bluish-pale skin was covered with stains of a whitish mold. Yet there was no cadaverous stench for some reason. There also were no visible wounds on the back of the body. But the amnesiac had no doubt that severe wounds mutilated the front side of the body. It looked as if this unfortunate man literally drowned in his own blood since the drain had been stoppered. How much blood is in a human adult–is it some five liters? Not too much, but it is possible to choke even in a soup bowl. Or had he died from blood loss earlier? The wounds, however, from which so much blood had flowed out, could be deadly in themselves.

The absence of a stench, however, led him to think that the corpse might not be a real corpse but, for example, a dummy. And that all this in general was just an idiotic prank arranged by a bunch of wild friends. He might have been given something to drink that knocked him unconscious, brought to some abandoned house (but why would there be electricity in an abandoned house, and in what era were houses built without windows?), the things here smeared with paint, a doll put into a bath... But the mutant cockroaches? Are there, among his friends, experts in genetic engineering?

However, even all this would not explain the memory loss. A person who was drunk might not remember at all where and with whom he drank, but he does not forget all his previous existence! Anyway, did he even drink at all in that life? Perhaps he was a committed nondrinker? He could not remember even that.

Nevertheless, he bent down and with uncertainty pushed at the recumbent body. The cold slippery skin, covered with fine hairs, moved slightly under his fingers. No, it was definitely not rubber or something similar! He fastidiously jerked back his hand and, after quickly looking around, wiped it on the curtain–which did not look at all clean.

After his push the right hand of the corpse had turned a little, and now it was clearly visible that its fingers were bloody, especially the index finger. But the fingers were not entirely covered in blood. Mainly just the fingertips were stained. Probably, clamped between the body's side and the bath wall, the hand had not bathed in the main bloody pool at the bottom. So what did it mean–this man dipped his fingers in his wounds? Dipped to make this inscription? If a dying person has a chance to leave a final message, at least in such a way, it would be more logical to write the name of the murderer or something to that effect.

The man dare not touch the corpse again, especially not to overturn it. It was all too clear what he would see: skin entirely covered with blood, terrible slash wounds–judging by the quantity of blood, the poor fellow was really mangled–and, probably, the viscera literally falling out through the openings. No, no! Whatever happened, he should get away from there as fast as possible so he would not become the next one dead!

He jumped back into the room and jerked the handle of the door leading, he believed, to a corridor. A bloodcurdling thought flashed in his mind–what if the door were locked? And indeed, it had no inclination to open either out or in. But before the panic could completely engulf him, he looked at the door more attentively and understood that it simply should be slid to the right. His new attempt met with no difficulties. Behind the door there was indeed a corridor, barely lit by the same dim flickering lighting fixtures. There were no windows there, either.

At this moment he remembered that he was naked and decided to find some clothes. The choices were poor. He must try to fashion something from either the oilcloth off the cot or the curtain in the bathroom. The situation was complicated because he had no cutting tool and to tear synthetic material would not be easy. As he discovered, however, someone had already cut half of the oilcloth away. Could it have been for the same purpose? In any event, he rolled something like a skirt for himself from the remaining half. It would cover him unreliably. If he needed to run, it certainly would unwind and fall off. However, if he really had to run, he would have more serious problems than his naked ass.

He did already. He tried to drive this thought from his mind, but it only grew stronger. It will come to no good no good it cannot come to any good... "Despair." Despair, anxiety, and fear. Yes, the whole atmosphere here (where?) contributed to it. But there was still something besides the realization that he had awakened (regained consciousness!) devil knows where, remembering nothing, in the neighborhood of a dead person who had choked to death in his own blood. Having rummaged through the short scraps of his memory, he understood with surprise that the "something" was his previous thought about genetic engineering. It was as if... as if he had inadvertently touched a painful tooth which had now subsided and was having no effect. Why? Why does this thought generate such fear? Perhaps these bandages are the result not of an accident but of biological experiments? Some operations made against his will? Though, how does genetic engineering come into the picture? As much as he could remember, geneticists did not cut the victim, they operate at the microscopic level. Or not genetic engineering per se, but something related to it? Something that (no! no! don't do it!) he could not remember. He tried again, despite the fear that spread like a sticky cold. No. He could not recall. Emptiness.

He approached a little table which until now had escaped his attention and found out that it was not simply a table. Half of it was occupied by a built in screen and, maybe, some other devices. Had there been any communication facilities? Now it was already difficult to tell. Everything had been destroyed, broken out, and shattered with a wild frenzy. Only a lonely torn off optical path stuck out from the mess. Suddenly the man leaned forward and peered through the dim light. In the niche which remained from where the screen had been, among the fragments of electronics (photonics, broken out from the emptiness, "electronics" is an outdated term) something lay that did not resemble a circuitry element. He lifted this small object, rounded at one end, and brought it up to his eyes. In an instant he understood with disgust that he was examining a torn off human nail with flesh attached. Could the one who destroyed things here have done it with his own nails? And the intense pain of a nail and flesh being torn off had not stopped him?

The amnesiac hurled away his trophy and gloomily thought that having a weapon could not hurt. However, the harmful subconscious immediately replaced "could not hurt" with "would not help," but he tried to drive away this thought. At least a chair... after all, shouldn't there be a chair in this room? But alas, there was none.

Again he went to the corridor sunk in flickering twilight, only now realizing that the corridor was not straight, but smoothly bent, forming a large ring. Which direction to choose – left or right? Whichever direction he chooses, he could not see around the curve of the corridor. He listened. He listened. Neither from the left nor from the right came any sound. Only occasionally the oppressive silence was broken by the electric crackling of flickering lamps. He went to the right. Underfoot there was the same dirty floor–for how many years was there no cleaning done here? However, he no longer regretted that he had to go barefoot, as it allowed him to move almost silently. The blank wall continued on the left and doors similar to those which he had left repeated on the right. Judging by distances between them, not all of the doors hid such small rooms. But he had no desire to enter and to come across... The devil only knows what it is possible to come across here. His goal was to get out of here as soon as possible, so he should go directly to the exit. Shouldn't there be an exit somewhere here?!

The dim shivering light was distorting his sense of reality, hindering his ability to orient himself, and giving the impression that all this was just a dreadful nightmare in which he would walk eternally in the dirty gloomy corridor that had neither beginning nor end. For a moment he was so assured of it that he began to pinch himself but without the desired result. However, as he remembered it now, actually pinching oneself to wake up is a myth, since painful sensations can be in a dream, too. While in dreams they are usually weaker than in reality but the sleeper does not realize it. A pinch is not very painful anyway. But if he were thinking so logically about a dream, then he probably was not sleeping. However, what if he indeed had already made a full circle through this corridor and had begun a new one? Immediately came more questions. What if the exit were behind one of these identical doors? Or perhaps the exit did not exist at all? No, that's delirium! But was not all that surrounded him since he came to his senses similar to delirium?

These thoughts entangled him with a sticky cold fear that he tried to expel in vain. Everything here should have a logical explanation. Everything here should have... Yes, certainly. But who guaranteed you that you will like it?

He shook his head. He had to somehow mark the door from which he had emerged and then he would know if he had made a full circle or not. To mark? With what? His own blood?

No way, he calmed himself from the hysterical thought which had rushed to his head. To leave the door open–what could be easier? And maybe he had actually done this? Did he close the door when he left the room? The first time–surely, would be a natural behavior for a person who knew that he was naked. But the second time... He couldn't remember.

A moment later, however, he was given proof that he had not completed a circle yet. On the next door on the right, all in the same manner, in brown-red with long stains (in blood, recognize it already, in blood), was written: "KILL YOURSELF NOW."

"Encouraging," he muttered. It was the first word pronounced by him as far back as he could remember. Usually such a phrase refers to a whole life, but in his case... Goddamn, probably, no more than ten minutes had passed, though it seemed to him that he had wandered in this terrible building not less than an hour. He did not like the sound of his own voice, a hoarse croak. He probably had been silent very long before he spoke.

Or maybe, on the contrary, he had damaged his throat with shouting?

He shrank in belated fright, listening. Perhaps even this flat muttering will attract unknown creatures from a corridor twilight? Or even directly from this door.

But everything still remained silent. Khrrr... click... khrrr... crack! He shuddered from surprise. One of the ceilings fixtures ahead had suddenly gone out and this section of the corridor was engulfed in darkness. Nothing was visible behind this section because of the curvature of the corridor. It was very easy to imagine that...

He waited tensely, peering into the darkness. No, he told himself, the fixture had simply failed. With such voltage, obviously far from standard, it is no wonder. He looked at the door again. The one who leaves such appeals can hardly be a friend. And if an enemy were trying to frighten him, then it would be foolish to take his cue from what the enemy had done. But if a real threat lay behind the door, an enemy would probably not warn him about it, even in such an exotic way. The man pulled the handle. With the door obediently sliding into the wall, he went in.

It was probably some sort of laboratory. That's it–"was." The same furious destruction, as with the little table in the first room, only on a larger scale, had been repeated here. The whole floor was covered by the remains of the mauled, smashed devices torn out of racks. It was now difficult to tell what kind of research they had been intended for. Fragments of a turning chair which, probably, the unknown vandal tried to use as a sledge hammer, lay there, but then the chair, made of plastic, proved to be too light and fragile for such a job.

The amnesiac took some cautious steps, being afraid to wound his feet. But, apparently, there were no splinters from test tubes and subject glasses here. That being as much as it was possible to understand in such chaos and with such illumination. So, it was suited probably more for physics, than for biology or chemistry. Though who would know? Maybe only remote control of the equipment in some hermetic chamber was carried out from here. Among fragments of plastic cases and boards some metal plates, cores, coils, windings occurred–but, apparently, there was nothing that could be used as a weapon. And all this demolition was carried out long ago, as fragments had time to grow with dust–the dust which had almost hidden the brown stains on a floor. In a corner a massive metal bed of a certain installation towered, which apparently proved to be too difficult to destroy. And on its side there was the next inscription, made in the same fashion: "DARK IS FASTER THAN LIGHT HA HA HА." From the last stick of the last letter "A" a stream with a drop on the end led downward. Directly on this drop sat a whitish cockroach. No, it was more likely a fat round spider, as if it had crept out to drink the blood. But actually both the stream and a drop dried up a long time ago.

Gingerly bending down–he liked spiders no more than cockroaches–the man nevertheless approached more closely, wishing to examine the arthropod to discover whether it were a representative of another ugly mutant, or just a normal spider? What is ugliness here: a deviation or the norm?

He moved nearer slowly, in order not to frighten off the creature, but precaution was excessive. The spider did not move. It was dead long ago. And has dried on the bloody drop just as if it had not enough mind to move away when it has started to get thick. The man lifted a fragment of some transparent polymer from a laboratory table–possibly a former screen part–and poked the dried up whitish little body with it. The spider fell to the table, the drawn in legs up. The number of legs, as befits to all spiders, was eight. Three on the right side and five at the left.

The man returned to the corridor. This time he intentionally left the door opened. For orientation, he told to himself, though more likely in order not to see the inscription on it. But, just as he thought of it, the inscription with all its stains appeared in his mind’s eye: "Kill yourself now." Whatever had been before in this laboratory, he did not yet see reasons for suicide. For optimism, however, too...

Suddenly he shuddered, overtaken by a new wave of sticky fear. Physics, a laboratory, mutants–all of it merged together, knocking out the wall which had cut his memory by one more concept: radiation. What if this were the case? If this strange building (a research center? a clinic?) experienced a certain nuclear failure, then all here was abandoned long ago, and all this musty air was penetrated by a slow death. If even insects and spiders, which are more radiation resistant (from where did he know this?), have mutated, then a human here was doomed for certain. That's why "kill yourself now" would mean less suffering. Death from radiation sickness meant long and horrific torment.

But what was with the personnel, hastily leaving the building after the accident, destroying the equipment? The rage against machinery which betrayed them, of course, was understandable. Even a scientist can break down, but when each second was valuable for rescue… And all these bloody inscriptions? A naked corpse in a bath? Maybe he was someone who had found his way into the forbidden zone after the accident and understood too late what he had done?

But, maybe, there had been no evacuation? Maybe they were all just written off? The authorities wished to hide the truth about the accident and had let nobody out. Or not radiation, but some biological shit, and all of them were infected–infected and dangerous. But was radiation capable of preventing decomposition? Some virus may be capable...

But what about himself? Who, in that case, was he? One of the personnel left here or a guinea pig? How could he have survived here for so long, from the moment of the accident, after, seemingly, years have passed? What did he drink, what did he eat? Cockroaches? This thought made him squirm.

Are there other survivors? And what does a meeting with them threaten? Who has left these inscriptions? At first he thought that the word "despair" was written before death by that person in a bathroom. But he had been bleeding profusely, in such a condition that he could not come here from there or vice versa. And all the inscriptions looked to be made by one hand. Then would it be logical to assume that it was the hand of a murderer? But where were the new victims, whose blood was used for the writing? Dragged somewhere, maybe still alive? What for? And why the inscriptions, why smash the equipment? Madness, madness...

He suddenly felt himself very tired–not so much physically, though his head remained heavy, the infinite, hopeless weariness raising from these attempts to consider the situation rationally, the process of thinking per se painful. "Nobody has survived" had escaped suddenly, as an agonizing exhalation, from the depths of his mind. The accident affected not only this building, everything was much, much worse, no people remain in the whole world, nobody, only mutant spiders and cockroaches, and he never will get out from here, never, never.

He mutely moaned through clenched teeth, leaning against a wall covered with something sticky, shocked with the power of the despair which had captured him. Despair, yes. Were these inscriptions made under such conditions? "Kill yourself now." No, he should struggle! He would not allow this place to win, whatever it actually was. It was necessary to search for an exit. ("No!", his frightened subconsciousness peeped. "Don't search. No, don't search anything!") It was necessary to search, he firmly repeated to himself, and, having gathered himself up, made him step into the darkness of the unlit part of the corridor.

For some instants he moved forward, carefully rearranging his feet and expecting every moment that something cold and slippery from the gloom would suddenly seize his ankle. The darkness seemed to go on longer than he expected. There was, probably, a cascade switching off of several lamps successively. But at last ahead an unsteady light began to dawn around the bend. Some more steps and...

Something cold and slippery occurred under his foot and stuck its teeth into his sole.

Overwhelming fear kept him from jumping aside, freezing him in place, a behavior beyond reason. However, the paralysis, lasting a pair of infinitely long seconds, allowed him to understand that the jaws unclenched under his foot were too languid and didn't try to bite him at all. He had simply stepped on the face of a corpse.

"Kill yourself now." Did someone really yield to such advice? Or, more probably, someone was helped.

At that moment the head of the dead person turned (not by itself, a late understanding came, it happened simply because he pressed on the face with his weight), and his foot, having slid off, was stuck into a floor. But instead of dirt and garbage familiar already, he felt under a sole something different. During the following instant he understood that he was standing on the long matted hair stretched around the dead head. Is that a woman?

Probably, he should explore the body more carefully, at least to the touch, and better to drag it to the light. But the disgust, and also the fear that the thing that killed the woman could still hide somewhere here in the gloom, flooded any rational thought. The man darted off and rushed to the light, as if being pursued by hellish demons. His makeshift skirt fell down, but his reflexes managed to catch the falling oilcloth. Several instants later he was already taking a breath, standing under the next flickering light fixture. Nobody pursued him. Only his heavy breathing was heard in the dead air.

Having calmed himself, as much as possible under the circumstances, he put his attire in order and again moved forward. Soon his efforts were rewarded, at least partly–the passage leading, obviously, to the ring center occurring on the right. But he had no time to be glad about this, as he noticed something else, something far less encouraging.

It was the bloody prints of bare feet, which went along the circle corridor in the opposite direction and turned into this pass. And not only feet... Here and there between footprints the large blots darkened, somewhere merging in the whole paths, similar to the traces of huge worms. So the idea that someone had simply passed through a bloody pool had to be rejected. In that case, each succeeding trace would be paler than the previous, which did not happen here. No, blood streamed from the legs of the walking one, but he(she?) persistently went forward, overcoming the pain.

All right, the man thought, whatever happened with this person, it happened from where he came, not to where he was going. He turned into the pass.

Here the light glowed particularly dimly, some light fixtures periodically dying out completely. Then–probably when some condensers had time to accumulate a charge–with a click they would flash on for a short time. These flashes did not so much help, as blind him, preventing his eyes to adapt to the twilight. The man felt under his foot a small flat object which has slipped to the floor. Stooping down, he picked it up and stood up under the nearest light fixture, hoping to examine the find.

It was a small, palm-long, rectangular plate, most likely metal, or maybe of firm plastic. Defining its makeup was difficult, since it was densely and completely covered with dried blood. Here and there short curly hairs had dried on it–more likely from a body, rather than from a head.

When the finder made it out, his throat was squeezed by a short spasm of disgust, and he went to fling the plate away, but he forced himself to think more rationally. It could be used as a weapon. And he obviously was not the first to think of this. One of the plate corners had been made keener.

The man began to scrub the blood from the object with his fingernails. His fingers almost immediately felt some grooves on one of the sides. It seemed an inscription had been embossed on the plate.

At last the plate was entirely cleared. It was a tablet of golden metal (but obviously not of gold, judging by its weight). The inscription was definitely not handmade and consisted of a single word: "HYPERION."

He tried to remember what this word meant. First his consciousness struck the same blank wall. Hyperion... hyper... hyper... It seemed it was some character from ancient Greek mythology. (A minute ago he had not suspected even the existence of ancient Greek mythology.) But this explanation didn't satisfy him. It had arisen too hastily, as if trying to protect him from the undefined fear that splashed from the bottom of consciousness, fear of something doubtfully concerning the ancient Greece.

And the place where he was now could be anything but an antiquity museum.

The next flash sparkled ahead, snatching out from the gloom another body lying on a floor.

The one still living cautiously approached the dead. There was no doubt that the one on the floor was dead, no doubt that he had been the one who left the blood trails. The body had writhed in a pool of blood, now dried, his back upwards, with his hands tucked under his stomach, possibly triying to press a wound.

But this was not what made the startling impression on the amnesiac. The person on a floor was almost naked, his only clothing consisting of an improvised skirt rolled from something like a dirty oilcloth.

Just the same. Probably even, it was the other half of his own.

So, it means, he has regained consciousness in the same room, and went... I went along the ring to the right, and he, probably, to the left. And there THIS was done to him...

The ice cold pierced the to the soul of the one who was still alive, like an edge which had slashed the belly of his predecessor. One small mistake, if only he had turned in another direction… But then he thought, that man may not have necessarily gone to the left. He could have gone to the right as well, but had not turn into the pass and move further along the ring.

The nausea was rising to his throat, and the light, sharply flashing and dying away, did not assist the exploration at all. Nevertheless, it was necessary to inspect the corpse. If he hoped to receive at least a few answers and, most important, to avoid the same destiny... If it, of course, can be avoided here at all.

He tried to turn the dead body over, but it resisted to his efforts. He thought that the blood-stained skin had stuck to the floor, so he pulled more forcefully. With a wet clack the corpse came loose from the floor and turned on to one side, and then lethargically rolled over on its back.

The abdomen has been ripped practically from the solar plexus to the groin. Sticky gleaming bowels fatly flapped, falling out from a wound; a black slime poured down on already befouled floor. The one alive broke down, benting over in spell of vomiting. However, real vomiting did not occur. Painful spasms shook and wrenched his body, but only a thin thread of a sour saliva came from his mouth.

For how long had I eaten nothing? flashed in his mind. But he didn't feel hunger. On the contrary, thinking about eating in such place nearly caused a new set of spasms.

Having recovered his breath, he forced himself to look again at the corpse, now with a ruthless brightness lit by a new flash, then again becoming a hardly distinguishable silhouette in the gloom. The flashing light fixture was uncannily reflected each time in the gaping eyes of the agony-deformed face. Both the face and the breast were soiled by blood, but, without touching them, it was hard to know whether there were wounds there. However, upon a closer look the amnesiac understood that at least earlier there had been. On the skin of the dead man there were dried bandages, like on his own.

But nobody tried to bandage the main wound, and it would have been impossible without sewing it up. He looked again at the ripped abdomen. How could this poor fellow walk in such condition?! It looked like he had to hold a tangle of falling out entrails by his own hands.

A new flash lit up those sanguineous hands, with fingers stuck together, and a new thought pierced the brain of the amnesiac. No, it seemed that this unfortunate man had not even tried to clamp and close the wound in any way. His crooked fingers squeezed mucous loops of his own guts, and dug his nails into them. This person obviously caused himself an excrutiating pain. But why? Had he absolutely lost reason due to torment? Did he not control himself in agony? However, the reaction to a pain belongs to the level of unconditioned reflexes, even if he seized his own entrails unwittingly. He should have immediately jerked back his hands.

Suddenly in purple medley something boggled and began to move. The survivor thought that now he would go mad for sure, if he had not done so already. It seemed to him that the intestines of the dead man had begun to live their own life and were creeping outside. At this moment the light had again gone out.

The man jerked back in horror, ready to run helter-skelter, ramming against a corridor wall. The suddenness of this blow nearly made him fall down. He recovered balance, seizing the wall (his shoulder ached from the hit), and, having turned towards the unknown danger, he stiffened for a moment. In the resulting silence he heard a disgusting wet-sticky sound, as if someone had licked a dirty floor with a big clammy tongue.

The light flashed again. The dead person lay in the same place without any movement, as any dead body would. The sound was shed by something wriggling on a floor near the corpse. At a glance it could indeed have seem like a spilled entrail living its own life. But it was some wormlike creature about a forearm in length, its black annulate body fatly shimmering, leaving trails of blood on the floor. At the first flash it seemed to the man that the creature was creeping directly toward him. He helplessly flattened himself against the wall, though, possibly, he could have crushed this creature with just one foot. The light went out again but, when it was lit the next time, it became clear that the creature was just creeping by, paying no attention to a panic-stricken man. As much as he could make out, it had neither eyes, nor mouth.

That's the point, he thought. This creature had gotten into the man’s guts, and he… In an attempt to get rid of it he probably cut himself open–with the corner of this plate inscribed with the word "Hyperion." This thought made the amnesiac squirm. For a moment he imagined very clearly himself doing it. Madness, certainly... madness was trying to render such "aid" to the victim, trying to tear the creature from his own bowels, and then moreover to walk somewhere... But, probably, the torment caused by the wretch creeping in his guts was absolutely unbearable. How had it got inside? Had it crept through the mouth? Through his anus? The laughter was absolutely inappropriate, but he nervously giggled. No, most likely–like any parasite–it had gotten in as a tiny imperceptible larva. It even more asserted itself in his mind: Even if a meal would be found in this place, he should not touch it. However (one more remembrance breaking through), there are, apparently, some microscopic worms, capable of getting into the body directly through the skin.

"Kill yourself now." Kill yourself in an easy way before such things happen to you. This version looked even more believable than the radiation one.

But how could "the easy way" disappear later? Why hadn't this person tried simply, for example, to slash his wrists? Too slow? But he surely suffered even longer. Nevertheless he had hoped to survive? Or was it simply the pain absolutely depriving him of the ability to think sensibly?

Everything is useless, came to him (from behind of the wall?), an improbably depressingly-tired thought–a thought which seemed as ancient as time. Everything... is useless... there is no exit from here... even such one... And then came to him a rolling, accumulating dark wave–despair, despair, DESPAIR!!!

The man lashed himself on a cheek to come to his senses. He stuck his teeth into his lip, until he felt the salty taste of blood. Calm down, he ordered himself. It is necessary just to keep a head on one’s shoulders and to think logically. For some reason this logical idea caused a new spasm of icy horror in his stomach. But he forced himself to knock down irrational fear and continue: "I know now about at least one real danger - articulated parasites. Is it the only one? Quite probably, the man in the bath, and the woman in the corridor–or was it yet another man with long hair?–have died of the same cause. From where did these wretches come? All from the same a biological experiment? And we... We were unlikely its organizers, as all of us appeared here without clothing. But this doesn't mean that our situations were identical. Perhaps, not all have lost their memory. This person, so deliberately walking somewhere with the ripped stomach... Most likely he knew all along where he was going, hoping to receive help there."

Having bypassed the corpse, he continued to walk in the same direction and had soon reached, apparently, the ring center. Here the corridor branched, bending around the thick column which pierced the floor and the ceiling. Having approached more closely, the man saw in this column a closed door and two triangular buttons nearby. The lift? Very probable. But to use the lift when power supplies were semidead would be silly. Fortunately, by moving around the column by the left corridor the man found an exit to a staircase. The staircase was spiral; it wound around the huge cylinder which enclosed the lift column and the passes bending around it. This cylinder, obviously, was enclosed within an even bigger one, based upon the form of an external wall. Again, there were no windows here, and the illumination was made by the same light fixtures, here vertically located on the external wall. The corridor from which he had just come went into this wall, finding room between the staircase volutions. Now he could observe it from the outside. Strange architecture... Light fixtures here glowed dimly, too, but their light was not white, but reddish, making the picture ever gloomier.

Now where? The stairs completely blocked the space between the internal and external walls, giving him no chance to see how far upwards or downwards this spiral went. The common experience, which had been not affected by amnesia, prompted him to conclude that an exit from a building, however freakish it was, should be downwards, so the man already made some steady descending steps, but then stopped. What if this whole complex were underground? The absence of windows supported such idea–especially if the project were dangerous and confidential.

He turned in indecision. And saw on the first of the stairs, going from a platform upward, the next bloody inscription:

"DO NOT GO THERE!"

Now he was not so sure that these inscriptions were left by somebody hostile. Most likely it was the same victims of unknown experimenters or the accident which had overtaken them. However–he reminded himself logically–that still does not mean at all that he should trust them unconditionally. These people (whether any of them were still alive) could be mistaken, could be, after all, simply mad. Someone destroyed devices with frenzied fury, did he not? And, by the way, what had been written in the crushed laboratory–some obvious nonsense on the theme of darkness and light.

Nevertheless, he turned again and went downwards. He nearly ran, as the staircase was steep enough, but then he decided that it was necessary to do all with care here.

The staircase was also dirty and abandoned, like everything in this terrible place. Perhaps, it was even dirtier. Most likely in those days when all were working here, the personnel used the lift, and the staircase was intended only for emergencies. That's why its illumination was so dim.

He passed some platforms with exits, each time stopping and listening before walking past the next door, but he decided to continue to the bottom. If there were a cellar, then he will ascend a level upward. At this point a foolish thought came to him that this downward course, going goodness knows where, by a dirty staircase illuminated by an ominous red twilight reminded him of the descent into hell. Yes, so he had remembered the concept of a hell–as well as the fact that he had never believed in it. "Nonsense," he told himself again. "Everything is absolutely material here. Even those goddamned mutant creatures." Yep, "goddamn." However, the freak arthropods and even guts-settling articulated worms were rather small for the standard hellish demons.

At last he reached the bottom. The last platform abutted against half-open door leaves of the high sliding gate which led not into the cylinder but outside. Maybe the door mechanism had jammed in such a position, or the cause could be the deficiency of energy. The remaining gap, however, was wide enough to climb through. Behind the door it was absolutely dark.

And on the right half of the gate one more inscription had been made in the same way and manner: "DO NOT THINK." What was it suggesting that he not think about remained a riddle as part of the door was hidden by a wall. The man tried to move the heavy leaf, but he might as likely pull on a cliff. All right then, as it is clearly known, appeals not to think about something simply result in just the opposite.

He stood for a while, listening, sniffing the air–nothing fresh, the same musty abomination of desolation as everywhere else here. At last, working up the courage and clasping his only weapon–the tablet with the acute angle–he pressed himself through the gate into the darkness.

The faint hope that any automatics would turn on the light remained futile. If ever such automatics existed here, they did not work now. Should he return and look for another way to the outside? But what suggested to him that such a way existed or that it would be more safe?

He stood a little longer, hearing in the darkness only the fast terrified beating of his own heart, and then, reaching forward with his left hand and groping the floor with his bare feet, he nevertheless moved forward.

After several–seconds? minutes?–he was not sure that he could calculate time correctly in such conditions, though he already understood that he was in a really large room, his fingers having touched a wall. The wall was dusty, but under the dust the smoothness of plastic or some similar material was evident. He moved to the right, sliding along the wall by his hand, came across some vertical metal bar, and bypassed it, before his hand again fell into emptiness. He went forward, until his hand rested against a next obstacle.

At first it seemed to him that he had been keeping the direction, but having looked back at a moment ago, he had not seen the doorway gap through which a light from the staircase should seep–neither there, where he expected to see it, nor anywhere. With growing trepidation he understood that he was wandering in a labyrinth and had already moved far from the entrance. And, maybe, the emergency illumination died out completely. What a damned place is this! Why would there need to be a labyrinth here?

He tried again to knock down the panic by shear will. It is possible to find a way out of any labyrinth. It is necessary to just go always along the right wall... or along the left one, the main thing is to choose it once and not change this decision once made. But when he tried to follow this principle, he found that he was walking around a huge cube. The principle works only for topologically connected labyrinths–provided he remembered correctly what topological connectivity was.

In despair he rushed forward, crashing in the darkness against the next wall and began to punching it. Based upon the sound, the wall was very thin (it even slightly caved in under his blows), and behind it there was an emptiness. He tried to cut the wall with the tablet corner, but, while thin, the barrier turned out to be too firm.

"It is not a labyrinth," he thought. "It is a warehouse, and I am wandering between containers!"

This discovery, however, had not much improved his situation. He still had no idea how to get out from where he was in complete darkness–even again to the staircase, let alone to the outside. He tried to shift the next container in his path, but it was, of course, too heavy. Or maybe the issue was that metal bars which he periodically encountered probably served to fix containers on a place. Had he understood it it or just remembered it? That's not important! The bars! The warehouse was obviously not full, and the containers, apparently, weren't placed in a strict order, but the bars should stand at equal intervals and, most likely, form a rectangular grid. So if he went from one bar to another, counting them, then...

Suddenly something round rolled under his foot, and he almost fell down. He heard it, having turned out from under his foot, trundle on the floor in the opposite direction. What was it? Some small cylinder–maybe just garbage. Nevertheless he made some steps toward the sound, then went down on all fours, putting the tablet down momentarily, and began to rummage the floor with his hands–carefully, in order not to push whatever it was again. Where are you, you little bastard? Aha, here!

He felt his find. A smooth circle on one end, and something like a button on the side. Could it be a flashlight? He pressed the button, and a soft light flashed in his hand, lighting up suspicious dark stains on the floor and the wall of the next container with a lengthy number. Luck, luck at last!

He sprang to his feet, immediately receiving a blow by something long and firm on the head. A flash sparkled in his eyes, and he powerlessly tumbled down on the mucky floor.

Having come round, he lay for several seconds, stupidly looking at the flashlight which lay nearby and continued to shine. The beam, almost parallel to the floor, quite vividly illuminated all the dirt and dust. The top of his head ached, and he thought for certain there was quite a large lump. Then it hit him like a bolt of lightning: he should not be thinking about his head, but instead about the one who has struck him! But everything was still silent and it did not seem as though anybody was going to attack him again. The man very carefully turned his head and saw several pipes almost directly above him. They were not too thick, about two inches in diameter, with one end going into a wall of the nearest container. This wall seemed not to be solid, but perforated. He took the flashlight–still no one hindered him–and, having shone the light on the container, saw that it was indeed perforated. Then he sat up on the floor and moved his eyes and the beam to the opposite side, wishing to understand where the pipes led. At that very same moment he caught his breath in horror.

The beam of light tore from the darkness a silent figure, standing closer than two meters from him. The figure was dressed in (a shroud, it seemed to him at first) a white lab coat (apparently its only covering) and stood motionlessly, with its head inclined to the left shoulder in an unnaturally angle. Long black hair completely hid the face. The hands hung powerlessly. On deathly pale naked legs and feet ran streams of blood, coming from under the coat, but now dry.

It seemed that she (she, the amnesiac understood; it was a woman) was silently examining the uninvited intruder, smiling under a curtain of hair with a grin promising nothing good. He would have cried under this inscrutable look, but a spasm seized his throat. His fingers began to fumble convulsively on the floor in search of the tablet left somewhere abouts. But the next moment he had already realized that his horror and shock were caused only by unexpectedness. This woman was not likely the one who had struck him. He realized this because he had, at last, noticed the pipes, which had in several places ripped through her coat into her breast and solar plexus. She was punctured by these pipes, like an insect specimen pierced by several pins at once.

At the same moment the man understood that nobody had beaten him on a head. He had struck against these pipes himself when he sprang to his feet, being directly under them. He stood up and approached the dead woman. The free ends of the pipes, brown with blood, stuck out of her back no less than a meter. A pool has accumulated on a floor under them. From behind, the coat had been soaked red much more deeply than in the front, and the man rejected the idea of putting on these blood-stained rags (for, of course, he would at first have to remove the corpse from the pipes). He did, however, have the logical thought of searching the coat pockets.

There were only two of them. The right one was empty, but in the left he found a folded sheet of paper. The man unfolded it and brought to the flashlight. It was a list, written by hand (fortunately, this time not in blood):



Dr. Kalkrin - s-e

Dr. Hart - heart attack

Prof. Poplavska - madness

Dr. Silberschmied - s-e

Dr. Nakamura - s-e

Dr. Lebrun - coma

Prof. Ward - fire in lab, supp. s-e

Prof. Streicher - killed h-self in ment. clinic

Dr. Giroldini - death in road accident, supp. s-e

Dr. Wong - stroke

Prof. Kovaleva - took the veil, silence vow



The amnesiac twirled the paper in a hand. The mysterious "s-e" probably meant suicide ("Kill yourself now!"). But what does this list of the lost scientists mean? Not all of them, in fact, have died physically, but, anyway, all were lost for science. Whether is it possible, that all these corpses, which he saw in this place, are the people on this list? And he, in that case, is one of the survivors? For example, professor Poplavska... But no, it is, apparently, a female surname (he looked again at the dead woman standing near him). Then maybe, Lebrun, who had regained consciousness after a coma... Though this place was hardly similar to a functioning hospital... Yes, yes, he already thought of it... But whether a certain hybrid of coma and lethargy were possible, where a patient forsaken without any help for several months would not be capable of just surviving, but would also come round without aid? It seemed to be something out of pure fiction, though he, after all, still did not know what the experiment was essentially, even if it actually were an experiment.

And the others–a fire in the laboratory, a road accident–all this was not very similar to that, to what he saw here. However, he saw only four–more precisely, three, because on the fourth he had only stepped. But, if it were known about the deaths of the scientists, why were the bodies left here? Maybe the list on this piece of paper reflected merely the official version?

Or maybe all of them were left here simply because all those who knew about this place have died, gone mad, or fallen into a coma? No, that would be nonsense, such a huge building cannot be the initiative of a small group, something not reflected in governmental or corporate documents. But what could he tell for certain? He, who cannot remember even his name?

He moved the beam around on the floor, searching for his missing tablet, found it, and stood for a while, without knowing what to do with the paper. He lacked pockets, and carrying three objects was inconvenient. Perhaps he should learn this list by heart? Was it valuable? It was the only item in the pocket of a woman who died a terrible death. Perhaps, this information cost her her life? On the other hand, the murderer had not touched this paper.

But was there actually a murderer? It didn't look like the victim has resisted. Her feet stood on the floor, her legs not bent back as they would have been had she–already dying–been pushed forward, further and further on to the impaling pipes. And the main point: How could the murderer position himself so that the pipes would not hinder him to do what he did? They would bear against his own chest.

But it is was even more difficult to imagine that she had done it to herself. She, applying considerable force, would have impaled her stomach and breast pressing on the pipes pushing forward, sliding on the metal piercing her body, while she still could. What an excruciating pain she must have felt! Is there truly something in this world capable of making a person do such a thing? Even the worm in your guts didn't seem a sufficient cause.

This flashlight–was she the one who had dropped it? After all, the murderer very unlikely would have thrown it here, so far from the exit!

But the dead body made nothing clear. Maybe if he were–what is it called?–a pathologist–and he had the proper tools... But, though he still did not know who he was, he was, for some reason, quite confident that he was definitely not a physician.

At last he wound the sheet around the handle of the flashlight and picked up the tablet from the floor, then continued to search for the exit.

The flashlight shone dimly. Apparently its accumulator was almost discharged, so he definitely had to hurry. But with at least this light source the warehouse didn't seem something like a haunted dungeon anymore. The containers were not specially placed in order to confuse the person who appeared here, so he quickly enough found the exit back to the staircase. This, however, did not suit him already, and he moved along a wall in search of an exit to the outside. But, to his surprise, having gone around the whole warehouse on its perimeter, he had not found any more doors. For some time he stood there perplexed. Some containers were obviously too large to drag them down the spiral staircase already familiar to him. How could they get here? He looked with doubt at the waning flashlight and nevertheless moved deeper into the warehouse.

The thought which had flashed through his mind proved true and after a while he found them: the big square hatches in the floor–more exactly, not really hatches, but the platforms of lifts by which cargo was hoisted from below. So, this was not yet the bottom level of a vault? There are probably tunnels under the building. Anyhow, he couldn't go there. He had not found any buttons to activate the lifts. Any attempts to open some of the containers had also failed. He had to return to the staircase.

As he had planned to do before, he ascended to the next level and entered the passage leading into the cylinder. Here it was also absolutely dark. But no sooner had he taken a pair of steps than light switched on with a strained click, and brighter than before, so that he shuddered unexpectedly, but understood at the next moment that in some places the automatics still worked. He turned off the flashlight to save the battery charge.

Having rounded the lift shaft, he found himself in a corridor. Here something clicked too, but light did not come on. Perhaps, it will work in the next section, the man thought and made some careful steps forward. There was clearly a reason to move cautiously. The floor underfoot was not simply dirty. It was somehow greasy, in places slippery. It was not blood–neither dried up nor even fresh. It was something different. And the smell. To the general atmosphere of mustiness and desolation something else was added here. Something heavy and unpleasant. Not the odor of decay, no. More likely such an odor came from something alive–something even the most excited fans of nature would not care to have as a pet. More precisely, they would not want to encounter at all.

The man stopped in indecision. Now he also heard sounds–muted sounds, hardly distinguishable, wet, rasping and stirring.

He lifted the flashlight, holding it like a sword hilt. But he didn’t switch it on. He took one more step, knowing (from where did this knowledge come?) that he would enter the radius of a sensor responsible for illuminating the next section. This hope proved true. It clicked, and then light was turned on.

The light illuminated a corridor looking completely different from the other premises of this strange building, while initially, obviously, it had been built and finished in the same manner. But while in other places only dust and rubbish had accumulated, here everything looked much worse. From the ceiling here and there hung some sort of fringe, disheveled rags of something like a dusty web, with stalactites of pale flesh hanged down. On the walls jellylike stains fatly shone and mold blots shagged. On the floor, covered with dead insects in some places, having swelled and broken through an artificial covering, slimy ugly mushrooms, similar to pieces of aborted embryos, puffed up. But this was not the nastiest. Oh no, it was only a background which was almost not borne in the mind of the amnesiac. Because he, paralysed by horror and disgust, stared at what he had nearly nestled against in the dark.

Just a meter from his face, across a corridor, hung a crucified corpse. Certainly, this was not the first dead person he had seen this day, but all the previous, however terrible their end had been, were really lucky compared to this unfortunate person–more precisely, unfortunate woman. Though there were no clothes on the body, the amnesiac could not immediately recognize its gender. Her skin was almost completely grazed. Only on the lower body did semi-torn off scraps of skin hang down from the scarlet flesh. Maybe the torturer did not have enough time, or something has distracted him. But especially gruesome was the look of the round head, with rolled out balls of lidsless eyes and, grinning in a final shout, lipless jaws. She had no legs, only a medley of blood-stained tatters of flesh, from which yellowish bones stuck out, was left from her hips, and everything below, seemingly, was not even chopped off, but simply broken out from knee joints. The belly of the martyr has been ripped, and entrails, having fallen out through the cut, hung down like an ugly knobby utter. Thin but obviously strong wire dug into her outstretched arms, tearing the wrists almost to the bone, the left arm tied this way to a bracket on which, probably, an observation camera had once been established, and the right arm to ventilating lattice in the opposite wall. (The ventilation was not working here as seemed to be the case for the whole building.)

It was hard to say how long her agony lasted, but now within this tormented and mutilated body life could be found again. The purple-shining peeled flesh was already accreting in places with some spongy rubbish, but more to the point, the whole body was pitted and corroded by small gnawed holes. Numerous creatures similar to a hybrid of a worm and an insect crawled out of these holes, crept on the dead body and disappeared inside again. They had triangular heads, articulated fore-chelas–only one pair–and soft twisted bodies. Their length did not surpass three centimeters, but on the corpse (and the more so, obviously, in it) there were plenty of them, and their swarming made that sound which the amnesiac heard. Unlike ants or termites, they moved slowly and clumsily, quite often slipping from the dead flesh and plopping down to the floor. Under their awful nest, a whole pile of dead creatures had already accumulated. Those still alive were scraping and wriggling among the corpses of their companions.

The corridor was not too narrow to bypass the crucified corpse, still it was hard to imagine a more daunting obstacle to moving further. The amnesiac moved back. Some arthropodic worms fell out of the open mouth of the dead woman and, as if sensing material for a new nest, began crawling towards him as fast as their ugly constitution allowed. This became the final straw, he turned and quickly rushed away. The passionless automatics recognized that the light was no longer necessary and the darkness again hid the horror that was now behind him.

But for an instant before the light had gone out, he had time to see something else. On a lift door–situated just so the crucified woman could have seen it and, quite possibly, written in her own blood–was one more message, a phrase least of all corresponding to all seen in this corridor and in this damned building in general: "NO DEATH."

He regained self-control only when he had almost lost his breath from running so quickly up the staircase. He dropped to his knees and rested his hands against the step before him, panting noisily. His heart pounded so hard it felt as though it would break through his ribs, tear through the skin and plop down on the dirty platform as a wet gob of meat, making the same sound with which the quasi-worms had slipped from a corpse and plopped to the floor.

He tried again to pull out of the sticky whirlpool of panic and to reason logically. Whatever it was that he had just seen, there was one thing quite clear: She had in no way committed suicide. And the one who had killed her–the one who enjoyed killing people IN SUCH A WAY–was, quite probably, still alive and somewhere in this building. And for that matter who is to say that he was only one.

At last, having recovered his breath (and with surprise at having understood that he didn't sweat at all), he raised his head and stumbled across the inscription "DO NOT GO THERE." Aha, here he was already. That meant that he had run again to his initial level. But now this time he was not going to take these inscriptions seriously. Kill yourself now. No death. That was madness. That was it, most likely, it was simply madness. Probably, it was indeed written by the murderer, by a balmy maniac, with a screw loose. Anyway, a person who was the least bit sane could hardly do what had been done to that woman. Person or persons, he thought to himself, considering the possibilities. There would be still a chance to deal with one maniac barehanded, but if...

He looked at his hands. Oh yeah. The flashlight which was still wrapped up in a piece of paper, lay on a stair nearby, but the tablet was not there. Now he remembered, how during his run the "skirt" began to fall down, and he had mechanically seized it. Yes, of course, he thought gloomily, the civilized man in all his glory–dropping his only weapon to obey the useless conventions of decency. It would be necessary to go back down to look for the tablet. But he could not force himself. It seemed to him that the ugly worms with legs had already crawled up the staircase following him from below. And all the same, what could he do with this pitiful tablet? It was in no way comparable even to the most unpretentious knife. It could not inflict a deep wound, and even a surface wound would be possible only if the enemy did not resist. All was hopeless–all. He will never get out of here. He felt a sudden desire to write directly on the floor, "NO EXIT.” If he had been bleeding at that very moment, he, perhaps, would do just that.

He shook his head. No, it is necessary to struggle with these attacks of despair. It is necessary... to struggle... He took the flashlight and stood up. Upwards on the staircase? Or first to investigate the rest of the ring on this level, where he has regained consciousness? He had found three corpses here, yes. But now he was convinced that danger could await anywhere. And he recalled that the first corpse had been found in a bathroom on the other side of a door where he had lain insensible and helpless. Arguing in this manner, he should have been finished off already there, at the same time as the other victim. Or may it be that he was the chosen one? Perhaps he would not suffer the same fate that the others had suffered and that was why he was still alive. Even if it were so, however, he might have been chosen for something even worse?

He heaved a deep sigh. Speculating was useless. He stepped into the aperture leading into the cylinder, without any idea why he had made this particular choice. Maybe it was just because he had no desire to clamber up an abrupt staircase again. This time he bypassed the lift shaft from the other direction and moved along a corridor which he had not explored yet.

Here he saw no corpses–aside from several dead cockroaches on the floor (or spiders or whatever they actually were). Suddenly it came to him that, perhaps, in the beginning of his exploration, that he would not have discerned these tiny bodies in the twilight on the dirty floor. It was not less dirty here, but... So did it mean that the light, yet still flickering painfully, became slightly more bright and stable? Only in this corridor, or on the whole level? For some reason this discover did not make him happy at all. Perhaps, somewhere the big sections of light fixtures, or other equipment, zoned out–and at the expense of them more energy began to supplement what remained? Then all this illumination is only for a short while. But even such variant was not the worst. Maybe... maybe, this whole place was awaking–not as a patient recovering from a coma, but as a vampire rolling in his tomb.

He reached the end of a corridor and found himself in an external ring again. He stopped dead.

From the left the sounds of bumps arose.

He stood still, again with a sharp regret that he remained without a weapon (the flashlight did not suit this role in any way). But now he wanted to go back for the tablet even less. Thinking a little, he came to the conclusion that there was a barrier between him and the source of these sounds. Otherwise the blows would have been heard more clearly. Having put a hand on an internal wall of the ring corridor, he felt how it shuddered slightly in time with the blows. However, the vibration obviously came from elsewhere. It was hardly probable that someone would be beating his own head against the wall, though now he would not be surprised even by this. More likely someone or something was breaking to the outside through a closed door. But what would happen when it escaped?

Nevertheless the man went to the left, towards to sounds. Any direct danger would be better than uncertainty. If another victim was breaking to freedom, as was he, he would help. If, on the contrary, it was the murderer who had gotten himself into a trap... or any other creature, for example, the next mutant, but far from insect size already, then he would try to strengthen the door or whatever contained this thing. But how would he understand it? Talking through a door? And what if the murderer, however mad he was, could convincingly pretend to be a victim?

Meanwhile the blows grew closer and closer. He took some more steps and saw a door. It did not differ from the one which he had gone out not so long ago, except for the mutilated and, probably, tightly jammed lock. Obviously, someone had tried successfully to jam it because he concluded that this door should not be opened. And that someone had probably tried for a good reason?

However, he had apparently overestimated the durability of the door which shuddered and caved in under blows from within. It was not simply hit with fists and feet but was apparently rushed all over. It even seemed to the amnesiac that it was already possible to distinguish on the surface of the door a rough convex resemblance to a human silhouette, and he didn't feel himself assured at all that he wanted to meet whoever was so fiercely breaking out.

While he stood in indecision, however (there was absolutely nothing to prop up against the door other than his own shoulder), one more desperate blow moved the door outward from the door jamb several centimeters, and the following one threw it to the floor. And then something dreadful fell out into the corridor.

A suitable word had escaped from the dark depths of amnesia: mummy. And specification: from old horror films. The figure was, almost from head to foot, in some sort of dirty bandages. Here and there they had been torn and bloody. There were no other clothes, or footwear. From under bandages on the head in several places long ugly strands of black hair rose up.

The amnesiac involuntarily recoiled.

"Who are you?" he hoarsely exhaled, throwing up again the useless flashlight, as if it were a sword.

The figure, which had found balance, sharply turned toward him. It seemed to be as frightened as he was.

"And you?" she asked. The voice was female. And the body outlines, actually, also female.

"I would like to know it myself," he muttered and then had a subsequent thought that, probably, he had better pretend to be more informed–or at least try to stay in control of the order of questions and answers.

"You don't remember anything?" she understood, her voice disappointedly going down. "Me too. For how long are you here?"

"Thirty, forty minutes," he shrugged his shoulders, "or maybe hours. I am not sure that I correctly perceive time here. And that's from the moment when I came to my senses. But before..." he again shrugged his shoulders.

"Like me. I regained consciousness in a closed room, in bandages. For some time I waited for someone to come and explain. Then I began to shout and call out. Then I understood that nobody would come. I began to bang on the door. That's all. And you? You were outside, weren't you?"

"My door was open."

"But what is there? I mean, around?"

"Nothing good." He grew dark. "I don't know where the exit is, if you speak about it."

"It is after all not a hospital?"

"Yes, in hell there might be such hospitals."

"But also not a prison? I mean..." She looked around. "It is too dirty here, even for a prison. And I have beaten out a cell door. Where are the jailers? Where is the alarm? It looks like there was no one alive for many years here."

"We are."

"Yes. Listen, we have to name each other somehow."

"Just ‘Hey!’ won't be enough?"

"Personally I don't want to be called just ‘Hey!’ And then, maybe we will find someone else."

Or it will find us, the man gloomy thought, but answered aloud : "Well, considering circumstances, you can call me Adam," and adjusted his only clothing.

"Then I am Eve," she easily agreed, "considering circumstances." Apparently she only now recognized that she did not even such clothing. However, she also did not look naked under all those bandages. Whether she was confused, under bandages, also remained unclear.

He remembered about the piece of paper which he still held in his hand.

"Listen, does a surname ‘Poplavska’ tell you anything? Professor Poplavska. Think."

"No." She shook her head. "And who is it?"

"Then, maybe Lebrun? Hart? Or lastly, Kovaleva?" ("No, this place is absolutely not similar to a monastery,” he added to himself.)

"You, after all, know something? Who are all these people?"

Without a word he gave her the sheet. For some time she studied the list.

"You think we are some of these scientists?" She returned the paper.

"Or victims of their experiments. I do not know. I know nothing."

"Where did you find it?"

"Eve, in your bath... by chance... was there a dead body?" he asked instead of answering her.

"Dead body? In a bath?" She wonderingly stared from under her bandages, then got it: "You mean there was one in yours?"

He silently nodded.

"And are there a lot of them here?"

"I've seen five yet. But I have not visited everywhere."

"And all in baths?"

"No."

"And how have they died?"

"A way we had better not," Adam muttered. Before his eyes a vision of the crucified woman appeared again, and he shuddered. However, Eve, apparently, had encountered a lot of trouble, too. "Painful?" he asked compassionately, nodding toward her blood-stained bandages.

"A little. I was probably wounded when I rammed the door. Oh no, I just noticed!"

"And old wounds?"

"No, probably, all healed. I even tried to remove the bandages, but..."

"They don't come off," Adam nodded. "The same story."

"I am so afraid about my face," she admitted. "There’s no pain, but what if under the bandage I’m deformed."

"We should not think about beauty now," he grumbled, thinking to himself: "Women!"

"All right, let's think about how to get out of here. What do you know so far?"

He briefly told her what he had had time to see, not going into details about the description of the corpses. However, Eve shivered. She probably had a vivid imagination.

"Hyperion," she said. "Something terrible whiffs from this word."

"I think, not from the word, but from something hidden behind it. Something we cannot remember."

"We cannot or don't want to."

He had to recognize that she was right. Each time when he tried to remember, fear rose from the bottom of his soul like disturbed silt.

"All right," he said aloud. "Let's go upward. At this level there is certainly no exit."

"But you haven't explored it completely, right? There can be other survivors–as both of us have recovered ourselves here."

"I do not want to stay here anymore." Yet recently he was not so sure, but now, having found a partner, he decided to let well enough alone. "If we don't find an exit, we can always return. And if we find–we'll send rescuers or whatever."

"Perhaps you’re right," agreed Eve. "I get the jitters from this place. And I wouldn't like to look at corpses at all."

"I’m afraid,” Adam thought to himself, “you will see them not only on this level,” but he kept silent.

They reached the staircase and, having stepped over the bloody warning, began to ascend.

The route upward occurred to be much shorter, than downwards–only two levels. After entering the top one, they found themselves between the lift and some other sliding doors. There weren't any corridor here. Sometime these doors were closed, obviously, but someone had taken them apart, hammering them, as judged by crumpled edges, a certain rough wedge between halves, and then widing a gap by means of a lever. At the first Adam was delighted that he did not have to do the same work (especially taking into account that the stormer has carried away his tools), but then he understood that if their predecessor had gotten out to freedom this way, the rescuers or whoever from the external world must have come here already. Judging by a dust lying everywhere, the break in had to have occurred a very long time ago.

It was dark inside, but not completely. Some sparks were shining in a gloom. Could it be stars? Was it night outside? Adam switched on the flashlight and resolutely stepped forward. Eve followed him.

But it was not the night outdoors, not even a window to it. Shining points indeed suggested stars, but with stars seen through a window there usually are no inscriptions. Obviously, it was an image on a screen–more precisely, as revealed by the slipped beam of the flashlight, on a wall which simultaneously played the role of a screen. Below, the beam picked out of the darkness an instrument console stretching along a wall opposite to the entrance, and before it there were two high armchairs with headrests.

Having pointed the beam to the left armchair, Adam saw a hand which motionlessly overhung from the armrest. He expected to see something like this.

Adam and Eve approached more closely. In each armchair sat a person–a man in the left one, a woman in the right, both only in underwear. The head of the man had powerlessly fallen to his breast; the head of the woman, in contrast, was thrown back. The dim flashlight beam highlighted her white face, ripped from top to chin with deep furrows, like wounds from claws, and empty bloody holes instead of eyes. Eve involuntarily screamed and seized Adam's shoulder. He raised the head of the dead man by the hair. The face of this corpse had been scratched too, but not so cruelly. But his mouth and chin were covered in the dried blood. Teeth dimly reflected the light, but not all of them. Some of them had been ripped out, one still sticking out of his gum at an angle.

"What's this?" Eve fastidiously exclaimed, having stepped with a bare foot on something soft, cold and sticky. Adam lit on it and bent down.

"In my opinion, a human tongue," he asserted, looking at the floor.

"What... cut off?"

"More accurately bitten off."

"And his arms! Look, what happened with his arms?"

Adam pointed the beam at first one, then on the other arm of the dead man. Their appearance was horrifying. They looked as if they had been gnawed by an enraged animal, whole pieces of meat torn from the forearms, the lacerated veins and sinews clearly visible. Blood had covered the armrests and formed a big pool under the armchair.

"They... have gone mad and butchered each other?" assumed Eve with a wobbling voice.

"In my opinion, worse." Adam shook his head, squatting before the armchairs and exploring with the flashlight the blood-stained fingers of one and then the other corpse. "Each of them has done it to himself. He has gnawed his own arms and bled to death. And she...she tore apart her face to the bone with her nails, squeezed her eyes out and, I guess, forced her fingers through the eye-sockets directly into the brain.

"Good Lord! What the hell happened here?" Eve's voice was close to hysterical. "Maybe... there’s shit in the local air which makes people mad?" She made movement to run away, but Adam caught her hand.

"If so, it would have spred all over the building long ago, since the doors are opened."

"And it did! As you told me, mangled corpses are everywhere here!"

"But we are all right. If something were in the air, it has disappeared long ago."

"All right? This you call ‘all right?’" She poked with the spread hand into her bandages.

"At least, more all right than they are." He nodded toward the corpses. "By the way, they have no bandages. And when it happened to them, they were obviously in some kind of clothing, which the blood did not pass through."

"Indeed. After all they ruled everything here."

"I do not know. But, anyway, those who have undressed them have shown a certain respect for the bodies, setting them back in armchairs, instead of simply throwing them on the floor." He turned and shone the light on the console which was not revived by any spark. "No such regard was given the panel. Here the console was smashed with the same frenzy, as in other places. Only with the screen could they do nothing because the substance of a wall itself shows a picture, and it is, apparently, firm enough. Well, I do not know what has happened here, but at least it is clear what this place is."

"And what is it?

"A spaceship. We are not on Earth.”

"Do you think so because this picture is similar to a star map?

"It is a star map. But not only because of that," he put the light on armchairs again. "See these belts? Shoulder, waist... If it were a ground-based installation, it would not be necessary for operators at the panel to be fastened."

"There is no weightlessness here."

"Perhaps, we fly with acceleration. Or an artificial gravity works here. Or some other physical principle which we don't remember."

"And may we have already landed?"

"Maybe. But unlikely." Adam again looked at the big screen. He remembered almost nothing of astronomy but did not doubt that signatures under the bright circlets were the names of stars. And still this map was unusual. The density of stars decreased from edges to the center, and in the center there was a large enough spot, with outlines similar to a butterfly. It had no sharp edges but, the closer to the center the more light there was. On the periphery of the spot there still were some stars, but the middle was absolutely empty. At first this spot seemed to Adam just a defect of the screen–quite explainable, considering the condition of everything on the ship–but then he decided that this"defect" has too regular structure. Then his attention was drawn away by some blinking in the left bottom corner. There rhythmically flashed on and off a red circlet with a caption "Gliese 581." Still more to the left and lower a yellow circlet gleamed, labeled "Sun."

"Does the name "Gliese 581" tell you anything?" Adam asked.

"No... I don't know. It seems to me, I can remember..."

"I think this is our destination. More precisely, was. But we flew by it a long ago and now are here," he pointed with a finger to the center of "butterfly."

"Have people really already learned to fly between stars? I don't remember anything about it".

"Nor I. But, seemingly, they have. We weren't abducted by aliens, it is obviously a human ship, judging at least by these signatures."

"Also what do you think has happened here?"

"I don't know. Some insanity. The devil only knows what could cause it, but it affected various crewmen differently. Some began to destroy equipment and to kill each other. Others killed themselves, and no less fanatically. The third sort were luckier. They only lost their memory."

"And the bandages?"

"Obviously, we were hurt in struggles with the first ones but nevertheless remained alive."

"I'm not talking about that. There should be still a fourth category. Who bound us up? Who helped us? If somebody from the crew remained alive and healthy, where are they? Why don't they try to repair the ship? Why have left us? I was even locked in the room."

"I don't think that anyone is still alive," Adam shook his head. "Anyway, anyone normal. Everything is too neglected here. Perhaps, someone has helped us, but later was killed. Or maybe, our memory loss was not instant, and we still had time to bind up each other. Now no more help is within reach."

"And why was I locked in?"

"To protect you from those who were still wandering outside." Adam shrugged his shoulders. "If it were done by me, then it is clear why I hadn't locked myself in. Probably, it could be done reliably only by breaking the lock, and I was afraid that I would not get out."

"All the same, what if one of the madmen is still alive?

"I don't know. Seems to me, there is nobody here except us, but nothing can be guaranteed. The ship is big."

"And what about clothes?"

"About clothes?" Adam didn't understand.

"Suppose we were undressed for rendering medical aid - though it's hard to understand why clothing was not left in our rooms, especially if it was done by ourselves. I suppose also that madmen tore off the clothes of their victims. But you said the ones who had undressed the pilots showed respect for their bodies."

"Well... I don't know. Perhaps, this madness did not overtake everyone simultaneously."

"And I am not sure at all that your hypothesis about insanity is right. And that all these deaths and destructions are made by human hands."

"By whose then? Are you trying to tell that we have an alien on board?" He grinned skeptically.

"Why not? We apparently have visited this Gliese. And have found there a lifeform–or it has found us."

"And a certain monster wanders till now in compartments and corridors?"

"If nobody could wrest it down–and it seems that indeed... And if it hasn't died by itself."

"No, wait. Okay, it is possible to explain some of the deaths this way–especially if this monster is sentient. An animal can hardly crucify a person on a wire. But these pilots have obviously committed suicide, and not in the most pleasant way!"

"We don't know," Eve objected. "The broken teeth and nails can be a result of struggle. And wounds too. That the shape of the bite marks are similar to human, proves nothing. We after all don't know what it looks like."

"Or they."

"Yes. Or they."

Adam was silent for some time, looking at the mutilated body of the dead man. Then he moved the flashlight beam aside, unable to bear the view anymore. But it was even worse: Somewhere from the darkest depths of his consciousness, where even in the most sober-minded person the irrational is hidden, a feeling, almost a certainty, was rising that the dead man who had disappeared in a gloom, now, using his invisibility, would move, would start to rise silently in an armchair, would stretch the gnawed hands toward a victim for which he had long last waited. After all, it was not without reason written (in blood) across the staircase leading to the control room: "DO NOT GO THERE."

Adam tried to drive away the delusion and to force himself to think rationally.

"Perhaps you are right about landing on Gliese or somewhere else," he said slowly. "All these creatures–spiders and cockroaches–still could mutate from those on Earth, though I cannot imagine where they could come from on a starship. It obviously had to be disinfected before it started. But the others–these hybrids of worms and insects–there is nothing similar on Earth."

"Do you remember so well–what is on Earth?"

"No. But there is a difference between "forgot" and "never knew." Anyway, I vaguely feel it. And I am absolutely sure that these creatures are not from our world. Possibly we took them aboard as samples of local fauna, and then something happened so that they could creep away all over the ship. I don't know whether there is anything big among them. But even small insects can serve as transmitting agents for the disease which somehow affects the brain."

"And now? You think we became immune already?"

"I don't know." He heaved a deep sigh. "I know nothing–except one thing: We have no chance of getting out from here."

"Perhaps it is still possible to turn the ship towards Earth," said Eve without much real hope in her voice. "Or at least we could send the distress signal."

"How?" Adam hopelessly moved the beam around the crushed panel. "Even if we find tools... Do you have even the smallest clue how everything was arranged here? We even don't remember that people in general are able to fly to stars."

"Well, we may find not only tools but also instructions," Eve objected with considerable doubt. "And also, we managed to remember something, though..." She became silent.

"What ‘though’?"

"I’m afraid."

"No wonder."

"No, not about that. I’m afraid to remember. Sometimes it seems to me that I have already almost gotten at my past and then at once such horror strikes me, as if someone in my head were shouting: ‘No, don't do it. Don't remember. Don't think about it!’ Haven't you felt the same? I mean, since you have come to your senses?"

"Yes," Adam confessed. "Nothing mystical here, we just came in for a lot of trouble, especially you. Natural defense reaction... Hmm, ‘Don't think,’" he remembered. "It is written on a warehouse door at the bottom level. By the way, doesn't it seem to you that if the crew struggled against monsters, they would have left more intelligent writings? Even assuming that they had really nothing to write with except blood, then especially it was necessary to write only the most useful and informative things. And here; ‘Don't go there!’ Well, here we have come, and what?"

"We have learned that we are on a spaceship."

"Also what is dreadful in it? Though... Yes, certainly. To learn that we are billions of miles from Earth, on a dead starship, uncontrollable flying further and further in infinite emptiness. If this starmap is anything to go by, even stars aren't present here. But if we had not learned it, how would our position have become better?"

"Perhaps we would die in ignorance," Eve sighed.

"Like these two? And the others? I hardly think any of them died easily. And in general, forewarned is forearmed."

"All right," Eve interrupted. "All these conversations only lead to despair! (He shuddered, having heard this word again.) Let us search–for tools, instructions, others survivors–anything!

They left the control room, listening to the silence of the ill-fated ship even more tensely. But still no sounds reached them, except of the electric crackling of agonizing light fixtures. However, now Adam had no doubt anymore that their light had lately become slightly brighter. He did not know how it could be explained and what it was fraught with, like everything that took place on this damned ship. He shared his observation with his companion, but she only shrugged her shoulders and assumed that the light seemed brighter to them after control room's gloom.

They descended a level. Here it seemed there were also some control posts, but they had been crushed in the most ruthless way too, so their purpose could be only guessed at. Here and there among the spoiled fragments dead cockroach mutants lay while their living brothers crept about lethargically.

"What if neither madmen nor monsters made all this destruction?" Eve asked suddenly. "What if it had been done purposefully?"

"By whom?" Adam grinned wrily, fastidiously trying to find a place where to put his foot. "Suicide terrorists?"

"Crewmen who have understood that this ship shouldn't return. Never should get to Earth... or any habitable planet. Therefore they have directed it into starless space, and then..."

"But what for?"

"So that what has happened here would not be repeated on Earth." She shrugged shoulders.

"Because of these creatures? No, ridiculous. Even if they are infectious, there are quarantine measures. The ship could be held in an orbit while scientists tried to understand the situation."

"And if these measures are insufficient? Probably, when they... that is, we...took these wretches aboard, it was done not to spread them all over the ship! You say that most of all this is at the second level from the bottom. Probably, our zoo was on that level–or the samples repository, or how it is called? And we were sure that no bacterium would slip out of there."

"Well, suppose someone has committed an error, didn't close a door in time, ignored disinfection. But it doesn't mean that this muck is capable of getting through the walls of the ship and the space vacuum!"

"I do not know. Perhaps the point is not in chemistry or the physical passage through walls."

"But in what?"

"Any remote influence from which our protections do not save us."

"Worms-telepathists?" he skeptically hummed but at the next moment thought seriously about this idea. "Necrophages causing an uncontrollable penchant for violence in larger creatures and thus providing themselves with stocks of dead flesh...and apartments." He remembered the crucified corpse of the woman transformed into the huge...ant hill–hive?–and that made him shutter. "Generally, such hypotheses explain much. For example, why do these corpses not decay here. If this fauna produces some preservative... But still, why destroy all the devices of the ship, leaving no hope for the last survivors? After all, if we survived and remained normal, the protective mechanisms do exist!"

"Perhaps they weren't assured that we remained normal. We were unconscious, and they didn't have time to wait till the end. But there is also an even worse possibility."

"Worse than flying somewhere into intergalactic space on a ship purposely deprived of all chances for a return?"

"Yes. If we didn't remain normal. If these creatures are already in us."

Adam stood examining his own sensations. He was half expecting to feel parasites gnawing roads through his to bowels, but felt only sticky cold fear spreading in his stomach. And this fear had no plan to disappear, irrespective of the presence of material confirmations.

"You didn't see the worm that had crept out of the guts of that guy," he said hoarsely, trying to convince not as much her as himself. "And those that have legs... They are large enough–we would feel them, if..."

"And what if they simply wait for their time?" Eve objected. "Larvae can be small. And they may not be as stupid as they may seem. They know that we are the last ones onboard. And they will let us live until we meet new potential carriers and transmit the infection further."

"All the same," he obstinately curved his lips, "it can't be that the humans, who had already learned to build the interstellar ships, weren't able to contend with just some parasites! And they don't have any real mind. I mean the parasites. You see, they don't even hurry up to escape from a foot, so that I have to look so as not to squash this muck! And how many of them have perished already?"

"Probably, it is difficult for them to adapt in this unusual environment. But some nevertheless manage to do it, all too well." Eve suddenly squatted, picked up a plastic shard and used it to move a pair of dead "cockroaches," and then overturned one of their living comrades. The latter torpidly stirred with no chance to return to a normal position. Eve, with a crunch, smashed it on a floor. "I cannot understand where such creatures could come from," she said. "Have you noticed that they have different number of legs?"

"I told you that long ago!"

"I mean even those that seem to belong to one specie. And this one has even legs but of different lengths. What evolution could generate such things? And paired extremities are after all not a casual whim of Earth’s nature. It is really convenient, it is the expediency fixed by generations of natural selection for species absolutely dissimilar to one another. What must such a world look like where such clumsy beings with unpaired limbs of different length achieve evolutionary advantage?"

"As the world of nightmares," Adam muttered and, after some thought, added, "of a schizophrenic. Listen, maybe we haven't come to our senses at all? Couldn't it all be hallucinations? I would give anything to wake up now in a cozy mental hospital."

"Then you are also a hallucination," noticed Eve, "from my point of view, of course. And I am from yours."

"It is better to be a hallucination than worm-eaten from within. I... I am afraid of cockroaches," he said almost plaintively. "And spiders, too. And I do not favor worms much either." He helplessly looked at his body stuck here and there by bandages adhering tightly, as if expecting to see something moved and creep under his skin. And maybe the bandages cover exactly this, the holes gnawed by larvae. "Why the hell did you suggest a hypothesis which we can't check up on? As if it weren't already sickening without that."

"Aha, and who just said forewarned is forearmed?" Eve reminded him, but without any acrid celebration in her voice. The anxiety and fear gnawed at her from within worse than any worms. "Let’s go further and do anything, or I will indeed go mad."

They went into a corridor which was bending around the lift shaft, and moved to the door beyond.

"By the way, did you notice one other odd thing?" Adam asked. "In such a big ship the doors have no labels. Certainly the crew should know what is where, but nevertheless here it is easy to mistake a door, especially in ring corridors."

"Yes," she agreed, "it was unlikely designed this way."

He drew his face near to a door, carefully exploring it with a flashlight.

"Just as I thought, the label was here," he ascertained. "Its traces still can be distinguished. Someone has torn them from all the doors. What for?"

"And why was the equipment destroyed?

"You think to prevent our return? Well, the absence of labels is not much compared to the destruction of the control panels. All the same, sooner or later we will explore all premises. My version about mad fury is more likely true. Or..."

"Or what?"

"Or someone wanted us to take in the situation as late as possible. Not never–he should have understood that the absence of inscriptions on the doors wouldn't stop us–but as late as possible. I don't know. Folly. Nonsense."

"Perhaps not such nonsense," objected Eve. "The longer it takes us to understand, the farther we will fly in this direction and the less will be our chances to return. So, there are such chances all the same!"

"Do you believe in it?" Adam heaved a deep sigh and took the door handle. "Well, let's look in here."

There was nothing good.

Adam heard a painful squeezed throat sound behind him and understood what it was. He had been in such situations himself before. Eve's stomach was wrung with an emetic spasm, but nothing left her mouth, except this sound. In this room light shone, and even bright enough. Here were neither devices, nor furniture, except the remains of a broken chair on a floor. The room was semicircular. Its concave wall, opposite to the entrance, as Adam has guessed, was a panoramic screen made with the same technology as the starmap in the control room. Possibly this premise was a hybrid of a library and cinema hall. For certain, when everything was working here, access to the information resources of the ship was possible from other places, too, but here the conditions for watching were the most comfortable. A slit in a wall at the left, from which ragged white tatters hung out, now associated mostly with an aperture for toilet paper, but obviously there was a time when it has been possible to receive listing of the necessary data here. No control panels were visible anywhere. Probably vocal or other touch-free interface had been used here.

But Adam and Eve paid no attention to all these technical details at first. Their eyes were struck by numerous blots of blood which blurred the screen and lateral walls–here and there together with other blood some whitish nubbles had dried on the walls–and a twisted corpse on a floor under the screen. It was male. His clothes consisted merely of underpants and boots. His head had turned into brown mass where between wisps of blood-clotted hair sharp shards of skull bones stuck out, reaching no higher than the temples. The whole top part of the skull was smashed completely, the skin covering it is was ruptured, and the lacerated brain had partially flowed out to the floor through this terrible hole. On the floor near the head, which was turned to one side, semicircular slimy drops of both beaten out eyes lay, threads of nerves still stretching from them into the split eye-sockets.

The fingers of the dead man were covered by the brown crust of the dried blood, and apparently not only blood. Directly over him on the screen one more inscription obliquely stretched–more precisely, not just one more. Letters, curved and twisted, of different size, crawled against each other and in general looked as if they had been written by a very drunk person with Parkinson disease. In many places the same whitish nubbles and hair stuck to them all. But nevertheless the writing was possible to read.

"DARKMICROCOM=MAC," Adam spelt out. "My God, looks like it was written with his brain."

"In what sense?" Eve still felt faint, but already could speak.

"In the literal sense. He crushed his head against the wall, or was helped to do it, and then somebody, dipping a finger into the broken skull, as into an inkwell..."

"I think, nobody helped him," Eve objected with a wobbling voice. "Everything was done by him, including the inscription. That’s why it’s so twisted."

"Is a person in such condition still really capable of writing? Picking out a piece from his brains with each letter?"

"The human brain has a great safety factor." This information had resurfaced from somewhere in Eve's memory. "The whole hemisphere may be lost, but the personality still can remain, and even without considerable damage, though some abilities or concepts can be lost."

"Here, obviously, there was damage. Perhaps when he started to write he meant something comprehensible, but by the end it turned into totally jibberish."

"In my opinion, it not jibberish." Eve shook her head, listening to her uncertain memories. "Dark... microcom... It seems to me, it means "microcosm." Microcosm is equal to macrocosm. That's what he tried to write. A long time ago I've heard this phrase, but I cannot remember what it means."

"Something medieval," Adam remembered. "If I remember correctly it’s an alchemist’s idea that human nature is identical to the nature of the universe. Only they understood it not to the effect that the laws of physics are uniform for everything, but more literally and primitively, and they wound lot of mysticism round it. Oh, what a shit! I cannot recall anything about the starship construction. Even my name I don't remember–but this useless bosh..."

"He apparently didn't consider it useless," Eve said inaudibly.

"Well, it for sure hasn't helped him," Adam sniffed. "By the way, concerning the usefulness..." He walked to the corpse. Eve remained on a threshold.

"What do you want to do?" she asked.

"First take his boots. We'll divide them fraternally–left to you, right to me?"

Eve wanted to answer that it was a stupid joke but understood that her companion in misfortune was absolutely serious.

"It will likely be inconvenient to walk in one boot," she said. "Besides they are obviously too large for me. Take both if you want."

"Okay," Adam removed the boots from the corpse and put them on, noticing that the dead man had no socks. He also worried about the size, but the boots fit perfectly.

"It is still not clear," he noticed, "where all clothes disappeared to. So far all we know that only the pilots in the control room have died dressed, otherwise their bodies would be all in blood. Also that then somebody has taken away their suits, without being squeamish about the blood on them. While all the others, including ourselves..."

"By the way, we haven't found those other two yet," Eve reminded him.

"True, but the ship is big. And, for that matter, it's not a fact that there were two of them. They took two suits, but this yet tells us nothing about their number."

"Perhaps they are still alive?"

"Hardly. If they, like us, had survived the accident, they could have left instructions for others who survived–intelligent instructions, not such rubbish." He nodded toward the wall. "For example, ‘the rallying point is...’"

"And do we leave instructions for someone?"

"Hm..." Adam was confused. "That's true. It hasn't crossed my mind."

"So, may we begin?"

"I don't think so," he shook his head. "If someone wanders through here, except us, we don't know who it is and in what condition–and what the encounter might produce."

"So they reasoned the same."

"Well, maybe. By the way..." Adam bent down and pulled a fragment of a skull which was sticking out from the smashed head of the dead man.

"What are you doing?"

"We need a weapon. At least such as it is." He discovered that it was not possible to break out a bone, so he straightened again and fiercely stamped a foot with the boot on the head of the corpse lying on the floor. It cracked loudly and made a squashing, chomping sound. Eve turned away in disgust. Adam bent down again. This time he managed to break out a large enough piece of an occipital bone with a sharp jag, and having put the flashlight on a floor, began to clear his trophy of brain, flesh and hair. Suddenly he thought about how it looked from the outside–the interstellar ship, the highest achievement of human mind and a science, in contrast to the half-naked savage making a bone weapon from the skull of a fellow tribesman. And after all, both of them obviously have a university education–maybe, even doctor degrees.

"How many does he make?" Eve asked, still without looking in his direction.

"Mmm... The eighth. Not including us."

"And how many are on your list?

With his foot he knocked off the piece of paper from the flashlight handle, stepped on the edge, straightening it, and peered, counting the lines.

"Eleven. So what? Clearly that's not a list of crewmen. However big the ship is, it for sure doesn't contain monasteries and highways."

"But this list somehow is related to us and to what is going here! Perhaps it is the crew of the previous expedition. Or our backups. Or we could be their backups. We were sent afterwards, after what had happened to the main crew, according to the list."

"So you want to say all this began on Earth?"

"I don't know. I cannot remember. But I feel that this ship was doomed from the very beginning. No, not even feel–I know... knew earlier... I cannot… When I think of it, I am overrun by such despair! But I cannot also stop thinking!" Eve clenched her head with her hands, painfully sticking nails into her temples between the bandages. "So, have you finished here?"

"I am going to check–about parasites. Now I have a tool to do an autopsy. Certainly I am not going to cut myself though it alone would give full confidence."

"Erm... Adam! What are you up to?" Eve had turned towards him, looking at him in round-eyed fear. "Are you crazy? This is the way, probably, all this begins!" She took a step back, ready to run away.

"What's the matter?" He was surprised. "You... decided that I was going to dissect you? Faugh, how absurd! Though..."

"Though what?"

"Well no, it's purely theoretically–really, to check whether we are infected inside, it would require one of us to take... but no, I've said, theoretically! I'm not a murderer! I'm going to dissect him!" He nodded at the dead man. "If in his guts I find the same creature as in that man in the corridor, things look bad... and if no, that means, it has crept inside by chance."

"Even if you find nothing, it may mean the larvae are invisible to the naked eye."

"Thanks, you calmed me. But even if it is clean inside, it still says nothing about us. But all the same..." Adam squatted and scooted the corpse back over. "I never considered that I would ever disembowel my colleague with his own bone," he said to himself. However, strictly speaking, he didn't know what thoughts he had had in his past. But, indeed, they were unlikely to have been anything like these.

He thrusted the bone jag into the unnaturally pale belly covered with curly hair. The flesh at first caved in deeply without piercing it, and from the mouth of the corpse, a heavy sigh escaped. Adam shuddered and was dumbstruck, but the next moment he realized that he had just squeezed air out of the body. He pressed more strongly and the skin split its sides, making a terrible crimson mouth. No blood came out, it had clotted long ago.

Adam felt again an attack of nausea, but now he easily overcame it. After everything seen earlier... The ripped up flesh hardly gave in, as if it were rubber–or maybe his "surgical instrument" just lacked sharpness. He had to exert considerable effort. Yes, it was not at all the same as cutting meat with a knife on a plate (from this thought Adam felt a lump rising in his throat again, and decided that, if somehow he got out from here, he would become a vegetarian). At last he drew the cut to the groin and, grabbing the edges, stretched the flesh apart sideways. Of all things, there was a lot of fat inside, while the dead man didn't look at all fat. So, this wet bag is, obviously, the stomach, he concluded, and here are the guts, similar to a clot of huge slippery worms. The real worms–terrestrial or, the most important, local–however, were not visible anywhere. But to be fully convinced of their absence, it was necessary to cut and glance into each section of the intestines.

"So was it there?" Eve lost patience. At times she threw fastidious looks in his direction, but did not dare to come nearer.

"Looks like nothing yet–no larvae, eggs or whatever. Now I will open his intestines. What the hell is that?"

From a cut made under the stomach something whitish emerged. Adam's hand trembled, but he realized that it didn't look like anything alive. He ripped the slimy tube further and with two fingers pulled from it a crumpled and stuck together lump of a paper.

"It seems we have mail," Adam muttered.

"Do you really think so?" Eve all the same overcame herself and stepped inside the room.

"No, of course not. He hardly expected that he would be dissected, but for some reason he has swallowed this piece."

"Wouldn’t it be easier to tear it?"

"You’re asking me? Perhaps he did it in a fit of rage and in the same fit smashed his head against the wall. Or maybe he didn't want someone to reconstruct the sheet from scraps."

"Again something was hidden from us? Can you unfold it without tearing it?"

"I will try. By the way, apparently, this paper is firmer than the usual one. Perhaps it's even not a paper at all, it just looks similar. Shit, we don’t even remember what they write on now."

He managed to unwrap the wet sheet on a floor. Eve, trying not to look at the ripped body, sat down on her knees nearby and pointed the flashlight on to the sheet to see it better.

Letters were quite distinguishable–this time printed, not hand-written. The text had neither a beginning, nor an end.

"...neral theory of a dark matter-energy of Bernstein-Wong (Nob.pr. for physics 2063), which showed that the dark matter actually was not some type of hypothesized exotic matter but is in fact a certain phase of the standard one, with the phase transition being completely reversible [3]. The common view that objects in this special phase are capable of motion with speeds greatly exceeding the speed of light is not quite correct. Actually objects in the "dark" condition obey the equations of the Generalized quantum theory [5], from which, in particular, it follows that such an object does not have fixed coordinates in the continuum (or even a fixed projection to the continuum); rather its location is a superposition of all the possible coordinates, the probability of a particular value of the coordinates actualizing, being described by a certain three-dimensional distribution function Φ, which depends on the curvature of the continuum at each point and on the configuration of the dark energy field. Travel of the "dark" ship, accordingly, is in fact a reconfiguration of the field of dark energy performed in a way so that at the moment of the collapse of the ship's wave function (which occurs at field's switching-off), the function Φ possess an above-threshhold value in the vicinity of the destination point. It has been shown by Kozelsky (2065) that for any nonzero Σ it is possible within a finite time (using a finite amount of energy) to carry out the field reconfiguration so that the ship would return to the standard phase within any prescribed set of coordinates with an error of no more than |Σ| [6].

The postulates of the theory have been experimentally confirmed by Kalkrin's group (2070, 2071), these experiments becoming the starting point for the "Hyperion" program. In 2077 the unmanned probe "Hyperion-1", equipped with the Kalkrin generator, explored the system of the star Gliese 581 and successfully returned to Earth.

It should be emphasized that the General theory of dark matter-energy, despite its experimental (and even industrial) verification, still does not supply answers to several pertinent questions. In particular, the essence of dark energy remains disputable. The problem of the cosmological constant, according to which the observed density of dark energy as is evidenced by its gravitational interactions is 120 orders of magnitude below the estimated value, remains unresolved. Bernstein explains it with the assumption that most of the dark energy does not manifest itself gravitationally. For an explanation of this cosmological constant problem, a number of hypotheses were offered [3] [7] [8], none of which are universally accepted. In particular, works of Miller (2065) and Birnbaum (2069) [9] [10] are devoted to the criticism of these hypotheses. Chang (2067, 2069) has offered the alternative explanation, according to..."

"Dark is faster than light," Adam muttered, having read up. "So it is not such nonsense."

"Apparently we are on a ship with the Kalkrin engine." Eve drew a practical conclusion. "But it said here, after all, that the flight to Gliese 581 was successful?"

"Unmanned," Adam reminded her. "After that they sent the manned spacecraft... and then something went wrong. As far as I understand it, we didn't return in time from dark phase to usual space. Which is, in fact, no wonder, if all this madness and destruction began. Probably they even broke the computer which would have returned us automatically. But the field generator continues to work, carrying us away all the further. That is, changing probability of our location in such a manner that..."

"And to return to the normal world, it is simply enough to switch it off?" Eve interrupted.

"Yes, but we will appear in the middle of nowhere. Remember the ‘butterfly’ on the screen in the control room? It is a graphic representation of function Φ. We will come up somewhere within it, most likely, near center. I do not know, how much the picture there corresponds to linear scales but if it corresponds, we will appear, at least, hundreds of light years from Earth. And, probably, in tens–from the nearest star. And if the scale is logarithmic, it is even terrible to imagine, where..."

"In other words, there is no hope to call for help."

"No. And it is also impossible to send a radiogram from the dark phase."