Page 87 of The Half Life of Valery K

‘Okay – why?’ the administrator managed.

‘On the way here,’ Valery said, and then found he was struggling to speak. In fifteen minutes he was going to be led into the woods and shot; it didn’t seem worth the effort.

There was a long silence. ‘Explain yourself, please,’ the administrator said, his voice gone high.

In all fairness, the man deserved that. ‘On the way here. They threw all the women’s bodies into the forest.’

The silence was even longer this time.

‘I don’t think I quite understand.’

‘The carriage was divided into two. Men on one side. Women on the other.’ Valery realised he was wrenching his hand round and round his own wrist, but he couldn’t stop. ‘The men broke through.’

The administrator sat down. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘I see.’

The guards shifted uncertainly. Valery looked at the floor. For the last month he’d been wholly focused on this, on doing something, after he’d done nothing on the train. He felt emptied out now that it was over.

The administrator picked up his telephone. ‘Yes, tell them to stand down. It was just an accident with some cleaning stuff. No, I know, tell it to Moscow. Bullshit supplies.’ He put the receiver down and studied Valery. ‘The way I see it,’ he said, very softly. They were all still in dealing-with-a-lunatic mode. ‘The way I see it, we have short supplies this month. The camp would have been very stretched, and at least fifty men would have died of hunger by November. This unfortunate accident has just evened out our numbers.’

Valery looked up, confused. ‘What?’

He expected the guards to argue, but incredibly, the one nearest to him only patted his shoulder.

‘Leave him with me. Back to your posts, gentlemen,’ the administrator said to them.

They looked relieved to be out of the room, which left Valery alone in the middle of the floor. It felt exposed.

‘Tell me now,’ the administrator said. ‘Did you do that because you feel guilty that you did the same thing those men did?’

‘No. I didn’t do anything.’

‘That sounds sugar-coated.’

‘No. You don’t understand. I didn’t do anything,’ said Valery. He swallowed, which hurt – there was ash in the back of his throat. ‘I just – switched off. I sat in a corner of the train carriage and I didn’t move. I didn’t help anyone, I didn’t even try. It wasn’t even cowardice, it was just … numbers,’ he said, hating that the word for numbers was so neutral, as if having those as the keystones of your soul wasn’t horrifying. ‘Then I pretended to be dead.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m small.’

‘What? Oh; oh.’

Valery made a fresh study of the carpet. He didn’t understand how any human being was supposed to function, knowing that forty-nine out of fifty men were nothing but pressure bombs, every single one primed and ready to go off if someone just leaned on them hard enough, and that one in fifty was a machine in disguise, with all the basic humanity of a combine harvester.

Very carefully, he supposed.

The administrator cleared his throat.

‘I’m taking you on to my staff. You’ll be my secretary. You’ll get at least one decent meal a day and in the mornings you’ll keep teaching me chemistry. You will not be allowed near any more cleaning cupboards, understand?’

‘What?’ Valery croaked.

‘I will, however, be consulting you sometimes about blasting in the mines. You clearly have an excellent and useful understanding of explosives which it would be foolish of me to waste, and God knows asking you will be cheaper than having a full-time engineer.’ He looked pleased. ‘Fetch the textbook, will you?’

32

The Demon Core

City 40, 1963