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Authors: Victor Pelevin

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #sci-fi, #Dystopian

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BOOK: Omon Ra
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As a child I often used to imagine an open newspaper, still smelling of fresh ink, with a large portrait of myself right in the centre (wearing a helmet and a smile), and the caption: “Cosmonaut Omon Krivomazov feels just fine!” It’s not easy to understand just why I wanted this so badly. Maybe I was dreaming of living part of my life through other people—the people who would look at this photograph and think about me, and try to imagine what I thought and felt, the inner workings of my soul. Most important of all, perhaps, I wanted to become one of these people myself—to stare at my own face, made up of thousands of typographic dots, and wonder what kinds of films this man likes, and who his girlfriend is, and then suddenly remember that this Omon Krivomazov is me. Since then I’ve changed, gradually and imperceptibly. I’ve stopped being interested in other people’s opinions, since I realised that other people wouldn’t be interested in me anyway; they wouldn’t be thinking about me but about my photograph, and with the same indifference I feel for other people’s photographs. So the news that my heroism would remain unknown was no blow to me. The blow was the news that I would have to be a hero.

Mitiok and I were taken by turns to see the Flight
Leader the day after we arrived, as soon as we were kitted out in black uniforms, with bright yellow epaulettes bearing the incomprehensible initials HSS. Mitiok went first, and I was called an hour and a half later.

When the tall oak doors first opened to admit me, I was astounded how closely the room resembled a scene from some war film. In the centre of the office stood a table covered with a big yellow map, with several men in uniform standing round it: the Flight Leader, three generals, and two colonels, one a short fat man with a bright scarlet face and the other a skinny man with thinning hair who looked like an aging sickly little boy—he was wearing dark glasses and sitting in a wheelchair.

“Commander of Central Flight Control Colonel Khalmuradov,” said the Flight Leader, pointing at the fat man with the red face.

Khalmuradov nodded.

“Assistant Political Instructor of the Special Cosmonauts’ Detachment Urchagin.”

The colonel in the wheelchair turned his face towards me, leant forward in a slight bow, and removed his glasses, as if to take a closer look at me. I couldn’t help shuddering—he was blind; the lids of one eye had completely fused together, and whitish mucus gleamed dully between the lashes of the other.

“You may call me by my first name, Bamlag,” he said in a high tenor voice. “I hope we’re going to be friends, Omon.”

The Flight Leader didn’t introduce me to the generals, and nothing in their behaviour indicated that they even noticed I was there. I thought, though, that I’d seen one
of them during the examinations at the Zaraisk flying school.

“Cadet Krivomazov,” said the Flight Leader, introducing me. “Well, shall we begin?”

He turned towards me, folded his hands on his belly, and said: “Omon, I’m sure you read newspapers and watch films, and you know that the Americans have landed some of their astronauts on the moon and even driven around up there in a motor carriage. Their goals are supposedly peaceful, but that all depends on how you look at things. Just imagine a simple working man from some small country—say, in Central Africa …”

The Flight Leader wrinkled up his face and went through the motions of rolling up his sleeves and wiping the sweat from his brow.

“And then he sees that the Americans have landed on the moon, while we … You understand?”

“Yes, sir, Comrade Lieutenant-General!” I replied.

“The main purpose of the space experiment for which you will now be prepared, Omon, is to demonstrate that we do not lag behind the countries of the West in technology and that we are also capable of sending expeditions to the moon. At the moment it is beyond our capability to send a piloted, recoverable ship. But there is another possibility—we can send an automated vessel, which will not have to be brought back.”

The Flight Leader leaned over the protruding mountains and small hollow craters of the relief map. A bright red line cut across its centre, like a fresh scratch made with a nail.

“This is a sector of the lunar surface,” said the Flight Leader. “As you know, Omon, our space science programme
has mostly studied the far side of the moon, whereas the Americans landed on the bright side. This long line here is the Lenin Fissure, discovered a few years ago by one of our sputniks. Last year an automated expedition was sent to this unique geological formation to gather samples of the lunar surface, and the initial analyses have suggested that further investigation of the fissure is required. No doubt you know that our space programme is oriented mostly towards automation—it’s the Americans who risk human lives. We expose only machines to danger. The idea is to send a special self-propelled vehicle, a so-called moonwalker, which will travel along the bottom of the fissure and transmit scientific information back to earth.”

The Flight Leader opened the drawer of his desk and began rummaging about in it with his hand, keeping his eyes on me all the while.

“The overall length of the fissure is one hundred and fifty kilometres, but its width and depth are a matter of a mere few metres. It is proposed that the moonwalker will travel along it for seventy kilometres—the batteries should have enough power for that distance—and set up a radio buoy at its centre point, which will broadcast into space radio waves encoding the words ‘Peace’, ‘Lenin’, and ‘USSR’.”

A small red toy appeared in his hand. He wound it up and set it at the beginning of the red line on the map. The toy began to buzz and edged forward—its fuselage was like a tin can set on eight small black wheels, with the letters
USSR
on its side and two eyelike bulges at the front. Everyone followed its motion intently; even Colonel Urchagin turned his head in time
with the others. The toy reached the edge of the table and tumbled onto the floor.

“Something like that,” the Flight Leader said thoughtfully, casting a quick glance at me.

“Permission to speak, sir?” I heard my own voice.

“Fire ahead.”

“Surely the moonwalker is automated, Comrade Lieutenant-General?”

“It is.”

“Then what am I needed for?”

The Flight Leader lowered his head and sighed.

“Bamlag,” he said, “your turn.”

The wheelchair’s electric motor hummed, and Colonel Urchagin moved away from the table.

“Let’s go for a little walk,” he said, driving over and taking hold of my sleeve.

I glanced enquiringly at the Flight Leader. He nodded. I followed Urchagin out into the corridor, and we began walking slowly along—that is, I walked and he rode beside me, adjusting his speed with a lever which was topped by a homemade Plexiglas ball with a carved red rose inside it. Several times Urchagin opened his mouth and was about to speak, but each time he closed it again, and I was already sure he didn’t know where to begin, when he suddenly grabbed my wrist in his narrow hand.

“Listen carefully now, Omon, and don’t interrupt,” he said with feeling, as though we’d just been singing songs together round the campfire. “I’ll start with the general background. You know, the fate of humanity is full of tangled knots, things that don’t seem to make any sense, bitter realities hard to accept. You have to see things very clearly, very precisely, in order not to
make too many mistakes. Nothing in history is like it is in the textbooks. Dialectics led to Marx’s teaching, which was intended for an advanced country but won its victory in the most backward one. We Communists had no time to prove the correctness of our ideas—the war cost us too much of our strength, we had to spend too long struggling against the remnants of the past and our enemies within the country. We just didn’t have the time to defeat the West technologically. But in the battle of ideas, you can’t stop for a second. The paradox—another piece of dialectics—is that we support the truth with falsehood, because Marxism carries within itself an all-conquering truth, and the goal for which you will give your life is, in a formal sense, a deception. But the more consciously …”

I felt my heart sink, and I tried spontaneously to pull my wrist free, but Colonel Urchagin’s fingers seemed to have turned into a narrow hoop of steel.

“… the more consciously you perform your feat of heroism, the greater will be the degree of its truth, the greater will be the meaning of your brief and beautiful life!”

“Give my life? What heroism?” I asked in a faint voice.

“Why, the very same heroism,” he said equally quietly, sounding as though he was frightened, “that has already been demonstrated by more than a hundred young lads just like you and your friend.”

He said nothing for a moment, and then continued in his former tone of voice: “You’ve heard it said that our space programme is based on automated technology?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s you and me go to room 329, and they’ll tell you about our space automation techniques.”

“Comrade Colonel!”

“Comrade Camel!” he echoed, mocking me. “They asked you at Zaraisk if you were willing to give your life, didn’t they? What answer did you give?”

I was sitting in an iron chair bolted to the floor in the centre of the room; my arms were clamped to the armrests, my legs to the chair’s legs. The windows were covered with thick blinds, and in the corner there was a small writing desk with a telephone without a dial. Colonel Urchagin was sitting opposite me in his wheelchair; as he spoke he laughed, but I could tell he was deadly serious.

“Comrade Colonel, you must understand, I’m just an ordinary boy. You think I’m some kind of great… But I’m not one of those people who …”

Urchagin’s wheelchair hummed as he began to move. He came right up close to me and stopped.

“Wait a moment, Omon,” he said, “wait a moment. Now we’re getting to the point. Just whose blood do you think the soil of this country of ours is watered with? Some kind of special blood, perhaps? From some kind of special people?”

He reached out a hand, felt my face, and then struck me across the mouth with his dry little fist—not really
hard, just hard enough for me to feel the taste of blood in my mouth.

“That’s the kind of blood it’s watered with. From lads like you …”

He patted me on the neck.

“Don’t be angry,” he said. “I’m your second father now. I can even take my belt to you. Why are you cringing like a woman?”

“I don’t feel ready to be a hero,” I answered, licking away the blood. “That is, I feel I’m definitely not ready … I’d rather go back to Zaraisk than …”

Urchagin leaned towards me and stroked my neck as he spoke in a soft and gentle voice.

“Don’t be such a little fool, Ommy. You should know, my son, that that’s what heroism is all about. No one’s ever ready to be a hero—there’s no way to prepare for it. Of course, you can practise till you’re really good at running up to the gunport and have the knack of falling neatly across it on your chest—we teach all of that. But you can’t teach anyone the actual inner act of heroism, it can only be performed. The more you wanted to live before, the better for the act of heroic sacrifice. The country needs heroic feats, even invisible ones—they nourish that fundamental strength which …”

I heard a loud croaking sound. The black shadow of a bird flitted across the blinds, and the colonel fell silent. He pondered for a while in his wheelchair, then switched on the motor and trundled out into the corridor. The door slammed behind him and then opened again a moment later to admit a yellow-haired air force lieutenant carrying a length of rubber hose. His face
looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out where I’d seen him before.

“Recognise me?” he asked.

I shook my head. He went over to the table and sat on it, his legs dangling down in their gleaming black boots with concertina folds, at the sight of which I remembered where I’d seen him—he was the lieutenant from the Zaraisk flying school who had wheeled my bed and Mitiok’s out onto the parade ground. I even remembered his name.

“Lan … Lan …”

“Landratov,” he said, flexing the rubber hose. “I’ve been sent to have a talk with you. Urchagin sent me. You don’t really want to go back to the Maresiev School, do you?”

“It’s not that I want to go back there,” I said. “I don’t want to go to the moon. To be a hero.”

Landratov chuckled and slapped his hands on his belly and his thighs.

“Well now,” he said, “so you don’t want to? D’you think they’ll leave you in peace now? Or just let you go? Or send you back to the school? And even if they do, have you got any idea what it’s like when you get up from your bed and take your first steps on crutches? Or how it feels before the rain?”

“No,” I said.

“Or maybe you think when your legs heal up it’s a bed of roses? Last year two cadets were tried for state treason. From the fourth year they work on flight simulators—d’you know what those are?”

“No.”

“Basically it’s just like being in a plane: you sit in a cockpit with your control column and your pedals—only you’re watching a television screen. So this pair of swine, instead of practising their Immelman loops, flew off west at minimal height and refused to respond to the radio. When they eventually dragged them out, they asked them what they thought they had been up to. Neither of them would say anything, but one answered the question later. Said he just wanted to feel what it was like, didn’t he, just for a minute …”

BOOK: Omon Ra
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