The Kid from Hell Chapter 5 - Weapons and Walls
Chapter 5 is where Gack hits a wall. Several walls, actually. Some invisible, some emotional, and one that nearly breaks him.
The Phantom Warrior
Gack can’t sleep all night. Is Kornei watching him on those screens? Did he see the breakdown at the monument and just sit there laughing? The cot keeps reshaping itself into a soft cradle. Gack keeps beating it back into a military cot. This tiny detail says everything about where his head is at.
At dawn he finally sees what makes that horrible “mrrreeow” sound. A bright spot appears over the glade, pours out liquid lilac light, solidifies into a Phantom-class starship. A figure climbs out, covered in something black, loaded with weapons that clank with every step. Then it rips off its face. Peels away a black mask. Underneath, something not human. White skin, no nose, no lips, eyes like glowing saucers. And it sinks into solid ground with every step like walking through bog. At the entrance, it drops all weapons in a clattering pile and walks inside. The starship vanishes.
Weapons You Can’t Touch
Gack does what any soldier would do. Runs straight for the weapons. In his shorts, barefoot, through wet morning grass. He reaches out, grabs a handle. Feels it, ribbed and warm. Pulls. And his hand is empty. The weapon is still lying there. He tries again, feels the weight of metal, jerks it toward him. Nothing. His palm comes away oily but his hand holds air.
So he calls Dramba. “Hand me that one on the end.” Dramba stares at the steps and reports: “Grass, corporal, sir. Steps. Dust. Four ants. Many species of microorganisms.”
He can see microorganisms but not a meter-long chunk of alien metal. Programmed not to. Every possible move was anticipated. Gack kicks the heaviest piece with his bare foot, almost breaks a toe. Limps back to his room and collapses.
To pull himself together, he reaches for his happiest memory. A frozen battlefield, bodies in gray snow, and the duke putting chewing tobacco on Gack’s tongue. “Oh these kids. My loyal, unconquerable kids.” That’s his entire emotional foundation, a piece of chewing tobacco from a warlord surrounded by corpses. He falls asleep grinning.
The Duplicating Machine
The house fills with visitors. Crowds arriving through the null booth, landing from phantoms, eating Kornei’s food and arguing in dozens of languages. But here’s where things get interesting. Gack watches a man put a small box into a chest-like machine in the dining room. Pull down a screen, hear a hum, see a yellow light, raise the screen. Two boxes. Again. Four. Again. Eight. The guy fills his pockets and runs off.
Gack tests it with a dirty napkin. Works. Then he finds his one remaining cartridge, 8.1 caliber. Duplicates it until he has sixteen. A full magazine. Makes replacement buttons too.
Nobody cares. He openly runs the machine while people eat lunch around him. They glance, smile, go back to conversations. Back home civilians stepped off the sidewalk for a Fighting Cat. Here, they don’t even notice he’s stockpiling ammunition. Insulting.
Kornei’s Son
Gack is hiding in the bushes when an aristocrat in gray stylish clothes steps out of the null booth, dark blue eyes, an expression Gack hasn’t seen on anyone here. Stern and unhappy. The uproar in Kornei’s study goes quiet. Then Kornei and the stranger walk out together. Kornei is hanging his head.
“I demand that you stop tormenting her,” the young man says. His mother. Kornei’s wife. She’s alone, and Kornei is never there.
Kornei can’t leave, can’t disappear. “It’s fate,” he tells his son Andrei. “Do you understand? Fate.” Andrei’s face trembles like he’s about to cry, then he waves his hand and walks into the null booth without another word. Kornei stands at the entrance for a full minute getting himself together. Then straightens his shoulders and goes back to work.
So here’s what got me. Kornei, this powerful figure who controls the house and all these visitors, is just a man who can’t be in two places at once. His son hates him for it. And he calls it fate because he has no better answer.
The Spy Training
One more discovery. Gack walks into Kornei’s dark study looking for a book. In pitch black, he hears Kornei speaking Imperial, the enemy language, in a bass deeper than anything he’s ever heard. A real interrogation, or so it seems. Kornei roaring, a rat-eater squeaking and wriggling.
Then Kornei switches to his normal voice: “Not bad at all, Voldemar. You’re ready.” It was training. Kornei coaching someone to infiltrate the Empire. Voldemar, a giant of a man, bumps into Gack in the dark and knocks him out cold.
Gack comes to on the living room floor. Voldemar towers over him, looking guilty: “What were you doing standing in the dark?”
“No, I didn’t hurt myself,” Gack answers. “Someone else hurt me.”
My Take
This chapter is about walls closing in. Weapons he can feel but not hold. A machine that copies anything, but what good is ammunition without a gun? A house full of people who treat him like furniture. And Kornei, who turns out to be running some kind of intelligence operation while his family falls apart.
The Strugatskys keep peeling back layers. Every chapter reveals that this “peaceful” civilization is more complicated than it looks from the outside.
Previous: Chapter 4 - Private Dramba