The Documents of the Dealings
"How odd," Sakharov remarked. "I've never seen Tiger so anxious to leave before – he didn't even wait to collect his payment!"
"It was that woman," Ghost opined between mouthfuls of cold canned meat. "He wanted to get away from her."
The professor stroked his beard absently. "Is there some superstition among your colleagues pertaining to women?"
"We're stalkers, not sailors." Ghost prodded a lump of gristle with his fork. "There was something unpleasant between those two."
Sakharov blinked owlishly. "What makes you say that?"
"It was all over their faces." The veteran stood, discarding his can. "Are we doing another night reconnaissance?"
"If the weather is favorable, yes."
"Then I'll take a nap." So saying, Ghost went into the cramped room beside the office and stretched out on the cot there. "See you at twenty-three-hundred."
Left to his own devices, Sakharov initiated the process of data analysis for the recovered psi-blocker, made himself a cup of tea and settled himself in front of his workstation. It would be some time before the bunker's computers could chew through all of the new information, and in the meantime there was a matter of his own curiosity which demanded attention...
Ministry of Emergencies and Affairs of Population Protection from the Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe – Commission of Inquiry's Report on the Crisis of 2006 – Appendix B: Survivor Testimony
Case #12: A. K. Petanko
Date of Birth: 11.11.1983
Place of Birth: Pripyat, Kiev Oblast
Place of Residence: Slavutych, Chernihiv Oblast
Parents: K. B. Petanko (deceased) and V. A. Volkova (deceased)
The file hadn't been updated since Sakharov last accessed it more than two years ago. That was probably for the better, he decided. What he was looking for didn't appear in the summary, so, acting on a hunch and a dim recollection, he skipped ahead to the ending pages. The last years of Anton Petanko's life on the outside were clinically summarized there, his trials and tribulations committed to record with an apparatchik's unfeeling efficiency: inability to readjust to life in Slavutych, the breakdown of a relationship with a young woman at one of Kiev's technical institutes, self-imposed exile to a small town in the north, contact with those who penetrated into the Zone illegally, and finally a sudden disappearance.
The last update to the profile was no warmer: Addendum 24.01.2009 – Y. G. Sakharov reported contact with subject Petanko at the Yantar Mobile Scientific Laboratory. Professor Sakharov described him as being in good physical and mental health, but added that subject Petanko is now one of the so called 'free stalkers' and has no interest in further assisting the Commission of Inquiry or the Ministry's investigative efforts.
Sakharov couldn't blame him for that last part, not after watching those dunderheaded Commission tinplates treat their key witnesses like diseased cattle and hoard their knowledge as if in some twisted contest. The amount of time wasted by their failure to establish a prompt working relationship with their counterparts in Belarus alone... No, it was far too late to be getting angry about that debacle. Suffice it to say that there were good reasons for the fact that the professor had never again mentioned the stalker called Tiger in his official dispatches.
Closing the file, the aging scientist sat back in his chair and contemplated the merits of a second cup.
"Anton! Dammit, Anton, wait for me!"
There were moments when Tiger wished he'd been granted a bloodsucker's invisibility rather than a biological radar. Still, Olga must have run nearly all the way from Yantar to have caught up with him so fast. If she was going to be persistent, he might as well stop long enough to humor her just this once. "Over here," he said curtly, climbing inside one of the derelict boxcars which sat about the Wild Territory.
"Whew," the female stalker wheezed, hauling herself up after him. "That's not an easy run even with a Moonlight..." Sitting with her back against the inner side of the boxcar's wall, she removed said artifact from a pouch on her hip. After a few seconds of briskly rubbing the peach-sized crystal sphere between her hands, it began to emit a piercing blue-white glow. "That's better."
"Well?" Tiger demanded. "What do you want?"
His impatience earned him a hurt look. "Anton, I haven't seen you in five years... You could have been dead for all I knew. Don't you think I want to know where you've been, what's happened to you?"
"There's no reason for you to care," Tiger said flatly. "You said it was over, so it's over."
"Anton, please – "
"Stop calling me that."
Olga gritted her teeth. "Okay," she replied, her frustration swelling. "Tiger, are you doing all right out here?"
"I'm fine."
"I hope so." Olga set her Winchester aside, along with an M16 she must have taken from the zombie Tiger had shot earlier, and stretched her arms. "You do look better than... than you used to."
Tiger scowled, his face half-shadowed by the hood of his coat. "Why are you in the Zone, Olga Ivanovna?"
Olga winced. "Guess I can forget ever being called 'Olya' again." There was an exasperated sigh. "I'm here because the economy has turned to shit, same as every stalker I talked to between the perimeter and Rostok. I got fed up with the way the institute kept whittling down my pay, so I got out while I could."
"Why not go back to Russia?"
"There's nothing for me in Bryansk now." She rubbed the Moonlight some more. "My parents divorced last year. They've both been insufferable since."
Tiger cocked his head. "What about Stanislav?"
"My twerp brother?" Olga laughed sardonically. "Oh, he finally achieved his dream of entering Moscow State. Then he dropped out to join a skinhead gang after one term... Anyway," she added in a dignified tone, "I like Ukraine."
"Even the Zone?"
"Especially the Zone. It's sad that there aren't any great artists here, painting its beauty." Raising the luminous artifact before her, Olga let its cold light wash over her soft features. "All the people in this place think about is how they can exploit it, or how they must destroy it, or how none of their enemies can follow them into it... None of them know how to stop and just appreciate it."
"And what of your old sponsors at the Ministry of Internal Affairs?" Tiger asked rhetorically. "They must send the Spetsnaz out here to kill us because we trample the pretty flowers."
"Don't lump me in with those philistines," Olga grumbled. "Oh, did you know there's an outfit down in Kiev that's making a video game about the stalkers? They're saying it'll be a big hit next year."
"Good for them." Tiger walked over to the open door and climbed out of the boxcar. "I want to get back to Duty ground before it's completely dark out."
"Ah." His onetime companion didn't hide her disappointment. "Hey, before you go – I can see you still feel pretty hurt about what happened, but... do you think it really would have turned out better if I'd stayed?"
"It doesn't matter." The stalker in the long coat turned his back and began to walk away. "I don't need you any more."
"Free stalkers! Veterans and brothers! Join Duty! Protecting the world from the Zone's evil is our common goal!"
There was a thunderstorm coming. The sky had clouded over, the air becoming dense with moisture. Soon those stalkers still afield would be running for shelter. The loudspeaker would keep playing its mix of Duty propaganda, advertisements for the Hundred Rads and worn-out recordings of Soviet radio dramas all night long, lightning or no lightning.
In the end, Olga had followed Tiger at a distance all the way back from the Wild Territory, a solitary pulse on the edge of his perception. Despite his harsh words, he couldn't bring himself to leave her completely behind. Instead he waited until she cleared the Duty checkpoint at the edge of Rostok's pacified half, then quickly shook her off by ducking into the maze of ladders, pipes and catwalks adjacent to Arnie's Arena. She'd given up looking for him after a couple of minutes and gone off to the bar, leaving Tiger to work undisturbed.
The late Worm's method of data security, it transpired, was to simply erase files as soon as he was finished with them: all that remained in his pocket computer's memory were a set of stash coordinates and three sound files. Fitting an audio bud into one ear, Tiger selected the first one and launched the onboard playback application.
"Worm, it's Drifter. You better not skip the pickup this time, man... Anyway, I got another marked stalker sighting for your collection. Razorback turned up dead at the Agroprom last week – seems he signed on with a band of neutrals who went to dig something up for the nerds, then gunned down all the other guys and blew his own cap off. A couple of our kind found the bodies and buried 'em out there. I managed to catch up with one of them in the Garbage, and he swore Razorback had the mystery tattoo. I asked around at the bar, but all I got was the usual story: Razorback took a hike north and vanished for a while. Next thing anybody knows, he's kaput... That probably doesn't help you much, but I thought I should pass it along. Mind bringing me up to date on how much we actually know about the mark?"
According to the date stamp on the file, this message had been recorded while Tiger and Leshiy were away dodging bullets in the Red Forest. Evidently Drifter had gotten the lowdown from Southpaw.
"Drifter, I screwed up. I took only one key to the Dark Valley, and it looks like the door won't open without both of them. The bandits caught me coming out: I got away, but I lost the key. We'll have to get it back from Borov somehow... Regarding your question, I still don't know what the stalker mark actually means. The mark itself is an ordinary tattoo – it's not magic ink or anything. There are a few definite facts in the data I've collected, however... First, there aren't any attested cases of living stalkers being found with the mark. Since it's only found on corpses, it must be applied shortly before each stalker's death or else the live ones deliberately hide it... Second, all the marked stalkers whose movements are known either went missing in the Red Forest or tried to get past the Scorcher. Most of them reappear as casualties in wrecked death trucks. The lucky ones quietly rejoin the community until they die in accidents... Third, the majority are free stalkers, specifically loners who don't belong to any band or gang and don't have friends who'd become suspicious... It looks like the marked ones may be infiltration agents, recruited somewhere north of the explored lands. Obviously that would mean the Monolith is involved. In any case, we still need more evidence. Keep following your leads: I'll check the drop point again in another day or two."
Tiger found the idea simultaneously intriguing and disturbing. But how, he wondered, had Worm gathered the material he'd based his conclusions on? For how long had he been pursuing this? There being no immediate answers, the listener advanced to the final recording.
"Worm, I got your message. Sorry to hear things went bad in the Valley... I have some good news, for a change: that tip about a Clear Sky stash in the Cordon was right on the money. Unfortunately there are some bandits camped nearby, so I had to grab some documents and run away. From the stuff I did get, it looks like Lebedev and his buddies were chasing some guys who supposedly got past the Scorcher. There was also a note from Suslov, addressed to somebody called Nimble. Isn't there a guy by that name who works for Sidorovich? It might be worth pursuing... I'm leaving this in the usual place and going back to the perimeter for another try at the cache. The coordinates are attached."
Going back to the text data, Tiger ascertained that the directions indicated a point on the eastern edge of the Cordon, among the scattered trees and boulders a little way north of the railroad embankment. His next move was obvious, but – as he was helpfully reminded by a rumble in the distance – it would have to wait until morning. Switching the PDA off, he packed up his things and went looking for a dry place to spend the night.
"Deadly anomalies! Dangerous mutants! Anarchists and bandits! None of them will stop Duty on its triumphant march towards saving the planet!"
Out of place scents greeted Tiger's nose when the southbound loner cleared the gated checkpoint at the perimeter area's farthest extremity. One was the stench of charred flesh, the other that of gasoline: somebody had either wrecked a vehicle or committed arson. Neither boded well, and the stalker's footfalls rang louder as he hustled down the road.
He found the explanation quickly: the mangled, smoldering remains of a four-wheel truck lay well off the pavement, not quite halfway from the checkpoint to the rail line. It didn't look like a military vehicle, and the long rips in the topsoil indicated that it had been traveling towards the bridge at the time of the crash. Drawing closer, Tiger made out the forms of bodies lying close to the wreck. They didn't look military either.
His stomach did a backflip. A death truck? Here? Now? The timing was most certainly a coincidence, but the loner couldn't help but throw a wary look behind himself. The gate at the checkpoint was closed with a padlock: someone else must have come through ahead of Tiger, unless the truck's driver had stopped to shut the gate behind him. Satisfied that he really was alone, the stalker carefully entered the crash site.
One of the truck's passengers had definitely been a stiff for some time. Though all of the bodies wore stalker suits, Tiger recognized none of the faces. There were no weapons or personal effects that he could see, and he didn't have the courage to physically touch the dead. He moved on, determined to find the stash and then make tracks for the neutral camp and Sidorovich as fast as he could.
"Nnngh!" Tiger reeled backwards, stumbled over a stone and fell on his ass. He barely registered the collision of his body with the ground, a trivial impact after those of the punches, the kicks and the threaded end of a pipe. His ribs, arms and cheek were throbbing, and now he could taste blood oozing around his teeth as well.
"Shrimp, that's enough." Vasya Boar stepped forwards, hefting Tiger's AK. "On your feet."
Tiger hadn't been so keenly aware of his own mortality in a long, long time. He picked himself up sluggishly, wiping impotently at the trickle of red on his chin. It used to be that the bandits would just take his money, maybe his artifacts – but today they'd taken everything: his guns, his detector, even his flashlight and binoculars! They didn't care that he'd never provoked them, that he always paid up front or that Friar owed him. Peace for our time, he thought bitterly. First Olga, then a death truck and now Borov's new regime.
"Good boy." Vasya smirked under his balaclava. "Listen good, stalker. We already caught your shifty friend: he's lying facedown in the middle of an anomaly field." The smirk widened to a leer. "So you're gonna go in there and get back what he took from the stash." Turning, he tossed the assault rifle to one of his cronies. "Got some real classy shooters here... You two bring the goods to the boss. We'll catch up once this ass-face is taken care of."
The encumbered bandits departed posthaste, leaving Vasya and Shrimp with the prisoner. "Okay, asshole," Shrimp drawled. "Move it."
It wasn't clear if the bandits knew about Tiger's ability, or if they were exploiting him simply because he was an expendable body. He decided to feign normality as they prodded him south and east, up the long slope to the train tracks. A sizable cluster of gravitational traps littered the hill, and among them a lone body could be seen. "That's him," Vasya grunted. "Go on."
Tiger didn't need any encouragement. He could feel the anomalies' deadly energy, as well as a couple of blips produced by artifacts drifting between them. Walking slowly, he zigzagged into the field – stooping here, edging sideways there. Impatient rookies would throw bolts to trip the anomalies, then clumsily dash past in the scant moments before they reset. It was their own fault they had to spend so much time trying to catch artifacts as the precious oddities ricocheted madly about.
One of the blips collided with Tiger's shin, manifesting itself as a Jellyfish. He quickly tucked the grayish lump into his thickest coat pocket and covered the last stretch without looking back, Southpaw's skeptical question echoing in his head: "What if you ran into somebody totally implacable, some kind of psycho who wanted to mess you up no matter what?"
Drifter had apparently been shot in the back and crawled several meters prior to expiring, and now he was cold and stiff. Gripping the fallen stalker's arm with care, Tiger turned him so that his gas mask faced the clouds and began to search his pockets. The papers from the stash were safe and dry, though creased by hasty folding. Flipping through the first few, the loner confirmed their identity before pocketing the lot. Having also claimed Drifter's PDA, he turned his attention to the problem of escape. The dead stalker's bandoleer was filled with stripper clips for an SKS, but the carbine itself wasn't with him. He must have dropped it before he wandered into the anomalies. His pistol was in its place, however, as were its magazines.
"Come on, shithead!" Vasya yelled. "Get back here!"
Bending swiftly, Tiger reached and pulled. The gun came out smoothly: a SIG-Sauer with worn edges and grimy masking tape around the grip. Ignoring the startled yell from Shrimp, the abused stalker turned, pointed and opened fire. A lucky bullet struck Shrimp in the arm, forcing him to drop his shotgun. He danced about, howling while his attacker turned the pistol on Vasya. The bandit veteran threw himself to the ground, evading the hasty shots and bringing up his own Skorpion. The entire magazine's contents whizzed overhead as Tiger tore the bandoleer from Drifter's body, slung it over his shoulder and ran.