Descendants of the Scythians - Страница 33

“He and his Hartak can go to hell!” Lida burst out in indignation.

“Right!” Artem supported Lida. “Let Hartak come here himself. Why is he hiding behind the backs of others? Then, when he makes his appearance, I’ll give it him hot! You old bastard, bring your Hartak in here, and I’ll teach him what’s what!”

Artem, burning with anger, was about to rush at Dorbatay with clenched fists when Ivan Semenovich’s stern warning stopped him. But the young man could not help adding: “I’m sure your Hartak is hanging around somewhere close. Tell him to watch his step. I’m short-tempered as they come! You hear that? Oh, and who’s that?”

The felt hanging at the entrance was pushed aside and a figure stepped into the semi-darkness of the kibitka. The soothsayer turned around quickly to look back. Lida guessed rather than actually saw the misshapen form of Hartak. “It’s Hartak! He’s been eavesdropping!”

“So much the better,” Ivan Semenovich remarked calmly. “He has probably realized by now without any further explanations that we reject both his and Dorbatay’s proposals. Now, Dmitro Borisovich, tell them this: we absolutely refuse to accept their proposals. We will not do what Dorbatay wants us to do. We do not want to assist him in duping people. That’s all we have to tell him. Am I right, my friends?”

“Of course!”

“That’s the only answer we could give him!”

Dorbatay listened attentively to what was being translated for him by the short swarthy man who accompanied his interpretation with many deferential bows. His withered face remained impassive, as if there was nothing unexpected or displeasing to him in the answer given by the strangers. But when he began speaking again after the translator had finished, notes of dissatisfaction could be discerned in his voice.

“The old man seems to be greatly displeased,” Artem voiced his observations. Lida irritably shrugged her shoulders, her meaning all too clear: I could not care less.

“The glorious Dorbatay has something else to say,” the swarthy man went on. “The glorious Dorbatay wishes to inform the strangers that if they refuse to accept his proposals, they will be sacrificed tomorrow morning. So they must choose: either they receive honors and wealth from the hands of Dorbatay or death tomorrow morning.”

“Dmitro Borisovich, tell them that we are not to be intimidated by his threats,” said Ivan Semenovich firmly. “There’s nothing more to discuss. We’ll wait and see how he will go about fulfilling his threats tomorrow!”

Uncontrollable rage twisted Dorbatay’s face. The swarthy interpreter bent over double, fearing the soothsayer would vent his anger on him. But Dorbatay controlled himself; he turned around and walked out. The interpreter followed him, shooting a glance full of bewilderment, at the strangers: these people had been offered such marvelous things — happiness and wealth — and yet they had inexplicably rejected them in favor of death! Shaking his head in wonderment, he walked out with the Scythian who was carrying the oil lamp.

With the only source of light gone, the kibitka was cast into utter darkness. There was a minute of silence, and then Dmitro Borisovich asked, his voice sounding a little dismayed:

“Now, my friends, what are we going to do?”

“Well, at least one thing is clear: we’ll learn a lot about the religious rites of the Scythians,” Artem replied testily. “Though we’ll only find out what it feels like to be sacrificed, I dare say it will be extremely interesting and exciting — from an archeological point of view, of course.”

“Artem, I’m not in the mood for your quips. I asked a serious question. We have a terrible problem on our hands,” the archeologist said reproachfully.

“Now, listen to what I have to say,” Ivan Semenovich broke in. “We’ll have time to talk about everything, but now we must ask Varkan whether he can bring the bags and other things we left as Skolot’s place.”

“Varkan promises to do it,” the archeologist said after he had listened to the Scythian’s reply to this question. “The bags will be here before dawn.”

“That’s good. Oh, there’s one more thing — Dmitro Borisovich, ask Varkan to spread the word among those he trusts that we are prepared to defy the soothsayer. Can you do it?”

“Of course!”

“That’s all for the moment.”

The message passed and received, Varkan slipped out of the kibitka crawling out on the ground under the felt that was cautiously lifted a little. Artem said tentatively: “What if we follow him? Then we could try to get to the forest and hide there until morning, and in the morning, we can start looking for the opening we got here by.”

“That’s out of the question,” Ivan Semenovich said calmly but firmly. “Varkan has lived here all his life. And we’ve been here barely twelve hours. He knows his way around, we don’t. We can’t speak the language. We’re sure to be seized the moment we crawl out of here, and then, the soothsayer may want to begin his sacrificial ceremony right away, without waiting for morning.”

Artem was silent for some time, and then, this time timidly, asked in the complete darkness of the kibitka: “Ivan Semenovich, may I ask one more thing? I’m trying to solve a puzzle, but I can’t, and it’s about to drive me crazy. We have some time to discuss things, don’t we?”

“Go ahead, Artem, go ahead! Since when have you grown so bashful?”

“Well, you said once that in your opinion, we’re in an incredibly large cave… it must be true, I know. But… but how come we’ve found people here? And, for that matter, the Scythians who supposedly died out more than two thousand years ago?”

Ivan Semenovich chuckled. He could not see the faces of Artem and Lida in the darkness but he was sure they were turned to him, listening attentively:

“As a matter of fact, that question should be readdressed to Dmitro Borisovich. He is the one who is an expert in archeology,” the geologist said.

“Archeology has nothing to do with it, Ivan Semenovich,” said Dmitro Borisovich. “It has never dealt with the living Scythians. In our case, they’re very much alive and kicking… In other words, I cannot give any plausible answer to Artem’s questions.”

“Maybe we’re imagining it all,” Lida said hesitantly.

“No, we’re not,” the geologist said with absolute certainty. “We have found the Scythians here, no doubt about that, though in a somewhat ‘canned’ state, so to say.”

“What did you say? Canned? How do you mean?” Artem and Lida cried out at the same time. Dmitro Borisovich made only a disparaging sound in his throat. Canned Scythians indeed!

“I’ve got the impression, my friends, that you’ve unlearned to understand jokes,” Ivan Semenovich went on. “I thought it’d make you laugh, but instead it puzzled you. Well, all right, I’ll explain. I did not mean it in the sense that somebody has put the Scythians into cans to preserve them until we arrive here. Nothing of the kind. You’ve had the chance to see for yourself that these Scythians are not quite the things from a preserve can. And yet — I insist upon my usage of the word: they are, to a great extent, canned products!”

“Ivan Semenovich! Don’t make us solve additional puzzles!” Dmitro Borisovich said. “We’ve got so many others yet!”

“All right, I’ll speak in plain language, without metaphors. By my reckoning, we descended two or three hundred meters below the surface before we came across the big rockfall. Am I right in my estimation?”

“Yes, we must have gone at least that deep.”

“Good. Then, we were attacked by that gas, and we crawled out through an opening to find ourselves in a strange forest, after which our adventures among the Scythians began. Correct?”

“Of course!”

“Hence, that opening was a window, so to say, into the world of the ancient Scythians. We have not used a time machine and yet we observe this ancient world, at least two thousand years old, all around us. We not only observe it, but are being treated rather harshly by it. We have no reason whatsoever to doubt the reality of this world. The question immediately arises: where is this world — or the observable part of it — situated? It would be quite sensible to suppose that it is situated under the ground, in an enormously large subterranean cavity of staggering proportions, cut off from the surface since the ancient times.”

“And the Scythians?”

“To explain their presence here, we have to put forward another hypothesis. At one time in the remote past, there must have existed a passage connecting this subterranean cavity with the outer world. I see no other way of explaining the presence of the Scythians here. So, once a tribe of the Scythians, probably fleeing from danger, inadvertently made their way to this cave and had to remain here because a rockfall blocked the way back. The Scythians found themselves trapped here, with no connections to the rest of the world, and since there were no more outside influences, they retained all their habits and customs of two thousand years ago. We have accidentally walked into their life. That’s about all I can offer by way of conjecture!”

“There’s one thing, Ivan Semenovich, that needs some further clarification. It is a well established fact that the Scythians, no matter at what stage of development they were — from the nomads to land tillers — were people whose lives were inseparably connected with the wide expanses of the steppes. It is very difficult to imagine them becoming accustomed to life underground. We do not know of even a single example when a Scythian tribe used a cave, much less lived underground!” the archeologist protested vehemently.