If this had been in the park... If it had been in the hostel or the library or the assembly hall... And it had been - in the park, the library and even in the assembly hall during Kirn's lecture on "What all Directorate personnel should know about methods of mathematical statistics." But now the forest was seeing it all and hearing it all - the lascivious obscenity that filled Acey's eyes, Quentin's purple face swaying in the van doorway, some dull, ox-like, droning mumble of Stoy-an's, something about work, responsibility, stupidity and the crack of flying buttons against the windshield ... and its reaction couldn't be guessed, whether it was one of horror, amusement or a fastidious grimace. " - " said Acey with satisfaction. And Pepper hit him. Hit him on the cheekbone apparently, with a crunch, spraining his finger. Everybody stopped talking at once. Acey held his cheek and looked at Pepper in vast astonishment.
"Don't say things like that," said Pepper firmly. "Not here. Don't do it."
"Well I'm not arguing," Acey said with a shrug. "I only meantthat I'm doing no good here, haven't got a
motorbike you can see that... So what good can I do here?"
Quentin inquired loudly:
"You want one across the jaw?"
'There you are," said Acey, vexed. "Right across the cheekbone, right on the bone... Good job, you missed my eye."
"No, I mean it, one to the jaw."
"Yes," Pepper said severely, "because here that sort of thing is out."
"Let's go then," said Quentin, lying back in his seat.
"Ace," said Stoyan. "Climb in. If we get stuck you can give us a hand."
"I've got a new pair of pants on," objected Acey. "Better let me drive."
Nobody answered, so he climbed into the back seat next to Quentin who moved up. Pepper got in next to Stoyan and they set off.
The pups had already gone quite a way, but Stoyan, driving with great skill, keeping the offside wheels on the path and the nearside on the dusty moss, soon overtook them and crawled slowly behind carefully using the clutch to adjust his speed. "You'll burn the clutch out," said Acey. He turned to Quentin and began explaining that he'd had no ulterior motive, he had no motorbike anymore anyway and a man's a man and if he's normal always will be, forest or no, no matter whether ...
"Have you had one in the jaw?" Quentin kept asking. "No, you just tell me, the truth now, have you ever had one on the jaw or not?" Quentin kept asking and interrupting Acey. "No," Acey would answer, "no, wait a minute, you hear me out first..."
Pepper stroked his swollen finger and looked at the pups. The children of the forest. Or perhaps its servants. Or maybe its experiments. They were proceeding slowly and tirelessly one after the other in line ahead, as if flowing along the ground; they oozed across rotting tree stumps, crossed ruts, pools of stagnant water in the tall grass, through prickly bushes.
The track kept disappearing, diving into evil-smelling mud, hiding itself under layers of tough gray mushrooms that crunched under the wheels, then again appearing, while the pups held their direction and stayed white, clean, smooth; not a blade of grass stuck to them, not a thorn wounded them, they were unstained by the sticky black mud. They oozed along with a kind of stupid unthinking confidence, as if along a road long-known and habitual. There were forty-three of them.
I was dying to get here and now I've arrived, at least I'm seeing the forest from inside and I'm seeing nothing. I could have imagined all this sitting in my bare hostel room with its three empty bunks; late night insomnia, everything quiet all about, then right on midnight the piledriver starts thumping on the construction site. I could have thought it all up: mermaids, walking trees and these pups, turning into pathfinder Selivan - the most absurd things, the holiest. And everything there is in the Directorate I can imagine and bring to mind. I could have stayed at home and dreamed this all up, lying on my sofa listening to symphojazz or voices talking unfamiliar languages on the radio... But that doesn't mean a thing. To see and not understand is the same as making it up. I'm alive, I can see and I don't understand. I'm living in a world someone has thought up without bothering to tell me, or maybe even himself. A yearning for understanding - that's my sickness, thought Pepper suddenly, a yearning for understanding.
He stuck his hand out of the window and held his aching finger against the cool car-body. The pups were paying the landrover no attention. They probably had no suspicion of its existence. They gave off a sharp unpleasant smell; their membrane now seemed transparent and it was as if wave-like shadows moved beneath.
"Let's catch one," suggested Quentin. "It's simple enough, we'll wrap it in my jerkin and take it to the lab."
"Not worth it," said Stoyan.
"Why not?" Quentin asked. "We'll have to catch one sooner or later."
