"Well, what about it? I've never got there, but if I did, I don't think I'd do too badly. Where there's a forest, there's paths, where there's paths, there's people, and you can always get by with people."
"What if there's no people?"
"If there's no people then there's nothing to do there. You have to stick to people, they won't let you down."
"No," Pepper said. "It's not as simple as that. I'm going downhill, people and all. I don't understand a thing about them."
"Lord, what on earth don't you understand?"
"Anything. That's what started me dreaming about the forest, incidentally. Only now I see that it's no easier in the forest."
She shook her head.
"What a child you still are," she said. "Why can't you ever understand that nothing exists in the world except love, food, and power. All rolled up together of course, but whatever thread you pull, you're sure to arrive at love, or power, or food..."
"No," said Pepper. "I don't want that."
"Darling," she said quietly. "Who's going to ask you whether you want it or not. Of course, I might ask you: what're you tossing about for, Peppy, what the hell more do you want?"
"I don't think I need anything," said Pepper. "To clear out of here as far as possible and become an archivist or a restorer. That's all the desires I have."
She shook her head again.
"Hardly. That's a bit too complicated. You need something simpler."
He didn't argue, and she got up.
"Here's your towel," she said. "I've put your under-things over here. Come out and we'll have some tea. You'll have all the tea and raspberry jam you want, then go to bed."
Pepper had already pulled the plug and was standing up in the bath rubbing himself down with a huge shaggy towel, when the windows rattled and there came the muffled thud of a distant explosion. Then he remembered the spares dump and Jeanne the silly, hysterical doll. He cried: "What's that? Where?"
"They've blown up the machine," replied Alevtina. "Don't be afraid."
"Where? Where'd they blow it up? At the depot?"
Alevtina was silent for a while, apparently looking out of the window.
"No," she said at last. "Why the depot? In the park... There's the smoke going up... There they all are, running, running..."
The forest was invisible. In its place, below the rock as far as the horizon, lay dense clouds. It resembled an ice-field powdered with snow: ice-hummocks and snow dunes, holes and crevasses concealing endless depths - if you jumped down from the rock your fall would be broken, not by earth, warm swamps, or spreading branches, but by hard ice sparkling in the morning sun, powdered lightly with dry snow, and you would stay lying on the ice under the sun, flat, motionless, black. It might be thought to resemble an old, well-washed white blanket, thrown over the treetops...
Pepper hunted around to find a pebble, lobbed it from palm to palm, thinking what a good little place this was above the precipice: pebbles about, no sense of the Directorate, wild thorn bushes all around, faded untrodden grass, even some little birdy permitting itself a chirp. Best not to look over to the right, though, where a luxurious four-hole latrine was suspended over the precipice, its fresh paint brazenly shining in the sun. Quite a way off, it's true, and possible if you wanted, to make yourself imagine it a summerhouse or some sort of scientific pavilion, but it did spoil the scene.
Perhaps it was actually because of this new latrine, erected the previous turbulent night, that the forest had shrouded itself in clouds. Hardly likely though. The forest wouldn't wrap itself up to the distant horizon for anything so petty, it was used to a lot worse than that from people.
At any rate, Pepper thought, I can come here every morning. I'll do what they tell me, I'll tote up on the broken Mercedes, I'll beat the assault course, I'll play the manager at chess, even try to get to like yogurt: it's probably not too bad if practically everybody likes it. And of an evening (and for the night), I'll go over to Alevtina's and eat raspberry jam and lie in the director's bath. There's something to be said for that even, he thought. Dry yourself with the director's towel and warm your feet up in the director's woolly socks, meanwhile crammed into the director's dressing gown. Twice a month I'll go over to the biostation to collect salary and bonuses, not the forest, just the biostation, and not even there, just to the pay-out window, but no meeting with the forest and no war with the forest, just salary and bonuses. But in the morning, early in the morning, I shall come here and look on the forest from afar and lob pebbles into it.
