The Raccoon from Within

In the summer of 2099, trials of the new tank Raccoon were being held at the William proving ground. The project was a joint English-American-Japanese-Chinese one: and so a group of American, Chinese, English and Japanese generals stood at the edge of a sandy hillside, their gazes fixed downward, where wooded terrain stretched out: it was a pine forest, sunny, transparent, thinned out in places, crossed by narrow sandy ravines.
Far off, all the way to the horizon, lay this bright landscape; here even the pine needles had taken on the shade of sand. Now a dry wind flew past, saturated with the smell of hot resin, now the air over the forest froze and trembled like water on glass, announcing the heat that had accumulated in the ravines.
All the generals wore special self-focusing binocular-goggles: these goggles had been tuned in advance, taking into account what the generals were supposed to see - for the events that were about to unfold before them had been calculated in advance down to the minute: thus the generals watched a kind of film, in which the camerawork of the "smart binoculars" (these were optical mini-computers) was superimposed directly onto the visible reality.
Now the zoom came in: the greenery of the undergrowth loomed up at them in close-up, roots, the caps of red mushrooms, the tracks of snakes, pine needles in the sand... and suddenly, amid the swaying greenery, the striped little back of a raccoon flashed by.
The raccoon ran a little, made its way onto a trail, and froze by a large branching pine root, polished by time like the armrests of an antique armchair. Through the resinous mass of air, the anxious-dark, restless-wise eyes of the raccoon glanced at the generals. The animal looked, peered off somewhere; the generals saw the light, fan-fluffed whiskers quiver on its keen little muzzle, saw its front paws rub against each other, shaking off invisible sand.
And suddenly the raccoon became completely motionless, as though the screening of this film had been stopped, yet all around it the grass still swayed, and the air quivered, a white butterfly flew past, and only the raccoon stood motionless, like a figurine.
It was the director of the tank demonstration who had touched a key on the remote control. He had stopped the raccoon. The director of the demonstration - he was in fact the father of the tank, a designer, said to be brilliant, so highly classified that no one knew his real name. And his name was Pyotr Ignatyich Rumyantsev; he was a true Russian intellectual, enraptured by his work, in love with science, self-sacrificing, ascetic. He was so immersed in his work that he did not even notice how he had been stolen out of Russia, did not notice how there then came to be, in fact, no Russia at all anymore...
In his brilliant absent-mindedness he did not notice either that he had already been living more than a hundred years in perfect health, that his little beard had forgotten to grey, that his work went so happily, so inspiredly... Why, he looked about forty, vigorous, short, almost of a Chekhovian cut, lean... The merriment of science splashed in Rumyantsev's blue, childlike eyes.
He gave his assistants a sign that it was time to release the Tankman. Several assistants began slowly, with rotating motions, to unscrew the round lid of the reservoir in which the Tankman was located. The generals all turned toward the reservoir; their binocular-goggles now showed things at only slight magnification, softening at the same time the silvery glints radiating from the body of the reservoir, which resembled in form a soap dish, and in size an ordinary travel case. At last the lid was removed and out of the round opening of the reservoir onto the dry ground jumped a tiny little man, a little larger than an ant. A near-sighted observer would from a distance have taken him for a cicada or a ground beetle, but the generals' computer goggles immediately brought his appearance closer; all the details of his wrinkled face became visible, his naked body, whose texture slightly resembled wood. Such tiny little men had recently been bred in the secret laboratories of the Pentagon as a result of a series of covert successes in cloning and genetic engineering, but in the very year when such "military little men" came into the world, as if following the mockery of fate, a previously unknown tribe was discovered in the depths of Africa or South America - the tribe consisted of people of exactly the same size as the laboratory "ant-people". The tiny people of this tribe were very clever and warlike; they were drawn into the experiments, and natives of the tribe were often implanted, for experimental purposes, into detachments of cloned little men.
As for the Tankman, no one except Rumyantsev and one more general, directly overseeing this project, knew who he was - an artificial little man from the laboratory or a son of the jungle. And this was not a laboratory bio-robot, but a real person from the tiny jungle people. The Tankman was forty-two years old; his name was Son of the Daytime Dream, which indicated his privileged position in the tribe. This tribe had a rather complex caste hierarchy, and those considered to belong to the highest caste were people who had been conceived in sleep. More precisely, the future mother of the child had to be asleep while the man impregnated her, and if he managed to do his deed without disturbing her sleep, then the child of such a union was considered to belong to the ruling caste. Special witnesses were present at the couplings, attesting to the sleep or awakening of the woman. These people felt the state of sleep so subtly, they were so impeccably tuned to catching that state, that no woman could deceive them, should she take it into her head to pretend to be asleep. The difficulty of this matter was aggravated also by the fact that all the people of this tribe slept very lightly, for they had to live in forests inhabited by predatory birds, animals and insects. As a soporific for such couplings, women were permitted to use only the juice of a single plant, possessing merely an insignificant calming effect. Therefore all the noble people of this tribe were named something like Son of Sleep, Daughter of Sleep, or, more roundaboutly - Serene Noon, Rest after a Journey, Daughter of Oblivion, Son of Accidental Slumber, Rest on Palm Leaves, and so on.
The Son of the Daytime Dream was very clever, deft and experienced. Before becoming a Tankman he had studied for a long time in a secret military school, taken part in numerous trials of tactical and strategic micro-constructions, and was distinguished by a high degree of quick-wittedness and excellent training. However, in the interests of secrecy he often had to pretend to be a stupid artificial little man, a gnomic zombie from a flask. But he himself never forgot that a living sleeping woman the size of a grasshopper had conceived him, and she bore him too in her sleep, in the crevice of a tree trunk in a mysterious and hot forest, a thousand times more lush, juicy and humid than this pine grove. The children of sleep were not supposed to know their fathers, nor did the mothers of these aristocrats know them - the women who did not wake until the very end of the coupling.
The Tankman jumped down onto the hot ground, parted the stems of the heat-killed grass, glanced fleetingly at the group of generals and quickly strode forward along a thin little path. The path flowed like a bright thread down the burnt-out slope of the hillside, wound between stones (which seemed to the Tankman dazzlingly white cliffs, sometimes blotting out the sky), skirted mounds and crevices, at times disappeared into gullies, but the generals (with the help of their binocular-goggles) saw that this path streamed toward the raccoon frozen far from them, in the thicket of the forest - the path broke off right at its little belly. It was precisely to the raccoon that the Tankman was striding. And the farther he went, the more diligently the generals' "smart" goggles brought his image closer.
And now these goggles were already showing in close-up how the Tankman approached the frozen Raccoon, deftly grabbed hold of the fur, climbed up the dark stripe, reached the right nostril of the immobilised Raccoon and quickly and easily sucked himself into it. When the Tankman disappeared into the Raccoon's right nostril, Rumyantsev, unable to restrain himself, burst into a short, light, triumphant laugh. For a moment he turned to the generals, pushing his goggles up onto his sweaty, tanned forehead, down which trickled transparent rivulets of sweat - his eyes glowed with happiness, and at the very corners of his eyes little rays of wrinkles had gathered, scattering light across his almost youthful face... but at once he pulled the goggles back down and continued to watch the goings-on with fascination.
The Raccoon from within was sumptuous. The Tankman slipped inside and looked around. Everything in the Raccoon was as familiar to him as his own little body. Had impenetrable darkness reigned in the Raccoon, the Tankman would have acted here confidently even blind: he remembered perfectly the location of every little lever, every button... But it was not dark in the Raccoon: the screens of instruments and control panels flickered in restrained, multicoloured hues, creating a mysterious festive effect. No, it was not here as in the cramped and stuffy tanks of the past, in those tin cans ready at any minute to become sarcophagi or a "brazen bull" for the tankman. No, in the Raccoon it was spacious for the little man; he felt good at heart here. The creators of the tank had subtly taken into account both the peculiarities of the consciousness of the micro-folk from the jungle and the strange half-consciousness of the laboratory little men. It was here as in a small temple, solemn and quiet (sounds came in through special headphones shaped like flowers), and only the buzzing of a rare bee, awoken out of turn, sometimes broke the church-like silence. The walls of the temple breathed, radiated a deep, even warmth and cosiness - for the Raccoon was in many ways alive, though artificial, that is, it had been created not by God but by Rumyantsev. The bees slept well in their little hives - these tiny golden bees were in love with sleep, and they awoke only at a battle signal, awoke for a short flight followed by a landing on the Stripe.
The hives were fashioned like little shrines, their roofs overgrown with idols, semi-precious and carved, the idols' rakish eyes glowing with artificial opals and topazes; they splayed their childish but clawed little hands, and on their palms of red and black wood the life-lines of the gods twisted into finely-carved spirals and swastikas...
I fear I shall be accused of excessive detailing, they will say that I revel in the details of the Raccoon from within, but if only they knew by means of what complex, not fully tested apparatus each of these details is obtained (these apparatuses may, in their complexity, rival the apparatuses of the Raccoon), if only they knew with what difficulty this description is composed, then they would burst into tears of gratitude for these details, which are of defensive significance.
And yet it is impossible to describe the Raccoon from within, since the air that fills it defies description, warm and fragrant, carrying within itself the acrid-sweet aroma of honey... Yes, we know that the laboratory little men for some reason adored bees - perhaps they recognised themselves in their ordered existence, in their disciplines, in the structures of the honeycombs... We also know that the micro-people of the jungle considered honey a divine manifestation - and this made the two peoples akin: the people of the jungle and the people from the flasks.

And the Raccoon was already briskly running along the invisible little path, obeying commands. The generals' binocular-goggles followed it, and at the needed moment the tankman touched the cherished key on the back of the head of one of the idols, and the secretion of Honey began...
The Honey came from special vessels finished with agates; through a system of little capillary-tubes it seeped from within onto the surface of the Raccoon, impregnating exclusively only the Dark Stripe, the little path of black sparkling fur that stretched from the Raccoon's nose to the base of its tail. The Honey gathered at the tips of the dark bristles of the Stripe, swaying (like dew on meadow grasses) in large and small amber drops. The binocular-goggles demonstrated these gleaming drops of honey to the generals in detail, as in a nature documentary, despite the fact that the Raccoon ran fast, and the gaze had to keep up with its nimble little paws.
At the needed moment the Tankman touched another key with his wrinkled finger (the pupil of one little idol), and the thin song of the Awakening of the Bees swept through the sweet air of the tank. The bees began to wake, to stir in the hives and one by one to fly out of the Raccoon through its keen nostrils. The Raccoon ran, and the golden bees circled over it and landed on the Dark Stripe, drawn by the smell of honey. Gradually the whole Stripe became covered with teeming, jostling bees, became golden, shimmering, but there still remained on it dark patches of fur unoccupied by bees, though these free patches grew fewer and fewer.
And the fewer these unoccupied spots on the Stripe became, the more tensely the generals watched the Raccoon.
The Raccoon ran faster and faster, approaching a group of white buildings surrounded by a high fence - these buildings showed white in the heart of the pine forest. It was a mock-up, a sort of Potemkin village, built here specially for the trials - in appearance something between a military base and a defence plant.
And now, when the last bee took its place on the Stripe, and the whole Stripe became golden and teeming, filled with bees stuck in the honey - at that moment the Raccoon reared up, tensed, its anxious little eyes flashed a red signal, and a long and narrow stream of flame burst from its right nostril and struck the group of buildings. A powerful explosion resounded over the forest, the bright pines recoiled in horror, and a huge tongue of flame shot up over the pine grove.
Sumptuously it trembled and reared up, ginger and pale in the bright rays of the sun, as if the landscape had suddenly stuck out a gigantic tongue, teasing the blue sky. The beauty of a daytime fire with the smell of boiling resins - is it worth speaking of how blinding this beauty is? The tank trial passed successfully, exactly according to plan. Everything worked.
Rumyantsev threw his binocular-goggles down onto the ground, drunk with happiness, and walked toward the generals in his flung-open white jacket. He cried out through the laughter of success, no longer able to contain his jubilation:
- RACCOON, THE STICKY TANK!
The generals were infected by his rapture; they tore off their goggles, no longer needed, their eyes shining.
- RACCOON, THE STICKY TANK! - the Japanese general took up the cry, and his smiling face came to look like a scattered little heap of rosy apples.
- RACCOON, THE STICKY TANK! - the American general echoed, old and swarthy.
- RACCOON, THE STICKY TANK! - the Chinese general repeated after him, shaking with satisfied laughter.
- RACCOON, THE STICKY TANK! - whispered the young English general, whose ginger hair glowed in the sun like the reflection of a forest fire.

Moscow, 2005
To be continued...