Roadside Picnic

Richard Noonan is an engineer and equipment supplier for the Harmont branch of the International Institute for Extraterrestrial Cultures. At the start of the narrative, he is 43 years old. At some point, a shadowy government organization recruits him to act as a covert operative working to curtail the flow of contraband alien artifacts out of the Zone. While he is friends with Redrick, it is unclear how much if anything Richard has to do with his arrest.

While Redrick is in jail, Richard frequently visits Guta and the Monkey, building a bond with each of them. Despite his friendship with Redrick, Richard doesn’t visit him until a few weeks after his release, and even then it’s only because he seeks intelligence on a new scheme operated by the supposedly retired stalker, the Vulture Burbridge.

By the time he is 51, Richard describes himself as “fat old Richard H. Noonan” (109). He feels an enormous amount of anxiety, both about his standing with his covert outfit and its leader General Lemchen, and about the overall state of the world in the years following the Visit. Richard uses Dr. Valentine Pillman as a sounding-board, asking him, “How do you think it’s all going to end?” (128). The two have a long-ranging discussion about the implications of the alien visitation on technology and the military-industrial complex.

Though Richard is not a bad person, he is in some ways emblematic of the bureaucrats who come to control the Zone in the years following the Visit, much to Redrick’s disdain.

The Vulture Burbridge is an infamous, aging stalker whom Redrick has joined on many smuggling trips into the Zone. While not quite the book’s antagonist, the Vulture is neither loved nor trusted. In addition to beating his wife to death, the Vulture has a reputation for using young, impressionable stalkers as bait to trigger traps in the Zone.

On a trip to the Zone with Redrick, the Vulture accidentally steps in a puddle of hell slime. Rather than let the Vulture die, Redrick carries him to a doctor who saves the Vulture’s life but not his legs. No longer able to visit the Zone himself, the Vulture enters the tourism business, organizing “picnics” for out-of-towners on the edge of the Zone. Richard believes correctly that this is in part a cover for an operation in which the Vulture trains younger stalkers to enter the Zone and retrieve artifacts, which he later sells to enemies of the state.

Dr. Valentine Pillman is a physicist who receives the Nobel Prize for determining the rough trajectory and origin of the six Visit Zones. Though considered a pioneer in xenology—the study of extraterrestrial life—Valentine is dismissive of the entire field and believes that no scientific discovery made will eclipse the Visit itself. With his long and insightful speeches about intelligence, technology, and thermodynamics, Valentine is in some ways a surrogate for the authors’ themselves and their ideas about the limitations of science to understand the incomprehensible. He likens scientific advances to a lab monkey pressing buttons to release fruit, with “no idea how to obtain bananas or oranges without buttons” (136).

Arthur Burbridge is one of the Vulture’s two adult children, both of whom were wished for using the Golden Sphere. Arthur is very handsome with wide shoulders, narrow hips, and “long raven hair” (158). A recent law school graduate, the Vulture grooms Arthur from an early age to become a senator and maybe even the president. The Vulture is so concerned with Arthur’s future that he beats him on the rare occasions that he comes home smelling even the least bit like alcohol.

Arthur begs Redrick to accompany him to retrieve the Golden Sphere, and Redrick accepts without telling Arthur that he intends to use Arthur as a sacrifice. Upon reaching the Sphere, Arthur runs toward it and loudly proclaims his wish, a wish for universal happiness. The grinder grabs Arthur, twists his body, and kills him. 

Guta Schuhart is Redrick’s girlfriend and, later, his wife. Redrick describes her as “my beauty, my girl, showing her lovely legs, her skirt swaying above her knees as she walks; all the men ogle her as she passes by” (52). After becoming pregnant with Redrick’s child, Guta chooses to keep the baby despite the fact that the children of stalkers are usually born with inhuman mutations. By the time their daughter Maria—nicknamed the Monkey—is eight years old and no longer recognizably human, Guta feels the strain from her daughter’s seemingly incurable mutation. Though still chipper, she’s visibly aged from stress. 

Kirill Panov is a brilliant Russian scientist and Redrick’s boss at the Institute. Despite Redrick’s reflexive disdain for “eggheads,” he has a great deal of respect and even affection for Kirill. At one point, Redrick calls him, “My Kirill” (9). Although Kirill dies early in the book after a freak encounter with a mysterious Zone substance, his specter looms over much of the narrative. For example, it is Redrick’s guilt over Kirill’s death that causes him to leave the Institute and return to stalking. Furthermore, it is the memory of Kirill that Redrick tries to summon when he is at a loss for words at the Golden Sphere.