– How did you say?
– The “Mother's cracks”.
– It’s the first time I've heard it. And what is this called scientifically?
– I don't know.
– The first time I've heard it. I bet trackers told you tales again, right, writer?
– It seems not.
– Ok then. Don't you hammer my dying head with nails. Ask precisely, about me.
– Yeah… Who did you meet with first regarding the aliens? Surely with Petrovich? The famous conference in Two Pipes?
– Well, yes. No! I had the aliens to the fullest from the start, almost choked; faced the Father and his terrible daughter. The same day, to be honest… It was on the next day as I presented myself to the personnel at the Commandant's office upon arrival. On the seventeenth of November of nineteen ninety.
– And your “kiss”, by the way, if it's not a secret…
– Pour some water. A single “greeting”, no tongues. Good timing. Fucking paralysis of the fucking eyeball. The left one. My intuition is weak, you can count I don't have it at all. Accordingly, the “kiss” is alike this, incomplete. Just like “get off”.
– And you say that you have never been in the Zone…
– I haven’t been in the Zone, I haven’t. This is the truth. You think I'm kidding you? I'm not kidding. I guess I should tell you, right?
– I haven't seen the Father… Very interesting! Legendary times.
– For now maybe they are legendary. But then, I did not make a step out of the Headquarters without a jar of bromine… When you are sitting in a meeting with the citizens on Thursdays and Fridays, only bromine can save you. No vodka. Straight to the grave. People would drink to death, die in a mouth. Because a day lasts for a year… The same in the Zone and outside… “A hundred meters – ten miles” Yeah…
(Drops the plastic glass. I get under the bed to take the glass.)
– Sorry, slipped out. Yes, so the Father… Even CATU201 did not exist at that time. Two years before CATU. And the Zone wasn't even registered as QZAI212 yet in Russian documents. Only locals called it the Trouble. The Trouble, they said, the Mother-Trouble. And outside it was “the emergency zone”, and that's it. The gas meteorite. There was an order to provide an exclusion zone, and strict one, at least for ten kilometers around.
– And ZONA, Z, O, N, A, – when is this?
– This is when Yeltsin and Clinton signed the Memorandum. But who's gonna call it like this here? The Zone is the Zone. Kapustin's quarantine. Blue houses!
– Oh, already then?
– Yes. When else? They are deeply Soviet, these Finnish trailers. They found a few at the warehouses in the Middle Akhtuba, dismantled, still lying there from the seventies. Helped a lot. Exactly two families, two entrances. I myself had been living in one with my wife for about four years.
(Pause)
– It was detected from the tower in the city. Do you know about the tower? Later it burned like a candle. It was built behind the highway, opposite Volgogradsky checkpoint, right in the middle of the Dog's village, where they demolished a residential complex. Almost on the “neutral”, oh God! That time the “neutral” did not get to the center of the Dog's village yet, only the first line existed… Didn't you hear about that tower? Really didn't? One hundred and fifty meters? By accord! Five hundred thousand rubles down the drain! I was absolutely amazed when they showed it to me. Ostankino223 lookalike! Then they tried to sort out the paperwork for a long time, and then it burned down when the “neutral” spread in '93. Shame on you, historian… So he was walking along Severodvinsk street, the Father with his girl. During the night wooly had eaten the fog on the Terminal Square, so the visibility through the summer part of the “neutral” was perfect. Right above district thirty-nine. And he was wa-a-alking right down the roadway. I had just come to the Maldavanov's office, haven't even opened the vault yet. And they give me a call from the tower: this, they say, and this, comrade Colonel. We are informing you, according to the instructions. A person with a child is walking in the city, on the territory of the disaster. Do you understand? D-damned watchers, caught me up, as if I was new. “Turn on the video system, comrade Colonel!” And broadcast an image from the camera on the TV in my office.
– Was the Father wearing his cloak?
– O-oh, was he in his cloak? This cloak was the one and only in the whole world… And toy guns on it, like on a Christmas tree. And the girl in a cradle on his back. Call “Kashchenko” mental hospital231. So I was hooked. Grabbed the duty guide and ran into the Zone, not listening to what he was trying to yell. A hero, heroic among other heroes. Also dragged my own guard with me, an idiot.
(He crosses his heart twice, as all locals do: from the left to the right and from the right to the left)
– “Give a horse to the Colonel!” It is funny to remember. Pour some more water.
CHAPTER 1
About twenty minutes later the fisherman241-Colonel finally exclaimed that his eye is, kind of, healed, damn your mother this and, accordingly, that way. Then he said that this is, as such, an outrage, comrade guide, because Devil knows where the man in the black cloak down to the heels could go with the child along a terrible street of the dead city; and that it is necessary, damn you, to warn your boss about the special effects of the “neutral” that violate the rescue operation in its very beginning.
Comrade guide, a young man named Matveev, and nicknamed Nabis, was silently listening to the high-ranking fisherman. Because it is no reason to console him, a scumbag, and it is definitely no reason to argue him, a scumbag, when it's too late for former and latter alike, when they are already here, already on the “neutral”. Let him yell. Yell that the transformer is buzzing behind the back wall of the tent, that the Colonel is now puffing and loudly expressing his horror with bold words. Mad, though. Ran to the Trouble, to a psychotic bayonet, as soon as the drunk jolly fellows have showed him the movie with the Father from the tower. As if a year and a half did not pass after the Lightning, as if people did not die. So let him, a scumbag, yell,. Let him yell. Moreover, the general tone of the claims is concrete – “he yells with relief”, and thankfully he is not jumping at least, still sitting in his armchair, does not run from the body… Well, Nabis keeps silent. Diplomatically. He was waiting for the end. Patience. In this sense alive (that means – good) tracker is no worse than any Assol. Or a sniper.
The other trackers, that is the guard and the retinue of the Colonel consisting of: the Ensigns Shultsev and Glyzin, and Korostylyov, the Major, – also kept silent, albeit for a non-diplomatic reason, but for a physiological one. The Ensigns were being “kissed” passionately, that means Shultsev was vomiting, and Glyzin has been struck from behind. As for the Major Kororslylyov, he did not get anything shoddy as a “kiss”, like the Trouble just shook his hand. that means either he is the first-time tracker of a rare potential, or he is an experienced tracker, but is hiding it. And keeps silent. Pale, but silent. “This one is an interesting fisherman”, Nabis decided, “dangerous one. But the Trouble will redeem anyway. Let's write it down…” And Andreich Nikiforov, the driver of the “sixty-sixth”, nicknamed Kharon, the master of transferring die-hards from the Earth to the Trouble, was not considered as tracker. He sat in his bus cab and could not been seen or heard. He was not taken by the “neutral” into account. Here he was a familiar figure. You pay to the “neutral” just once, and Kharon was not asking for more. Seventy-five for leaving the checkpoint, ten per hour for all the time of the trip. And not a single step into the Zone. Three children, a wife, no one was lost, all are well.
– Well, why don't you say something, comrade guide on duty? – asked the Colonel, furiously twirling his freed eye, blinking it, massaging it with all his fingers in turn. – You could try to get out of it or just say “My guilt, sir”, at least. The old Colonel almost lost the vision! And you, understandibly, didn't give a shit. What is your surname, I did not hear?
Diplomacy…
– Сivilian Matveev, – Nabis said after a pause.
– And why the fuck of unknown kind did you remain silent, guide?
Diplomacy. Nabis “switched on the library”.
– Your mission is a complete unprofessional adventure, comrade Colonel, – he said quietly, – I tried to warn you earlier at the Headquarters. You did not give a sh… You did not listen to me. And you, comrade Colonel, are not ready for the mission. And the aim of the mission is not fucking clear. So I'll just try to bring you back alive. Without explanations. Who has the ears – will hear… Although we did not walk out there yet. We are not yet in the Zone…
– How is it that we are not in the Zone? – Colonel was surprised, pressing a damaged eye with his finger.
Diplomacy. Nabis spit from the car on the white hot concrete of the Stand. This is the kind of people we have as our bosses. And Kharon slammed the slightly open door of his cabin. Heard everything, the old dog.
