Сергей Жарковский – Creature of unknown kind (страница 5)

Vadim was silent. Petrovich turned his head toward him, took up the visor and raised his cap so that the visor overlooked the zenith.

– I have. A daughter, – Vadim said at last. What is that about, boss? Why did you suddenly care?

Petrovich nodded a few times.

– You are after demobilization, boy. Had been serving here, at the Polygon. You are about twenty or twenty-two years old. And the kid is a year or two? No own shelter, no help, right?

– Comrade Senior Ensign…

Petrovich shook his head: be quiet, puppy!

– L-listen to me, you fool, – he spoke in a half-whisper. – Listen to what old Senior Ensign Petrovich is telling you; I'm old enough to be your father. Here's a suggestion. I have friends at the Headquarters of the quarantine, let's make an act of your mental instability, and throw your contract into the furnace, then you can run back to your daughter! People, the “troublers”, are locked up here, perhaps, forever, but you! You are not local! Run away, before you are also registered here forever. I'll give you money, five thousand! I'm serious. If we are still alive at the end – run for your life! There, on Earth, such things begin, exchanges, joint ventures, it turned out that Americans are human after all, we saw them here… You have a head on your shoulders, you have hands – you will get by, and you will have an ability to start over, with my penny! Here's the Zone, son, Mother-Trouble, death, without a choice. Or even worse, prison is around. It will be worse than a war here. It will be blood to the elbows. The Wild West and cinders above.

On his back, under the backpack, Vadim experienced a strange feeling, as if somebody had ran a finger across him with an uncut nail. The feeling was related to Bashkalo, silent behind him. Bashkalo had become strangely quiet on this little detour… Almost delicate, even.

– Hell will come here, – said Petrovich. – I sincerely advise you, I'm not joking. You have a wife, a child.. And you came here…

– Comrade Senior Ensign… – Vadim said again.

– Call me “Nikolaich” Do not argue! Do not argue! – Petrovich spat. – He's creasing the muzzle, you look at this. I'm talking to you seriously and you are pulling a face… In Afganistan all I did was bury guys like you, and here in the Zone all I do is bury guys like you, and soon I'll start to kill guys like you myself…

– Nikolaich, comrade Senior Ensign. Thank you. I understood. I need to be here. Do you understand? Let's go on, comrade … Nikolaich.

– Did you think I'm checking you out through dibs now, puppy? – Petrovich asked angrily.

Vadim was so amazed that he was almost offended. For some reason, he did not suspect the Soviet Ensign was joking – and just got for it being unfairly scolded. Petrovich read this on his face and slouched. Apparently, it was “I'm sorry”.

Bashkalo intruded a non-statutory awkwardness; he had finally got burst. Or got sick.

– Hey, so what are you doing?

– E-e-eh, kids! – said Petrovich, sounding very non-military. – So then fuck you. Forward, left step, to the “risks”, go around them, me on the left, you on the right. Do not step on them. And then – silence. Got it, boy? Bashkalo, from here we silently keep moving. Do you understand?

– As for me, I understand… – Bashkalo responded.

– Another one hundred meters according to the map, half a kilometer objectively. You will see how it is and what's here. He needs… – Petrovich muttered, not to Vadim, but under the breath. And to Vadim he said: – Think about it! And go ahead, come on, next to me.

They reached the destination in twenty minutes, using a dozen of “risks” and finding just as many old ones. Vadim remarked to himself that Petrovich had not ordered any pole to be driven into the ground. On the right the railway embankment also stretched on, and everything was so much the same, was so usual, the steppe, the cloudy summer sky, the embankment, but it lasted and lasted and dragged on, so you, dying of boredom, could imagine yourself inside a “combined shooting”, walking on the spot against the backdrop of a barrel with a landscape painted on it.

The destination was marked with a corpse. Or crowned, as Vadim would say, if he was a well-read guy. The corpse looked eerie. Vadim tried to comprehend in which position the person had died. A heap of broken bones in a hazmat suit. In one lump. Vadim changed his position, took a step sideways, Petrovich muttered mechanically: “Move carefully.” Vadim understood. The victim was sitting with his back to them, stretching out his legs, and these legs were smeared on the ground, like plasticine with a huge finger, for five meters, with fragments of cloth from his pants, intact woolen socks, flattened shoes. And a head in a hat made of dog's skin was torn into the torso. A bent AK-47 trunk stuck out above the hat with a rubber on the flame arrester, as rich Americans do. Hands, like a broken puppet, lay on the sides of an oblate torso, palms up, as if the dying man threw his arms up, and they broke away from the shoulders.

– Who is this? – asked Bashkalo quietly.

Petrovich did not answer straight away, and replied while preoccupied with surveying the area. Squatting down and looking at the nearest square meters of the steppe, he said after about a minute and a half:

– Please meet Candidate for Doctor of Sciences: Malyutin, Alex. From Moscow. We made a discovery with him. For the first time in the world the area of the gravitational locale of an anomalous, bitch, intensity, and this… vector of direction was located and explored. Also, bitch, abnormal. I seem to have said everything right. Well, fine, Alex the Candidate… Can you imagine, he tells me: you see, comrade Petrovich, it's all about gauze. We are, he says, not in a vacuum, the nut is initially heavier that's why, he says, the horizontal, I think, vector of anomalous gravity has time… well, to grab the gauze and to pull it, as I understood him. And the density of the air. And this can be seen with the naked eye. That's what, he says, we have to fix. Now you are going to throw and I will take pictures… Alex used to call this thing “procrustes”. There was such ancient Greek, a sadist. Together we, I mean me and Alex, were here four times. We even settled down a little… There is our fireplace… We dragged down the instruments, but in vain. These were all the measurements he made: the spring scale worked, the flares, a goose feathers and the gauze on “risks”. And some boxes with electricity – not a damn thing. And the camera. It was allowed then to use optics, it did not burn the eyes. But what killed Alex – was actually the camera… Fine. Group, stand at ease. I designate the safe limits. From here to here. A fireplace. Safety. Fifteen meters to the left – is unknown. Did you understand?

– That's right, – Vadim and Bashkalo said discordantly in chorus, and the Senior Ensign took out his pack of royal “Rodopi” and offered one to Bashkalo. Petrovich continued, while smoking:

– But however, Alex used up about ten exercise books, ninety-six pennies each. And you see, you cannot even get them now… – Petrovich coughed. – They were in his backpack… We used to stay here for two-three days. Alex would carry his folding chair with him.

Vadim noticed the chair: a folding structure of steel wire with a wet canvas seat.

– He died and I fell under investigation. I had to bring an officer from special Department here, so as not to go to jail for the murder of one of our leading scientific employees. Half a year ago still, you could have been imprisoned for the loss of a warrior in the Zone, do you know that, cub? That officer drinks now… Drinks a lot, till blackout. They say, right up to the dismissal of the officer's status by the court. And he writes the reports on the upholstery of the room. With his finger.

– Well, that's clear, Nikolaich, – said Bashkalo, who had got bored. (“Interesting, does his mustache smell of vomit?”, thought either Vadim or Mumbler. His nose was itching because of Bashkalo's presence.) – We had admired the view, – continued Bashkalo, cleaning the ash from the cigarette with his little finger. – Rest in peace, soft-boiled bones. So why did you bring us here? To frighten our goose? I heard everything, how you promised him five thousand. And filing for a madman. Makarenko151.

– You say you heard? – Petrovich asked again. – Well, if you heard then you heard. It happens in the Zone. A whisper, like in a church. That's why being delicate is so important. You know, Vasya, like in a prison cell?

He suddenly slammed Bashkalo on the shoulder, squeezed the shoulder with his rake and pushed it towards himself, almost reached his eye with the cigarette.

– No, Vasya, we didn't come here for this, not for fear. We're going to make science, you understand? What Alex could not do, but we will. This is not about heaviness, it's about other thing. Something valuable. You will understand.

Ensign Bashkalo did not try to escape. He didn’t even seem frightened. He was smoking, lifting the cigarette to the side of his mustache and blowing the smoke away, and he did not take his eyes off the boss.