Сергей Жарковский – Creature of unknown kind (страница 6)

– Alex the Candidate made one calculation and explained it to me, I want to check it, finally, – said Petrovich. – If he has come up with the right thing, we will make money. Scientists will hang themselves. And you, screwy Vasya, will help me. To check.

The sound of the engine was heard. From the other side of the mound, from the concrete. Vadim gave up watching the theatrical scene “who's going to overwhelm whom” and even stood on his toes, trying to see the moving mechanism.

– Comrade Senior Ensign!.. Someone is coming!

The LiAZ bus, the passenger transport serial number 20224, had driven past them during its five-hour trip exactly three years ago, in the summer of 1987. On this bus, next to Doctor Vyatkin, was Vadim himself, sitting with his arm broken and hurting so much that he could even see the white dots. He, an ordinary scoop, was being taken to the hospital, and he did not remember now, but then it appeared to him through the pain, that three armed figures were standing behind the mound. Then the bus jolted, the figures disappeared, his arm hurt, and Vadim forgot, forgot, forgot about them…

Vadim woke up.

Ensign Bashkalo was lying on the ground on his back, calmly looking at Petrovich, who was hanging over him, while still smoking with his bloody mouth. Vadim froze. He missed the fight completely. The standoff in the stalls lasted, probably, for another minute.

The cigarette was finished, the argument had smoldered down to the filter. Bashkalo brought it to the blood-stained mustache, the ash fell from the filter, hissed in the blood; Bashkalo grimaced, spat to the side and crushed the filter with his fingers.

Senior Ensign Petrovich, Nikolai Nikolaevich was silent, standing over him.

– Comrade Senior Ensign!.. – said Vadim. – It seems that the bus has passed by.

– Yes, it happens here, – answered Petrovich calmly. – Sometimes they ride. Ghosts. It is damn clear. Eight thousand eight hundred and sixty-two people. Missing people. Just in the city. In one hour. Not a single body was found. Ghosts, of course. There must be a lot of them here. Eight thousand eight hundred and sixty-two ghosts, including women and children. Plus six thousand two hundred and two officers, ensigns and soldiers on active duty in the steppe. Not counting unregistered farmers and others on their places… And sometimes they're not even ghosts. It happens! Stop chattering, private. Vasily! I am speaking to you personally. Do you understand me, Vasily? Or are you refusing again to follow a combat order?

– Hey you, youngster! – said Bashkalo from the stalls in the same calm tone, and not moving. – He's gone crazy, I mean it. For a long time the rumor was spreading around the quarantine, that Kolya Petrovich has gone crazy. He goes to missions with a group and comes back alone. And, you see, he says, that they stopped imprisoning people for this. They began to believe what people say. “Died performing a rescue or reconnaissance operation in the area of a natural disaster of unknown kind.” And he is telling this now to you and me. Understand, goose? Listen, Nikolaich, I didn't believe this! – said Bashkalo to Petrovich. – I hit one in his face for these words. You know me, Nikolaich, we served in the same military unit! And this is how it turns out. It turns out this is true. Came out with a group, came back alone. Did you kill them yourself? Or had you brought them here and leave?

– Do you refuse to carry out a military order regarding a scientific investigation of this anomaly? – Petrovich asked persistently. – Talk to me straight, why are you fidgeting like a woman, you comrade Ensign of the Soviet army?

– Comrade Senior Ensign! Allow me to go! – said Vadim.

Bashkalo licked his lips.

– Call me “Nikolaich”, youngster, – said Petrovich.

– All right, Nikolaich, all right. I will go, – said Bashkalo. – Everything is fine. But I need to treat the hand with peroxide. Look how it is grazed.

– Then stand up, comrade Ensign. Prepare for the task. Personally yours.

And he turned his back to Bashkalo as if nothing had happened and came to the “procrust” boundary, which was only clear to him. The remains of the scientist were just a step away.

– I remember everything, Alex, everything… – said Petrovich to them. – Hey you, Fenimore! Listen, newbie, what was that.., Sverzhin, be attentive. This… What the fuck was it called? This gitik! According to Alex's calculations it is doubled. It stands in the shape of eight, two glasses back to back. Two zeros. Give me my stick, youngster.

Vadim picked up the stick, handed it over. Ensign Bashkalo also approached, hanging the rifle on his shoulder, tense, attentive, very concentrated. Vadim sneezed as his approached.

The Senior Ensign was drawing on the ground with the end of a brush.

– Here's how that is. This “zero” is – the closest one. Has been founded by Alex. And here's how the second one is located by the first. I'd found it during the first mission when I walked around the heavy one. Like an “eight” on its side. They are only ten meters in diameter each and both are the same. You can bypass it on the left using the “risks”. It is safe. I did it before. Have I already said that? And here, between them, I've noticed the traction, like in a good furnace. It starts at throwing the “risk”. Pulling smoke somewhere. How much we had burned there…

He slipped the stick to Vadim, took out his wallet from one of his pockets, and from the wallet – a piece of a comb, a piece of paper and, continuing to talk, he quickly made a smoke pot.

– And Alex ascertained that where the joint and traction are between these “procrustes”, something strange is present. By appearance – it is the effect of “invisibility”, with air-to-air special effects, with oxygen, with gas. A step forward – there is something, a step back – you don't see anything. Hocus-pocus, as I showed you, Sverzhin, with the “risks” and the fog. “Risks” just disappear in the hole, but nothing thumps as it would if they fell in the heavy stuff, nothing like this. And then Alex thought of throwing “a cat” in there and pulling it back out.

Vadim (“Fenimore, or already Fenimore with a capital F? Huh?”, leaned out Mumbler) was listening to Petrovich as he used to listen to cosmonaut Makarov. Madness is infectious and contagious, and Senior Ensign Petrovich, Nikolai Nikolaevich, judging by his tone and appearance, was now completely out of his mind, like everyone who creates (or imagines he does) a story or a feat.

This time, the wrapper of a cigarette pack, glued on the sides with a blue electrical tape, appeared from Petrovich's wallet. Petrovich first showed it to Vadim, then handed it to him. In the wrapper Vadim saw a dry, bluish flower and the curved stalk of some plant with sharp leaves on it. He stared at Petrovich. Petrovich grinned.

– Bennettit! Did you understand, my Fenimore? An ancient flower, shortly. And even more precisely – a protoflower. That's what we took out with that “cat”. Live protoflower. I personally saw Alex drank two bottles161 like water. Two hundred million years ago… or whenever it was. The Cretaceous of the Jurassic, did you understand, son?.. In this hole is the Cretaceous! Understand?

He suddenly cut himself off, stopped smiling and lifted a finger, and said anxiously.

– Oh! Do you hear? There is a shooting somewhere.

“Somewhere” nearby the fuse had flipped.

Vadim would remember forever that after the first hit, the smile returned to the face of the Senior Ensign, and each of the next four bullets that pierced Petrovich from the back made this smile wider, more cheerful, more sincere.

– There is a time hole, did you understand, son? – said Petrovich, gurgling and dying. – I myself… oh… uh… like water…

And he died and fell on his side, as if at attention.

Bashkalo transferred the smoking pupil of the machine gun to Vadim. Vadim stepped from foot to foot. Bashkalo barked quietly:

– Freeze, sonny! He'd gone crazy. He deserved it. And got it. He's dead. That's all! And now you. A question! How should I finish you, bitch, immediately next to him or with a benefit for science? Huh, contract boy? Want to suffer a bit more? It's up to you, I'll provide that. And meanwhile, put the rifle on the ground slowly. And the twig, throw away the twig too. F-Fenimore, fucking bitch!

Darkness was looking at Vadim with no blinking, with no trembling, the smoke had faded away, Bashkalo's hands were firm, and Petrovich was not killed in hysterics; and he was ready to kill Vadim clearly and consciously. Actually, the lecture about “went out with a group, came back alone” he had read to himself, not to Petrovich. Now they don't imprison you. Vadim sneezed. “You will not die”, Mumbler told to Vadim. You cannot. You have girls. Irka and Katty. And Zhitkur did not order this.

– Don't shoot, comrade Ensign, – Vadim said calmly.

– Or what? – Bashkalo asked oddly, lifted his chin.

– Or then no one will pull living plants out of the hole, which have been dead for two hundred million years. I can't even imagine how much they may cost. Even if paid a penny for a year.