Сергей Жарковский – Creature of unknown kind (страница 7)

Bashkalo snorted. Vadim sneezed.

– Cheers to you, bitch! – said Bashkalo with a twitch. He was really calm; excited, but not rabid. He was working. – Everything is possible in the Zone, you're right. Piss, not war! Five-storey buildings fly, air cuts people, equipment operates itself. You can walk a kilometer in a month, like at the airdrome, from hangar-three to meteorological booth. And why not to visit the time hole? Science fiction. But if you, Fenimore, don't put the rifle on the damp mother-earth right now, arsehole…

Vadim moved his shoulder, the rifle slipped, balanced against his leg. Vadim moved his leg; the rifle fell.

Bashkalo's cap nodded approvingly. But the rifle did not move; as if it was cast into space. Vadim was already too tired not to blink, his eyes were stinging.

– And everything else. The backpack, the jacket. The knife, the gun. Slowly. Take off your gas mask too.

Watching the disarming of the survivor, Bashkalo sat down on the Alex the Aspirant's chair. Vadim also wanted to sit. But the KHM together with its owner was watching his slightest movement and the fuse was off. The scientist’s chair seemed strong. Bashkalo sat carefully first, but when Vadim was removing a device for measuring the parameters, Bashkalo somehow tested the strength of the chair and, moving the ass, sat freely, spreading his legs, with his whole center of gravity. The distance between him and Vadim was equal to four good spittles, but just as Petrovich's corpse was lying across the directory, so was Vadim's equipment. Only Bruce Lee would be able to jump over this all, dodging the oncoming bullets. By the method of “combined shooting”.

Vadim’s clothes were a blend of wool, with the stockings of the hazmat suit over the celebrated American shoes. He was cold, but he stood motionless, waiting. He was freezing, trying not to tremble. He was sniffing and (already habitually) moving his fingers at the hips, at least so checking the external situation. He sneezed twice, not because of the cold, but because Bashkalo was making his nose itch stronger. Bashkalo suddenly took out a bottle of vodka from somewhere, uncorked it and began to sip gently from the bottleneck, watching Vadim with one eye. Vadim shivered when the bottle became empty. Bashkalo dropped it in front of him and deftly crushed it with a heel.

– Want some? – he asked, taking out the second. – Vodka in the Motherland is really like water, but to you – according to the circumstances – even water is not superfluous.

– No.

– “No, sir”, Anika-warrior. You had to say “no” at home, to your mother. So if it's “no” then get on with the task. Assigned by the heroically fallen Senior Ensign. Let's see what there is for two hundred million… pennies.

– I need to take something, – said Vadim, pointing to Petrovich's corpse, pretty drenched in blood.

– No question, take it, – Bashkalo pressed the bottom of the half-empty second bottle into the ground and aimed, holding the machine gun with both hands.

The dead, Alex the Aspirant and Petrovich, had been absolutely right. Several flares marked the shape of “eight” of the “gitiks” perfectly, as in the class. Smelly smoke was being blown along the boundaries of “locations of anomalous gravitational intensities of unknown kind”, clearly denoting them.

– Two hundred million pennies… Some crooked junior science employee gets four thousand one hundred and eighty-five rubles per month! – proclaimed Bashkalo suddenly from somewhere from another world. There too, a thought process was ongoing, gaining momentum, being born, coming to conclusions and finding the general meaning of things. But Vadim did not even turn around, mesmerized by the almost living twists of smoke. It was akin (not the same, but akin) to the drawing of tobacco smoke in the sun, peeking through the cracks in the dark shed.

– And he sits in his tents – clicks on the scores, did you understand?! Damned JR! Call me formally by name and patronymic, he says… And what about an academic then – a hundred thousand per month? I beat the shit out of their mother together with your Gorbachev! Who marks the tracks? An academic? Who carries devices and cables? JRs? Who carries jars, funnels, loots inside and out? Gorbachev? Fu-cking no! Me! I went out to the airfield, I went to the “Zhitkur” object, reached up to halfway together with Pasha-Maz! (Here Vadim picked up his ears for a second. “Yes-yes-yes”, said Mumbler, “'Pasha-Maz'. I wrote down.”) And to me, to me! – two hundred rubles with deductions for the work. Where round here should I spend it? Quarantine? Fuck your quarantine.

“And maybe”, thought Vadim, appealing to Mumbler, “this is not two gitiks but one?” “Or a system of two”, picked up Mumbler. “The system is even probably better”, Vadim agreed. “But when it is the only one – this is flawed”, said Mumbler. “So you're an astronomer”, said Vadim. Mumbler chuckled, self-satisfied. Vadim lit up another couple of pieces of the comb and threw them; one to the right, filling the gap of the smoky hoop, the second directly into the center of the hole. It then disappeared. Vadim stood on a knee, watching. At the junction of two parts of the “eight”, the smoke drew a pipe from the inside, accelerating, getting denser… and suddenly a hefty, upright circle appeared in front of Vadim. Vadim jumped up and back for a couple of steps, completely stunned.

– We have talked to the guys for a long time. Many are unhappy! Because this is not right. We are here, in the Zone, in the middle of the Trouble, the main ones, so you pay us well. And here, you see, you're driven. We teach you, drag you, share the combat experience with you. And here we are now! You are living off us along with the same psychos as our resting Senior Ensign Petrovich. Wanted me to go as a bumper, b-bitch! Me! So “a thousand and a half” goose made sense to him. And me, the old stalker… he decided to appoint me as a bumper in a tough place. And for what? The poles were lost! I did not lose them… So, what's up with you, contract boy? What the hell!

Vadim turned around. Bashkalo was standing, his gun lowered, staring at the smoke arch in space, his jaw hanging as far as the chin strap allowed. However, he recovered faster than Vadim.

– Stop, sto-op! – he said, taking Vadim on sight again. – Calm down, son. Ye-e-es… Fucking gitik! – he exclaimed softly and cheerfully. – The time hole. Well… Fine. Are you ready for work and defense, comrade traveler to the past?

Vadim imagined how Bashkalo saw him, Vadim, in general, so to speak. Against the background of the smoke patterns, in the center of the main arch of the system of gitiks “The Time Hole -1”. A beautiful target. (Mumbler laughed.)

– As for me – I'm ready, – said Vadim loudly, cutting off this laugh, which nobody except him could hear. – And what about you, a chunk, are you ready?

– So you're not a pussy, right? A brave one, right? – said Bashkalo grinning, with pleasure. – Well, say it, say it, bumper. Last speeches. The Senior Ensign Petrovich was kind, but Ensign Bashkalo is evil. No damn way, puppy, you will not understand me. And you did not understand the meaning of the situation. For you it won't make a difference if I was lying as a corpse now and Petrovich was drinking vodka. Do you think he's better than me? He has done in more of ours here than guerillas in his Afghanistan! He was a beast, his soul was dead!

Vadim stopped listening to him. Bashkalo noticed this immediately.

– So you're a brave one, right? – he said over the gunsight. – Well, come on, come on, come on, go ahead… you sensitive leather stocking. Bring me some prehistorical loots, my two-legged cat. Some flowers. Dinosaurs. And will see, what we shall do with you later. But if you don't get out, then you don't. A grenade after you. You don't know, right? Exactly “procrustes” explode very well. How do you think we made it almost halfway to the airfield? So many of these tough places were there… Stand down, – he said to himself. – Come on, Sverzhin. Farewell.

Vadim turned away, looking at the hole, that means looking at the steppe, framed with a smoke frame. “Slowly, try it with your hand first”, timidly suggested Mumbler, who became serious. Vadim shook his head. No. He rummaged around the belt, pulled out another strip of gauze from the clamp.

– Hey, hey, warrior, no jokes!.. – proclaimed Bashkalo expressively.

Vadim showed him the gauze over the shoulder. Bashkalo went silent. Vadim tied several knots at one of the ends, one above the other, put the formed ball in his mouth and began drooling on it. The wet ball weighted the strip rather well for something homemade, making the “risk” manageable, but without a sinker, without a nut. For some reason here and now it seemed important to be iron-free. (The thought about the first one who ran through the second railcar flashed again.) Keeping the “risk” in his outstretched hand, Vadim began to swing it forward and backward. Here the ball touched the hole, like the surface of a vertical puddle, no waves ran, but the gauze immediately stretched out. Vadim unclasped his fingers and the hole sucked it in. And Vadim, without a farewell sigh, bent and stepped after it. And disappeared.