Creature of unknown kind

And Petrovich finished the tea in one gulp.

Vadim shook his head.

– No sir.

Bashkalo laughed.

– You should listen to the instructions with your ears, but not with… family guy. – Petrovich said with his usual loudness. – The same was with the poles: it was made from the rod at first, before they got washed with the blood… So what brought you here, damn you, married one?

Vadim was silent. Two (just two!) months ago no one in the world could convince him to return here. Neither for money, nor for the Motherland. He was a happy TV viewer just two months ago, he crawled on his knees to the TV to show Maika that here is the burning bread factory, we used to get bread there, and Americans disappeared right here, exactly here I served… He was a happy viewer. The Range (“Captain Zhitkur!”, interrupted Mumbler) gave him money, fate (“Madness of your dad!”, interrupted Mumbler) gave him Maika, Maika gave him Katty, and Vadim would agree to watch the horrors of Kapustin only on TV. Alex the Ukrainian was choking with tears when in the summer of eighty sixth he read to them letters from Kiev, about radiation, about illicit radiometers, about cops in cellophane. But Vadim would never shed a tear because of the disaster at the Range. He hated and feared it. And now it was the only hope. That which he hated and feared.

It turned out that all this time Petrovich was waiting for an answer.

– Are you silent? Silent-pliant, snotty. Okay. So. This is what we will do in connection with the feat of the comrade Ensign… – He chewed his lips. – So, group, listen to my command. Our mission of reconnaissance, marking a safe track to the “area twenty nine” and inspection of the condition of nuclear weapons as far as is visually possible for such a survey we cannot accomplish anymore. We can't get out without the poles, and will not leave anything for others. Thank you, Vasya, again. We change the route. Take the fallback route. We’ll smoke and go.

Petrovich pulled out the rarity of that summer – a fresh pack of “Rodopi”, opened it and lit up. He neatly rolled the wrapper into a ball (“Puff the ball”, squeaked Mumbler) and shoved it into the fire. The splinters were already burned and cooling, only the tablets glowed blue. Bashkalo breathed noisily and asked for a cigarette with a gesture.

– Where are we changing to? What is the fallback route, Nikolaich?

– Not far, comrade Ensign, – said Petrovich, passing him the cigarette to light up his. – It is a dive for three our poles from here. We didn't manage to do reconnaissance for command… Thanks to you. So let's do science, since the tracks have coincided. Don't soil your pants, Vasya, it's not far. Not far and familiar. My stash is nearby. I want to share it with you. And with this one, the newbie.

– That's it… – said Bashkalo, inhaling. – Share the stash! Pi-iss, not war…

They smoked in front of each other, flicking the ashes in turn into the already totally spirit fluid campfire. It was heavy, sucking, hopelessly-dueling, and Vadim shrugged off the chatter ban again.

– Comrade Senior Ensign… Allow me one more question. To do with work. So all these… weird places… Gitiks. They are all near our equipment, to the railway, as they seem to generate only from equipment, right?

Petrovich laughed.

– He's playing Indians here. Oh, kids, kids… It was true, warrior! And binoculars could be used at first, and sights. But now you will not take a walk along the free-flowing steppe… So you, Sverzhin, of this… thinking kind. For one thousand five hundred per month. How did you say – “gitiks”?

Vadim nodded.

– The “Jackets” in the smoking room were arguing. They call this an incredible place. A gitik. “Science knows many gitiks.”131 There is such an expression.

– Now that's what we call the Red Army. – Petrovich said didactically. – All the personnel of the test site, who are alive and not in the nuthouse, sit and read damned science fiction instead of the Charter! Led by comrade General, the chief of the quarantine. And you are still running to the scientists. You are strange, Sverzhin. But you have flair. And the balance is good… And you shoot, they say… Leather stocking…

– Actually I don't read at all, – said Vadim, but nobody heard him.

– Yeah, he is… a Fenimore. Damn! – Bashkalo cut in.

– Here is your Fenimore… It's a strange thing about your conscription contract, – said Petrovich. – I heard that enlistment offices recruit eighty-six to eighty-nine of the demobilized from here by their polls, and immediately offer one thousand and a half per month. Am I right, Sverzgin? Just asking.

– They also take a non-disclosure agreement, – said Vadim. – A fifteen-year sentence.

– Look where they brought the country… – said Bashkalo unexpectedly, but right in the vein, straight down the line.

– Well, if it's a fifteen-year sentence so then stop the chattering, – said Petrovich. – Have you finished a cigarette, Vasya? And you, have you finished your lunch? Get up now. Sverzhin, take the thermos and fill it with soil. Compress it with your fingers, it should be packed! And put a cork above. And carefully throw it away, but better roll it. And you, comrade Ensign Vasya, my dear man, – you are still responsible for the poles. All three and a half. Ok, you convinced me, I'll carry the broken one. But don't you drop the rest, I dare you in the name of the proletariat. Grab and cradle them. Gently. There will be something that needs a fence.

“A cylindrical hollow of metal or glass, open from one or more sides, tools and everyday items of any length and more than five centimeters in diameter acquire dangerous properties with a 100% probability”, parodying the secret instructor in a fencing mask, Mumbler howled. Vadim even rubbed his nose bridge, “like the following: empty cans and bottles, mugs, shell and anti-aircraft cartridges, and other similar technological objects …”

Vadim was shoving clay into the thermos, and the voice of Petrovich was barely making its way through the mumbling of the little man in his brain. Vadim could not calm Mumbler, before the thermos became “full to the eyeballs”. Fortunately, Petrovich decided to repeat everything, after he waited for the place of a halt to be brought into a safe state.

– Attention, group! Listen to the combat mission. Here we see, – Petrovich indicated the “three hundred and twenty-fourth“, – there is an offshoot from the track. Unknown to authorities. We go this direction. – A wave of the cane-staff. – About four hundred meters according to the land map, and in fact a kilometer and a half. Under the embankment again. The place is weird. – He scratched under the strap on his chin. – “A gitik”, you said, Sverzhin? Let it be “a gitik”. I'll show you the real gitik. Big and complicated. If we come back – do not talk about what you saw. Bashkalo, first of all I'm talking to you. You'll get exactly fifteen years.

– Listen, Nikolaich, you… not so fast, you slow down… – began Bashkalo nervously.

– Shut your mouth, Vasya, damn your leaky hands, I'm talking to you in the presence of the cub. We change the order of movement. Sverzhin, you go close, completely on the “risks”141. I'll be “risking”, and you handing them over to me. Now we go further. This track will be a place where you cannot talk, make noise, stomp out, or pray. No sound! You can only look at me and repeat all my actions. Bashkalo, you are ten meters behind all the time. Is the task clear?

Vadim nodded. Mumbler was attentively silent.

– That's right, it is clear to me, – said Bashkalo, hard at work. – But you should explain at least, Nikolaich…

– We'll get there – you'll see everything yourself. If you don't understand – I will explain to you at home. No questions in the Zone. Or you forgot? It seems that you're not a first timer, Vasya, – said Petrovich, expressing amazement in the last phrase.

– So is there something extremely dangerous? I didn't get. We've been ordered to survive…

Petrovich lost his patience.

– Ensign Bashkalo, stop chattering! The task is set, is clear. Perform the task. It's extremely dangerous everywhere here. And for the Soviet people, you, Vasya, must work your fifteen hundred per month through two hundred for each mission. We seem to have an ideological cub here, I live by the rules, and you have come to talk too much about money lately. Enough, no questions. Right dress, attention. Forward, contract boy. The order of movement is statutory before my command. On the march!

Vadim took one step and tumbled down into a river.

It was good in the river. And the world through which it was flowing was good. Warm, safe, and forever homely. Newcomers have been warned about hallucinations repeatedly. They were advised to recall what happened in them and, if possible, to count a seconds of objective time. One, Mississippi, two, Mississippi, three, Mississippi… And then, without fail, describe the memories in the report. A slow, narrow river in the jungle. The heavy river, the powerful river, flows from afar, for a long time. The Amazon? What the jungle is this? “How do I know”, said Mumbler, “am I a jungle specialist to you, or what?” The river flows majestically, like semolina porridge. There is a feeling of peace and security, peace in the whole world. And crocodiles and piranhas? There are none here. The water is very clean and tasty. Upstream, a half of kilometer away from Vadim, the river made a turn (he perceived it as “the river flowed out of the bend”), and out of this bend some boards with life buoys on the walls, fishing rods and open doors suddenly appeared, all sparkling in the sun, white, like in Chekhov's poem, suburban, theatrical.

“That's right”, said Mumbler, “a houseboat. A square like a box, a house on a raft, with a veranda, wicker chairs, curtains in the doorway… Who is sitting on the veranda? Two people? Or one is sitting down, while the second at the railing, spits into the water?”

It was unclear from the scene.

Two hundred eighty-five Mississippi, two hundred eighty-six Mississippi… Vadim was counting diligently.

– Sverzhin, stop!

Vadim was thrown back. He stopped and slammed himself hard over the eyes, trying to wipe them.

– “Stop” was a command! – repeated Petrovich after all this. – Pay more attention on the track. – Vadim heard his footsteps, and here Petrovich approached and stood next to him on the right. And only then the vision seemed to be cleared from the river of semolina porridge, and Vadim realised that he had almost stuck into the famous fog of the Zone. The atmospheric condensation.

“And I saw it a long time ago, about fifteen seconds”, said Mumbler, “But you force me to count there, to watch here, friends don't act this way with a friend!”

“Oh, shut up!” – Vadim almost said it aloud.

– Hey you, bumper, how you called…, Sverzhin, you need to be more attentive, – Petrovich said quietly and unexpectedly mildly. – Do you see the old “risk”, it is lying right there? I'm throwing a new one next to it.

A small nut, flying for a dozen meters, with a gauze strip, not very long, tied to it, crossed through the air and entered the fog. The fog blinked, at once, totally disappearing for a moment.

– Did you get it, Fenimore?

Vadim completely returned from the river. The taste of water disappeared from the tongue, sharp TV flashes melted in his eyes. An automatic desire to jump on one foot, shaking the water out of the ear, lingered for one more second (By the way, yes, he got water in his ear). His short-term memory kicked in, and Vadim said, focusing on reality:

– Yes. I see. D-damn! What a mess. There is no fog in reality, is there?

– Yes. That’s the thing. Exactly this one does not actually exist. Something happens with the eyes here. These kinds of places lie in wait. Gitiks, damn them. Doctors say it's like a mental leap. We see in some other way, or sometimes do not see at all. But the Trouble forces a special human gut feeling to show itself, if you're lucky. If there is one – even you, young one, immediately distinguish the real fog from… well, from this, from what's in the mind. But it can also happen like now – no fog at all, neither in the brain, nor in reality, but the visibility is still only a few steps. And no hunch will help. Here, take a step backward.

Vadim carefully obeyed. The fog vanished.

– There is no fog, but there are “risks”, right?

– Yes.

– Don't even step back, just lean back with your body.

The “risks” disappeared.

– Understood? Neither exists. Hocus-pocus. But they are there, I see them from here. This is called “to blink the fog away“. Here is what a creation of unknown kind it is, our Mother-Trouble… Hunch is a hunch, but attention and caution are the main thing. Like in a minefield. Listen, Sverzhin, – Petrovich said suddenly, – so you are married; why did you come here, you fool? Have you got kids? Come here.

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.

– 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?