Creature of unknown kind

– Sergey Borisovich.

– Quiet and “yes, sir”, you scribbler! Damned putsch in ninety-one… Well yes, in ninety-one! And you say “yes” and list-ten, what if there is a reason why I, an old stub with the brain cancer, am telling you the same for the third time. About death, about funerals, about the fact that I have never been in the Zone, never stood a foot. So get this, writer! Maybe repeating makes sense, think about it. And you tell me about your putsch.

– I'm listening.

(Finishes the water)

– Is Antipov still flying?

– Still flying.

– Pour some more water. The water from the “neutral” is delicious. Where was I? Yes. Accordingly, we are very fortunate that the Americans fall under the Lightning182, that's the thing. There was no way to hide the Zone because of them. Although Gorbachev, and then even Yeltsin, gave their civilian subordinates instructions to submit such proposals, and then Yeltsin even delegated the question to the General Staff. I know this for sure. I had been transferred from Chernobyl to Kapustin not just because, I was present at all their tea-drinking meetings, have been wasting the time directly from the Lightning, from Ryzhkov's commission. That one, you won't remember. At all, starting from the first, on New Year's eve in eighty-nine…

– Sorry, you said “we are very fortunate with Americans”, Sergey Borisovich. Who are “we”?

(Pause)

– Humanity, damn it. Such an ufologist you are.

(Pause)

– I'm listening.

– So then yes, sir, listen. The Americans… Now what…

(Highlights “now”)

– …we are fortunate – it's understandable why. The internationalization of the Zone, albeit under a moratorium, is not going anywhere. But even then! In ninety-one, when I ran out of money all at once – Americans helped out. And earlier, straight away. In all the editorial offices of the Commission for the Zone affairs there were Americans. There are, for example, Yeltzin, Gorbachev and Nazarbaev sitting down and here is Matlock in a corner, rubbing his glasses. He went there like it was his work. Although, of course, there were secret meetings too. I'll tell you later… maybe. I remember that time I was agreeing with all of them, say, that would be good if the quarantine would be tight, up to the idea that the administrative border with Kazakhstan, at that time still a republic, should be moved for at least thirty kilometers off the exclusion zone around Kapustin and the rest of the test-site, like in Chernobyl, for fifty kilometers – even better. To decide something about the river, to start a project for a bridge across Ahtuba near Kotly, the highway and the railway to Astrakhan through it, through the floodplain… and total unity in military command. And of course, all this is sponsored by Americans. That's what was the politics… In the Soviet Union, until it was over, it would have still been possible, at least at the level of decision-making. We did not have enough time.

(Thinks)

– Actually, later the bridge was built somehow, but with the rest, with the quarantine, it didn't work out…

– Sergey Borisovich, sorry to interrupt, I didn't ask yesterday, the most interesting in all those meetings with the presidents for me…

– So you always interrupt! I have already told you: you can interrupt. Interrupt. You see, I confuse the dates. Enough apologizing. You're not a gentleman, and I'm not a monsieur.

– Have you there, in the Kremlin, considered at least some of the Lightning's other possible reasons? I mean – seriously. Because from the January 1990 there were already regular film shoots at the “thirteenth hostel”, the phalanx was also filmed in the garage cooperative, and things with time-space were already reliably recorded. And there was not a single corpse in the city – that was known from the beginning…

– Exactly so. But in general, there wasn't any talk about aliens, you know… They avoided it. And, accordingly, me too. What damn aliens, they said? Unknown kind and that's it. A gaz meteorite, it’s final. How can serious people talk about this?! Such words aren't even invented…

(Drinks)

– When Gaidar began to drag his father-in-law, the writer, Strugatsky, to these gatherings, I could see how they were jarred. Everybody was jarred. And it jarred me. Fiction writer at the meeting of a top-secret government commission! What a story… What are you staring at? The writer was invited not to a bathhouse for some culture, but to a serious adult meeting, with minutes… Gaidar, yes, he seriously considered it, but kept silent. He was a cunning, clever guy. And this Natanovich, although he's a science fiction writer, he used to be in the military, moreover, he was in our military, special one… He also acted smart. That was impressive. Like, he was just sitting with his stick, but whatever he says – everything is right to the point. He actually recommended announcing an indefinite quarantine, to build the camp for the troublers and not let anybody out… And those who had already left, to relatives maybe, following the resettlement program – make them come back. Notwithstanding the titles. Such a mess started there, whoa! Everybody was stunned. But I was ready to put a candle for him191 because of this for so many times! In the beginning – how they were all barking at him…with one voice. I was also barking, such a fool. Like, it's not nineteen thirty-seven anymore. Democracy, human rights. New thinking. Those times nobody even knew these words, that's what it is about.

– And Matlock? Was he there at the time?

– And Matlock was listening, sipping tea… Or whatever was in his thermos. Coca-Cola. We always kept his own thermos. And an interpreter. He spoke Russian, but not very well.

– And then?

– And he says: I think, he says, the opinion of Arkadiy Natanovitch is a deeply thoughtful opinion (it is full of thoughtful thought). And everyone immediately became silent. Impressive! It's horrendous what would have happened if there had been no quarantine.

– M-m, yes… And Strugatsky, did he also say nothing about an aliens, about UFOs?..

– I'm telling you, ufologist: with Gaidar they were birds of feather. Smart people, but father-in-law was experienced, been there. A drinker, a person who understands. But they both also knew how to keep quiet. And this book… About stalkers… He did write it, invented it in his head! When I was reading it, I did not believe my own eyes! Ten years before the Lightning… even more! With his brother… The book itself spoke for him. Even Yeltsin read it afterwards, I know this for sure… His brother, a scientist, was also at the meeting once… And in general I had a strange feeling that he, this Arkady, somehow knew something more, and knew it in advance. After all, Gorbachev reported object to the Commission about Zhitkur-9 not instantly, but when he had already signed his resignation. In January of ninety-one… The soviet Union was already finished.

(Laughs)

– That moment everybody lost the gift of speech. Yeltsin whacked his chair into the wall, consequently Primakov dropped the glass with kefir… And Gorbachev is just sits there, calm, blinks, fidgeting with a pen in a hands… So, this Arkady Strugatsky, in my opinion, didn't even change his face expression… Set that aside. Listen, ufologist, I lied to you, listen! Gaidar was not even there, at the first meetings! But Strugatsky already was present. He already attended the meetings in eighty-nine, Pavlov was there, Ryzhkov, Khryuchkov, of course, and no Yeltsin in sight, I had been flying from Ukraine… At Yazov's call.. Exactly!

– It is strange.

– Do you understand? Even I do not know everything, okay? Officially, I was transferred to Kapustin on the fifteenth of November, and on the twentieth, the first meeting of the Commission was held with Yeltsin invited as the president of the RSFSR. Because this was still the Soviet Union, not CIS… But Nazarbayev, yes, was already the president. Of the republic. And he was worrying a lot. Such a horror was happening in the Kazashsky Corner of the Zone. The terrifying walls of the fire, this plasma lava… Well, you saw the movie.

– Mm, well… And the name “Kazashsky”, did everybody call it so from the very beginning?

– I do not understand.

– “Kazakh” would be correct. Kazakh Corner, Kazakh Curve.

– Fuck knows. It just happened so. Actually, I never thought about it.

– By the way why did the main word not catch on if everything was by Strugatskys?

– What main word?

– Stalker.

– Stalker? Is this your question? A-a-a fuck kn… Set that aside, I remember! This Natanovich also asked me… it was disturbing him. That is when we were drinking with him later, already in ninety-five or ninety-six, when I was in Moscow for the last time… Why are you smiling, writer? Understandably that it was interesting for him… It did not catch on because of Americans. It's something offensive, from English slang. Wanker, or something like that. Sat that aside, I remember. A peeping tom. A sexual blackmailer, accordingly. Rubbish. So it did not catch on. And then you, ufologists, immediately appeared in the Pre-Zone, at that time there was an extraterrestrial craze among the people, and there, among you, ufologists, climbers and tourists of all sorts, so the “track”, “traverse”, all this, too. Well “track” is “track” and, accordingly, “trackers”. And it happened. In my opinion, therefore that is how. As for me, I prefer “walkers”, as we, military men, used to say. And aliens. Although there is a subtlety. Well, you know.

– I see. I'm very interested in the intensity called the “Mother's cracks”.

– 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.

– What is it, comrade guide, searching for the words so you can politely tell the boss that he's a moron? – the Colonel asked suddenly and grinned.

– Between the Trouble… It's like a barrier between the Zone and the Earth, the “neutral”, a neutral band, – Nabis said, holding the tone. – As a trace strip. Here earthly works as earthly, and the Trouble's works too… But nothing kills. No dangerous gitiks. And a “kiss”… well, vomit, some things with the eyes, bleeding from different parts, – these all are normal for the first time. The Trouble looks at you in the “neutral”, who you are, where from. What you here for. And then registers you. It's like to enter the cell.

– Have you ever been jailed? – asked the Colonel, but not in a “shrewd” way, somehow normally.

– No, – answered Nabis.

(The Colonel noted the guide has a strong incomprehensible and unpleasant accent, although his Russian is correct and he himself is Matveev. In the “waiting room” of the checkpoint they had time to tell Colonel a little about him. He is the best on-duty guide of the rescue service personnel available today, said the issuing, Captain Mazin, he took over twenty tracks, has been serving on contract for a year. Local, a refugee. The village bully in the past, did not serve in the army, after the army he seemed to be a boilermaker, freelanced at the Polygon. Tall, a young boy of thin bones with a very dense mane of small curls on his head, blue-black, lambskin-like. In winter, might be, he does not even wear a hat. Small mustache. The day before yesterday – on the day of arrival – and yesterday Blintchuk saw him in the smoking room next to the Headquarters three times, and every time Nabis was reading a book. They all read here. God forbid such soldiers. Or even simple subordinates.)

– Yeah… How can it be fucking “neutral” if such a thing happens here with people? – asked the Colonel.

Nabis shrugged his shoulders.

– It is what it is, – he said. – It doesn't kill. Thanks for that.

– Who are you by nationality? – asked the Colonel.

Nabis stared at him, then realized and smiled a little.

– You think I have an accent. This is a speech defect, comrade Colonel.

– I beg your pardon, – the Colonel muttered distinctly odd words for him and turned pale, which evidently replaced his “flushed”. – Guilty… But you do not understand the aim of the mission… What isn't clear about it? To detain a person with a little child seen from the tower, withdraw from the disaster zone, interview and provide assistance.

– Comrade Colonel, this is the Father, – said Nabis quietly.

– What does it mean – “the Father”? Does it mean he is a known person?

– He is the only one who survived in the Lightning. I mean they are only two. He and his daughter.

They were sitting side by side on the ebonite armchairs with folding seats, installed on the floor of the aboard Kharon's “shishiga”251. (Kharon stole the chairs in the cinema hall of the Dog's village club, four in a row on the iron rack.) Nabis was sitting on the edge. From the Earth they left through the Second, “Volgogradsky”, checkpoint and for the “greeting” of the pioneers Kharon immediately turned to the Stand, a concrete pad where two cars quietly rusted in the endless sun, dryness and heat. Door to door, white “Volga” of the missing Chief of the Polygon and “Zaporozgets” of some, probably also missing, Ensign. Neither Dog's poachers, nor bottle-women, nor even cops from the guard towers allowed themselves to touch these cars.

In the areas of housing (“The Dog's curve”) the weather inside the “neutral” had a specific behavior. A hot June day was reigning in this part of it in the middle of a cold November of the Earth. The “time of midges”, which was terrible in the Lower Volga region. But of course there were no midges in the “neutral”, as there was no other local living creatures, including cockroaches. They say, there were not even bacteria here. The dead ground, the zero circle. It was very quiet here, there was no sound from the human side, although running red and green excavators, literally a hundred meters away, were visible beyond the Volgograd-Astrakhan highway, ragged by the Zone. Well, on the alien side there was no one to make noise.

(But stupid TV tower was not seen from the “neutral”. What to show and what not to show the “neutral” chooses by itself. “Interesting, when the Colonel notices this”, thought Nabis, “will he rush back to figure it out? They say, one million rubles was stolen during the building of this tower. It was not created by a fool, of course. There was enough to carve up.”)

Behind “zaporozgets” there was a green camouflage American bio-toilet, and also an American plastic can with a tap hung on a concrete column with holders for a barbed wire. The first thing, as soon as he stopped the engine, and the colonel had not yet yelled that his eye had burst, Kharon dragged himself out of the cab with a canister and filled the can with the water after pouring out the old one. This was a responsibility of all drivers on the Dog's curve of the “neutral”. The water on the Stand was always useful. Some need to wash their top, others need to wash their bottom. And some need both. The Colonel, whom, of course, no one dared to inform about the rituals and peculiarities of going out to the Zone (or dared not to inform, or did not have time to dare to inform), and who himself did not inquire, just saw Kharon with the canister and started to command, allegedly: keep moving driver, I do not get why we stopped, quickly go to where the man with the child is walking in the Zone… here's when the hassle with the Colonel's eye started, and the orders soured in a mid-word, being replaced by the questions, vaguely translucent through the obscenities, “what the hell is that, what is happening to me?!”. Runny shit Ensign, in general an assembled and attentive man, only asked Nabis: “Is the toilet okay, safe?” – and saw a nod, dashed from the car like into a pit, holding the stomach but not forgetting, however, as many before him, weapons. The vomiting Ensign decided not to rush from the car. He fell from the chair on the floor to the left, and boasted to the Stand of his breakfast from a mechanized hill, lying at the feet of the chief. And the Major Korostylyov, as it already had been said, withstood the “greeting” without special effects, but was very surprised and worried about the resulting discord of the rescue team. But had been bravely enduring wonderment and worrying. He only put his machine gun a bit more comfortable on the knees and adjusted the black knitted hat. “This one read the instructions and did not swap fables with instructors. Or, still, it is not the first time he is out here. From whom he is hiding, from me or from his own guys”, Nabis was thinking.