well, all the same, these figures are not felt in our simple words… So, what I’ll say: for those endlessly long five years spent, well, that is, in the sense of tattered, worked out in this, unnecessary, in this, abandoned to all distant, distant devils, Streets, we were all given a decent monthly allowance. This feed… so what? Do you hear Monthly allowance! We plowed to death there, worked and worked!.. Someone… Someone died there, someone was taken to a hospital in the capital, but already irrevocably, and we continued to plow. Whoever was taken away didn’t return… We did the allowance, but who needs it? That is the question…
– Mmm, to whom? Probably someone needs it? Aah, no? – The phrase fell out of Ave in a clot of misunderstanding.
– Who needs their allowance now? To whom? No, well, oh… on the other hand, do you think I could drive these… these… international buses for a regular salary? And… I would hardly have been able to… and in general, I’ve come here on business… – Aft said and suddenly felt a nauseating, lumpy lump roll up to his dry throat, he choked, but was still able to squeeze a few words out of himself. – Now I say, wait a minute!..
– Can you help?
Suddenly, the face of Aft turned red, he shook his head negatively, the small, shabby mustache trembled convulsively, and he, with an unsightly bent almost in half, choked in a strong prolonged cough. The ant felt an unpleasant burning pain, felt like a fiery-prickly wave ran through the body, suddenly gray-colored, with a flash-like build-up: from the heart to the very tips of the paws, and mercilessly knocked out the very brain.
– Bjzhzhus-bzhzhzhus! Well, there’s some kind of horror, bjzhzhus, today with me, well, what’s going on! Horror, he is! – as if nothing had happened, continued the interrupted monologue Aft. – No, no, now they pay well at my work, I am not complaining. The manual – of course, it’s all great! That’s just health… health is not that… and not return health, for any money and rewards. Yes, and on such bus liners I do not travel often. It just happened so today… Today, at the Eighteen Seas Artificial Television Studio, veterans of the Streets accident were being collected… health could not be restored – at least someone would say… they were collecting us… – suddenly a new wave of terrifying attack came over Aft, he again painfully shortened, curled up in half, like a crumpled piece of paper, and grunted hoarsely for a long time, coughed.
– Aft, listen, well, maybe something to help you? Run for water? To run off? To help? What to do – say it! – to the embarrassed Ave it was scary to look at the bending Aft, and even more so, to remain indifferent in the trouble of the old comrade.
– Yes, no, no, everything is fine, everything is fine… wait, now… – the ant shook his head strongly, completely denying help, from somewhere in his pocket he quickly scratched a mouse-colored handkerchief, and a piece of fabric disappeared into the depths of the mandibles.
A black oval metal medallion with six or seven embossed numbers and letters crawled out from behind the collar of the shirt, as if a awakened sacred scarab beetle crawled out of hot sand in a dry desert, at the moment when the ant was bent in a painful cough. Ave noticed an unusual distinctive sign unusual for working individuals, and only wanted to ask Aft about him, as he decided to tell himself ahead of all the questions.
– I’m now considered a labor veteran… can you imagine, dear Ave, where am I and where is a labor veteran? Two categories – completely incompatible…
– Well, you give! – only breathed out Ave.
– I’m still so young, my whole life is ahead… And already – a real veteran! Aft anxiously took the dark roundish into a small paw, twisted it nervously, looked philosophically at the inscriptions and showed it to his comrade. – You see, it was handed to us. Do we need this? Yeah, it’s necessary, especially… Some have already been handed over posthumously. Yes, and we are also almost posthumously… There is no health at all, no, and almost no one is alive, but we, what you say, but we are veterans… That’s it! I don’t know what to tell you even this… It’s hard to realize some things, it’s very hard and still I can’t reconcile… Hand-handed, and rejoice, guys – veterans… But how do we continue to live – it is not clear…
– What are you saying? Why posthumously – to you? Live, live! Let’s all live!
– Yes, we are, really, against? We are not…
– Health… Well, health is yes, everything is complicated here… Hopefully, it will recover a little… You are already here, and not there…
– Yes, almost, – Aft interrupted Ave with calm confidence on a rising note of indignation. – We are all already – almost there…
And Ave really introduced this ant, his former spine, a sincere companion, one year younger than him, a labor veteran. Veteran of labor, who became due to a small pinch of past years for the merciless work in Streets. If you look from the sidelines – because of some few years that cost many individuals of life… There are optimistic charged natures in the world who are completely satisfied with everything and quickly get used to everything, that was exactly Aft himself. At one time, it was hard to imagine an ant more compliant and agreeing to everything, but now it was strikingly different from that old self. Such a strong change of character that happened with the decrepit Aft during the time before the comrades saw each other, struck Ave brightly. Life circumstances made him many years older: his appearance changed a lot, almost beyond recognition – wrinkles were significantly added and the body coating, as if all vital juices had been pumped out of his body and left one shell, seemed artificial and pale grayish. Ave remarked to himself that during communication Aft was somehow unusually talking, uncontrollably pushing with his power, not letting him in even a word that there was no such thing before. But Ave knew Aft very well once, but it seems that this “once” irrevocably passed and remained far, far behind, in a completely different, transcendental archaic reality. The unfamiliar voice of the dying Aft, which used to ring like an expertly tuned instrument, today was rather a creak of an unoiled door, now and then interrupted by a wailing cough. Perhaps the only thing left of the former Aft, which Ave knew many years ago, was a wonderful sense of humor. Rarely did Ave meet on his journey with a refined ability to subtly ironize and sharply joke; almost always a cheerful and cheerful Aft, like a fireproof bright light, as he laughed at the whole world a few years ago, he continued to joke about everyday problems and sophisticatedly make fun of issues of national scale. He recalled with noticeable pleasure amusing episodes from a recent extreme life, a truly primitive communal, rooted, canine, and terrible painful life in a gloomy, dilapidated alien city, he narrated in a light, semi-aerial, and peculiar to him manner, as if the grueling, sometimes overwhelming and dangerous work at the emergency nuclear station became for him a festive Sunday walk to the city leisure park.
Ave knew about all the pressures that the workers on Streets had “combed” by the journalists from the weekly news reports, and at that very moment, in the minutes of communication with Aft, he tried to unite in one harmonious picture: the large-scale recovery of the consequences of the accident and his old friend, a participant in these heroic events. In total, more than three thousand specialists from different cities worked at the station at that time, and two hundred professionals came even from the arrogant Moot*, a snob city, which seemed to have fought the whole history of the ant family with the whole world. Only a common misfortune, threatening terrible unimaginable consequences, violated the millennial confrontation of peoples. But, as happens in history, everything is back to square one, and after a two-year lull associated with the sending of worker ants to Streets, the military conflicts provoked by the
