to the small puddle, got down on all fours and began to look. “You’ll never gasp for breath anymore,” said Yara. Dennis rose. Clay stains remained on his knees. “They always looked at me like at a freak! Everybody and always! Girls, whom I would like to meet, smiled at me like they were smiling at old men or sick cats!” he muttered, justifying himself.
Yara touched her nose with a closed hand. A red ball trembled on the back of the hand. “Excuse me! I must get to the horses,” she said. Dennis did not detain her. He ran beside her. He passed her, stopped, and turned around. “Is this marker indeed in me now, huh?” he repeated. “It turns out I now possess a gift! I’ll finish medical school, become a surgeon! And I’ll return this marker, I will! Don’t look at me this way!” Yara was also not looking at him. Only once in passing did she look at the hand with the marker. The stone was dim. It was possible to drop it safely. But Dennis certainly would not believe her and would drag this useless cobblestone with him.
Yara reached the horses. Eric neighed impatiently and caught the sleeve of her jacket with its teeth. She climbed into the saddle with difficulty, feeling her legs turning into cotton. Dennis, on the contrary, jumped onto Delta easily, like a grasshopper. He did not even recall the existence of stirrups. Now he again argued that there was no Lyuba and he simply would not let himself be fooled. Yara heard this already. Self-justifications always go in a circle until they stop at some argument, which seems maximally convincing to the one defending himself. In a day Dennis would even believe himself. He simply had no other way out.
Yara turned Eric around towards the Horseshoe Cliff. “Where are you going?” Dennis was surprised. “To that side. I’ll try to find a red marker. Ul says there are many more of them there. They won’t send another hdiver. The operation is today.” “Of course there isn’t any little idiot! Don’t you understand? They use us!” “Good-bye!”
Yara picked up the trowel and, scraping off a piece of bark the size of her palm from the pine tree, with the sharp edge of the shovel drew the hdiver sign: a circle and a cross. The circle came out uneven, only an outline, but this was unimportant. Whoever needs it would understand.
“Are you abandoning me? You’re my guide!” Dennis was alarmed. “You no longer need a guide. Delta knows the way back, and you’ll pass through the swamp easily. It’s only possible to take away a marker not merged with the person. The elbes know this and they won’t report your point of exit to the warlocks.”
Another red drop fell onto Yara’s jacket. It was time to hurry. No one knew when strength would finally leave her. She shouted at the grown-lazy Eric and immediately urged it to a gallop. After galloping about thirty metres along the increasingly steep slope, Eric took to its wings. It gained altitude slowly. Yara sat in the saddle unsteadily, jolting from one wing to the other. She was in pain, suffocating, miserable, but already through the weariness appeared something new, for the time being unclear to her.
She heard how behind her Dennis was shouting at Delta, kicking it with his heels, beating it with the whip. The old mare strained, attempted to skip; however, it could not move even a metre to the rocks. Something invisible retained the horse by the pine tree. “Good,” thought Yara. “The blue marker, which we found first, is no longer for him to take. And that, perhaps, would do.”
Yara looked around no more. She knew that neither on a horse nor on foot nor crawling would Duoka allow Dennis to the rocks. Possibly, it would still be a considerable time before Dennis finally realized that there was only one direction of motion for him now – to the swamp. And he understood this. He lowered the whip and, after turning the tormented Delta around, flew to where dawn, in spite of the customary flow of things, switched over to the cold dull twilight. He flew and, cursing everything in the world, recalled against his will the small figure moving away in the direction of the Horseshoe Cliff.
Chapter 3
“Gomorrah” Receives Guests
The harder the nut of a soul, the harder one must hit it against a stone in order to reach the meat.
Can never go upwards rolling down.
On an April evening of 201*, the well-known floating restaurant with the flirtatious name of Gomorrah,5 situated in a quiet park by the Moscow River, was not receiving strangers from five in the evening. The extensive parking lot in front of Gomorrah was cordoned off. Brawny men in austere suits not hampering movements approached vehicles driving up and politely requested them not to park. Automobiles made U-turns and drove off. Someone had time to notice that a small truck with the sides lowered was occupying the centre of the area. In its body was something bulky, covered.
However, they did not chase away all automobiles. They let some through, those who sat inside did not show a permit, only lowered the glass slightly. Far from all of the cars “approved” by security were luxury class. Among them were old foreign brands, beat-up Zhigulis,6 and neutral microbuses. At close to seven in the evening, eight motorcycles in a single group drove up.
Another curious detail was that exactly four people always got out of the dashing right-hand-drive Toyota with cracks on the windshield, the insanely expensive Porsche, the obscurely tinted SUV, and the microbuses. Each team of four kept together and as a single organism went up the clattering metallic gangway leading into Gomorrah. The teams of four were mixed. There were not so many muscular guys in good shape. There were enough women, old men, girls, and young people looking like students.
In the parking lot – a stretched-out field of asphalt divided into blocks by twin round bushes – the vehicles that arrived made up large groups. In each were thirty automobiles with one more in front. In the middle group, eight motorcycles replaced two cars.
After destroying the precise geometry, a powerful Hummer rushed past the astonished guard pointing out to it the parking spot at the head of the central herd of automobiles and, having flown about a hundred metres, rammed the side of a new Bentley. From the blow, the Bentley turned over twice on the spot. The front wheels flew off the bank, but the car did not fall off, instead it was hanging steadily on its bottom.
A girl of sixteen, pert and pretty, got out from the driver’s side of the Hummer. The better look you had of her, the more puzzled you would be, although, it seemed, all of her was in sight. In order to form an initial and completely lasting impression of a man, one needs ten minutes. That of a girl is two seconds. And two more, because it will surely appear that you understood everything incorrectly. And two more… And again… With the last two seconds invariably stretching to infinity.
The girl approached the Bentley, pushed it appraisingly with a foot, then again returned to the Hummer and began to back up, intending on toppling the Bentley into the river. “Anya, stop!” a displeased voice demanded from the Hummer. “But Dad!” protested the girl. “It’s the Tills’ car! And they’ve attached themselves to me, by the way!” “All the same, stop! I forbid it!” “But Dad! I’ll only finish it and immediately stop!” “ANYA!”
The Hummer stopped angrily. The girl jumped out in annoyance and turned her back to the car, showing that she was extremely offended. Another girl, somewhat three years older, got out from the Hummer after her. She approached Anya from behind and, after first lowering a hand onto her shoulder, said something quietly. Anya shrugged her shoulders. Without paying this any attention, the older girl continued to talk. A little later Anya started to laugh, grabbed her by the wrist, and impatiently pulled her towards Gomorrah. “Run! You’ll have a great time!” she promised. “We’ll see,” answered the older one. It was noticed that she had doubts about
In the Old Testament, Gomorrah was one of the two ancient cities, the other being Sodom, destroyed by God because of the wickedness of its people.
A 4-door sedan produced in the Soviet Union between 1970 and 1988, the compact is known as Zhiguli domestically and as Lada outside of Russia.
