his face a rubber mask, with a bitten nail touched the youth’s forehead.
The young fellow in the sweatshirt shuddered. A wave of pleasure passed throughout his body. He tried to hide it but his face gave him away. His mouth smiled weakly. His eyelids grew heavy. Droplets of sweat came out on his forehead. When Guy took his finger away from the forehead, the youth did not even notice. Then, losing his balance, he took a step and bumped his tummy into the chair. The berserkers guffawed with understanding.
“Only don’t abuse it!” advised Guy.
“I can stop any time!” the youth said obstinately.
“I know you can,” Guy agreed willingly, lovingly shaking down the shoulders of his dusty sweatshirt. “But all the same don’t spend it all immediately. I’m begging you!”
The youth pulled his collar with a finger and, having nonchalantly pushed aside a berserker in his way, went to the edge of the platform. He was stepping lightly, getting up on his toes, and felt an unaccustomed ease in his body. He wanted to push off and fly, but here was the trouble – a low ceiling.
At the edge of the platform, the youth felt something rolling in the sleeve of his sweatshirt and scratching his skin. He pulled up the sleeve. A dead bee with folded wings fell out. He leaned over it. Then he straightened. Something buzzed in the tunnel, approaching. The youth in the sweatshirt looked around. A yellow cyclopean eye was hitting his face. The young man burst out laughing, slipped the unlaced clms onto his arm, took a run and, after jumping directly towards the eye, teleported the moment before collision with the train.
Guy and his secretary Arnaud exchanged glances. “If our young friend knows about the hyeon, it means so does Kaleria. And she hasn’t interfered. Thereby, she sets up the whole situation…” Guy said slowly.
“One hyeon is no big deal. Won’t even leave descendents,” Arnaud remarked.
Guy clicked his tongue. “The trend is important. I don’t want hdivers to have tame hyeons.”
The secretary nodded and made a note in the notebook, where there was a note about today’s meeting. “Useful fellow,” he said.
Guy massaged heavy eyelids. “Must warn him to give up diving. For the time being he’ll be able to enter the grounds of HDive, since he hasn’t appropriated markers, but already can’t dive,” Guy answered in a preoccupied manner.
“But if we come to an agreement with the elbes so that they don’t touch him…?”
“What do elbes have to do with it? The matter is Duoka. It won’t accept him. Besides, he devours such doses of psyose that the crazy house will be waiting for him in half a year. But in this half year we must extract from him as much as possible.”
Guy smoothed out the notebook page:
Makar Goroshko Tukhachevsky Street, #, Apt. 9
Daniel Kuznetsov B. Cherkizovo Street, #, Apt. 155
Alice Fedina Sobolevsky Proezd, #, Apt. 99
Alexander Dudnik Vernadsky Ave, #, Apt. 301
“Telling handwriting! A lot of curlicues on the ‘M’, but the end of words are broken up, and the ‘y’ has a flabby tail. The fellow shows off but not enough confidence,” he remarked.
A pencil scratched twisting, nasty, curved outlines in the notebook. Only Arnaud knew how to decipher his own signs. “Dispose of them ourselves or saddle Till with them?” the secretary asked quietly.
“Dispose?” Guy was surprised. “Forgotten Krunya’s prophecy? Sooner or later these ten will deliver into our world the most powerful marker.” The shadow from a swaying lamp lost its way in the folds of his face. The face sucked in gloom like a sponge soaks up water.
A train swept past through the eternal night of Volokolamskaya. Light lived inside its cars. Darkness rushed toothlessly to it from the corners but could not swallow it and, champing, crawled away into the tunnels.
Chapter 5
Purely Voluntary with a Minimum of Violence
A king had a daughter Princess Sombra 12 and another Princess Braya. The king promised one half of his kingdom to the one who would make Sombra laugh, and the other half to the one who would quiet Braya down.
Fall in HDive – especially in the Green Labyrinth and all around – the colours were always in full swing, so diversely and dauntingly bright that one had to squint. But colours began to kick up a fuss only in October. It was the fifth of September at present, and fall had just started to unscrew with its teeth the lids of tubes of oil paint. For Ul and Yara this was the happiest time. It was not like the previous terrible year, when it seemed to Ul that life had ended. They took off from HDive on any free evening and roamed around Moscow.
“Let’s conquer the world!” Ul once proposed. Yara thought and agreed. She adored large-scale villainies. “World, you’re conquered!” she said in a whisper, so that the next table would not hear. Quietly and peacefully in a small subbasement cafe, they finished celebrating the capture of the world.
Having the appropriate questioning look on his face, the fat waiter approached with a plate. He fancied that they had hailed him.
“You won, but it’s not about that. Keep the change!” Ul generously told him.
The waiter blinked. “What change? Only sixteen roubles from you!” he said.
The next day Ul and Yara taught Rina how to fall from a horse. They tied a cord to her belt and yanked her off while chasing Icarus in a circle. Right after the fall, Yara had to overtake Icarus and jump onto the horse’s back while on the run.
“Don’t grab the stump! Soft fall, don’t resist!” Ul howled.
Rina was all covered in mud. Sand crunched in her mouth. Jacket, pants, and boots were all the same colour – grey. So was Icarus’ foaming back. Rina slid down. Ten falls. Twenty. Twenty five. “Not enough!” shouted Rina. “Not enough! Again!” Yara began to worry and looked questioningly at Ul. She did not remember such energy in any novice.
Finally, either Ul overdid it or Icarus, running smoothly till now, pulled too zealously. After drawing an arc, Rina fell into the puddle and could not get up. “You’re sadists!” she shouted in a ringing voice.
“We’re hdivers. Get up!” Ul again pulled the cord.
Rina burst into quick, short tears, like rain with the sun. Yara took the cord away from Ul and went to Rina. To console. To change tears into laughter. Over the summer, Yara and Rina had become very close. Each saw in the other her own solution, her missing part: Rina, explosive, boyish, quick to flare up but simmer down at the same instant, and Yara, calm, slightly cool emotionally, very consistent.
Rina was still lying in the puddle. “Great!” she said in a suspiciously cheerful and clear voice, turning over onto her back. She slapped the puddle. “‘We’re hdivers.’ Great! Super!”
“What’s super?” Yara did not understand.
“The principle itself. Simplification of truth to its essence, without any disguising
