Dennis licked his lips. His fingers were shaking. He almost let go, but suspicion flickered on his face in the last second. “Why do you want to take away my marker? How do I know that you’ll return it to HDive? Maybe there isn’t even a girl? I broke my fingers, they nearly finished me off in the swamp!” his voice broke. “What guarantees that Kavaleria won’t keep my marker for herself? That she hasn’t kept all the markers for herself?” Yara kept silent. It was pointless to answer.
Dennis’ face was distorted. He jerked a hand up and decisively, as if trying to tear off his own face, ran it over the skin. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t want to be someone evil! I’ll give it, but a little later,” he said in a sick voice. “Give it now! Please!” Yara repeated persistently. “Business isn’t decided in a few minutes, is it? Do you think I can’t deliver the marker to HDive myself? You all can, but I alone can’t?” he again began to get irritated. “Of course you can. But the longer it remains with you, the…” “Nonsense! This was my job! They sent me for it! ME! Naturally it’s easy for you, but not for me! How do you know that it’s so? You have a heart like a young mare!”
Yara realized that this would go on forever. And the longer, the worse it would be. She no longer looked at Dennis’ face, which sometimes brightened up, sometimes became obstinate, but at his fingers. The stone gradually faded. The scarlet radiance was creeping over onto his wrist. His nails were glowing as if enveloped in fire. Pretending to tie her laces, she squatted and then jumped him like a cat would. She succeeded in grabbing Dennis by the hand, but he hit her chin with the base of his right palm. Yara fell.
“Did you want to cheat me? YES? YES???” Yara sat on the sand and looked at the marker in his hand. “Excuse me for hitting you… Earlier I never raised a hand to… Why did you jump me?” Dennis, coming to his senses, muttered guilty. Yara got up silently and, reeling, walked to the horses. He overtook her, pushed her in the shoulder, and easily brought her down to the ground. She felt that he had become much stronger. The awkwardness and chaos of movements had disappeared. “Wait! I’ll give it! But why, say why?” shouted Dennis. “We must,” Yara responded frigidly. After the hit she was in a fog. “Whom do we owe this? We’re the ones who dived here! By our own efforts! Like condemned men!”
Yara stood up and again walked to her horses. Dennis did not upend her again, he only barred her path. The radiance enveloped his entire hand and rose in thin streams to his elbow. His chicken-like chest was filled with strength. The right sagging shoulder rose. He even became taller, a little bit but nevertheless perceptible. Yara understood that she could not take away the marker by force. It was too late.
“You stop! I only want to understand!” Dennis shouted with desperation. “This marker will only help…” “Lyuba,” Yara cut him off. “What Lyuba?” “What, you’ve forgotten? The girl has a name.” He stumbled over the name and grimaced. “Ah, yes! Clear. Only her and no one else?” “Yes.” “But that’s not enough! How many sick children are in the world? And we’ll help only one! It’s unfair! It’s settled! I’ll quickly dive deeper, for rocks! There I’ll find another marker, ten times stronger than this! I’ll cure dozens of people of heart disease, hundreds!” He was talking feverishly, with passion, all the time believing more in his own words.
“Listen,” Yara said tiredly. “We mustn’t heal all of mankind! I don’t know why, but we mustn’t. It’s not in our power. Our job is a specific girl, who is now three months… If you keep the marker for yourself, you’ll never end up in Duoka anymore. Not just for the rocks, but not even here.” Dennis both believed and disbelieved her.
“Lots you don’t know!” he continued, justifying himself. “I never told anyone this… I had three heart surgeries in childhood. Three! Loads of things are never for me. If you would only know how much it cost me to learn to ride! I cover ten metres and I’m already gasping for breath… And here as if taunting me, they send me for a marker for the heart!” “Clear,” Yara said quietly. “What’s clear to you? What?” Dennis exploded. “Why they charged precisely you to get this marker. The first time a hdiver is always tested for maximum pain. It was so with Ul, also with me.”
“It’s unfair!” Dennis obstinately repeated. “I could dive doubly better, if I were healthy. But if we do this… I’ll give this to the girl and keep another for myself? Which I’ll find next time? Eh?” “There won’t be a next time,” said Yara, at once cutting off all his hopes. “But if…” Dennis began carefully. “No ‘ifs’,” Yara said bitterly. “What don’t you understand? There are no ‘ifs’. This is Duoka.”
Dennis took a step towards her, hoping to explain something, but suddenly stopped and, after inclining his head, stared at himself. “Indeed I’m now agitated? But when I’m agitated, I gasp for breath,” he recalled belatedly. Having bent his arm at the elbow, Dennis with surprise clenched and unclenched his right hand. The pain from the bones had left. Ready coordinated strength filled his fingers. He rushed 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.
Five months later
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 this.
From the back of the Hummer stepped out a rather dry, tall, and round-shouldered man in a black suit, holding a large old-fashioned umbrella with a bent handle. The rather prominent shoulder blades of the man and the shape of the umbrella’s handle amazingly echoed each other. They echoed in such a way that in the wrong evening light it could seem that this umbrella was carrying the man, or two umbrellas were carrying each other… On the whole, one never knows what will appear in the wrong evening light.
The head of security, a stout man with catlike movements and bulldog eyes, ran up to him. “Albert Fedorovich!” Bulldog eyes attempted to smile, but lost the smile in his cheeks. “Everyone’s here! Both Beldo and (an embarrassed look at the Bentley)… eh-eh… the Tills. They’re only waiting for you!” The man with the umbrella stopped. He turned. Colourless and flat fish eyes met dog eyes. The bulldog became ill at ease. There are no cowardly piranhas. Cowardly bulldogs are rare but possible. “And Guy’s only waiting for me?” he asked with suspicion. “Guy’s not here yet.” “Had to start with this! Get to work, Vtorov! Showing friendliness isn’t part of your direct responsibilities! Anya, let’s go!”
The man with the umbrella glanced around at the girls and made his way to the boat. The iron bridge resting on high buoys began to make a chomping sound. An empty plastic bottle floated out from under the bridge and, hitting against the side, was dragged away slowly by the current. The extensible doors of Gomorrah opened and closed.
A young guard from the new recruits ran up to bulldog eyes. “Who was it in the Hummer? Dolbushin himself?” he asked excitedly. The head of security looked at him suspiciously, checking if he had heard how they shouted at him. No, he did not. Or was pretending that he had not. “Dolbushin, head of fort two!” he said unwillingly. “And who rammed the Tills’ car? His daughter?” “He seldom brings her,” Vtorov screwed up his face, as if all his teeth started to ache at the same time. He imagined that he had to explain to Till Sr. what he was busy with when the Hummer knocked his car into the river.
“Ah-h…” the young one drawled. “The girl’s not bad. I wouldn’t mind her.” “Her father also wouldn’t mind shooting you,” Vtorov clarified. The young one pertly evaded. “And who’s the second one?” “First time I’ve seen her,” Vtorov said dryly. “Maybe a friend of the daughter. Maybe a new recruit.” “Ah-h…” again the young one drawled. “And why is Dolbushin with an umbrella? Afraid to get wet?” “Somehow you meet him in the alley. You with a crossbow and he with the umbrella,” bulldog eyes advised irritably and, as a sign that the conversation was over, took a step towards the river.