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“Pardon?”
“A person by the name of Rina!” a mocking answer followed.
“And what are you doing here?”
Rina slammed shut her book. She was reading a textbook on horse breeding. Sashka made out something on her wrist like a massive leather shield going into her sleeve. “Riding the bus!” she said capaciously.
Someone pulled out the money from Sashka’s fingers. “Give it here!” Makar again. Of course, “brotello” had long since changed seat and had settled himself next to Lara. Interesting, did he find out if the girl is local? Did he advise her to take care?
Makar leaped up with a knee on the seat and, jumping together with the rushing minibus, called out to the driver, “Hey, man! Hello! Are we taking the money?” No answer. The driver did not even attempt to stretch out a hand. They saw only a blue sport jacket with the collar raised high and a baseball cap.
“Hello, garage! Deaf?” Makar began to yell quite insolently. He obviously considered that to humble someone in the girl’s eyes was an additional way to earn points.
“Now the driver will stop, and he’ll fly out like a cork, given a send-off with tender strokes of the crowbar!” Sashka gauged and was mistaken. No one even turned to Makar. For such as he, this was a challenge. Yet, the great person fidgeted on the seat with his precious knee, dog-eared the money in his sweaty palm, and was ignored.
“I’m left with the money! Did you all see, people? We ride for free!” Makar announced for everyone to hear.
“He’s simply deaf! Someone, shake him!” the bossy girl with the flower-stalk neck demanded. She had just been introduced to the fan of gallows and army dog tags, and Sashka heard how she presented herself, “Freda.” Interesting, is that her real name? It does happen that a person disagrees with his own name and runs around his whole life as someone obscure.
Sashka put down his knapsack, jumped over to the empty seat next to Makar, and tried to touch the driver’s shoulder. Specifically, he tried, because the minibus made a sharp turn, passing a bus. Sashka, not holding his ground, tipped back, and in an incredible way pulled the driver off with himself.
He yelled, expecting a crash; the minibus continued to rush along. A second later he realized that he only had the blue sport jacket in his hands. Having decided that he had torn it off the driver’s shoulders, he leaped up and saw that there was no one at the wheel. Only a baseball cap was dangling in the air. Now, when Sashka had the jacket, it could not be kept secret that there was nothing under it.
Chapter 2
Coming from Nowhere to Going Nowhere
In any good the keyword is “regularity.” Irregular good is evil, which decides to amuse itself.
A warlock will discuss global laws on the eradication of hunger on a universal scale, but a hdiver will simply silently hand someone an apple or a pie and move on.
The stronger one loves, the more one forbids. If you for sure want to destroy the one you love, allow him everything.
Two ways lead to wisdom: grief or voluntary self-restraint, i.e., in general the same grief, only conscious. If you do not choose the second path, the first one chooses you.
Better to take less but carry it all the way than to take a lot and drop some halfway.
The power of a person is manifested in how well he will be able to restrain himself.
Yara’s summary.
From Kavaleria’s introductory lecture
Freda melancholically contemplated the empty driver seat. “But where??? What did you do with the driver?” she asked in the voice of a person who did not get the joke.
Sashka sensed that she thought him guilty. “Here! Catch!” He threw her the jacket by the sleeve. Freda in horror pushed it away immediately with both hands. The jacket fell. Now, when it was exposed, it did not pretend to be alive anymore.
“No! You did something to him!!! Aagh!” Freda closed her eyes and gave a short shriek, giving a signal to universal panic.
Lara began to squeal in the same second, demonstrating excellent vocal training. Makar in a businesslike manner advised her to cut it out. At the same time he leaned heavily with his stomach on the back of the seat, touching the mirror with his forehead. Incredulously, as if suspecting an invisible man, he ran his hand all over. “Wow, damn! Really no driver! Anyone knows how to drive?”
Showing that it was managing quite well by itself, the minibus dashingly dived between two trailers and went onto the outer lane. The clipped truck groaned like an offended bull.
“Me!” Sashka, recently in his grandpa’s Niva[7 - The original Lada Niva was the first Russian/Soviet built off-road vehicle. The present Chevrolet Niva is a mini SUV.] demolishing the neighbouring fence at the cottage, said.
“Well, so get busy!” Makar encouraged him.
Sashka wanted to climb over, but Freda caught hold of him, “Only try to touch it! I understand! We’re moving by computer control!”
Danny looked doubtfully at the pressed-down seat, the jingling door. He saw a kefir carton and a crumpled magazine. “By satellite!” he said skeptically, observing how the minibus honked angrily at a dog that had jumped out onto the road and made a dashing turn, dousing it with dirty water from a puddle. “Wow! The satellite surmised biological activity and set a course correction, taking into account the direction for splashing the liquid!”
Sashka tried to free himself, but doing this without being rude was impossible. Freda was hanging onto him like a tick. Not letting go for dear life for sure. At the same time, Sashka would not say that she panicked. She was simply such a person. Not a single action could be executed in her presence without her approval.
“What if it’s a show? Put us on some kind of stage and unnoticeably shoot our reaction? And broadcast live? Huh?” Freda put forward a different option.
After hearing that they could be filming her, Lara instantly settled down and fixed her hair. “Can I ask an improper question? Who is the studio decoy here?”
“Me! Really not obvious?” Cyril stated but backtracked on discovering how people were instantly staring at him. “Really! No need to kill me! I’ve already gone to seed! What show, people? Do you see at least one camera?”
“What if it’s hidden?” the precisionist in the suit proposed in a businesslike manner.
Cyril twirled a finger by his temple. “In this heap of junk? Even if they shove some web cam here, it’ll show like the eyes of a dead cockroach! Won’t work for TV!” he said with knowledge of the matter.
Lara tapped her knee with the phone. “I understand nothing! Should be all sticks here!” she complained.
Freda looked at her with an incinerating look. “Sticks are in the forest,” she said and, after letting go of Sashka, sat down.
The minibus finally broke away beyond the limits of the Ring Road and dashed between colourful new constructions. The region here was spacious, new, and the roads wide, free. The minibus swiftly made a turn. As Sashka was not being careful, he butted the glass with his forehead.
“We’ll not get out of here! We’re doomed!” the girl with the death dog tags uttered quietly.
“Don’t be a killjoy!” Freda pounced on her.
“Dog tags” shrugged her shoulders and with a long nail traced a final crossbeam on the gallows. “I’m not! I know!”
Even Rina was starting to be spooked. She was sorry that she had given Kuzepych the promise to keep quiet. But even if she had not, what would she say? “We’re going to HDive!” “Where, where?” “HDive! It’s this guildhall of divers, where they fly on horses through a dead world to get markers from Duoka!”
The minibus turned into a long straight road and it stopped rocking. Passing ahead of Sashka, Danny quickly half-rose. “Miss! May I ask you as an enormous favour to remove your skull?” he turned to Lara.
“Where?”
She was at a loss and immediately received the comprehensive answer, “Not strictly perpendicular to the back, but in such a way that the level of the crown would turn out to be below the level of the upper section of the seat!”
“Huh?”
“Off with the head!!!” Danny simplified to the extreme and unexpectedly deftly, making use of his beanpole frame, immediately tumbled over two seats on his stomach. The endless legs flickered. Escaping from them, Lara with a squeak bent down. It finally dawned on her why the level of the crown had to be lower than the back of the seat. The soles knocked on the back of the seat and Danny already emerged on the other side. He slid into the driver seat, grabbed the wheel, and slammed on the brake. Sashka watched as the pedal pressed down.
“Stop, my beautiful! Whooa!” Danny ordered. The minibus began to brake at the horse word, but it kicked up and continued to fly forward. Danny hung onto the wheel and attempted to switch over to the outermost lane. The wheel obeyed but this again in no way affected the behaviour of the minibus.
“Try braking with the clutch!” Sashka advised. Danny looked mildly around at him as if asking: do you think I do not know? He pressed on the clutch and, switching over serially, began lowering gears. When he reached the first, the minibus zipped out onto the oncoming lane and, after fearlessly cutting the flow, turned into a perpendicular street.
“This is useless, gentlemen! I quit!” Danny announced melodramatically and climbed back into the cabin. He sat down there like an idol and arranged his hands with palms up on his knees. Something that in no way could be grasped stirred in his memory. Something important, elusive.
Cigarette butts were floating in a glass jar a third full of water. Through the paint-spattered glass – cracked, with a whistling draft living in the crack – the Moscow courtyard well-defined by paint looked stingy to Danny. A golden bee was sitting in a sunny spot and cleaning its wings with its legs. Danny blew on it. The bee took off and, angrily hitting against the glass, bounced like a ball to the edge of the frame.
“I said: we’ll all die!” the girl in the black tank top said with deep satisfaction. Frost dripped from her voice.
Cyril touched the dog tags with a finger. “Listen, sunshine!”
“I hate sunshine!” Dog tags” cut him off.
“And don’t you be mad! Canna ask somethin’?”
“NO!”
“Were you ever smothered by a pillow earlier? Eh, sunshine?”
The girl pushed his hand away. “What are you, stupid? I’m not sunshine! I’m Alice, idiot!”
It was not possible to offend Cyril. “Idiot!” he said, turning to himself. “Get acquainted! This is Alice, who has never been smothered by a pillow!”
“Ass!”
“And who actively learns the names of animals!” Cyril looked around triumphantly.
Alice turned away, lapsing into silence. Cyril clearly considered himself the victor; however, Sashka doubted this. A guy must not fight with a girl on the same level and with her weapon: the tongue. They deliberately exist in different dimensions. Well, what does an eagle brag to a dolphin? That it knows how to fly? But a dolphin knows how to swim. Cyril behaved like the bearded philosophy professor, who, after putting on a skirt, set off for the earthen bench and said, rubbing his hands, “Well, grannies, hold on! Now I can argue with all of you!!!”
“I’ll try to jump out! Since the phones don’t connect here, perhaps they will outside!” Sashka shouted and tugged at the door. Asphalt with small puddles gleamed. Sashka stepped back. He did not imagine that they would be going so fast. Freda, with the idea of recording everything, directed the round eye of the cell phone at Sashka.
“Don’t!” Rina shouted, unable to control herself.
“Why not? Must! Jump! What are you waiting for?” Freda demanded impatiently.
Sashka estimated the distance to the lawn. Grass is tempting, of course, but you could miss the mark and splatter all over the tall barrier. Asphalt would be better. He put his head out. The wind cut his cheek. It hit his eyes, blinded him for an instant. “When it’s thirty kilometres, shout!” he ordered Danny.
Danny rolled over on his stomach to the driver seat and stared at the speedometer. “Ninety! Damn! Why no traffic jams? Aha! Traffic light soon! Maybe it’ll brake slightly at least… Yes! Going down! Seventy! Sixty!”
“Jump!” Makar pushed Sashka slightly from behind.
“Tough guy first!” Sashka turned and grabbed his turtleneck. He was so fed up with Makar that he was actually capable of throwing him off the minibus.
“Let go of me!” Makar ordered quietly.
“But why?”
Makar slapped his own pocket with a threat. “Bluff!” thought Sashka. “He puts his hand in the pocket and will fly from the minibus together with me!”
“Forty!” shouted Danny. “Thirty-five!” Sashka pushed Makar away and returned to the door. The speed no longer seemed so great. He will run several metres and then roll. The main thing is that no driver behind decides to pass them on the right.
“Come on!” Danny yelled. Sashka rushed forcefully into the opening and… here something incomprehensible happened. An elastic force caught him and threw him back like a kitten. Sashka realized that he was sitting on the floor of the minibus, clutching Makar’s leg like a lifesaver.
“Full protection, pity! Even if you yank the wheels off, you’ll end up on the bottom!” Rina recalled Kuzepych’s words.
Freda tore herself away from the cell phone screen. “Shot it!” she shouted excitedly. “You were separated from the minibus for about half a metre and then it pulled you back! Did you feel anything?”
“The joy of flight!” Sashka answered in annoyance. The minibus again picked up speed.
“Let’s lean out and yell! Someone will hear for sure! Only better from the other side! More cars there!” Cyril in the heat of the moment wanted to hit the glass with his fist, but Makar held him back.
“No, why? Must take care of the hands!” Makar said peacefully. Leaning over, he pulled out a fire extinguisher from under the seat and competently knocked with one end on the glass four times. The glass was covered with a tangle of cracks, but it held. Makar, not embarrassed, continued to peck persistently. On the tenth blow, the glass collapsed, after hanging onto the rubber retaining it.
“And now we yell! All together! With feeling!” Makar ordered the girls. He himself did not begin to yell. He did not want to compete.
The girls shouted, waving their arms. Lara, whom Sashka was holding by her legs, finally leaned out of the window up to her waist and found herself by the open window on the side of a car unhurriedly passing them. Sashka was convinced that the driver did not see such girls often, but he did not even turn his head.
“Drove past like a robot! Could at least move a little!” Lara said with annoyance, when Sashka and Cyril pulled her back into the minibus.
“You’re too noisy for him. He likes quiet dames with slippers in their teeth!” Cyril butted in.
“Okay, gophers! Don’t want to notice in a friendly way, notice in a bad way!” Makar warned with a threat. Before anyone had time to understand what this “bad way” was, Makar had already rested a foot against the back of the seat and kicked it off. Sashka had never seen anyone stripped down a minibus with this composure.
Makar leaned out the window. The seat back hit the windshield of the Toyota moving in the adjacent lane and flew away to the curb. A crack appeared on the glass. The driver twisted the wheel. Sashka, very near, saw a puzzled fat face and trembling cheeks.
Sashka could not control himself. He leaned out, yelled, and waved the hanky torn from his neck. He was convinced that it would be impossible not to notice him. He could even describe the ballpoint pen sticking out of the stout person’s pocket. Someone pulled his sleeve. Pushed him down into a seat. Danny.
“Calm down! He doesn’t see us! And you calm down! Put the extinguisher back!” Danny took the fire extinguisher from Makar, who intended on finally finishing the Toyota with it.
“He even twitched!” Sashka said dejectedly.
“He twitched because he heard a bang!” explained Danny. “We don’t exist for him.”
“And those people who tried to stop the minibus at the stops? They were doing what, waving their hands at a void?” Sashka had his doubts.
“I suspect that they see the minibus itself. But us and what we throw, no!” Danny followed with his eyes the fire extinguisher, which the agitated hands of Makar nevertheless flung out of the minibus. “Sit down and place your paws on your knees!” he peacefully advised Makar.
“I understand why it’s route D minibus! D for devious!” Alice said suddenly.
Danny snorted with suspicion. It is rare to meet mystics taller than two metres. Otherworldly things usually do not stray into a head placed so high. This is a height of practical things. “Well, ‘devious’, so ‘devious’! Gentlemen! Let’s stop running and howling, and try to figure this out! Has anyone been on the route D minibus before?” Silence. “Then something must exist that ties all of us together. If we understand this, then let’s also understand why we’re gathered here. Let’s determine what we have in common.”
“Besides me, everyone here is a freak,” Alice muttered under her breath.
“Age,” Freda voted. “Who here is older than sixteen, raise your hand.”
Cyril immediately jerked up his hand. “You’re all small fry!!! I’m seventeen!” he stated.
“Cyril! Well-a show that pass again!” Lena asked softly.
“Certainly!” Cyril’s hand eagerly dived into one pocket, then another, and a third. The search was carried out with exceptional determination, but the pass did not appear. Lena waited mockingly.
Danny lost patience first. “Fine, age!” he nodded. “But age is too obvious. There are 300 thousands like us in Moscow.”
