Chunk 21

or not. "Chimeras are part of one huge organism. The main one on this planet. A gigantic mycelium."

"Mycelium? You mean that literally?"

"Completely! This is one of the last discoveries of the expedition from 'Artillerist Hans.' A mycelium of incredible size. Occupies the entire continent. It has long, incredibly thin hyphae. Everything here is penetrated by them—buildings, concrete, plastic... Except maybe steel—that's the only obstacle. So the mycelium needs corpses. It wraps them in a cocoon, dissolves and completely sucks them out. And instead, inside the cocoon it creates a copy. An imitation. The same on the outside, but it's no longer human. That's the chimera. And from a biological standpoint, chimeras are fungi. Walking fruiting bodies. Zombie mushrooms..." she smiled sadly.

"So to become a chimera, you need to..."

She nodded:

"Die. Die on this planet."

"So Corporal Okamura never got better?"

"You can't jump off the pollen if you used it regularly... He died at night, and in the morning a chimera was already shooting at people."

"And you knew! Knew about the cause from the very beginning!" I was again seized by indignation that she was playing by her own rules that I didn't understand.

"That's right. I knew, but you had to find out about this only here. Otherwise you'd have immediately rushed to report to Vandlik."

"And what's wrong with that?!"

She smiled sadly.

"You think this time they won't recall the landing shuttles? Will act honorably?"

She raised a weary gaze to me. I wouldn't be surprised to see tears in her eyes, but there was only dry, sand-like anger.

Irma was right. Even yesterday I wouldn't have wanted to listen to her. I'd be thinking about insurance, about my hand, and that the killing in the hospital was enough for me...

"But what about the mutagen? So your 'Artillerist' wasn't interested?"

"Oh how interested!" Irma stood up and threw her cup into an urn half-filled with wilted leaves. "Let's go."

"Where?"

"Time for you to learn the most interesting part."

She winked conspiratorially and went inside.

Around the turn of the long corridor Irma pointed her finger at the ceiling and, without turning, threw out:

"Don't be scared."

She didn't even slow her step, but I nevertheless flinched and mechanically walked around this place in a wide arc. Another eerie mold bas-relief. This time staring down at us from the ceiling was the recognizable face of Nathan Gogh contorted in pain. So real that I seemed to hear stifled wheezing from his throat.

"Oh shit..." burst from me.

Irma paid no attention. We entered the so-called work hall. In the large room were several dozen tables separated by partitions. In the far corner under the ceiling another empty cocoon was visible. And overall, if not for the dust, you could think they'd only left yesterday. Except they'd left in a hurry—too much stuff lay on the floor.

"Your biostation was about ten times bigger than ours," I noted with surprise.

"That's because we were supposed to study the biosphere of an entire unfamiliar planet."

"And us?" I even stopped.

"And that's the right question, Lieutenant!" Irma, without turning, raised her index finger to the ceiling. "Three biologists and a technician, with all due respect to each of us—that doesn't look like a research mission. Right?"

Not that I'd never thought about this, but now her words so exposed this fact that it seemed like a splinter in my eye.

"And what does it mean?" I asked, catching up to Irma.

"Give me a few minutes and I'll try to answer."

She turned between tables and ended up in a small nook by the wall.

"Whose place is this?" I asked.

Irma with the air of a hostess sat on the dusty chair.

"Mine."

I curiously examined it. Not very similar to the workstation I saw daily. At our biostation Irma's place was ascetic and perfectly clean, but here it was full of various trinkets unrelated to work. Various kitties, pink stars, magnets, framed photographs... Irma took one of them and blew the dust off the glass.

"Here's who put a period in this story," and she held it out to me.

In the photo stood two girls embracing. Neither was even thirty. I recognized Irma immediately. The same as in the photo from the key card, only with a smile from ear to ear. She was embraced in a masculine way around the neck by a wiry, angular girl with a short haircut and a young boyish face.

"We were friends," Irma smiled sadly. "She was a junior officer in the security service. And she dreamed of getting into the assault troops. Funny. And I was a junior researcher who aspired to someday head biocontrol."

"Not much in common," I noted.

"We both loved life terribly. You'd have to look far to find two such gigglers..."

Irma stood smiling for a second, and then resolutely crushed the smile between tightly pressed lips.

"I don't know how they chose her. Maybe they found something in her personal file. In short, the frigate contacted her and offered to stay alive. Or die with everyone. A simple choice."

"And what did she do?"

"Stole the mutagen. A personal shuttle came for her. Evacuating one person is incomparably safer than everyone. When ours ran out, sure that the long-awaited evacuation had begun, the shuttle was already flying away. And in a few hours 'Artillerist Hans' left this galaxy forever."

Irma sat on the table, turning her face to me. We ended up so close I again smelled her hair.

She smiled and for some reason took me by the hands—somehow childishly simply and at the same time very tenderly—and pressed them to herself. I didn't resist. She put her arms around my waist, nestling her cheek against my chest.

"I don't want to die on this planet," she said quietly.

"We won't die here," I said. "Why do you say that?"

"Why—because dammit... Your stomach's rumbling."

I also put my arms around her shoulders and carefully laid my cheek on her head.

"Aren't you curious what her name was?" Irma suddenly asked.

"Whose?"

"My friend who escaped with the mutagen."

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

"Okay... So what?"

She straightened, looking into my face. So close, as if she was going to kiss me. But Irma only wanted to catch my gaze to drill through with her eyes right to the back of my head.

"Her name was Nicole."

"So?"

"Nicole Angela Vandlik," she pronounced separately.

31

For some time I stood, digesting what I'd heard, and on my lips involuntarily played that same confused or foolish smile that appears from nowhere in life's most difficult and unexpected moments. When they tell you your friend died, and you called him half an hour ago. As if your conversation should have given him immunity for at least a few days... But then you learn he was hit by a gravity express. And on your lips appears this same smile, as the last, futile, but only way to not let this event into your life. Or when they say you're fired. And you just took out a loan and seemed to have planned your whole life for years ahead... And again this smile as if tells you—don't believe it, or it will all become true!

But it's true anyway.

Deep in my soul I understood this from Irma's eyes. Even before I counted how many Earth years passed while Vandlik jumped from here to our galaxy and back. Before I subtracted those years from sixty, added them to the age of the girl in the photo and realized she should now be forty-something—as much as Vandlik is. Before I once more held the photograph to the light and began checking against my memory

—shape of eyes, mouth, height of ear placement, nose... Yes, it was her. Senior Control Officer Nicole Angela Vandlik.

"And she came back..." I wanted this to be a question, but it came out an answer.

"Yes," Irma looked just as fixedly into my eyes. "The mutagen she stole didn't work. Nobody knows why. Maybe Rosalyn guessed they wanted to steal it and did something to the sample... However it was, Vandlik is here again. After she saw chimeras and what they're capable of, she came back. Moreover she flew here with a bunch of civilians and only three biologists, to camp two steps from the dead city no one knows about. And now ask that question of yours again: why are we here, if even in the first mission there were ten times more scientists?"

She looked at me as if expecting not a question but an answer immediately. But I had no strength to think. All this turned out to be too much.

"And how are things between you and Vandlik?" I asked. "How can you work together after all this?"

"Like this," Irma thrust the deserter's bracelet under my nose. "Plus a non-disclosure agreement. One step left, one step right—tribunal. Relations are 'not great'..."

"I meant something else... How can you see the one who... Left you to die?"

She looked at me with a long sad gaze.

"But I was dying without her too..."

I didn't find what to answer. Most interesting, Irma's not much better than her former friend. Lies as a means to achieve an end, alien drugs she feeds to half the colony for the greater good, then this incident with Capybara... I remembered with what a calm face she lowered the wrench onto the poor guy's leg, breaking the bone, and shuddered. And at the same time she's smarter and braver than anyone I know...

She suddenly took me by the back of the head and tilted my face slightly toward hers. From this touch I seemed to lose my will. I saw only her lips and waited for what would come next. But she just smiled:

"We need to go to the lab on the basement level. Right now there's no access—someone engaged the emergency lockdown system. With Nathan's card it can be removed, but the doors will only unlock at midnight—zero hours zero minutes. So the plan is—we wait till midnight, go there and get out."

"And what's in the lab?"

"There's what I came for. The mutagen."

"But Vandlik stole it!"

"Well, not all of it, Lieutenant!" she looked at her watch. "Since there's a ton of time till midnight, I propose we eat. There are dry rations here."

Half an hour remained. With sunset the automation turned on duty lamps, but there was no full lighting—the station operated in economical mode. From the main computer, which was simply here in the hall, Irma removed the lab lockdown. In the garage were charging the batteries of an outdated but quite serviceable all-terrain vehicle. Our Aba believed the story about the torn track, and no problems were anticipated. Now it remained to wait till midnight and take the mutagen. Irma found a liter metal thermos for it. We sat on the couch, and she kept opening and closing it, as if beating the rhythm of some melody. In the half-darkness I could barely keep from falling asleep. And once more yawned widely.

"Drink more coffee," Irma said sternly. "You can't sleep."

"Because of chimeras?"

"Yes. In sleep you open them access to your head."

"To secret thoughts?"

I asked this jokingly, in an ambiguous tone. But Irma didn't notice.

"To fears."

"Oh... I'm fearless."

She grimaced contemptuously.

"Everyone has fears."

I fell silent, involuntarily remembering what I feared. I kneaded my numb hand. The sensitivity it had gained after using pollen was disappearing—slowly but obviously. As inevitably as balloons deflate after a children's birthday, with each hour dropping lower and lower...

"And this mutagen of yours... How does it work?"

"Like pollen. Only a thousand times faster. Do you remember the creatures our technician caught in the transformer?"

"Anton?"

"Uh-huh. So, we'll use their attraction to electromagnetic fields. God, how idiotically you named them..."

I grimaced.

"Reapers."

"Right now they die from electrical discharge—too weak. But we'll make it so they can destroy power sources. Understand? That's the whole plan. I'm confident two weeks will be enough."

"Enough for what?"

"Turn on, my dear, turn on! I'm trying to talk to you as a biologist! I'll use the mutagen and achieve targeted mutations, then release these creatures in the camp, and they'll destroy everything electric. In one night they'll turn the colony into a neglected cottage village! Without power, the colony will be ineffective. Completely! And they'll send us to Earth!"

She fell silent and, judging by her look, expected enthusiasm. There was something in this indeed... If you imagine there's no electricity and it's impossible to restore because some creatures destroy communications and generators, such a colony is worth exactly zero.

"And if something goes out of control?"

Irma even stood up, emotionally waving her arms:

"Please! What and where could go wrong!"

"I just don't want people to die, Irma! And you, however you spin it, are planning to grow some new monster!"

"No!" Irma looked at me reproachfully. "You weren't listening to me."

I fell silent. I didn't like her methods, but they were always effective. And yet I was scared that I couldn't imagine at all how the mutagen worked. Right then a thought dawned on me.

"Listen, this may be an idiotic question, but I'll ask..."

"That never stopped you before."

"Since you know how to handle this mutagen, and Vandlik flew here specifically for it... Why not just give it to her?

Tell her everything you know yourself, and that's it. Let the Corps choke on their fucking weapon, and we fly home!"

"Seriously?" she looked at me sympathetically. This was the look of a teacher at a school for mentally disabled children.

I got embarrassed:

"But what's wrong, Irma?"

"You think they'll fly from here without testing it?"

"Well, suppose they want to test..."

"On whom? Who do you think they'll test it on?"

Her eyes burned with confidence and irritation. As if I didn't understand the obvious.

"And if you're wrong? About Vandlik and why she's here."

"Then propose another version!" Irma emotionally slapped the thermos against her palm. "Somewhere on this planet is a weapon of mass destruction, but nobody knows what it is. Right? Its effectiveness has already been seen not only in the example of alien cities. And so a new long-term mission is organized, in which people weren't told a word about either the mutagen or the cities. And note, Vandlik and only she is responsible for its success! Now propose another sensible version if you don't believe they're using us as live bait!"

I rubbed my temples, sincerely trying to think of another explanation. But there wasn't one.

"So they're waiting for us to start transforming into chimeras?"

"Hallelujah!" Irma mockingly raised her hands.

"And will just watch as we eat each other?"

"And study. They need the secret of biological weapons. And we're guinea pigs. Or whatever they do experiments on..."

"But then it would be logical to bring a crowd of specialists! Virologists, geneticists... And not narrow biocontrol service down to three people!" it seemed to me I'd laid down a trump card.

"And who said they didn't bring them? It's just not you and me. Or do you think the corporal was dragged to the hospital every month for nothing? By the way, they never buried him."

I wanted to object, but arguments ran out. The mysterious Factor "B" came to mind—the selection criterion unknown to anyone. And how

Alex talked about the secret emergency arsenal: "...considering all this secrecy, at minimum, the Spear of Destiny. Well, or whatever they killed Christ with..." But there's no sense keeping the most effective weapon under lock and key! Unless you're afraid the bait will scare off the predator.

Irma again rhythmically clicked the thermos lid, immersed in her thoughts. Sleep began pulling me even harder. I started and looked at my watch. Ten to twelve. Just a little more...

I don't know at what moment I closed my eyes. Till the last it seemed everything was under control.

I was in the meadow again.

"Except this time it's not a dream," I told myself confidently and looked down.

There were many butterflies. Very many. They sat on each blade of grass, so thickly covering it that it seemed I stood in thickets of black-and-orange wings.

To the walls of the solitary white building someone was erecting in the middle of the meadow was about twenty meters. Millions of butterflies enveloped it in a moving cloud. I didn't see the builders. Only how someone's hands laid mortar right on hundreds of delicate wings, and then with a disgusting crunch crushed them with a brick. With new and new bricks, laying each tier of living, delicate, beautiful sunspot butterflies. And building higher and higher walls where from each seam stuck trembling wings.

I was the only one who could stop this. But for this I needed to reach the building and enter the single black door in the middle of the wall, and my every step also threatened the butterflies with death. Can't step on butterflies... The main thing, don't step... I wanted to stay there so as not to be the cause of death of these delicate creatures, but every second I stand, more and more black-and-orange sunspots die. Incomparably more.

And then I dared. I raised my leg and carefully placed it in the grass, trying to scare away as many butterflies as possible. They flew out in a bright spray, and I thought with relief that probably all flew away. But having placed my foot, I heard with horror the disgusting crunch of their

delicate bodies. Can't step on butterflies... I froze. There, on the wall, someone's hand again slapped a blob of cement over the living carpet and pressed with a white silicate brick the sunspots trying to fly away. Sighing, I resolutely took another step. However much I tried to be more careful, again sounded the nauseating crunch of destroyed butterflies. To the dark door was still just as far.

"Lieutenant!" someone whispered.

I looked around helplessly. Irma stood right nearby. I wanted to tell her not to move because she'd crush butterflies, but she took me by the back of the head and suddenly kissed me. Her closed lips for some reason were hard and cold. I tried to respond to the kiss, but she pressed so tightly to me I couldn't open my lips.

"Lieutenant!" she repeated in a whisper, not pulling away from me.

I managed to be surprised by the fact that Irma was speaking and simultaneously kissing me, and woke up.

Irma's face really was quite close, almost like in the dream, and she'd clamped my mouth with her palm.

"Sh-h..." she raised a finger to her lips.

I slowly nodded. Irma removed her hand and, not saying a word, pointed her finger to the end of the long corridor. I peered. At first it seemed absolutely empty there. But Irma insistently pointed with her thin finger at something at the very end... And I noticed. Something dark. I strained my vision. In the dim light of the duty lamps I couldn't even assert this was an object. Maybe just a shadow. If not for Irma, I'd never have paid attention. I was about to say I saw nothing scary when the shadow suddenly moved. No doubt, it moved—somehow strangely and awkwardly! I immediately put my hand on the pistol. My fingers felt the grip. "Thank you black pollen," flashed in my head. The shadow moved again.

Irma leaned right to my ear, touching it with her lips, and whispered as quietly as she could:

"Chimera."

32

The shadow moved again and changed shape. Suddenly it seemed to me that in the half-dark corridor walked, limping on its front paw, a huge dog. But something was wrong, something elusive... Its gait was somehow strange. Too awkward. As if it was moving its paws in the wrong order... And I understood. Recognized in the half-darkness these strange lopsided movements.

Like that time, when everyone also decided that on the white canvas of the old concrete road was an ordinary village dog, and I was the first to realize it wasn't so.

"Gorbosia," I barely squeezed from myself this forgotten word, because horror had already flooded my throat with thick jelly, and all my strength went only to breathing.

This couldn't be, because such a thing was in principle impossible. But doubts no longer remained: the shadow again appeared under the lamp, some ten meters away, and I clearly saw every detail. The figure disfigured by a hump, the left arm withered at the chest, the disproportionately large right one... And the huge axe with a carbon handle she dragged behind her. And most importantly—the eyes. Now I saw how her mad little eyes glinted from under her brow.

She raised and spun the axe around her wrist. I watched as if mesmerized and couldn't understand why this movement was so false. Not like then, in childhood... She did it somehow unnaturally...

"Shoot," Irma said, but her words were like the calls of children carried by wind from the depths of memories.

And the old woman rotated and rotated the axe, rapidly approaching with her strange gait.

It doesn't hurt! Turns out it doesn't hurt!

"Shoot!!!" Irma barked. Her cry stretched into a whole verse of senseless sounds, and I couldn't be distracted by sounds. I was trying to breathe so as not to choke on the damn jelly of fear that paralyzed me. And only stared unblinkingly at how Gorbosia spun the axe. What's wrong with this movement? Something's definitely wrong...

Shots thundered—as if I heard them from underwater. It seems Irma released about ten bullets into the woman. I saw how they, passing through the lopsided body, left behind her back a whole cloud

of tiny drops of blood and shreds of clothing. But this didn't slow her pace one iota.

It doesn't hurt... Turns out it doesn't hurt...

She was two steps away when Irma, grabbing me by the hair, jerked with all her might to the side. Pain doused me in a hot wave, and immediately time acquired its former speed, and surrounding sounds rushed over me. And the main one was the squeal of a wounded little animal, like the howl of a circular saw.

We both fell to the floor. The old woman's axe, making a clean cut on the back of the couch, flashed up again, ready to chop. Irma's inductor clanged deafeningly above my ear. Gorbosia's withered left hand lost several fingers. Irma pressed the trigger again, but the pistol whined offendedly with an empty discharge—the magazine was spent.

Then Gorbosia jumped. A human isn't capable of that, even if they're doped on black pollen and went to a cage match. That's how a rat leaps from a mousetrap, outpacing even the cocked spring. But Gorbosia's jump wasn't escape but attack. Coming to my senses, I raised the pistol. Rising almost to the ceiling, the woman beat me by a good quarter second, and my single shot only smashed one of the lamps.

Then Irma kicked me in the shoulder with both legs as hard as she could. Hardened by months of pollen use, her muscles were like iron: I flew to the wall like a bowling pin. Gorbosia's axe with a pitiful screech knocked a chunk of covering from the flooring exactly where I'd been. Irma jumped up and struck the creature headlong with the pistol grip, then grabbed the old woman's axe, trying to take it away. But she clung with a death grip. Then Irma sharply spun in place like a shot-putter, throwing Gorbosia a good six meters.

Strangely, she never released her weapon—even when with a crash she smashed through the plastic partition and overturned a table.

Irma flew to me, as if she was going to finish what Gorbosia had started.

"Get up!!!" she barked and, not waiting for me to do it, grabbed me by the loops and yanked me to my feet. "This is just a chimera! Not the one you recognized in it! Just a chimera! Repeat!"

"Just a chimera..." I uncertainly repeated, cautiously glancing to where the hunchbacked woman was climbing out from under the plastic wreckage.

"Only you can kill your chimera!" Irma shook me hard. "These creatures are almost immortal, but your chimera