Chunk 34

from there. And each time, having taken the first step on the withered leaves, she woke up.

...In reality pain and exhausting expectation of her own death awaited her. And pills. Piles of pills that deprived any food of taste, muted the colors of reality and made her brain like old soggy soap...

In Irma's dream the surrounding reality—just a second ago so material and voluminous—a second before waking suddenly began to fall apart, losing all its tangibility and depth. And then she understood it was a dream. Making superhuman effort, she mentally drew back into the surrounding world its blurred focus and vanished smells, painfully trying to remain in the dead city she'd dreamed. "Manage to learn the secret of the garbage pile," she told herself. "At least somewhat delay the return to reality"—that's how the truth should sound. With the same success she could catch reflections of birds in puddles. The dream splattered, spread in small ripples, leaving nothing behind except perhaps wet tracks on both cheeks...

So it should have happened this time too. Having seen the alley around the corner of "Central Department Store," Irma understood this was a dream. She habitually clung with all her being to sensations, to keep this reality from inevitable collapse. But for some reason didn't wake up. The world didn't cover itself with ripples and became neither flat nor blurred. She, as before, stood at the entrance to the mysterious alley, and the pile of garbage barely visible ahead still testified it was hiding something important. Strange, but awareness that this was a dream didn't at all prevent her from feeling the smell of withered leaves or the coolness of air she breathed.

Slowly, fearing to destroy everything with some careless movement, Irma entered the alley. The wind seemed to say: "Do what you want,"—and completely died down. In the alley, where autumn sun's rays didn't reach, it was cold and damp. The heaps of dead machines were truly gigantic. They menacingly hung over Irma, as if reminding that they still haven't fallen only because no one disturbed them. She tried to slip between them both smoothly and quickly, not taking her eyes off the garbage pile.

Up close it turned out the pile was sand and some debris, covered with ubiquitous withered leaves. Without thinking long, Irma got

on her knees and started rummaging, searching for who knows what. At some moment she got scared that under the debris, where she thrust bare hands, would turn out to be something alive. Irma reminded herself this was a dream, but fear didn't retreat. She wouldn't want to be bitten by a poisonous centipede, even if this bite would seem real only here and now. Then she thought that when she woke up, she'd again be enveloped by the black suffocating premonition of painful death. And this fear displaced everything else. Irma must manage to find what she came for, whatever it was.

Having thrown aside another large piece of debris, she understood she'd finally found it. Felt it. Because such an unexpected and even unthinkable here, not just familiar, but native from early childhood aroma hit her in the face. The aroma of strawberry.

As far back as she could remember, this smell meant something magical to her. For example, father (when he was still alive), who brings home a handful of incredibly fragrant berries found in the park on the way from work... Having felt this strange smell, Irma first froze in surprise. And then understood: this is a sign. Whatever this pile of garbage hides, it's meant exactly for her. And then she carefully pulled out a piece of debris resembling a chunk of wall (the smell became so strong, her head spun), and threw it aside.

In a small depression, from a crack in the impeccably smooth covering from which roads, bridges and endless overpasses were made here, hiding in brown old leaves, grew a flower. It was small, the size of a sickly houseplant cactus, bright purple and radiated a gentle neon glow. Thin stamens barely swayed, as if dancing a slow dance. Irma, mesmerized by this unusual spectacle, extended her hand to the flower, but then the dream began falling apart into separate vague images. And in a moment she realized she was looking at the ceiling of her cubicle barely lit by gray morning light. Woke up.

The dream gave her no peace all day. And when the next night it repeated, bursting in just as her fingers touched the delicate purple leaves, the thought of the flower became an obsessive idea. Without daring to tell anyone anything, Irma secretly sat in a research all-terrain vehicle and left the base's borders.

She circled the city hour after hour, but through observation slits it seemed just as unfamiliar and alien. Then,

having left the armored machine, she went on foot. As in the dream. And in half an hour of wandering unexpectedly came out to the familiar elongated building. "Central Department Store." Irma had never been in this part of the city. But everything was exactly as in her dreams. The mild autumn sun started to decline toward sunset, and its rays gave a peach tint to everything they touched.

Having gone around the building, Irma wasn't even surprised when she found herself in an alley covered with withered leaves. Ahead, behind huge heaps of some mechanisms, hid a pile of garbage.

...That same evening she planted the flower in a large paint can and put it by the bed. Then flushed down the toilet painkillers and anticonvulsants—all to the last pill. If at that moment someone grabbed her hand and asked why she was doing this, Irma couldn't have explained. Or could have, but her explanation would seem very, very strange.

About four hours later she moaned from pain. Toward morning convulsions twisted her, Irma cried and bit her lips till blood, but for a reason known only to her, never called for help. And closer to evening she opened her eyes and with surprise realized the pain had retreated and she really wanted to eat. It seems she had such appetite for the first time in the last month.

Then Natan looked in, and they quarreled badly, since an unknown alien plant in the cubicle is the most unthinkable violation one could imagine. And Natan was after all the commander. He ordered Irma to immediately get rid of the flower, and when she flatly refused, tried to take it himself. To Natan's surprise, he lacked the strength to cope with Irma. Bewildered, he told her that in the morning right after duty he'd come again, and if the flower was still with Irma, he'd send security here.

In the morning in the cubicle he saw neither the flower nor Irma. Natan decided she'd sensibly thrown out the plant, went to his quarters and crashed into sleep. He didn't know that around four in the morning Irma with the flower in hand descended to the empty laboratory of the complex and opened the quarantine compartment. No one would ever think to search for her here. So no one would prevent the flower from curing her. And Irma slammed the heavy doors of the quarantine compartment from inside.

When two days later she again climbed into the diagnostic apparatus, there were no traces of the tumor in her brain.

The morning sky had long turned milky white, but the sun never rose. Irma looked over the control panel somewhere into the snowy void. Elza pressed close to her and, it seems, was dozing.

"Even now, after everything, when I came to on 'Three Crowns' and learned that not just anyone flew for me, but Nicole... I decided she'd returned for my sake. Moved mountains there, and... I didn't even understand how many years had passed... Irma took a heavy breath. "I begged her to fly from here immediately. Asked. But she got stuck on this new mission... And then I understood why she'd flown. Guessed. That same night I snuck onto the bridge and... You know the rest. There are no miracles..."

It was quiet. Only Elza snored evenly. Irma looked at me almost pleadingly. As if waiting that now I'd disprove her words about miracles.

"I won't leave the rest of the people here."

"And you'll let your daughter die?!" now reproach read in her eyes.

I was silent. Irma's gaze greedily felt my face, slid back and forth, rushed from one eye to the other, pierced through, trying to find response, and then seemed to embrace and immediately shake by the shoulders, saying, well come on!

Finally she extended her hand to me:

"You, lieutenant, are a good person. You try to take responsibility for everything. For other people's children, for parents who dragged them here because they so badly needed money! For those officers who, unlike you and me, know the mission's goal from the very beginning! Don't. Just—let's fly! Because Vandlik is impossible to stop! She wasn't stopped by the most terrible nightmare of her life—the freak who once, in childhood, strangled her sister. He haunted her constantly, reminding that she ran away while her sister died, makes her sob into the pillow half the night... And on this planet the nightmare materialized. And came to her—as a chimera! She pissed herself from fear, but even after that didn't fold the mission! Vandlik won't lower the shuttles until she gets her mutagen.

(Section 5)

Vandlik doesn't open for a long time. Elza sits on my back again.

"Remember everything?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Won't be afraid?"

She kisses me on the cheek.

With my left hand I cover the lens of the intercom's multi-range camera. In my right—cocked "Shiva." Irma's metal thermos is in my jacket pocket. I knock on the door with my boot again. If she doesn't open—I'll shoot. But then the intercom clears its throat hoarsely and Vandlik's surprised voice asks who's there. I lean lower so Elza is next to the intercom device.

"I lost daddy!" she says.

I manage to hear Vandlik gasp.

The lock clicks. The open doors draw a yellow stripe of light on fresh snow. I stand in the lit wedge and poke the barrel right at frightened Vandlik's nose.

"Say some nonsense and I'll shoot."

Actually I'm bluffing. But Vandlik's face has such fright, as if I promised to feed her her own guts. She backs into the quarters, wrapping her short robe tighter.

I notice how her eyes dart around.

"No nonsense," I repeat and, without turning, slam the door behind me. "I came to propose a deal..."

"You found the arsenal..." she interrupts, only now making out the rifle in my hand.

"Yes. Sit."

With a side glance I manage to catch some movement, but react—no longer. The safety of an induction rifle clicks recognizably.

"Drop your weapon!" orders a quiet voice, and I'm surprised to recognize the ingratiating intonations of our Abu Asad.

"Don't you dare!" says Vandlik. "There's a child with him!"

"Have him drop the weapon!"

Elza, leaning very low to my head, starts crying—quietly and pitifully, as only a truly frightened child can cry.

"God, she's scared!" Vandlik jumps up, but I jerk the rifle and she sits back down.

I press Elza's little cheek to mine, not taking my eyes off Vandlik:

"Quiet, sweetheart, quiet..."

"Lower your weapon!" Abu growls.

"Stop it!" Vandlik barks. "Stop both of you! Why did you show up with a child, huh?!"

The last words are of course addressed to me. There's already no trace of fear in her eyes. Abu still confusedly aims our way.

He's stark naked.

"I didn't want all this," I say. "But you ordered me shot, remember? I didn't risk coming unarmed."

Vandlik looks at Abu. There's something in her look. Something understandable only to them.

"Lower the weapon, please," Vandlik tells him and frowns. "No one here will shoot anyone. He came to talk, see?!"

Abu finally lowers the rifle.

"And get dressed..."

Again Abu's uncertain look.

"Go," she orders.

Abu goes to the room. In the doorway I manage to notice a bed, thrown-off blanket, scattered pillows. Some pink tube on the

sheet. It gets awkward. I turn away. I lower Elza to the floor and sit on a chair. The rifle is on my lap, and, just in case, the barrel looks exactly toward the bedroom. Elza hugs me. Vandlik sits silently. I understand I should start, but want to wait for Abu. Let them both hear this.

"You know you missed the 'Don't sleep' signal?" Vandlik finally says. "They're looking for you—your Elza and Irma."

"I don't know. But it doesn't matter. I brought a solution. Just listen."

Abu returns. He's wearing army pants and some completely idiotic home t-shirt.

"I didn't know you lived together," I say quite inappropriately.

"We don't live together," Vandlik answers.

Involuntarily I cast another brief glance toward the bedroom. She looks straight at me. I feel myself reddening.

"Good," I say. "Good that you're both here. Here."

I take out the thermos and extend it to them.

"What is it?" Vandlik asks.

"Mutagen. This time real. Here. Lower the shuttles and let's fly."

They exchange glances. Their looks are full of surprise.

"What's in there?" Abu asks again.

"What you heard. Mutagen. With its help Irma bred the reapers. I think it's time you learned about this. Without mutagen the reapers were small and harmless. We once found one in a transformer booth, remember, major?" (Abu nods.) "Irma grew monsters from them in two weeks."

They exchange glances again.

"You're giving me mutagen so I'll lower the shuttles?" Vandlik clarifies.

Their manner of asking a hundred times starts to irritate.

"You caught the very essence, Nicole. Mutagen, and the arsenal as a bonus."

"And if there's no mutagen in the thermos?"

In Vandlik's voice sounds not even caution anymore, but some flattery. As if she's afraid that after this question I'll grab the rifle and in a long burst from the hip turn their love nest into a red-hot radioactive puddle.

"Check it," I say. "You can just run with it to the lab right now. I think when you see it, you'll understand yourselves. Everything as you dreamed. Even tested—you can bring a few reapers for the record. All that's left is report to Earth about mission completion."

They look at each other again, and my patience runs out. Won't play their games anymore. Now they'll have to play mine. I jerkily stand and step back. The chair falls. I hide Elza behind my back and raise "Shiva."

"You both don't get it?! Shit yourselves or what?! This is an ultimatum!!! Major! Get your ass up and straight to the biostation! You have half an hour—check what's in the thermos! Vandlik waits here, and if you screw up—she dies first! Got it?! You come back—she lowers the shuttles. Period! Otherwise she's a corpse. Now get it?! Double time march! Go!"

I got angry then. For real. Strongly. I think I could have fired. Unlikely in a calculated and cold-blooded way, but bang away from fury—one hundred percent. And in my hands is not just anything, but a synth-nuclear "Shiva." And Abu didn't take his eyes off it—was afraid. This is the first sign: a person who can't overcome fear, his gaze sticks to the weapon. Not to your eyes, not to the door through which he could flee, but to the tip of the barrel. As if while she's looking, she's invulnerable.

"Will someone take this damn thermos from me or not?!"

"Gil," Vandlik says quietly.

"She's scared too," I note to myself. "Believed."

"Gil, there is no mutagen..."

"So have him run to the biostation and check!!! I boom so that my own ears ring, and throw her the thermos.

Instead of catching it, she fearfully covers her face with her hands. The thermos hits her wrists and falls with a high metallic "bam." Elza presses her face into my thigh. Her little fingers cling with all their might to the rough fabric of pants, as if I'm about to tear away and she won't let go.

Vandlik's eyes widen for a second, gushing out all the fear accumulated inside, like two steam valves. She instantly becomes like a frightened little girl. Like the one who had met the long-bodied freak in a washed-out "Party or Die" t-shirt. This probably lasts about two seconds. Two frightened adults helplessly froze before an armed clown. And a little girl who

desperately clung to daddy's leg and is trying to survive her next nightmare. And then Vandlik masters herself.

Her lips instantly transform into a blade cut on her pale face. From her eyes disappears the defenseless childish depth, and they again become prickly and tenacious. Tendons move up and down. She briefly and decisively inhales and approaches the thermos. With one movement, as if driving away all evil and fear, she unscrews the lid (it flies aside a good three meters and rolls on the floor).

"Look!" Vandlik shouts.

She clicks the pneumatic plug and tips the thermos onto the glass coffee table. Does it so jerkily that I don't doubt the table will break. The thermos spits something black and sticky onto the glass. I involuntarily recoil, because I have no idea what will happen if I breathe in mutagen. But instead Vandlik... Having poured the black liquid onto the table, she shoves her fingers into it and extends them to me, as if wanting me to lick this filth.

"Here's your mutagen, look!" she shouts. "Here! More boldly! You can smell it, come on!"

Everything happened too fast, so the meaning of what's happening reaches me with delay: she would never have done this with mutagen.

Vandlik still extends her smeared fingers to me, and I, having lowered the rifle, approach her. Actually I've already understood everything. Even before I saw the mutagen isn't black at all, but dark brown. Before I felt the characteristic smell of burning that invariably associates for me with asphalt heated in the sun. Coffee. On Vandlik's fingers, without doubt, are wet coffee grounds that remain in the filter after you've made your morning espresso.

"Coffee," my mouth says, dumbstruck, hopelessly lagging behind my brain.

The brain is already racing both into the past, flipping through memories of everything Irma told me, and into the future, where my plans in which Vandlik lowers twelve shuttles hovering over the camp crumble to dust.

"Can't be," I say and raise the rifle again. As if I can change reality by threatening someone with a weapon.

Through the noise in my ears breaks Abu's calm voice:

"Mutagen is a fiction, Gil. I think if Irma really grew reapers, as you say, it was enough for her to kill individual specimens with electric current to develop resistance in the whole species. The laws of evolution on this planet are somewhat strange..."

"More damage—more improvements," I say to myself, remembering Irma breaking Capybara's bones. "Want to earn, bet on the girl..."

"Put away the rifle," Abu says softly, and I seem to wake up.

"No!" and I'm myself surprised at my hysterical intonation. "You'll still have to lower the shuttles!"

"Listen," Vandlik intervenes. Her voice is now calm too. "Just listen to us. The Corps mission is failed. It was impossible from the start. You can't bring biological weapons from here, because the weapon is the entire planet. Everything on Ish-Chel is one living being."

Probably at this moment I have a stupid look. At least I feel exactly that way. Abu joins in:

"All living things around—animals, trees, grass, death beetles, forest devils, reapers, even the taiga around the camp—all this is fake. These are copies. Fungi united by one huge mycelium. It got to Ish-Chel about a hundred years ago and captured it. The mycelium itself isn't capable of breathing, consuming nutrients from soil—nothing. But it copied local animals and plants adapted to life on this planet. Copied everything, preserving food chains and ecosystems. And exactly these clones breathe and feed for the mycelium. And chimeras are the most perfect weapon of the mycelium, designed to destroy intelligent beings. That's all. The mycelium easily displaced real life because its creations are stronger and constantly improve."

"They simply devoured all living things here," Vandlik interrupts. "That's why we still haven't lowered the shuttles. We're afraid to bring this infection to Earth. After all, among us are chimeras that are impossible to distinguish from people. At all. They don't reveal themselves in any way and simply wait."

"You're lying!" I exclaim and feel Elza press harder to my leg. "Chimeras are stupid! How can you not distinguish them?"

"You don't know a lot, Gilel," Vandlik speaks to me as to a dangerous psychopath; her tone is soft and very serious. "There are others. Sort of royal chimeras. We detected only one such... By behavior we would never in our lives have calculated her. She's exactly like a human. There are, possibly, a few nuances... For example, the question 'why' drove her into a dead end. But formulate it any other way, and she answers without problems."

"And also names," Abu added.

"Exactly," Vandlik agreed. "She didn't remember them. But we don't know if all chimeras are like this or only that one!"

"What did you say?" I asked again.

"We don't know if all chimeras..."

"No," I impatiently waved it off, afraid to lose such a transparent, such shy thought that only for a second surfaced. "What about names?"

They exchanged glances with Abu.

"Some names the chimera was incapable of remembering. Could repeat, but recall in half a minute—no longer. Forgot. But at the same time other names she remembered perfectly... We haven't completely figured this out."

"Gil, if we just take and fly..." Abu begins, but I raise my hand for him to shut up.

"Give me a tester," I say. "These portable tubes of yours..."

"We don't have any," he shakes his head. "There are almost none left at all. We lost the biostation, and all reagents were there."

"Fine... I'll manage without."

Taking Elza by the hand, I go to the exit. Already at the door I turn back to Vandlik:

"Did you tell anyone about your sister? About how that guy strangled her and that you feel guilt because you ran away then? And that the killer still haunts your dreams. Did you tell anyone?"

Vandlik's surprised face was more eloquent than any words.

"Not necessarily this time," I clarify. "Maybe on the first flight. At least to someone."

And in her already completely stunned eyes appeared an almost superstitious fear. Vandlik shakes her head in denial.

(Section 6)

The cigarette's light was visible from afar. Alex was waiting for me by the unfinished complex where Irma once grew reapers. He was on controlled territory, but here, as before, was empty.

"Bro..." having flicked the cigarette into snow, Alex hugged me tight. "I didn't even know if you were alive!"

"Alex..." in his bear hugs it was hard to speak. "Only honestly: you didn't break the promise you gave your mother?"

"About drugs?"

"About powder, to be precise. Have you tried it?"

"You've all already worn me out with this powder! Especially Irma! Haven't tried and don't intend to."

"That's wonderful, friend. Just wonderful."

I squatted down next to Elza.

"Sweetheart, you'll stay with this uncle for now, okay? If necessary, he'll take you to the ship, and I'll fly later. Deal?"

I understood that if they fly away without me, we'll never see each other again. But I couldn't let her guess about this. I needed her to obey Alex under any circumstances. Under any.

"And you?" she asked. "I want to be with you."

"My sunshine... Daddy must do something... I think I'll manage to return. By the way, Uncle Alex is a cool pilot..."

"Little bro," Alex said in an undertone. "Maybe you'll talk to me first?"