Chunk 39

some moment on the second pilot's monitor—I was sitting in his chair—everything turned red. A huge exclamation mark floated up in the center.

"Alex! Problem!"

He only glanced, and not immediately. Nodded, focusing again on control.

"Is this normal?" I couldn't stand it.

"What did you expect!" Alex said this cheerfully, but through clenched teeth. "The computer thinks we're falling! And it, the bastard, is right!!!"

What followed was some kind of hell. Alex called it the phrase "controlled spin," and it seemed to me that one of the two words—is a damn lie. But when my eyes darkened so that beyond the transparent dome of the bridge I could no longer see tongues of flame, the linkor somehow miraculously became polite, smoothly straightened out, and flew horizontally. Gravity returned, the world gained colors, and air finally got into my lungs again.

"Ta-dah!" Alex said cheekily and wiped sweat with his sleeve. "Now we definitely won't burn up! At most, we'll crash to fucking hell!"

We didn't laugh.

"Warn Vandlik," Irma advised. "Just in case."

Vandlik didn't answer right away. I had to introduce myself twice, and she still asked: "Which Hillel?"

"The real one. No more copies."

In the ether silence stood for a few more seconds. Finally the radio croaked hoarsely:

"What do you need?"

"We're landing 'Three Crowns of Cortez.'"

Silence for about five seconds.

"Who's the pilot?"

"Sergeant Alex Pai."

Silence again.

"You're out of your minds. In how long?"

"Estimated landing time—thirteen zero seven. We need first of all cynologists with dogs. We have two hours for everything."

"There are tons of chimeras here! We'll bring all this shit to Earth!"

"We won't. Too long to explain. Need all the testers there are."

The emergency landing gear, designed for landing on something no more than our Moon, cracked upon landing. The linkor tilted on its side, like a barge that

ran aground. But we still landed and were ready to take off again.

On the launch pad, which barely fit such a giant, chaos reigned. Vandlik sent out a forward group half an hour earlier. They looked everything over, made sure that hordes of reapers weren't hiding anywhere, and climbed into the transporter. In the warmth they were lulled in a few minutes. All became chimeras.

I don't know whose fantasies they scanned, but those chimeras were huge in height. Their legs transformed into something like two-meter stilts, and they shot fighters from Shivas from their height, like combat robots. And these guys' tongues were mile-long. Completely unnecessary, but very creepy meter-and-a-half snake tongues. Stupefied by infrasound, the conquistadors took cover. Rarely and extremely inaccurately they would shoot toward the monsters, but the outcome of the battle was obvious. So we landed in time: Alex turned the ship's turret and burned the beasts with the good old ship laser.

In an hour the whole colony had gathered by the linkor, waiting for boarding. Dogs barked—six that didn't run away and didn't die. But there was little use from them anyway—they barked continuously, as if surrounded by hordes of chimeras. Probably they're much more susceptible to infrasound than people, and that's the whole reason. Had to rely entirely on our "whys." The three of us took on the role of controllers, letting colonists through one at a time. The questions were ordinary. Mostly something like "Why did you decide to join the expedition?" Fortunately, the answers were quite adequate, so without doubt all who climbed aboard were human. Additional testing wasn't needed, and that's wonderful—we scraped together only twelve white tubes and spent them very quickly on the severely wounded.

On the edge of the landing pad appeared the last group. Vandlik's angular figure was impossible not to recognize. They were breaking through with combat, firing back again and again so the beasts wouldn't catch up with them. And there were plenty to catch up: besides the incredible-looking chimeras (some vaguely humanoid monsters), a whole swarm of reapers, death beetles, and some other creatures chased them—as if the local jungle had raised a rebellion.

"And hell followed them..." Irma muttered.

"They won't make it," Alex commented gloomily. "Take turns without me."

In half a minute the ship lasers flared again. Hordes of beasts drowned in clouds of vapor and smoke. Vandlik and all the others were able to turn around and run full speed to the linkor. The dogs barked like they'd gone mad, and I ordered them taken away.

Alex jumped out on the ramp and looked worriedly under the linkor's belly.

"Folks, we need to hurry very much."

I turned around. The landing gear was thickly braided with white web, which literally before our eyes was becoming denser and thicker, weaving into living tendrils that tried to tie our ship to the ground.

"Irma, look! Is this dangerous?"

She critically examined the landing gear.

"No. All this will die as soon as we take off. The main thing—don't take a chimera with us."

"Alex, can we take off with this?"

"That's what I'm talking about! For now yes. This is still a combat linkor, not a flying dick! But we can't relax. Besides, from the other side is approaching, fuck it all, the rest of the planet!!!"

Vandlik and her "black sleeves" ran up to the ramp. They crowded at the bottom, breathing heavily. Torn up. One more wounded—hangs like a sack on the shoulders of two, tourniquet on leg, face white as chalk. I recognized him and shuddered. Our Abu. Unconscious.

"Are there testers left?"

"I'll check now!" Alex dove inside the ship.

"Listen carefully!" I announced. "Everyone needs to quickly answer control questions, without this no one boards! You'll answer in turn, answers can't be repeated! The wounded stays here for now, we'll carry him ourselves. Officer Vandlik, you're first! Why did you decide to join the army?"

She looked at me stupidly and blinked her eyes.

"Officer Vandlik..." I involuntarily found the safety on the Shiva's body.

"She's shell-shocked!" one of the fighters shouted. "Blast went off nearby! She doesn't speak!"

Irma and I exchanged glances.

"Do you hear me, officer Vandlik?"

She's looking not in my eyes, but at my mouth. And even tilted her head a bit, like Vera did. And is silent, blinking confusedly. Irma grabbed the rifle more conveniently.

"Alex! Where are you!"

"They're gone!" he jumped out on the ramp again with an empty box. "Not one, bro..."

Vandlik looks at us with a strange expression. Her eyes run back and forth.

"We don't take anyone who can't answer," says Irma, as if I was going to argue. "Nobody."

"I know..."

Vandlik looks at us helplessly. Her eyes run.

"Yes!" I shout. "Everyone except the control officer, come up one at a time! Last name and why you decided to join the corps, quickly! Whoever repeats someone's reason—stays here!"

They move toward the ramp, and Vandlik, seeing this, starts to climb first. Irma immediately raises the Shiva.

"Back!"

The "black sleeves" recoil.

"Don't get hot..." I squeezed her elbow.

Vandlik stopped, opened her mouth wide, and strangely shook her head...

"She really looks shell-shocked," Alex muttered. "Her ears are completely blocked. Probably got hit good..."

"And she also looks like a chimera!" Irma cut off, not thinking about lowering the rifle.

"Officer Vandlik," I shout, afraid that Irma will fire. "Get off the ramp! Step back!"

I think she understood not the words, but the gestures. But she got off the ramp and let others through.

In a minute the "black sleeves" successfully passed the check and were inside. Abu remained (we had to put him right on the ground), Vandlik, and the three of us.

"That's it?" Irma asked uncertainly. "Do we seal up?"

"Stop!" Alex suddenly shouted. "There's one more!"

He disappeared into the iron belly of the linkor and in half a minute returned with a white tube in his hands.

"In the jacket," he explained breathlessly, "that covered Elza. Took a spare."

He held out the tester to me. I uncertainly shifted my gaze from Abu to Vandlik.

"Only one flies, Hillel," Irma reminded. "No other way."

I think. For a long time—several painful seconds, stretched out a hundred times. Alex and Irma seem not even to breathe. They're waiting. Bit their tongues so as not to rush. The radio comes alive: "Hurry up! There's a sea of them here!!!" And a stream of profanity. I close my eyes and count to five. Someone has to decide.

"Vandlik," I finally say. "If we assume they're both human, we need to save the one with better chances to survive. Abu—is wounded. Let Vandlik take the test."

Irma nods silently. Alex whispers: "Hurry, bro,"—and, leaning over the ramp railing, anxiously looks at the landing gear braided with mycelium. I descend a few steps and hold out the tester to Vandlik.

From everything it's clear she immediately understood what's what. Confidently took the tube. But for some reason isn't hurrying to do the test. Strangely turns the tester in her hand... And I can't get rid of the feeling that with every movement she reminds me of Vera, who just hatched from a cocoon.

"Come on!" and I gesture for her to hurry. "Faster!"

Vandlik looks for some reason at Abu. The whole time only at him. Either really a chimera and doesn't understand a damn thing, or... And then she approaches the major and kneels. I didn't understand at first... Irma jerked the rifle... And it turned out—to kiss: she pressed her lips to his face for several long seconds.

"Human!" Alex whispered. "She's saying goodbye... She's human!"

We're silent. Vandlik strokes Abu's head.

"Give the major the test! And you can tell by her..." Alex says again, but Irma interrupts.

"We have no right to risk. Neither can answer, so only the test."

And clenched her teeth. It's not easy for her either.

Vandlik took Abu's hand and pressed her cheek. We don't rush. Really want to hurry, but we wait. And then she

takes the tube more conveniently... And presses it to the major's finger. Turns to us. Places the tester on Abu's chest. Picks up her rifle and walks toward the camp.

"Human..." Alex repeats. "She saved another... Human..."

"We have no right, Dukhovsky," Irma says quietly and irritatedly wipes a tear on her cheek.

In the distance Vandlik's rifle rumbled—she was concentratedly burning beasts on the edge of the launch pad, giving the last battle as a grandmother with jaguar eyes. Alex descended to Abu and started shaking his tester. Irma watched Vandlik. She turned several times and waved for us to fly. And I saw how Irma doubted. How she struggled with the desire to take her who had been her closest friend... Probably she still would have rushed after her and taken her, to hell with all the risks. But then right under Vandlik's feet the ground rose. I managed to see the snouts of several huge reapers at once, when control officer Nicole Angela Vandlik, not even changing her facial expression, turned the Shiva's barrel down and pressed the trigger, drowning together with the beasts in a white thermonuclear flash.

Abu's tester beeped, glowing with green light. Alex and I, as if coming to our senses, dragged the major onto the linkor. Irma looked at the black scorched spot on the snow and cried. I had to grab her by the shoulders and forcibly drag her inside. The heavy ship hatch clanged shut. "Three Crowns of Cortez" trembled with its whole hull, breaking free from the mycelium's last embrace.

15

We exited the transverse jump one-sixth of a light year from the Sun. Jeweler's precision. One short jump remained directly to Earth. Three weeks with acceleration and deceleration.

Most were licking their wounds. Some physical, some emotional. The lion's share of the dead—conquistadors. Of the children not one died, and from this point of view the evacuation went excellently. Abu was recovering. But more than two hundred people we still lost. And weeping for those who remained on Ish-Chel didn't subside the whole first week. One of the cynologists lost his

beloved dog. Ridiculous, probably, against the general background... But the guy, besides the dog, had nobody. It seemed to him the dog was lost somewhere on the linkor, and to explain to him that there's nowhere to get lost here was useless, so everyone tolerated his mournful cries when at dawn he called for his beloved dog, wandering through all the ship's decks. The eight "secret biologists" walked gloomy and hid their eyes. I think in these three weeks they became maximally close acquainted with their own conscience. About Vandlik's feat everyone spoke everywhere. Sometimes a nasty thought pricked me, like, if you only knew why they brought you all to Ish-Chel...

The very first day after departure I climbed into the automatic medical module. Just to understand how much time I have. The result was like a miracle: the fraction of abnormal protein in which pathological changes began—zero percent! Zero! It turned out the hand numbness was caused by a cyst the size of an apricot pit in the elbow area. The apparatus successfully removed it. And here was a nuance, after which I struggled another hour and a half with the medical module, trying to understand how, just in case, to erase the data. Namely: the cyst was one hundred percent composed of so-called "wrong tissue"—a special combination of cells characteristic exclusively of fungi and lichens. Having scanned my main fear, the mycelium decided to somewhat speed up events. I guess the same story with Irma and her cancer, which during the time in the cocoon disappeared without a trace. Here's the mysterious mechanism that makes anxieties come alive...

"And now you're healthy?" Irma asked when I told her.

"Honestly, now my chances are again fifty-fifty."

And I remembered her words, that for happiness you need to find yourself "an elephant on level ground," then get rid of it and enjoy.

"But, you know, Irma, you're right. Now I'm healthy!"

I wanted to hug her, but she raised her hand and said: "High five!" I slapped her palm, forcing a smile out of myself with all my might. It feels like she was much closer and dearer to me than I to her... Our relationship remained purely friendly, even despite the fact that she spent all her free time with Elza, as if she were her mother. Elza, by the way, behaved wonderfully. Didn't ask about Vera. When I decided to talk about it, she said that "when she slept" (Elza called the period in the cocoon that), she saw mama's dreams and understands everything. I think it's about

Vera's memories. About the same way I visited Nathan Gog's memories...

"She loved you very much, daddy," Elza said. "Did you know?"

I knew. Forgot lately. And she forgot too. But we both knew.

And on the day when the main event was the appearance in the porthole of the illuminated grain of our native Earth, I was watching a movie in the wardroom. Well, watching... Staring through the screen, not getting into the plot—dissolved in the exclamations and laughter of other conquistadors.

Elza was playing with a tablet. Suddenly Irma came up from behind and hugged me. For the first time, if you don't count her clone (God, how wild that sounds now!).

"Hillel... I didn't tell you, but I should have..." she whispered. "Thank you!"

"For what?"

"For pulling me out..."

"From the cocoon?"

"From the cocoon too."

She leaned to my ear and whispered:

"Remember when you spent the night at my place?"

"At your copy's."

"But I felt everything," her lips almost touched my ear, and it was terribly pleasant. "And I remember everything."

"You almost broke my arm then!"

"And that exactly wasn't me! For the future please take note!"

She kissed me on the neck and ran away to Elza—to read. I caught myself thinking that I won't find anyone better than Irma. Not even that. That I don't need anyone except her...

"Check this out!" a conquistador entered the wardroom.

Everyone unstuck from the movie and turned. It was that same cynologist who lost the dog. For the first time since the day of departure he changed his mournful expression to a smile. On his arms, under bravely rolled-up sleeves, flaunted new, freshly inked tattoos.

"Wow!" someone said. "What's the theme?"

"I dreamed it. Just every night in my sleep! You have to look at both at once!"

And he crossed his arms on his chest so that two Gothic inscriptions on skin still bright red from the needle merged into one.

"ONLY GOD" on the right and "JUDGE ME" on the left.

T H E E N D

Kyiv, 2012–2018

DISCLAIMER

I must admit, I made up this story. It's not excluded that it will actually happen in the future, but for now all characters are fictional, coincidences are accidental and all that. But...

The syndrome Hillel suffers from exists in reality, though the real disease differs somewhat, particularly it's not purely hereditary. The real disease is called "Huntington's chorea." A child of someone with chorea has a 50-percent chance of inheriting the genetic defect—exactly this inspired me to create for Gil an eternally half-empty glass. The probability of drawing this ticket exists for everyone, but it's—somewhere one in eight hundred thousand.

Twice I was ready to abandon this novel and finished "The Dance of the Underdog" only thanks to Mykhaylo Brynykh, whom I highly respect as a literary critic and to whom I first gave to read still very raw one hundred pages of unfinished manuscript. Mykhaylo unexpectedly colorfully praised the text and reminded me of the pantheon sacred to me consisting of Harry Harrison, Stephen King, and Ray Bradbury, which incredibly inspired me. To the question of how it is—to see the matter through to the end, he exclaimed in Russian, imitating a Caucasian accent (because he was convinced he was quoting a Soviet marathon champion from Georgia, whose name he forgot): "To run you must run!" And I'm infinitely grateful to him for this secret of writing technique that allows not waiting for inspiration and not suffering with doubts. Want to write—write.

The name of the linkor "Three Crowns of Cortez" comes from the three crowns on the coat of arms of the most famous conquistador Hernan Cortez. The right to create a personal coat of arms in addition to the family one he obtained from Spanish king Charles V as a reward for conquering the New World. The three crowns on it symbolize the three conquered Aztec kings, but there are other interpretations, about which they still argue.

The space frigate "Artillerist Hans" is named in honor of one of the 18 participants of Fernan Magellan's circumnavigation expedition, who alone of all managed to finish the journey and returned to the port of Seville in September 1522. Magellan himself died on that journey. So, their surnames

remained in history forever, except for one participant, about whom is known only that his name was Hans, and he was an artillerist.

The terrible synth-nuclear rifle "Shiva" I named not in honor of the Hindu goddess, but in memory of the giant twenty-beam laser installation, designed in 1977 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, to carry out the first attempt at thermonuclear fusion in laboratory conditions. The attempt itself took place in 1978 and failed—"Shiva" lacked power. However, the attempts continue to this day, they've designed not even a second, but a third installation—this time a monstrous 192-beam (!) laser, called "N.I.F."—but to "start" thermonuclear fusion in laboratory conditions still hasn't succeeded.

The story about the doctor-hostage who quoted Ecclesiastes to terrorists—is real. It happened in the early nineties on Sakhalin Island, where I then lived with my parents. The paramedic knowledgeable in biblical texts was the father of my classmate. Him, because of obsessive preaching, they literally kicked out from the hostages (!) by four repeat offenders who were escaping from the local detention center. The continuation and resolution of this story are no less interesting, and someday I will definitely tell it.

Everything about fungi and lichens in this book (except for the invented intelligent mycelium from planet Ish-Chel)—is true. I'm very grateful to my old friend-biologist Pavel Novikov for consultations. It's wonderful that he specialized exactly in fungi, and could tell me so much interesting about hyphae, giant multi-kilometer mycelia, predatory fungi and lichens, inside which in eternal fungal slavery live algae. Pavel not only helped me construct the ecosystem of planet Ish-Chel, but also gave several very interesting dramaturgical tips, closely connected with biology, biologists, and fantasies around this.

The story about two images of the Mayan goddess Ish-Chel—is true.

The chimeric dream about sun-moths and construction on a wasteland is also real (if you can say that about dreams). It was dreamed several times to my wife Svitlana Tykhonova. Just as real is the story about the half-mad baba Gorboshiya who chased children with an ax for innocent jokes. In reality that woman was called Tanka-Hunchback, and among the kids who fled from her at night on a deserted

concrete road was my Svitlana, who was then about thirteen. I'm very grateful to my beloved for these vivid images. And it's good that in life that old woman never caught up with anyone...

All the riddles in the novel (except the riddle about the strawberry flower, of course) were made up by my daughter Leya when she was four years old.

And last. Two poppy seeds at a distance of almost three dozen kilometers from each other—this is pure truth. You can calculate it yourself too.

Space is damn empty.