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– We have talked to the guys for a long time. Many are unhappy! Because this is not right. We are here, in the Zone, in the middle of the Trouble, the main ones, so you pay us well. And here, you see, you're driven. We teach you, drag you, share the combat experience with you. And here we are now! You are living off us along with the same psychos as our resting Senior Ensign Petrovich. Wanted me to go as a bumper, b-bitch! Me! So “a thousand and a half” goose made sense to him. And me, the old stalker… he decided to appoint me as a bumper in a tough place. And for what? The poles were lost! I did not lose them… So, what's up with you, contract boy? What the hell!

Vadim turned around. Bashkalo was standing, his gun lowered, staring at the smoke arch in space, his jaw hanging as far as the chin strap allowed. However, he recovered faster than Vadim.

– Stop, sto-op! – he said, taking Vadim on sight again. – Calm down, son. Ye-e-es… Fucking gitik! – he exclaimed softly and cheerfully. – The time hole. Well… Fine. Are you ready for work and defense, comrade traveler to the past?

Vadim imagined how Bashkalo saw him, Vadim, in general, so to speak. Against the background of the smoke patterns, in the center of the main arch of the system of gitiks “The Time Hole -1”. A beautiful target. (Mumbler laughed.)

– As for me – I'm ready, – said Vadim loudly, cutting off this laugh, which nobody except him could hear. – And what about you, a chunk, are you ready?

– So you're not a pussy, right? A brave one, right? – said Bashkalo grinning, with pleasure. – Well, say it, say it, bumper. Last speeches. The Senior Ensign Petrovich was kind, but Ensign Bashkalo is evil. No damn way, puppy, you will not understand me. And you did not understand the meaning of the situation. For you it won't make a difference if I was lying as a corpse now and Petrovich was drinking vodka. Do you think he's better than me? He has done in more of ours here than guerillas in his Afghanistan! He was a beast, his soul was dead!

Vadim stopped listening to him. Bashkalo noticed this immediately.

– So you're a brave one, right? – he said over the gunsight. – Well, come on, come on, come on, go ahead… you sensitive leather stocking. Bring me some prehistorical loots, my two-legged cat. Some flowers. Dinosaurs. And will see, what we shall do with you later. But if you don't get out, then you don't. A grenade after you. You don't know, right? Exactly “procrustes” explode very well. How do you think we made it almost halfway to the airfield? So many of these tough places were there… Stand down, – he said to himself. – Come on, Sverzhin. Farewell.

Vadim turned away, looking at the hole, that means looking at the steppe, framed with a smoke frame. “Slowly, try it with your hand first”, timidly suggested Mumbler, who became serious. Vadim shook his head. No. He rummaged around the belt, pulled out another strip of gauze from the clamp.

– Hey, hey, warrior, no jokes!.. – proclaimed Bashkalo expressively.

Vadim showed him the gauze over the shoulder. Bashkalo went silent. Vadim tied several knots at one of the ends, one above the other, put the formed ball in his mouth and began drooling on it. The wet ball weighted the strip rather well for something homemade, making the “risk” manageable, but without a sinker, without a nut. For some reason here and now it seemed important to be iron-free. (The thought about the first one who ran through the second railcar flashed again.) Keeping the “risk” in his outstretched hand, Vadim began to swing it forward and backward. Here the ball touched the hole, like the surface of a vertical puddle, no waves ran, but the gauze immediately stretched out. Vadim unclasped his fingers and the hole sucked it in. And Vadim, without a farewell sigh, bent and stepped after it. And disappeared.

Having waited a moment, ensign Bashkalo licked the mustache, sticky with blood, lowered the barrel of the machine gun and said into space:

– And what now, bitch? Is that all, bitch?

Meanwhile, two hundred million years ago Vadim was smothered by an enormous sun, by overwhelming heavy, damp odors, making his knees weak, knocking him down and tossing at the same time. And he fell with his eyes shut, not painfully but heavily on the left side and left shoulder, as if somebody had snatched him back and thrown him to the left. He knew for sure that he had already fallen, struck the ground, but inside everything continued to fly, to churn, howling with cold in the lower abdomen… and a huge wet rough palm grabbed him in that place between the ears, where the balance control center of the brain is located, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it to another huge wet rough palm. And back. And forth again. And he was aware of all this, with no sign of fainting. His head was ringing clearly, and this ringing clarity was thrown from side to side.

He waited. The panic of the five senses subsided with his eyes shut. Signals from the periphery appeared: “It's wet!”, they informed him. He opened one eye and immediately saw a prehistoric bennettite flower on its stalk, bent in front of his nose. Vadim shook himself up. With one eye open, somehow the head wasn't spinning.

He was sitting in the thickets of Wollemi, his last “flare” was giving off smoke in front of him, dirty gauze strips were hanging on a stems of strange grasses, including his own, the clean one with the ball, wet with drool. There were also a few rusty nuts thrown by Alex the Aspirant. The sun was pressing from above, it was sweltering, the air was bitter, and one had to literally drink it, rather than inhale, so dense it was.

– July 14, 64, 765, 563, 122 BC, – said Mumbler aloud, without hiding. Not two hundred million, but also nice. Please shave, like dad said.

Vadim looked around. Behind him was a pile of some kind of a fern, from which some kind of bamboo tree protruded. Not bamboo. Dinosaur-like, with scales. On the left, in an Ilex's embrasures, which was not focusing in the eyes, glistened either a hairy lake or a Savannah, simply flooded with water. Everything was sparkling unbearably, everything was wet, everywhere were rainbows. On the right there were impenetrable bushes. Not bushes. Something green and impenetrable. The Lost World, the “black” Conan Doyle in eight volumes. All this did not interest Vadim; he had already come to his senses. He was interested in the way out. From here, from this side nothing clearly indicated the time hole, but even in this heat there was a feeling of heavy chill on the sweaty back, cold from the Zone. The hole was there and the hole was open. Vadim was surprised: the temperature difference was very high, dozens of degrees, there must be steam, it should be steaming like bath doors in winter. But there was no steam. Vadim looked at his wet dirty hands. Seemed like he was sitting in the puddle. The ground under his ass was deeply slushy, saturated with wet humus; brown water flooded the dents from his palms right before his eyes. Something buzzed past his face like a slow bullet, Vadim twitched the head away. His vision still could not cope with the general focus, the huge green sunny world fell on its side every time he opened the second eye, the dizziness was still there, as strong as ever… Something in the stomach slurped loudly and gave a nasty taste in his mouth; but it pleased him. “Now I am going to vomit”, thought Vadim, “And it will become easier, as on the “neutral” with the first “kiss”. Yes, yes, it is already getting easier.”

Then it began. He did not have time. The hell knows why “Montana” on his hand started to play.

Tam-ta-tam-ta. Ta-ta-tam. Never let me go. Tam-tadam-tadam…

The first organized melody played on planet Earth, the Solar System, Milky Way, God's World, by the very first tune attracted to the confused, disoriented Vadim the keen attention of a young Triceratops, who had just left his group of hatchlings in the morning of this ancient day. The young Triceratops had gone into the jungle because it was now time for the heroic and dangerous adventure of searching for the mother of his offspring. He was equally scared and uncertain, but male pride was burning at his intimate parts and forcing him on, and he was ready to snack on flint and rape T-Rex females. So, is it possible to blame him for the fact that the squeaking of the watch, inaccurate in its electronic annoyance, and the general light-headedness of the melody infuriated him to the point of “kill immediately, bite!”? The young Torosaurus walked through the Jurassic, looking out for the moos of young females, and here we go – music by Poulton, words by Fosdick, performance by Elvis Presley. Who would not be furious? Everyone would be furious.

Vadim did not immediately distinguish the attacking horned hippo from the surrounding flora. And that actually saved his life, when he finally did, like a bunny on a mysterious picture, and realized that the tenth chapter of “The Lost World” had already begun.

PART ONE

1990. DIFFERENT OFFERS

Archive of Shugpshuits (Book of the Trouble)

File “Blinchuk-4”

A fragment of self decryption, pp. 1-5

(Spelling errors fixed)

(For the previous meetings, we had developed a little communication ritual, I do not want to decipher the reasons behind. Blinchuk, scarcely seeing me and scarcely saying “Hello”, started whining again and again, with the peevishness of a helpless sick man, how it nags at him, on his deathbed, that he never visited the Zone. But he could have. Oh, he could have! His rating would crush any Wobenaka. Or Gena the Genious, now deceased. But it didn't work out. And even now, when it doesn't matter anymore, the evil troublers, trackers, they are also selfish smugglers, and related others – the little boozers, the clumsy beggars, and border-hoppers, allowed him to go only to the “neutral”. But he still didn't reach the exit, he was banned. He, who had been working as a god of the Perimeter for fifteen years! And here is your regard, here is your glory. And what is he supposed to do, whom to ask so that he will at least be buried there, in the Trouble. In the park of the Old Tens. That is his dying wish. If only you, comrade writer, could put in a word for me before your aliens. It is not the Ass, his former subordinate and protégé, that the old General and Major Blinchuk should ask. And so on so forth.)

– Sergey Borisovich, this is now the third time you're trying to wring a tear from me, saying how unfortunate you are, nobody needs you, old retired General-Major; damned Maloroslikov pranked you, the bloody Putin hadn't given a hand.

– And what, is it so hard for you to listen to the whining of a dying man once again? I should have finished you, such an insensitive shit you are, right at the moment you appeared in my Pre-Zone on April 6^th, 1998 on a thirteen-hour bus. I would have sent someone, and – you would be finished like a gnat. Actually, get out of here! Now I'll call Dr. Vyatkin, and he'll expose you. Doctor Vyatki-in! Come here!

– For the third time, Sergei Borisovich. This is already recorded and will not disappear.

– Got out of it. Well, give me some water.

(Drinks)

– So they set me up as the Commandant at the Trouble in 1990. In November. After the putsch, the mess, the bickering, that time I was a Colonel. And then Pasha Grachev called me from Ukraine, and… And until the end, until the fifteenth, until last year… Did you at least know this, writer?

– The whole world knows this, Sergey Borisovich. But the putsch was in 91. And you were appointed as a Commandant of the Zone in 1990. By the Gorbachev’s decree.

(Pause)

– You know what? Fuck you, smart ass!

(Drinks)

– The whole world… I did my job badly if the whole world knows me!

(Drinks)

– On the other hand, though I was like the Governor-General… How can you not know me… And everybody knew… Ones who needed to know and who didn't need to… So, I didn't tell you yesterday, I didn't tell you the day before, but I will tell you today. I was, Shug… pshug… pshuitz… Stierlitz¹⁷1, damn it! I have been watching you carefully, from that day, when you came to my Pre-Zone on a fake visa. Ufologist-conspirator! I know exactly who you are. That's why I agreed to talk to you, as I'm dying. I know that the “troublers” trust you, that the trackers care of you and that you had your hands on the Trouble Radio and saved many in the Trouble through this matter. And that you're kind of a priest-confessor here… Although you're a boor.

– Sergey Borisovich.

– Quiet and “yes, sir”, you scribbler! Damned putsch in ninety-one… Well yes, in ninety-one! And you say “yes” and list-ten, what if there is a reason why I, an old stub with the brain cancer, am telling you the same for the third time. About death, about funerals, about the fact that I have never been in the Zone, never stood a foot. So get this, writer! Maybe repeating makes sense, think about it. And you tell me about your putsch.

– I'm listening.

(Finishes the water)

– Is Antipov still flying?

– Still flying.

– Pour some more water. The water from the “neutral” is delicious. Where was I? Yes. Accordingly, we are very fortunate that the Americans fall under the Lightning¹⁸2, that's the thing. There was no way to hide the Zone because of them. Although Gorbachev, and then even Yeltsin, gave their civilian subordinates instructions to submit such proposals, and then Yeltsin even delegated the question to the General Staff. I know this for sure. I had been transferred from Chernobyl to Kapustin not just because, I was present at all their tea-drinking meetings, have been wasting the time directly from the Lightning, from Ryzhkov's commission. That one, you won't remember. At all, starting from the first, on New Year's eve in eighty-nine…

– Sorry, you said “we are very fortunate with Americans”, Sergey Borisovich. Who are “we”?

(Pause)

– Humanity, damn it. Such an ufologist you are.

(Pause)

– I'm listening.

– So then yes, sir, listen. The Americans… Now what…

(Highlights “now”)

– …we are fortunate – it's understandable why. The internationalization of the Zone, albeit under a moratorium, is not going anywhere. But even then! In ninety-one, when I ran out of money all at once – Americans helped out. And earlier, straight away. In all the editorial offices of the Commission for the Zone affairs there were Americans. There are, for example, Yeltzin, Gorbachev and Nazarbaev sitting down and here is Matlock in a corner, rubbing his glasses. He went there like it was his work. Although, of course, there were secret meetings too. I'll tell you later… maybe. I remember that time I was agreeing with all of them, say, that would be good if the quarantine would be tight, up to the idea that the administrative border with Kazakhstan, at that time still a republic, should be moved for at least thirty kilometers off the exclusion zone around Kapustin and the rest of the test-site, like in Chernobyl, for fifty kilometers – even better. To decide something about the river, to start a project for a bridge across Ahtuba near Kotly, the highway and the railway to Astrakhan through it, through the floodplain… and total unity in military command. And of course, all this is sponsored by Americans. That's what was the politics… In the Soviet Union, until it was over, it would have still been possible, at least at the level of decision-making. We did not have enough time.

(Thinks)

– Actually, later the bridge was built somehow, but with the rest, with the quarantine, it didn't work out…

– Sergey Borisovich, sorry to interrupt, I didn't ask yesterday, the most interesting in all those meetings with the presidents for me…

– So you always interrupt! I have already told you: you can interrupt. Interrupt. You see, I confuse the dates. Enough apologizing. You're not a gentleman, and I'm not a monsieur.

– Have you there, in the Kremlin, considered at least some of the Lightning's other possible reasons? I mean – seriously. Because from the January 1990 there were already regular film shoots at the “thirteenth hostel”, the phalanx was also filmed in the garage cooperative, and things with time-space were already reliably recorded. And there was not a single corpse in the city – that was known from the beginning…

– Exactly so. But in general, there wasn't any talk about aliens, you know… They avoided it. And, accordingly, me too. What damn aliens, they said? Unknown kind and that's it. A gaz meteorite, it’s final. How can serious people talk about this?! Such words aren't even invented…

(Drinks)

– When Gaidar began to drag his father-in-law, the writer, Strugatsky, to these gatherings, I could see how they were jarred. Everybody was jarred. And it jarred me. Fiction writer at the meeting of a top-secret government commission! What a story… What are you staring at? The writer was invited not to a bathhouse for some culture, but to a serious adult meeting, with minutes… Gaidar, yes, he seriously considered it, but kept silent. He was a cunning, clever guy. And this Natanovich, although he's a science fiction writer, he used to be in the military, moreover, he was in our military, special one… He also acted smart. That was impressive. Like, he was just sitting with his stick, but whatever he says – everything is right to the point. He actually recommended announcing an indefinite quarantine, to build the camp for the troublers and not let anybody out… And those who had already left, to relatives maybe, following the resettlement program – make them come back. Notwithstanding the titles. Such a mess started there, whoa! Everybody was stunned. But I was ready to put a candle for him¹⁹1 because of this for so many times! In the beginning – how they were all barking at him…with one voice. I was also barking, such a fool. Like, it's not nineteen thirty-seven anymore. Democracy, human rights. New thinking. Those times nobody even knew these words, that's what it is about.

– And Matlock? Was he there at the time?

– And Matlock was listening, sipping tea… Or whatever was in his thermos. Coca-Cola. We always kept his own thermos. And an interpreter. He spoke Russian, but not very well.

– And then?

– And he says: I think, he says, the opinion of Arkadiy Natanovitch is a deeply thoughtful opinion (it is full of thoughtful thought). And everyone immediately became silent. Impressive! It's horrendous what would have happened if there had been no quarantine.

– M-m, yes… And Strugatsky, did he also say nothing about an aliens, about UFOs?..

– I'm telling you, ufologist: with Gaidar they were birds of feather. Smart people, but father-in-law was experienced, been there. A drinker, a person who understands. But they both also knew how to keep quiet. And this book… About stalkers… He did write it, invented it in his head! When I was reading it, I did not believe my own eyes! Ten years before the Lightning… even more! With his brother… The book itself spoke for him. Even Yeltsin read it afterwards, I know this for sure… His brother, a scientist, was also at the meeting once… And in general I had a strange feeling that he, this Arkady, somehow knew something more, and knew it in advance. After all, Gorbachev reported object to the Commission about Zhitkur-9 not instantly, but when he had already signed his resignation. In January of ninety-one… The soviet Union was already finished.

(Laughs)

– That moment everybody lost the gift of speech. Yeltsin whacked his chair into the wall, consequently Primakov dropped the glass with kefir… And Gorbachev is just sits there, calm, blinks, fidgeting with a pen in a hands… So, this Arkady Strugatsky, in my opinion, didn't even change his face expression… Set that aside. Listen, ufologist, I lied to you, listen! Gaidar was not even there, at the first meetings! But Strugatsky already was present. He already attended the meetings in eighty-nine, Pavlov was there, Ryzhkov, Khryuchkov, of course, and no Yeltsin in sight, I had been flying from Ukraine… At Yazov's call.. Exactly!

– It is strange.

– Do you understand? Even I do not know everything, okay? Officially, I was transferred to Kapustin on the fifteenth of November, and on the twentieth, the first meeting of the Commission was held with Yeltsin invited as the president of the RSFSR. Because this was still the Soviet Union, not CIS… But Nazarbayev, yes, was already the president. Of the republic. And he was worrying a lot. Such a horror was happening in the Kazashsky Corner of the Zone. The terrifying walls of the fire, this plasma lava… Well, you saw the movie.

– Mm, well… And the name “Kazashsky”, did everybody call it so from the very beginning?

– I do not understand.

– “Kazakh” would be correct. Kazakh Corner, Kazakh Curve.

– Fuck knows. It just happened so. Actually, I never thought about it.

– By the way why did the main word not catch on if everything was by Strugatskys?

– What main word?

– Stalker.

– Stalker? Is this your question? A-a-a fuck kn… Set that aside, I remember! This Natanovich also asked me… it was disturbing him. That is when we were drinking with him later, already in ninety-five or ninety-six, when I was in Moscow for the last time… Why are you smiling, writer? Understandably that it was interesting for him… It did not catch on because of Americans. It's something offensive, from English slang. Wanker, or something like that. Sat that aside, I remember. A peeping tom. A sexual blackmailer, accordingly. Rubbish. So it did not catch on. And then you, ufologists, immediately appeared in the Pre-Zone, at that time there was an extraterrestrial craze among the people, and there, among you, ufologists, climbers and tourists of all sorts, so the “track”, “traverse”, all this, too. Well “track” is “track” and, accordingly, “trackers”. And it happened. In my opinion, therefore that is how. As for me, I prefer “walkers”, as we, military men, used to say. And aliens. Although there is a subtlety. Well, you know.

– I see. I'm very interested in the intensity called the “Mother's cracks”.

– How did you say?

– The “Mother's cracks”.

– It’s the first time I've heard it. And what is this called scientifically?

– I don't know.

– The first time I've heard it. I bet trackers told you tales again, right, writer?

– It seems not.

– Ok then. Don't you hammer my dying head with nails. Ask precisely, about me.

– Yeah… Who did you meet with first regarding the aliens? Surely with Petrovich? The famous conference in Two Pipes?

– Well, yes. No! I had the aliens to the fullest from the start, almost choked; faced the Father and his terrible daughter. The same day, to be honest… It was on the next day as I presented myself to the personnel at the Commandant's office upon arrival. On the seventeenth of November of nineteen ninety.

– And your “kiss”, by the way, if it's not a secret…

– Pour some water. A single “greeting”, no tongues. Good timing. Fucking paralysis of the fucking eyeball. The left one. My intuition is weak, you can count I don't have it at all. Accordingly, the “kiss” is alike this, incomplete. Just like “get off”.

– And you say that you have never been in the Zone…

– I haven’t been in the Zone, I haven’t. This is the truth. You think I'm kidding you? I'm not kidding. I guess I should tell you, right?

– I haven't seen the Father… Very interesting! Legendary times.

– For now maybe they are legendary. But then, I did not make a step out of the Headquarters without a jar of bromine… When you are sitting in a meeting with the citizens on Thursdays and Fridays, only bromine can save you. No vodka. Straight to the grave. People would drink to death, die in a mouth. Because a day lasts for a year… The same in the Zone and outside… “A hundred meters – ten miles” Yeah…

(Drops the plastic glass. I get under the bed to take the glass.)

– Sorry, slipped out. Yes, so the Father… Even CATU²⁰1 did not exist at that time. Two years before CATU. And the Zone wasn't even registered as QZAI²¹2 yet in Russian documents. Only locals called it the Trouble. The Trouble, they said, the Mother-Trouble. And outside it was “the emergency zone”, and that's it. The gas meteorite. There was an order to provide an exclusion zone, and strict one, at least for ten kilometers around.

– And ZONA, Z, O, N, A, – when is this?

– This is when Yeltsin and Clinton signed the Memorandum. But who's gonna call it like this here? The Zone is the Zone. Kapustin's quarantine. Blue houses!

– Oh, already then?

– Yes. When else? They are deeply Soviet, these Finnish trailers. They found a few at the warehouses in the Middle Akhtuba, dismantled, still lying there from the seventies. Helped a lot. Exactly two families, two entrances. I myself had been living in one with my wife for about four years.

(Pause)

– It was detected from the tower in the city. Do you know about the tower? Later it burned like a candle. It was built behind the highway, opposite Volgogradsky checkpoint, right in the middle of the Dog's village, where they demolished a residential complex. Almost on the “neutral”, oh God! That time the “neutral” did not get to the center of the Dog's village yet, only the first line existed… Didn't you hear about that tower? Really didn't? One hundred and fifty meters? By accord! Five hundred thousand rubles down the drain! I was absolutely amazed when they showed it to me. Ostankino²²3 lookalike! Then they tried to sort out the paperwork for a long time, and then it burned down when the “neutral” spread in '93. Shame on you, historian… So he was walking along Severodvinsk street, the Father with his girl. During the night wooly had eaten the fog on the Terminal Square, so the visibility through the summer part of the “neutral” was perfect. Right above district thirty-nine. And he was wa-a-alking right down the roadway. I had just come to the Maldavanov's office, haven't even opened the vault yet. And they give me a call from the tower: this, they say, and this, comrade Colonel. We are informing you, according to the instructions. A person with a child is walking in the city, on the territory of the disaster. Do you understand? D-damned watchers, caught me up, as if I was new. “Turn on the video system, comrade Colonel!” And broadcast an image from the camera on the TV in my office.

– Was the Father wearing his cloak?

– O-oh, was he in his cloak? This cloak was the one and only in the whole world… And toy guns on it, like on a Christmas tree. And the girl in a cradle on his back. Call “Kashchenko” mental hospital²³1. So I was hooked. Grabbed the duty guide and ran into the Zone, not listening to what he was trying to yell. A hero, heroic among other heroes. Also dragged my own guard with me, an idiot.

(He crosses his heart twice, as all locals do: from the left to the right and from the right to the left)

– “Give a horse to the Colonel!” It is funny to remember. Pour some more water.

CHAPTER 1

About twenty minutes later the fisherman²⁴1-Colonel finally exclaimed that his eye is, kind of, healed, damn your mother this and, accordingly, that way. Then he said that this is, as such, an outrage, comrade guide, because Devil knows where the man in the black cloak down to the heels could go with the child along a terrible street of the dead city; and that it is necessary, damn you, to warn your boss about the special effects of the “neutral” that violate the rescue operation in its very beginning.

Comrade guide, a young man named Matveev, and nicknamed Nabis, was silently listening to the high-ranking fisherman. Because it is no reason to console him, a scumbag, and it is definitely no reason to argue him, a scumbag, when it's too late for former and latter alike, when they are already here, already on the “neutral”. Let him yell. Yell that the transformer is buzzing behind the back wall of the tent, that the Colonel is now puffing and loudly expressing his horror with bold words. Mad, though. Ran to the Trouble, to a psychotic bayonet, as soon as the drunk jolly fellows have showed him the movie with the Father from the tower. As if a year and a half did not pass after the Lightning, as if people did not die. So let him, a scumbag, yell,. Let him yell. Moreover, the general tone of the claims is concrete – “he yells with relief”, and thankfully he is not jumping at least, still sitting in his armchair, does not run from the body… Well, Nabis keeps silent. Diplomatically. He was waiting for the end. Patience. In this sense alive (that means – good) tracker is no worse than any Assol. Or a sniper.

The other trackers, that is the guard and the retinue of the Colonel consisting of: the Ensigns Shultsev and Glyzin, and Korostylyov, the Major, – also kept silent, albeit for a non-diplomatic reason, but for a physiological one. The Ensigns were being “kissed” passionately, that means Shultsev was vomiting, and Glyzin has been struck from behind. As for the Major Kororslylyov, he did not get anything shoddy as a “kiss”, like the Trouble just shook his hand. that means either he is the first-time tracker of a rare potential, or he is an experienced tracker, but is hiding it. And keeps silent. Pale, but silent. “This one is an interesting fisherman”, Nabis decided, “dangerous one. But the Trouble will redeem anyway. Let's write it down…” And Andreich Nikiforov, the driver of the “sixty-sixth”, nicknamed Kharon, the master of transferring die-hards from the Earth to the Trouble, was not considered as tracker. He sat in his bus cab and could not been seen or heard. He was not taken by the “neutral” into account. Here he was a familiar figure. You pay to the “neutral” just once, and Kharon was not asking for more. Seventy-five for leaving the checkpoint, ten per hour for all the time of the trip. And not a single step into the Zone. Three children, a wife, no one was lost, all are well.

– Well, why don't you say something, comrade guide on duty? – asked the Colonel, furiously twirling his freed eye, blinking it, massaging it with all his fingers in turn. – You could try to get out of it or just say “My guilt, sir”, at least. The old Colonel almost lost the vision! And you, understandibly, didn't give a shit. What is your surname, I did not hear?