Creature of unknown kind - страница 15



– Want some? – he asked, taking out the second. – Vodka in the Motherland is really like water, but to you – according to the circumstances – even water is not superfluous.

– No.

– “No, sir”, Anika-warrior. You had to say “no” at home, to your mother. So if it's “no” then get on with the task. Assigned by the heroically fallen Senior Ensign. Let's see what there is for two hundred million… pennies.

– I need to take something, – said Vadim, pointing to Petrovich's corpse, pretty drenched in blood.

– No question, take it, – Bashkalo pressed the bottom of the half-empty second bottle into the ground and aimed, holding the machine gun with both hands.

The dead, Alex the Aspirant and Petrovich, had been absolutely right. Several flares marked the shape of “eight” of the “gitiks” perfectly, as in the class. Smelly smoke was being blown along the boundaries of “locations of anomalous gravitational intensities of unknown kind”, clearly denoting them.

– Two hundred million pennies… Some crooked junior science employee gets four thousand one hundred and eighty-five rubles per month! – proclaimed Bashkalo suddenly from somewhere from another world. There too, a thought process was ongoing, gaining momentum, being born, coming to conclusions and finding the general meaning of things. But Vadim did not even turn around, mesmerized by the almost living twists of smoke. It was akin (not the same, but akin) to the drawing of tobacco smoke in the sun, peeking through the cracks in the dark shed.

– And he sits in his tents – clicks on the scores, did you understand?! Damned JR! Call me formally by name and patronymic, he says… And what about an academic then – a hundred thousand per month? I beat the shit out of their mother together with your Gorbachev! Who marks the tracks? An academic? Who carries devices and cables? JRs? Who carries jars, funnels, loots inside and out? Gorbachev? Fu-cking no! Me! I went out to the airfield, I went to the “Zhitkur” object, reached up to halfway together with Pasha-Maz! (Here Vadim picked up his ears for a second. “Yes-yes-yes”, said Mumbler, “'Pasha-Maz'. I wrote down.”) And to me, to me! – two hundred rubles with deductions for the work. Where round here should I spend it? Quarantine? Fuck your quarantine.

“And maybe”, thought Vadim, appealing to Mumbler, “this is not two gitiks but one?” “Or a system of two”, picked up Mumbler. “The system is even probably better”, Vadim agreed. “But when it is the only one – this is flawed”, said Mumbler. “So you're an astronomer”, said Vadim. Mumbler chuckled, self-satisfied. Vadim lit up another couple of pieces of the comb and threw them; one to the right, filling the gap of the smoky hoop, the second directly into the center of the hole. It then disappeared. Vadim stood on a knee, watching. At the junction of two parts of the “eight”, the smoke drew a pipe from the inside, accelerating, getting denser… and suddenly a hefty, upright circle appeared in front of Vadim. Vadim jumped up and back for a couple of steps, completely stunned.

– 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!