Дмитрий Емец: No Way Out at the Entrance

“One hyeon is no big deal. Won’t even leave descendents,” Arnaud remarked.

Guy clicked his tongue. “The trend is important. I don’t want hdivers to have tame hyeons.”

The secretary nodded and made a note in the notebook, where there was a note about today’s meeting. “Useful fellow,” he said.

Guy massaged heavy eyelids. “Must warn him to give up diving. For the time being he’ll be able to enter the grounds of HDive, since he hasn’t appropriated markers, but already can’t dive,” Guy answered in a preoccupied manner.

“But if we come to an agreement with the elbes so that they don’t touch him…?”

“What do elbes have to do with it? The matter is Duoka . It won’t accept him. Besides, he devours such doses of psyose that the crazy house will be waiting for him in half a year. But in this half year we must extract from him as much as possible.”

Guy smoothed out the notebook page:

Makar GoroshkoTukhachevsky Street, #, Apt. 9

Daniel KuznetsovB. Cherkizovo Street, #, Apt. 155

Alice FedinaSobolevsky Proezd, #, Apt. 99

Alexander DudnikVernadsky Ave, #, Apt. 301

“Telling handwriting! A lot of curlicues on the ‘M’, but the end of words are broken up, and the ‘y’ has a flabby tail. The fellow shows off but not enough confidence,” he remarked.

A pencil scratched twisting, nasty, curved outlines in the notebook. Only Arnaud knew how to decipher his own signs. “Dispose of them ourselves or saddle Till with them?” the secretary asked quietly.

“Dispose?” Guy was surprised. “Forgotten Krunya’s prophecy? Sooner or later these ten will deliver into our world the most powerful marker.” The shadow from a swaying lamp lost its way in the folds of his face. The face sucked in gloom like a sponge soaks up water.

A train swept past through the eternal night of Volokolamskaya. Light lived inside its cars. Darkness rushed toothlessly to it from the corners but could not swallow it and, champing, crawled away into the tunnels.

Fall in HDive – especially in the Green Labyrinth and all around – the colours were always in full swing, so diversely and dauntingly bright that one had to squint. But colours began to kick up a fuss only in October. It was the fifth of September at present, and fall had just started to unscrew with its teeth the lids of tubes of oil paint. For Ul and Yara this was the happiest time. It was not like the previous terrible year, when it seemed to Ul that life had ended. They took off from HDive on any free evening and roamed around Moscow.

“Let’s conquer the world!” Ul once proposed. Yara thought and agreed. She adored large-scale villainies. “World, you’re conquered!” she said in a whisper, so that the next table would not hear. Quietly and peacefully in a small subbasement cafe, they finished celebrating the capture of the world.

Having the appropriate questioning look on his face, the fat waiter approached with a plate. He fancied that they had hailed him.

“You won, but it’s not about that. Keep the change!” Ul generously told him.

The waiter blinked. “What change? Only sixteen roubles from you!” he said.

The next day Ul and Yara taught Rina how to fall from a horse. They tied a cord to her belt and yanked her off while chasing Icarus in a circle. Right after the fall, Yara had to overtake Icarus and jump onto the horse’s back while on the run.

“Don’t grab the stump! Soft fall, don’t resist!” Ul howled.

Rina was all covered in mud. Sand crunched in her mouth. Jacket, pants, and boots were all the same colour – grey. So was Icarus’ foaming back. Rina slid down. Ten falls. Twenty. Twenty five. “Not enough!” shouted Rina. “Not enough! Again!” Yara began to worry and looked questioningly at Ul. She did not remember such energy in any novice.

Finally, either Ul overdid it or Icarus, running smoothly till now, pulled too zealously. After drawing an arc, Rina fell into the puddle and could not get up. “You’re sadists!” she shouted in a ringing voice.

“We’re hdivers. Get up!” Ul again pulled the cord.

Rina burst into quick, short tears, like rain with the sun. Yara took the cord away from Ul and went to Rina. To console. To change tears into laughter. Over the summer, Yara and Rina had become very close. Each saw in the other her own solution, her missing part: Rina, explosive, boyish, quick to flare up but simmer down at the same instant, and Yara, calm, slightly cool emotionally, very consistent.

Rina was still lying in the puddle. “Great!” she said in a suspiciously cheerful and clear voice, turning over onto her back. She slapped the puddle. “‘We’re hdivers.’ Great! Super!”

“What’s super?” Yara did not understand.

“The principle itself. Simplification of truth to its essence, without any disguising coquetry! Well, can say that it’s to writing like processing coffee in letters. Or to fighting, that this one fella beats another on the head using his extremities, until by chance he gets to the switch… We’re hdivers! Ha! Hdivers!” She scooped mud from the puddle and began to dribble it onto her forehead.

“You’re getting hysterical!” Yara quietly warned her.

“And you only just noticed?”

Someone whistled like a robber, with two fingers. Vityara appeared by the stable. “Ul, Yara! To Kavaleria!”

“Why?”

“You said it, dude! I have no idea… I was sent for the senior hdivers.”

Gaining strength with the lion , Yara pulled Rina like a carrot out of the puddle. “We’ll be there soon. You’re okay? You’ll take Icarus in?”

“Aha.” Rina caught up with Icarus and sprung stomach first onto its back. She rode along this way – head on one side, feet on the other – slapping the horse’s rump. Gentle Icarus, they could get away with such things with it.

Ul and Yara had already rushed to Kavaleria.

The office of the director of HDive somewhat resembled Beldo’s apartment. Not by the presence of sofas swallowing like quicksand and chatty skulls, but by the rigidity of the clearly defined zones. A tub with a dwarf pine tree, a seedling Kavaleria brought back from Duoka , divided the office into two clear poles.

The garden bloomed in the south. The seedlings spread over multi-tier glass stands: violet leaves in little glass jars, young boxwood, newborn eucalyptus, and yellow roses. Between them lay shovels, pruning shears, watering cans of different sizes, and other miniature equipment. Countless china figurines of ducklings, kittens, and human children were also crowded there.

The northern part of Kavaleria’s office began from the palm tree. Even an ordinary pencil had the right to be here, only based on necessity. The minute this necessity disappeared, the pencil also vanished into thin air together with it. If a chance violet strayed into here, Kavaleria would personally send it a steel ball from a schnepper. She had no time for violets here, because now, in the northern part of the office, Kavaleria was raging. Detecting the approach of dangerous minutes in the barely noticeable vibration of her voice, clever Octavius tucked in its tail in advance and hid behind the bushy liana.