Chapter 2
Coming from Nowhere to Going Nowhere

In any good the keyword is “regularity.” Irregular good is evil, which decides to amuse itself.

A warlock will discuss global laws on the eradication of hunger on a universal scale, but a hdiver will simply silently hand someone an apple or a pie and move on.

The stronger one loves, the more one forbids. If you for sure want to destroy the one you love, allow him everything.

Two ways lead to wisdom: grief or voluntary self-restraint, i.e., in general the same grief, only conscious. If you do not choose the second path, the first one chooses you.

Better to take less but carry it all the way than to take a lot and drop some halfway.

The power of a person is manifested in how well he will be able to restrain himself.

Yara’s summary.

From Kavaleria’s introductory lecture

Freda melancholically contemplated the empty driver seat. “But where??? What did you do with the driver?” she asked in the voice of a person who did not get the joke.

Sashka sensed that she thought him guilty. “Here! Catch!” He threw her the jacket by the sleeve. Freda in horror pushed it away immediately with both hands. The jacket fell. Now, when it was exposed, it did not pretend to be alive anymore.

“No! You did something to him!!! Aagh!” Freda closed her eyes and gave a short shriek, giving a signal to universal panic.

Lara began to squeal in the same second, demonstrating excellent vocal training. Makar in a businesslike manner advised her to cut it out. At the same time he leaned heavily with his stomach on the back of the seat, touching the mirror with his forehead. Incredulously, as if suspecting an invisible man, he ran his hand all over. “Wow, damn! Really no driver! Anyone knows how to drive?”

Showing that it was managing quite well by itself, the minibus dashingly dived between two trailers and went onto the outer lane. The clipped truck groaned like an offended bull.

“Me!” Sashka, recently in his grandpa’s Niva⁷ demolishing the neighbouring fence at the cottage, said.

“Well, so get busy!” Makar encouraged him.

Sashka wanted to climb over, but Freda caught hold of him, “Only try to touch it! I understand! We’re moving by computer control!”

Danny looked doubtfully at the pressed-down seat, the jingling door. He saw a kefir carton and a crumpled magazine. “By satellite!” he said skeptically, observing how the minibus honked angrily at a dog that had jumped out onto the road and made a dashing turn, dousing it with dirty water from a puddle. “Wow! The satellite surmised biological activity and set a course correction, taking into account the direction for splashing the liquid!”

Sashka tried to free himself, but doing this without being rude was impossible. Freda was hanging onto him like a tick. Not letting go for dear life for sure. At the same time, Sashka would not say that she panicked. She was simply such a person. Not a single action could be executed in her presence without her approval.

“What if it’s a show? Put us on some kind of stage and unnoticeably shoot our reaction? And broadcast live? Huh?” Freda put forward a different option.

After hearing that they could be filming her, Lara instantly settled down and fixed her hair. “Can I ask an improper question? Who is the studio decoy here?”

“Me! Really not obvious?” Cyril stated but backtracked on discovering how people were instantly staring at him. “Really! No need to kill me! I’ve already gone to seed! What show, people? Do you see at least one camera?”

“What if it’s hidden?” the precisionist in the suit proposed in a businesslike manner.

Cyril twirled a finger by his temple. “In this heap of junk? Even if they shove some web cam here, it’ll show like the eyes of a dead cockroach! Won’t work for TV!” he said with knowledge of the matter.

Lara tapped her knee with the phone. “I understand nothing! Should be all sticks here!” she complained.

Freda looked at her with an incinerating look. “Sticks are in the forest,” she said and, after letting go of Sashka, sat down.

The minibus finally broke away beyond the limits of the Ring Road and dashed between colourful new constructions. The region here was spacious, new, and the roads wide, free. The minibus swiftly made a turn. As Sashka was not being careful, he butted the glass with his forehead.

“We’ll not get out of here! We’re doomed!” the girl with the death dog tags uttered quietly.

“Don’t be a killjoy!” Freda pounced on her.

“Dog tags” shrugged her shoulders and with a long nail traced a final crossbeam on the gallows. “I’m not! I know!”

Even Rina was starting to be spooked. She was sorry that she had given Kuzepych the promise to keep quiet. But even if she had not, what would she say? “We’re going to HDive!” “Where, where?” “HDive! It’s this guildhall of divers, where they fly on horses through a dead world to get markers from Duoka!”

The minibus turned into a long straight road and it stopped rocking. Passing ahead of Sashka, Danny quickly half-rose. “Miss! May I ask you as an enormous favour to remove your skull?” he turned to Lara.

“Where?”

She was at a loss and immediately received the comprehensive answer, “Not strictly perpendicular to the back, but in such a way that the level of the crown would turn out to be below the level of the upper section of the seat!”

“Huh?”

“Off with the head!!!” Danny simplified to the extreme and unexpectedly deftly, making use of his beanpole frame, immediately tumbled over two seats on his stomach. The endless legs flickered. Escaping from them, Lara with a squeak bent down. It finally dawned on her why the level of the crown had to be lower than the back of the seat. The soles knocked on the back of the seat and Danny already emerged on the other side. He slid into the driver seat, grabbed the wheel, and slammed on the brake. Sashka watched as the pedal pressed down.

“Stop, my beautiful! Whooa!” Danny ordered. The minibus began to brake at the horse word, but it kicked up and continued to fly forward. Danny hung onto the wheel and attempted to switch over to the outermost lane. The wheel obeyed but this again in no way affected the behaviour of the minibus.

“Try braking with the clutch!” Sashka advised. Danny looked mildly around at him as if asking: do you think I do not know? He pressed on the clutch and, switching over serially, began lowering gears. When he reached the first, the minibus zipped out onto the oncoming lane and, after fearlessly cutting the flow, turned into a perpendicular street.

“This is useless, gentlemen! I quit!” Danny announced melodramatically and climbed back into the cabin. He sat down there like an idol and arranged his hands with palms up on his knees. Something that in no way could be grasped stirred in his memory. Something important, elusive.

Cigarette butts were floating in a glass jar a third full of water. Through the paint-spattered glass – cracked, with a whistling draft living in the crack – the Moscow courtyard well-defined by paint looked stingy to Danny. A golden bee was sitting in a sunny spot and cleaning its wings with its legs. Danny blew on it. The bee took off and, angrily hitting against the glass, bounced like a ball to the edge of the frame.

“I said: we’ll all die!” the girl in the black tank top said with deep satisfaction. Frost dripped from her voice.

Cyril touched the dog tags with a finger. “Listen, sunshine!”

“I hate sunshine!” Dog tags” cut him off.

“And don’t you be mad! Canna ask somethin’?”

“NO!”

“Were you ever smothered by a pillow earlier? Eh, sunshine?”

The girl pushed his hand away. “What are you, stupid? I’m not sunshine! I’m Alice, idiot!”

It was not possible to offend Cyril. “Idiot!” he said, turning to himself. “Get acquainted! This is Alice, who has never been smothered by a pillow!”

“Ass!”

“And who actively learns the names of animals!” Cyril looked around triumphantly.

Alice turned away, lapsing into silence. Cyril clearly considered himself the victor; however, Sashka doubted this. A guy must not fight with a girl on the same level and with her weapon: the tongue. They deliberately exist in different dimensions. Well, what does an eagle brag to a dolphin? That it knows how to fly? But a dolphin knows how to swim. Cyril behaved like the bearded philosophy professor, who, after putting on a skirt, set off for the earthen bench and said, rubbing his hands, “Well, grannies, hold on! Now I can argue with all of you!!!”

“I’ll try to jump out! Since the phones don’t connect here, perhaps they will outside!” Sashka shouted and tugged at the door. Asphalt with small puddles gleamed. Sashka stepped back. He did not imagine that they would be going so fast. Freda, with the idea of recording everything, directed the round eye of the cell phone at Sashka.

“Don’t!” Rina shouted, unable to control herself.

“Why not? Must! Jump! What are you waiting for?” Freda demanded impatiently.

Sashka estimated the distance to the lawn. Grass is tempting, of course, but you could miss the mark and splatter all over the tall barrier. Asphalt would be better. He put his head out. The wind cut his cheek. It hit his eyes, blinded him for an instant. “When it’s thirty kilometres, shout!” he ordered Danny.

Danny rolled over on his stomach to the driver seat and stared at the speedometer. “Ninety! Damn! Why no traffic jams? Aha! Traffic light soon! Maybe it’ll brake slightly at least… Yes! Going down! Seventy! Sixty!”

“Jump!” Makar pushed Sashka slightly from behind.

“Tough guy first!” Sashka turned and grabbed his turtleneck. He was so fed up with Makar that he was actually capable of throwing him off the minibus.

“Let go of me!” Makar ordered quietly.

“But why?”

Makar slapped his own pocket with a threat. “Bluff!” thought Sashka. “He puts his hand in the pocket and will fly from the minibus together with me!”

“Forty!” shouted Danny. “Thirty-five!” Sashka pushed Makar away and returned to the door. The speed no longer seemed so great. He will run several metres and then roll. The main thing is that no driver behind decides to pass them on the right.

“Come on!” Danny yelled. Sashka rushed forcefully into the opening and… here something incomprehensible happened. An elastic force caught him and threw him back like a kitten. Sashka realized that he was sitting on the floor of the minibus, clutching Makar’s leg like a lifesaver.

“Full protection, pity! Even if you yank the wheels off, you’ll end up on the bottom!” Rina recalled Kuzepych’s words.

Freda tore herself away from the cell phone screen. “Shot it!” she shouted excitedly. “You were separated from the minibus for about half a metre and then it pulled you back! Did you feel anything?”

“The joy of flight!” Sashka answered in annoyance. The minibus again picked up speed.

“Let’s lean out and yell! Someone will hear for sure! Only better from the other side! More cars there!” Cyril in the heat of the moment wanted to hit the glass with his fist, but Makar held him back.

“No, why? Must take care of the hands!” Makar said peacefully. Leaning over, he pulled out a fire extinguisher from under the seat and competently knocked with one end on the glass four times. The glass was covered with a tangle of cracks, but it held. Makar, not embarrassed, continued to peck persistently. On the tenth blow, the glass collapsed, after hanging onto the rubber retaining it.