Chapter 5
Purely Voluntary with a Minimum of Violence

A king had a daughter Princess Sombra ¹² and another Princess Braya. The king promised one half of his kingdom to the one who would make Sombra laugh, and the other half to the one who would quiet Braya down.

Ul’s fairy tale

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.

“May we?” Appearing in Kavaleria’s office, Athanasius, Ul, and Yara, as experienced hdivers, first of all found out in what part of the office its mistress was. It turned out to be in the business section. Octavius hid behind the tub, solely the tail was spied outside. Kuzepych was sitting at Kavaleria’s. His eyebrows like brushes were moving angrily. He was like a boatswain flying into a rage. After exchanging a couple of words with Kavaleria, Kuzepych left.

“Someone wrecked the beehive at night. Boards scattered, honeycombs trampled. Now Kuzepych is knocking everything together anew. But honeycombs, it goes without saying, are beyond his abilities,” said Kavaleria, not looking at anyone.

“And the bees?” Ul began to fret.

“The bees didn’t suffer,” Kavaleria interrupted. “Nevertheless, the beehive is destroyed. Nowhere for them to live and nothing to eat. That the bees are golden doesn’t mean that they feed on diamonds.”

Octavius began to growl agreement behind the tub. “Don’t echo, emperor!” Kavaleria told it. The emperor subsided.

“Kuzepych is sure that it’s Gorshenya. Its tracks were around the beehive. One can see that it was trampling there all night… And as ill luck would have it, the bees only recently began to depart for novices! Now they’re worked up, angry, and it’s also incomprehensible how it’ll be. Possible they’ll gather much fewer than the usual four teams of five.”

“You think that Gorshenya…” Yara began.

“I think nothing!” Kavaleria dryly cut her off. “Gorshenya has been in HDive for three centuries. It chases lovers, creates the necessary extreme sports for the novices, and prevents them from trampling the flowers! In general, Gorshenya is Gorshenya. It’s the symbol of HDive. No other like it.”

“What do we do now with Gorshenya?”

Kavaleria began to snuffle. “For the time being… I emphasize, for the time being… nothing. But if it continues to go on doing such things, we’ll have to part company with it.”

Athanasius became agitated. “Has Gorshenya explained anything?”

“I killed an entire hour in conversation with it,” said Kavaleria with annoyance. “Babbles something incomprehensible, ‘Walked, walked, touched, touched! Belly hungry does not eat!’ Likely we should be grateful that it didn’t guzzle the hive! A bow to the ground to him!” Kavaleria said with irritation and, after opening the upper drawer of the desk, handed an envelope to Athanasius. “Hold this! You’re the best of all to take care of this. Here’s the name of the girl chosen by the golden bee. She left yesterday, before all these events. Find her and establish the circumstances… Ul and Yara, you get busy with the beehive! Help Kuzepych! I don’t worry about the hive itself; the honeycombs trouble me. Also protection. If Gorshenya comes again at night, where is the guarantee that it won’t ruin the new one too?”

“And if…” Ul began.

“Let’s do without the ‘if’! You’re not a spartan!” Kavaleria cut him short. “Set up a spatial trap by the beehive! Only don’t get carried away. I still haven’t forgotten how Kuzepych was left high and dry for a week on the island in the White Sea.”

“Rodion set it up then,” Ul gave it away. “I was only in charge. But then he himself asked to protect the cases of condensed milk.” Yara grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to the door.

Athanasius turned the envelope in his hands, an ordinary envelope with the hydroelectric power plant on the printed stamp. And not sealed. “What to do with the new girl?” asked Athanasius.

“As usual. Purely voluntary with a minimum of violence. And especially don’t get tangled in a lie: you yourself know, any lie will echo when you pass the swamp,” answered Kavaleria.

Octavius began to growl behind the tub, made a timid sudden move, and tried to attack the leaving Athanasius with a nip at his heel.

* * *

Athanasius carried out Kaleria Valerevna’s commission the very same day. He had to dash off to the university for this, about which he was only glad. Trips to the city did not happen to him particularly frequently, not counting the evenings when he arranged fake meetings with the cryptographer from Honduras.

Moscow was humming in a businesslike manner, like the hive of the golden bees. The cars recently gathered from the spaciousness of cottage country bellowed restlessly and, interfering with each other, crawled along the gas station. Everyone was hurrying somewhere, everyone’s eyes were clustered together. Even babies in strollers looked surly. Only the sun tried to cheer everyone up, but did not manage and was sad, wiping the damp-looking clouds.

Officials sat quietly on the Internet. The prisoners of offices smiled appropriately at their bosses and chose a country for the next two-week vacation. Schoolboys had their eyes on the new teachers, groped their weak sides, and mentally composed a list of tasks, which would not need to be done, and topics, which would not need to be studied. The same spirit reigned also at the university. The euphoria of beginning-of-school-year meetings had already died down, and now the students, spitting out marble aggregate, gnawed on the foundation of science.

Athanasius went out of the first humanities building of Moscow State University and stopped at the front entrance, not recognizing Moscow. It turned out that while he was walking, outside had time to have a downpour. The most surprising was that it was already not raining now. The sky had cleared. The horizon had teethed with precise rectangles of high-rises. It seemed the capital was smiling with that uncertain, freshly washed smile, the kind that appears on the face of a person just finished crying.

Along the asphalt flowed streams of water, in low places reaching halfway up the shin. The storm drains became seething pools. A stalled car stood in a pit. Water reached midway up its headlights. Other cars carefully travelled around it, scrambling onto the curb. Exactly like a herd going around a cow killed by lightning.

Athanasius continually met victims of the rain. Umbrellas, damaged by the downpour, did not save them. Many, despairing, went around barefoot, after throwing over the shoulder shoes with laces tied together.

After picking a long skirt up above her knees, a girl with a bag on her head walked towards Athanasius. The handles of the bag were dashingly tucked behind her ears. He moved aside, passing her, raised his head, and was immediately hailed. Athanasius looked around. He recognized the geometrical half-circle eyebrows and wheaten hair. It was Gulia. She grabbed his sleeve and, twittering, dragged him through the puddles. The sensation emerged in Athanasius that they had parted not three months ago but only yesterday.

“Where did you come from?” asked Gulia, trying to shove his head into the bag with hers.

Athanasius resisted, partly from dignity, partly because the rain had stopped. “From the university!” he said.

“You study here?”

“No.”

“And rightly so!” approved Gulia. “Suspicious place! Here friends speak well of each other. It’s unnatural.”

In the middle of the road full of cars splashing water, it came into Gulia’s head to stop and, arms akimbo, pose the question, “Where did you disappear to then? I waited for your call!”

Knowing that he would not be believed nevertheless, Athanasius craftily lied with the truth. “Was injured. Lying in the clinic. Supovna cursed me ninety-two times. Fed me regularly as much as… That’s because I never finished eating. Dealt her a blow.”

“Everything is clear, reindeer!” said Gulia in the magnanimous voice of a person willing to be taken in.

A car swept past. A canopy of water appeared above it. Athanasius hurriedly shut his mouth and eyes. It was already useless to cover the rest.

“Jerk!” Gulia yelled, jumping like a sparrow. “A natural jerk! Look where you’re going! People are walking here!”

Athanasius carefully grabbed Gulia with both arms and moved her onto the grass. But even on the grass Gulia continued to jump and threaten the cars. Her howls were laughable and silly. Like that of a child who beats the table for hitting him with a corner.

She finally calmed down. “I thought about you,” said Gulia, not making an acknowledgement but simply informatively.

Athanasius began to feel uneasy. He was not used to someone thinking about him. “How is your bear doing? Is it still so green?” he asked in a hurry.

They agreed to meet the next day. This time without excuses.

“I’ll bring a friend. And you’ll also bring one of yours!” ordered Gulia. “I’ve now adapted myself to finding in supermarkets bottles with winning codes! Felt one yesterday, but a woman already had it in her cart.”

“And your friend is also…” Athanasius carefully asked.

“Also what?”

Athanasius hesitated. His tongue was not in a hurry to utter “incubator for elbes.” “Well, does she possess abilities?”

Gulia looked around suspiciously at the elderly man with a professorial beard, who squatted across the street and examined an apple floating in the puddle. “Nina can find any object,” she said.

“She finds treasures?”

“Well, if she sees the one who buried it. Also any lost inanimate object… She’s unhappy. Introduce her to someone!”

Athanasius hesitated. “In order to make two unhappy at once? Certainly!”

“And your friend has abilities?”

“Only one. He ties construction nails into little bows,” answered Athanasius. He imagined that he would bring Max with him.

* * *

Athanasius showed up quickly in HDive. There were terribly long lines for the buses to the outlying regions and it seemed to Athanasius a good reason for teleportation. After turning up on the concrete area outside the gates, Athanasius wanted to take a step but realized that, having missed the mark by a centimetre, his soles were stuck. There was no chance of removing the shoes and nothing else to do. He had to take them off and go barefoot into HDive, leaving the boots sticking out in front of the bumper of Kuzepych’s bus.

Athanasius approached Max in the evening, when that one was busy with an important practical matter: pick out from the tangled mess a pair of socks of more or less similar colour. There were six washers for the entire HDive. They were all in the room next to the shower and, since there were many people in HDive, things were always mixed up. What they had not tried. Basins signed with markers, labels on things, ribbons sewn on, and allowing only several people to wash at the same time – nothing helped.

Max stated at first that he did not care. He was not going anywhere. Then he said that, so be it, he would go for the company, although he knew ahead of time that the girl would turn out to be this woofer.

“Why is that?”

“Law of the j-jungle! Pretty g-girls always have dogs as friends. Is your G-Gulia pretty?” he asked.

Athanasius wisely kept quiet. He would not rush to call Gulia “his.” It seemed to him that love at first sight is a TV cliché. It was totally different with Yara. Virus love is outside of the rules. Moreover, he had already recovered.

Max pulled a sock onto his enormous foot and wriggled his toes. “Forbidden to meet with w-warlocks!” he said.

“Nothing in the HDive charter says so. I checked. Besides, they’re not warlocks!” Athanasius stood up for them. It was unpleasant for him that Gulia was called this.

“Then what?”

“Well… eh-eh… simply going astray a little.”

Max neighed. “And what will y-you give me, if I g-go?” he asked.

Athanasius punched him in the back and hurt his own fist. Max liked this. He adored it when they hurt themselves against him. But Max liked to pretend to be a dull bodybuilder more. Moreover, he pretended with such perseverance that increasingly he was actually becoming one.

“Okay, I’ll go for free. Only t-take this! I…I’ll not talk with your woofer. And if she tries to come near me, I’ll un… un…unscrew her head!”

“Of course, not a problem!” Athanasius hurriedly agreed.

Max’s subsequent behaviour surprised him. The giant, allegedly not attaching any special importance to the meeting, began nervously to choose a pair of jeans and fling out turtlenecks from the dresser.

“This will k-kill me! And this is s-small!” he swore and again declared that he was not going anywhere, because there was nothing for him to wear and could in no way go in the hdiver jacket. Athanasius wanted to propose his own sweater to Max but understood that for such a moose it would only be fit to be carried in the pocket as a talisman.

Max kicked the dresser and dejectedly sat down on the floor. “I hate S-Supovna! She fattened me so that now I can’t get into anything!”

“What’s the difference to you? You’re going for the company,” Athanasius consoled him.

“I don’t want them to th…think that I’m a d…dolt!” Max declared.

Finally, he succeeded in finding decent clothing and calmed down. True, not for long, because he was concerned about what to do with his hair. Max did not have hair lying on top. He did not want to comb straight back. One obstinate strand always fell down with a comb-over to the left, while one to the right would show an unfortunate pimple.