Fatalism

There was noise coming from the construction site. It was chaotic. Carts, wheelbarrows, cranes, all jumbled into a confused picture. What a mess to work in! Ruslan had a headache from having to rearrange other people’s drawings. It would have been better if he had been allowed to make his own, but then the rotunda would have to be destroyed and the foundation would have to be rebuilt. The employer won’t allow it.

Vereskovsky himself came to the construction site a week later to visit the new architects. The conversation with him was not the most pleasant. Vereskovsky had a lot of requirements that were difficult to fulfill. Everything had to follow his instructions stupidly, and he did not promise a bonus in case of successful completion of the construction.

Many of Vereskovsky’s conditions were extremely stupid. It seems that he is a fantasist. So the construction is going on like a bedlam. Ruslan was extremely happy to kick the oligarch out of the construction site.

“He ought to have been a serf while working in the fields,” complained Dima. “Next time you’ll meet him alone, and I’ll pretend that I’m too busy with urgent problems.”

“It’s not good to put everything on your friend’s shoulders!”

“I know, but I don’t want to feel like a slave!”

Dima muttered to himself for a long time something like that all the money he earned here would have to be spent on psychologists to calm him down from his boss’s tyranny. Ruslan silently looked after Vereskovsky, who, accompanied by his bodyguards, was walking toward the luxury car. The oligarch appeared to be an unassuming type.

“What did Valentina Vladimirovna see in him, I wondered?” Dima also looked at the way Vereskovsky was driving away.

“It was money,” Ruslan answered without hesitation.

“Are you joking?”

“It is absolutely not. If a beautiful woman gets mixed up with someone who has only wealth among his virtues, it’s immediately clear what she found in him – a voluminous purse, well, maybe some connections. All beauties strive for a high social status through marriage or love affair.”

“You’re a pessimist!”

“I’m a realist!”

“Don’t you get any attention from women?” Dima scrutinized his handsome colleague.

“They do, but not for long. I don’t have much to offer them,” Ruslan bitterly remembered that all the romances that had started in high school and at the institute had ended there. How is it that in the modern world you can get acquainted only at school and at work? And if in the circle of colleagues found no one suitable, then there is nowhere else to look. There are, however, dubious dating sites, where you can pick up a promiscuous person or a fraud.

“Once I met a pretty girl by giving her a cheat sheet for an exam,” Ruslan recalled.

“And how did it all end?”

“She lived in the Moscow suburbs, and I lived in Moscow. While we were going to school, we met. Together with the studies, the affair ended.”

Ruslan doesn’t even want to think about those times. It was impossible to live on a scholarship or to buy a bouquet of flowers for a girl. Many students worked part-time after classes, and they had no time to meet someone. During the school years, only children of rich parents live well. If Valentina has children, they will be able to have fun and go on dates between classes, spending parental money on flowers and visits to cafes.

“Did you hear that Vereskovsky’s wife is planning to go to the hospital before the construction is finished?” As if by the way, Dima said. “So she won’t visit us again. It’s a pity! I enjoyed talking to her much more than to her stern husband.”

“Is she seriously ill?”

Dima almost laughed. “She wants to have plastic surgery at some elite hospital.”

“Are you serious? Why would she do that?”

“Who can understand with these beauties?”

Ruslan shrugged his shoulders. Probably Valentina Vladimirovna’s beauty is just skillful makeup. All the stars look perfect after cosmetic salons, but when you wash off the makeup, they get old and dull before your eyes. He was well acquainted with this situation on the example of one theater star, with whom his mother was friends.

“She wants to change her facial features?”

“Why would she? Did her husband fall out of love with her? Did he think she was ugly?”

“It is worse! Valentina Vladimirovna fell under the general craze – she wanted to become like a movie star. She’s very fashionable now. Everyone wants to be like her, but not everyone has the money to realize this dream. The star’s name is Athenais. You’ve probably heard of it?”

If he wasn’t too busy working, Ruslan would go to the movies. But it seems that overwork is a good thing. Otherwise, what absurd thoughts would he have been indoctrinated into by the movies? Women go to the movies and then start dreaming about plastic surgery instead of doing housework and cooking! It’s high time the star business is shut down since it indoctrinates healthy viewers with such sick thoughts.

A star named Athenais was now a mass lunacy. Ruslan didn’t know what was so special about her, because he hadn’t seen any movies with her. He had only heard glimpses on the radio that she had caused frequent suicides, and that girls who wanted to be like her had died under the knives of plastic surgeons. But the fate of Valentina Vladimirovna is not his business. If she wants to become another victim of beauty, it makes no sense to dissuade her.

“Why don’t we go to the nearest movie theater this weekend? There’s an Athenaïs movie playing right now called ‘Blood Dawn.’ It is about the struggle of violent religious sects. They say it’s more moving than Romeo and Juliet.”

That’s the last thing we need! Ruslan was already under the impression that a gorgeous girl who could easily win first prize in a beauty contest was eager to reshape her face to look like Athenais.

“No, I don’t! I’m going to sit down this weekend to work on some new blueprints.”

Dima turned away with a sigh, clearly swallowing the reproach:

“You’re so boring!”

Let him be boring, the main thing is that he’s alive. Those guys who go to movies with Athenais die in droves. Ruslan noticed in his friend’s things a glossy advertisement with some Egyptian movie and ran his eyes over the first lines. What a coincidence! This very star, it turns out, played the role of that Egyptian deity called Alais. That’s why her statue will be made of gold! Apparently, the oligarch himself was no less impressed by her than his wife.

Ushebti

The huge wooden box was delivered first thing in the morning. It was not marked “valuable cargo” for nothing. Apparently, it was museum stuff inside again. Dima had accidentally ripped off the tag and was now looking for it all over the rotunda. Ruslan decided to open the box instead of looking for the tags to it. Inside, packed in shavings and sawdust were ominous statuettes.

“These are Ushcheti,” Ruslan guessed. “Vereskovsky had ordered to make a separate chamber in the rotunda for them. I’m afraid that won’t be realistic. He doesn’t even realize that the whole rotunda will collapse if we make an extra room in it.”

“So let’s make an annex,” Dima concentrated on looking at the statuettes. “Are they made of black wood or stone?”

Ruslan took some figurines out of the drawer. The feeling was that they were about to bite his fingers.

“Why do I feel like I’m holding not a figurine but a grenade?”

“They have a very evil look,” Dima suggested.

“But they are skillfully made. The material seems to be terracotta, and this one seems to be made of sycamore.”

“They must be very expensive.”

“But they do have an ominous look to them.”

“They’re funerary statues.”

“What good are they?”

“It is just a museum, put them in a display case and admire them. Well, you can still study them.”

“Our oligarch loves such exhibits.”

“But he doesn’t know the meaning behind them.”

“What’s the point?”

“These figurines served as the dead man’s slaves. They were to do all the work for the dead in the afterlife, so that the deceased would rest after death.”

“It is fascinating! But our employer doesn’t need them, he has enough live slaves.”

“They are hired laborers, not slaves. It’s different.”

“Not much different!” Ruslan’s back was already hurting. The work was hard and the pay was small. One might as well have worked for a single tortilla, like the slaves of ancient civilizations. But his colleague was not discouraged. No wonder, because he got a smaller part of the work, so he could get busy looking at Ushebti.

“I see you like these sinister freaks very much. Do you wish you could take them back to your place?” Ruslan teased his buddy.

“It is no way! I’m not crazy.”

“What makes you think I think you’re crazy?”

“There are stories that those who have them see creepy creatures that work at night and bite if you catch them at work. One restorer was afraid to wake up at night because of them, and the next morning found that they had done his work for him so that all that was left of all the exhibits were just shavings.”

“Obviously, they can’t do work for the living and do it the other way around,” Ruslan suggested.

“What if they do it on purpose? They are slaves of the dead. We, living people, climb into ancient pyramids, take out funeral paraphernalia without asking, and the ancient gods take revenge on us.”

“It’s just a story.”

“I have heard many such legends,” Dima admitted, “and their wording is very modern. Allegedly, many collectors have suffered because of Ushebti. The symptoms of all the unfortunates are the same. After the Ushebti got into their collection, they hear the sounds of hard work at night, see aggressive laborers who work hard for their owner, and wake up in the morning in complete bedlam. To a secretary who worked at an exhibition, they gutted all the folders with documents. The movers who transported them complain that the Ushebti deliberately punctured their truck tires. One wealthy businessman, who was renovating his cottage, received an Ushebti as a gift. He left them at the cottage at the time of repair. The Ushebti worked there as fitters, roofers and dyers. In the end, the cottage was just rubble. And it was worth a lot, but the Ushebti have cleaned it up in their way.”

“And all of this was caught on security cameras?”

“No, security cameras are always broken or damaged, but there are eyewitnesses. Usually, they’re unhappy people who left the Ushebti at their place. Then they all need psychologists. Ushebti are industrious, but you have to flee from their industriousness, otherwise they will bury you under the rubble of your house, or if you are working in the field, they will drive a tractor over your corpse instead of sowing. I heard that one seamstress was helping restorers of historical costumes. They put her alive under her own sewing machine. The needle stitched all the way through her skin, even on her eyelids. That’s the work of an Ushebti!”

“How cruel is it!”

“The ancient gods are cruel.”

“Are they only the Ancients?” Ruslan had heard something frightening about modern sects.

“Yes, probably all of them, otherwise the world would be a paradise if they were kind.”

The truth seemed bitter. Ruslan regretted having unpacked the parcel. If it hadn’t been for the Ushbeti found in it, this philosophical conversation wouldn’t have taken place.

“Let’s put them somewhere so that they could add to the local exposition,” Ruslan suggested.

“I’m afraid there are no shelves for them here.”

That’s right. There were only empty pedestals around, on which the statues would soon be placed. The package with them would obviously be more cumbersome than the one with the Ushebti. Ruslan clutched one figurine in his hand and wondered how he felt. Why did it seem to him that such fragile figurines held more power than the giants?

“It felt like they could crush us all,” he thought aloud, but Dima didn’t listen to him. He walked around the rotunda with his phone and photographed the exhibits.

“I’ll keep the pictures as a souvenir. Where else will you see such curiosities?”

In any museum, Ruslan wanted to say, but bit his tongue in time. He himself had visited the Egyptian hall in the Hermitage and the Historical Museum on Red Square many times, had been to various exhibitions of Oriental and antique culture, but he had never seen such sinister and impressive figures. Somehow even the bandaged mummy in the Hermitage window did not make such a frightening impression on him as the beautiful statues?

He had seen Ushebti before, too, in museums and on reproductions in encyclopedias, but not like these. The figures seemed alive and breathing. For some reason, when he looked at them, he thought of black locusts.

“If they wake up, there won’t be a construction site left,” a voice whispered in his subconscious. He must have imagined it again.

The Ushebti resembled gods. And they were not only ancient, but also modern, almost glamorous. It seemed as if they had been specially varnished and polished.

Ruslan left the Ushebti in a box among a pile of shavings. They would not break here. If scratches appeared on the Ushebti, those who unpacked the box would have to account for the damage.

Working at a construction site has brought Ruslan to a dead end. No architect and no engineer can cope here, because the employer demands to build a new fantastic building on the skeleton of an old structure. The future palace will have to have a bunch of wings: Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, Japanese, French, English, and so on. One wing will have to look like a Russian princely terem, only not made of wood. Usually terems were built of logs, but such material is short-lived, so Ruslan will have to choose stone or cement and process it so that the masonry walls resemble log walls. Even one wing in the shape of an Aztec pyramid is planned. All the wings will be connected by air passages. Hanging gardens and galleries will be located in the passages. We still need to design sites for fountains and greenhouses. The idea is grandiose! But how you could realize it?

Ruslan worked on the drawings all day long. Dinner was modest, and they had to spend the night in a tiny carriage taken off its wheels. The workers jokingly called it a trailer. Some people didn’t have enough wagons, so they slept in tents. There was no hope of a luxury hotel. There are no hotels near the construction site. There is only an abandoned hospital.

“I’d be happy to sleep there, too, if there were a decent bunk instead of a sleeping bag and a heater,” Dima complained as he fell asleep. He and Ruslan shared one trailer for two.

After lights out, only the guard on duty remained at the construction site. He had his own booth in front of the entrance, and he certainly didn’t make any noise at night. There’s a strange noise coming from wherever, like someone’s still working.

“Do you hear hammers banging there?” Ruslan called out to his colleague, but Dima just turned over on his other side and snored.

The sound of hammers was monotonous, as if a whole army was working outside, but no sounds of conversation or footsteps could be heard. Probably it was just an auditory hallucination. Overwork can do that too. The sound of hammers has been joined by the whistle of a drill. That’s exactly the whistle of a drill.

Ruslan woke up and crawled out of the cramped sleeping bag. Not even in the pioneer camp had it been so uncomfortable. His whole body ached. There was a noise and a strange hissing outside. Ruslan opened the door of the wagon, and barely managed to dodge the sparks that usually fly off from working welders. What the hell! They can’t have fireworks at night on a construction site.

Some shadows were replacing the workers, carrying bricks from wheelbarrows, pouring cement, working with trowels and picks. The work was confused and inept. It did more harm than good.

“Hey, you!” Ruslan called out, and flinched when red eyes stared at him.

They’re not construction workers. They’re not wearing helmets or uniforms. And they were shorter than grown men. The strangers were small, thin and dark, like shadows. They hissed at Ruslan with needle-sharp teeth and continued working. They were industrious, but they were wasting building material. Everything in their hands was breaking instead of being useful.

Ruslan couldn’t understand what was happening. Did he really see the Ushebti working at the construction site? Or was it all a nightmare?

There was no time to think. No one was awake but him. The guard was nowhere to be seen, and the industrious laborers were tearing everything down. Their sharp teeth glinted like needles and easily ripped stones from concrete blocks.

How to stop them? How could he justify himself to the oligarch if the building was destroyed the next morning?

Ruslan didn’t know what to do. Maybe hit them all with a crane. The Ushebti only got angry when he tried to take action. Well, now they’re going to jump on him and bring everything down with it. They might even dance on the wreckage to celebrate the successful destruction. Or is it not their job to have fun anymore? All they have to do is work. And they have to work for the dead, not the living. If they come from a burial cult, no wonder why they destroy everything. Their work is the opposite. It’s not a work for good, but for destruction.

“It is enough!” A clear, ringing voice came from somewhere above and overrode the hissing of the Ushebti. “This is my territory! Look for work elsewhere!”

Strangely enough, the Ushchebti obeyed. And Ruslan passed out in full confidence that he had just heard the voice of a deity.

When he woke up, it was night. A column resembling an obelisk had been erected at the construction site. It was probably just some block that had been dragged here and dumped wherever it was.

On top of it sat a beautiful girl who looked like a model with golden wings attached to her back. Ruslan saw her for only a moment, and then there was only a flash of sunlight. The model disappeared somewhere, as if it had never existed. Could he have imagined it? No, he could clearly see the arrogant expression with which she was watching the construction site, as if all the construction workers were her slaves. That was the arrogance with which the pharaohs watched the building of the pyramids.