Текст книги "Shinie’s Ritual"

Eggs again!

– 1 —

“No, I won’t,” Harry was trying hard to sound as confident as he could, “That’s it! I’m sick with it!”

“Harry,” his mother squatted beside him, so he could see a vein throbbing on her temple, “Sweetie!”

Harry was staring hard at the floor. He knew that if he looked his mother in the eye, he would eat the doggone eggs without leaving the smallest piece over.

“Harry, please, look at me. Please. I promise, I’ll take you to Doctor Cooper on Monday, and I’ll ask him to replace eggs with… well, maybe milk. And what about meat? Harry?”

Finally, the mother caught his eyes and smiled. “Just another three days. I promise, we’ll make a change.”

“Ok, mom.”

“Well, then… please, be so kind as the Hero-Superman-Batman-Robin… eat the eggs, my dear son!”

“Ok. I’ll catch it, maam. And I’ll kill it, maam.”

“Just eat it, sweetie.”

Harry obediently turned to eating, trying not to concentrate on the taste. In fact, he liked eggs. He had used to. About five years ago. And he knew, that was the cheapest thing, which they could barely afford though.

Milk and meat would be extortionate. To say nothing of the fact that it would take at least a year or two before a replacement was available. So, mom’s words were nothing less than an attempt to buy another two or three extra mornings with fried eggs.

Harry’s body had ceased to digest protein five and a half years ago. Any protein-based food would cause excruciating pain and convulsions, proteins would not dissolve and would transform into poisons shortly after getting into Harry’s stomach.

It had been after a long while that doctors had realized what was wrong, and then they had sought for a solution. They had tried all sorts of vegetable proteins, as well as animal proteins – dried and dissolved… but nothing worked.

Over the tree months, which had put Harry through a whole batch of tests, he shed ten kilograms. Then he was prescribed a diet, and it was not before ten months passed, robbing him of another fifteen kilos, that the solution became available. Ten laying hens inoculated with Harry’s DNA. By the time, he was a skin-covered skeleton.

Every egg cost a fortune, but Harry felt better. His mother found another job, Harry knew how difficult it was for her, therefore, last morning’s scenes occurred less frequently than outbursts of anger and disgust.

– 2 —

Contrary to Harry’s expectations, his mother did take him to a hospital on Monday. Doctor Cooper greeted them with a smile. He did not try to amuse Harry like he had before, since the issue had been fixed forever during one of their first visits. However, he did seem to like the boy, who had the strength to bear the ordeals life had inflicted on him. Fried eggs. Yes, on a plate. Harry returned a smile.

“Hello, Harry! Hello, miss Anacrater. So what,” the doctor decided to take then bull by the horn, “Omelet is over with, isn’t it?”

“Fried eggs are, Dr, Cooper. Omelet is abominable.”

“U-huh, u-huh. Well, is it that indeed?”

Harry looked down. His eye fell on his mother’s hands. All wrinkled.

“Are there alternatives?”

“Yes, there are. However, it’ll cost you more, and it won’t come quick.” Doctor Cooper was the last man to take to weaseling, and that had been settled between them.

“I guess I can handle two or three more years of fried eggs,” Harry smiled, but the smile was lopsided.

“Great! Then we’ll have an ordinary examination. Miss Anacrater, I’d like to talk to you after that, so please, stay here.”

– 3 —

“Take him to the laboratory. Definitely, he’ll be excited to see the pets working for him. Maybe it will reduce his aversion to food, I don’t know. I’ve notified Doc Teese, he’ll tour you around the place.”

“May we go now? I have half a day off, and I have a bit of time right now…”

“Yes, sure. Just let me warn him. Come here: can you see the pavilion over there? The grey building. No, the next one. Doctor Teese will meet you at the checkpoint. Good luck!”

– 4 —

Doctor Teese was a tall young man with blond hair. Harry’s mother had to look up during the conversation, and Harry would not even care to. From his low vantage point, the doctor’s head seemed to be swinging high up in the clouds, and his voice – a bass that sounded a little too low for such a young man – thundering from above. However, the doctor was concise.

“I knew you were coming. Harry? Hello. Miss Anacrater? Good afternoon. My name is Adam. Please, follow me and try to keep up.”

After a dozen or two of turns and bends, he rumbled again:

“Now we’re going outside. They’re in an enclosure.”

“They?” that was the first time Harry said a word since their meeting. “I thought there was only one.”

“Hens? No, there are thirty six of them. The human DNA has changed their physiology…”

Suddenly, the doctor shut up, probably not wanting to disclose information. Then he rumbled again:

““Thirty six. They must reproduce – that’s one. They do not lay eggs every day – that’s two. On the whole, they live longer than usual chickens. But we need them anyway to reproduce. We have already replaced two chickens.”

“I understand, thank you very much, doctor!”

His mother wrapped her arm around Harry’s shoulders. She had been here once, when she had received their first bunch of eggs, but she had not seen the hens. “What is their life expectancy?”

“We have no idea. The oldest one is over four years old. It was brought here first. The rest are a little younger.”

The conversation continued until they reached the enclosure.

“Here they are, can you see? It’s tidy. There is sand bedding. The box over there is the nest. There’s only one nest. Here are the troughs. And these are feeders. The newspapers are an entertainment. They peck and tear at them… generally, they need a varicolored thing, it keeps them busy. Or they’ll fight.”

“I’m very impressed, Doctor Teese! I grew up on a farm and I know how hard it is to keep it this clean! That is… very good.” Finally, Harry’s mother picked up a decent term. “They’re… they’re a bit larger than usual laying hens.”

“On the average, they are larger by half. That’s quite a result too… would you like to look at the lambs? We’re breeding lambs for a g… for another patient.”

“Oh, yes, we do. Do we, Harry?”

“No, thank you, I’ll wait for you here.”

“Ok, Harry. I guess you wouldn’t mind a little talk with your saviors, would you. We’ll be right back, won’t we, Doctor?”

“Five minutes.”

– 5 —

Harry went closer to the hens. Now the only thing separating them was a glass partition with ventilation holes. All thirty six stood motionless, scrutinizing him and producing barely audible sounds. They were really big. They had brown feathers, but they were almost crestless. Was that normal for the breed?

“Hello. You’re saving my life, know that?”

The hens, still not moving, stared at Harry with their bead-shaped eyes. Then, as if at a command, they went about their usual businesses – digging the bedding with their legs, pecking and tearing at the newspapers. Harry turned away. What’s the big idea?

He looked at the neighboring enclosure. There was poultry, as well as in the next one. He had to go to look at the lambs. He turned to ‘his’ chickens with a sigh.

“Well, my dear sav…”

Words stuck in his throat. The hens formed a line along the rear wall of the enclosure, and, in the foreground, in the sand bedding, all studded with chicken footprints, he saw a well-discernible scribbling (‘like chicken scratch’, it flashed through Harry’s mind): “We hope you’re doing better now, aren’t you?”

Solar

– 1 —

Circling a teaspoon in her cup of coffee, Mila stared at Polis, whose boiling mirage shadow was vibrating over the horizon. No, a nighttime view would be definitely more beautiful. At daytime, the city, which was the closest to Mila’s reservation, looked maybe not like a mirage, but at least like a blast-furnace’s vent. All sunrays seemed to have converged upon the city’s concrete structures. Polis. Wouldn’t they all melt in there? And Mila knew they wouldn’t.

Notwithstanding its hellish environment, the city, encircled by a tall concrete wall, was an object of desire for all reservists with no exception. Finally, it was there that all advanced technical thought was concentrated. While the residents of the reservation were shaded from the unbearable heat and radiation by thick clay walls, the residents of Polis owed their comfortable life to air conditioners and the buffer dome.

Mila looked around. “How many generations will it take for reservists to adapt to the permanent twilight? And to realize that there will be no choice but to go deep underground?” a mad thought flashed through her mind. Mila had no idea. “I’m not a technical specialist,” she snorted. “How should I know? And I’m not a genetics expert either – when will they all degrade?”

“And not a historian either,” she asserted, grating her teeth. However, it was quite observable that the local community was splitting into two camps. So far they were getting along well with each other, and maybe they would continue to do so. However, there was nothing to guarantee they would.

Mila and a group of 38 people were first-generation reservists spat out by the city onto the sizzling frying pan that the reservation was. Ok, let’s call them frontiermen. Those were people rejected by the city as ‘poorly engaged in Polis’s life’. What did that mean in practice? That meant that if you were an artist, and a not so good one at that, just like Mila, there would be no place for you in the city. You are not a sanitary technician or builder, are you… Oh, no, you’re not even an educator. Artist was a profession fit for the waste-paper-basket. That had served as a lesson, and the entire Department of Fine Arts became vacant. When the source of drop-outs was drained, they began to shed those who had failed to pass the qualification examination by the time of the induction. Then the real fun began – downright dumbheads began to arrive in the reservation.

However, the city would magnanimously send assassins, thieves and junkies to tougher places. Still, the crowds that arrived two or three generations after Mila, would give her a feeling of extreme disgust. She never got married, although there had been two potential matches. “Oh, no, I don’t want my future kids to live here,” she had asserted on her first day in the reservation.

– 2 —

Not that there was no way out of the place. Yes, there were, if you were a technical genius. Just like Sandz, who had come up with a brand new electricity generation method based on using the difference between daytime and nighttime temperature. Do you believe the method was ever applied in the reservation? Ha-ha!

Well, Sandz did receive the status of a citizen and was appointed as a department manager in Polis. And he had been one of Mila’s potential matches. If only she could have known that. Eventually, it was Eva, not Mila, who had left for Polis with Sandz in the status of a spouse and with a pair of snotty little children.

Well… no need to palter. There were truly talented people – poets, painters, composers, and they had not been ousted. Was there a chance to return in this status? Mila did not know. The nastiest thing was that it was not until she got into the reservation that she began to tackle really decent things. Even if one wouldn’t amount to as much as a masterpiece, it would give her a straight A.

Mila took her pieces to Patrick Snade – her teacher of Fine Arts (third generation frontiermen), and he said that they were ‘not quite so bad.’ To grasp the meaning of the ‘not quite so bad’, one had to grasp Snade himself. At classes, he’d beat Malevic and Kandinsky all black and blue. And impressionism fans would not even dare open their mouths about their preference.

By the time, Mila had accumulated a whole thick folder of sketches. She knew she’d better have had them bound and sent to Polis, but she hesitated. Not for financial reason, just because she realized that it was going to be her last chance. There would never be one again. She had missed last year’s competency test, because she had felt like she’d been well prepared. Although she was nearing the next test, she did not feel more confident by a fraction.

Mila looked at the vibrating mirage over the funnel window once again, then at her unfinished cup of coffee. A decision was to be made, so, leaving the coffee on the table, she grabbed the folder and the handbag. Time was running out.

– 3 —

Mila walked up to the list of the attested. Over the three weeks that passed since she applied, she had gone through three stages: hope, fury and despair. Now she did not care at all. A paper with a list of twenty names hung lonesomely on the wall. Not bad, considering the fact that the entire reservation counted two thousand residents. That was as much as one percent!

Well, let’s see! Kizz, Tomsin, Arbite… Why not arrange the lists alphabetically? Oh, yes… they are alphabetical – by professions, not by names… Mila moved her eye to the head of the list. Agronomist, cook, driver, … One more time: agronomist, cook, driver… This is it: artists are out of favor again…

Well, to hell with it. I shouldn’t have hoped. Cook! Driver! Of course, we won’t stand a chance. The needle of Mila’s mood-meter swayed toward the red notch.

…

Well… If you cannot change the reality, change your attitude – that was the decision Mila made after her seventh glass of tequila. What’s good about this city, huh? Talk to me! Who are the residents left in it? Sanitary technicians? Decorators? Cook-ibn-gastrologists? If she ever went to that hell-be-damned city of Polis, she would not even find a guy to chat with.

Here, here… Here is life hustling and bustling, a true highly intellectual society, all pink and white. We are going to build our own state based on equality and respect. Well, as to the flunk-outs landing up here… They’ll be happy too! And we are the new intelligenzia… so many opportunities… Kaleb… High parties… the Empire of Sun.

– 4 —

Happily, alcohol was putting Mila down quickly and mercilessly. That was why the ‘high bunch’ would never hear about the ‘new Empire’s’ apocalyptic plans. And in the morning, Mila was too busy struggling with hangover.

Shortly before the afternoon, somebody knocked at the door, but Mila did not open it. First, the door sign said clearly and concisely that she was away from 11:00 a.m. until 17:00 p.m. If there was really a fool who’d have the strength to trudge his way to her house in the hellish heat only to turn back and return unaccepted.

Second, Mila realized early in the morning that what was to be her good looks was terrible, and she was sure she would not be able to fix that by the afternoon. Fortunately, the visitor must have adhered to the intimidating door sign and would not knock any more. Instead, at three p.m. she heard someone as much as banging at the door. Oh, what a day!

“Wait! Give it a rest!”

Mila looked in the mirror. It would be not before she’d clean her face that she would open the door. They wouldn’t have banged that hard without a good reason…

Mila washed herself, brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her hair. Finally, she walked up to the door. Kaleb literally stumbled into the room.

“You’re one wild tormentress, mam. It’s hot as hell, I all but got fried!”

“I recommend using an umbrella.”

“What? You’re a one! I’d never have thought it would have jolted you this hard! Well, could you, please, give your old buddy one last glass of water?”

“Yes, I could. What about a cup of coffee?”

Admiring her friend’s face, now iridescent with a palette of emotions, she went off to fill the glass. Overwhelmed with generosity, she added two cubes of ice. “At least somebody is as sick as I am,” a stupid thought went through her mind.

“Why one last glass of water?”

“How can you drink coffee on a hot day like this?” Kaleb guzzled down his water and bit on the ice. Oh my head.

“Kaleb! Please, not this loud… oooh.”

“Wow!”

Toning down seemed to be the last thing the so-called ‘buddy’ was going to do. “Did you commemorate it yesterday? You should have invited somebody to join the party!”

“Commemorate what?” Mila’s patience had worn thin, so her last words were a growl.

“What do you mean – what? How come? Haven’t you seen the lists? You’re in! Your name is right in the middle!”

Bastard! This is it…

“Kaleb! Get out of here. Now!”

“Mila” the man piped down, “Mila, I’m serious. Did you look up Letter P? Painter-decorator, Mila Kravitz.

“Painter-decorator?!” the world went dark before her eyes.

– 5 —

Nearly all reservists came to see Mila off, since she was a first-generation expat, so she knew everyone by sight, if not by name. She was smiling back and responding to well-wishing for nearly thirty minutes, so the driver of the rattletrap truck assigned by the city administration for transporting reservists, made a expressive remark about her not wanting to leave. That didn’t matter to her, and that was no good reason to ruin her high spirits. She was heading to Polis. And that was it!

Throes of creation

– 1 —

We-e-ell… Marina felt a blush begin to creep up her cheeks… Serves you right, darling. You should have stopped messing with everybody’s heads a long time ago, shouldn’t you? She had tried to take on that old this-does-not-mean-anything-yet look, but… the editor-in-chief was staring at her.

“Well, let’s continue.”

Sir Tr., J. Gorny was shooting out Russian phrases at a speed of a tennis ball bouncing off the world’s top-ten-to-twenty tennis player’s racket. She wondered where he had bought such an exquisite interpreter… that must have been an individual order. Oh, dipping into her wallet was the last thing she wanted to do now…

“Now take a look at this SLIDE image.”

Ooooh… the ‘slide image’ sounded so sincere as if Gorny was calling on to look at as much as godhead. Why look at it, it’s all pretty clear. Here it is – the four-layer map of the publishing house.

The heap of what in third-millennium editors’ slang was called ‘rough’, meaning ‘overall written material’, towered over like a lofty mountain, and the monthly dynamics extended over half of the conference room, its edges touching the employees sitting in the first rows.

It was a little worse with texts approved for further processing. However… on the average, they seemed to be as good as last year’s. Well, last month had been far from perfect, but it was not bad on the whole… Many offices would have taken great pains to achieve this result! But the “Frigate” driven by admiral Gorny (Marina all but snorted) felt dissatisfied.

The heap of texts, which had passed the focus-group test, was much smaller. My aunt! Over the last five months the text bulk had plummeted hard enough to crush all hopes for Christmas bonus payments. The feeble violet curls were barely visible in the cross-section view of the 3-D model.

And what about commercially successful texts? There had not been one.

Sir.Tr.J. Gorny was meaningfully silent. It was not for nothing that he had gathered writers who had been the most successful over the last several years. He wanted them to take their first-hand look at the picture and tell him – how come, HOW COME? How come he had to explain the past year’s failure to the shareholders?

So much for the merry Christmas…

“I want you, ladies and gentlemen, to revise your technical equipment once again. By December 20, our marketing department will submit a plan for the next year. We must be ready.”

Gorny swept his eyes over the room. His best employees…

“I must admit that I’m in for a tough conversation with the shareholders. I have to explain to them what I don’t understand myself – how come the best authors and marketing service in the country and elsewhere have failed to earn a penny. I’ll discuss it individually with the authors who are guilty of ineffective TST. You’ll find emails with invitations to my office in your mailboxes, and I hope you’ll take it as it is.”

Wow! That was new stuff. Gorny had always realized that all authors he had dealt with were creative personalities and he’d always wrapped his requests and desires in a colorful envelope, like a sundowner or a weekend trip – whatever tool he could use to keep a person on the right track toward creating another masterpiece. Things were far from good, weren’t they…

And, by the way, Marina seemed to have done worse than everybody. Ok, take a walk to my little office. Maybe an idea will dawn upon me before I get there.

– 2 —

She had to beg the bank for another loan. Everything would be on the art’s bucket list – that was why she had bought a country house. She wished she had used the authors’ hotel, which the publishing house had kindly provided for everyone who needed a rest. But she had sought total quietness, which nowadays costs a fortune.

And here we are now – hello, collectors. If the problem persisted, they’d cut down her salary, and the country house would be no longer affordable. To say nothing of the past two years of hardly being able to make both ends meet.

She had to get a new machine no matter what. It did not take an editor’s admit card to see that Marina’s text had barely met the terms. The narration line was a sheer squiggle, and Mario, the main character, could well end up being Tornundul by the end of the story.

Although she did run through her writings, she could not handle the whole bulk. Had it been a squint of disapproval on the editor’s face last time, or had it been her imagination? Reaching the office, Marina fumbled for her facility agent’s ID card in her handbag on the run…

“Hello, Angelica, I’d like to meet you today…” Marina took a glance sideways at the PC screen showing a blinking email mark. “No, not really… and what about tomorrow? Great! Tomorrow, twelve o’clock.”

She breathed in enough air to fill her lungs to capacity just in case and opened her inbox. First came a message from her ex-husband: “Hello, I’m writing to remind you that it is almost time to pay home insurance, you’re always forgetting…” Next came spam, then another spam, again and again, followed by a message from Veronica: “Marina, I’d like to remind you that we expect you to attend your next massage session today at…", and that was it… well, where’s the message from the Frigate leader? Hmmm, that’s strange…

Well, what would she do next, go back home? Oh, no, massage… Oh, should she cancel it? Too late. She was not quite in the mood to attend it. Ok, she’d go to massage… She’d had a hard time arranging for it. You’d better appreciate what you get for free these days.

– 3 —

Marina walked out of a taxi cab and went straight to the technical section of the Art’s shop. She did eventually get the loan, since a good half of the bank officials who were authorized to determine her wallet’s thickness, were her fans. The shop assistant recognized her too and began to show her around the section with the most expensive machines. That was the price of popularity.

“Well,” Kira, the shop assistant, started with a machine exhibited at the edge of the shopboard. “This is ТR-58S45 featuring voice recognition function. Now it has a database of more than two thousand plot lines, a database of geographical names, common names and a complete dictionary of flora and fauna. The previous version had a mineralogy database malfunction, but that is no longer an issue. This one also includes post-processing and standard text purity monitoring mode. Generally, all you need to do is download – vocally or directly – and get a complete text. We have tested it, you know, it writes wonderful poems! That is beyond understanding… The price is not so low, but I can say it’ll work for at least three years and, given your talent, you’ll write wonderful books. I’m dying to read your new novel about Testy Wisetachen!”

Marina took an apprising look at the machine and moved her eye down to the specification sticker and, on the fly, the price tag… What?!

“Thank you very much, Kira, but, you know, I put individuality first, and what I really need is a device with a substantial author’s participation support. This one is very good and comfortable, but it does not fit my style, you see?”

“Yes, sure! I understand! I should have noted that what makes your books really great are the sweet little trifles and details, that minor roughness making one sound like a childhood book… This modification is not good for you anyway…”

Kira paused for a couple of seconds and, much to Marina’s relief, went toward the end of the product line. There were one, two, three machines, which she could afford. So, which one to choose? The hefty MAC-89 or PKR – more compact but less functional.

MAC was her current machine, an older modification, so that would be a fair exchange anyway. She was pretty much accustomed to the interface and the output procedure and she was aware of its weak spots… On the other hand, MAC looked too cheap to her… and it was cheaper, she checked herself. What a torture!

Finally, she chose PKR. She was in for a holiday, which would give her time to figure it out. Also, there was such a thing as sick leave, and the district doctor, who worked at her local hospital, was her talent’s fan.

The PKR was not bad at all! Of course, compiling texts with it would not be an easy cake, but it could last her several seasons, maybe a year, and that would be a better thing than the obsolete rattletrap she was using right now.

“Yes, home address, please! Now, let me sign it, thank you very much, Kira. Expect new stories!”

They would not deliver it before evening. Marina wanted to see it standing on her desk badly, even though installing and operating it would take quite a bit of figuring out. Marina felt another pang of regret – she could have chosen the good old MAC… it had saved her so many times… And now she was to tighten her belt…

Now, no more slobbery, it’s time to go to work and there’s a bit of focus-group attendance to be done. “Happily, not mine!” Marina thought. “That would be a disgrace!”

Focus-group was a mandatory part of pre-sale testing of editor-approved texts. Essentially, sessions were attended by a representative of the trade union and an author group member, and today it was Marina’s turn.

– 4 —

Marina dashed into the focus-group sitting room, being ten minutes late, but the comfortable seats, in which experienced readers had usually sat, who were hired by the company for the target audience to conduct preliminary evaluation, were still unoccupied. At least, she had time to take her wind, so she flopped down into the nearest seat.

Three days before wage – not a penny in the pouch! She laughed. Never mind – now she had a machine, a brand new one, and text would be up to the mark again… Natasha – the secretary – walked into the room, and on seeing Marina there, her face took on a look of sincere astonishment.

“Marina, what are you doing here? The focus-group has been disbanded. They’ve called the whole thing off for today.

“Here we are. I’ve been out in the city since lunch time. I had no idea. What day have they rescheduled it to? Tomorrow?”

“Oh, no. This is for long. There won’t be any gatherings before they repair the focusizer. Wow, you’re not aware, are you… Can you imagine, the focusizer has broken down and has been forming focus groups improperly for about three months, I mean – off the topic. For instance, it could assign a group of medics to discuss an adventure story. Likewise, a bunch of housemaids could be assigned to evaluate a science fiction story. Generally… Marin, what is it? Oh, Dear, Marina!”