Pegasus, Lion, and Centaur

ANNOTATION

HDive – this is not a name, not a last name, not a nickname. HDive – this is the guildhall, where hdivers gather and which can be found on the map in the neighbourhood of Moscow. Outwardly this building is the most ordinary and every hundred years it is demolished and rebuilt in order not to draw attention. Hdivers do not need popularity; in fact the bulk of HDive is not even above ground.

Hdivers are not magicians, although their abilities far exceed any human understanding. If something significant or inexplicable happens somewhere in the world, it means the matter is not managed without hdivers. It is impossible for an outsider to enter the grounds of HDive. Anyone who has betrayed the Charter of HDive just once also can never return.

Hdivers are not by birth. No supernatural talent or affinity with magicians is necessary. The golden bees choose hdivers and the only beehive is in HDive. No one, not even the hdivers themselves, knows whom a bee will choose next and, most importantly, why.

When you hurt, do not pose as a suffering hero. You need to either cry out or put up with it. You can give everything to others, but nothing to yourself. Because you are a hdiver!

You will rip a pillow with your teeth, hit your fist against a wall, but you will smile at people. Because you are a hdiver!

Any dive is paid by the victim.

The smaller the victim and the less aptitude for sacrifice, the less chance a diver can extract a marker. The sacrifice cannot be more than a person can bear.

A repeat dive is impossible for one who has used a marker for himself.

A non-diving hdiver or one who gives up diving can remain in HDive, but not one who uses a marker for oneself.

The hardest dive is always the first. A hdiver is always tested by maximum pain with the first marker.

Not a single person, definitively firmly convinced of evil and its values, or perceiving himself as clearly good, can penetrate the grounds of HDive. We did not decide this. It is simply so, it was, and it will be.

New hdivers are not chosen by people but by golden bees, whose only beehive is in HDive. We do not know why the bees chose precisely you, because once in exactly the same manner they chose us. Although in some cases we can surmise. But surmising does not mean knowing.

It is impossible to crush a golden bee accidentally, but one can betray it. In this case it dies.

Chapter 1

Work – the Best Pill for the Love Virus

The principle of any advance: reach its absolute ceiling and make one sm-a-all step forward.

On the fifth of December, snow began to fall heavily in Moscow. Earlier it was falling with selective timidity: on the roofs of cars, park benches, garages, and transformers. Now the snow got seriously down to work and fell so densely, as if somewhere in the sky hyeons – winged half-hyena-half-lions – simultaneously emptied out ten thousand pillows. Large snowflakes did not flutter, but solid like middle-aged hens, each sitting in its own place.

Movements stopped. Traffic lights winked independently, conducting a white symphony. There was nowhere to go. Roads had disappeared. Automobiles, waving the windshield wipers, turned into snowdrifts in the blink of an eye. As it often happens, in the herd of cars there turned out to be a hysteric, repeatedly pressing on the horn and honking long and angrily: it was incomprehensible what he was demanding and from whom.

On the construction site searchlights from below hit the crane, and three pillars of light, piercing snowfall and closing in, showed its absolute infinity.

When the snowfall began, two young men and a girl were standing in an area near the subway flooded by electric light and laughing at the mysterious inscription “Chickn meat in pita.” These were Ul, his girl Yara, wide-mouthed and smiling, and his best friend Athanasius.

Ul was standing, thumbs in his pockets. His favourite pose. Medium build, not muscular, but as if hewn from an oak stump. Nearly twenty years old, short scar on the upper lip (the result of an attack by a bicycle chain let go in Max Gorky Park), Russian blood with a touch of Kalmyk, two hundred and forty-two roubles in the pocket, wide shoulders, and size forty-three boots. Here is everything about our hero. Get acquainted, reader!

Athanasius is half a head taller and half a year younger. They often call those like him good-looking. Lean, with narrow shoulders, and long legs like a foal. His hair is flaxen as a German prince’s, whose kingdom is so small that now and then he has to dart off his throne and catch the chickens so that they do not cross the border.

Athanasius was laughing, but he was feeling sick at heart. He regretted coming into the city at all today. As a rule, Athanasius avoids Yara; but today everything was going against his will. Together they reached the city, together they sat in the subway. The station was the terminus and it is impossible to pretend that you have to go in the other direction. While they were travelling, Athanasius looked at his double in the window of the train. On the face of the double crawled infinite wires braided in black, and written on the chest: “Places for women with children and for the handicapped.”

Athanasius tried not to listen to what Ul and Yara were talking about, but the more he tried, the sharper his hearing became. They were arguing complete nonsense, nevertheless Athanasius felt like scum, eavesdropping by a crack. To him, each of their words seemed significant, containing secret tenderness concealed from everybody.

Once in a while one of them remembered Athanasius, turned to him and asked him a question. Athanasius answered with unnecessary attention, although he also knew that the question was posed in order not to exclude him from contact. You know, if the three of us are together, then we three should talk together and not otherwise. Athanasius did everything that a self-respecting third wheel should: he smiled, joked in return, but felt that it was tearing him apart. He wanted to yell and yank the emergency brake. Let everyone fall on one another, then he would feel better for a moment.

The consciousness of Athanasius hastily searched for a loophole. Suddenly he recalled that he should buy a cover for the lens. For two years the camera – a reliable thirty-year-old Zenith, which he placed above any digital camera – had lived excellently without a cover, but now Athanasius suddenly realized that this was fundamentally wrong. One must take care of technology. He jumped out at Pushkin Station and the other two jumped out after him. Probably, they reacted to the closing doors. “We didn’t want to lose you!” Ul declared.

Athanasius almost growled. Ul was so radiant with camaraderie that Athanasius knew if he would stumble now and fly in front of the train, then Ul, not missing a beat, would rush after him and try to drag him away. And Athanasius felt wretched because of this. True, he had not yet become a traitor, but it seemed to him that falling in love with Yara, he had stabbed their friendship in the back. One must never be unfaithful or betray even in jest. This is more dangerous than getting up on a stool, putting a noose around one’s neck, and then asking someone to kick out the stool and run to the kitchen for a chair because it is more comfortable to stand on a chair.

Before Ul and Yara got together, Athanasius treated her casually. If he liked her, then no more than three or four other girls. In his internal list, Yara was not even on top. Then Ul, with a determination normal for him, not wavering and not comparing, chose Yara for himself, to love “till death do us part.” And Yara somehow immediately felt this and reciprocated, although Ul never uttered ardent speeches. And then for the first time the inexpressible inner truth, which needs no words, breathed on Athanasius – smart, sensible, respecting himself, his own eloquence, and his own mind. If it, this truth, exists, then every girl will feel it.

At first, Athanasius, in the capacity of the best friend, was critical of Yara. He was not pleased that Ul dragged her everywhere with him, but she would go and keep quiet as a timid mouse, which would transform into a cat at any minute. This was still that period, when she was the third wheel. Then, although nothing had changed outwardly, and Ul still rushed to him every time so joyfully, Athanasius began to feel that he was gradually becoming a part of the scenery.

Then everything picked up and Athanasius got stuck like a wasp in jam. At the same time, as an attentive man and not missing a chance to introspect, he vaguely sensed that his love was not real, i.e., born independently, but viral – emerged from a feeling of competition. It is very complicated for love to grow. It is like creating a new influenza virus from nothing, when all around everyone is healthy. Yet, it is possible to catch the love of others after a sneeze.

But while love was in many respects viral, he was unlucky for real. Moreover, he was doubly unlucky because together with a girl who loved not him, he could lose a friend. “If Ul only knew…” thought Athanasius gloomily. “And what would he do if he knew? Would he throw Yara in a bag into the sea for the sake of our friendship?”

Yara, not yet thrown into the sea, displayed enormous activity. She dragged poor Athanasius through tonnes of stores and found a lid after all that would fit the diameter of the lens. After forcing Athanasius to be glad of it to the max, the happy couple pulled him into a cafe, where he drank coffee and from melancholy chewed the rim of the paper cup.

Then they proposed to Athanasius to stroll along the boulevards, and he agreed, although the pleasure for a walk in winter along the boulevards is two percent from average. With his toe Athanasius kicked a cap from a plastic bottle and, his eyes following the jumping red point with a white belly, he berated himself. Where did he go wrong? Perhaps he and Ul paced their friendship too fast? When you reach white heat too soon, then it is difficult to maintain it. However, never sell a friendship short. It does not forgive. For two hours, Athanasius trailed along beside them, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind.

“So I told her parents, ‘She’s absolutely undeveloped, although a beauty! Nearly twenty, and still spends the evenings gluing her brain to garbage on TV!’ Her papa, the secret service colonel, said to me, ‘First you get married, and then re-educate!’ he said, waving his hands.”

“Let’s go to her right now! We’ll dash off somewhere as a foursome!” Ul cheerful proposed. Athanasius became silent for a second. “Easily!” He took out his phone, but the next moment with regret took it away from his ear. “Ah, forgot! Can’t today! She has classes,” he said. “She always has classes. Either the Institute, or the University, or some academies,” remarked Ul. “What do you want! Well, maybe, although these will be the last. Then we’ll meet,” Athanasius expressed hope.

Here he was being sly, because he knew that his girl’s classes would continue forever. Or at least until the girl herself appeared in nature. For the time being, there existed only a name (Victoria), a last name (prudently not revealed), an apartment on Bolshaya Nikitskaya, important parents, and a photograph of a stunning beauty. Victoria came to his head somehow accidentally, surfaced from parts cut from non-existence, and now the entire HDive knew that somewhere in the city Athanasius has a girl, who was ready to walk to Siberia for his sake and was only waiting for the moment when the well-known firm would release its new line of winter footwear. At times Athanasius felt that he was beginning to be inconsistent in the details, and, suddenly remembering, started to reason out the circumstances of the break-up with Victoria. A tragic death? Fatal treason? Departure to Honduras of the intelligence officer papa with the cryptographer daughter and sniper wife?

Meanwhile the happy beloved of the cryptographer from Honduras was strolling pensively behind his friend’s girl and trying to convince himself that he did not like her legs. And generally he was glad that she was almost always in camouflage pants, which automatically transform every girl into a combat comrade.

All through the fall, during any free hour, Ul and Yara wandered along the Moscow River and, looking at the water taxis with pop music thundering, called them music boxes. Somehow, Ul shot apple cores at them. As the third core in succession struck against the side, the water taxi discharged dark and smelly diesel exhaust at the same time. “Yay! I beaned it!” Ul began to shout, and for a long time they ran after it until, tired, they fell onto the grass.

It was cold. Wet leaves stuck to their backs. “Dragons” escaped from their mouths on forceful exhalations. They lay on the lawn and imagined the sea of those quiet off-season Crimean towns, where at eight in the evening life stops, already inconvenient to phone, and only timid bicycle thieves dart along the narrow stone courtyards, reeking of the long-standing presence of cats.

This imaginary sea was better than the real one, because it was born of their love. In their Moscow sea rusty teeth of old moorings jutted out of the foamy water. Waves ran along the jagged steps of the embankment. At night, the searchlight burnt on the old customs quarantine pier. Well-fed seagulls, like chickens, were sauntering along the parapet. Insolent sparrows somersaulted in the surf, where small flies swarmed above the rotting algae and a dolphin tail cut by a screw stuck out.

Then Yara became Yara. In all documents and registers, it goes without saying, it remained “Yaroslava” as before. “Yara” was like the mark of Ul’s property. Economizing the sounds of his own speech, Ul eternally shortened everything, beginning with himself. It would seem that the name “Oleg” was too long. Why not make himself Ul?

Ul hardly talked about love. When it is there, it is not necessary to speak of it. Perhaps he blurted out something in the style of: “tell this to our grandson!” But then he adored life-asserting stories. Well, for example, one fellow went into the drugstore for a thermometer. On the way back two guys attacked him. He began to struggle and during the fight it turned out that the thermometer was shoved into the mouth of one guy and was broken there. “Precisely with all the mercury! Get it?” Yara did. “But how did it get shoved into his mouth?” “Anything can happen in a fight. Maybe, there weren’t any teeth. Maybe, even somehow… And there’re much dumber incidents!” Ul said, and Yara believed that so it was.

The dumber the incident, the closer to the truth. On the contrary, the more romantic, the further from the truth. Not without reason the experienced librarians most often placed books about princes on white horses in the division: “developing literature about animals.”

Occasionally they went to Yara’s sister, who had a son a bit over two. The sister would instantly flutter off somewhere and Yara would serve her duty as an aunt. “Once upon a time there lived a mousey-scouty and a froggy-crocy!” she said solemnly. The diathetic chubby little boy did not care for fairy tales. He immediately lost focus and began to throw a potato. “Come, let’s listen! To whom is the most beautiful girl in the world telling a story about mousey-scouty and froggy-crocy?” Ul said in a dismal voice. The child froze. The mouth began to pull down dangerously. “And hoppy-bunny!” Yara continued to coo. “And money-bunny!” Ul made a correction. “In short, this entire brotherhood lived in a certain kingdom – a certain state, namely at the Savelovskaya subway station, not far from the computer market, and fed on talking cockroaches with no musical ear.”

So flowed the days of this exquisite fall. At times, a silly mood came over the formerly serious, almost stern Yara. “Will you do everything for me? And will you let me touch your eye with my hand?” she asked slyly. Ul was happy and was secretly afraid of his own happiness, understanding that he was absurd in happiness like an enamoured pit bull.

In that walk before the snowfall, everything was wildly hilarious to Yara and Ul. Goofy people were strolling along comical streets and with an intense look doing amusing things: shopping, answering the phone, looking fearfully at the sky, and pulling up their collars. Nearby a freezing woman with a handcart was stomping and selling snakes for cleaning clogged drains. Established couples politely hissed at each other or squabbled in tired voices.

And here suddenly snow came pouring down and everything was hidden somewhere. The square, the subway, the “chickn meat” in pita, and the woman with the handcart. Only car horns, short lost rays of headlights, and the two of them. And at that minute, when the whole world was only made of snow, Ul kissed Yara. After the kiss, he rubbed his own nose against hers. Yara liked this. They stood and rubbed noses like horses. And snow tried to get between their noses.

“Well, I’m going!” Athanasius’ voice reached them through the snowy shroud. “Where to?” Athanasius wanted to say that he was leaving altogether, but instead growled, “To buy water!” and went away to the kiosk. Ul heard an annoyed exclamation: either someone bumped into him or he against someone.

“He’s strange today! Something’s eating him. He’s probably jealous,” said Yara seriously. “Of whom?” Ul was puzzled. “Of you. Yesterday you were his, but today mine.” Ul was inclined to consider that he was his own man. “Perhaps because of the dive? I can’t stand being the guide. If anything happens, I’ll never forgive myself,” he proposed.

“Who’s he going to guide?” Yara asked, and with a movement showing ownership swept snow from Ul’s shoulder. “Dennis.” “Athanasius can’t be a guide. He has to be completely calm. In this state he won’t be able to make his way through the swamp!” Yara said decisively. Ul looked at her for a long time, then nodded. Better to teleport alive into the meat grinder at the sausage plant than to get stuck in the swamp. Certainly, Athanasius would brag, but must not let him. Yara was right.

“I’ll guide Dennis myself!” Ul proposed. Yara clicked her tongue. “You can’t. You have a different speed of passage.” It was useless for Ul to object. Passage depends neither on age nor on sex. An iron and a feather bed will not sink with the same speed even if they are of equal weights. “Who then?” Ul asked perplexedly. “Athanasius shouldn’t. Me neither. Kavaleria generally plunges like a needle. Maybe we’ll ask Max or Rodion?” “No need to ask anyone,” said Yara. “I’ll be the guide.” Ul was worried. “You’ve never been a guide! It’s not the same as diving yourself! I’m against it.” “Have to start some time. I’ll have a talk with Kavaleria, and you with Athanasius. Okay?” Yara said pleadingly.

Ul threw back his head, opened his mouth and began to catch snowflakes. Yara imagined that a snowdrift was growing in his stomach. “Say it!” she demanded. “That I agree? I don’t agree!” “Well, say it!” Ul swallowed some snow. “Don’t interfere! Don’t you see: the man is feeding.” “Please!” “Well, fine: I say it,” he yielded unwillingly. “Satisfied?”

“No. Say also that you love me!” Ul frowned. “Don’t blackmail!” “Say it!” Yara insisted. He stopped catching snowflakes. His face was wet. Only the snowflakes on his eyebrows did not melt. “I don’t know how to say it! My tongue is frozen.” “Don’t weasel out! Repeat: ‘I love you’” “You love me.” “OLEG!” Yara tried to strangle him but his neck was too muscular. With her pitiful vain attempts, she only delivered pleasure to Ul. Ul always uttered the words “I love” under the greatest pressure, asserting that the less often you utter them, the more they are worth.

“And why did you hide roses all over town and stealthily plant the coordinates? I found one rose in an old pigeon loft on Savelovskaya, another on the garret of a two-storey house on Polianka! Answer!” Ul leaned over and scooped up some snow. “Didn’t find it at Voikovskaya? I thought so.” “Confessed! Aha!” “Not aha. I simply saw how he put it there,” Ul extricated himself. “Who?” “An unknown in a black mask. I pursued him, drove him into a corner, but he drank acid. Only smoking laces remained,”

Ul quickly looked at Yara’s indignant face and suddenly proposed, “Fine. Come, I’ll shout this at the top of my lungs!” Before Yara could stop him, he jumped on a box and, holding onto a post, shouted through the snow, “Humanity, hey! This is my girl! Here she is, in the green cap! She’s not visible because she’s hiding behind the post!” “I’m not!” Yara was outraged and, making use of the fact that he was standing on one leg, pulled him by the ankle.

Ul flew sideways. In the air, he dodged like a cat, rolled over and jumped. It could seem to someone that he had broken all his bones. But only if the person does not know what a hdiver and such a hdiver jacket are capable of. “Must think first! It’s asphalt after all!” he was indignant. “I’d visit you in the hospital. Would bring rolled oats and oatmeal!” Yara encouraged him. “Wait!” Ul quickly asked. “Do you actually consider that rolled oats and oatmeal are different things? Some good mother I picked for my poor children!” “Wh-at???” Yara was mad. “What children?”

Athanasius approached with the mineral water. The water was icy, and snow had settled on top of the bottle. “Anybody want any?” he asked with hope. No one wanted any. Then Athanasius, feeling unhappy, gulped down the water, and his gums immediately froze.

On recalling something, Ul unbuttoned his sleeve and looked anxiously at the laced-up leather buckler on his left arm. Similar to a medieval vambrace and continued from the wrist to the elbow, the buckler was decorated with small cast figures. A bird with a female head; a suspiciously short-legged centaur; a goggle-eyed lady with a forked fish tail; a lion resembling a chubby sneering cat. Someone who has never seen a live lion could imagine one like this, but then would beat off the goggle-eyed fish-tailed lady with a harpoon. The figures were interwoven and, alternating with grape clusters, formed a guard plate rigidly fixed on rough skin. The only surprising thing was the difference in the colour of the metal. The goggle-eyed lady was dim, but the sneering lion, the centaur, and the bird blazed, as if they were cast a minute ago.

“Why has the mermaid faded? Ah, yes! We stole the herring from the hypermarket and released it into the Moscow River!” Ul recollected. “A mirror carp! Your idea, by the way!” Yara corrected him. After seeing how it opened its mouth in the aquarium, Ul assumed that it was shouting, “Oooh! Bro, I’m in ambush!” He touched the mermaid, and there was one less fish in the hypermarket but one more in the Moscow River. Ul blew snow away from Yara’s cheek. “Well, let’s go, snow grandma, to charge the clms!”1 he said pertly. “And you’re snow grandpa!” Yara snapped.

They quickly went to the underpass. A large shaggy dog emerged from somewhere, ran after them, and started to bark at them furiously. Ul stopped and the dog stopped. “HOLY! Dang! So what’s next? No way, huh?” Ul was interested. The dog also did not know what was next. Its life’s plans disintegrated. It was confused, but could not stop barking immediately and, after several loud yelps, leisurely retreated. Athanasius attempted to treat the dog with water, but it only sniffed the neck in passing.

The underpass was full of people. Many were standing on the stairs and apprehensively stuck their heads out. “Has it stopped? It hasn’t stopped?” they asked every second. It was funny to Yara: they were sitting in a pit dug under the road, pushing and getting angry that they could not force their way to their multi-apartment burrows. Ul stepped in front like an icebreaker, breaking through the crowd with his wide shoulders. “Please allow us through!” he politely asked. Athanasius settled behind Ul and used the path opened up by him. Yara had a different tactic – where Ul was squeezing through, she glided like a snake.

Nearer to the centre of the underpass, Ul was inexplicably filled with politeness and began to make way for the counter-flow. To do this he had to press against the wall lined with a greyish tile. Ul got hold of the tile with his sleeve and proceeded further. Several seconds later Athanasius turned up in the same place of the underpass. He did not begin to complicate matters especially: tossed the bottle from his left hand to the right, touched the wall, and quickly proceeded forward. After touching the tile as Ul and Athanasius did, Yara felt a tingling in her wrist and light heat rising from her fingers to the elbow. Having ascertained that the clms was charged, she wanted to tear her hand away immediately, but here the crowd caught her and she delayed slightly.