No Way Out at the Entrance

“Let’s meet F-Friday!” said Max.

Nina and Gulia exchanged glances. “We can’t on Friday.”

“Why?”

They did not get a clear answer. The girls hesitated. Nevertheless, Athanasius knew how to sum up from the scraps of answers that on Friday the warlocks were up to something. And it would be in the psychology school at Bolotnaya Square, on the next admission day.

They said goodbye at the subway. Nina offered her cheek to Max and outlined the place with a long nail. “I hope you don’t intend to kiss me? It’s so disgusting!” she prompted.

Max smooched her with athletic honesty, holding her head with his hands. Athanasius waited for some time to see whether Nina’s skull would crunch, but Nina turned out to be durable.

“Well now! Not enough that this terrible person meanly dragged me to a date! He even attacked me!” Nina was outraged, taking out a mirror in order to check the damage inflicted on her face.

While Athanasius was pondering whether he was obligated to kiss Gulia for the reason that Max kissed Nina and whether this would be plagiarism, Gulia got up on tiptoe – the difference in their height was large – and kissed Athanasius on the eyebrow. “Till we meet!”

Max neighed so abominably that Athanasius again gave him a fist. The train approached. They hopped into a car.

“Well, how do you like her?” Athanasius asked in the tunnel.

Max looked suspiciously at him. He, like that lady on the phone, did not like to admit being happy. Dissatisfaction, if you examine it, is universal currency, with which everything can be purchased, if we bargain long enough. “Who?”

“You know who.”

“N-not bad. Okay,” answered Max.

“For some reason it seems to me that this is for a long time,” said Athanasius. “Well, with Gulia. Not that intuition… Simply the more confused a situation, the more real it is, perhaps.” Max understood nothing and chuckled. The train slowed down, stopped, and again set off. “Now I’ll not calm down until I nail her ele. I know myself…” said Athanasius.

“Watch you don’t n-nail her together with it!” Max advised quietly. They were silent again. Max swayed peacefully, holding onto the handrail. Athanasius was bouncing like a sparrow.

“Did you understand everything?” he yelled into Max’s ear.

“Yes,” Max winced. “What did I un-understand?”

“Think!”

Max thought till the next station. “Ah! That my Nina, most likely, is from Beldo’s fort but not from D-Dolbushin’s? She’s a pr-practical student,” he stuttered.

“Oho!” thought Athanasius. “My Nina! He labelled her quickly! And several hours ago called her a dog.”

“I’m not on about that,” he said. “The warlocks are having a new recruitment! Would be nice to see how all this progress with them? Eh?”

* * *

Athanasius met Ul in HDive. Ul was standing with his schnepper similar to a double-barrel and aiming at a food can from fifteen steps away. He shot. The can remained standing. “Here I’m thinking about female whims. When it seems to someone that more time is spent with a horse and all that…” he said.

“Is it true?” asked Athanasius.

“It’s not about that. What forces them to behave like that at all? Maybe, a woman is capricious because it’s important for her to check if a man will stand the whims of a possible child? Some kind of test?”

“There are girls who aren’t capricious,” Athanasius said carelessly.

Ul again took a shot. “Who? Your telegrapher from Honduras? Holy! Dang! I suppose they learn to sleep on nails, eat with the head down, and open tanks with a finger.”

“They learned,” said Athanasius.

“What learned?”

“She perished,” Athanasius lowered his eyes. “Didn’t make contact. In the mountains, where there was the hidden transmitter, they found the safety pin from a grenade trampled into the ground.”

Ul grabbed his hand. “And you kept quiet?”

“I was joking. She’s alive. Sits at home. Bought a cookbook,” said Athanasius half-heartedly.

Ul pushed him away. “Some jokes!!! You’re simply a blockhead!”

“Aha,” admitted Athanasius. “I know.”

The can, which Ul aimed at, fell by itself.

Athanasius found Kaleria Valerevna in the teachers’ room, long and narrow. There was an argument: whether Kuzepych blocked up part of the corridor or it was stretched as a result of an unsuccessful dance of the shamans, who wanted to crush the teaching staff of HDive with the walls but did not manage and only stretched out the room.

Kavaleria was standing by the board with the timetable and considering how to make four instructors out of one free one in order to fill all the “windows.”

“Nothing pans out! People will again hang around with nothing to do! Looks like you have to be busy with the novices,” she complained.

“With the novices? Really the bees…?”

Kavaleria’s plait bobbed like a fishing float. “The last departed today. The bees calmed down, it means fall recruitment is finished. This fall we will recruit nine. Plus ‘beeless’ Rina.”

“You hand them over to Kuzepych. He knows how to keep everyone busy,” advised Athanasius.

Kavaleria smiled. “Well, what can I do for you?”

Athanasius told her, supplying the details. In his version, they met with the girls exclusively in the interests of HDive. “Certainly, can blast an attack marker, but there won’t just be some warlocks. Pity the ‘incubators’,” he finished.

For a long time Kavaleria twirled the pencil in her fingers. “Risk must be justified. Unjustified risk is folly. For the time being, I see no justification for the risk. We can lose a man, but what will we get in exchange?”

“Well… we’ll see how it’s there and what.”

“And see what? Walls?”

“Not… Well, warlocks at least…” Athanasius was lost.

“And you haven’t seen them before? Or do you think that the heads of the forts will share their plans with a crowd of people assembled from all over Moscow?” Kavaleria asked mockingly.

Yielding, Athanasius let air out through lips elongated like a small tube. “So, you’re against it?”

“I need to think.”

Chapter 6 Boys to the Left, Girls to the Right!