June 22, 1993
Tuesday
9:30 AM
The cold and dark were far behind now. I slid along a plane streaked with flashes of light and lightning, tumbled out into nowhere, flew — a-a-a-aah! — down a soundless black corridor... what was that?... the scream caught in my throat, my eyes flew open, and a wondrous marvel stamped itself into my brain — gates glittering with gold and diamonds. For two-tenths of a second I took in that jeweled splendor, and — oop!... the gut-sucking sensation of free fall vanished, and I crashed into a stream of soft light that turned out — impossible! — to be solid. The light braked my fall into nothingness, wrapped around me, and carried me to a shore covered in tropical growth, filled with the sound of surf.
Africa?
I snapped my eyes open and saw the ceiling of room forty-four, first building, MEPhI dormitory. Familiar down to the smallest detail. Ugh!
I’d woken up in my own bed. The nightmare was over.
The first feeling was relief. Sunbeams, fuzzy with dust, broke through gaps in the curtains. A plasma body a hundred and fifty gigameters away promised the same broke, cheerful weekdays as always. Though the broke part needed dealing with. I felt a pang of regret that the night’s fairy tale was over, that no happiness handed to me on a silver platter was coming after all.
«But what if the sands, and the girl, and the gentleman were all real?» I puzzled. «Maybe I really had been knocking around on the other side of life. What now? Would I stop being pathetic, take on some marketable shine... start a whole new life?»
Something inside me churned, bubbled, and — as if that weren’t enough — pounded my skull like a hammer: «From now on it won’t be like before, it’ll be like this! Wait for it! Like this! Like this! Like this!»
The sun shone outside the window. Its rays cheered me on: «No more foul weather. Bad luck, be gone! Everything’s going to be fine! It can’t be any other way...»
Muttering nonsense mantras, I tossed and turned, and... a sunbeam blinded me, sliced my eyes with a razor of bright light. I squeezed them shut, buried my face in the pillow... and heard a hoarse voice:
— Romka, cut it out sawing logs. Up and at ’em!
Who’s here?!
I lifted my head. An unfamiliar guy stood in the middle of the room, chasing a sunbeam around with a little mirror.
— Who are you? — I asked.
— Don’t recognize me? Happens, — he winked amiably.
— I don’t know you.
First time I’d ever laid eyes on him!
— Man, you’re dense, Peskov, — the guy held up a sheet of paper with a rust-brown handprint on it. — Recognize this?
Of course I did. That paper had been handed to me right before I left that cold world.
«So, so, so. Looks like I really did sell my soul. What’s going to happen to me? Am I about to croak?» I started to panic.
— Chill! No pissing yourself, no shitting bricks, no freaking out! You’ll live well, just not long, — the stranger reassured me. — You’ll get everything, and then some! Let’s shake hands. Hi! My name is George Coffin. In Russian that’d be Georgy Chaykin. Or Zhorik.
— What do you want?
— I don’t need anything in this life anymore, Roma. I’ve been sent here so you can get a few things before you kick the bucket. So, what’ll it be? I never made it through the whole contract.
— I don’t want jack shit.
— Oh, come on, jack shit, — Georgy-Zhorik gave a snorting laugh. — What’s the password? Boss said it’s nothing special. How’d it go... m-mm... Ah! Got it! «My life has had it all.» Heh-heh. Plain, no imagination to it. «Life’s a piece of shit!» would’ve been sharper. Admit it. Well, fine, don’t strain your brain. You’ll get the dough, and you can figure out where to spend it yourself. Money can buy everything except one thing. As the saying goes — keep your eyes fixed on death, poor singer and rider. So quit sawing logs... Gonna do your morning workout? No? Even better. We roll out in fifteen minutes...
«Roll out where? Why? What’s the sudden panic about? Who even is this guy?! And where had I heard those last words of Valera’s before?» — a flock of questions, big and small, descended on me. My head buzzed and refused to think straight.
Grunting, I got up off the cot, scratched my belly.
Ow! Son of a gun! A flash of pain made me yank my hand back from the scar I’d accidentally scratched. I sighed: «Not a dream, not delirium! Well, how about that!»
What now?
Without coming up with any coherent explanation, I circled the room hunting for clothes: a «Rock for Peace» T-shirt, jeans, socks. In the meantime, I took a good look at Zhorik.
He looked five to ten years older than me. Hard to tell. Maybe the reddish stubble covering half his face was hiding his age. Couldn’t say.
Build-wise he was taller and heavier than me: something around a hundred and eighty centimeters and over a hundred kilos. Gray hair that hadn’t seen a comb or scissors in six months piled up and stuck out every which way.
His clothes were ill-fitting and absurd, as if lifted whole from a dumpster and thrown on some collective farmer fresh off the bus from outside Tutayev.
