how he could have missed her. Then he understood: the high back had been blocking the girl.
“Me? A person!”
“Pardon?”
“A person by the name of Rina!” a mocking answer followed.
“And what are you doing here?”
Rina slammed shut her book. She was reading a textbook on horse breeding. Sashka made out something on her wrist like a massive leather shield going into her sleeve. “Riding the bus!” she said capaciously.
Someone pulled out the money from Sashka’s fingers. “Give it here!” Makar again. Of course, “brotello” had long since changed seat and had settled himself next to Lara. Interesting, did he find out if the girl is local? Did he advise her to take care?
Makar leaped up with a knee on the seat and, jumping together with the rushing minibus, called out to the driver, “Hey, man! Hello! Are we taking the money?” No answer. The driver did not even attempt to stretch out a hand. They saw only a blue sport jacket with the collar raised high and a baseball cap.
“Hello, garage! Deaf?” Makar began to yell quite insolently. He obviously considered that to humble someone in the girl’s eyes was an additional way to earn points.
“Now the driver will stop, and he’ll fly out like a cork, given a send-off with tender strokes of the crowbar!” Sashka gauged and was mistaken. No one even turned to Makar. For such as he, this was a challenge. Yet, the great person fidgeted on the seat with his precious knee, dog-eared the money in his sweaty palm, and was ignored.
“I’m left with the money! Did you all see, people? We ride for free!” Makar announced for everyone to hear.
“He’s simply deaf! Someone, shake him!” the bossy girl with the flower-stalk neck demanded. She had just been introduced to the fan of gallows and army dog tags, and Sashka heard how she presented herself, “Freda.” Interesting, is that her real name? It does happen that a person disagrees with his own name and runs around his whole life as someone obscure.
Sashka put down his knapsack, jumped over to the empty seat next to Makar, and tried to touch the driver’s shoulder. Specifically, he tried, because the minibus made a sharp turn, passing a bus. Sashka, not holding his ground, tipped back, and in an incredible way pulled the driver off with himself.
He yelled, expecting a crash; the minibus continued to rush along. A second later he realized that he only had the blue sport jacket in his hands. Having decided that he had torn it off the driver’s shoulders, he leaped up and saw that there was no one at the wheel. Only a baseball cap was dangling in the air. Now, when Sashka had the jacket, it could not be kept secret that there was nothing under it.
Chapter 2
Coming from Nowhere to Going Nowhere
In any good the keyword is “regularity.” Irregular good is evil, which decides to amuse itself.
A warlock will discuss global laws on the eradication of hunger on a universal scale, but a hdiver will simply silently hand someone an apple or a pie and move on.
The stronger one loves, the more one forbids. If you for sure want to destroy the one you love, allow him everything.
Two ways lead to wisdom: grief or voluntary self-restraint, i.e., in general the same grief, only conscious. If you do not choose the second path, the first one chooses you.
Better to take less but carry it all the way than to take a lot and drop some halfway.
The power of a person is manifested in how well he will be able to restrain himself.
Freda melancholically contemplated the empty driver seat. “But where??? What did you do with the driver?” she asked in the voice of a person who did not get the joke.
Sashka sensed that she thought him guilty. “Here! Catch!” He threw her the jacket by the sleeve. Freda in horror pushed it away immediately with both hands. The jacket fell. Now, when it was exposed, it did not pretend to be alive anymore.
“No! You did something to him!!! Aagh!” Freda closed her eyes and gave a short shriek, giving a signal to universal panic.
Lara began to squeal in the same second, demonstrating excellent vocal training. Makar in a businesslike manner advised her to cut it out. At the same time he leaned heavily with his stomach on the back of the seat, touching the mirror with his forehead. Incredulously, as if suspecting an invisible man, he ran his hand all over. “Wow, damn! Really no driver! Anyone knows how to drive?”
Showing that it was managing quite well by itself, the minibus dashingly dived between two trailers and went onto the outer lane. The clipped truck groaned like an offended bull.
“Me!” Sashka, recently in his grandpa’s Niva7 demolishing the neighbouring fence at the cottage, said.
“Well, so get busy!” Makar encouraged him.
Sashka wanted to climb over, but Freda caught hold of him, “Only try to touch it! I understand! We’re moving by computer control!”
Danny looked doubtfully at the pressed-down seat, the jingling door. He saw a kefir carton and a crumpled magazine. “By satellite!” he said skeptically, observing how the minibus honked angrily at a dog that had jumped out onto the road and made a dashing turn, dousing it with dirty water from a puddle. “Wow! The satellite surmised biological activity and set a course correction, taking into account the direction for splashing the liquid!”
Sashka tried to free himself, but doing this without being rude was impossible. Freda was hanging onto him like a tick. Not letting go for dear life for sure. At the same time, Sashka would not say that she panicked. She was simply such a person. Not a single action could be executed in her presence without her approval.
“What if it’s a show? Put us on some kind of stage and unnoticeably shoot our reaction? And broadcast live? Huh?” Freda put forward a different option.
After hearing that they could be filming her, Lara instantly settled down and fixed her hair. “Can I ask an improper question? Who is the studio decoy here?”
“Me! Really not obvious?” Cyril stated but backtracked on discovering how people were instantly staring at him. “Really! No need to kill me! I’ve already gone to seed! What show, people? Do you see at least one camera?”
“What if it’s hidden?” the precisionist in the suit proposed in a businesslike manner.
Cyril twirled a finger by his temple. “In this heap of junk? Even if they shove some web cam here, it’ll show like the eyes of a dead cockroach! Won’t work for TV!” he said with knowledge of the matter.
Lara tapped her knee with the phone. “I understand nothing! Should be all sticks here!” she complained.
Freda looked at her with an incinerating look. “Sticks are in the forest,” she said and, after letting go of Sashka, sat down.
The minibus finally broke away beyond the limits of the Ring Road and dashed between colourful new constructions. The region here was spacious, new, and the roads wide, free. The minibus swiftly made a turn. As Sashka was not being careful, he butted the glass with his forehead.
“We’ll not get out of here! We’re doomed!” the girl with the death dog tags uttered quietly.
“Don’t be a killjoy!” Freda pounced on her.
“Dog tags” shrugged her shoulders and with a long nail traced a final crossbeam on the gallows. “I’m not! I know!”
Even Rina was starting to be spooked. She was sorry that she had given Kuzepych the promise to keep quiet. But even if she had not, what would she say? “We’re going to HDive!” “Where, where?” “HDive! It’s this guildhall of divers, where they fly on horses through a dead world to get markers from Duoka!”
The