Аннотация: New Year's Eve on Mendoir. Waterfowl Turians and Azath's gift.
Chapter 4. Christmas and Holidays
Igor (Mendoir, December 2358)
Christmas
December 24, 6:00 a.m.
I'm working out with a pole in front of the window, and snow is falling outside from large, soft and fluffy snowflakes. I've always loved winter, but I was unlucky in my previous life. We lived in a megalopolis, and as it snowed, the whole city was stuck in traffic jams. And here I just love it again. Maybe it's because it's mild on Mendoir, the temperature hardly drops below minus five degrees Celsius, there's a lot of snow, and since there's no wheeled transport, there's no problem with travel. My father, of course, cleans the snow at the garage and in the yard, but that's all. Our village is illuminated by lanterns, they walk along the fences in three-meter increments, so we always have light, since the lighting is automatic: dark turned on, dawn turned off. Beauty!
Today is Christmas, what a holiday! People have been in space for centuries, they have mastered other worlds, we are neighbors with alien races, and they still celebrate Christmas! And that's it, that's such a twist of consciousness, and after all, other races don't mind, they celebrate with people. Well, at least here on Mendoir. They say they celebrate at the Citadel too, well, they celebrate everything there! All the holidays of all the races of space, just a holiday without pauses! I'll probably see you sometime.... At the crossroads, my parents, with our common children's help, built an ice town, a spiral slide around a tree, and ice statues (Taela's work). He has a talent for this, however, Santa Claus looks like a Quarian, only bearded! He has an amazing figure, and Tael himself doesn't grow a beard. They put up an artificial Christmas tree, hung toys, and half of them were homemade. The garlands are also homemade, half of the village are engineers.
As my father said, "I'll spend money on it if I do it better myself!" Of course I did. It's clearly visible from our house: it's standing at the intersection, glowing. The Turian brothers will be here in an hour, and we'll go to the school pool to swim. We like. I love swimming. And the Turians, too.
Since mid-November, we have been taught languages. We were sitting, learning English from pictures. After all, the official language of the Alliance. And the whole colony speaks Russian, so they gave it to me too. I did not learn, because I was reborn in a previous life on Earth and knew languages well. I was just playing along with the teacher. The aliens were learning their own languages. During this time, we took off the instrumentals and memorized the sound of the language. But then the author used translators.
More dreams have come! Very realistic, strange, sometimes amazing, sometimes scary, in which I see places where I've definitely never been. Very similar to my viewing of probability lines. But I've always done it in reality. In these dreams, I am often haunted by a strong sense of loss, fear, and anger. Most often, I have a dream in which I walk through our city park. I'm wearing a hunting jumpsuit like my father's, with thick inserts on the knees, elbows, and lots of pockets. I have my father's carbine in my hands. His hands were scratched, his knuckles were bruised, one nail was broken, and his combat jacket was stained with brown spots, dirt, and grass. I wander through the trees and look for my own, but there is no one. I call, I scream, but all I hear is rustling. There's fog in the park, and the trees are appearing like ghosts! Suddenly, I find myself in our village, strangely quiet and deserted. I'm walking past the Tanirs' house, Dahi's flyer is parked, covered in leaves, Azat's bike is covered in mud and covered in dust, despite the fact that Azat is a terrible cleaner in life, and his bike always sparkles. I see a collection of Nasar's favorite books rustling with torn pages and lying in the mud. Strange. He really values his small library, which he collects. Ratnait 's house is opposite, it's locked, the shutters are closed, and the red hologram of the castle is on. The Ratnait house is opposite, it's locked, the shutters are closed, and the red hologram of the castle is lit. The flowers in the flower beds around the house are wilted and blackened, the rose bushes are like dark skeletons: there are no flowers or leaves on them. Binna's swing is broken, hanging on one chain, the second is coiled like a silver snake in the brown grass, and the seat is slowly rotating around its axis from the wind, making a soft, barely audible creak. Her favorite stuffed gray cat is lying in the grass. Although she treats him very carefully. It's a birthday present from Deniska. Aegikh's house stands with the airlock open, and fallen leaves are blowing across the hallway floor. I slowly walk around it, I see that the bay window is broken, and small glass crumbs have covered everything around. Tael's favorite armchair is lying on its side, with the upholstery torn. The Natoles are dark and silent, the windows are black and look like dips into the darkness, the holograms of the castles are not lit, the wind is blowing sheets of paper across the front garden. There are drawings on them, I try to collect them, but each time the sheets are taken away before I can grab them. Here is our house, but there is no one in the courtyard, it is empty inside, and it seems that everyone has just left. The holovision is working, a cup of tea is floating on the coffee table, the guys in the room have a guitar on the bed and the turned-on datapads are lying around. My father has a punch line turned on in his office, and the sensor pads are on the edge of the table. There is a cold, growing, aching, acute feeling of loss in my chest!
The first time I had a dream, I woke up exhausted and couldn't sleep anymore. After that, I looked at my family all morning and couldn't get enough of it, the thought was beating in my head: "Really? Am I really going to lose them?! For what?! No! Please, not that!!!"
I'm standing in the shower under the hot, taut jets of water, remembering the conversation between my mother and Retnait that I overheard on the same day. It was Sunday, and the whole family was at home, and my father, as always, was sitting in his office reading a book. The older brothers had gone somewhere, Ivan was sitting in his room and enthusiastically assembling something from Lego cubes. I'm tired of reading, and my throat is dry. After going downstairs, I decided to go into the kitchen for a compote and found the beginning of a conversation at the locked door.
"Dayan, what are you worried about! You have the most ordinary son. An absolutely healthy child, smart, active. Most importantly, obedient! What are you unhappy about? I don't understand?!"
"A Retnait! He scares me! Sometimes it seems to me that he is not a child! Someone else, an adult, is looking at me from his eyes! You know, a four-year-old boy can't have that look!"
Oh! I got burned, it seems, in full! We have to get out somehow! But how? Okay, let's hear it further....
"Don't talk nonsense! What are you imagining? You didn't like the look!"
"No, Retnait, this is not normal! This is really, really not okay, Ratnait! My poor boy! He sat at breakfast today and looked at us as if he couldn't get enough of us, as if we were all going to disappear, and there was such longing in his eyes..."
"Maybe something happened to her, Diane? Have you even asked him? Maybe I had a dream about some kind of trash! He was exposed to element zero before he was born. Soon the magical gift should manifest itself. You people are generally versatile magicians, unlike us. It's just biotics. Many of your children become visionaries, even if they are weak.
That's the moment. I'll tell you about the dream now, at least some of the questions will be removed. I pressed the sensor, the door slid open, went into the kitchen, greeted Ratnait. I took a decanter of wild berry compote from the table, poured it into a glass, stood, drank, and looked at the women.
"My son? Tell me, why did you look at us so strangely this morning?"
"I had a terrible dream, Mom!"
"Tell us about him," Ray said.
He told them about his dream, ended it almost in a whisper, and said he was sure it would be like this. I look at my mother with her hands over her mouth, tears in her eyes, fear for me and pity in her emotions. Ratnet is sitting there, frowning, looking at me with sadness.
"You're a visionary, Igor..." Ray says softly.
"But why did everything wake up so early?"
"Our girls' magical abilities also show up early, sometimes at the age of fifteen."
"Retnaite, he's only four and a half years old."
"Well, your people have been living for only a hundred and fifty years."
Mom came up to me, hugged me, and said in a low, broken voice:
"Well, Igor, such an unpleasant gift appeared so early. It's also your magic. Who doesn't love you so much in heaven?" I hug her back, hold her tight, and say to myself "I chose the path of the messiah again after my last birth, Mom. But I won't tell you this, otherwise it will be hysterical. When I materialize my wings, everyone runs in terror."
I hear the terminal chirping, and I come out of my memories. 7:45 a.m., Tanirs will arrive in 15 minutes, and Azat and Ali will swim in the pool. Sometimes Nasar joins us. But unlike his brothers, he doesn't really like swimming. And those who really like diving in the depths.
While we're getting high in the warm water in the pool, Dr. Dahi is scribbling something on his datapad. An hour later, we packed up and flew to the Tanir home. Well, how did my good ones swim? Aunt Cassia met us. Yes, Mom, it's so cool.
January 01, 2359, 1:15 a.m.
I look out the window, it's snowing again. Large, soft snowflakes, slowly swirling, cover everything around with a fluffy white blanket. I put the metal pole aside and picked up the dumbbells. I have started training in the Russian Cadet corps. There are only five buildings on Earth. One in the USSR. The second one is in the USA. The third one is in Canada. And the fourth is in Germany. Well, the fifth is in Britain, somewhere in Scotland. The Highlanders took him under their wing. My uncle Hackett and my father graduated from it. Yes, I was surprised too, but the Soviet Union is still alive and well. His corporations have even spread out across the cosmos. Take the same Rosenkof Materials, which oversees the industry on Mendoir.
"So yesterday we celebrated the beginning of the new fifty-ninth year." Shouting and laughing, they ran around our Christmas tree, set off fireworks, lit torches and sang songs. It was easy, and I was possessed by a kind of gentle serenity. It's been a week since I stopped having my scary dream. And Mendoir began to prepare to repel the pirate raid. The deployment of defensive complexes and consultations with former military leaders of the colony have begun. I thought that maybe everything would still work out, well, there can't only be bad things in life!
Azat gave me a magnificent gift for the New Year, said that he had shaken up his piggy bank, asked his father for money, persuaded his mother and bought me a hunting knife at a gun shop in Gagarin! He's generally very protective of me. Like an older brother to a beloved younger one. I picked up the handle, though it grew, but it was quite in my hand. Kasia must have helped. The slightly curved, black metal blade, 12-13 centimeters long, had an intricate pattern of thin silver lines that curled closer to the guard into an inscription in Turian: "claw". The handle has a comfortable grip, made of reddish polished wood. At the end of the handle is the head of a mythological grinning beast. The sheath is made of brown leather, with straps attached to the arm or leg. I always go with him now. We are used to this, Mendoir is a young colony, and everyone is armed here: both children and adults. Five kilometers from the city, a natural wild territory begins, and wild animals in the city limits will not surprise anyone. The brothers have been carrying light pistols since they were seven years old, it's a battery-powered railgun with ten charges in a clip, 10 mm bullets, conical, with notches. The initial velocity of the bullet is only 300 m /s, which does not give a strong recoil, but the stopping effect is enormous. When hit, the bullet crumples into a pancake with a diameter of 20-22 mm, and I personally saw how such a bullet broke a fifty-board. It is not necessary to explain what will happen to the same nazumi from the impact of two or three such bullets. By the way, in all the thirteen years of the colony's existence, the colonists never shot at each other with weapons, neither adults nor children. I wonder what the advocates of the ban on the possession of weapons of the population in that Russia from a previous life would have responded to this....
Time is passing, and in three months I will be five years old, four of which I remember. What will the new year bring me? We'll see. As they say, we'll chew and see.