Shadow of the Transition

Chapter 4

I struggled to get up and pulled the cord that was tied in a tricky knot on my sweater. Rick Jansen dropped his jaw. Indeed! Thanks to the efforts of Peter and Ashan, my kidnappers and bosses, about ten kilograms of fish and two two-liter bottles of water fell out at Rick's feet.

"L-lady," he stammered, "you are like that prophet of the Almighty who brought a basket of fish to the hermit..." He reached for the bottle and began to slowly sip the water, though I would bet it was not easy for him. "No, you are like an angel who brought water to some guy in the desert!"

Rick closed the bottle, but it was beyond his strength to let it go. I pursed my lips so that he couldn't see me smile, and went to explore our hideout, leaving the guy alone with his unexpected wealth.

The room in which we found ourselves was quite large, about twenty by thirty meters, with a high ceiling, but absolutely empty. There was nothing in it, just bare old concrete all around. The floor was pitted and dusty. In one place, a piece of metal stuck out of the wall, and Rick's dirty, concrete-dusted camouflage jacket hung on it. Besides... well ... in the far corner, I found a latrine, which of course didn't contribute to the freshness of the air in a closed room. I returned to the opening and glanced at Rick out of the corner of my eye. He was sitting on the floor, clutching the bottle to his chest; it was already half-empty.

However, I was feeling unbearably cold in my wet clothes, and it was time to do something about it. I loosened the cord that had held the hem of my long knitted sweater turned up. This had been done in order to stuff the fish and the water into this "pocket", so that I could match the weight of the dead Sergeant Evelyn. Naturally, the sweater stretched out and now hung down to my knees. It looked like a blot, openwork, wet and cold. I walked aside, took it by the hood, and started twirling it over my head, first slowly, and then faster and faster, as the water was displaced by centrifugal forces and the sweater became lighter.

Rick laughed as drops and trickles from my so-called "helicopter" fell on him. He was openly jealous, but I didn't care. Such method of drying clothes was terribly tiring. I was feeling hot, and I knew all my muscles would ache tomorrow; still it was better than freezing in the wet clothes and catching cold.

When I got really hot and I thought my arms were going to fall off, I put my sweater on and started walking around to dry my clothes with the body heat. Then I started twirling my sweater again. After an endlessly exhausting period of time, I noticed that the light had dimmed: probably it was evening. My thin synthetic turtleneck became dry by that time, and my synthetic fitness pants were half dry too. That is, their upper half was dry. They were a bit wet from the knees down, but I didn't have the strength to move anymore.

I looked back at Rick and saw that he had somewhat followed my example. He had his camouflage pants hanging on a piece of iron and was sitting hunched over in his underpants and boots, covered with his short jacket. His shirt was still lying in the puddle near the opening. I approached and felt it – it was 100% natural. Yes, these things take a long time to dry. They're also expensive to wash because they need a lot of detergent. That's why after the Disaster, I only had two sets of clothes, and they were both synthetic. It was too difficult to bring water to my ninth floor. Actually, why did I need more clothes? As for the artificial fabric being electrified, one can get used to it.

Suddenly my stomach rumbled loudly, and I remembered that probably I hadn't eaten since the night before, when the fish ran out at home. In the morning I went to the distribution point, and when I returned ... Had it really only been one day? Considering the intensity of my inner experiences, they would have been enough for me for more than a year ... Well, how could I arrange our meal so that I didn't have to bring one fish at a time from the pile to the "table"? Somehow I had a feeling that Rick didn't want to move closer to the fish. I went to the pile, scooped up as much fish as I could into his t-shirt, placed it between us and squatted next to him. Contrary to my expectations, he didn't touch the fish, just watched with a hungry look as the slaughtered carcass disappeared in my mouth.

"Lady, do you know... Do you know where this fish comes from? This fish that our government distributes for free? This is probably the only good thing about the Disaster, though it's not our merit, the people's merit, I mean. It happened by chance. Do you want me to tell you?"

I didn't answer: my mouth was full of juicy and fat flesh, so tender, moderately salty, without any small bones that are characteristic of our fish. But Rick had warmed up a bit and stopped stuttering, he had a pleasant voice, and the subject was interesting; so why not?

"Well, in the first months after the Disaster, the Professor and everyone who could help him tried to make a Return Frame: some structure equipped with trackers, which would bring biological objects from there to us alive. But they had no experience yet, so they built the Frame here and threw it there like a net, instead of building it right there, as they do now. A stupid idea, isn't it? It's like throwing a net from a satellite into the sea, in the hope of accidentally catching a drowning man. But those were just the first experiments. And one day the net, that is, the Frame returned full of fish..." Rick looked with burning eyes at another juicy slice that had disappeared in my mouth, and continued, "The fish turned out to be edible and very, very nutritious. But it was not from our world and had a completely incomprehensible protein composition. Well, so far, no one has died after eating it," he sniffed and cast a glance at the subject of his story, "but no one, even the Professor, could predict what would happen with long-term use, because this alien protein accumulates and integrates into people's bodies, something like that. Therefore, the government continues to harvest these fish, according to the initial signals from the trackers, and distributes it to the poor for free. It's better than starvation, but whether to use it or not – everyone decides for himself ... Oh, to hell with this! Excuse me, lady...»

Rick grabbed one fish and dug his teeth into its back, biting off a piece right with the skin and part of the backbone. He took a second or two to taste it, and then ate the rest of the carcass in the same way. Even with the offal, as it seemed.

"Why are you ... so surprised ..., lady," he murmured as he broke the back of the next fish and threw its head away together with the intestines, smearing his hands completely. "There's a first time for everything..."

I took the third fish out of his hands, pulled the top fin toward its head, tearing open the delicate skin without scales, and at once took out two perfect and whole elongated slices of flesh, setting aside the rest.

"Wow! Blimey! You're not only a prophet and an angel, lady, you are also a magician!"

There was such absolutely childish admiration in his voice that I moved aside his hands smeared in the fish intestines, and put the piece of fish right into his mouth. It was funny. Rick was laughing, I was instantly carving the fish carcasses, and he was catching the fish slices with his lips, sometimes bumping into my fingers, just like my cat used to do before the Disaster ...

"Oh, please, lady, stop cleaning them, I'm really full, enough for now..."

He got up and went to the opening to wash his hands and face, and I took the remains to the latrine and also ... used it. After I washed myself, I realized that it was already very dark and I could barely see Rick in the thick darkness.

"Come here, lady! Do you hear my voice? Yes, come here!"

A flicking sound was heard, and a living light of a plastic lighter, small but so magical in this place, flashed in the darkness in Rick's hands.

"The gas is almost over, so I'll put it out now, just look, lady, here is my jacket, you can lie down, and I'll sit here, in the corner..."

The light faded. I reached out for him sitting somewhere in the darkness, and found his short hair and the ic-cold skin of his shoulder and back. Yeah, he would sit there without his pants and jacket! And I would probably be all alone by morning!

By poking this shy idiot in the ribs and pinching him mercilessly, I forced him to lie down on his side on the jacket. Then I lay down next to him, pressed myself tightly against his cold back, and covered us both with my almost dry sweater, its hood serving as a thin layer between our heads and the concrete floor. We had to sleep in wet shoes, but... The thought swayed and started floating away out of my head.

And then another one came: oh my, how had he slept here before?..