MONSTER KID - A SPACE JOKE

Sergey Lukyanenko Translated by Marina Wright

I heard the clatter of sandals ring under my window and opened my eyes with a groan.It’s not easy to wake up with a hangover.

I had spent all last night with my old pal, Vladimir Vassilkov, the spacenavigator. His space-clipper, ‘Nematoda’, had crawled through the wormholes of time and space, visiting eight planets and returned to Earth the day before yesterday. The call and the flickering of the videophone had interrupted my work. I put aside a thick pack of graphpaper with a grumble and answered the call. You can only imagine what I would have said, had it turned out to be Zhanna, my assistant.

But it was Volodka. He was bearded, had that special lilac tinted “astral-tan” and he had a lively sparkle in his eyes.

“Hi, old pal”, he yelled, “I am back on Earth! Do you still remember where my dacha is, and what you’re supposed to bring with you?”

Would I not remember?

It took scarcely more than half an hour for me to say goodbye to the Transport Flyer (a jolly young man from the Caucasus looked at my jingling bag with a smile and wished me good holidays), walked up the overgrown garden paths and knocked on the familiar door. Volodka gave me a mighty bear hug and dragged me into the kitchen. There, the fire was already burning in the Russian stove, the old samovar was boiling merrily, and Benia, the robot, creaking with old age, was slicing sausage and ham, opening oysters and chopping tomatoes. My friend inherited Benia from his granddad; the robot was old but my sentimental friend refused to send him offto be scrapped. “With every year he is closer to becoming a Vintage”, Volodiasaid and kept on patching up Benia’s worn out mechanism. After Benia had laid the table and settled, joints cracking, in the corner by the stove, to nurse his worn out thermoregulating system, Volodka and I had a jolly good chat. What great times we hadboth had. Volodkatold me about Outer-Space, the meteor storms and magnetic squalls, anti-matter vortices and mysterious crystallized killer-ships which fire at everything warm and alive which comes their way. I told him about my work. Our conversation grew more sincere, more cordial. From the corner old Benia’s oil pump made an occasional sobbing sound; the television screen flickered silently; cicadas chirped in the garden…..

Then I went to sleep on the veranda.

As luck would have it, I got woken up. I looked at my watch and growled –seven in the morning! It was Saturday, it was only seven in the morning – and I was woken up!

What sort of bastard could have done that……?

I got up from my bed and looked out of the window. Just you wait, you damn early bird – I’ll tell you what I think of you!

But the severe tirade I had prepared stuck in my throat. Under the window I saw a tanned fair-haired boy of about twelve, standing to attention. He had a red sun-hat on his head and brown sandals on his feet, his shoulders were scratched by the thorns of a blackberry bush, some fluff froma poplar stuck on his right cheek and he blew a huge bubble of gum from his mouth. When the boy saw my dishevelled head with its angry frown, his eyes grew round with fear and his bubble of gum burst with the sound of the first ten bars of a popular hit-song. Such musical chewing-gum is highly popular among kids now.

“Who are you?”I enquired severely, “and why are you making that row under mywindow at such an unearthly early hour?”

The boy, though embarrassed, did not seem to be timid.

“Please, forgive me”, he said. “But I didn’t know somebody was sleeping here. I came to see Vladimir Vassilkov, the Outer-Space navigator.”

“You know what, kid… I mean it, seriously. It’s not good to wake up VolodiaVassilkov now. Let him sleep for another two or three hours. Volodia is very tired after the hum-drum grind of his routine space duties.”

“I see”, said the boy, also sounding serious. “What a pity. I came to ask him to go for a swim in the river.”And once again camethe clatter of hissandals: clickity-clack. It was amazing what unusual friends my severe spaceman-pal had.You thought you knew a friend for a good twenty years, then suddenly you’d see him in a completely different light.

“You know what”, I said. “Go for a swim on your own and let Volodia sleep.”

“I can’t go on my own”, the boy said seriously, “I can go only with Volodia.”

“And why is that?”

“You see”… he lowered his voice and looked around just in case, “our river is very deep. I am too scared to swim alone.”

He said it with such touching sincerity that I didn’t know what to say. Where can you find a boy who readily admits that he is afraid of something?

The boy thought for a minute or two and then suddenly suggested:“Why don’t we go to the river together? I think it’ll do you a lot of good!”

“Well, but…”, I was rather taken aback, it was so unexpected, “Hasn’t anyone taught youthat you shouldn’t go anywhere with strangers?”

“Oh, that’s all right”, the boy smiled, “I am Vitia! So now we’re no longer strangers!” And he touched the window with his narrow paint-smeared hand, covered in iodine and with a plaster stuck to it.

“Sviatoslav.” I shook his hand. “Actually, I was planning….. oh, all right! Wait a second!”

I put on trousers and a tee-shirt and came out of the house. Fima, Volodka’s cat, saw me off with a meow.

Vitia held me tightly by the hand and led me through the garden, explaining on the way:

“We could leave through the gate and follow the road, but I know a short cut. We’ll have to climb over a fence, but I am sure you’ll manage it...”

While we were walking, he was constantly stretching his hand over his back to scratch a mosquito-bite between his shoulder-blades. It must have itched a lot.Vitka was even squawking a little in frustration from not being able to reach the itching spot properly.

“Is it bad?”, I asked

“Terrible!”, he said “Our mosquitoes are real beasts, bloodthirsty like tigers!”

We just reached the fence that was surrounding the dacha grounds.

“Press your hands to the boards”, I said to him.

Vitka did as I told and I gave him a jolly good scratch between his shoulder blades.He was so pleased that he started to grunt with delight. An old ice-cream sellerwho was passing by the other side of the fence, stared at us with curiosity. She could only see the top of Vitka’s head over the fence, and it was completely impossible for her to guess what could have caused this grunting. The ice-cream seller adjusted the yoke of the pails on her shoulders and hurried off down the road, turning round from time to time to look at us suspiciously.

“I know only too well, what it’s like to have an itch”, I said. “Once, I caught a space itch from Volodka… Boy, were we itching until the scientists found the cure… By the way, how do you know Volodia?”

Vitka breathed heavily through his nose. I stopped scratching his back for a moment.

“Well…” Vitka hesitated.

I started to scratch his tanned back again – white lines appeared under my fingernails.

“He is my Dad”, he muttered.

“He’s your Dad?”I raised my voice with astonishment. “Wait a minute… It can’t be!

Spacemen can’t have children after they’ve been in space! Spacemen swear not to have children, because it’s not known what these children might turn into. What if they grow into monsters?”

“Well, do I look like one?”, Vitka asked, insulted.

“No, you don’t”, I admitted. “But I didn’t know that your Dad was married.”

“You’re grown-up. Don’t you know it’s not at all necessary to marry for that.” There was bitterness in his voice. “Let’s go. I’ll tell you…”

We climbed over the fence (I was first then Vitka climbed on top of the fence, before jumping into my arms. He was as light as a feather). We walked down the country lane, passing by the sleeping dachas, while Vitka told me his story in avery grown and quiet manner.

“Dad went to outer space thirteen years ago. He swore an oath never to have kids. Mum also was a spacewoman. Their clipper got into a whirlwind of degenerate matter in the Alpha Godzilla System.They were sure they’d die, so, well…” he sniffed,“so that’s it.”

“But why did Volodia never tell me about you?”, I was horrified.

“He didn’t know himself”, Vitka grinned. “There was only one life capsule on their spaceship, the other one broke down. And then Dad left and my Mum stayed behind to repair the capsule, ‘cos she’s a mechanical engineer. She didn’t know then about me.”

“So for how long were you boththere?”I was shocked.

“A year ago, Mum repaired the capsule and we returned to Earth”, Vitka said. “We landed in secret and found a place to live near Dad’s house.”

“And why in secret?”

“Don’t you know what they’ll do to me?”, Vitka looked at me with his big grey eyes. “They’ll put me into the Space Research Centre and will be testing me there for ten years to see if I’m a monster or not! I’ll be an old man, by the time they release me!”

He was silent for a while and then waved his hand with vexation:

“Why on earth did I tell you? Now you’ll tell them about me, and they’ll cart me away.”

I felt uneasy. I sat beside him, hugged him by his thin shoulders and pressed him to me. I could hear his heart beating fast in his chest.

“Certainly not”, I said. “I can tell that you are real. You are alive. Don’t be afraid, I won’t betray you!”

The gate creaked. The ice-cream seller came out of the neighbouring house. She saw us, then for no reason seemed perplexed and stalked off.

“Thank you”, Vitka whispered.

The river was a few steps away. It was quiet, not wide and had been a favourite spot with all the local kids. Navigator Vassilkov and I also liked to sit on its bank after a good samovar or two of tea or to go for a splash by the dam. In summer,the river would get a bit overgrown until it was completely calm and sleepy. You could also fish for roach and carp in it.

Vitka kicked off his sandals and jumped joyfully into the river.I sat on the shore, cradled my poor head in my hands and pondered about life: what a difficult, complicated thing life was, what amazing encounters happened to you, and what difficult decisions you sometimes had to make.

Vitka finished his splashing, ran out on to the shore and started merrily skipping on one leg, trying to shake the water out of his ear. I looked at him with approval – what a lively, sweet kid he was, no headache at all. It seemed Vitka had caught my look. He frowned, came up to me and put the wet palms of his hands on my forehead.

“Bear up, uncle Sviatoslav.”, he said. “It’ll hurt a lot at first, but then all the pain will go away.”And true to his words – it seemed as if my head had exploded from within! But hardly had I had time to scream, the pain subsided.

“So, what’s all that?” I asked. “Are you a psychic? Do you heal by laying on hands?”

“No, no!” Vitka shook his head. “I can’t heal. I just speeded time up inside your head, so your hangover cleared in three seconds!”

“So you are a monster, after all”, I said, “Shame on you, Vitia! You lied to me!”

Vitia blushed, “And what if it’s for doing good? Is that also being a monster?” he challenged me.

I thought to myself. Obviously, the severe rules and regulations of OuterSpace exist fora good reason. It was discovered back in the twenty-second century, that the children of those spacemen who went to the stars grew up into horrible monsters. They didn’t have to be wicked, but each and everyone of their childish pranks was paradoxically connected with cosmic processes. The first alarm-bell sounded for mankind when the son of spaceman Ermakov was denied ice-cream, leading to the whole of Venus becoming covered in ice as a result. And when Elly, the little daughter of spaceman Brinner, was not allowed to go the circus… To cut a long story short all these children were put into a state of deep-freeze, and all new spacemen are now obliged to take a strict oath never to have children.

“And what does your Dad say?”I avoided answering his question.

“He says, it’s Ok… that I am not a threat to the Universe…” Vitka lowered his eyes. “I promised him never to use my abilities. Please, don’t tell him… that I cured your headache!”

“All right, Vitka. I won’t mention it. Go, have another swim.” I waved my hand at him. I was annoyed.

The morning got better and better! I took a pleasant stroll along the riverbank, having a pleasantchat about the weather with a shepherd who had brought a flock of rabbits to the water. Vitka, as any normal kid would do, was splashing in the shadows.

All of a sudden, I heard his scream of alarm.Quick as a flash I rushed to the spot on the bank where Vitka had already climbed out of the water. Blood was running from his left foot.

“It’s all right, it’s nothing.” Vitka was putting on a brave face.

But I could see that he had turned pale with fright!

He had cut his heel on a piece of glass. Worse still, some silt had got into the cut.

“Sit down, you piece of trouble!”, I ordered Vitka. I took his heel into my hands and started to suck the silt out of his cut. I had to suck for a long time, until the stale taste of silt changed into the salty taste of the boy’s blood. I spat it out into the grass from time to time, muttering, “You’ll turn me into some sort of a vampire, you wretched monster…”

Vitka stopped grimacing and was now smiling. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the ice-cream seller with her pailscame down towards the river. She saw us, pursed herlips and took a lower path downstream.

“Why is she always following us?” Vitka was indignant. “What a ghastly old bag! She’s been here since the day before yesterday…”

I bandaged his foot with my handkerchief. Vitka put on his sandals and hobbled bravely towards his father’s dacha. I put my hand on his shoulder and walked beside him. When we reached the gate I turned round.The ice-cream seller was hovering around the place where we had just been bathing. I smiled and helped Vitka over the fence with ease.

“Volodia!”, I reproached my friend after we had finished our tea with crackers, and Vitka had run into the garden to gather some raspberries for the evening meal. “Volodia! How could you?!”

Navigator Vassilkov lowered his head and pleaded with me:

“Sviatoslav, don’t rush to pass your severe judgment! We were certain that we’d die!”

“I don’t mean you having a kid”, I waived my hand. “To be absolutely honest, a lot of spacemen break the law. But why didn’t you tell me all about it? Aren’t I your best friend? Aren’t I, after all, one of the heads of the Monster Kids Control Department?”

“That’ sexactly why”, Volodia sighed. “Don’t I know your methods …. ? Off to the deep-freeze – that’s the only language you lot understand – till better times. But he is alive, he is warm… he wants to play, to swim in the river, to go fishing…”

“He cured me of my hangover”, I said gloomily.

“You see”, Vassilkov produced a bottle of ‘Old Bowsprit’ brandy and poured some into our glasses. “He is a good and kind boy! What… what did you say he’d done?”

“He demonstrated his monstrous abilities!” I rapped out the words. “It doesn’t matter that he did it with good intentions. Don’t you know how all this is interconnected?

They’d announce the appearance of Black-Holesagain,or whatever ……. and it would be your Vitka playing with a catapult.”

“You make him into God knows what!” Vassilkov was indignant. “So the kid knows how to movetime forwards and backwards a little… strictly on a local scale! None of your Black-Holes…”

“That’s what you think.” I shook my head. “Wait a minute.”

I took my videophone, got the right number and asked:

“So, what’s the news?

“The results of the express test show ninety three to ninety four percent of the monstrosity level. Be careful with him over there, will you?”The lab assistant’s voice faltered.

“So, you’ve already taken his blood for testing? That was quick!” Vassilkov was indignant.

“It was pure luck. He had cut his foot while swimming.”

Vassilkov took a swig of brandy and asked me in anguish.

“And so, what now, my dear friend?”

“To freeze him”, I sighed. “That’s the only way. He’s not a bad kid, but what’s a prank to him turns into a disaster for the Universe. What’s a pastime for them is a pest-time for us! We simply can’t take the risks!”

My friend looked at me with deep sadness, and was just about to say something, when suddenly we heard from behind the door:

“I knew it! I knew it! You are wicked!”

Vitka was standing at the door clutching a sieve full of freshly picked raspberries. Red juice from his lips mixed with tears was gathering in drops on his chin.

“Vitia, please try to understand”, I said with a sigh. “We can’t do otherwise. You’ll just go to sleep. And then, one day,sometime in the future you’ll wake up. Just imagine, what fun it’ll be to wake up in the future?”

“No, no and no!”Vitka shook his head. There was an ominous glint in his eyes. “You won’t be able to do anything to me! I know what….. I’ll age you now! You’ll die in three seconds, you wicked grownups! And then I’ll quickly turn other kids into grown-ups and we’ll conquer you. And I’ll let out all the other monster-kids. I wanted to let them out, from the very beginning!”

We froze in horror under the icy gaze of his eyes, They didn’t look like kid’s eyes any more. It even seemed to me that I began to age, though most likely he was merely gathering his forces.

And at this moment the stairs on the porch creaked under the heavy foot steps.

“Milk, cream, homemade curd cheese!”, drawled the old ice-cream seller in a singsong voice. “Yoghourt, milkshakes, ice-cream! Everything fresh and organic, everything straight from the cow!”

“Get lost, you old bag!”, Vitka screamed, without turning back. “Or all your milk will turn sour!”

“Ai, ai, God save us all!”wailed the old woman. “Have a chocolate covered icecream instead!”

“A chocolate covered one? I will, I will”, Vitka was nearly jumping with delight. “And a vanilla one as well…”

And in this very instant with one agile move the old ice-cream seller emptied her pail over the boy. We heard the hissing sound with which the liquid helium froze the monster kid. It whistled, it gurgled: a slight warm body at onceturned into a hard dark brown statue, resembling the chocolate figurines of little Moorish boys in the confectionary shops.

“Hold him, hold him, he is hard but he is brittle!” Volodka screamed on top of his voice, when the little monster started to topple backwards.

Luckily the ice-cream seller caught the body in time and arranged it carefully on a little rug.

“Well done, Zhanna,” I thanked my assistant, “As efficient as always and bang on time!”

“Remove his sandals, will you?” Zhanna ordered us around and picked up another pail of liquid helium. “Now you guys, keep turning him round, so I can pour the helium evenly over him, until he’s well frozen all over.”

The three of us froze Vitka quickly and uniformly, then we put him on the sofa and called for the transportation team. Zhanna pulled off her wig and then took a swig of brandy with relish.She looked reproachfully at Volodia and said:

“Naughty-naughty!”

“I won’t do it again, I promise.” Volodka was embarrassed.

Abram, his old dog, ran into the room from outside. He sniffed at Vitka, scratched himself ponderously and settled by the stove.

“Zhanna, was it on purpose that you waited till he”, I nodded at Vitka, “would be half turning with his hand outstretched so touchingly and with a smile on his lips?”

“Sure”, Zhanna nodded. “You know how they’re stored in the long-term storage-hall, poor darlings. It’s too sad looking at them standing at attention, arranged so regimentally. So I liven it up a little.”

We looked pensively at Vitka.

We all felt embarrassed and even a bit ashamed. But what else could we do? If the events on the cosmic level begin to depend on childish pranks, then we, the grown-ups, cannot do otherwise.

After all we were all monsters when we were kids…….