At the end of March, there was still dirty lumpy snow on the shady sides of the streets, but coltsfoot bloomed along the fences in the sun. While the weather was sunny and calm, then brown butterflies fluttered from time to time upon the blossoms.

There was no sun that day. The sky had been covered by heavy clouds since the night before, and the feeling of hopelessness hung in the air. The school principal, Yar, just wanted lie down and pull the blanket over his head. He told the kids to go home after the second class. He also announced spring break two days early.

But Chita didn’t let the third-graders go home. He gathered them in the school gym and gave them a warm-up with jumping jacks and other exercises. Then they started the ball throwing competition.

About three months had slipped by and still there was no news from the Windies. Yar, frowning, went into the left wing of the school building - there was his apartment. Dasha was in the kitchen jingling plates. Yar had asked her a thousand times to stay out of this, but she kept comming by every now and then and do the dishes after he and Gleb sat and talked late at night. Al’ka was sitting on the windowsill in Yar's room, just looking at the sky. He smiled slightly and said to Yar, “Gleb has arrived.”

Gleb was sitting on the bed in Yar’s tiny bedroom with a frown and inserted long bullets into the revolver. “Filthy weather, isn't it?” Gleb said. “They're quiet now, but I think they're plotting something big.”

Yar shook his head and said, “I'm worried about Tik. He’s out there somewhere, and he's...”

“I'm here, Yar,” Ignatik said. He stood in the doorway.

“Phew,” Yar sat next to Gleb and leaned back against the wall with the map of the peninsula on it. “How are things in town, Tik?”

“There's no news, nothing,” Ignatik said.

“I don’t like this ... calm before the storm,” Gleb said.

Then Dasha entered the room. She said with a sneer, “His lordship the learned Magister is moving down the hallway.”

They met the Magister at the grand room. He was wearing a leather coat and a fashionable hat. He still had a beard, formally styled and he still seemed like a real university professor.

"Hello, Principal Yar, hello, young people," the Magister said and sat down at the table without invitation. He took off his hat and laid it casually on the edge of the table. If he were a human being, Yar would say that the Magister drank a bit to brave himself up. The Magister crossed his legs and turned to Gleb. "Hello Gleb Sergeevich. Do you remember meeting me before?”

"How did you survive?" Gleb asked, squinting behind thick glasses.

“You missed last time, Shooter,” the Magister said with a smile.

“I always have a clear shot,” Gleb said and sat at the table opposite the mystery guest. Yar also sat down at the table, next to Gleb.

The Magister drummed his neat fingers on the oilcloth and said, “I would very much like to find common ground on one important point. Honestly, it is in our best interests…”

“The Sparky is no longer available. Blabber will not be giving it to you,” Yar intoned flatly.

“But you can create another one,” the Magister said, staring at Gleb. “You remember the recipe, don't you, Shooter?”

“I suppose today's weather is your doing?” Gleb asked.

“We did it,” the Magister answered.

“Why?” Yar asked.

The Magister stroked his beard and explained, “The tricks with weather are just for show… for now.”

“You won't get the Sparky or whatever else,” Yar said.

”It's a pity. You have no idea how deep this is. Come on, Shooter, please stop touching your revolver under your jacket. We have completely changed the structure of our bodies. We are practically bulletproof. Even your special bullets cannot harm us. We'd better have a good talk.”

Yar cocked his wrist, squinting at the dial.

“Alka, Dasha,” Yar called. “Please, go relieve Chita at the gym. He has been training with the guys for two hours.”

Alka snuffled displeased, but went to the door. Dasha followed him.

“It’s not like we can make an alliance with you,” Yar said to the Magister.

“But, Yaroslav Igorevich!” The Magister exclaimed. “Once you've considered it more carefully, you'll realize the mistake you are making.”

“Do you want some good advice, Magister? Run from this planet and don't look back. Find yourself the most distant planet where there is no intelligent life, and where you can do your tricks as much as you like... Don't you see that here you are doomed to defeat. You face a seed of resistance so far. And what happens to you if people of several planets team up against you?"

“If we only lift a finger, there'll be nothing left - no planets, no people on them," the Magister said acidly.

“So what happens to you, then? Come on, Magister. You are the race of cosmic parasites, but parasites cannot live outside his host," Gleb said with a grin.

“And that is why we can not take your advice. Galaxies where life doesn’t exist are useless for us. And for the record, there are no such galaxies,” the Magister said with a straight face.

“You can't stay here,” Chita said, standing in the doorway.

The Magister looked around.

"You're wrong, boy. We have a cause that's bigger than any one of our own needs.”

“And so have we,” Chita said emotionally. "I want you to know that you're risking a lot, too."

The Magister was silent for a long time. It seemed that all seven hundred twenty-nine of his brains had been thinking a great deal about the words that Chita said.

Then he said with a weary sigh, “What can you do? Do you think that stupid incident at the post office scared us? Now we find it even funny. So don't even hope for throwing drumsticks at us.”

"What? What drumsticks are you talking about?" Yar said in surprise.

“So you don't know, do you? Well, the better for us,” the Magister said.

“I guess we'll find that out, too,” Yar said. “But the fact that you are afraid of drummers has long been known. No wonder you could not take down them during the uprising."

“What do you mean, ‘the uprising’?" the Magister asked disdainfully.

“In the naval school,” Chita answered.

“That is totally untrue!” the Magister exclaimed in a high-pitched voice. He suddenly morphed from a university professor into an old yeller. “There was no uprising. There was an act of hooliganism of the boys who broke the ban and swam the river to enter the Empty City. They had to be called to order."

"You call that ‘сall to order’? You wanted to send them to the labor school on the island. This is a closed facility, which has the effect of imprisoning. One of them was no more than six years old," Chita said.

“That's right,” the Magister said in a calm, confident voice. “And then someone made up an inspiring legend of the uprising. There were not any drummers. I can prove it. I can show you how it all was."

“But how?” Yar asked.

“I'm going to make this very simple. A mnemofilm. My memory record. It portrays the facts accurately and dispassionately,” the Magister said and looked around the room. “Do you have any sheet of metal?"

"Will the tray fit?" Dasha asked. She and Alka had just entered the room.

“Fine,” the Magister answered.

Dasha brought a black tray which had a bouquet painted on it.

“Is it okay it has a painting?” Dasha asked.

“It doesn't really matter,” the Magister answered.

He laid the tray against the pile of textbooks on the table. Tik, Al’ka, Dasha and Chita stood behind Yar. Gleb drew his chair to the table and put his chin on his fists.

"Just a moment. I have to focus," the Magister said.

The black lacquer coat and the bouquet painted on the tray disappeared, melting in the opening depth, and there became something like a window in its space. It mirrored the oval shape of the tray...

It was like a TV program, but with no sound. The edge of a stone house and a tower with battlements became visible. There was a passage between the tower and the house and boys ran out, looking around.

“You see,” the Magister said. These were the ones who did not want to participate in the outrages. They were not being kept there against their will.”

“Not true. These are the youngest children who were sent away,” Ignatik said.

The image on the screen had a swing and the cobbled fortress courtyard became clearly visible. Yar physically felt the sensation of the stone slabs heated by the sun. Then some boys appeared in two rows. They stood with rifles. The rifles had bayonets, and their tips caught the sunlight.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

A boy, who had a blue rag bandage on his knee, stepped forward, raised his right hand and shouted something. Everyone in the first line knelt down. Both rows readied their rifles. The boys' faces were not visible. The boy raised his hand and shouted again. The guns flashed silently. Yar closed his eyes for a second. The boys racked heir guns. Then they took a step back and Yar saw the muzzles flash again.

“So who where they shooting at?” Yar asked, trying to stay calm.

“At us,” the Magister answered.

The boys on the screen fired again. A row of dusty clouds rose above the stone slabs three steps in front of them. The bullets fell on the cobbles before reaching their targets. It was as if they had hit an invisible barrier and bounced down onto the ground. Chita ground his teeth behind Yar's back.

“I wish I'd been there,” Gleb said.

“Good thing you weren't there, believe me,” the Magister said. “We wanted to avoid any killing, if at all possible.”

“You're quite the humanist,” Yar said scornfully.

Meanwhile, a wall of flames appeared in front of the boys on screen. Yar flinched. The line of shooting boys opened and they started to fall back to a stone ledge with an iron staircase on its edge. Yar realized that it was the corner of the tower.

The fflames flared up again. The boys began to run up the stairs, one by one. Yar could not see them clearly behind the tongues of fire. Then Yar saw the top of the tower with serrated outer edges. He saw it from below, as if he were standing down in the yard. The guys on the tower stopped shooting. They removed their bayonets and rhythmically beat the barrels of their rifles with them. It seemed to Yar that they were beating their rifles to the rhythm of some march. A yellow shirt and sunny blond hair was flashing among them. "That's Dan!" Yar thought. But than the fire went sky-high, to the battlements of the tower and seemingly sent a few boys flying. The boys flew up and disappeared into the air. Sevral little spiral fire vortexes appeared for a moment just where the boys were.

“How can I watch at this?, Yar thought. He was horrified, but continued to stare at the screen.

The Magister said casually, “You see, there were no drummers. Just noise from the frightened kids.”

“Not true!”Alka said loudly.”That one over there – he has a drum.”

A dark-haired boy stood at the charred edge of the tower and moved his drumsticks rhythmically.

“Ah, this one... There was just one boy,” the Magister said. ”But his drum was not real. Look...”

The screen come closer and Yar seemed like the boy with the drum really was in the room. He was beating his drumsticks on the oilcloth, which was tightly stretched over a round cauldron. It was so weird that no sound was heard. A scruffy aiguillette dangled on his dirty blue shirt.

Gleb leaned forward sharply.

A yellow fire flashed on the screen.

The boy slowly turned his tanned face and his large eyes and stared in the faces of the people sitting in the room.

“Yurka…” Gleb exhaled.

image [http://www.rusf.ru/vk/pict/sterligo/golubjatnja_na_jeltoi_poljane_23.gif]

(EARTH-2) THE AUTUMN IN STAROGORSK III. A special mission (continuation)

3

These last few days with Yanka seemed long to Gelka.

From the outside, it looked like Windy Dan was the same Yanka that Gelka had known. Yanka even went to school as usual. At recess, he kicked the ball with his classmates in the schoolyard and made a newspaper collage on the classroom wall. But no one, except Gelka and Yanka's grandfather, had any idea of the sadness Yanka-Dan felt. Not even Alyosha-Twinkle and Vaska were able to understand. For Twinkle, all this probably looked like a game while the robot Vaska turned his emotional unit off.

It was late summer but the weather was still warm and quiet. However, there was a special slowness in this silence, a hidden time extension inside a temporal loop.

Now every meeting with Yanka was a special event for Gelka and each of their conversations had a special meaning.

…After school, Gelka overcame his shyness to ask: “Yanka, play me the Uprising song.”

Yanka would bring his violin from home, and they would go to the railroad station, to the wasteland near the dead end sign, where their wagon had recently stood. This was the same place where the wreckage of the robot Jeremy had been buried under the concrete block.

Nothing remained of the "Henhouse on wheels" -- the wagon had been dismantled by order of the station master.

Yanka stood between the tracks and played. Gelka felt like he could see a frantic swirling of autumn leaves, driven by strong wind around Yanka.

Yanka lowered his bow and smiled sadly. Gelka unhooked a bronze lizard from his collar. " HereYanka, take this... Whenever you decide to fly away, hold it tight. This is to remember me by like a talisman.”

“Okay, but save it for later, Gelka.I’ll take it once I really do fly away.”

“Yanka... How does it feel to fly through time and space? I mean, how long could it be?”

Yanka-Dan said quietly, “It is hard to say. When I'm going through the time loop, I lose all sense of time and distance. It feels falling into into a gray void. All I feel is fear.”

"Why? You told me nothing can harm the Windies.”

“Right. But I'm really afraid won't be able to break through this time loop, which took me right back to the beginning of the timecycle. The war returns, the uprising, and I don't remember anything again... If only I could go straight back to the meadow, to our guys! Then I would fly to the Empty City, find Yurka there and bring him to his father Yar, even if only for a short while.”

Both of them understood that the only way possible was somehow to open the infinite time loop.

Then Gelka thought,"We’ll fixe the temporal loop! Very soon! The magic paste from the snowflake grass seeds ripens in the cache under the Duplex kennel."

While they walked along the rails, Gelka held the bronze lizard in his palm, and Yanka stroked it with his little finger. Yanka said, "In the fortress where the naval school used to be, there were a lot of lizards. One boy even managed to tame one."

“Wow. But how did he do that?”

“He tried, and he was finally able to do it. He had a good heart. He looked somewhat like you, but he was a bit younger.”

“Did he become a Windy, too?”

“No, he wanted to, but he didn't have the time.”

“What happened to him?”

"I don't know, Gelka. There was fire all around and it’s difficult for me to remember everything. Yurka probably sent him away to the fortress with other boys."

“Why did he send them away?”

"It suddenly dawned on Yurka that we weren't going to be able to hold off very long. The main thing was to free the four boys imprisoned in a labor camp on the island. We then had to leave. So he only ordered the Windies to stay in the fortress."

“So did you free those four?”

“Yes, they got away, but we did not. ‘Those who command’ appeared. We told them: just let us go and we'll walk away without a fight. But they continued to pursue us and we had no choice but to go to battle. But there were not only Windies in the fortress, but ordinary boys from the naval school as well. The boys who had access to the rifles did not want to give them away and did not leave while there was still time.”

“So what happened to those ordinary boys?” Gelka asked in a whisper.

Yanka was embarrassed and said nothing.

Gelka asked, “Yanka, how does one become a Windy? Well, not permanently, but long enough so that I can fly?”

Yanka-Dan walked slowly over the rotten sleepers; his feet, in sandals, touching the heads of the daisies that grew between the rails.

“Is it a secret?” Gelka asked again.

“It's no secret. First, you need to swim across the River. Secondly, you need to know the spell. It is written on a black plate found in the Tower of Winds in the Empty City. And then you need to overcome fear and jump from a great height...”

Gelka remembered last year when Yurka and he dived off the old barge.

“I should be able to do all this,” Gelka whispered. “I’ve already swum across the river twice.”

“Gelka!” Yanka said with care in his voice. “It's not the same river, and you don't know the spell.”

“Won't you tell it to me?”

“Of course I'll teach it to you.”

And then Yanka said five words in a low voice; they were so simple that Gelka even laughed.

“Is that it?”

“Yes. But, Gelka ... In my opinion, everyone should say the spell outloud while on the tower and then swim across the River..."

“Is it wider than our river?”

“No, not wider...”

“So what difference does it make?”

“I don’t know. Please don't risk your life.”

"Okay ..." Gelka said but he had already made up his mind.

"I'll just have to wait till this whole thing with the Bridge is over," Gelka thought.

***

They timed it perfectly, right down to the second.

The Bridge appeared every evening, when the full moon was out and an ‘iron dance’ rumbled over the wasteland. At 9:23 p.m., the huge, black bridge materialized out of thin air, and two minutes later, the old train passed over it. Another fifty-two seconds later, it would vanish. The Bridge disappeared into another space and time, probably one in which the lives of Yurka, Gleb, scaderman Yaroslav Rodin and the Windies were racing in a closed time loop like a speeding train. The life of an entire planet or maybe many more planets...

It was quite possible to climb the thirty-meter bridge in less than 2 minutes, using its rusty iron steps. Two seconds for each meter. The main thing was not to be afraid. Then, after the train would pass by, they had to put checker pieces wrapped in foil on the rails. These would have magic paste inside. A long wire with an electric detonator had to be connected to one of the checker pieces. The detonator had to be made by Vaska. After that, one had to climb down the Bridge as quickly as possible, lie down in the ravine and turn the detonator battery on. The train would be long gone and people who were traveling on it would not be hurt.

“All right, well, we've got to move quickly, there and back, because the Bridge will disappear,” Gelka said. “I mean, what if it happens before we climb down?”

“Don't worry. I can make it before it disappeares,” Yanka said.

“Why... why you?” Gelka asked. He was сonfused by Yanka’s decision.

‘Who else would it be?”

“I thought that I could climb the Bridge...Yanka, you told me you’ve got a fear of heights and get dizzy.”

“I'm over that. Don’t forget I'm about to turn back into a Windy. Well, there's just one more thing... Since I didn’t take Yurka to his father, I have to blow the Bridge up. You see, Gelka, this is my special mission.”

Gelka sighed with relief to hear it. He was ashamed to admit he was truly afraid of climbing up the Bridge.

It was just the two of them, chatting away on the edge of the junkyard the day before the explosion had been planned. The Bridge had already appeared and disappeared, and the rumbling of the rusty witches’ dance subsided over the wasteland. The moon was particularly bright.

“Don't worry, I'm sure I'll make it before the Bridge disappears,” Yanka said reassuringly. “I won't even have to come down from the Bridge.”

“What do you mean?” Gelka asked in dismay.

“Very soon I'm going to be a Windy and then I'll be able to fly away. It's only a matter of time. Frankly, it might be for the best. Listen, I don't want a long goodbye so...” Yanka looked at Gelka with his big eyes. They were like mirrors which reflected two small moons. Once again, Gelka felt that last few days had been one long farewell.

Gelka frowned and asked Yanka, "But all the same, I'd like you to come down and say goodbye to me." He looked worried. “After all, if the temporal loop breaks from the explosion, you may not have to fly away.”

“Well, okay…” Yanka said obediently.

They continued talking while they walked home.

“I’m not going to school tomorrow,” Yanka said with a smile. “Anyways, they'll have no time to react. I’ll fly away before they know what happened at home.”

“If you don't go, I won't either,” Gelka responded.

“If your aunt finds out, you're in trouble,” Yanka said.

“Phooey! It's no big deal,” Gelka said.

Yanka paused before speaking. He became serious. “You know, I want to be alone with my grandpa one last time.”

“Yanka... I'm sorry. I've been such a fool.”

“Come on, Gelka. You'll come and see him sometime, won't you?”

“Sure, Yanka ... And do your parents know?”

“No. Grandpa will tell them later.”

“Yanka!”

“What?”

“Write me something tomorrow morning in Gleb’s diary, okay?”

“Sure!”

No scientist could possibly invent such a quick way to send mail.

Gelka was writing something on the back of the pages from Gleb's diary, and the letters immediately appeared on Yanka's sheets of paper. Yanka was writing, and Gelka could read it immediately. It had become common practice for them to correspond in this way.

“Gelka, hello! Any news about Yurka? I dreamt of him and Gleb. Gelka, grab a pen for Vaska to take to school, because he lost his."

They had written such letters to each other before, but soon they realized that they should save the paper. They began to write in small letters, and no longer did drawings – they were saving the magic pages from Gleb's diary.

“What will Yanka write to me today?” Gelka woke up with this thought. It was still early morning. Gelka shivered. There was a draught on his neck from an open window. Real autumn had come.

The sheet of paper was white and clean. Gelka was waiting for the words to appear on the paper. And then a string of letters began to appear on the paper. Red words were written in sloppy handwriting. Yanka wrote in a hurry:

“Gelka, goodbye! We won't have time to see each other. I'm about to fly away, I can feel it. I’ve turned into a Windy earlier than I expected. Those two drops of blood that we gave to create the magic Sparkies probably took some of our lifetime, just like Jeremy said. I have not got another minute. Gelka, break the temporal loop...”

TO BE CONTINUED...