image [https://fanfics.me/images/fandoms_canons/295-1450564273-big.jpg]

Part I

A Day of Meetings

I'm running, and I'm in a hurry

I was running late again. And all because of her-- my Aunt Vika.

“You're not going anywhere until you eat your carrots, so eat!”

I hated these grated carrots with sour cream with every cell in my body.

I felt sick by    just looking at them, but all that Aunt Vika knew was that the kid needed his vitamins.

“But I can't!”

“Don't act up. Remember what you promised your mom when she left."

I promised to obey Aunt Vika and my grandmother, but that didn’t mean that she can torture me!

“I really can't swallow it.”

“I don't understand why are you fighting me on this?  You could’ve eaten it and gone out to play already a long time ago."

I held my breath, closed my eyes and swallowed the carrots in three gulps. Then I raced away from the table. My aunt shouted after me: “Helja, wait! Where are you going? Don’t swim under the bridge; the water is deep there! Why do you have sandals on your bare feet? That’s inappropriate! Put your socks on! What time will you be back? Helium, stop!”

But I didn’t answer her. I only ran faster. Later I would say that I didn’t hear her instructions because I was already on the run....

I knew that Aunt Vika as about to open the window to lean out and shout for me to stop at the gate. I was thinking about all this automatically, as my legs were working at full speed.   I rushed from the porch to the fence. Firewood was stacked there for our old fireplace and there was my dog Duplex’s kennel. I jumped on the kennel, then the woodpile, on to the edge of the fence, and from there - oh! - down into the burdocks growing on Kolenchaty Lane. My aunt appeared in the window and shrugged her shoulders.

 As I ran, I moved my hand with the wristwatch to my nose. The watch was old; my dad wore it when he was still a student. Pale electronic numbers had been flickering slightly on the black screen, but I saw that it was already six minutes to nine.

I rushed down Starogorsky Lane, along ancient cobblestones with which the road was paved a long time ago, in proto-space age. However, I immediately had to slow down: a bus was crawling towards me, occupying the entire width of the lane. It looked like an airship pasted with advertisements.  Sightseers usually rode such buses to see the monastery and other historical sites. I ducked into the gap between the monastery wall and the fence, over which large, almost ripened apples hung.

I had to pass through the garden. If the owners had seen me, they would have complained, and my aunt and I would have had yet another conversation". But that wouldn’t happen until the evening, and Yurka was waiting for me now.

I set off along the fence towards the old gap... Ah, damn it! It was covered with new yellow boards.

So I took the only course open to me: downhill to the swampy river Pestryanka.

Some poles spanned the small stream at this point. I was lucky if the boys from

Library Street had not pulled them to their bank of the river. When they played

Indians, they took this makeshift crossing back.

Hooray, the crossing was in place! I fearlessly ran onto the thin poles at full speed,

but they sprang treacherously under my feet and moved apart. Good thing I had

almost reached the other side of the river. I went ankle-deep into mud and

knee-deep into water. But I rushed on through the sedge and got to a dry place.

And forward again! The ascent began. There was a path along the hill, but I rushed

straight through the goosefoot grass and “grandmother's beads”. “Grandmother's beads” is a plant, like a weed. By mid-summer, it dries out, and seeds appear at the top, looking like wrinkled black beads. They are very hard. When I ran fast in the

thicket of "grandmother's beads", it seemed to me that the dried berries were being

shot at my feet. It was like a hundred people were hiding in the bushes and firing peashooters at you.

 I was running with as much speed as I could muster. My sandals swelled and started to feel slippery inside, but I continued to race up the hill as easily as if I was going down instead of up. After a few minutes of incredible speed, I began to experience a pain in my side. It became hard for me to breathe and I slowed down to a walk. After a few minutes of walking I arrived on the path that lead to the flat top of the hill.

When I reached the top I stopped to catch my breath.

Catching my breath wasn’t the only reason why I loved to stop here.

It was the view that drew my attention and made me pause every time I made it to the summit. I liked to look at our town from high up.

Our town was just a tiny one but that didn’t bother me.

I loved it for how small and perfect it was and I wouldn’t trade it for the crazy street life that came with living in huge cities like in any of the capitals in the Zone of the Cities.*

(*The megacities consolidated into The Zone of the cities).

My aunt Vika had a different opinion though. She liked to tell me about how lovely it was in the cities. About how there are living rooms with built-in stereo TV and how you could order food quickly from take-out restaurants. She would tell me about all of the convenient public monorail transportation services as well. It seemed that travel inside the cities was easy and fast compared to my small town. But you could run from one side of our town to the other in half an hour, so there was no need for a monorail.

But I was sure that  city life missed some amazing things. No one there had a fireplace with a real fire inside their home. There were no beautiful cliffs over the river and wastelands like we have, where you could make bonfires and play, imagining that you were in the wild jungle. In these huge cities, there were no mysteries and secrets. What you would see a lot of would be only man made parks and big glass houses.

The old Monastery was one of the main attractions of our town. It alone was enough to make your head spin. Monks once lived there, and if the town was attacked, the monastery served as a fortress and the monks fought like ordinary soldiers.

The monks had all kinds of weapons and below ground there were secret underground passages from which they could mount attacks.

We investigated every nook and cranny of the monastery and found the remains of these tunnels. One time some boys from our class dug up from near a wall an old cannon that had incomprehensible letters and patterns on its barrel. Later on a museum was located at the site of the monastery.

From the top of the hill I could see it all: old bell towers, sparkling mirrors of the solar power station, multi-colored roofs of houses, and green gardens patches. I could even see the white domes of the observatory where my grandfather worked. The tall houses of the Western suburban district sparkled like Antarctic ice in the sunlight.  These houses were as good as any in the Zone of the cities.

The big river - sometimes silver, sometimes dark blue – curved smoothly around the hills on which the town stood. They say that the hills were mountains millions of years ago, but over time have eroded and settled. Maybe this was why our town was named Starogorsk. It once had a simpler name: Old Mountains. The railway station bore the same name.

I was standing near the station and I could make out a small, yellow two-story house, the clock tower, and the red and blue train at the station platform.

 Further on there were empty sidings, and on the farthest track our old wooden train carriage  with Yurka   was standing ....

"Oh, but Yurka is waiting for me!" I suddenly realized.

I hurried down the hill - through the shooting of "grandmother's beads" again. And then suddenly it sounded: "Pee-ee, pee-pee, peak!" Two long beeps and a short one! The signals sounded from the loudspeaker on the station tower.

What? Nine already? I was dumbfounded. I looked at my wristwatch. My watch said 08:57.

“You're a stupid fool! I hadn't put my watch in the sun to recharge for a week. And of course, now it's lagging behind," I thought.

I was imagining Yurka contemptuously curling his lip and saying to me, “Well,

Penny, could you possibly be on time?”

"Hey Penny! Come here!" someone suddenly said.

I turned my head to some robotic voice, where was it coming from?

Behind me, on the barren top of the hill, there was the latticework of the relay tower. On the left were the thickets of the city park area and on the right was a wasteland covered in tall burdocks. There were abandoned sheds in the wasteland - only their leaky roofs were visible above the burdocks.

“You, Penny, I'm talking to you!”

On the roof of the nearest shed lay the robot Jeremy. He unfurled from within himself the shiny plates of his solar cell battery. Jeremy was charging. He turned his square head to me and looked at me with his green eyes, like a cat.

“What?” I asked fearfully.

“Well, come here, we need to talk,” Jeremy said.

Jeremy was a runaway, homeless robot. About five years ago, he had fled from the young technicians’ city exhibition.

They said that he was made at some kind of electronics club from all kinds of junk. Several old calculating machines were crammed into his head, and the gaps between them were filled with micro-memory cells from a decommissioned Crystal-M control machine. Jeremy did not immediately decide to escape from the exhibition. At first, he behaved like an ordinary obedient robot: he greeted and distributed booklets to visitors; solved math problems for first-graders.

But one evening, when the visitors had gone home and Jeremy was quietly sitting in the corner, the cleaning lady accidentally dropped a heavy basin on his head. Some music began to play inside Jeremy, then he made a screeching sound and fell silent, but suddenly he said to the cleaning lady words which a decent robot should not only  not say, but should not even know.

The cleaning lady complained to the director of the exhibition. The director threatened Jeremy that, as a punishment, he would disconnect him from the mains power. Jeremy said that this would not happen again. But that night he built batteries and solar cells into himself, jimmied the door lock and left. Thus, Jeremy began his free life.

In Starogorsk, Jeremy immediately became famous for being a bully. He walked around with a makeshift tin guitar and sang pirate songs from the movie “The Galleon comes from Cartagena” with a raspy voice. The boys flocked to Jeremy. At their request, he danced and shot small lightning bolts from his ears. But that wasn’t the most interesting thing about him. The watchmen in the park noticed that at night Jeremy would break gypsum statues of all kinds of athletes and swimmers. Then Jeremy came to the attention of the police. They wanted to scrap him for parts, but Jeremy didn’t let them. He said that they had no right to do this to him because he was a living creature with the ability to think. They explained to him that beings that think do not behave in this way. Jeremy promised that it would not happen again.

After this incident, he disappeared from our town for a year or two. There were those who said that he had left for Neisk and worked there as a guide at the Technical Museum, while others said that he secretly lived in the basement of the town library where at night he would devour the wisdom of the books.

When Jeremy appeared on the streets of Starogorsk again, his behaviour was not imprudent. But  the parents and grandparents still refused to allow the kids to see him. The boys, if they were rude and disobeyed, were called “Jeremy.”

 Jeremy didn't mess around. During winter, along with the street cleaners ( both human and robots) he used to clear the snow from the streets. In the summer he used to sit at the entrance of the park and clean shoes for everyone. He helped the street cleaners for free, but demanded a little money for cleaning shoes. With this money, he was buying all kinds of radio components for his bowels. He also used to buy tobacco for himself.

Yes, imagine, Jeremy smoked! He explained that through smoking he warmed up his olfactory system.

Jeremy used to give mechanical mice (to tease cats) and electronic bicycle bells to the boys who met him despite the prohibitions of their parents He also used to cast small tin knights and pistols. But Jeremy did not invite anybody over to his place. They said that he lived outside the city, at a large metal junkyard.

I didn’t know Jeremy personally. Probably because I'm indecisive by nature. The other boys would run up to him and say, “Jeremy, hello! Jeremy, how are you? Jeremy, make a mouse for me, eh! ” But I only looked at him from afar.

But Jeremy seemed to know me!

image [https://avatars.dzeninfra.ru/get-zen_doc/4581052/pub_601f012886f4e22208ded17f_6033c82f756eeb31f034bf99/scale_2400]

I came to him a little anxiously. Jeremy the Robot pulled the solar panel into his belly, slammed the doors and locked them with a wire hook. Then he sat down and let his legs hang from the roof-- each were made of a thick iron pipe with flexible rubber joint. He wore an old winter felt boot on one foot and a big soccer boot on the other. His hands were also made of pipes with flexible rubber joints on the bends, and his palms and his fingers were made of black plastic. His body looked like a wardrobe of unpainted tin, and his head was angular, like a mailbox. His mouth was wide, and his lips were made of porous rubber.  He only ever parted his lips to stick a cigarette holder into his mouth.  He spoke through the speaker on his chest. Jeremy’s nose was made of an orange ball with two holes for nostrils. Green indicators from old tube receivers served as his eyes. Jeremy was looking at me through those green eyes. It was impossible to understand how he looked at me: in a good way, or with mockery.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said hoarsely.

“I'm not,” I said, frowning. “I'm just surprised: how do you know who I am?”

“I know everyone here,” Jeremy answered with a note of pride. “My memory is electronic.” He patted his iron head, making a booming sound.

“Electronic memory, but you don’t know my name,” I said angrily.

“Pe ... Penny,” the robot said.

“Penny, bah! My name is Helka! I mean, Helium. It’s because my grandfather was an astronomer. He studied the sun!”

Jeremy seemed embarrassed. He wrinkled his rubber nose and grunted, “I thought Penny was your last name.”

“My last name is Travushkin,” I said.

Jeremy hesitantly shook his foot in the soccer boot. “Why Penny, then?”

“Because the fools came up with the nickname,” I muttered.

Three years ago, at summer camp, there was a game called “Take the Fortress,” and we, the little ones, got roped in by the older guys to be scout. Everything was good at first. I got to the fortress but suddenly, they grabbed me and pulled me up out of the grass.

 The guys laughed, “We saw that you were crawling from afar. Your head shines in the sun like a new penny!"

Since then, I became known as "Penny".

Actually, I have hair with a copper tint, especially when I have a crew cut.

 But since when does the nickname Penny have anything to do with it? What stupid nickname! It is as if I I’m only worth one penny...

 Jeremy jumped from the roof into the thicket of burdocks and stepped towards me with a squeaking sound. He was my height, but much wider.

“Okay, Pe ... Travushkin,” Jeremy said, and blinked guiltily with his green indicator  eyes. “They are fools... The hell with them! Listen, I have something for you to do”

“What?”  I asked seriously, but actually I was happy to have a good reason for being late. I would tell Yurka that I met Jeremy and we talked about business.

“Do you happen to have an old vacuum tube radio?” Jeremy asked me while shifting from one foot to the other. "One of the tubes in my innards has burned out. Now I am deaf in my left ear and have pains in the back of my head. It makes me feel rotten!”

“Don’t you use transistors?” I was surprised.

“I’ve got many things inside me. They constructed me, one might say, from all kinds of scrap. I’m slowly replacing everything in myself, but I can’t find an equivalent transistor for this tube. It  is a big problemi. Maybe you can find a radio for me?”

“Well, did you know that I have a tube like that or did you just guess?” I asked.

“So, you do have one?” Jeremy got very excited. “I didn’t know about it. I just logically assumed it. I think Travushkin’s house is old and in its attic there is probably plenty of stuff.”

Our house was really old, it was built in the time of my grandfather’s parents. It was a small two-storey house with a four-pitched roof, under which there was a spacious attic. Near the house there were tall birch trees, right by the window of my room. I really loved our home....

“Well, okay then,” I sighed. “I’ll see if I can find a radio for you.”

“Oh, buddy!” Jeremy gave a creak. “I’ll never forget this till the day I'm melted back down.”

“Come on,” I was embarrassed. “Just do not come to my house for it. You see, my aunt...  I’ll bring it to you.”

“Well, thank you! Today, since you have a free hour, you can bring it to your train carriage and in the evening I’ll hobble there and take it.”

“He knows about our carriage, too!” I thought, and even felt slightly scared.

But Jeremy made me feel better when he said, “Do not worry! I won’t tell anyone,

no doubt about it. All the information I have inside is like in a safe. So I'll see

you tonight?”

“Yeah. I have to go now. See you later!”

“Bye, Penny ... oh, Travushkin. Sorry, I got a contact failure from that burned out tube.”

The Scarlet Rosehip Medal

The Old Mountains Station was completely desolate. Hardly any freight trains

went along our line, because there were no large construction projects nearby. The goods were transported in vans. Half-empty passenger trains were running twice a day: in the morning and at three in the afternoon. People preferred traveling on electric buses or by river express hovercraft. The station was quiet. Only sparrows chirped in the grass among the rails heated in the sun.

You could run across the tracks without fear, as long as the attendant or station master didn’t shout out warning.

An old wooden train carriage stood in the dead end siding behind the station water pump. The tops of goose grass and “grandma’s beads” were swaying inthe wind and scraped along its rusty wheels. It was mine and Yurka’s carriage. We were the first who guessed that no one but us needed it.

Here we kept our swords for playing musketeers, flashlights, a supply of crackers (just in case), inflated car inner tubes to float on the river, and all our other property. And, of course, we kept our fishing rods there. Why carry them home if we were closer to the river from the station than from home?

 That day we were not going to go to the river, but to the old flooded quarry. Yurka had learned from someone that last spring the laboratory assistants from the Institute of Fisheries released fry into the quarry.

“They did not need these fry and they released them,” he said. “And now they have grown into huge carps there. This is a special breed of fish.”

I did not believe his stories about the huge carps. The quarry was in the middle of nowhere and I did not want at all to go all the way there. But Yurka did not ask me if I wanted to or not. He said that we were going there and that was that. He also explained to me that the perfect time for fishing was while the shadow from the cliff was over the water. By noon, the shadow goes away, so we had to get to the quarry early. We agreed to meet at our train carriage at nine. But I was hopelessly late. Of course, I had a good excuse, but still ....

I don’t know why I was so afraid to upset Yurka. This feeling remained with me from the time when Yurka "was making a new guy out of me."

I met Yurka last year at a bad time when I had just been kicked out of the Dodgeball game.

At first, everything was fine. Everyone in our team wanted to play, but no one wanted to be a catcher and defend the zone. Our captain Vovka said,

“So what I we gonna do? Come on, Penny, you are up.”

I was so happy that I even forgave him for calling me "Penny." I put on my gloves and got ready to start throwing balls. Well, at first, I didn’t play so badly. I was hitting and catching the ball and jumping and falling.  Yes, I missed two balls, but that could happen to anyone. I scraped my elbows and knees.

But then Yurka appeared in the alley. At the time, I didn't know his name.

I'd never seen him before. He looked like he was in fifth grade, dressed in a saggy sweater and baggy pants, a wrinkled beret on his head. Our opponents immediately put him in the center of the attacking three. Apparently, they already knew him. Then Yurka scored three balls in a row on me in just one minute.

The first time, the ball whistled near the ground next to a leaky bucket, which marked the end of the zone. I didn’t even have time to move. Our opponents yelled joyfully, and the guys from our team silently watched me as I searched for the ball in the thistles by the far fence.

As soon as I threw the ball back, I got a second hit! The ball flew in from afar and from above. I could only touch it with my fingertips.

Was it my fault that I couldn’t jump high enough to get it? I caught the third ball. But what good did it do?

The third ball was the largest and the heaviest, like a cannonball. Together with the ball, I flew into the zone like a bird ....

Vovka said to me, not even angrily, but wearily, “Eh, Penny. You are not a catcher. You're such a klutz. Alright, you go get some rest.”

I sat down on the bench in the front garden. I had to clench my teeth to keep from crying. I scolded Vovka in a whisper, “I’d like to see you try to catch the balls when they throw them so hard ....”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Well, I was angry at myself, too, for being such a helpless person, although I had finished fourth grade in school.

Then the teams took a break. The score was 5-2 and we were losing. One of the players dropped to the grass, another ran to the standpipe to drink water. They didn’t even look at me. That guy in the beret who scored three points against me walked right past me.

Then he stopped two feet from me, took off his beret and brushed the dirt off his pants with it. He looked around, snickered and told me, “You are the catcher, so keep your eyes open. Don't half-ass it!”

“What's it to you?” I said.

But he answered calmly, “I don’t care… Look, you’ve scratched your elbow. Go home. You need to bind your wound.”

What did he want? Maybe he felt guilty that I'd hurt my elbow so badly because of him?

“It'll heal... eventually. Anyway here's noone at home,” I lied.

Aunt Vika and my grandmother were, but I had quarrelled with them in the morning.

The boy pulled up his pants, took me by the shoulder and led me to the standpipe.

Although I was angry with him, I did not resist.

He washed my elbow scratch, then sighed, slapped my neck with his wet hand and said, “Not so bad. You will survive.”

“Sure. Well, thanks!”

“Yeah, no problem ... Where do you live, dude?”

I bristled up, “Why are you asking?”

“I will take you home, make sure you don’t faint from the loss of blood,” he said.

I turned away from him and started going home. He walked beside me. And then, as luck would have it, aunt Vika came out to meet us.

“Helja, what happened? Go home right away! So, Oh, I’ll have to write to your mother about this.”

She glanced angrily at my companion and started to walk ahead.

He only sighed and said to me, “You poor thing ... Perhaps I'll make a man out of you….”

 “And just what do you think I am?”  I asked him, irritated by his words.

He didn’t seem to hear me. He thought about something for a moment and said forcefully: “Okay then, we’ll start tomorrow.”

So Yurka started his work. At six in the morning, he appeared at my window, knocked and beckoned me outside. I went out there to him, otherwise my grandmother and aunt Vika would wake up and start asking me, what, where, why? Yurka took me to the stadium behind the school, put me in the goal and began to teach me the art of a goalkeeper in his own way. The ball flew like a rocket: bang, bang!

“Don't dodge, Penny!”

“I'm not Penny! I have a name!”

“You can have your name when you learn how to catch balls. “

Every morning, Yurka pulled me out of bed almost at dawn and started my training. He either bombarded me as I stood in goal, or made me fight him with wooden swords, as if he wanted to make an ancient Roman gladiator out of me.

But the worst thing was when he brought old ragged boxing gloves.

 If he saw that I was scared, he would immediately give me the command, “Face down and do fifteen push-ups!”

I don’t know why I obeyed him. Was I afraid of his mockery, or what? No, it was more than that.  He could look at me in his special way: he curled his lips in a grin and looked at me through the fringe falling over his brow and I felt like I was a grasshopper stuck in tar. He looked at me as if he was thinking, ”Oh, you poor insect, what should I do with you?”

He had a mop of dark hair, which always fell out from under his beret across his squinting yellow-gray eyes.

Now if Yurka did not come in the morning for some reason, I was unhappy and began turning in my bed worrying: has he forgotten about me, or what?

One day it happened that he didn’t come for a third morning in a row, and I became quite restless. In the end, I went and found his house. Yurka was in bed, unhappy and angry. An old redheaded woman with a kind face let me in to see him. She said, “I can’t believe that you managed to get a sore throat in the middle of the summer. I suppose you have been swimming in the river until you were blue with cold. Oh, you are causing me so much trouble. You, boy, stay with him if you want and I’ll go to the pharmacy.”

“I don’t need any medicine,” Yurka muttered.

“What am I going to tell your mother when she gets here?”

“Fat chance that will happen anytime soon,” Yurka said looking at the ceiling. “Who is that?” I asked awkwardly when the woman left.

“She's like an aunt for me. You and I live in the same way: with our aunts.”

 “Ah ... where is your mom?”

“In Neisk,” Yurka said gloomily. “She’s trying to arrange her love life there.”

I was silent, embarrassed and full of unspoken questions.

“She married a famous editor,” Yurka grinned. “Do you watch the TV show “The News from Orbits?” It's his work…. Mom keeps kind of hinting asking me: ‘Yurik, do you want to go to the boarding school? They say, there are all the conditions to

live comfortably, many peers, groups, clubs and aesthetic education in the boarding school.’ I am sick to death of this boarding school!”

“And where is your father?” I forced myself to speak.

“I have no idea. I never had one,” Yurka answered almost cheerfully. “It's impossible….”

“It’s possible,” he grinned. “But that man, the editor, isn't so bad after all. But, I mean, I don’t think they need me. So I cleared out of my town. By the way, my mom's new hasband did all this for me. This woman is his sister.”

Yurka recovered a day later. The whole thing went back to the normal. Nothing had changed. But something was to change later, in the fall.

It was a warm autumn, like a second summer. Lilacs and rose hips bloomed again and butterflies flew over the thickets, where we played musketeers and the Cardinal's guards. Yurka, three other boys and I were guards.

White crosses were sewn on our shirts and Yurka’s sweater; the musketeers had blue crosses. In the old days, crosses were sewn to save soldiers from bullets and blades. But the crosses did not save anyone from anything, as I was personally convinced.

When I was lying in waiting in the bushes near the monastery wall, a heavy bumblebee landed on my back, higher than the neckline of my shirt.

I can’t tell you how afraid I was of them, all those bumblebees, bees and wasps. If such a buzzing creature flew nearby, I stood still. But if the insect sat on me and began to crawl....

I almost jumped up and yelled, but I stopped myself at the last moment, because I

was still lying in wait. The next second, Yurka said in a steely whisper, “stay, here, don't get up.”

He sat above me about two meters away, on a brick ledge behind a thicket of lilac branches. With his whisper, he pinned me to the ground as if with his sword.

He was right: I could not give myself away. Somewhere nearby, musketeers were riding about on their horse-bicycles. The bumblebee continued to crawl over me with his furry tickling legs. He could crawl under my shirt!

“Lie there and keep quet,“ Yurka whispered.

“Oh ... you hardass, Yurka! You know how I’m afraid! Just shoo the bumblebee away with your sword!”

Yurka took pity on me. His wooden blade rubbed me on my back. The bumblebee flew off, and I realized what real happiness felt like. But my happiness lasted only a few seconds. Apparently, the bumblebee liked me. He made a circle in the air and fell on my leg like a shaggy hailstone.

“Oh! Oh, oh, oh, oh…”

“Don't move,” his ominous order came from above.

But the furry villain was already walking along my leg. From time to time he stopped and seemed to rub his hind legs against one another. It seemed the bumblebee was wondering where to stick his sting. Oh, no….

“Yurka, what are you doing there?”

But Yurka froze - the enemy was close. What to do? It was impossible to move my    leg strongly: the musketeers’ scouts would notice us. But if I tried to swing my foot slightly, then the bumblebee would sting me for sure!

I was scared to death. Somebody, help me!

The musketeers helped me. They ran straight into our ambush, and I went into battle, howling joyfully. Oh, how I was waving my sword! All the musketeers ran off like rabbits. And when the battle was over, Yurka picked a large flower from the rosehip bush. He made a hole in my shirt with the tip of his sword and stuck the small stalk of the flower into it. He said very seriously, “For courage and iron self-control, Helium Travushkin is awarded the Scarlet Rosehip Medal.”

“Quite a show he put on back there,” Vit’ka muttered, rubbing his elbow. “He waved his sword like a crazy windmill.”

“That's not what I'm talking about,” Yurka said.

I hid the "Medal" in my pocket, and at home I straightened the petals and put the flower in my “Journal of Observations".

From that day Yurka started treating me differently. Of course, he still commanded and shouted at me, but he no longer told me off. The guys respected him, and therefore they stopped looking at me as if I were a loser. They sometimes called me Penny, but it was more from force of habit.

At school Yurka was in the year above me, but after school we would always play together. In autumn, in winter and in spring. My mother liked Yurka, but for some reason, she sighed whenever she looked at him. And Aunt Vika raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips when Yurka came to our courtyard and stroked Duplex. He rarely came to our house, because Aunt Vika was not among his favourites either. However, he was very courteous to her.

Aunt Vika said, “A very odd boy. There is something about him I like, but that dreadful appearance... In former times, such kids were called street children. Keep in

mind, Helja, since you are friends you should affect him positively.”

But how could I affect Yurka?

The Trapped Man

I went under the train carriage at a run and came out on the other side from which the entrance was. Yurka was sitting on a stack of old half-rotten railway sleepers (they don’t make wooden sleepers like these anymore).

“Hi!” I said and, rose. “I was running all the way down here.”

 “I see,” Yurka grinned.

Of course, he knew and saw everething. It was like watching myself from the outside, as if I saw things through Yurka’s eyes. I saw myself, from my disheveled red head to my silt stained sandals. My legs were muddy and scratched by

sedges. I had my pants on crookedly. My striped T-shirt had come out from under the strap and hung in front like an apron. It was a good T-shirt, almost a real sailor vest, but still it didn’t give me a brave look. I was shifting from foot to foot in front of Yurka, as if I were a latecomer first-grader standing in front of a head teacher. It was even worse when you didn't do anything wrong but still felt guilty.

I shoved the T- shirt into my pants with my fist and said angrily, “W-what's the matter? I'm late for a good reason! I met Jeremy there, on the hill.”

Yurka listened to my story about Jeremy without surprise and looked up at me absently. He sighed, scratched the back of his head under the beret, and looked at me somehow guiltily.

“You know, we don’t have time for fishing right now. Well, the thing is….  It looks like we have a resident in our carriage.”

I blinked, “What? What kind of resident are you talking about?”

“Come and meet him.”

It was light in the carriage. Hot sun rays were shining through two windows in the roof and numerous cracks. The doors were wide open. There were no dark corners left inside. In the corner, where Yurka and I made our “lounge zone”, I saw a stranger.

He was a thin, flaxen-haired guy with thick glasses; he had a beard that looked like light curly fluff. He was wearing a plaid shirt and tight red velvet trousers. He was sitting on the plastic box that we had instead of a table. When we approached him, the guy got up and seemed to be very skinny and long-armed. His eyes behind the glasses were blue and indecisive.

“Here,” Yurka said. “This is my friend Travushkin. I have told you about him.”

Yurka’s words made me feel warm inside.

The man extended his big hand and said awkwardly, “I’m Gleb.”

I replied, “I’m Helka. Helium. Travushkin.”

Gleb nodded, sighed for some reason, and sat down, spreading his knobby knees. “You see, he has settled here recently,” Yurka explained to me. “He thought that the old carriage was uninhabited. Let him live here.”

“If nobody minds,” Gleb said, embarrassed, and looked at me again through his thick glasses.

I shrugged. I wasn’t sure if I minded or not, but it didn’t matter – he and Yurka had already agreed.

I just said, “I do not mind. And what do you do?”

“He is a journalist. He is here on a business trip,” Yurka explained hastily.

Gleb noticed my wariness. He got up and pulled a red rectangle out of his hip pocket.

“Here, to erase mistrust.”

It was a photo ID with a blue seal. “Vyatkin Gleb Sergeevich is the Kolych newspaper Mayak correspondent. Editor-in-chief D. I. Somov.”

"Well ... Do journalists live in leaking wooden carriages? Maybe that Gleb was hiding from someone or maybe he was a spy. Or maybe our journalist decided to become a tramp and write a book about it like Jack London?" I thought.

“Why don’t you stay at a hotel?” I asked Gleb.

Gleb spread his arms and wanted to say something, but Yurka pulled on my shirt, “I'll explain everything to you later….”

Gleb moved his long fingers in the air, as if striking the invisible keys and asked without any hope, “Do you happen to know where I can get a typewriter for a couple of days?”

Yurka shrugged.

I said casually, “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try to get one…”

Gleb was excited, “Oh, really? Please, do me a favor. Because I can't work and it makes me crazy.”

Yurka looked at me with respect.

Yurka and I said goodbye to Gleb till the evening.

Yurka asked me as we were walking across the railway line, “Where will you get a typewriter?”

“I’m gonna bring him my grandfather's one.”

Yurka said sympathetically, “Then your aunt will definitely go from words to deeds.”

“If I only take it for a while, no one will know… Unless Gleb runs off with it somewhere."

“Does he look like a crook?”  Yurka stood up for Gleb.

I did not know what to answer. I had never seen any real crooks.

“Then why is he hiding in our carriage?”

“He’s not hiding. He’s doing the opposite. He’s running all over the town, but they see him as a madman.”

“Why?”

“Have you seen his ID? What city is written there?”

“Kolych or something…” I said.

“Kolych. Where is that?” Yurka asked.

I shrugged my shoulders angrily: there were plenty of cities.

“And no one here knows such a city,” Yurka said with a frown.

“How's that?” I asked.

Yurka said meaningfully, “Just what I’ve said. There is a strange phenomenon. He went from his Kolych to a certain Old Talitsa to write a report about the summer camp. But instead of this Old Talitsa, he’s got here, to us.”

“Well, he could go back.”

“Go back where? There is no such station as Kolych on the line. It does not exist.”

 “Well then, he is not from Kolych! He's lying!” I exclaimed.

 “But what about his ID?”

“Well Yurka! It’s probably a fake!”

Yurka said in a condescending tone, “Silly, silly Helka. Who would make a fake document and then show it to everyone?”

“Really,” I thought.

Yurka looked sideways at me and asked, “Tell me, does this Gleb look like a bad person?”

I started thinking. No, with his kind eyes he looked defenseless, despite being an adult.

“He didn’t even touch a single cracker of ours despite being hungry,” said Yurka. “Why is he hungry?” I asked.

“He thought he was only leaving for a short time and did not take enough money with him, so now he can’t go to a cafe or a hotel.”

“But he can get bread from the bakery!”

“He did not know that bread can be taken for free,” Yurka said.

 I blinked in surprise.

“He’s just like some kind of Robinson Crusoe on a deserted island,” Yurka explained. “We need to help him. You started helping robot Jeremy, but Gleb is a living person.”

“Jeremy is a person too!” I blurted out.

Not far from my house, after Yurka and I had said goodbye, I bumped into Aunt Vika. She had an amazing ability to get in my way at the worst possible moment. She, of course, raised her hands to the heavens.

“Helya! It's only morning, but you're already looking like a scarecrow! Go clean yourself up! You are not a child, but a complete anomaly!”

I used to think that “Anomaly” was the name of a sloppy girl, so I was offended. But then I found out that it simply meant "abnormality." Well, I stopped being offended.

I began walking toward the house while my aunt, following me, continued her diatribe. “Helium, why can't you look like the other normal children? Like that cute boy, for example. Look, here he comes,” my aunt said to me.

I took a look. Before me was a neat boy who carried a violin in his case.

Such boys probably exist in nature especially to please aunts and grandmothers. He was watching where he was going so that his patent-leather shoes would not be scratched. His hair was neatly combed. He was dressed in a yellow suit, and he even had a bright yellow spotted Ascot tie around his neck. The creases on his trousers were perfect.

 I grunted just like Yurka did, pushed my fists into my pockets and walked faster. Flakes of dried silt were falling off my sandals.

“Don’t even try to go inside in such dirty shoes,” said Aunt Vika.

I washed my sandals under the tap in the courtyard and dragged them to the roof to dry. After that I went down and quietly entered my grandfather's room. There were gilded rows of terribly old books, standing behind the glass of the bookcase. The map of the starry sky appeared black on the wall. The bright sun’s rays shone on the huge globe. The heavy pendulum of the ancient clock was swaying with ticking.

Grandfather’s typewriter stood on the edge of the green writing desk, which

looked as big as a football pitch. The typewriter was covered by a polished walnut box with shiny bronze patterned corners. Nobody ever opened the typewriter (only sometimes I lifted the box lid and gently pressed the keys).

I opened the box and looked at my grandfather's portrait. My bearded grandfather was smiling. He knew what I had in mind, but apparently he was not angry. Why would he be angry? No one had used it, but there was a man who needed it for his work!

“Nothing bad is going to happen to it in just a few days," I reassured myself.

But still, I realized that I was doing something wrong. I sighed and picked the typewriter up off the desk, but left the box-case where it was. I wrapped the typewriter in my father’s old jacket made of thick tetra-cloth — I found it in the attic and took it with me. Then I pricked up my ears. There was silence in the house: Aunt Vika had gone somewhere, my grandmother was dozing off upstairs. I lifted the window frame. The window looked out onto a thicket of lilac bushes ...

I hid the typewriter behind my dog’s kennel. The vacuum tube that I had promised to bring Jeremy was also there. However, just to be sure I covered it all with burdock leaves. My dog, Duplex, got out of his kennel. He was a shaggy, big-eared sandy-coloured dog. He lived here a long time ago and used to be my grandfather's pet. Duplex looked at me with his watery blue eyes and nuzzled his wet nose into my leg. I stroked him and confessed, “I'm a bad person, Duplex.”

The dog sighed and shook his head - no, you are a good one.

“I am always the best friend to you .... Okay then. But how do I drag all this stuff? I have to go to Yurka and ask him for help.”

Duplex nodded in agreement.

image [http://www.rusf.ru/vk/pict/sterligo/golubjatnja_na_jeltoi_poljane_10b.gif]

An Ambush on a Violin Player

I was walking barefoot - my sandals were still drying on the roof. At the corner I tripped over the edge of the sidewalk, stubbed my toe and got angry at Yurka; he should have known that I couldn’t drag the receiver and the typewriter alone. Where was he when I needed him?

I saw Yurka when I turned onto Mark Twain Street. He seemed to be hiding from someone.

The street was humpbacked. There was a red house with columns up the street. In ancient times it was built by the owner of the local dock, and later the Children’s Health Centre was located there. A brick wall stretched down the street from the house. The wall was high, thick and beautiful. It was decorated with patterned lattice on top. Semicircular niches were arranged within the thickness of the brick wall. Benches were set in the niches. The benches were also old - they seemed to be hiding in a burdock and wild dill thicket. Yurka was hiding on one of these benches.

He was acting weird. First, he craned his neck and looked up along the street, and then again hid in the shadow of the wall.

Yurka did not notice me, because I approached him from down the street. I snuck up on him and said, “Hands up!”

He shuddered, and turned his head slowly.

“Ah, you’ve come ... Sit down, don't just stand there.”

I climbed through the dill and settled down beside Yurka. I said angrily,

“What are you doing here? Do I have to carry all the stuff to the carriage as a porter?”

“There's no need to hurry. I'm waiting for someone here.”

“ Who are you looking out for?”

“Well, there's a guy…I want to touch the bow knot on his neck.”

“Ah, he's the one who plays the violin!” I guessed.

“Have you met him before?” Yurka asked me.

“Yes, I have. My aunt holds him up as a good example for me.”

“Well, there's something personal between you and him.”

“No. What do I need him for? But what has he done to you?”

Yurka answered, “I don’t like cowards, you know. They need re-education, otherwise they will end up doing great harm to everyone.”

Yurka squinted and spat in the grass.

My toe was still very sore.

“Wow, he worries about all mankind so he doesn’t have to carry the heavy stuff,” I thought.

“What’s made you think that he is a coward?”

Yurka grinned, “He ran away from me like a coward yesterday. I walked across the bridge over Pestryanka, and this “Young talent” was coming towards me. I stopped

and so did he. The guy widened his eyes  ike that. It was like if he'd seen a Martian pangolin.”

"So what happened next?" I said disapprovingly.

"I told him - come on, I want to take a closer look at what this Bow Thing is. Then he took a step back. I took a step forward, and he turned and ran up the path."

I frowned. I didn’t care about that musician, but I was embarrassed.

We all know these things can happen: you could have been scared or screamed, but it was a shame to run away without a fight. Even a child could explain that to you.

However, I said to Yurka, "You are half a head taller than him."

"So what? Did he think that I would drown him or eat him?"

"He decided that you would fight with him. He probably only sow the fight in the movies."

"So he needs to gain experience... Ah, there he comes! Handsome Nini…"

“What do you mean? Is it Spanish or what? Not “Nini,” but “Niña.” That means “a little girl.”

“It’s not Spanish. This is short for the word ‘Paganini’, Yurka explained.

"Nini" was walking completely unaware of our ambush. The violin in the case seemed to be floating next to him.

“I’ll go out to meet him, and you’ll come in from behind,” Yurka ordered.

I did not like that idea, but I did not want to quarrel with Yurka.  If I refused it would look like I betrayed him.

We were not going to bash him. He was not to blame for anything and two against one was not what I called a fair fight.

Everything happened quickly, like in a movie. Yurka jumped onto the sidewalk and stood in front of Nini. The violinist pulled back, but I was already standing there. Nini jumped aside, which was very stupid. He ended up in the niche in the wall where we had just been hiding. He was literally in a dungeon.

“Hello,” said Yurka as he raised his beret.

Nini pressed the violin to his stomach and blinked fearfully. His eyelashes were yellow, like his suit, and his eyes were gray, filled with fear.

Then he stopped blinking and asked almost in a whisper, “Why are you chasing me? What did I ever do to you?”

“Chasing?" Yurka said with pretended surprise. “How can I catch up with such a runner? Yesterday you ran away from me so quickly.”

Nini bit his lip slightly. Something else appeared in his eyes - hint of anger, perhaps? He suddenly put the violin on the bench, stood up straight and rested his hands on the bricks behind him.

“So what?” he said quietly. “I didn’t know what you wanted.”

“That's it!” Yurka continued to clown around. “You did not know, but you ran away! I just wanted to talk with you.”

Nini looked at Yurka, at me, then somewhere between us. He shrugged.

“Well ... you tell me now.”

Yurka grinned and spat. I suddenly realized that he did not know what to talk about.  I didn't know, either.

Yurka said lazily, “Now I don’t need to talk with you. I see what kind of person you are. Your knees are shaking with fright."

Nini looked at his yellow trousers and answered very seriously, “No, they’re not.”

“You are afraid anyway,” Yurka sniggered.

Nini looked down again, as if he was thinking. Then he looked at us calmly. “Yes, I'm afraid. I am very afraid for the violin.”

Yurka laughed unnaturally, “Well, you amaze me, Maestro... We're not savages, after all, are we?”

“Well, you could accidentally damage it in a fight.”

"Why is it of such value? A Stradivarius?" Yurka asked sarcastically. He knew how to show his knowledge.

“No,” the violinist said. “But it's still very good. It is the only one in the world....”

“Wow!” Yurka said.

I was looking at the violinist. His face was tanned, his nose was flaky, and his hair was as yellow as Duplex's hair. We made eye contact. I blinked from embarrassment and again got angry at Yurka and myself, as well. What did we want from this boy?

To help the violinist, I asked him, “So, if you were without your violin, you would not have run away?”

He thought for about three seconds, licked his lips and said quietly, “I wouldn’t.”

I told Yurka, “Okay, let's go!”

Yurka turned, and we went away.

Yurka said with a grin, “We can talk later when he hasn’t got his violin. We’ll meet again.”

Suddenly we heard from behind, “If that's what you want, go ahead.”

“What?” Yurka turned around.

The violinist did not answer, and also did not lower his eyes.

“So you want to meet us again?” Yurka asked with a grin.

“Well, if you want to, go ahead,” the boy said quietly again.

“And when?” Yurka asked.

“Anytime. If you want it that badly.”

“Then we’ll walk you home,” Yurka said mockingly. “You take the violin home and come out. Okay?”

The violinist thought for a while, then nodded and took the case from the bench. He said, as if making excuses, “I live three blocks from here.”

“Let's see where the young talent lives,” mumbled Yurka.

And we walked down the street. The violinist was walking a little ahead of us, and we flanked him on both sides. I felt terribly stupid. I asked the boy, “Where did you come from? We know every guy in the area.”

“We came from Primorsk. My dad was appointed Head of the Clinic.”

“Wow ...” Yurka said mockingly. "And what? In Primorsk everyone wears Ascot ties around their necks?"

“No,” the boy said. “I’m studying at a ... my grandfather’s friend. He is an old musician and loves students to always be dressed as if at a concert. This is not difficult for me, and it makes the old man happy.”

Yurka added with a snicker, “Do not forget to take off your Cravat Ascot.”

 “I will, don’t worry,” the violinist said.

He lived in a new two-storey house with semicircular windows. A large number of small coloured houses were built in Starogorsk.  There was a lawn with a low plastic picket fence in front of each house.

“I won't be long,” the violinist told us and disappeared behind the door of the high porch.

“I guess it is silly,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Yurka snapped.

“We are just standing here, while Gleb is waiting for us there and Jeremy probably has already come to the carriage.”

“They can wait. I need to complete my experiment.”

“What do you mean?”

“My psychological experiment. I wonder if Nini will come out of his house or not.”

To tell the truth, I wanted the boy to come out to spite Yurka.

The door flew open. For a second, I was actually excited for the boy, but it was not our violinist. A woman in a red dress and a straw hat came out. She looked over at us.

"Boys, are you probably waiting for my son?"

It was time for us to get out of here now. I imagined rolling over backwards and running off through the grass into the alley. But she said, “He asked you to wait for him for two minutes. Our coat rack in the hallway fell down from the wall. He is nailing it now.”

I was shifting from one foot to the other. I wanted to hide my bare feet somewhere. The violinist’s mother went on, "He said that two of his friends were waiting for him outside. Why don't you come in?"

“Some...  some other time, thank you," Yurka answered politely.

She smiled at us again and walked across the lawn. She was so beautiful and young, just like my mother. Yurka hung his head and curled his lips with annoyance.

And that's when our musician appeared. Of course, he was without his Ascot tie. He was wearing a blue T-shirt and rumpled shorts of a summer school uniform. He had put on shabby sneakers. He stood in front of us, frowning as he looked at us, and said,

“Well ... Where are we going?”

“What for?” I was surprised.

“What do you mean what for? To talk or whatever you guys call it.”

“We can talk just fine here,” Yurka said awkwardly. “So,  tell me something ....

Why did you call us your friends?”

“What should I’ve said? Mom, there are two boys who have come to fight with me, ask them to wait, is that it?”

“We are not going to fight with you,” Yurka was frowning. “Aren't we?”

"Two against one is not what I call a fair fight," I said.

 “So, one on one?” the violinist asked.

“Come on,” Yurka sighed. “I'm stronger than you. If you want, you can fight with him,” he nodded his head in my direction.

“No way!” I answer indignantly.

Yurka suddenly laughed. I looked angrily at Yurka and asked the violinist, “What’s your name?”

He moved his lips as if he wanted to smile and said,

“Yanka.”

Honestly, half a second before he said his name, I already knew that he was Yanka.  I didn’t even know why. It was as if someone whispered his name to me. Yanka was defenseless in appearance. I had no muscle myself, and even compared to me, his hands were like twigs, but he would not be afraid to fight anyway.

Yurka was embarrassed. He said, “Why do you have such a strange name?”

“My grandfather gave it to me,” Yanka explained and scraped the sidewalk with his sneaker. “My Grandfather hails from the Baltic Sea region ...My full name is Yan.”

I thought about my grandfather and asked Yanka, “And who was your grandfather? A violin maker?”

“What do you mean, “was”. He’s alive. He’s a doctor and a violin maker too. He has been making violins all his life.”

Yurka raised his eyebrows, as if he’d said to himself, “Wow!” and asked, “Did he make your violin especially for you?”

“Yes, he did it right after I was born.”

“Have you been learning to play the violin for a long time?” Yurka asked.

 Yanka smiled, “Well, practically my whole life.”

“So they don't force you?” Do you do it of your own free will?” I asked.

“Who could force me?” Yanka's eyes became widened in surprise. “I love it. If I don’t play for a long time, I feel like I don't exist.”

Yurka said hesitantly, “Сan you play for us?”

Yanka looked up joyfully, “Well, of course!  Come to my place.”

But Yurka suddenly frowned, “Well, maybe next time…. We have others things to do….”

I realized that he was self-conscious about his outfit. I thought that I was not really dressed for the occasion either. Yanka responded quickly, “Nobody's home. Let's go!”

We were on the veranda with its colorful windows. Yurka and I were sitting on the floor against the wall. Yanka was in the middle, but it seemed to me that rather than standing, he was flying with his music. The sun was shining obliquely through the yellow and red glass, and bright autumn leaves seemed to be rushing past Yanka. The black bow was cutting through the air above the shiny violin and his fingers were flying over its neck. Yanka's hair was messed up, his belt buckle had slid to one side, and his shirt had ridden up so that his stomach was visible. It suddenly seemed to me that Yanka was racing standing on the back of a golden horse ....

The music sounded again the notes with which the melody began. This melody was like a signal for the beginning of an uprising. Yanka lowered the bow and pushed back his hair. Tiny beads of sweat glittered on his forehead and neck.

Yurka was sitting hunched over on the floor. He put his elbows on his knees and put his chin on his fists. He looked at Yanka through his hair.

“Here,” Yanka sighed softly.

“What was that? Tadeusz Levski?” Yurka asked.

Yanka smiled a little, “No. My grandfather and I wrote it together.”

“ That explains why it sounded completely unfamiliar,” Yurka said in a whisper.

I looked at him in surprise.

Yanka adjusted his shirt, scratched his leg with the violin bow and licked his lips. He jerked his head up, “Oh! But are you guys going out tonight?”

Yurka jumped up.

“Yes,” he said. “Want to come?”

Yanka did not ask where or what for. He immediately answered, “Yes, I want to!”

We went out onto the porch. It was already quite dark. The sun had turned brick-red and disappeared behind the thick poplar trees at the station.

I told Yanka, “We'll be home late. What if you get scolded?”

 I knew that Aunt Vika and my Gramma would certainly get mad at me for coming home late.

Yanka was surprised, “No, they let me take walks as late as I want. I’m a free man; I just have to leave a note for my Grandpa.”

He ran back into the house. Yurka thoughtfully said, “He’s an amazing player.”

“I did not know that you are a music lover.”

“You didn’t know much,” Yurka grinned. “In Neysk they were bringing up me as a well-rounded child…. I never thought that trumpets and drums could sound like that on his violin. Well, how do you like our…. Nini?”

I was suddenly seized by a strange fear.

“Yurka, why have you told him to come along? Do you wanna make a man out of him too?”

“No. He’s man enough already,” Yurka answered.

I said nothing. I could not get rid of my irrational anxiety.

image [https://sun9-12.userapi.com/impg/ccal0CTOKn0vo75QSOLEhEYoMUpzxRpU-uoMQA/9ULehekoYgc.jpg?size=1222x1609&quality=95&sign=6cf0c3ae7e903b490aa3b2b80d074059&type=album]

To be continued...