A blunted wolf yell ran around the room of death, through the open door of the room of torture, the butchers kitchen, reflected on the ship and calmed down.
*
For a professional-digger a tanker is an easy to read empty pan. There are all delicious diggers’ spices, such as: an extensive ventilation, a sewage, air trunks, elevators, double walls for hidden electrical and telephone cables, fire escapes, lifeboats, utility rooms, hidden hatches, outlets for anchors and winches, a kitchen, a waste tank, decorative ceilings and big air holes for stability. With his experience Dux could live on such ships infinitely anywhere in the world, and any police couldn’t identify him, eating from the table of the captain. Having roamed about the tanker’s maze, driving rats away and covering with dust, he found a cabin with a common wall with the mesh ventilation. The cabin was a standard one, and if it necessary it two people could live there. A narrow bed with straps, a table with edging, a recess for bottles, a refrigerator, a TV at the ceiling.
One man slept on the bed. Another one walked in the cabin. Probably, he thought, having stared at the ceiling and moving his lips. From time to time he came to the bedside table, opening and closing the drawers. At that moment, in a tiny cabin one could hear a terrible thunder. Small plastic things rolled in the drawers such as: pens, buttons, pins, round balls of a not finished up gum, screws, cartridges from Luger and other rubbish.
The sleeping one opened his eyes. He said:
- I warned you. If you open the drawer again, I'll kill you!
His head slowly focused the consciousness. The situation didn’t promise anything good. However, the guy by inertia closed three drawers.
It was too much.
- I warned you!
He looked around the room looking for support. Gradually the lying man eyes filled with a furious crimson color. The thinking one returned to reality, but it was too late.
The great one became punching the guy.
- I warned you!
He wheezed and screamed, punching painfully the neighbor and shouting:
- Never open the drawer! And never squeeze the toothpaste on the side!
From a viewpoint it looked as if they were friends, but the head of the thin one was unnaturally trembling.
- Squeeze the toothpaste just from below!
- I’m beaten! - Bleated the spirit, darting out to the corridor.
Colonel heard heavy footsteps of big bare feet of the tall one, rapidly moving away, muttering with indecent words, a scream, short muffled sounds reminding cries of night birds.
Dux felt it was time to intervene. He crashed through a wall and tumbled to the fighters. Both were dumbfounded. In front of them there appeared a completely naked man with the signs of violence on his body and soiled with dust and dirt, as a chimney sweep, so that only cold bluish eyes were seen in the twilight. They cried out in one voice:
- Who are you?
- A rescuer.
Colonel heavily punched the tall one, dragged him back to the cabin and put on the same bed, where he slept five minutes earlier. Then Dux strapped him to the bed with tape. The hit one with great pleasure kicked the tall and cried out:
- The fool!
Colonel put on clothes of the tall one.
- And who are you?
Dux, ignoring the thin one, put on his boots, took Luger out of the drawer, loaded it with cartridges, waved a gun and ordered:
- Put on your boots.
The frail one quickly agreed for everything.
- Where are we going?
- To Karaganda! – Colonel evilly forced with the clenched teeth.
A tall one began moving and said with resentment,
- You will be killed!
Dux with a crash opened the drawers, found not fresh socks and stuffed them into that man’s mouth like a gag. He shook his head and mumbled. Colonel pulled out the gag.
- Is there something you want to say?
- You both FFF-freaks, FFF-freaks, I do FFF- I will kill you ....
- There is no any alternative! - Sadly thought Dux.
He listened to that the man said and again shoved a gag into his mouth, having taped it.
- Am I look he? - Pointing at the neighbor.
- You’re a copy.
Colonel realized that the frail had a sense of humor.
- You will go with me and you will tell stories, did you understand?
- Rentgenoelektrokardiographia!
- Once more!
- Rindfleischetikettierunguberwachungaufgabenubertragengesetz!
- Not bad!
He didn’t like this freak.
- Come on.
Brandishing, just in case, Luger, Dux forced the frail into a small hole and carefully closed the hatch. He illuminated the dusty cramped space ventilation.
- I have only ten minutes to talk. Speak softly, and on business. Where is Skull?
The thin one vaguely chuckled.
- I do not know. For us, it's like the president’s protection.
- When did you last see him?
- Yesterday. I didn’t se himself, they said that he was there.
- Did you come to the captain's cabin?
- No, it isn’t allowed.
- Never?
- Never.
He reverently looked up at the sky.
- Who did you were?
- I can not remember.
- Don’t you remember either your father or your mother?
He suddenly burst into tears.
- I know that they were.
- Where do you know languages from?
- They appear from somewhere. But then they can disappear.
- Do you see the future?
- I saw the flood. A tide is everywhere.
- Remember the city!
Dux raised his voice.
*
The puny one had a stabbing pain. He grabbed his head, rocking. He knew that he had then an integral wonderful world. He met a girl. It was the first time she kissed him on the lips. They went to a cozy cafe.
He cried again with a squeal.
- I can not tie together the ends of the rope.
- Believe me. You are not alone.
Colonel frowned.
- Was there the asphalt near the cafe?
- No, there was the block pavement. Everywhere, there were photos on the pillars.
- How did you die?
- Well, my feet were cold. I've heard people behind the wall. They did not hear me. I felt bad.
- Okay. What did they do with you?
- Like in a hospital. The resuscitation.
- Did someone remove extra brain?
- Exactly.
- Come on, get up. Undress.
- What?
- Absolutely. I'm your doctor. Quickly.
Dux, armed with a second torch was studying recent bruises and scars. For some reason he thought that all these poor were did craniotomy.
No. The mad system was indifferent. She could revive the dead and fix the wounded up. And could bring the corpses back to life, but she had a time limit. Twenty minutes without deep freezing. And an unlimited storage in special refrigerated capsules.
- And what about the healthy ones?
- What?
- How they knock the brains out at the healthy ones? With a bat?
- Well, they hit strongly, don’t permit to sleep, give drugs. They are medics in the lock-up. As everywhere.
- Get dressed.
Colonel knew that the puny’s withdrawal pains may begin at any time. So he was on his guard.
- Come on, my friend. We have only fifteen minutes left.
*
At the entrance to the lower deck there was a freak. Colonel moved his short stroke axis and the third cervical vertebra, so that the atlas was left without support. He gave a thin one trophy trunk.