"Is not it time for me to make a wish" - thought Dux. - "Just to slow down. It's too much, for two days, to fall down twice from the sky to the ground".
- Alex. Do you have a dream?
- Yes...
*
The Virgin Galactic, having showed her teeth with many nozzles, was entering the compact layers of the atmosphere. For a moment, one smelled trouble and the astronauts felt the boys at the roller coaster attraction. A contractor Scaled Composite Burt Rutan managed to do something impossible, namely, the fall and braking were comfortable and beautiful. The Virgin having lifted up vertical tail unit, showed not only the wonders of dirigibility, but also a breakthrough in the composites history.
- Well? - asked Colonel.
- To reach big money! - Alex said pathetically.
"There”, - thought Dux.
Having reached the height of seven thousand miles, the spaceship turned into an ordinary aircraft which furrow skies. Seats of the pilots who were reclining automatically moved to a vertical working condition. Alex, who used to be a pilot, steadily negotiated with managers. Scarlet evening glow was growing dim and a few minutes later trough the dark clouds appeared brightly lit runway of the Nikola Tesla Airport.
*
"Why did I come here," - thought Сolonel. - "Why?"
His work outwardly full of adventures, stress, shooting, game, frankly false pursuit of wealth, power and passion, was empty.
A part of a man, existing in some reality, filled with many hungry crocodiles, such as greed, lust, anger, vanity, pride, power, envy, wealth, and other lie in plural, and often does not allow the swimmer opportunity to reach the other shore.
His other third was very far from reality. There were hours-long reflections, search for the perfect island, simple good manners, the lost world of heroes and knights with pure passionate love, his numerous deja vu in different cities. There was also a strange not finished poem "The sun and the stars" sensible self-restraint, to see some day with hope and faith the outlines of the discerned harbor. There existed his whole Celestial "A Gold Tower to heaven", "Another equator", "Your Star", "Eternal Purity," "The Girl in the pyramids", "God says," "The Mask is at the ball," "The Three are at the gates of Death"," Conversation with M "and" River of Belgrade". Probably, only in his childhood, he brushed his dreams aside, which seemed to him lost of time. With the first heavenly revelation, when he was a teenager, he felt in dreams the approach to the Deity under the hypnos. God’s breathing moving us over the waves of emotions and states of souls and along the edges of intermediate states.
However, just his real third part gave him sense and consciousness. It was called "love."
*
The spaceship flew to the brightly lit runway of Belgrade. Сolonel peered into city contours which he had never visited physically, but mentally had more than. In cold waters of the Sava and Danube Dux surprisingly saw the outlines of the Ainu’s runes, a turned over letter "y", with a shining outline of the Milky Way. A few minutes later the "Galactic Maiden" landed like an ordinary airplane. Alex touched Dux.
- We have arrived.
- Thank you.
Alex with some surprise saw another Сolonel. Impeded, with a wandering embarrassed look, with mad searches of the unknown, he seemed to be a pitiful and helpless reed. Alex took him through the long corridors of grey queues of refugees from the New World. Border guards asked a lot of questions. In the end, a couple of aliens was interested in by the officers in civilian clothes and painfully interrogated them in a small room. Dux either was silent or answered totally inappropriately. He had never had in his life such a difficult task, which was harder than the task of three bosons.
*
"In wine there is no truth!" – said Colonel almost aloud. - "In purity of living is truth!".
To describe the living there should be the number no less than the square angle. To visible and invisible inert worlds conform three hundred and thirty million gods. They give a lot of signals controlling alive. They are not in the material world or in the subtle worlds where there is weight. These Boolean transcendental entities run the time, energy and forms of living.
In this sense, a man is an absolutely helpless creature. Being in the subtlest layers, a man slowly drifting down then rushes up, then he is brought down by the unexpected hit from the side. He was caught napping by misfortunes, illnesses, love fever, bailiffs, unnecessary pathetic fame and a stupid unexpected death.
It is surprising, the more human institutions energetic the faster and inevitably they are crusted, destroy dissent, reduce the diversity of people and other living, to, as long as possible, bite their finest crispy cake of life off.
*
A smiling civilian from the BIA gave the screw-loose sign, showing his partner, that the guy was off balance. If not for Alex, who with incredible impromptu solved the situation, Colonel could be taken to the mental hospital. In the end, taking the undertaking of non-disclosure and not to leave the territory of Belgrade and obliging both to come for questioning on demand, they were released.
- My friend, you saved me in difficult times! – said Dux.
Alex muttered something himself under his breath. Having changed dinars, two men were walking through the airport during the natural pause of silence between arrivals and departures.
- Alex ...?
A self-confident and a bit arrogant, bespectacled stopped inquiringly.
- You know. I walk as if I don’t exist. And if I see I pretend to remember with difficulty. And what about you?
- I'm just a director - elusive hard irritation flashed in his small glasses.
Despite of the strict reproof which happens between the overachievers and poor students-alternatives, Dux mumbled hesitatingly:
- If you can by yourself... Cut and run!
Alex straightened his tie and went to the taxi with a bossy look.
Dux left through the side door. He put on a blue cap, an apron and trousers of a cleaner, having hid behind the truck. Having got to the local dining of the airport administration, he changed his clothes once more, turning into a greasy kitchen worker, put behind his cheek a little piece of cotton wool depicting flux and drew a black eye, he took two black stinking bags with slops and confidently moved to the service exit. He shouted loudly with shrieks and disgust to space:
- Pacovi, Pacovi!!!
The guards, probably, should block his way, but Dux was convincingly spraying with small drops stinking liquid from the bag and darted out to freedom in an unknown direction, jumping so artistically that rats seemed to be in the bag. Colonel ran far to the east, washed in some puddle and having seen some bus went to the center of Belgrade. There were few passengers: a severe unsmiling massive Serb, a hugging couple, some crazy man, a painted cheerful company. Rare stops, changing faces, as usual.
Having clapped on his head a big grey cap, he was furtively observing city evening streets. A feeling of a sophisticated scout told him that those men never let anybody go. The following day his photos would be surely hung around the city. We had to hurry.
He drove to a hill in the center of Singidunum. That hill for two thousand years it has been won by forty different armies and thirty-eight times it was burned to the ground. Although in the city there was not declared a state of emergency there was urgently advised not to walk in the streets after eleven pm. The city was patrolled.
*
On the spit Dux looked at dark waters of the Sava and Danube rivers. Like a lonely wanderer he was observing the river bends. Twenty years later, the borders had been effaced, there was only a vision of the city which he had never visited.
A hill with invisible underground rivers, abandoned countless peoples forgotten two hundred thousand dialects, under shining militant palaces, with the advanced of good and evil, was silent.