“Why ten and not one?” Serge wondered.
“Because there’s no reason for me to bother opening and closing the corral if the number of sheep does not increase.”
“Well, then one sheep could bring two; one for itself and the second for the trouble at the gate.”
“What about overheads?”
“Then three.”
“And what about business development?”
“Well, four.”
“And taxes?”
“Let it be five.”
“Plus business profit?”
“It turns out six.”
“Nice number, but my last word is nine. Deal?”
“What do you mean?”
“In order to release yourself from the smoking habit, you must bring nine new smokers to my realm,” Gregory clarified to the gullible client.
“No, I can't go for such a deal,” Serge squeezed the phrase out of himself with effort.
“Can't you..? Well, it’s up to you, but you still have to pay for my visit. Accountant, bring an estimate of our transport and other costs!” the egregor snapped his fingers the way a waiter is usually called in restaurant. An elderly, presentable accounting lady with gray-haired smoke floated into the room and handed him a sheet of layouts.
“So, according to the recalculating table, for such transgression he’s sentenced to get a cancer to one of his lungs. Will he survive?” Gregory asked, looking at the numbers.
“Yes, but disabled. One his lung will be cut off,” the lady reported.
“Okay, let’s close the deal,” the egregor ordered.
And at the same moment Serge suddenly felt a hellish pain in his chest.
“But I didn't know, I'm sorry,” he squeaked.
“Ignorance of the law does not absolve you from guilt. Do you think that I have nothing else to do apart from rushing around with escort personnel on fake calls? I’m not a boy already; I’m not a thousand year old anymore. Good luck!” Gregory stood up from his chair.
“Okay, I’ll sign,” Serge howled in pain.
“Great! Lawyer, notary!” Gregory sat down and snapped his fingers again. The pain in Serge’s chest stopped instantly. Out of nowhere, two girls, one with hair of white smoke, the other of black one, clattered on high heels into the room. The blonde put the ready-made contract in triplicate onto the table.
“Please, sign here, here and here, where the check marks are,” she pointed out.
“And pay attention to the paragraphs of section two about the obligations of the parties and section five about the responsibility of the parties,” Gregory advised.
Serge took the contract and began to read it. The letters jumped before his eyes.
“Why was the agreement dated two weeks earlier?” Serge tried to find a reason to delay inevitable.
“Because the Gregorian calendar is used, as indicated right under the date of the treaty,” egregor repulsed his correction attempt.
“That is, having made nine people smokers, I lose my desire to smoke at all? Completely?”
“No cravings, as if you had never ever smoked at all.”
“How will I attract new clients? What exactly am I supposed to do?”
“We will give you nine super-cigarettes. Anyone who smokes just one of them will immediately turn into a smoker. As though he or she would have been smoking for five years. Your task is to seduce nine non-smokers under age of thirty within nine months since now. In section number two of the contract, everything is stipulated. Read!”
“And if I do not find so many clients within the specified period?”
“Excuse me, for long nine months? Then you will have one your cancerous lung cut off, as you heard. The disease has already started. Anyone who smokes a super-cigarette will weaken your illness, and the last one will heal you completely. Read point five carefully.”
Serge took a pen, signed a contract and immediately felt himself a scum. The notary and the lawyer straight away took their copies of the agreement from the table, went out of the room into the corridor and disappeared there into nowhere, like a haze.
The egregor put a pack of super-cigarettes on the table.
“In case you inattentively read the fifth point, I draw your attention to the fact that for each of these nine cigarettes you are responsible not with your lungs, but with your head. None should be wasted. It is an expensive high-tech product. And, I warn you, do not try to cheat! Albeit you are my creator, I am your Master!”
Serge could not utter a word. Gregory fatherly patted him onto the shoulder and followed his staff. Shocked, Serge looked at his watch. It showed one in the morning.
The alarm clock rang. Waking up from a semi-drowsy state, Serge sat down on the bed with difficulty. He did not sleep all night. The sleeping pills had no effect. Fortunately, he had wisely taken a day off from his work. He looked out of the window – everything appeared as usuaclass="underline" the slanting rays of the sun shining onto the stripes and spots of yellow autumn grass; passers-by hurried for work; stray cats slowly crawling out of hiding places. Everything was so mundane, that for a moment Serge thought that event that has happened at night was simply untrue, just a nightmare. But then his glance fell on the agreement on the table. He bleakly sighed, took one of yesterday’s cigarette butts out of the plate, lit it up and smoked. To be certain, he decided to have his lungs checked by a doctor.
The doctor scowled at the results of blood tests, then at the X-ray of the chest and finally said:
“Honestly, the picture is not so good, as well as the blood tests … no, nothing catastrophic – markers of tuberculosis or cancer have not been detected yet … but if you do not immediately quit smoking, then, I am afraid, the consequences will be dire. It is strange to me that three months ago you did a fluorography with us and it was good.”
“I’ll quit, I’ll definitely quit, doctor”, Serge assured. His voice trembled.
The contract has already begun to be fulfilled. Serge left the clinic and walked to the church.
“Father, I want to confess,” Serge spoke in a hoarse voice to the stately priest.
“I am not a father, I am a deacon. In our church, Archpriest Gregory confesses an hour before the evening service. Today you are already late, so come tomorrow,” the priest looked at the grief-stricken Serge and added affectionately, “our lost sheep.”
Upon hearing the name of the priest and diacon’s last phrase, Serge was taken aback. He doubted that the father and the egregor was the same person. But still, such coincidences seemed to him very odd. Serge recalled Gregory’s warning and hurriedly left the church.
For several hours Serge wandered the streets in thoughts. All sorts of nonsense climbed into his head. For example, why not to report Gregory to the police? Serge understood that it could neither save him, nor catch the egregor, but his mind desperately continued to look for a way out.
“Serge, hello, why so gloomy?” someone pushed him into the shoulder. Serge raised his eyes. His school friend Alex stood right before him.
“Hello! I just talked to the god of all smokers yesterday,” Serge confessed in order to test the perception of his situation by others.
“To whom? Ha-ha! You should’ve work as a humorist on television! Huge talent is wasted” Alex laughed.
“I’m quite serious,” Serge persisted.
“Well, I turn here, bye!” Alex giggled and stepped aside along the path between buildings.
The dialogue with Alexei convinced Serge that he could not tell his misfortune to anyone in order to keep himself out of the guarded institutions for the mentally ill. For an hour or two he walked along the streets aimlessly in prostration.
“Excuse me, could you treat us with cigarettes? ” a silvery girlish voice brought Serge out of his stupor. Three girls of about sixteen stood right before him, smiling shyly. The most impudent, red-haired, was just a step apart from him, and the other two, brown-haired, were three meters away. Serge got delighted with the unexpected luck and hastily pulled out three contract cigarettes from the pack in the breast pocket of his shirt. The girl rewarded him with a milk-white smile. Serge looked fascinated at her healthy teeth, not yet spoiled by nicotine, and his hand with cigarettes froze halfway.