Classics fantasy – 9. A. Belyaev

approached Matvei who abandoned the cart into steppes.

      13

      The new river, still anonymous, flows on the East, moistening air and the earth. It came here, to the adust steppe to extinguish the fire of the earth. Felt the way, carefully as blind, groping all roughnesses of the soil, filling in holes, sometimes branching off aside, and suddenly – stop! Came across, blind, a wall. Stood a bit and turned on the South, having changed the way planned by it the old course.

      – Red Dawns station! – Grachev shouted.

      On a dam poured out all settlement. Valkirny smiles. Everything left as he wanted. “Red dawns” are saved. There was a danger whether the river will fill in the settlement, having bypassed a dam from above, but also this danger passed: to the South a slope, and the river directed the waters there.

      – Let now from Kamyshin come yes will look! I to them saved up not one ten thousand rubles. And all “barrage” was built, the kopek for them was asked!

      – Good fellow, Kondrat Semenych! Head!

      – And now for work, children! There is nothing to yawn! – And he walked by the saved “Red dawns”.

      However this day came to an end absolutely not so joyfully as began.

      Valkirny made orders on the farmyard when the out of breath Grachev came running to it. On it the person was not.

      – Kondrat Semenych, trouble!

      – What, broke through a dam? – quickly asked Valkirny and turned pale a little.

      – No, not that! We did del, Kondrat…

      – Say yes, the devil, plainly!

      – Now called by telephone from Sukhanov. They say, filled in the villages of Igoshki and Chernyaevo which did not need to be filled in. A bit filled in Chernyaevo, and Igoshki in a hollow, so that absolutely on roofs. We, so the dam turned the small river not there where it is necessary. Ask for help…

      Valkirny did not listen any more. He rushed and ran to office, having shouted on the run:

      – Call alarm!

      But Grachev lagged behind him, and Valkirny, the first having reached the square in front of office where the bell convoking for work and a lunch hung began to sound the alarm. From everywhere the people ran together. Valkirny gave orders:

      – Harness horses, vividly. Take hooks, axes, ropes, do not feel sorry for horses, you drive with might and main. You fly to Igoshki. There is a flood!.

      And itself ran to stables, chose the best horse, hastily put on a bridle and rushed off on a bareback gnedk on the steppe, the coast of the new river.

      The village of Igoshki was in twenty kilometers from “Red dawns”.

      The kind horse flew a whirlwind, and it seemed to Valkirny that it hardly trudges. Kondrat Semenych beat a neck of a horse with the end of a bridle and heels in sides.

      “Here opportunity! I thought that the river will go more to the left… And well as there still people sank…” – Valkirny thought and at the same time involuntarily examined the area. Absolutely unfamiliar! River, creeks, lakes…

      Here and roofs Igoshek are seen over water.

      On roofs people, roosters, cats… Shout, groan, crying…

      The peasants who were in time to get out, while water was low, sit with a sad face ashore. Around on the earth of a blanket, pillow, samovars, sheepskin coats – that managed to take out. Dogs, having raised muzzles, howl, looking at the flooded village.

      Valkirny approaches and abruptly rebuffs a horse.

      – Why you do not save, you are idle? – snatches on peasants.

      – And how you will save? – the red peasant snaps. – There are no boats, with barehanded into water will not get.

      – A barn it was necessary to sort yes a raft to make – Valkirny says

      – Language easily! – hostile voices are heard. – Make itself! Axes sank, there are no ropes, than the raft will be connected?

      – Hands it was possible to sort a barn. On a log you will not drown. So gradually would also drag the people on the coast.

      Valkirny, as was, in heavy boots and an invariable leather jacket, floats to the next log hut. He removes from the boy’s roof, mounts to himself upon a neck and floats back to the coast, without paying attention to crowd.

      Valkirny when there arrived krasnozoryets managed to drag several people already on the coast.

      Work began to boil. Sorted an old barn on logs, made a raft and on it transported all from roofs on the coast.

      – In huts remained nobody? There is no drowned? – Valkirny asked.

      – As though all are whole … – Began to consider, to have something in common.

      Valkirny was already going to return to “Dawns” to dispose how to place the people who remained homeless when after the journey the beep of the car unexpectedly was heard.

      There arrived from Kamyshin the secretary of a cell, the Inhabitant of Tula to whom already phoned about everything.

      He approached Valkirny, put to it a hand on an elbow – did not reach a shoulder – and, looking directly in eyes, told:

      – Well that, Kondrat Semenych, now you understand why private it is necessary to subordinate to the general? Posvoyevolnichali also did del! It is necessary to answer now!

      Valkirny was silent, having hung the head.

      14

      Letter the first

      “Dear Lenz!

      I do not know what to begin with. I have such state as if I watched without interruption forty movies. Try, understand all this. I choose the general from lots of the diverse impressions: collective farm “New way”, in my opinion, the most interesting place on the globe. I as if moved on other planet where time moves with extreme speed.

      To begin with the fact that from Kamyshin where I examined a great Volga dam, I flew through traffic on the big passenger-and-mail airplane to collective farm. Constant line. To the village on the airplane. Not bad?

      There was a windy day, and I as if slid on the American mountains over the wide steppe. Once it was waterless, droughty, whimsical for harvests. Now all it is filled in with water: rivers, lakes, lagoons… In places I still saw wooden huts of villages, but stone four-storeyed houses, the whole towns of such houses met on the way more often (or rather under way as I looked from above).

      – And also “The new way” is seen – the neighbor told me, pointing to the horizon.

      I uvidat the smoking pipes of the plants. It is a lot of factory pipes. Whether my fellow traveler was mistaken? I interrogatively looked at it. He smiled and, seeing my bewilderment, hurried to explain:

      – These are collective-farm factories and the plants on primary processing of agricultural raw materials: flax, hemp, development of tinned fruit and vegetables, myasokhladoboyn, cheese dairies, mills, elevators, fish-canning, sugar, oil milling plants.

      In a few minutes I saw all agricultural and factory collective-farm city. It stood at the river – the new river created by a piping which supplied it with water. Higher on a current, separated by a wide strip of the wood from smoke of factory pipes, the inhabited city, all from the white two-storeyed houses rolling in gardens and parks was located. Several houses were allocated with the size – it is probable, houses of government and public institutions. On the river swimming baths were seen, boats scurried about.

      When we flew by over the wood separating the city from factories