Classics fantasy – 11. A. Belyaev

already similar to the ice city – Ignat exclaimed, pointing to the ice columns serving as support for wires. – It is thought dexterously up!

      – We here widely use “local construction material” – Stepan told. – And ice – magnificent material: always near at hand, strong, cheap, pliable. Here it is hard to deliver the wood. And we use ice everywhere where it is only possible. Our meteorologist Verkhovsky thinks out all this. You get acquainted with it. “Father Frost”. Interesting old man. Have a look at these ice cubes.

      – Ice house? – Ignat asked.

      – Ice тепляк – Asatkin explained. – To build on such frost – hard piece. Mittens disturb, without mittens, any minute, will freeze hands. Now we perform almost all works in teplyaka. We build over construction an easy case from thin plywood or even a cardboard and we pour water. It turns out ice тепляк with any thickness of walls. It perfectly keeps heat. Heating – electric or gas.

      – But what will be with all these teplyaka and ice columns when the summer comes?

      – In the summer of a teplyaka are not necessary, and columns let thaw. It is temporary conducting for publicizing of buildings. Work will be finished before heat comes.

      – We and Jima already prepared for you a house. For visitors we have no hotel yet. Froze, Jim? – asked Pelkin Jima as old friend.

      – Cold – Jim answered.

      – And what, Pelkin whether you threw the North for the sake of hot Florida? – Ignat asked.

      – Of course, no – the fall answered.

      – Here, you see, Jim. Andrey Ivanovich says that the best places on the globe begin only behind the Polar circle. – All burst out laughing.

      – We will warm you – Asatkin consoled. – Here and izba. It only witness mark…

      – From whom it is necessary to guard here? – with surprise Jim asked.

      – From polar bears mainly. Despite fires, these curious animals quite often visit us. Overlook – will get into our refrigerators.

      – Yes, in storage of products it is far better in the north, than in Florida. Meat does not spoil – Ignat told.

      All entered a small izba. Walls smelled of a fresh larch. Electric lighting is carried already out, but the electric furnace is not installed yet. In a corner on bricks there is a small iron furnace. Near it a heap of spill and scraps.

      Pelkin quickly kindled the furnace, put a teapot. Merkulov brought from a snowmobile suitcases with bread, canned food, cervine sausage. Friends decided not to go to the dining room, and to have dinner here to talk and “to remember old times”.

      Merkulov and Asatkin were “nomadic builders”. They traveled all over all USSR from edge to edge. Their ways dispersed from Ignat, again were crossed. It was the meeting after several years of separation.

      Jim with interest listened to life of “people without settled life”. He well knew “vagrant America”. But there people loafed from end to end in job searches. They were pursued as tramps, arrested, put in prison. This homeless was considered almost beyond the law. The homeland for them was not the homeland, but the country inhabited by hostile tribes in a police uniform. The unemployed felt almost the same as the first English pioneers among the virgin nature and the hostile Indian population.

      And these Asatkin and Merkulov! They are not bezdomna. They only live in the big-big house where one “room” is called Central Asia, another the Far East, the third… yes all rooms and not to count.

      The human voice of clock radios reported time everyone a quarter of hour. Friends did not notice how midnight came. Pelkin, Asatkin and Merkulov began to say goodbye.

      – Do not forget to switch off clock radios, otherwise this herald will disturb you at night. Put this arrow at six in the morning. Not early? And in six you will be woken – told, leaving, Pelkin. – Good night.

      They left. Ignat wearily stretched, and Jim sat at an oven and everything enclosed firewood. The furnace was heated.

      – Really to you it is still cold? – Ignat asked, undressing.

      – By the morning will blow – Jim answered. – The house is recently difficult.

      At last they switched off clock radios, turned off light and settled. Ignat immediately snored. To Jim it was not fallen down. Whether stirred roulades which were removed a nose by Ignat, whether the homeland was remembered. There now day. The bright, hot sun shines. And on streets also warmly, is even even warmer, than in this izba… And here behind the walls smelling of pitch wind howls, lifting blizzards. Around on one thousand kilometers the ice desert. Wolves, bears… Anna Fokina was remembered. Whether he will see it tomorrow? To Jim it became sad. It is a pity, the Hawaiian guitar in a suitcase. Would play on it, absolutely quietly not to wake Ignat. However, perhaps, and gun shots you will not wake him… No, it, Jim, will not remain here. Will go to Uzbekistan, to Transcaucasia. There is more sun, more probably home.

      Under a floor, at an oven, the crash was heard. Crude dries up. Again crash and someone’s heavy sighs. Ignat sighs? No, he snores exactly, rhythmic. A strong crash, hissing, as in a water tap, when there is no water, whistle, a smack… And suddenly Jim felt that the bed under him is unsteady. Or he has a dream? Jim pinched himself for a cheek. No, he does not sleep. The crash does not stop. Jim begins to worry. He lowers legs on a floor and feels in darkness that the floor board into which he stepped costs an edge. In the formed crack bears ice cold. It is necessary to light fire rather. Jim goes on a floor, stumbles, falls. Legs freeze. Where this damned switch? Jim switched on light. At the same moment the roar was distributed. Boards of a floor rose, turned, from under them water began to act. Jim woke Ignat. That half asleep could not understand in what business.

      – Rather! Get up rather! – Jim hurried him. The izba was quickly filled with water. One more shot. The wall warped, between logs the crack was formed. Frosty air began to enter this crack with whistle. Water rose, froze, ice with a crash broke, from a crack stuck out water flows and immediately froze. In the face of the surprised Jim and Ignat the izba turned into a glacier.

      They began to put on quickly. Ice already on half-meter filled an izba. It squeezed out a door which with a crash was opened, and now in an izba became also cold, as well as outside.

      Hardly two friends ran out on the street as there was a new eruption. On their eyes all izba was filled with ice up to the top. Ice squeezed out windows, came to light. With a roar of weapon shots it broke off a tree, a stone, everything where water got and where it froze.

      The amazed Jim and Ignat stood and looked at this extraordinary show. Ice filled an izba to a ceiling, stuck out from windows and a door, went down to the earth. At last everything calmed down. Light of the next lamp lit dilapidated to a witness mark.

      – Legs did not wet? Go rather to mine to a witness mark to be heated and dry. Not that you will be left without legs. Pound legs snow, take off boots! – the appeared watchman – the Chukchi or the Yakut ordered goodness knows where from. Jim and Ignat could not distinguish him yet. The watchman forced to undress legs and to rub with snow. Only when legs became red as paws of a goose, the watchman took away Jim and Ignat in the izba standing in the neighbourhood.

      – What happened? – Jim asked.

      Ignat already understood and explained to him:

      – All this permafrost “jokes”. You do not know what is permafrost? The layer of the frozen soil which is not thawing in the summer. In places here even during a thirty-degree summer heat the sun heats the soil only on one and a half meters. And below the layer of the chilled soil and ice lies. It never thaws. Though, of course, permafrost actually is not eternal. It is possible that to – гда in these latitudes there was warmer climate and permafrost was not. It is