For the first time in a long while, Rustam opened his eyes without the monstrous pain in his head, after a cruel blow; not from the sharp shout of the robber; and not from coming to his senses after a dose of sleeping drugs. He slept so well. It seemed such an insignificant thing, but he did not even suspect how much he had missed it, and for about half an hour he relaxed on a narrow bed, covered with a gray, smooth, thin, and very, very warm blanket, listening at first to the uncertain and then sweet yawns of the guys who had woken up before him on the other beds. Amid their whispers, he yawned twice, finally saying good morning to Sylvie, who was rubbing her eyes.

  Then the whirlwind came. Ruda kept her word, bursting into their compartment accompanied by a detachment and raising everyone to their feet with a loud clatter of hooves. She dragged them into the colorless bathrooms, polished to a shine, and dispersed the group into separate shower stalls, separating the boys from the girls and slapping Decimus when he tried to slip behind Tsereg. One girl, stubbornly insisting on being addressed as a man, Ruda took with herself and Grisha to separate showers, to the loud disappointment of Gosha, who wanted to know if she had a dick.

  Probably, the poor girl was tortured badly in captivity, and now she uses this delusion for a shield. Rustam thought, taking a warm shower and trying not to waste water in vain. Ney, charged with the responsibility of watching after the male half, told them not to worry about trifles, but precious water doesn’t come from nowhere; everyone knew that!

  To his wonder, Rustam’s hand did not rip off the remains of his thin, falling hair. It seemed to brim with vigor, and examining his face in a mirror, he noticed a slight brown shade reappearing at their roots. The sores he had received from guarding near the engine compartment had subsided, no longer festering; his eternally red armpits did not itch, and the natural skin had grown a little over the patch on his cheek.

  Right after finishing washing, they were given orange coveralls, along with comfortable boots. Even though Grisha could not walk, Ruda still helped him put them on and lace them up, sitting him on her shoulders. Several members of their group, including Rustam, had to visit the medical bay, experiencing the unceremonious treatment of Cenfus, while the rest waited.

  The training started right after that. Ruda, continuing to play the role of a steed for Grisha, drove them along the decks, forcing the entire group to wind circles. Jake, the Insectone, stayed closer to the scoundrel, while the calmer Ney brought up the rear.

  Their path led through empty corridors, full of closed doors, hiding unknown compartments from prying eyes. Periodically, the corridor smoothly descended, even though ahead, at a great distance and inaccessible for a jump, a further path was visible, separated from the rest of the passage by a precipice. They spiraled down six levels, losing a breathless girl in the middle of the passage on the fourth level, next to a door marked with the IX sign. A soldier stayed with her, handing the flushed little girl a flask.

  Ruda didn’t even flinch, continuing to lead their group, cutting circles. Upon reaching the seventh level, she ran up the slope, and they picked up the missing girl near the same door and another passageway leading higher. Rustam looked at Decimus, and he raised his thumb, agreeing with the unspoken question. The way up had not been visible from door IX earlier. The fortress of their saviors and of this bitch concealed mysteries.

  Rustam lost count at the twenty-thousandth step, when Grisha’s thin voice commanded a stop and Ruda ducked so that he would not hit his head on a jamb, entering the nearest door. Inside, breakfast awaited them on trays standing on long tables. Each tray had one fried piece of meat and a bowl with a small amount of greenery floating in a gray mass of unknown origin diluted with water. Although it paled compared to yesterday’s feast, they greedily pounced on the food, which was still steaming slightly. From the furious clatter of forks and spoons, Rustam realized he wasn’t the only one finding the taste divine. They had indeed been saved.

  But the biggest surprise of the day came minutes later. The slavers had captured entire families, and despite the deaths and sales, some relatives remained in the wagon, confined to various tasks. Today, they were reunited. Rustam almost choked, his fingers turning red as they gripped the table, his eyelashes heavy with moisture when he looked at those who were lucky enough to hug their parents, siblings, and other kin.

  A few days earlier. A few days earlier, me… and them… The thought pounded in his temples. He wasn’t the only one having a hard time coping with the wild envy seething inside him. Ney and Ruda stopped near several crying children, comforting them and glancing at Jake. The nasty thing tapped her temple with a finger, and the Insectone in black shrugged. Not wanting to let this freak know his weakness, Rustam and Sylvie volunteered to assist the staff in clearing away the trays and lingered in the unusual kitchen, washing dishes.

  Would I trade their joy for one of my family members? He asked himself, slightly speechless. Was he cruel enough to destroy another family to save his own? So that the emptiness in his chest would disappear, so that he would not be haunted by thoughts about what he should have done? Don’t know. Dad, forgive me, but I hope not. I’m just certain that I want no one to experience our fate.

  The work helped him to shake off his dark thoughts, and he met the head cook, a grumpy old man critically inspecting the cleaned dishes and trays. In exchange for something called juice, the assistants agreed to scrub the floor while the cooks prepared food for the crew. Here everything was as Rustam expected. The knights got well-done meat with a crust, stuffed with apples and surrounded by pieces of bread, and the servants of lower ranks were content with modest portions of natural products, tea, and gray bars. The head cook explained to the curious Sylvie that these bars contained enough calories and vitamins to satiate a person and avoid illness.

  “Seventy years ago, we didn’t have such a thing in the infantry. Only thirty years ago it became a part of the general diet, if my memory serves me right,” the hunchbacked cook grumbled, showing a mouthful of metal false teeth. He set out eight glasses, filling them to the brim with a yellow liquid. “The Blessed always get the best toys ahead of everyone else.”

  “The Blessed? You mean the nobles?” Rustam clarified.

  “To us, it’s the same thing.” The cook waved his hand. “Drink up and get out of here. We have plenty to do.”

  “A pig or a cusack for the magister?” a young cook shouted from the stove.

  “Ah, he’ll send it to the soldiers, anyway. That picky vegetarian doesn’t appreciate our efforts. Prepare the cusack; we don’t have many pork carcasses. Let them chew, the ungrateful sloths.”

  Carefully, not wanting to appear cowardly in front of Sylvie, Rustam took the first sip of juice. The sweet and sour, cold liquid dripped onto his tongue, instantly invigorating him and tearing him out of his melancholic thoughts, and he desperately pointed his fingers, urging the others not to wait until the juice warmed up. They’ve got the canteen of the gods here! The guy admired it, draining his glass in three gulps and immediately bombarding the cook with questions about how to get a permanent job here. The old man refused to answer.

  “We don’t have enough hands here,” he complained, preparing a dish. “There are enough of us to service the crew, but no one warned us that we would take so many passengers. And those pests from engineering, security, and maintenance took all the candidates. Voracious piranhas, a horn in their ribs, left us no one...”

  “So hire us!” Sylvie exclaimed. “Best solution!”

  “You won’t stay here long. In a week or two and you’ll land in the city. So why should I get distracted and fill out paperwork for this? But...” He glanced slyly at the group. “I don’t mind occasional help. We have plenty of delicacies.”

  Together they promised to drop by as soon as they had the opportunity. A glass of juice in exchange for a simple cleaning—that’s stealing!

  “Hire us.” Rustam smiled, whispering in Sylvie’s ear on the way back. “Somehow it doesn’t fit with your theory about the strong and the weak.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “If they want to play, they should take advantage of this privilege,” she answered stubbornly. “Besides, the cook is from the weak.”

  He didn’t roll his eyes. Everyone was moving on from the past in their own way. Thoughts of missed opportunities tormented him; Sylvie was dealing with her demons. The important thing was that they survived. They would overcome everything else, chew it up, and spit it out to spite the world.

  “You helped in the kitchen,” Ruda said, casting a hateful glance at Rustam.

  Seriously, what did I do?

  “We don’t have free work,” Ney said, telling a joke to a kid wiping his red eyes.

  “We’ve already been paid...”

  Grinding her teeth, Ruda reached into her pocket, stopping Sylvie’s explanation. Her hand clenched, her knuckles white, but then she forced herself to put a couple of coins in Rustam’s palm, giving the same to the other children, but now accompanying it with praise, a pat, or a smile.

  Reveling in the seething indignation of this dumb bastard, bound by unknown rules, Rustam examined his first earnings, trying one coin with his teeth. Two circles were cast in gold, but it was unlikely that this precious metal was used in their creation. Most likely, it was a brass coating, similar to what Dad made for sale. A cross evenly divided one side into four sections, one of which had three letters, III. He turned the coin over, seeing the engraved profile of an unfamiliar, bald man. The unknown caster conveyed an attentive look and a calm, obedient appearance of this, he guessed, important person.

  I need to find out the value of one coin. Rustam thought, deciding to stop moping. Nothing will bring his family back. They were gone. Sylvie’s situation may be even worse, yet she still stood up for everyone. He will become the same—no, better—and will lift the burden from her shoulders.

  “Okay, since everyone’s finished eating, follow me quickly!” Ruda clapped her hands, interrupting the joyful reunions, attempts to sneak a nap, and the incipient pranks.

  She dragged them into a compartment a little further down the corridor, filled with open containers about as tall as Rustam’s waist and ordinary wooden chairs. Ney began to seat them, and Decimus rushed to get a larger chair for Gosha and Tsereg while Ruda was away, and Jake sat in the corner with Grisha, continuing to teach the pale boy unfamiliar words and terms.

  The reason for the open containers soon became obvious when Rustam sat next to Sylvie and easily stretched out his legs. A table. He smiled, accepting the notebook and pen from Ney.

  “Can everyone write?” asked the attractive, black-haired man. The bruises on his face had already disappeared.

  “Nope,” Gosha said.

  “How so?” Ney got upset.

  “Why do we need letters?” a girl with deep blue eyes without pupils asked, surprised. Her mouth was full of fangs, only slightly inferior to Gosha’s, and the spreading bright red web of vessels was visible through the snow-white skin. “When we need to pass on knowledge or leave messages, they can be carved on stone. When we need to tell or compose a story, we call skalds. Gathering, farming, hunting, invasions, and defense are much more important than drawing squiggles. And after the primary tasks, there is no time left for them.”

  “To preserve and increase knowledge,” Ney said, sitting down on the container opposite her. “A person can only remember a certain number of stories. And even less memorize them verbatim. Your skalds are storytellers and singers, correct?” The girl nodded. “Now, you’ve probably heard how the same story was told in different words.”

  “But the meaning didn’t change,” the girl said.

  “Really?” Ney became amused. “I know about forty variants of worshiping the Planet, one of the gods, although officially, there is only one generally accepted version.”

  “So the priests of this Planet must burn out heresy. A lying skald’s tongue is torn out...”

  “Aha, so the meaning does change after all!” Ney smiled. “And how will you know whether or not the skald is telling the truth if you’re listening to his story for the first time? No, keeping knowledge on the lips is too risky. Someone might die, another might change history… Take our cruiser, for example. To build it, you need a lot of different parts, all made to precise standards; otherwise, all the work will go to waste.” Noticing his interlocutor’s bored expression, he pulled a folded magazine out of his pocket and threw it to her. “Or this.”

  “What is this?” the girl asked, frowning. Gosha stretched his neck with a crunch, looking over her shoulder. Unable to resist, Rustam came closer, and soon the others joined him.

  “Ha. A comic book,” Decimus declared in an even tone. “Disappointment.”

  On the page, a woman in a tight suit and an orange mask snaked out of the way of a huge fist trying to smear her on the asphalt in the center of a vast settlement. Her rival, a four-meter giant, snapped at the heroine’s remark about his ‘rapid fire’ and spat out a small tornado from his mouth in the next image, while other heroes saved bystanders or shot bright beams at the villain’s back from their hands.

  “What do they say? And why do they fight?” asked the girl.

  “Learn to read, and you’ll find out,” Ney interrupted Decimus, who was about to speak. “Knowledge is never superfluous. With its help, you can learn new stories...”

  “Turn over six sheets, please,” said Decimus.

  “Okay, stop; this part is not for children!” Ney snatched the comic, but Rustam caught a glimpse of the spread with a naked, embracing couple frozen in a deep kiss and lying on a spread cloak while the rising sun illuminated them.

  “And not for the virtuous crusaders setting an example for us all. A joke,” Decimus said. “You have interesting hobbies, Sir. Not a judgment.”

  “And how did you know what would happen next?”

  “You were talking about the benefits of knowledge,” the gray-skinned guy said calmly.

  “You forgot to add: evasion.” Sylvie burst out laughing.

  “Evasion is not an emotional coloring of the sentence; that’s why Deci kept silent,” Tsereg said. Decimus turned around, looking at her. “Everyone already understands why you add these words at the end.”

  “You can call me Deci whenever you want. Pleasure.”

  “Class, to your seats!” a voice barked.

  Ruda walked inside, dressed in jeans cut at the ankles and a blue sweater. She pulled her short hair back into a ponytail, exposing her pointy, overlong ears. She wore glasses without lenses, held a terminal under her arm, and played with a long pointer. Ney joined her, standing near the sole wooden table in the compartment.

  “I already know your names, and my name is Ruda Fleshtearer. My assistant is Ney Schwarzendruber. You’ve been through a lot of terrible things, none of which you deserved, and I promise you, this is not the end. You’re still here; you’ll pull yourself together and recover from your fear, integrate into normal life, and find your happiness. I guarantee you that you’re not alone anymore. If you need to talk, have a problem, or are just lonely, my door is always open.”

  Rustam expected a sharp look aimed at him or Gosha, but Ruda spoke passionately, confidently, and at the same time tenderly, not singling out anyone and casting aside her hatred. Against his will, he dared to believe that even he would not be driven away if he dared to ask her for help. Of course, he would rather die than grovel before this cloven freak, but the presence of a potential opportunity was reassuring.

  “We have a motley gathering here.” Ruda smiled. “Many guests from all over the world. Surely some of you have never seen altered people.” She raised her hoof. “No need to be embarrassed; I don’t know a tenth of the world either. In today’s lesson we will have a small explanation of why we are different. Our history begins a long time ago, well over three hundred years ago. Then there were no Abnormals…”

  “Blessed,” Ney interrupted.

  “It is the same thing. Back then humanity had already left the cradle of our planet, had settled on the Moon, the Red Planet, and had built habitats orbiting around many cosmic bodies in our system, and our world itself was so densely populated that tens of millions lived in cities.”

  “You’re bullshitting us,” Gosha blurted out.

  “Am I?” Ruda asked cheerfully. “Let’s check.”

  She pressed a button on the terminal, and a gray beam shot out, stopping on the wall. The small spot quickly grew, taking on the outline of a dark window, dotted with white dots. Soon, a colossal structure reminiscent of a needle, but much larger, floated into view. No mountain could measure the size of this structure, shimmering in chrome and shrouded in a protective field that reflected meteors. Long glowing lines, consisting of small transports, docked with this titan of the cosmos, and when the image moved away a little, Rustam gasped along with everyone else, and Gosha’s fist hit the container, denting it.

  This fortress was floating around the Sun!

  Then the image changed, depicting the world, their blue ball, surrounded by hundreds of similar needles. The image dove through the clouds and showed a city covered in endless variations of colors, conjuring visions of attractive men and women drinking drinks, holding various things, showing off artificial limbs, or driving cars. Sharp spires rose higher than the sky itself; the city itself stretched to the horizon, and in its crazy jumble of tangled streets and cars soaring through the air, Rustam noticed one constant. Quadrangles, densely covered with various greenery, were evenly spaced, scattered throughout all sections of this wonderful and unusual place, providing access to nature for everyone desiring it.

  People, so many people that his eyes began to swim, dwelled in this place, and not crowds, but hordes walked along the roads. White-skinned, dark-skinned, some with blue-tinged skin, and several had elegant mechanical implants indistinguishable from normal arms or legs. And not a single one looked emaciated.

  “There is no one like Decimus here. Or Gosha. Or Jake. Not even people like you!” Grisha squeaked.

  After taking a closer look, Rustam was convinced that Grisha was completely right. No one in the picture was as massive or changed as Tsereg or even Cenfus, in spite of all the outward differences.

  Ruda nodded.

  “Well noted.” She turned off the terminal. “Three hundred years ago, not a single Abnormal existed...”

  “Blessed.”

  “... Or a Mutant, or a Malformed for that matter.”