Bulychev read Cinderella's white dress. Kir Bulychev - Cinderella's white dress

Chapter 1
ABOUT THE UGLY BIOFORM

OK it's all over Now. Drach took the last instrument readings, battened down the casing and sent the construction robots into the capsule. Then he looked into the cave where he lived for two months, and he wanted orange juice. So much so that my head was spinning. This is a reaction to being overexerted for too long. But why exactly orange juice?.. The devil knows why... But for the juice to gurgle like a stream along the sloping floor of the cave - here it is, all yours, bend down and lap up from the stream.
There will be orange juice for you, Drach said. And there will be songs. His memory knew how the songs were sung, but he was not sure that it had correctly recorded this process. And there will be quiet evenings over the lake - he will choose the deepest lake in the world, so that branching pines will certainly grow on the cliff above the water, and strong boletus peeks out from a layer of needles in a transparent forest without undergrowth.
Drach got out to the capsule and, before entering it, took one last look at the hilly plain, the lake seething with lava at the horizon and the black clouds.
Well, that's it. Drach pressed the ready signal... The light dimmed, flew away, and what was left on the planet was a ramp that was no longer needed.
A white light flashed in the ship on duty in orbit.
“Get ready to meet the guest,” said the captain.
An hour and a half later, Drach walked through the connecting tunnel to the ship. Weightlessness prevented him from coordinating his movements, although it did not cause any particular inconvenience. Little at all caused him any inconvenience. Moreover, the team behaved tactfully, and there were no jokes, which he was afraid of because he was very tired. He spent the time of overload on the captain's bridge and looked with curiosity at the shift watch in the shock-absorbing baths. The overloads continued for quite a long time, and Drach performed the duties of a voluntary watchman. He did not always trust the machines, because over the past months he had more than once discovered that he himself was more reliable than them. Drach jealously watched the remote control and even in the depths of his soul was waiting for a reason to intervene, but no reason presented itself.

* * *

He dreamed of orange juice all the way to Earth. As luck would have it, orange juice was always on the table in the wardroom, and therefore Drach did not go there so as not to see the decanter with the piercing yellow liquid.
Drach was Dr Dombey's only patient, if Drach can be called a patient at all.
“I feel inferior,” Drach complained to the doctor, “because of this damned juice.”
“It’s not the juice,” said Dombey. – Your brain could come up with another point. For example, the dream of a soft pillow.
- But I want orange juice. You won't understand this.
“It’s good that you talk and hear,” said Dombey. – Grunin managed without it.
“Relative consolation,” answered Drach. “I haven’t needed this for months.”
Dombey was alarmed. Three planets, eight months of diabolical labor. Drach at the limit. It was necessary to shorten the program. But Drach didn’t want to hear about it.
The equipment in Dombey's ship's laboratory was not suitable for seriously examining Drach. All that remained was intuition, and it was ringing all the bells. And although she cannot be completely trusted, at the very first communication session the doctor sent a long-winded report to the center. Gevorkyan frowned as he read it. He liked brevity.
And Drach was in a lousy mood all the way to Earth. He wanted to sleep, and the short bursts of oblivion were not refreshing, but only frightened him with persistent nightmares.

* * *

The mobile of the Bioforming Institute was brought close to the hatch. Dombey made a parting promise:
- I'll visit you. I would like to get closer to you.
“Consider that I smiled,” answered Drach, “you are invited to the shore of the blue lake.”
In the mobile, Drach was accompanied by a young employee whom he did not know. The employee felt awkward; he was probably uncomfortable with Drach's proximity. Answering questions, he looked out the window. Drach thought that the guy wouldn’t make a bioformist. Drach moved forward, where the institute's driver, Polachek, was sitting. Polachek was happy with Drach.
“I didn’t think you’d make it,” he said with captivating frankness. - Grunin was no stupider than you.
“It turned out okay,” Drach answered. - Just tired.
- This is the most dangerous thing. I know. Everything seems to be fine, but the brain fails.
Polachek had the thin hands of a musician, and the remote control panel looked like a piano keyboard. The mobile walked under low clouds, and Drach looked sideways at the city, trying to guess what had changed there.
Gevorkyan met Drach at the gate. A heavy-set, big-nosed old man with blue eyes sat on a bench under the sign “Institute of Bioforming of the Academy of Sciences.” For Drach, and not only for Drach, Gevorkyan has long ceased to be a person, but has turned into a concept, a symbol of the institute.
“Well,” said Gevorkyan. -You haven't changed at all. You look fine. It's almost over. I say “almost” because now the main concerns concern me. And you will walk, relax and prepare.
- For what?
- To drink this same orange juice.
“So Dr. Dombey reported this and my affairs are completely bad?”
- You're a fool, Drach. And he was always a fool. Why are we talking here? This is not the best place.
The window in the nearest building opened, and three heads looked out at once. Dima Dimov ran along the path from the second laboratory, absent-mindedly taking with him a test tube with a blue liquid.
“I didn’t know,” he justified himself, “they only told me now.”
And Drach was overcome by the blissful state of a prodigal son, who knows that in the kitchen there is a crackling firewood and the smell of a roasted calf.
- How is it possible? – Dimov attacked Gevorkyan. “I should have been informed.” You personally.
“What kind of secrets are there,” Gevorkyan answered, as if making excuses.
Drach understood why Gevorkyan decided to arrange his return without fanfare. Gevorkian did not know how he would return, and Dombey’s message alarmed him.
“You look great,” Dimov said.
Someone chuckled. Gevorkyan tutted at the onlookers, but no one left. Bushes of blooming lilacs hung over the path, and Drach imagined what a wonderful smell it had. May beetles rushed by like heavy bullets, and the sun set behind the old mansion that housed the institute's hotel.
They entered the hall and stopped for a minute at the portrait of Grunin. The people in the other portraits were smiling. Grunin did not smile. He was always serious. Drach felt sad. Grunin was the only one who saw, knew, felt the emptiness and hot nakedness of the world from which he had now returned.

* * *

Drach had been stuck at the test bench for the second hour. Sensors swarmed around him like flies. Wires stretched into all corners. Dimov performed magic at the instruments. Gevorkyan sat to the side, looking at the screens and glancing sideways at the information tables.
-Where will you spend the night? – asked Gevorkyan.
- I would like to have it at my place. Was my room left untouched?
- Everything is as you left it.
- Then at home.
“I don’t recommend it,” Gevorkyan advised. – You’d better rest in the pressure chamber.
- And still.
- I won’t insist. Do you want to sleep in a mask, for God’s sake...
Gevorkyan fell silent. He didn't like the curves, but he didn't want Drach to notice it.
-What confused you? – Drach asked.
“Don’t turn around,” Dimov stopped him. - You're in the way.
-You've been in the field too long. Dombey should have recalled you two months ago.
“With two months, we would have to start all over again.”
- Oh well. – It was not clear whether Gevorkyan approved of Drach or condemned him.
– When do you think you’ll start? – Drach asked.
- At least tomorrow morning. But I beg you, sleep in the pressure chamber. It's in your best interest.
- If only in my interests... I'll go to my place.
- Please. We don't need you anymore at all.
“I’m doing badly,” thought Drach, heading towards the door. “The old man is angry.”
Drach slowly walked to the side exit past the identical white doors. The working day was long over, but the institute, as always, did not freeze or fall asleep. Even before, it reminded Drach of an extensive clinic with nurses on duty, night rush jobs and urgent operations. The small residential building for candidates and returnees was located behind the laboratories, behind the baseball diamond. The thin columns of the mansion seemed blue in the moonlight. One or two windows in the house glowed, and Drach tried in vain to remember which of the windows belonged to him. How long did he live here? Almost six months.
How many times did he return in the evenings to this house with columns and, going up to the second floor, mentally counting the days... Drach suddenly stopped. He realized that he did not want to enter this house and recognize the coat rack in the hallway, the chips on the steps of the stairs and the scratches on the railing. Doesn't want to see a rug in front of his door...
What will he see in his room? Traces of the life of another Drach, books and things left in the past...
Drach went back to the testing building. Gevorkyan is right - you need to spend the night in a pressure chamber. Without a mask. She was boring on the ship and would get even more boring in the coming weeks. The fighter walked straight through the bushes and scared away a couple. The lovers kissed on a bench hidden among the lilacs, and their white coats glowed from afar like warning lights. I would have liked to have noticed them, but I didn’t. He allowed himself to relax and didn’t notice it either. There, on the planet, this could not happen. A moment of relaxation would mean death. No more and no less.
“It’s me, Drach,” he said to the lovers.
The girl laughed.
“I was terribly scared, it’s dark here.”
– Were you there where Grunin died? – the guy asked very seriously. He wanted to talk with Drach, to remember this night and the unexpected meeting.
“Yes, there,” Drach answered, but did not linger, he went further, towards the lights of the laboratory.
To get to his laboratory, Drach had to walk through a corridor past several work rooms. He looked into the first one. The hall was divided by a transparent partition. It even seemed as if there was no partition and the greenish water inexplicably did not fall on the control table and the two identical thin girls behind it.
-Can I come in? – Drach asked.
One of the girls turned around.
- Oh! You scared me. Are you Drach? You are Grunin's understudy, right?
- Right. Who do you have here?
“You don’t know him,” said another girl. – He came to the institute after you. Fere, Stanislav Fere.
“Why not,” answered Drach. - We studied with him. He was a year younger than me.
The Drach stood indecisively in front of the glass, trying to guess the figure of Feret in the tangle of algae.
“You stay with us,” the girls invited. - We're bored too.
- Thank you.
- I would treat you to waffles...
- Thank you, I don’t like waffles. I eat nails.
The girls laughed.
- You are funny. And others are worried. Stasik is also worried.
Finally, Drach saw Stanislav. It looked like a brown mound.
– But this is just the beginning, right? – the girl asked.
“No, it’s not true,” answered Drach. – I’m still worried now.
“No need,” said the second girl. - Gevorkyan will do everything. He's a genius. Are you afraid you've been there too long?
– I’m a little afraid. Although I was warned in advance.

* * *

Of course, he was warned in advance, warned repeatedly. At that time, they were generally skeptical about Gevorkyan’s work. It makes no sense to take risks if there is automation. But the institute still existed, and, of course, bioforms were needed. The skeptics' recognition came when the bioforms Selvin and Skavronsky descended to Baltonen's bathyscaphe, which lay, having lost its cable and buoyancy, at a depth of six kilometers. There were no robots that could not only go down into the crack, but also figure out how to free the submersible and save the researchers. And the bioforms did everything that was needed.
“In principle,” Gevorkyan said at one press conference, and this sank deep into Drach’s stubborn head, “our work has been predicted by hundreds of fairy tale writers in such detail that it leaves no room for imagination.” We rearrange the biological structure of a person to order, to perform some specific work, reserving the opportunity to unwind the twist. However, the most difficult part of the whole matter is returning to the starting point. Biotransformation should be like clothing, a protective suit that we can take off as soon as the need for it passes. Yes, we are not going to compete with spacesuit designers. We bioformists pick up the baton where they are powerless. A suit for working at a depth of ten kilometers is too bulky for a creature imprisoned in it to perform the same work as on the surface of the earth. But at the same depth, some fish and shellfish feel great. It is fundamentally possible to rebuild the human body so that it functions according to the same laws as the body of deep-sea fish. But if we achieve this, another problem arises. I do not believe that a person who knows that he is doomed to be forever at enormous depths among mollusks will remain healthy. And if we really turn out to be able to return a person to his original state, to a society of his kind, then bioformia has a right to exist and can be useful to a person.
Then the first experiments were carried out. On Earth and on Mars. And there were more than enough people willing. Glaciologists and speleologists, volcanologists and archaeologists needed additional hands, eyes, skin, lungs, gills... At the institute, newcomers were told that not everyone wanted to part with them later. They told a legend about a speleologist, equipped with gills and huge eyes that could see in the dark, who managed to escape from the operating table when he was about to be restored to divine form. Since then, he supposedly has been hiding in the bottomless caves of Kitano Roo, filled with icy water, feeling great and twice a month sending detailed articles to the Speleology Bulletin about his new discoveries, scratched with flint on polished graphite plates.
When Drach appeared at the institute, he had five years of space flights under his belt, sufficient experience working with construction robots and several articles on the epigraphy of mons. Grunin was already being prepared for bioformation, and Drach became his backup.
They had to work on huge, hot planets, where firestorms and tornadoes raged, on planets with incredible pressure and temperatures of six hundred to eight hundred degrees. It was necessary to develop these planets anyway - they were storehouses of valuable metals and could become indispensable laboratories for physicists.
Grunin died in the third month of work. And if not for his, Drach’s, stubbornness, Gevorkyan, Gevorkyan himself, would not have overcome the opposition. For Drach - Gevorkyan and Dimov knew about this - it was most difficult for him to transform. Waking up in the morning and realizing that today you are less of a person than you were yesterday, and tomorrow there will be even less of your former self left in you...
No, you are ready for anything, Gevorkyan and Dimov discussed your design features with you, experts brought samples of your skin and three-dimensional models of your future eyes for approval. It was interesting and it was important. But it is completely impossible to realize that it concerns you specifically.
Drach saw Grunin before departure. In many ways, he was supposed to become similar to Grunin, or rather, he himself, as a model, was a further development of what was formally called Grunin, but had nothing in common with the portrait hanging in the hall of the Central Laboratory. In Grunin’s diary, written dryly and matter-of-factly, there were the words: “It’s damn sad to live without a language. God forbid you survive this, Drach.” Therefore, Gevorkyan went to great lengths so that Drach could speak, even though this complicated bioforming and for Drach it was fraught with several extra hours on the operating table and in hot bio-baths, where new flesh was grown. So, the worst thing was watching my own transformation and suppressing irrational fear all the time. Fear of staying like this forever.

* * *

Drach perfectly understood the current state of Stanislav Fere. Feret had to work in the poisonous bottomless swamps of Siena. Drach had a clear advantage over Fere. He could write, draw, be among people, could trample the green lawns of the institute and approach the house with white columns. Feret, until the end of the expedition, until his human appearance was returned to him, was doomed to know that between him and all other people there was at least a transparent barrier. Feret knew what he was getting into and put in a lot of effort to gain the right to this torture. But now he was having a hard time.
Drach knocked on the partition.
“Don’t wake him,” said one of the girls.
A brown mound shot up in a cloud of silt, and a mighty, steel-colored stingray rushed towards the glass. Drach instinctively recoiled. The stingray froze a centimeter from the partition. The heavy, persistent gaze was hypnotizing.
“They are terribly predatory,” the girl said, and Drach chuckled internally. Her words referred to other, real stingrays, but this did not mean that Fere was less predatory than the others. Skat carefully poked his muzzle into the partition, looking at Drach.
Feret didn't recognize him.
“Come to my blue lake,” Drach invited.
The small vestibule of the next hall was filled with young people who pushed each other away from the thick windows and, snatching the microphone from each other, vying with each other to give conflicting advice to someone.
Drach stopped behind the advisers. Through the porthole, he saw a strange figure above, in the light fog that enveloped the hall. Someone blue and clumsy was floating in the air in the middle of the hall, frantically soaring upward, disappearing from sight and reappearing in the window glass from a completely different direction from where one might have expected him.
- Wider, wider! Put your paws up! - the red-haired black man shouted into the microphone, but immediately a girl’s hand snatched the microphone from him.
– Don’t listen to him, don’t listen... He is completely incapable of reincarnation. Imagine this…
But Drach never found out what the one in the hall had to imagine. The creature behind the porthole disappeared. Immediately there was a dull thud in the speaker, and the girl asked busily:
-Are you hurt badly?
There was no answer.
“Open the hatch,” ordered the Rubensian woman with a braid around her head.
The red-haired black man pressed a button, and the previously invisible hatch moved to the side. There was a smell of piercing cold coming from the hatch. Minus twelve, Drach noted. Cold air rushed out of the hall, and the hatch was filled with thick steam. A bioform materialized in a cloud of steam. The black man handed him a mask:
“There’s too much oxygen here.”
The hatch closed.
Bioform awkwardly, one after another, trying not to hurt anyone, folded his down-covered wings behind his back. His spherical chest trembled with rapid breathing. Too thin arms and legs trembled.
- Tired? - asked the Rubensian woman.
The bird man nodded.
“We need to increase the area of the wings,” said the red-haired black man.
Drach slowly retreated into the corridor. He was overcome by endless fatigue. Just to get to the pressure chamber, take off the mask and forget.

* * *

In the morning Gevorkyan grumbled at the laboratory assistants. Everything was not right for him, not right. He met Drach as if he had really annoyed him yesterday, and when Drach asked: “Is there something wrong with me?” – I didn’t answer.
“It’s okay,” reassured Dimov, who apparently hadn’t slept a minute that night. – We expected this.
- Did you expect it? - Gevorkyan roared. “We didn’t expect a damn thing.” The Lord God created people, and we are reshaping them. And then we are surprised if something is wrong.
- So what’s wrong with me?
- Don't shake.
“I’m not physically fit for this.”
- I don’t believe it, don’t shake. We'll glue you back together. It's just going to take longer than we expected.
Drach remained silent.
“You’ve been in your current body for too long.” You are now physically a new species, genus, family, order of intelligent beings. Each species has its own troubles and diseases. And you, instead of monitoring reactions and taking care of yourself, pretended to be a tester, as if you wanted to find out under what loads your shell would crack and shatter to hell.
“If I hadn’t done this, I wouldn’t have accomplished what was expected of me.”
“Hero,” Gevorkyan snorted. – Your current body is sick. Yes, he suffers from his own disease, which has not yet been encountered in medicine. And we will have to repair you as you transform. And at the same time be sure that you will not become a freak. Or a cyborg. In general, this is our concern. We’ll need to examine you, but for now you can go in all four directions.

* * *

Drach should not have done this, but he walked out of the gates of the institute and headed down to the river, along the narrow alley of the park, drilled by the sun's rays. He looked at his short shadow and thought that if he was going to die, it would still be better in his ordinary, human form. And then he saw the girl. The girl walked up the alley, every five or six steps she stopped and, bowing her head, pressed her palm to her ear. Her long hair was dark from the water. She walked barefoot and raised her toes funny so as not to prick herself on the sharp pebbles. Drach wanted to leave the path and hide behind a bush so as not to embarrass the girl with his appearance, but he didn’t have time. The girl saw him.
The girl saw a lead-colored turtle, on whose shell, like a smaller turtle, there was a hemisphere of a head with one convex cyclopean eye, divided into many cells, like a dragonfly. The turtle reached her waist and moved on short thick legs that extended from under the shell. And it seemed that there were many of them, maybe more than a dozen. There were several holes on the steep front slope of the shell, and the tips of tentacles protruded from four of them. The shell was scratched, and here and there there were shallow cracks along it, they spread out like stars, as if someone had hammered the turtle with a sharp chisel or shot at it with armor-piercing bullets. There was something sinister about the turtle, as if it were a primeval fighting machine. She wasn't from here.
The girl froze, forgetting to take her hand away from her ear. She wanted to run away or scream, but she didn't dare do either.
“What a fool,” Drach scolded himself. “You lose your reaction.”
“Sorry,” said the turtle.
The voice was smooth and mechanical, it came from under a metal mask that covered his head right up to his eye. The eye moved, as if the partitions in it were soft.
- Sorry, I scared you. I didn't want this.
– Are you... a robot? – the girl asked.
- No, bioform.
– Are you preparing for some planet?
The girl wanted to leave, but leaving meant showing that she was afraid. She stood there and probably counted to herself to one hundred to pull herself together.
“I’ve already arrived,” Drach answered. – You move on, don’t look at me.
“Thank you,” the girl burst out, and she ran around Drach on tiptoe, forgetting about the prickly stones. She shouted after him, turning around: “Goodbye.”
The steps disappeared into the rustling of leaves and the bustling May sounds of a transparent, warm forest. Drach went out to the river and stopped on a low cliff, next to a bench. He imagined himself sitting on a bench, and it made him feel completely sick. It would be nice to jump off the cliff now - and that’s the end. This was one of the stupidest thoughts that Drach had had in recent months. He might as well have jumped into Niagara Falls and nothing would have happened to him. Absolutely nothing. He's been in much worse situations.
The girl is back. She approached quietly, sat down on the bench and looked ahead, placing her narrow palms on her knees.
– At first I decided that you were some kind of machine. Are you very heavy?
- Yes. I'm heavy.
“You know, I dived so poorly that I still can’t shake the water out of my ear.” Has this ever happened to you?
- It happened.
“My name is Christina,” the girl introduced herself. – I live nearby, visiting. By Grandma. I got scared like a fool and ran away. And she probably offended you.
- In no case. If I were you, I would run away immediately.
“I just walked away and remembered.” You were on those planets where Grunin was. You probably got it?..
- This is already the past. And if everything goes well, in a month you won’t recognize me.
- Of course, I don’t know.
Christina's hair quickly dried in the wind.
“You know,” said Christina, “you are my first cosmonaut acquaintance.”
- What a score. You are studying?
– I live in Tallinn. That's where I study. Maybe I'm lucky. There are many ordinary astronauts in the world. And there are very few of them...
– Probably about twenty people.
– And then, when you rest, will you change your body again? Will you become a fish or a bird?
- This hasn't been done before. Even one perestroika is too much for one person.
- It's a pity.
- Why?
– It’s very interesting to experience everything.
- Once is enough.
-Are you upset about something? Are you tired?
“Yes,” answered Drach.
The girl carefully reached out her hand and touched the shell.
– Do you feel anything?
“You have to hit me with a hammer for me to feel it.”
- It's a shame. I stroked you.
- Do you want to feel sorry for me?
- Want. And what?
“...So I regretted it,” thought Drach. “Like in a fairy tale: a beauty will fall in love with a monster, and the monster will turn into a kind young man.” Gevorkyan has problems, sensors, graphics, but she regretted it - and no problems. Well, maybe just look out for a scarlet flower nearby so that everything goes as planned...”
- When you get better, come to me. I live near Tallinn, in a village on the seashore. And there are pine trees around. You will be pleased to relax there.
“Thank you for the invitation,” Drach thanked. - I have to go. Otherwise they will miss it.
- I'll accompany you if you don't mind.
They walked back slowly because Christina thought it was difficult for Drach to go fast, and Drach, who could outrun any runner on Earth, was in no hurry. He obediently told her about things that cannot be described in words. It seemed to Christina that she saw everything, although she imagined it to be completely different from how it really was.

To the question Tell me a brief summary of Kira Bulycheva's "Cinderella's White Dress" asked by the author Caucasian the best answer is “Cinderella’s White Dress” - the fifth story about the space doctor Pavlysh. While on the Moon, he accidentally meets a strange girl, Marina, at a carnival, who literally fascinated and intrigued the young doctor. However, this acquaintance turns out to be so fleeting that all that remains for Slava Pavlysh is the knowledge of her name and a short note in two lines - all that he has (except for a vague half-longing - half-love). Several months pass and our hero, by the whim of cosmic circumstances, finds himself on the planet Project-18, which was recently discovered and intensively explored by people, which consists almost entirely of ocean, with the exception of several small islands. By chance, Pavlysh finds out that Marina is also there. But for some reason the girl doesn’t want to see him. Pavlysh is perplexed: when and how could he offend her? It's not a matter of offense. The fact is that Marina is now not exactly Marina, but a bioform (this is a person whose bodily structure has been changed in such a way that he can better perform work in conditions in which a normal person is not able to work). During an earthquake at Project-18, Pavlysh saves a bird that turns out to be bio-altered by Marina. Pavlysh explains to her and confesses his love. As a farewell, Marina gives him her portrait in a finely carved jade frame.

Answer from Mosol[newbie]
"Cinderella's White Dress" is the fifth story about the space doctor Pavlysh. While on the Moon, he accidentally meets a strange girl, Marina, at a carnival, who literally fascinated and intrigued the young doctor. However, this acquaintance turns out to be so fleeting that all that remains for Slava Pavlysh is the knowledge of her name and a short note in two lines - all that he has (except for a vague half-longing - half-love). Several months pass and our hero, by the whim of cosmic circumstances, finds himself on the planet Project-18, which was recently discovered and intensively explored by people, which consists almost entirely of ocean, with the exception of several small islands. By chance, Pavlysh finds out that Marina is also there. But for some reason the girl doesn’t want to see him. Pavlysh is perplexed: when and how could he offend her? It's not a matter of offense. The fact is that Marina is now not exactly Marina, but a bioform (this is a person whose bodily structure has been changed in such a way that he can better perform work in conditions in which a normal person is not able to work). During an earthquake at Project-18, Pavlysh saves a bird that turns out to be bio-altered by Marina. Pavlysh explains to her and confesses his love. As a farewell, Marina gives him her portrait in a finely carved jade frame.

ABOUT THE UGLY BIOFORM

There will be orange juice for you, Drach said. And there will be songs. His memory knew how the songs were sung, but he was not sure that it had correctly recorded this process. And there will be quiet evenings over the lake - he will choose the deepest lake in the world, so that branching pines will certainly grow on the cliff above the water, and strong boletus peeks out from a layer of needles in a transparent forest without undergrowth.

Drach got out to the capsule and, before entering it, took one last look at the hilly plain, the lake seething with lava at the horizon and the black clouds.

Well, that's it. Drach pressed the ready signal... The light dimmed, flew away, and what was left on the planet was a ramp that was no longer needed.

A white light flashed in the ship on duty in orbit.

Chapter 2 HUSSAR AND CINDERELLA

Hussar Pavlysh, in a blue cardboard shako with a short plume of copper wire, a white mentic and sparkling theatrical epaulettes, which hussars were not entitled to, looked stupid, he was sadly aware of this, but could not do anything. Someone else's monastery...

He walked through the empty central tunnel.

On the stage, the orchestra members, led by a noisy, fussy fat man with black mouse eyes, were setting up a piano. Those who did not have a seat were crowded at the door to the hall. Pavlysh looked over their heads.

On the stage, under a white shield with the inscription “Selenoport is 50 years old”, entwined with a wreath of synthetic spruce branches, stood, not knowing where to put his hands, the famous professor from the Sorbonne. He became entangled in a solemn speech, and the numerous creatures of carnival fantasy that filled the hall only with great difficulty maintained relative silence. A deep-rooted sense of duty forced the professor to inform the audience in detail about achievements in selenology and related sciences and the significant contribution of lunar bases to the exploration of outer space.

Pavlysh looked around the hall. Most of all there were musketeers. About a hundred people. They looked at each other unkindly, like women in identical dresses who accidentally met on the street, because until the last moment each of them believed that only he had come up with such a bright idea. Between the musketeers, the tall caps of alchemists swayed, making it difficult to look at the stage, rare turbans of Turkish sultans and square skerls of Martians. True, there was no complete confidence that these were carnival Martians, and not employees of lunar laboratories from Corona or P-9.

Kir Bulychev

Village. Thirteen years of travel. The Great Spirit and the Runaways. Cinderella's white dress

Stories about Doctor Pavlysh

Doctor Pavlysh is one of the most famous heroes of Kir Bulychev. He first appears in the story “The Last War” (1970). The ship "Segezha" arrives on a planet that has recently experienced a nuclear war. The name of the ship is no coincidence: it was on the dry cargo ship “Segezha” during a passage along the Northern Sea Route in 1967 that Kir Bulychev met the ship’s doctor, who became the prototype of his hero.

In 1972, the story “The Great Spirit and the Runaways” was published. Doctor Pavlysh's ship "Compass" suffers a disaster. He is the only one left alive. Having sent a message about what happened, Pavlysh goes to explore the planet on which he managed to land and discovers humanoids. Their civilization is still at the very beginning of its development, and at the same time, as Pavlysh sees, an unknown highly developed civilization is conducting an experiment on these primitive aliens.

“Cinderella's White Dress” (1980) is a love story. On the Moon, at a carnival, Doctor Pavlysh meets a strange girl. After a fleeting acquaintance, he only has her name, Marina Kim, and a short note. A few months later, while working on the planet Project 18, almost entirely covered by ocean, Dr. Pavlysh learns that Marina is also here. He tries to meet her, but she refuses. The reason is that she became a bioform: her body was changed to work in conditions in which an ordinary person cannot work. One day there is an earthquake, and Doctor Pavlysh saves the bird, which is actually a changed Marina.

The story “Thirteen Years of Journey” (1983) tells about the youth of Doctor Pavlysh, when he, then still a cadet, found himself on the experimental ship “Antey”, which had been flying to Alpha Cygnus for a hundred years. Thanks to teleportation, the crew changes every year, but when Pavlysh’s replacement arrives, communication with Earth is severed. You have to choose: return home or fly the remaining thirteen years to your goal.

In the novel “The Village” (published in full only in 1988), Doctor Pavlysh appears only in the second part. And the first describes the disaster of the Polyus ship and the seventeen-year survival of the remaining crew members. In an extremely unfavorable environment, they are constantly on the verge of life and death: the older generation is aging and losing hope, and the younger generation knows about the Earth only from their parents. But in a moment of despair, the victims notice an object in the sky that can only be man-made. Indeed, another expedition landed on the planet, which included Doctor Pavlysh. Having discovered the wrecked ship "Polyus", she initially considered its crew dead, but eventually met with the survivors.

The stories about Doctor Pavlysh are classic space science fiction of the 1970s, an era of intensive space exploration and the Cold War, naive hopes for quick flights to distant stars and paralyzing horror of the possibility of nuclear disaster. But above all, they are about people from the future whom we would like to see in our present.

Part one. Pass

Chapter first

The house was damp, midges were hanging around the lamp, it should have been turned off long ago, mother, of course, forgot, but it was raining and semi-dark outside. Oleg was lying on his bed - he had recently woken up. At night he guarded the village: he chased away jackals, a whole flock of them climbed towards the barn, almost killing him. There was emptiness and ordinariness in his body, although he expected excitement, maybe fear, from himself. After all, it’s fifty-fifty – you’ll come back or you won’t. What if fifty squared? There must be a pattern, there must be tables, otherwise you are always reinventing the wheel. By the way, I was going to ask the old man what a bicycle is. Paradox. There is no bicycle, and the Old Man reproaches him with it, without thinking about the meaning of the phrase.

My mother coughed in the kitchen. It turns out she is at home.

- Why didn’t you go? - he asked.

- Awoke? Do you want some soup? I warmed it up.

- Who went for mushrooms?

- Maryana and Dick.

- Maybe one of the guys got involved.

They could have woken me up and called. Maryana didn’t promise, but it would be natural if she called.

- I don’t feel like eating.

“If the rains don’t stop,” said the mother, “the cucumbers won’t ripen before the cold weather.” Everything will be overgrown with mold.

The mother entered the room, scattered the midges with her palm, and blew out the lamp. Oleg looked at the ceiling. The yellow mold spot has grown and changed shape. Just yesterday it looked like Vaitkus’s profile: a potato nose. And today the nose is swollen, as if stung by a wasp, and the forehead is arched into a hump. Dick is not interested in the forest. Why should he pick mushrooms? He is a hunter, a steppe man, as he himself always said.

“There are a lot of midges,” said the mother, “it’s cold for her in the forest.”

- I found someone to feel sorry for.

The house was divided in half; Stary and the Durov twins lived on the other half. He took them in when the elders died. The twins were always sick: one would recover, the other would catch a cold.

If not for their nightly whining, Oleg would never have agreed to be on duty at night. And now you could hear them whimpering in unison. The Old One’s indistinct, distant, familiar monologue, like the wind, was cut short and the bench creaked. The old man went into the kitchen, and his students immediately began to shout.

- And where should you go? - said the mother. - You won’t get there! It’s good if you come back safe!

Now the mother will cry. She cries often now. At night he mumbles, tosses and turns, then begins to cry quietly - you can guess because he sniffles. Or he begins to whisper, like a spell: “I can’t, I can’t do it anymore! I’d rather die...” Oleg, if he hears, freezes: it’s a shame to show that he’s awake, as if he spied something that shouldn’t be seen. Oleg is ashamed to admit, but he does not feel sorry for his mother. She cries about what is not there for Oleg. She cries for countries that cannot be seen, for people who were not here. Oleg does not remember any other mother - only the one she is today. A thin, wiry woman, her piebald straight hair is tied back in a bun, but it always comes loose and falls in heavy strands along her cheeks, and her mother blows on it to get it out of her face. The face is red, pockmarked from tumbleweed, there are dark bags under the eyes, and the eyes themselves are too light, as if faded. The mother sits at the table, her calloused hands extended with hard palms down. Well, cry, why are you? Now she’ll take out a photograph... that’s right, she moves the box towards her, opens it, and takes out the photograph.

Behind the wall, the Old One persuades the twins to eat. The twins whine. The students are making noise and helping the Old One feed the kids. Well, it’s like an ordinary day, like nothing happened. What are they doing in the forest? It's almost noon. They're leaving from lunch, it's time for them to come back. Who knows what can happen to people in the forest?

While visiting the Moon, the young, promising space doctor Pavlyshev, purely by chance, ends up at the festival. There he encounters and meets a very young, interesting and very strange person, Marina. The young lady instantly, at first sight, captivates the doctor and gets him interested. Everything flew by so quickly that he couldn’t come to his senses in time and stop her. All that remained with him from this instant and fleeting acquaintance with Marina was a small letter of a few lines and her name. An incomprehensible feeling, either melancholy or fleeting love. He constantly remembers this meeting with her.

A coincidence of circumstances happens that Pavlyshev is sent to the planet Project-18, it was discovered quite recently and is being studied by people. This planet is almost entirely covered by ocean, but there are several small islands. All these actions take place a few months after the young people meet.

The doctor finds out purely by chance that the girl is there. Marina completely ignores the doctor. The lover is completely bewildered by her actions, how he could have offended and upset her. But it turns out that it’s not a matter of grief or resentment at all. The girl he met on the Moon is now completely gone.

Marina now appears in the form of a bioform. This is a changed human structure. Only she is capable of being and working in conditions in which no normal existing person can. When an earthquake occurs, Pavlyshev miraculously finds and saves some feathered creature. Suddenly it turns out that this bird is his beloved. He still manages to explain himself and open up in his love for her.

At parting, Marina gave him her image, in a carved, thin, jade frame.

Bulychev read Cinderella's white dress. Kir Bulychev - Cinderella's white dress

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

ABOUT THE UGLY BIOFORM

Chapter 2

HUSSAR AND CINDERELLA

Picture or drawing of Cinderella's white dress

Other retellings for the reader's diary