Читать книгу No Way Out at the Entrance - Дмитрий Емец - Страница 7

Vlad Ganich stopped by the porch, quickly looked around at Rina gone off in front and outlined with his eyes a semicircle through the lilac bushes. “Why are we following her? If we slip away? Through the fence and…” he, proposed. Cyril wanted to say something maliciously on the theme of cleanliness of the suit, but Vlad had already gotten a move on through the lawn and tore quickly like a young moose through the thick lilac.

“He shouldn’t have! If we’re to get the hell out of here, then all together! He’ll climb over, and the girls will slow down! Have to let them go first!” Sashka condemned him, after noticing how a slightly opened window on the second floor wobbled.

Vlad reached the iron fence. No thorns, no sharp peaks, a very convenient fence. Stepping on the embellishments, he scrambled up in a second and jumped. Sashka heard a crack, and yet a second later Vlad came out of the lilac from this side. The lilac indignantly shook its leaves. Vlad shook his head like a stunned heifer and again persistently climbed the fence. Sashka decided that Vlad had gotten away. Anything can happen when a man is under heavy strain.

Vlad again scrambled along the fence, for some reason stood up on his feet, and only then jumped. This time Sashka definitely saw that Vlad jumped off onto THAT side, but again turned out to be on THIS side. Only this time he did not fall down into the lilac but flew through it. Vlad did not dare to jump a third time and, limping, returned to the others. Sashka raised his head. The window on the second floor was closed.

Rina was standing next to Sashka and sympathetically watched Vlad. “Keep in mind, I got really badly scratched by this lilac. It seems, I think, the leaves…” she said and began to climb the stairs.

Makar overtook her, ran up to the plaque and the white cockroach letters finally formed into the inscription “Guildhall of Divers.” “And whatsa here? They teach diving?” he asked, trying to beak off the plaque.

“Drowning!” Cyril joked.

“H-h-hands! Both!” someone ordered in a resounding voice. Makar and Cyril fidgeted in a startled way. “P-ut in the po-o-ockets! Don’t touch the inventory!” the voice finished cheerfully. The door was open. A thickset fellow in a jacket of rough skin examined them with interest. He looked to be twenty-twenty-five years old. The worldly Makar began to worry. He had gotten it in the neck most often precisely from this age range.

“I’m Ul! Can be Oleg. All questions afterwards! For the present, if anyone gets anything into his head, digest three things. First: this isn’t a school of witchcraft and other magic. Whoever maintains the opposite, I’ll cast a spell on him! This is neither school nor institute nor college at all, but simply the modest and only one of its kind HDive. Second: from this moment on you’re divided into teams of fives. For convenience in tasks, duty, and patrol. One team: Makar, Sashka, Alice, Danny, Rina! The other: Cyril, Lena, Vlad, Lara, Freda… And third: no one keeps you here by force.”

Burning with indignation, Freda jerked up her hand.

“Well?” Ul generously allowed her.

“And the fence??? If no one keeps us by force, why couldn’t Vlad climb over?”