The Snezhinsk Subway

   Many of you are probably already familiar with rumors, circulating around the city, about underground passages in the old part of Snezhinsk. We tried to find out more details about this matter and with the help of one of the readers of "Windows" came to the source of information, we are interested in.

   The first telephone conversation with this man was very difficult and, to our regret, ended in nothing. However, two days later he came to the editor himself and, unexpectedly, agreed to tell us everything.

   His almost four-hour story produced the effect of an exploded bomb. Those who listened to him, as well as the one who later decrypted the dictaphone recording (which turned out to be of extremely poor quality), walked a week later still with their eyes sore from sleepless nights. Opinions were extremely polarized, but all unanimously agreed on one thing - this is sensational!

   After quite understandable hesitation, we decided to publish the narrated story practically in the form in which we happened to hear it. Minor literary refinement is due to the preparation of material for print, the features of the speaker’s language and the aforementioned recording quality. We also omitted a number of, in our opinion, quite unfair statements addressed to particular city leaders and the Russian Federal Nuclear Center.

   We accepted the author's challenge, as he claimed that the editorial staff would be afraid to print his revelations. For an independent publication, which "Window" is, there is no reason to refuse such publications.

   However, we are aware that after the second or third issue already (and publication is planned for at least ten issues), the editorial office will receive perplexed or even indignant calls, so we want to say right away that the editorial office prints the indicated material as literary and does not bear any responsibility for the reliability of the facts stated in it. The author’s surname and coordinates are in the editorial office, but for a number of reasons, we are not yet inclined to advertise them.

   One more thing. Our dear visitor! For about a month now, we cannot contact you. We kindly request: please drop by or call the editorial office - at least so that we can make sure that everything is all right with you...

The editorial staff of "Window" newspaper

The Beginning

   I don't care if you believe me or not. If you don't believe me, I will get up and leave! You interest me no more than this beer can. Not me, but you made inquiries with my former acquaintances - and I know that they all called me crazy. So be it. I have already realized that people are used to hiding from life under the shell of their imaginary prudence. Let them be. It’s easier for them. They’re calmer that way ... But in fact - the one who prudently considers these wretched atomic bombs to be the most important secret of our Snezhinsk is the craziest nutcase, the complete moron! After all, one must completely lose one's brains, to believe that a defense system like ours was created only in the name of preserving some worthless design secrets! ..

   It's okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm just angry. I just can’t calm down, knowing that still almost no one knows the truth.

   But I do know...

   Let's agree from the very beginning. I will tell about everything that I saw with my own eyes, and you will listen to me until the end, without asking idiotic questions. And I’ll tell this to you as I want it. Me - and not you! .. You expect me to start with the words: "And then I saw ..." No way! If I accidentally stumbled upon a source of the noise, it would be a beautiful story in the spirit of Indiana Jones. A thriller! An action movie. But I was walking towards this, you understand? Walking! I was walking for almost thirty years! .. I mastered the means. Realized the goal. And then, in the end, I realized that these particular means are suitable for my purpose! .. And you will listen to me from the first to the last word, and if you are too lazy or you are in a hurry, then consider that I wandered here by mistake ! ..

   I am not interested in either your reaction or your further actions. I am not afraid of anyone or anything. I already have experience with a psychiatrist, and this is enough to predict my future fate - right up to the last nail hammered. But, I repeat, I’m not afraid of anyone. You, you are the ones who be afraid to print what I will tell ...

   I was born in Snezhinsk, well of course, in the “seventies” building, or rather, the “fifties” - my mother gave birth to me right after Gagarin’s launch. Yes, and of course my name comes from there. From the time of universal optimism, universal happiness and universal pride.

   I lived with my sister and parents on Sverdlov Street, number 42, which is located diagonally from the high rise near the 'Malachite', across the boulevard. Then, of course, this vile eyesore of a nine-story building wasn't there, and instead there was a beautiful hill with tall ship pines, looking at which I told my mother, proud of my quick wits: “Mom, I know why the wind blows. Because the trees are swinging... "

   My childhood was like any childhood. Fights in the yard with the ringleader Yasha. Uncle Zhora’s threats to tear my ears when I annoyed the billiard playing adults. Cycling along the boulevard under the ever watchful eyes of my parents - our windows looked out onto the street. I remember the guys, Leshka Simonov, the Kiryunin brothers, the Buzdygar (they later moved to Obninsk with their parents) and others.

   I’ll tell you about the first strong impression, which, in my opinion, largely determined my future path. At that time, next to my favorite slide, where I spent all my available free time, they began to build a restaurant, the nowadays notorious “Malachite”. When the framework was erected (I was seven or eight years old at the time), a general commotion began in our area, the essence of which was, avoiding the guard, to enter the construction area, jump through the narrow lower window into the darkness of the new building's basement and get out via the attached board to the other side. A usual yard check "for lice". Of course, I was in the forefront. Repeating this feat multiple times and quite comfortable in a completely not-scary room, I once went a little further, climbed through some hole and suddenly saw a magical spectacle in front of me: fantastic formations rose vertically up from the ground, for which I, with difficulty, found a word already existing in my language. Stalagmites! They shone from the inside with a strange, greenish light, and, touching with trepidation, I realized that they were made of ice. And this is at the height of summer! For several minutes I stood completely enchanted by the view that had appeared in front of my eyes, and this feeling of secret splendor remained with me forever. I still don’t know what it was. Whether the builders opened some kind of underground cavity with these wonderful icicles, or their formation could be explained by some purely technological reasons, the fact remains: I realized that there is something hidden under the ground that can never become accessible to the person leading ordinary, "ground" life.

   There is no need to explain that since that moment I have not missed a single construction site in my hometown. I knew every brick, every stone at the construction of the 'Sunny' store, 127th school, the first trade-and-culture complex 'Jubilee' (which, incidentally, was called Blue Mountains in those days, and only a pompous anniversary prevented it from preserving its beautiful , romantic name). Wake me up at night, and I could recall from memory the location of the pits of almost all the houses to be laid down Victory Street, describe which rocks fill these man-made pits (I was fond of mineralogy then, read Fersman), tell about the communication trenches leading from one foundation pit to another ...

   My research was far from cloudless. Repeatedly I was caught by some personalities, mainly, the law-abiding citizens of nearby houses. They read notations and morals to me, suggesting that a good boy should not wander around a construction site where a heavy and hard crane could fall on him ... I could not endure such sussing since early childhood, so I soon realized that they were more concerned with their own feelings of significance, rather than with my health and safety, and that it is necessary to avoid meetings with such individuals as much as possible. Looking back, I understand that my reasoning was quite sound for an eight-year-old child ... Once, a man caught me at the construction site of the 6th house on Victory Street, grabbed my shoulder like a tick and led me to the militia station, which was then located in a two-story building behind the "Spring" store. Since he had no special reasons for such an arrest, using the careless words I said along the way, he complained at the militia precinct that I called the militiamen 'policemen' — not a word was said about my capture at the construction site. My first encounter with representatives of the law disappointed me, because an hour-long conversation between a child and an adult uncle in uniform came down to a dull repetition of a single sentence: "Who taught you to call militiamen like that? .." From it I learned only one thing: any representatives of authority (and all adults then seemed as such) should be avoided.

   Time has confirmed the validity of my conclusion.

   I repeat, my knowledge was not given to me painlessly. And not only in moral, but also physical sense. Once, when I arrived on a bicycle to the building site of number 40 on Lenin Street (the third “long” house from the music school), I did not notice the trench of the heating main dug in the past 24 hours and flew into a two-meter hole with my bicycle. I’m amazed how I survived because I bounced my forehead against a stone protruding from the ground, and the bike just folded in half, and I had to prove to my father for a long time that the curb near the 'Fir-tree' store, which I accidentally crashed into, could have inflicted such damage to my bike ... There was a case during the reconstruction of Gagarin stadium when they demolished an old wooden platform and dug a foundation pit for a new one. Days long summer rains filled the pit with water two meters high. The damned schoolyard banter made me put together two wooden shields from the fence and go on them for a short sailing, which ended in complete disaster, and I remember very well the feeling when, being in the water, going down more and more and resurfacing less and less, I calmly thought, well, that’s it, I’ll drown now, and I remember the crazy eyes of a citizen next to me, frantically ripping off his pants and thrashing into the water in simple family underpants, a citizen to whom I owe a deep, deep debt to my grave and who I wanted to find all these years, to say Thank You, that I was not able to say on that fateful day ...

   Of course, all this is lyrics. But you must know the "lyrics" to understand my troubled soul. To understand how uncontrollably and indomitably I was drawn into the depths. To realize that the obstacles on the way did not weaken my craving for knowledge of the unknown. And in order to understand, finally, why one evening I stopped at a construction site before the next communication trench and thoughtfully said to myself: "Yura, but it must lead somewhere."

The Underground Labyrinths

   Before this thought, the realization that the pipes laid in open trenches go somewhere underground, I was quite happy with the exploration of dug pits with chopped roots protruding from the laminated walls and basement rooms covered with slabs. But this thought was something very different.

   Once, walking along a freshly dug trench at number 52 on Lenin Street, I was surprised to find out that the pipes over which the welders had been doing their magic for two days did not go into the ground, the sand, into nowhere. I saw that there was a special concrete gutter-corridor laid for them, inviting me to visit its unknown depths.

   That day I did not go far. I wasn't scared (for some reason I never felt fear of the unknown; it seems that since early childhood, I was firmly instilled with false confidence that this world was created exclusively for man, and there can be no real danger to life in it). It was just dark. It was then that I realized the need for a flashlight and an ability to navigate in an unfamiliar place.

   At the same time, there came the understanding that I was breaking through an open door. I discovered that the city is full of manholes for inspection and control sewer wells, each of which was a door to an unfamiliar world.

   But I did not immediately come to use these alluring features. It should be remembered that at the time I was still small. I was just ten years old, and I physically could not lift the heavy cast-iron lid.

   I began to look for open hatches. To my surprise, there were a lot of them. I found them both in the clearing area - the continuation of Lenin Street ('The Three Piglets' weren't there back then), and in the forest behind the railroad tracks near the present 'Building Materials' store, and near the garages on New Street (which then did not exist as a street either). As if specially for me, metal brackets were welded to the reinforcing rods of the discovered wells, along which I easily went down and, lighting my way with a flashlight given for my birthday, examined the underground labyrinth that has opened up to me.

   I must say honestly, almost every one of these paths hit a dead end ten to fifteen meters from the place of descent. However, the impasse was not always truly insurmountable. In most cases, the pipes running, as a rule, in pairs disappeared in an unexpectedly narrowing passage, clogged with thermal insulation and some kind of muck. At first it was stopping me, but one day, bracing myself up, I climbed onto the top pipe (it seems that it was somewhere in the vicinity of the city rescue station) and, burying my face in glass wool, crawled forward. My determination was rewarded: after about twenty meters, I felt that my clothes no longer cling to the rough surface of concrete, and, turning on the flashlight, I realized that I again found myself in a passage similar to the one just left. After about ten meters, I found staples leading upward and, ascending, smashed my head to a lid. But that did not discourage me. I realized that I had found a way to travel underground.

   This is not to say that my travels brought me only positive emotions. I remember very well when making my way from an open well, apparently undergoing repairs, in the courtyard of building number 9 down Vasilyev Street (opposite the former 'Dawn' canteen), I found under my feet a half-decomposed and foul-smelling body of some representative, either of felines or canines . This did not come as a shock to me, because during my walks I often came upon some very unappetizing things, but it was from that moment, that I began to go through the underground communications in a respiratory mask, which I begged for from the wall painters (as I remember) in a rental building number 32 on Victory Street. It was, if I am not mistaken, May or June of '71. Thank you, dear ladies ...

   I divided the routes into good and bad, although for you, the surface dwellers, they would all be about the same, characterized by two words: dirt and darkness. But after all, one likes to go from the bookstore to 'Foodie' along Vasilyev Street, while the other prefers to go through the square, past the 'Ray' and the Department Store. So I liked getting, say, from the viewing well at the dispensary to the well at the entrance to the greenhouse of 127th school (the most convenient place to exit to the surface in the evenings) - not through the collector at the 11th house on Victory Street (even on the surface it constantly seems to stink of feces), but through the clean and tidy collector of the repair and maintenance workshop behind 'Jubilee'.

   When I was twelve, it occurred to me to draw a plan of the dungeons I had visited. In principle, I knew them anyway (I have a great visual and spatial memory), but then I read a book about mazes, and writing plans became my passion. Incidentally, it was then that, after several times observing the work of plumbers, I learned to open the covers of sewer manholes. It’s not difficult at all and even a fifth grader can do it if you know where to insert the crowbar and how to pick up the lid. It is hard to believe, but I lifted any cover within five seconds, and it took me no more than five seconds to get inside, pushing the cover behind me - not fully, but only to create the appearance of it being closed.

   So, back to the plans. I drew the first plan without going down underground. What for? I already knew everything. The city was well-trod far and wide. Dozens of raised and lowered lids. Hundreds of hours spent underground. Thousands of impressions set aside in the back streets of memory. My parents? And which parents know what their child is doing from one in the afternoon until six in the evening? After six, I diligently did my homework, watched TV and even, I remember, went to the Ural pool to the scuba diving section. The section was led by Oleg Mikhailovich, a sincere person, unfortunately, I don’t remember his last name, then there was Vasya Dmitriev, but he was before my time ... I’m getting distracted. Although, perhaps not. It was in the pool that I realized a simple thing that the underground network cannot but have other exits to the surface besides sewer manholes and precipitation sewage drains. More than once in my underground journeys, I found large, human height, metal sheets with inscriptions like "Electrical Panel", from which I tried to stay away, but once in the pool, running with the guys through the gym (we tried to spy on the girls in the women shower) , I found a door with the same inscription in the short corridor on the "female" side, and this door was slightly ajar. At that moment, all the naked girls flew out of my head, because behind the interweaving of wires I saw a passage, and this passage damn well reminded me of my underground tunnels. Something clashed in my head, and the underground plan of a "seventies" quarter began to grow in my imagination with new, previously unknown details.

   Of course, that day, fleeing from an angry technician, I did not even try to get into the shield panel of the pool. I never entered there at all. But a few years later, seeing this door from the inside, I remembered everything and involuntarily smiled ...

   From that day in my underground travels, I stopped missing the doors that I saw at times in the concrete walls of the collectors. Very often, these doors were hiding only shallow niches or small rooms with one or two shovels, a pair of buckets and a constant fire extinguisher. But sometimes quite decent corridors began behind them, which, as a rule, led to the basements of apartment buildings or to other, more exotic places. For example, who among the townspeople knows that under the blocks surrounding the Lenin monument there is a sewer well, covered instead of a lid only with one of these same blocks (the second from the left corner)? But it was from there that I listened to the ceremonial speech of the first secretary of the city party committee on May 9, 1975, a speech dedicated to the 30   ^th   Victory anniversary ... Who knows that in the basement of the city bank vault there is a small door of half a human height, a door behind which an ignorant person would only see a huge valve and rust-covered pipes? And yet, I squeezed more than once into the narrow gap between the floor and the bottom pipe and stood with bated breath and listening to the metal clang of bars and safe doors above my head ... Who would consider that most apartments on the ground floors of old buildings can be got into without much difficulty by raising the flooring in the kitchen? I did not do this, but many of the family secrets of the inhabitants of these apartments were not secrets for me. A person of different character in my place, would probably be fascinated by the opportunity to know everything about everyone, but, fortunately, this prospect did not appeal to me. And, meeting with young women, pregnant from God knows whom, or couples sweetly smiling at each other, who had flooded each other with select curses just yesterday, I did not feel any superiority over them. But, true, no awkwardness either ...

   I must say, that I was very lucky to begin climbing down at such an early age. Then I could squeeze into such cracks that five years later became inaccessible to me. Faced for the first time with such obstacles at the age of sixteen - I would certainly send this activity to hell. But by this age, I knew a lot of workarounds and was sure that if I wanted, I could get anywhere.

   Oh yes, I deliberately did not mention another kind of premises that were hiding behind the doors that I came across. These were short dead-end corridors, usually about eight meters long, which did not lead anywhere and were not connected to anything. They struck me with their relatively good furnish and complete uselessness. They had another feature that I did not immediately realize, but still realized eventually.

   Sometimes in these corridors, or more precisely, under their floors, one could hear a measured, distant hum ...

The City Mystery

   From early childhood I knew that I live in a special city. In a secret city. In a city associated with a Mystery. What was this Mystery, I had no idea, and that made it seem bigger and more significant. Nowadays everyone has become very smart. Everyone knows everything. And I did not know that atomic bombs were being made in my hometown until my graduation. And when, after studying for five and a half years in Leningrad and arriving at the All-Union Research and Design Institute by assignment (or rather, by calling), I finally found out what the majority of citizens do every day, I was amazed. Amazed to the depths of my soul. But not at what you all think. Not the awesome proximity of atomic weapons. And not involvement in the most important state affair. Not at all.

   I was amazed at how petty and worthless the Mystery was.

   I did not believe that this was the Mystery.

   And I do not believe it to this day.

   What happened after my return to the city? Probably the same thing that happened to everyone. I became a design engineer with a good salary of one hundred and sixty rubles. I was engaged in social work. Had fun at the Komsomol (The Union of Communist Youth) parties. Went as a counselor to the "Eaglet" pioneer camp. Went hiking in spring. Spent vacations in Leningrad, visiting friends and relatives. Then - an acquaintance with my future wife, a honeymoon in the then quiet Caucasus, the birth of a son, then a daughter. And then...

   Next is a dead end. The collapse of everything: the country, work, human relations. Marriage finally. I will not talk about it ...

   Studying at the institute, as it were, grabbed several years from my life, detaching it from the city. One can consider, that in this respect I was very lucky: when I reappeared here, I looked at the city through the eyes of another person, a person who was devoid of any stereotypes and illusions. As a child, you don’t particularly think about the course of life around you, so the city that appeared before my eyes was for me a completely new object that still needed to be studied and accepted.

   I realized, for example, that I absolutely did not know the neighborhood around the"seventies" block. Not those neighborhoods that are inside the perimeter, but those that are directly adjacent to it. Our family didn’t have a car, and even if we went anywhere, it was only to Sverdlovsk or Chelyabinsk by regular buses, that’s why within a radius of fifty kilometers for me lay the most perfect “terra incognita”. I still remember the recurring nightmare that tormented me until graduation: I accidentally find myself somewhere at a checkpoint in the area, as I understand it, either the Twenty-First, or Kyshtym, and I have the task of returning to the city; the task is practically unsolvable, because, on the one hand, I don’t even know on which side the city can be (although its proximity is set a priori), and on the other, I’m bound by the iron chains of secrecy, so I can’t ask the first passerby a simple question about the “seventies” location, which I’m sure is known to any local dog, therefore, choking from impotence (and the inability to wake up), I have to develop a cunning plan to reach the city through the regional centers, about which you can ask anything you like and "our" bus stops - thank God! - are absolutely known to me ...

   That is why I eagerly plunged into the study of my native land. The alarm bell of the Mystery was not yet heard firsthand, but the distant echoes of it were already evident, riddled with incomprehensible forebodings of my soul. Numerous conversations with residents of the Twenty-First, Vozdvizhenka, Klyuch, Selkov became for me a window into a new space of images and ideas about our city. And now I don’t remember who first dropped this phrase about the territory that Snezhinsk now occupies. A phrase forever etched in my memory.

   Nobody has ever settled here.

   The above said has shocked me. I don’t know which strings it touched in me, but the first thing I wanted to make sure was that these were not empty words. My ex-wife, who then worked in the library (she still works there), wrote out to me almost everything directly or indirectly related to our district from the Chelyabinsk Fund . It seems that a lot was seized during the period when the city was being built and kept secret, but the finding were quite sufficient.

   Nobody really ever settled here.

   Yes, they gathered blueberries here, hunted goats between Bold (Chumishev, Wolf) and Warm mountains, dug out pits in search of “pebbles”. Here timber was prepared for the Vozdvizhensky glass factory, which was tied in rafts and ferried to the other side of the Sinara. Here they built temporary fishing lodges . But to live - they did not live here.

   Sure, the Russians came here quite late. But the Bashkirs, whose ancestors settled here almost half a millennium before the arrival of all kinds of Cossacks-robbers? What bothered them?I plunged into the study of place names. Rummaging through piles of literature, I made two important discoveries that confirmed that I was not looking for nothing.

   Firstly, I found an exact explanation of the name Sinara, around which a lot of different romantic nonsense has been heaped up. The first part of this word - “sin” - quite clearly indicates the burial ground, grave among the southern Bashkirs and Kazakhs, sometimes - a statue standing on the grave; to search for the basis of this word in Kazakh "sen" ("son") -' true' - is far-fetched and ridiculous. Its second part - "ara" - is translated as 'gap', 'middle'; for example, Arakul - "a lake located in the gap (between the mountains)." Thus, Sinara is a “lake between cemeteries” or “a lake near cemeteries”. I dare to suggest that this name also had a different shade - "the lake near which is death" ...

   Secondly, with a feeling close to amazement, I found that in one of the decrees of the office of special Iset province of the Orenburg governorship (“on March the third day of the year one thousand seven hundred and thirty-seventh of Our Lord”) a hill is mentioned “one verst from the southern shore the lake by the nickname Sin-Ara to the south "- that is, about a kilometer south of the southern shore of the lake - "which the Tatars call Yure-Me "!

   Whether you like it or not, it’s a mountain in the center of the city where the music school is now located! There are simply no other hills in the region south of the lake. But this is not the most important thing. We will leave a reference to Tatars on the conscience of the author (these are, of course, Bashkirs), but the interpretation of the given toponym is known to many schoolchildren of our city, those who, while in the "Eaglet" made ascent to Yurma, one of the highest mountains in the Southern Urals located near Karabash, with Sergey Mikhailovich Roshchupkin,. The Bashkir word "yure" means "to go", "me" is a negative particle. "Do not go!" - a pronounced warning about the danger of climbing this mountain, and in our case it is probably a ban on approaching the indicated area, because, of course, there can be no talk of any "climbing" here ...

   When I shared my discovery with two or three local "authorities", I was advised not to clog my head with unverified rumors and other nonsense, referring to the fact that people always lived here, that near the lake they have repeatedly found encampments of ancient Bronze Age and early Iron Age people and that the fact of their occupation in fishing and cattle breeding is absolutely confirmed ...

   Yes, I know all this. Back in '76, Yurka Karpov told me how he found clay shards and arrowheads on the Cockerel. And I am familiar with other testaments. And does the opinion of experts on all these finds not interest you? Real experts, not our homegrown Schliemanns? .. Interests, it seems. That's it. So, I can show you the conclusion of the Department of History of the Ural University, summarizing all these findings ... The encampments were abandoned suddenly, the objects left were not subjected to either fire or physical destruction. There are no remains of the dead, which is completely atypical in the event of a surprise attack by the enemy ... People simply left. Why? Yes, because you could not be here! It’s just not possible. And if not, then - "yure-me" ...

   These are only the first strokes of the overall picture created later. Accumulation of critical mass. The first steps towards the Mystery. Follow my line of thought ...

   Now about work. At first, until all these perestroika and post-perestroika squabbles started, I actually liked it, in fact. I had to think, solve some problems, move my brains. True, the specificity of work for me was expressed not in the uniqueness of the problems of designing special items (any kind of creativity is unique), but in the regimen entourage.

   The regimen requirements were positively amusing. I emphasize, amusing, not annoying, like they seemed to many of my comrades. All this had an air of healthy idiocy and resembled a game in a house for children with mental retardation. It was funny that instead of taking a piece of paper and starting to draw or calculate you had to do a lot of obscure ritual actions, each of which was characterized by an absolute lack of meaning and did not at all serve the purpose, it was originally intended for, namely, to provide privacy mode.

   I’ll draw your attention to this point, because my fun ended when I realized that from the point of view of systems theory all this bears the simple name of redundancy. Not duplication, but redundancy. And if duplication increases reliability, then redundancy introduces destructive changes into the system that drastically reduce its reliability. That is, the level of regimen requirements existing at our enterprise is completely incompatible with the task. I proved this by calculations and made an unambiguous conclusion that either these requirements were developed by a complete moron (which I had and have very big doubts), or they have nothing to do with the issues of maintaining the secrecy of atomic weapons.

   You don't understand? Let me try again. When you notice a thief on the bus who has put his eyes on your wallet, you will try to move the wallet to another, less accessible pocket. It will be logical. When you see that the thief is not leaving and continues to follow you, you decide to shift the wallet back to confuse him, and then for the same purpose you begin to move the wallet from pocket to pocket. Your first action is the real provision of secrecy, and therefore the safety of your capital. Your further actions become meaningless, because they only attract the criminal’s attention; it is as if you are telling him that you have money, a lot of money, making the theft more attractive to him. Most likely, in this case, you will sooner or later lose your wallet. But these actions take on the deepest meaning if the wallet is empty and your money (big money!) is in the inside pocket of your jacket ...

The Inexplicable Little Things

   Thus I decided, continuing my journey to the Mystery, that there must be something in the city that is reliably hidden by the existing regime of secrecy. And that is not the atomic bombs.

   Around the same time, I had a remarkable conversation with Georgy Pavlovich Lominsky.

   No, don’t you think that I was then on a short leg with the enterprise director (with the last real enterprise director of the Research Institute). Who is he and who am I, plus the age difference, you understand. Everything is much simpler. It happened at the "Eaglet" pioneer camp, which the Boss visited with joy and pleasure. At that time, the director of the Institute arrived without warning, walked for half an hour through the territory, and then sat down on a bench by the administrative building, waiting for Anatoly Ivanovich Chushkov, then the camp director. My detachment was just on duty, so I sent pioneers to search for Anatoly Ivanovich, and for about fifteen minutes maintained a worldly conversation with Georgy Pavlovich. We have already talked once, so I reacted quite calmly to the very fact of our dialogue. The conversation quietly turned to be about me, where I studied and where I work, how they let me go off work to the camp, whether I like work — and things like that. After another turn of the topic, I inadvertently asked a question, the answer to which later, much later clarified so much to me. I started like this:

   - Georgy Pavlovich, this city was created to develop a very specific weapon. Suppose, sooner or later, it will become unnecessary - no matter for what reason, whether the situation in the world will change or somewhere they will begin to make something more perfect ... What will happen to the city?

   When asking this purely theoretical, maybe even somewhat useless question, I of course could hardly have imagined that after some ten years it would in a perfectly concrete way worry every resident of Snezhinsk. And Georgiy Pavlovich, of course, then did not think about it either. He was silent for a while (not for long, but enough that I could think with horror, that I uttered some obvious stupidity and hurt the elderly man who had given all his life to “unnecessary” weapons), smiled slyly, but ... the smile suddenly disappeared across his face, and Lominsky, waving his hand with sort of annoyance, replied strangely and incomprehensibly:

   - Is it really about these weapons ...

   Today, my question does not seem either stupid or naive. And the answer of the Boss is full of deep meaning for me, which became clear to me only a decade later ...

   There was another conversation worth mentioning. Conversation with my Uncle Kolya. From the year '59 until his retirement, he worked as a procurement manager at the Institute, he knew a lot, and saw a lot. When he began to talk, my sister and I opened our mouths and listened with bated breath. My parents reacted to him in the same way, and generally everyone who came into close contact with him.

   In the year '93, in May, we celebrated his sixtieth birthday. He followed me out to smoke on the balcony, and, looking with narrowed eyes at the setting sun, said, continuing the conversation that had begun earlier:

   - Yes, any supplier must be a scumbag. This is common knowledge. He must spin to please both ours and yours, and not to forget to do his job ... But there is one more quality that must be inherent in him. - Uncle Kolya took a drag on his cigarette and continued: - He must be aware of what he is doing. Be well aware ...

   -Everyone should understand what he is doing,- I replied diplomatically.

   - Should! - stressed the uncle. -But can anyone, honestly, say that he lives that way?- Uncle was silent for a moment. - For all the time that I worked, and what the heck - in my entire life, I only once could not explain this to myself. Only once! How many can boast of something similar?

   -And what could you not explain to yourself?- I asked, just to keep up the conversation.

   Uncle Kolya gave me a quick glance and again turned to look at the setting sun ..

   -There was this case,- he said reluctantly. - One time, some equipment came to me. The whole train. But where it was later used, I still do not understand.

   - Is it really the supplier’s responsibility to control the use of supplies? - I was surprised. - Moreover, in an atmosphere of our secrecy. You might not even know what you were accompanying and where it was going.

   -You're a fool,- the uncle said kindly. -I might not know what I am ordering or carrying. But the name, designation or code name was always known to me. I knew how many pieces of this very unknown are with me, how much it weighs, where it comes from and where it is transferred to. Say, the cargo “ABC” entered the sector “A” for research “B” on conditional financing “C”. Get the principle? So that equipment was not associated with any unit of the institute. Indices of it have sunk into the unknown.

   I doubt that I absolutely correctly convey what was said by my uncle. I understood only one thing: planners have their own clues that allow control over the distribution of material resources both in the nuclear center and in the city in general.

   -Don’t worry, uncle,- I reassured him, -it was only once. Someone just screwed up with the documentation. -With me,- the uncle said with a peculiar expression, -it happened only once. - He spat on the butt and threw it down. -But I am not alone in the enterprise. There are dozens of suppliers. And I know for sure that in the same year 1966 there was another such story. And not with anyone, but with Petrovich ...

   (Petrovich is Uncle's old friend, who worked together with him for thirty years. I don’t remember his last name, but as a child, my sister and I often visited him, he lived in the 3rd house on Vasilyev’s, in the 1st entrance, as I recall.)

   -You guys were simply squandering the socialist property,- I burst out laughing. - I am amazed how anything is still left in our Institute. Too bad there wasn't a Beria on your case.

   Uncle did not accept my silly tone. On the contrary, he somehow got together and became serious.

   -Lavrenty Pavlovich actually came here,-he said weightily. - Although few know about it. In July of '47. It was here that he wandered through our swamps. Not alone, of course, there was almost a company of machine gunners with him. Don't believe me? A man from Kasli told me about this, his brother-in-law was the guide. Here's a question for you: what made the minister wander through these jungles? But he wandered around for 2 days, spent the night in a tent. And do you know where his camp was?

   Where?- I asked eagerly, although a second before that I wanted to limit myself to the word "nonsense."

   - Got you interested ... I don’t know if you remember what was in the place of the new surgical building ...

   -I remember,- I interrupted him. - There was a stone rock, five meters high. We still climbed it when we visited dad, he was in the old hospital in 1968 with appendicitis ...

   -You have a good memory, Yurik. Beria spent the night near that rock ... Remember well. Only talk less about it, you will be healthier. And remember about the train. Just in case you need, you never know what might happen. Your years are young still ...

   Uncle died in the same year, in October. His heart could not endure the White House (Parliament building in Moscow) being fired upon. I often come to his grave, bringing flowers. Unaware of it, he opened my eyes to many things. Maybe he knew something, but he hid it well. He was from another generation. A silent one ...

   After the uncle's story, my searches became more conscious, more focused. At that time, publications began coming out on the history of atomic weapons creation, and in the book "The Secret of the Forty" I was amazed to find indirect confirmation of the possibility of Beria appearing in our area at the time mentioned by my uncle. It turns out that on July 8, 1947, the chairman of the Special Committee arrived in Kyshtym for inspection of the first industrial nuclear reactor under construction! It's a no brainer that he needed to be there, but what could he do here - seven years before deciding to create a new institute and a new city? Could the story of Beria's wanderings through the Sinara woods -be just a mythical echo of the inspection visit to the "Forty"? I did not believe it, so my piggy bank of facts, having to do with the Mystery, gained one more significant fact..

   In the same books, the following surprised me. In no place did I find any explanation of why there was a need for a new institute at all, and also why it was decided to build a new institute exactly where it is now.

   Yes, I saw the text of the famous decree, read the memoirs of Zhuchikhin, got acquainted with links to Lominsky’s story, listened to a lot of jokes about this, but everywhere there was a strange perplexity, covered by thoughtful demagogical justifications. Judge for yourself. Summer of '54. The atomic weapon has "gone big." The first hydrogen was blown up. Serial plants grew like mushrooms Everything is fine. It is logical to expect a leisurely but comprehensive increment of the much-needed product power. And here - like thunder on a head - we need an Arzamas double! Just need and that's it. Who needs? What for? And the explanations still brought up in defense of this decision! Just listen to their followers! Some say that in case of an enemy attack in the rear, another “atomic” institute was needed (let it be known to you, my dears, that already in 1949 the concept of the rear in Soviet military science was recognized to be exhausted and was put to rest in peace - thanks to the atomic bombs, long-range aviation and carrier ships). Others argue that with the functioning of the second center, a spirit of healthy competition was to develop, contributing to an increase in the quality of manufactured products (competition! in the early fifties? - Then for this word alone you could get article fifty-eight, point ten without any difficulty , anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation, at least five years in peacetime!). Still others nod to the Jews, they say, cosmopolitans multiplied in Arzamas then, whether you want it or not, there was a need had to build a separate Security Committee for the Russian people (here I refuse even to comment, I can say some censored expressions...)

   That's about the need for a new institute. Now about the place. I’ll say right away: no matter what they say, neither KB-11 (the research and development complex of the future Arzamas-16), nor Object “A” (the first industrial reactor of the future Chelyabinsk-40), not one of the serial plants were built on completely bare ground in terms of communications and infrastructure location. No doubt, the difficulties were enormous, but there was no idiocy in this sense. The country was able to count money. It was the people's money - I am not being ironic. And to cut down the forest in the remote taiga, and to lead the road there just would not be for nothing. It would be possible to build an object next to the “Forty” - since there was everything there by that time on a silver platter, established production, transport, and fissile materials nearby, within reach. It was possible to dock Snezhinsk to serial workers in Zlatoust-20, and still work together to this day, inextricably. One can list five more options, each of which would be logical in its own way and will not be inferior to Snezhinsk for secret regime reasons (it is ridiculous to think that the removal of the city some thirty kilometers from the “Forty” will make it top-secret), as well as safety considerations in the event of an accident. It’s possible, everything is possible - but for some reason none of these options was chosen.

   Why?

   Because, for some unknown reasons, completely unrelated to the atomic issue, the city had to be built exactly in its current place ...

Six Points

   If my arguments went in the sequence that I am describing to you, then I would have come to the Mystery five years earlier. But the point is that these were separate thoughts, views, impressions that for a long time resisted to come together in one knot. Most of all I regret my condescending reaction to Uncle's story about Beria. Was it not for my "common sense" then already in 1993 I would have known everything.

   However, everything in due course. After the divorce, I again, after a long break, began to descend into my underground halls. Honestly, when there, I did not think about the Mystery, rather I just looked for salvation from my longing and despair, from the feeling of hopelessness in life. The communications of the new districts, all of these Lykovkas, Prostokvashinos and Golodaevkas, did not attract me much, inspiring outright disgust with their utilitarian primitivism, so most often I wandered under the Old Town, rejoicing that nothing has changed there, everything was the same as it was in my faraway and happy childhood.

   In my wanderings, I once came upon one of these dead end corridors that I already spoke about. I remembered that once I heard a distant buzz here, and even the floor, as I remember, was trembling a little under my feet. Now everything was quiet and calm here, like in a grave. Shining a flashlight under my feet, I walked through the corridor around the perimeter (I used the rule of my right hand purely mechanically, touching the wall a little while walking) and was already about to go out the slightly opened door, when something seemed to push me.

   As far as I remembered, in the corridors like this one, a distant noise was always heard.

   This thought by itself did not mean anything. Any transformers or pumps running nearby could break or stop, this is obvious. But shifting the semantic emphasis, I got to another striking conclusion.

   During my childhood trips, only these corridors, intended for unknown use, were connected with a source of the strange noise.

   And again I felt a breath of mystery. So far, just a mystery, not the one to which I already consciously aspired. But big secrets always consist of small ones ...

   Upon returning home, I climbed onto the sofa, where my old diaries, school notebooks, lecture notes and other paper trash were kept. Sneezing from the dust, I turned everything over and from the pile in the far corner I took out a shabby forty-eight-sheet notebook with the ornate inscription “Labyrinth”.

   I carefully opened it and began to turn page after page with excitement. I came across a scheme drawn by an inept hand with naive designations of valves and siphons, with diligent notes like: "Here, be careful !!! Hot pipe !!!", with numbers showing the number of steps from one hole to another. I could not believe my eyes - as a child I did a colossal job, comparable, probably, with the works of Livingston, Stanley and others like them ... Of course, I remembered well how I kept all these notes, remembered how I applied communication lines, hiding every time a notebook from my parents and sister in the second row of the bookcase, I remembered everything, but my childish perseverance, determination and energy struck me. Me - the thirty-six year old, disbelieving, stooped, surrendered ...

   But they whipped me, forcing me to act.

   After reviewing the notebook, I realized that this scheme does not suit me. It gave a complete picture of the location of passages and pipes, but was drawn up without taking the scale into account, and the exact image was absolutely necessary to confirm one of my assumptions.

   It took me exactly a year to create an accurate map of Snezhinsk underground utilities. There was everything - schemes of water supply facilities, including water supply, sanitation and sewage systems, and schemes of heat supply facilities, and schemes of electric networks and communication lines, and schemes of gas pipelines, and schemes of basements, and schemes of not advertised and little-known underground structures, and still much, much more ... How I got these schemes - I won't talk about. Not because my actions were, as they say, contrary to existing legislation. And not because almost all of them had a signature stamp (the majority - "for official use"). But because people who voluntarily, and most often unwittingly provided me with access to this information, still sit at their workplaces. Let them sit on.

   You shouldn't think that I created my map only because of the obtained schemes (by the way, most of them I didn’t need). All this year (from the summer of 97 to May of 98) I practically did not crawl out of the underground, since there was plenty of time. At work, you know the mess, even if you want to do something, others will not let you, those with whom you are connected in a chain and who have their own problems. Therefore, most have long understood: in order not to be nervous, you need to sit quietly and wait for money - the only way to exist in our secret "box". Well, and the boss, in principle, couldn't care less where you sit, at work or somewhere else. Maybe it’s not the case with others, but I always negotiated with mine ...

   In short, the map was ready by the beginning of summer, and I had to sit down for a thorough study of it. I had to compare the passage of communications at different levels and analyze their relationship with the structures located on the surface. I can talk for a long time about everything that I did: how I carried out statistical calculations, determining the variance and average deviation of a number of selected parameters, how I created topological models of areas of interest, how I studied the suddenly required pipe laying technology in a closed way, how I shoveled through mountains of all kinds of technical documentation, including the most exotic standards, norms, rules, instructions ... Mentally, I even awarded myself the title of Candidate of Technical Sciences, which I have been hopelessly striving for ten years, working in the Institute ...

   The main result of my research was the following. I found six places in which communications were located, let’s say, with similar violation of a number of existing standards. I do not mean work defects here - my God, not a single underground highway that I knew was laid without defects (the people responsible would simply be horrified to see their condition firsthand)! No, here we are talking about something else.

   In the indicated places of communication, contrary to the rules, contrary to the usual logic, they delineate a huge arc with a radius of at least ten meters (in the absence of any visible obstacle), after which they carefully maintain their previous direction. And - what perhaps is most important - the center of this arc in all six cases is located behind the end wall of those dead-end corridors that caught my interest twenty years ago! ..

   Did something stir inside of you? Did you get the goosebumps? No? Then you won’t understand me, why, for the first time realizing this, I laughed like crazy, burst out laughing, choked with laughter, cried out - and still couldn’t stop until I realized that I just can’t stop, that it’s a hysteria, and only then I finally calmed down. And I am known as a more or less restrained person. Rather, was once known ...

   It makes no sense for me to hide these places, if I decided to tell you everything. I will list the landmarks roughly corresponding to them. The first is the Department Store. The second is the Jubilee complex. The third is that very "stinky" eleventh house on Victory Street (who does not know, this is a long house opposite and obliquely from the stop). The fourth landmark is a hill near 'Sinara' or, more understandably, the parking lot at the twenty-fifth house. Fifth - one hundred twenty-first school. And finally, the sixth - a new (well, not really new) surgical building.

   Of course, you are now mentally trying and can not understand what is common between these points. Two shops, a house, a parking lot, a school, a hospital - what connects them? You can refer to the time of their construction, but this is also unlikely to help. The Jubilee House and the eleventh house were commissioned in the second half of the sixties, the Department Store and one hundred and twenty-first school in the mid-seventies, and the surgical building in the early eighties. Everything is completely different. Maybe they have nothing in common except the meaningless "incorrectness" of underground utilities and the presence of some dead-end corridors?

   There is. Here is a map of the city. Follow me. To begin, I connect the indicated points indicated with lines. What have we got? That is what it should be. A hexagon. Not really such a beautiful hexagon. Now look carefully. Don't you think that there is another elementary geometric figure, different from the drawn, that can be traced through these points? Well, a little imagination ...

   That's right. A regular ellipse.

   And therefore, if you have even a bit of thoughtfulness, I'm not talking about imagination, then you probably won’t be surprised and will not say that my actions were absolutely meaningless when on the third of July, on Friday, although no, wait, it was already Saturday the fourth, having waited for the drunks (and the police squad accompanying them) to leave the Jubilee, I opened the lid of one of the two wells located on the left slope of the complex, dropped the pickaxe that I had prepared in advance and hid in the grass, and then quickly got inside, sliding the heavy cover above.

Into the abyss

   It took hardly four minutes to get to the metal door, hiding the painfully familiar dead end corridor, open it and go inside.

   The presence of a pickaxe clearly spoke as to the purpose of my journey. I have long realized that the wall opposite the entrance has emptiness behind it as, indeed, are the similar walls of five other corridors. What determined the choice of this particular corridor, was only the proximity of Jubilee to my house.

   The first blow of the pickaxe was just deafening, and I stepped back to close the door more tightly, trying as much as possible to avoid any accidents. Then I returned to the concrete wall and again swung the heavy instrument.

   The concrete was reluctant. Small fragments and cement dust fell on the floor, and only miserable scratches remained on the wall. The lantern on the bag illuminated a small section of the wall on which my broken shadow danced in a fantastic dance. Then things got more fun. I got used to it, and now and then I had to step aside, protecting my feet from particularly large falling pieces. Sweat ran down my face, but I continued my labor like a measured clockwork.

   Suddenly I felt something like a draft. Turning around, I was convinced that the door was still closed, and at that moment I understood what was happening. Going up to the wall, I saw that a small hole appeared in the very center of the crater I created. I eagerly clung to it, but saw only darkness. The lantern did not help either: it was impossible to watch and shine at the same time. Grabbing a pickaxe and feeling how close my target was, I began frantically striking blow after blow. The hole became the size of an egg, then a fist, a head, then ...

   Then a huge piece of the wall seemed to disappear, falling somewhere into the outer darkness, and I almost went after it, startled, releasing a pickaxe that was swallowed by the abyss ...

   A moment later, a deafening, echo-magnified blow came from below ...

   When everything quieted down, I sat for another five minutes without moving, huddled in a corner at the front door. It seemed to me that the whole city heard this terrible roar. It seemed to me that a riot police detachment was already coming down here with an order to capture me dead or alive (better, dead, flashed through my head from some action movie). In any case, for a long time I could not believe that the event did not affect a single person except me.

   Quite by accident, I remembered that in my bag, in a bottle for baby food, there are one hundred and fifty grams of medical alcohol (I was preparing seriously). It seemed to me that now is the time to use it. I took out the bottle and filled it to the very neck with water from the flask, and at once I knocked over the resulting "non-Mendeleev" mixture.

   And you know, I felt better. True, after a minute I began to speak out aloud with myself, but that didn’t bother me much. The treacherous trembling ceased, and the instinct of the researcher woke up in me again.

   Approaching closely to the formed gap, I carefully shone into the darkness. In the front, about ten meters away, a shivering light spot appeared on the wall. Moving the flashlight back and forth, I snatched out from the dark another side wall to my right, as well as a low ceiling, which, apparently, represented a single whole with the ceiling of my corridor. I didn’t have the determination right away to shine down, because for this I had to stick my head and shoulders into the hole I had made, but it was just impossible to move on because I saw vividly in my mind how, from one awkward movement, another piece fell out of the wall with a leisurely inevitability, taking me along, flying into the unknown depths of the Earth ...

   It turned out to be about seven meters to the floor. The part of the hall that was visible to me turned out to be completely empty (not taking into account pieces of concrete scattered across the floor and my pickaxe lying slightly to the side). In order to see what is to my left, I tried to lean out a little further and immediately issued an amazed exclamation. I could never count on such luck: about one meter from the bottom edge of the hole right below me, metal brackets going down were built into the wall.

   I well remember the feeling of emotion that gripped me (perhaps due to alcohol, but this does not change the matter). If I were a believer, I probably would have brought a prayer of thanks to the Lord, and so I just began to hum in full voice "Yellow Submarine", rejoicing at how far my voice is carried through the dungeon. Perhaps my euphoria would not be so complete and strong if I had a simple question that I asked myself much later: for whom, in fact, was the staircase leading to nowhere intended? ..

   Suddenly I calmed down. My movements became collected and confident. Having tied a duffel bag to a sling, I lowered it down, followed by a switched-on flashlight tied to the second end of the sling, after which I dropped down the sling itself. The raincoat was also on the floor of the hall when, after an unsuccessful attempt, I realized that I just couldn’t squeeze into the hole in it. And finally, under the fanfare that sounded in my soul, I found myself below.

   “We have arrived,” I said aloud.

   The light of the lantern beamed into the end wall, already familiar to me, so, hastily bending down, I grabbed it and turned it to the opposite direction.

   A ray pulled out of the darkness ... emptiness.

   I almost dropped the lantern from my hands, it was so unexpected and, I'm not afraid to say, scary. For the first moment it seemed to me that a gigantic abyss had opened before me, on the very edge of which I stood, helpless and defenseless. But this was only the first moment. The lantern fluttered in my hands, and a ray of light slid along the curving wall.

   A tunnel.

   A giant tunnel, about ten meters in diameter, extending at an angle of thirty degrees somewhere down into the darkness.When I came to my senses a bit, I carefully examined what my, not very powerful light source could allow. Yes, an impressive construction. Concrete walls with a rough surface. Metal reinforcing rings. And ... an ordinary ladder, step by step, going down to where the beam of my lamp turned out to be powerless.I did not think long. Putting on a raincoat, I reeled up and hid the sling, and then, throwing the straps of the duffel bag over my shoulders and hanging the flashlight on my chest, I began to descend carefully.

   The steps were wide and comfortable. You could walk along them without even looking at your feet, but I didn’t want to fall into some kind of suddenly opened hole, so I went down slowly, holding the lamp so that I could see the stairs in front. At times I would move the beam directly in front of me, but as before, I could only see the arch of the tunnel covered by metal rings.

   Passing the hundredth step, I began to figure out how many meters I went down, and it turned out not less than fifteen. At the one hundred and thirtieth step, it seemed to me that I was seeing the edge of the tunnel arch, and after another ten steps I was convinced that it was so, and in front of me there was a yawn of darkness still beyond my sight. On the two hundredth step, the descent ended, and the beam of my flashlight hesitantly rose from the floor.

   I stood ... at a subway station.

“Kurchatov” station

   Yes, I was at a subway station.

   You will not understand my condition. You were ready to perceive what I just told you from the very beginning of my story. So now you are relieved to say to yourself: "Well, finally. Finally, he reached this place." And at the same time, my thoughts and feelings at that time are completely inaccessible to you.

   Perhaps I just don’t know how to tell, effectively leading the story to the most important thing, if you were not at all surprised by what I saw. If you are sitting now with bland, polite, calm faces. Of course, maybe you just do not believe me, and then this is another matter. But if at least one of you does not consider my words to be fiction, try to understand my shock - the Mystery was not at all what I imagined it to be!

   Frankly, I was ready for anything. I was ready to discover here a secret labyrinth of ancient eras, a giant bomb shelter, a powerful accelerator of charged particles, food depots, underground factories, ballistic missiles shafts, and even, I admit, gloomy strategic transport arteries ... But to discover some sort of an underground palace - no, that was beyond my comprehension, it went against all my guesses and assumptions! ..

   Barely moving my wooden legs, I walked forward along the thick layer of dust covering the marble floor. I was not well. The design of the station was in stark contrast to the rough finish of the tunnel, which I just went down from. A ray of light pulled out from the darkness either thin metal columns lined with corrugated stainless steel with inserts of raspberry-pink rhodonite, a smalt panel adorning the plafonds embedded in the arch of the hall, or a tall statue standing in a niche at the opposite end of the station ... there are no suitable words to describe this, but - just imagine one of the Moscow metro stations, and everything will become clear to you.

   Of course, there was no brightness, glitter and cleanliness, familiar to the capital city metro passengers. Only the beam of my lantern scattered the darkness, and around, as I said, everything was covered with a layer of dust. But the layer was smooth, untouched, so there was no impression of dirt or any disorder. It was as if they covered the station with the lightest gas cloak, as if trying to muffle its intolerable splendor a little.

   The similarity to the Moscow metro was mainly in the level of aesthetic embodiment. In the degree of architectural and artistic perfection. And the difference ... From a purely technical stance, there are two fundamental differences between the station that opened to me and the stations of the capital - and any other subway. Firstly, it was almost two times shorter than usual, forty or fifty meters, no more. And secondly, it was one-sided - that is, there was only one transport tunnel, the track of which passed to the right of the platform (in relation to the tunnel along which I went down). The diameter of the tunnel seemed to me much larger than the diameter of the usual metro tunnels familiar to me.

   I walked along the platform and approached the three-meter-high copper-casting figure in the opposite niche . There is no doubt! Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov! But it was not that stern and impregnable Kurchatov, towering now on the Twentieth site. Here he was portrayed with a fervent laugh, with his famous beard slightly lifted forward. In his hands he held a model of an atom with electron balls attached to wire ellipses. His whole figure breathed such health, joy and optimism that I involuntarily smiled, although at that moment I was not at all having fun."The Soviet atomic workers fulfilled their duty to the country!" I.V. Kurchatov, "I read on a pedestal lined with granite.

   And from these words, from this obsolete word "atomic worker" I suddenly shuddered, goosebumps ran down my back, and a lump appeared in my throat. It was as if I felt the breath of history on me. It was as if I had returned to the era of universal joy and fiery enthusiasm, to the era when my fellow countrymen still understood what they were working and living for - and were proud of it! - in the era of eternal youth and a happy future ... For a moment it seemed unreal to me that somewhere upstairs now they are cursing the President, dreaming of getting at least some money, they can’t feed their children and, most importantly, they don’t see anything ahead of them except the inevitably approaching old age and its terrible companion following shortly after ...

   A giant mosaic panel decorating the station wall opposite to the rails attracted my attention for a long time. I would call it The History of the Atom, or maybe it was really called that. There, surrounded by cathode lamps, atomic reactors, synchrophasotrons, flashing supernovae, flasks, retorts, all kinds of physical equations with the same "E = MC2" in the center - were depicted Lomonosov and Beckerel, the spouses Curie and Rutherford, Einstein and Fermi, Kurchatov and Landau (by the way, it was thanks to Lev Davidovich that I later concluded that the station was decorated no earlier than 1968) ...

   Examining the pattern on the marble floor slabs, I did not immediately realize that the intricate ligature is nothing more than a stylized image of an atom. The originality of this image was that each element of the picture spread out on the floor had a kind of “self-similarity”, and the nuclear-planetary structure was repeated inside the electrons, protons and neutrons, and inside their corresponding elements it was again possible to make out the central core and its envelopes. In my opinion, this was a magnificent illustration of the idea of the infinity of the levels of matter and their invariance with respect to scale. In general, I thought that the the sketch of this pattern was created by a mathematician.

   The arch of the hall was decorated with two plafonds, alternating with three giant bronze lamps. On one of the plafonds, I saw something like a spaceship plowing expanse of the universe , and on the other - a panorama of a beautiful city with tall buildings and transparent aircraft hanging in the air - maybe this is how the author imagined Snezhinsk of the future ...

   Yes, about the air. The air was stale. Not that it had any smell or it was hard to breathe, but the feeling was like that of a long-unventilated room. Maybe it only seemed so, with an unconscious comparison to the invigorating atmosphere of most subways in the country. I do not know, in any case, it was clear that even if ventilation shafts exist somewhere, the exhaust units have not been working for a long time. The air temperature, in my opinion, did not exceed ten to twelve degrees. It was relatively dry.

   I jumped off the platform and walked a little deeper into the tunnel. There was no familiar airflow. And the wind from the approaching train did not ruffle the naughty hair ... Thick cable bundles covered with dust stretched along the walls. Rails, sleepers and a concrete base were covered with the same dust. I kicked the contact rail mounted on the brackets on the side and just above the running rails, but even without that it was clear that there was no trace of electricity here ...

   Suddenly, I realized how tired I was. I realized that I was holding on with all my strength and only alcohol did not let me go crazy from everything I saw. But the effect of alcohol had already begun to pass, there was a chill, a feeling of nervousness, which, I felt, was about to turn into a tantrum or a fit of fear. I realized that for the first time is enough. It's time to come back.

   While I was climbing up two hundred steps, exhausted and emptied, I understood what this inclined tunnel is for. Here escalators were to be mounted for raising and lowering passengers, all kinds of drives, sprockets and tensioners. Were to be? I asked myself. So where are they? However, this question was already beyond the power of my brain, exhausted by impressions.

   Having climbed the brackets with difficulty to the hole punched out two hours ago, to the window, behind which the familiar world began, behind which my dear Snezhinsk had measuredly snoozed in the sweetest morning dream, I threw a sack there, a raincoat, and was about to squeeze in myself when all of a sudden...

   I don’t know what it was. Perhaps I just imagined some type of a creak, or a squeal that rang out somewhere far below. But then I froze in place, hanging at the height of the third floor, and unnaturally twisting my neck, I kept gazing into the darkness of the tunnel going down, listening carefully and feeling my insides freeze. Then, as if waking up from hypnosis, I threw my body into the hole in one motion, smashing the flashlight to smithereens.

   “Kurchatov station ...” I muttered nervously, rising from the floor in pitch darkness and trying to suppress the rising fear at least with the sound of my voice. - Exit to the Jubilee store and school number one hundred twenty six ... Caution, the doors are closing ...

Lominsky Metro

   Afterwards I got sick.

   High fever and delirium. My brain refused to make ends meet. I wandered in the dark passages, and the electric cables turned into stinging snakes. The walls closed and crushed my body with a crunch. I was constantly thirsty. Constantly gasping for air. The night time stretched to infinity, and the days passed so fast that once I seriously thought that the Earth had stopped its rotation, and in the States it is now an eternal day. In the viscous swamp of my nightmares, I tried many times to draw an ellipse through six points and could not, just could not do it - and this, perhaps, was the worst.

   The first sensation after which I realized that I was recovering was a fresh, moist stream of air from a wide open window. Rain in early August. After that, things got better.

   Do you think that I was slowly gaining strength after my illness, not daring to go down again? To hell! I went down there two days after I first got out of bed. I came down, became convinced that all this really exists, and returned. For the first time, it was enough for me. Sometimes I think that my illness was sent to me from above as a kind of respite in order to get used to all these underground affairs and not to go crazy.

   I began to go down daily, or rather, nightly - in the afternoon I had to sleep in the workplace. I completely renounced my life, cutting off almost all ties with anyone, except, perhaps, my son and daughter. The Underground - that was my only reality. I lost all fears when descending there (although, mindful of strange sounds, I now always hung a huge hunting knife on my belt), the feeling of surprise was dulled. It was as if I embarked on some grand project, doing it carefully, methodically, step by step ...

   Yes, I call this place the Underground. Sometimes - without a shadow of irony - the Lominsky metro: in our city, this was the only person by whose name I would not hesitate to call anything. But more often it’s simply - the Ring.

   There are really six stations. And each station - apart from the ubiquitous dust and the lack of escalators - is brand new, as if an orchestra is about to sound and a blue ribbon is to be cut. You know, I often imagine that these stations are lit with bright light, that the platforms are full of people, jokes are heard, laughter, a fresh wind blows from the throat of the tunnel, and, as if pushing it, a fancy express breaks free into the air ... And you know - I get a lump in my throat. I would like to ride this blue train every day ...

   I gave my own names to the stations, because, to my surprise, despite their completeness, not one of them had metal letters adding to form the names on the walls.

   I have already spoken about Kurchatov station. It became my home base. From it I traveled through tunnels from station to station. I slightly expanded the completed hole to make it easier to get in and out, and I inserted a lock on the corridor door in case of an invasion by uninvited plumbers.

   Behind Kurchatov station, about six hundred meters away, approximately in the middle of Victory Street (underground, of course) is the Ural station. It is simply impossible to name it any other way. Imagine columns trimmed with red-brown granite with emerald green capitals made of coil and amazonite. Trees, real trees! Passing between them you can lose yourself and imagine that you are in the forest. A mosaic panel on the wall! Wonderful mountains, mysterious lakes, dense forests, jolly rivers - this is the inescapable beauty of the ancient and ever-young Urals ... And this panel was made not by some smalt, but by real Ural gems, primarily jasper of various colors and shades although there is onyx, serpentine, and ophiocalcite, and porphyry - in a word, all the wealth of the Ural treasuries. At the end of the station is a stunning Stone Flower - when I first saw it, I admired it for almost an hour, unable to tear myself away from this wonderful sight. I think the person who sculpted him is a master from God, to match Bazhov's Danila ... On the Flower sits a large red-green lizard, also made of stone, and behind, on the wall are characters of Ural tales -portrayed in a completely unusual, unconventional but very attractive manner ...

   Further along the line is "Workers" station, the one near the "Sinara", under the hill. Shallow niches are made in massive pylons located along the platform, from the side of the hall, in which sculptures depicting representatives of various professions are made on the low marble pedestals by electroforming (I tapped - they are hollow inside). Perhaps they should symbolize the most common occupations of the inhabitants of Snezhinsk. There are seven in all, they are slightly taller than human height. The scientist is an elderly man in an academic cap on his head, in his hand is a microscope. The engineer is a middle-aged man who counts on a slide rule. The doctor is a slender woman with a stethoscope on her chest, next to her is a little girl that a woman strokes on the head. The worker - a young fellow holding a hammer at his right leg. The teacher is again a woman, this time elderly, with glasses, a globe in her hands, a boy next to her showing Snezhinsk on the globe (not Moscow, as I first thought). The warrior is a stern man with a machine gun on his shoulder. And the collective farmer closes the gallery - a full-bosomed, cheerful girl with a sheaf of wheat in her hands ...

   All these figures are somewhat reminiscent of the sculptures at the Revolution Square station in Moscow. But it is obvious that they were created by another sculptor. They are less artificial (but no less skillful!), more human, more lifelike. And despite the seemingly naive symbolism, they do not look funny. They exude pride and spirituality ...

   Another “tunnel” departs from Workers station to the right , as well as from the next station, which I call Snowy, but I will talk about these tunnels a little later. Snowy station, located under the one hundred and twenty-first school, amazes with its decoration in white marble and other white materials. The most interesting thing is that I did not immediately understand the charm of this station. Dust and darkness prevented me. But when the imagination taught me to imagine my Dungeon as it should look in the light of bright friendly lamps, washed and cleaned up, joyful and calm - then and only then, penetrating with thought through the soul-killing grayness, I realized the gentle, subtle charm of a winter fairy tale blowing from every bit of this station ...

   There is a station under the surgical building, which, after much deliberation, I called “Zoological”, although I understand that this name doesn’t quite suit it, something less formal, something more tender, intimate is needed ... In the very center of the station stands something like a huge tree, or perhaps a cliff twined with creeping plants, onto which the most diverse representatives of the animal world of our forests are perched. On the lower ledges from different sides are an elk, a bear, a wolf and a wild boar; a lynx, a roe deer, a hare, a capercaillie are located a little higher, above them are small critteres like martens, squirrels, ravens and woodpeckers, and a kite flinging open its huge wings crowns the very top. All this is made of black cast iron, and even a layman can easily recognize the famous Kasli castings ... The columns of the station, made of gray-blue marble, expand slightly towards capitals, which look like unreal fantastic plants. In my opinion, the station lights are hidden there, behind the capitals, and I imagine how soft, caressing light should fill this hall, as if illuminating the central composition like the sun ... On the wall there is a mosaic again. The image resembles a gigantic ornament, on which dozens, if not hundreds of animals, seem to flow into each other, not allowing to make out where one easy-swift body begins and another ends ... It seems to me that the kids would be crazy about this station for hours standing there and staring with amazed little eyes at someone's unknown skill ...

   And finally, the last station is “Lenin Square”. I am sure that it should have been called that. Here on the bas-reliefs under the ceiling there is little Volodya Ulyanov, and “we will go the other way”, and the hut in Razliv, and the speech from the armored car, and “peace to the nations!” and something else made from famous paintings. A bronze Lenin in an end niche reaches out his hand, and on the wall behind him is the Aurora, and groups of sailors and workers are running off into the distance with rifles at the ready ...

   Okay, I got carried away. Of course, you are not at all interested how these stations are designed, because a completely understandable question revolves around your tongue and dries your throat. Well, I’ll move on to it now - but here's what I still want to tell you. The man who conceived this particular design of Snezhinsk metro is a genius! .. Genius, because he expressed the very essence of the city, having embodied its immortal soul ... Think for yourself! Wonderful people surrounded by wonderful reality, which helps them to create and inspires them to new exploits! .. The energetic Kurchatov, Workers and Lenin Square embody the pathos of work, creativity and revolutionary breakthrough into the future, while the soft and sincere "Ural", "Snowy" and "Zoological" seem to support them, bringing people the harmony, tenderness and purity so necessary for them ...

   I would like to live in such a world.

Doubts and questions

   Yes, I understand your impatience. Going around the caves of the tunnels and admiring the palaces of the stations, I, like you now, was tormented by the same question.

   Why a subway?

   And this question instantly fragmented into dozens of small questions. When was it built? Who built it? What was it for? Why don't the townspeople know anything about it? Why was it not put into operation? Why weren't the escalators laid? Why? Why? Why?..

   Step by step, I received answers to some of these questions, but could not answer the main one.

   The first thing that became obvious from the very beginning was that the construction of the subway was for some reason shrouded in such a veil of secrecy that perhaps no agent of any of the secret services that had ever existed on Earth had dreamed of in his rosy dreams . The degree of this secrecy can be grasped at least by the fact that in the city, where at any point you can hear some or other atomic secrets (and this, in the presence of an allegedly reliable system of their protection), the vast majority of the population have not once (which would be more than enough for spread of rumors) hear about this construction! ..

   After much thought, I decided that the subway was built for about fifteen years - from the mid-sixties to the end of the seventies. I determined the lower limit based on the story of Uncle Kolya - of course, it was there in 1966 that a train with equipment, which had never surfaced anywhere in the Instutute, has disappeared to. And, judging by uncle's words, more than one train. Probably, in order to maintain secrecy, such matters were assigned to different people, and not all of them possessed the degree of competence and insight inherent in my uncle. Delivered, signed - the end! .. The upper boundary was drawn from the considerations that, climbing under the ground as a teenager, I distinctly heard the noise coming from below, and now, restoring the nature of this noise in my memory, I was absolutely convinced that it belonged to the underground electric trains. So at that time the work was in full swing, and the metro was getting ready for commissioning. The fact that the work ended in the seventies, I also decided, studying some of the features of the picturesque and architectural elements of the stations: this style was typical only for the seventies, and since the stations were designed at the final stage, it was then that something prevented their unveiling.

   As for the builders, I have not made a final decision. I do not want to seem ridiculous, making any assumptions, but in Snezhinsk there can be no people involved in this construction. There can’t - and that’s it. Perhaps some of them (few, otherwise the information would have spread one way or another) were entirely in the know about the construction; to this day they are perfectly aware of everything that I am talking about (and these people know how to keep secrets!). Others worked there, most likely not even understanding where this place was (a suitable legend was created for them, their signatures taken, driven to the place of work in circles in a closed car - and so on). But the bulk, I am sure, were military builders not of “our” construction battalion, possibly even prisoners brought there on some sort of “shift”. Maybe they lived there, although I found no evidence of this.

   They will ask me: how so? Subway construction always begins with the laying of a mine, from which tens of thousands of cubic meters of soil are taken out. Where are such mines in Snezhinsk? Where is the extracted soil that all citizens should have seen?

   I too could not answer these questions for a long time. I’ll return to the excavated soil, but I’ll definitely tell you about the mines. Two mines were laid in the city, which the townspeople did not know about for one simple reason: both of them were on the territory of ordinary, unremarkable construction sites.

   Where exactly?..

   n principle, with good reflection, you yourself could answer this question. Little hint. Please recall the examples, perhaps unique for the "seventies" long-term construction, lasting almost a decade. Strain, strain your brains - you need to know the history of your hometown in all its manifestations ... Remember? Right. One of them is the long-term construction of a new surgical building (by the way, the slogan “Glory to the first builders of the city!” hung on its facade for so long - which, in the end, began to seem that it was for the builders who laid it). Well, what about the second unfinished building? Huh? That's right too. Only the construction of not just one "Department Store", but the entire complex of buildings on Lenin Square -the "Department Store", and the "House of Communications", and "Snowflakes". Thinking about it? What, in your opinion, was the delay in building for many years in a city with excellent financing? And don't you think that these objects coincide with something else? With some points that I already told you about ...

   I will not bore you. The answer is simple. The main shaft is now under the surgical building. And I will say more: this mine was laid in the place of some older mine. I found a lot of horizontal drifts, which I did not have time to study, because, having passed only one of them, I was convinced that it stretches for more than three hundred meters, and there are dozens of them. So, I’ll make an assumption (in fact, this is my firm conviction) that the first metro builders went down through these old workings, and then, naturally, the mine was expanded ..

   But here's the thing: the mine is wide enough to accept a significant number of workers, but completely unsuitable for extracting a large volume of soil to the surface. That is, a crate for about twenty people is still there, but it is absolutely not suitable for transporting the ore. There are also no inclined workings with skips, trolleys or conveyors. Absolutely no. What? Tunnels for escalators? Those inclined escalator tunnels that I spoke of are not connected with the ground surface and have never been connected with it ...

   All of the above also applies to the second, slightly smaller, mine under the "Department Store". Of course, no entrances from the basements to these shafts now exist for the simple reason that the manholes of the shafts are covered with slabs and filled with concrete of the foundation on which these two buildings, so familiar to the eye of the townspeople, rise ...

   But here's another mystery: there are no mines at the four remaining stations. How did people get there? There is only one answer - only through a gradually laid tunnel. From the point of view of driving to the workplace, this is probably not bad: get on a trolley and drive off. But from the point of view of the delivery of roadheaders there and the return transportation of the same soil - this is another thing to think about. But the fact remains: the subway was built almost from the inside. Even, it would seem, such objects as ventilation shafts, which are quite accessible and advisable to do from the surface of the earth (where there is space for technology to turn around), nevertheless, according to many signs, were also laid from below. Speaking of ventilation shafts. Their ground parts still exist (I made my way along them to the very top), and in five cases out of six they are inside the structures of local transformer substations. Ventilation kiosks are surrounded by distribution boards, tightly welded to them. However, the stall lattices are not patched, which, apparently, allows even with idle fans for fresh air to penetrate into the subway.

   It becomes somewhat clear why the escalators were not mounted. The beginning of the escalators installation would mark the exit of construction to the surface, that is, practically declassifying it. Undoubtedly, sooner or later this should have happened - this could not go beyond the plans of its creators (although sometimes I get a crazy idea that I try to drive away, but it comes back to my head again and again: what if the Snezhinsk metro from the very beginning was built as a kind of “thing in itself” - just like that, out of a love of art?), but declassification did not happen. For unknown reasons, just before the completion, an order was given to urgently curtail construction.

   Urgency or emergency? The latter was more likely. You cannot explain by urgency alone the fact that all the equipment, probably worth millions of those old rubles, was left below.

   Left or abandoned?

   When this thought first hit me, I felt unwell. I remember how I rushed through the dark tunnel from Lenin Square to my Kurchatov, stumbling, falling, getting up, and cursing myself for imbecility. The brain helpfully prompted an answer that nearly cost me a mental breakdown then.

   Radiation! How did I not immediately understand! Radioactive infection of tunnels. And I wandered about them, staring around with the curiosity of a nerd, not knowing what lies in wait ...

   I already considered myself a dead man. A goner. However, at home I pulled myself together and before running to donate blood for analysis (as I decided along the way) I called a school friend who works at Twentieth. A call at three in the morning (I realized a little later about the time of day) agitated him, but the next day I went down with the dosimeter in my hand and did not calm down until I walked all over the Ring.

   There was no radiation.

   But the questions remained.

   And here is another problem that worried me. I will show on the map. Take a look. The drawn ellipse captures the sixth, ninth and twelfth microdistricts of Snezhinsk, that is, the territory bounded by the streets of Sverdlov, Vasilyev, Victory , Shchelkin, and New. Okay, let’s leave alone the New City, the construction of which during the development of the project may not have been planned yet, but, excuse me, why was the oldest part of the city without the metro east of Sverdlov? .. But this is not the main thing. Even a child will tell you that the metro (as, incidentally, other types of public transport) is created mainly to organize passenger flows from residential areas to a place related to the production activities of the bulk of the population! In short, from home - to work!

   So why does the ellipse of the Snezhinsk metro not capture at least the Ninth site? Using the subway for urban traffic is not even funny: it will take longer to go down underground.

   However, there is a tunnel towards the Ninth. I have already mentioned the branch from Workers station. However, this tunnel raises more questions than explains anything. Firstly, it is narrower than the main ring tunnels, although it has the same track line. Secondly, it does not reach the Ninth at all, but somewhere in the area of the city cemetery or even, possibly closer to the city, it branches into three deadlock tunnels in which the depot is organized. This does not apply to the case, but I’ll say: there are nine three-car trains there, in my opinion, in very good condition ... Yes! From Snowy station there is a tunnel of the same diameter and about the same direction, however it breaks off two hundred meters from the station. A tunneling shield is installed at a dead end. The rails are not stacked. At all.

   And although these tunnels (Sorting and Cul-de-Sac, as I called them) were nothing special, I often turned to them off the Ring Line. I don’t know why, but their strange difference from other tunnels made me think that the solution lies in them. I also wandered there on November 7, trying to find answers to damned questions when something happened that I still can’t remember without a shudder.

   I walked from the depot along the Sorting tunnel, and I had about two hundred meters to the arrow, when I felt that a pebble got to my right shoe. Putting the flashlight on the ground, I bent down to untie my shoes, and at that moment I saw it.

   Huge footprints with terrible crooked claws clearly imprinted on the dusty sleepers.

The Beast

   Forget Robinson Crusoe! He had a gun in his hands, an ax behind his belt, and he still found only human tracks! ..I squatted, literally shrinking into a lump and expecting that an unknown beast was about to be on my back, tearing and ripping my body with its claws. Fear bubbled in me, mingling with a keen sense of hopelessness: the only way out was two kilometers of tunnels away, where, you know, there was no possibility of hiding or turning aside.

   I cursed myself for being careless. I don’t know why, but during these four months I completely ruled out the possibility of any danger in the Underground. Those strange sounds that I heard on my first arrival here were, over time, frivolously attributed by me to an onset of delirium. Time after time I became more and more careless, more and more often forgetting to take a hunting knife - and now I had no weapons, no way to protect myself.

   I did not even try to come up with any hypotheses about the origin of these tracks - I would like to look at you in this circumstance! - and the only thought that, I remember, was dancing in my head, was: "Only not rats. Please,don't be rats! .."

   Gradually, the stupor that gripped me has passed. I slowly straightened up and carefully shone the lantern into the darkness in front of me. Then, just as carefully, shone it back. Nobody. It was absolutely quiet. The ability to think gradually returned to me. There could not be a beast behind me - I walked all the way from the depot, where there is nowhere to hide. So it was here before me - and before I entered the Sorting tunnel it returned to the Ring line. I again lit the sleepers with a lantern.

   So it was! The unknown tracks went both ways, and it was easy to see that my own tracks everywhere went on top of them. On top - and how on top! The prints of my sneakers were inside the prints of a monster, apparently wandering along the railroad ties like me. I am not a tracker, but I managed to make out anothere, slightly smaller prints, from which I concluded that the beast was walking on four legs. Who could it be? ..

   It is now that I am describing everything so coherently and beautifully. Then it was only fragments of thoughts, from which I, rather subconsciously, built the general picture.

   The image of a giant rat with a fat body, with a long stiff tail, with an indescribably vile grin of upper teeth haunted me, but, listening to the voice of reason and casting out the chilling images of horror films from my head, I assumed that a simple bear just passed here (!). Where it came from was the second question, but, you see, it’s easier (and somehow more reassuring) to imagine in the subway this large and often dangerous predator, than an unknown monster like a mutant rat or some giant hyena. ..

   There was only one road, and I slowly moved forward, now and then stopping and listening. For some reason, I decided to get to the station first thing, where, it seemed to me, there would not be such a hopeless - back and forth - alternative to my movement. There it will be possible to figure out where the beast has gone and run along the Ring in the other direction - to the security of Kurchatov station.

   I approached the junction of the Sorting tunnel and the Ring. The Ring line vaults were one and a half times higher, so the darkness immediately seemed to come nearer, opening its arms. I shone the lamp first to the right, then to the left - and gasped!

   The tracks were everywhere!

   I repeat: I am not a ranger. Perhaps the beast walked here a week ago, and I just did not pay attention to the prints in the dust. But now I had to make a decision which way to go, and I, like Buridan's ass, faced a deadly dilemma.

   Actually, I was going to the depot from the side of Workers station, and if I didn’t meet anyone along the way, it would be logical to assume that it was worth going there. However, who dares to claim that the beast, having walked, say, to Snowy or Zoological, while I was in the depot, did not decide to visit the same Kurchatov? And I simply will follow it! .. Or, perhaps, it is sitting (and has been sitting!) somewhere on the steps of the Workers or Ural escalator tunnels (I did not go to any of these stations), waiting for my return to get to know me better?

   In the end, I nevertheless moved towards the Workers station, visible on the left, mainly guided by one consideration: from here it is closest to Kurchatov. I reassured myself that perhaps the tracks were about to end, turning back, and then I would go forward unhindered.

   The beast jumped on me from the platform.

   Everything happened so unexpectedly that I did not even have time to really get scared. In the light of a lantern soaring upwards, I saw only an elongated black-and-white muzzle with fangs under a bulging upper lip and a light, almost white woolly body.

   I am sure that it was only a chance that saved me. The beast was clearly guided by the light of my large mining lamp, which I carried a little in front of my body, so it missed (nevertheless knocking the lamp out of my hand and knocked me down) and hit hard on the tiled wall of the station. Jumping up and screaming wildly, I, without thinking, rushed back. The fallen lantern continued to burn, shining right in my back, and I continued to run, first seeing in front of me in the ray of light my ever-receding shadow, and then for a moment the light faded, and I heard behind me the heavy and at the same time soft tread of my pursuer , whose shadow consumed my shadow and also gradually ran forward with each soft heavy scratching step and a rhythmic inhaling-exhaling sound coming behind my back ...

   Only then did I realize that I had acted in the only right way. Having flown into the Sorting tunnel to the right, I quickly climbed up the wall, clinging to the protruding parts of the metal finish and the cables running along the walls. Here I have a memory failure, however, I remember well that, with my hands on the protruding rod of the armature, I try hard and still can’t throw my second foot over the cable running under the ceiling of the tunnel - and at that very moment I hear, or rather I feel, with my whole body, a heavy blow shaking the wall , and immediately after there is a long booming sound of a burst cable and a disgusting scratching of claws on metal ...

   I don’t know exactly when, but at some point I realized that I was sandwiched between the arch of the tunnel and the two cables running along it. How I managed to get in there - to this day remains an unsolvable mystery for me. My backside hung in a vacuum, my forehead rested against the ceiling, and my legs hung on opposite sides of the cables. There was no bag on my back, and I half-recalled, half-assumed that I had dropped it somewhere during the hundred-meter race that nearly cost me my life.There was a loud and unpleasant rumbling from below. From the sounds, I figured that the beast is trying to reach me, but without much success. This gave me some optimism, because I got comfortable enough and a fall from fatigue did not threaten me, in any case.

   For a long time I could not force myself to turn face down. Firstly, it seemed to me that at the same time I would either fall off or the cable would burst. Secondly, I thought that with my excessive mobility I could infuriate the beast, and it, pumped with adrenaline, will get me. And thirdly, I was simply scared by the opportunity to see my opponent firsthand ...

   I turned over for a long time. The beast stopped wandering back and forth through the tunnel and, judging by the heavy breathing, sat right below me, watching my actions. I released my left foot, slowly moved it to the right, and, catching it on the right cable, carefully turned to the right, holding the left cable with my elbow. Then I pulled my right leg to my stomach and, releasing it from under my left, I jerked to hook on a neighboring cable - and missed.

   My body fell down, describing an arc; I almost fell off and immediately felt a blow of air at the very foot, and then I heard the noisy fall of a huge animal. But my hands had already found both supports, and, not waiting for the beast to jump a second time, I hastily pulled my right foot to the cable, clung to it and only after that, having finally convinced myself of the reliability of my position, I looked down.

   It was not a bear!

   My lantern still continued to shine from afar, and in the obscure twilight I discerned a huge whitish creature with two black stripes on a narrow, elongated snout.

   A giant badger!

   My amazement was so great that I felt my muscles go limp, and for a moment I lost control, almost falling down. The monster was almost larger than a bear, in any case, two meters in length and no less than a meter in height. It kept raising its head and staring at me with tiny, barely noticeable eyes. Twice it approached the tunnel wall and, rising to its hind legs, began to frantically scratch on it, clinging and swinging the cables. Several times it grumbled in a vile way (causing my blood to freeze), ending the rumbling with a vicious guttural grunt.

   Apparently, the beast was not going anywhere. Perhaps this tunnel was its home, or perhaps it, like many predators, could stalk the prey endlessly. Of course, I remembered that badgers feed on frogs, lizards and snakes, but I'm afraid for this badger that would not be quite enough. Rushing at me, it clearly outlined its tastes and priorities.

   About half an hour has passed. The badger wandered through the tunnel under me, retreating about forty to fifty meters, but always returning.

   By that time, I could reason sensibly. Yes, and I had plenty of time. I was not burdened with weapons. I could not boast of muscle strength, although I firmly decided that if I had to engage in battle with the beast, I would try either to strangle it or break its neck. It is ridiculous to think that it will not try to impede my intention - but then is God's will. In any case, I thought, it might be worth wrapping the left hand with a gown to try to shut the beast's mouth. I am not Mtsyri, but I firmly decided to fight for my life.

   Unbuttoning the raincoat, I mechanically put my hand in the pocket, hoping to find something that could help me, and stumbled upon a small object that easily fit in my palm.

   A lighter.

Fire

   Salt is salty.

   Volga flows into the Caspian Sea.

   All animals are afraid of fire.

   Oddly enough, it was precisely these common truths that surfaced in my brain when I felt for a lighter in my storm jacket pocket. Imagine: the twilight of the tunnel, the rumbling predator below, the gleaming rails - and I, pressed with cables to the ceiling and entertaining philosophical problems.

   Not really philosophical.

   Not true, not all animals are afraid of fire. But all animals are afraid of the pain from fire. The light of the lantern did not frighten the badger, although, perhaps, unbalanced it.

   The beast, like human, like any living creature, is afraid of pain.

   Here is my chance.

   At first I almost ruined everything. It occurred to me to draw fire, and then, crushing a plastic can of the lighter, bring down a fiery waterfall on a monster. If I did that, then without a doubt, I would instantly flare up myself and, howling in pain, jump directly into the jaws of a bored badger, hungry for a toasty meal. But my guardian angel was somewhere nearby, and I, upon reflection, abandoned this ridiculous plan.

   I pulled a ribbon from the raincoat neckband, tightening the hood, tied it with a knot on one of the cables and, turning the lighter wheel, carefully set fire to the bottom. The badger watched my actions warily, and when the flame of broke out, it pulled back slightly, hiding its snout - apparently, the light nevertheless caused it some inconvenience. The tiny light at the end of my makeshift tinder did not go out, and I proceeded to the second part of my plan.Undressing under the ceiling was terribly inconvenient, but there was no choice. As if to dry, I hung the raincoat and the sweater on the cable. Tearing the T-shirt with my teeth, I divided it into two parts, and then, pulling out a belt from my jeans, I slipped one of the pieces of the former T-shirt into a buckle and tied it in a knot. After that, I pulled on my sweater again, wrapped a raincoat around my left hand and, having settled down more reliably, carefully crushed the lighter spray, trying to ensure that the contents fell on both pieces of the T-shirt.

   I knew that the liquid evaporates instantly, so I did not have time to think twice. I quickly brought one of the pieces to the tinder, the fabric instantly flared up (although not as hard as I expected), and I dropped it down.

   I was lucky that during the flareup the beast stuck its head in its paws and did not see how the burning fabric landed from above. There was a deafening howl-scream, a sharp smell of burning, but I no longer looked down. A belt with a rag at the end tied around my right wrist served as a torch, and as soon as it blazed with fire, I freed myself from the cables and fell from the height of the second floor, quite successfully falling to my side without breaking anything. Time stretched out. Hearing somewhere ahead of me the furious growl of a beast that was crazed with pain, I slowly got up and still couldn’t finally get up, and when I stood up, was horrified to find out that when I fell, my torch almost went out, and the wheezing badger turned its snout towards me, and its frenzy was about to turn into a rage of attack, but I, drunk from some feverish foreboding of the fight, which I had probably inherited from some distant ancestors, uttered a wild cry and rushed at the enemy, and its frenzy turned into fear, which I felt with my entire body, and instead of clutching its teeth in my throat, it started running away, and I rushed after, waving a belt, with my torch flaring brightly, and I still managed to get its pale, bouncing backside with my fire sword, and it screeched wildly like a rat that got into a mousetrap, and rushed forward faster, spreading the smell of fear and scorched wool, and I kept the chase, shouting something loudly and waving my belt ...

   At the station, the beast immediately jumped onto the platform, rushed past the two nearest pylons, and in the uneven light of my torch, I was astonished to notice how, as if flattened, it squeezed into a narrow, not more than thirty centimeters wide, space under a bench standing against the inner wall !. .

   The torch burned out, and I threw the belt onto the rails. Then crouched, leaning my back against the contact rail. There was neither joy nor fear. The emotional and physical surge was replaced by complete decline and indifference. I did not care. If the badger came back and started to bite me, it would not interest me in the least.Then I somehow pulled myself together, went to retrieve the lantern, which continued to shine (in passing, trying, but not being able to be horrified by the thought of what would have happened if it had crashed), and then completely unexpectedly decided to go and see where the beast had disappeared.

   Overcoming a terrible ache in my whole body, with difficulty I climbed a metal ladder to the platform and hobbled into the hall. Seven figures still stood in their niches, and, after illuminating around, I was somewhat relieved to see that no eighth figure was visible in scope.

   I don’t remember if I said before, that at each station there were four benches located along the wall opposite the platform. They entered the landscape of the stations in different ways, but there were four of them everywhere. So there. My recent friend disappeared under the second bench on the right.

   Bending over, at the first moment I couldn’t make out anything and even for a moment doubted that all this happened here: the gap under the bench was so narrow that even I could hardly squeeze in there. However, then I remembered how once a classmate of mine (now a teacher of biology and geography) told me that in rodents, like mice and rats, the bones of the skull (the most "oversized" place) are arranged in such a way that when an animal squeezes through a narrow gap they fold behind each other. Maybe this creature has such moving bones?

   I laid down on the marble floor near the bench, extinguished the lantern and closed my eyes for a few seconds to get better used to the darkness. Then pushed the flashlight forward so that the flashing light did not blind me, and turned it on. I was supposed to see a dark, winding hole going somewhere deep. Perhaps the predatory snout of the inhabitant of this hole. But what I saw was completely unexpected.

   Behind a concrete wall about thirty centimeters thick, I saw ... a tunnel. Exactly the same as any other tunnel connecting Snezhinsk metro stations. Exactly the same ... but not quite.

   Two ruts were laid in the tunnel, noticeably narrower than usual. On both narrow gauges there were many low trolleys fading into the dark. Not a single cable passed through the walls of the tunnel. There was something else not quite ordinary in this tunnel, but what exactly I could not understand and did not particularly try. That was it. I couldn’t see anything else.

   I will not lie. Having lain on my stomach for about three minutes, I got up and without any interest went off. Another tunnel, I thought languidly. Well, to hell with it.

   You may not understand me. How so, you say. In the secret subway - yet another secret tunnel! How could you not be surprised! How could you not pay attention to this?

   But try to understand me. All my feelings were dulled - a usual defensive reaction. An animal unknown to science had almost eaten me. I miraculously escaped. And you want me to be surprised at something, to think about something, or, even more so, to get into its teeth again?

   However, some work still was going on in my brain, and I was sure that sooner or later the result of this work would surface. In the meantime, I leisurely pulled on the raincoat and, hanging a flashlight around my neck, again went down to the rails. Upon reflection, I decided not to return for the duffel bag (to this day it lies somewhere there, not far from the Sorting tunnel) and, picking up a belt, leisurely wandered towards Kurchatov station. For some reason, I was not at all afraid of a chase now ...

   I want to end my story about that incident with a small, seemingly insignificant episode. When I had already passed the Ural station, the buckle of my belt, which I waved thoughtlessly around, touched the wall of the tunnel, suddenly knocking out a bright spark. I mechanically scratched a fresh scratch on the whitewash with my fingernail and slowly went on. Then stopped and scratched the wall again. Then scraped the wall elsewhere ...

   I'd like to lie that at that moment I understood everything. It would be very elegant, but I would have spoken against my conviction . At this moment, I was simply not able to make any fundamental conclusions. But, metaphorically likening my thought process to the metro, I can say that it was then that my train entered the only possible tunnel leading to its destination station. Although if you ask me what I was thinking about, hobbling along the dark corridors of the Underground, climbing the steps of the Kurchatov escalator tunnel, squeezing into the still narrow manhole opening , then my words will surprise you, and you might decide that they have nothing to do with this whole story.

   But you are mistaken. Should I tell you what I was thinking about?

   I was thinking about tubings.

Tubings

   Now about the tubings.

   If you don’t know what these are, I’ll explain everything with my fingers. The methods for constructing subway tunnels are different, but they always include the following operation. After unloading all the ore, exploded or worked on by jackhammers, the tunnel lining is assembled. It consists of cast-iron rings covering its entire inner surface. Rings are formed from twelve tubing segments connected by bolts. When the ring is assembled, the cycle is repeated, and after about a meter the next ring is assembled etc. You have seen these black structures more than once, staring out the window of a subway car.

   So here. I asked myself the question: why, running away from the terrifying badger, I risked my life to overcome the extra hundred meters, and did not climb the tunnel wall immediately after the attack?

   Of course, you can assume that my brains worked poorly then, and in a panic I did not immediately understand what to do. However, I dare to object and make the opposite assumption: my brains worked just as they should, although I was completely unaware of the logic to my actions. But there was logic there. Iron logic. Cast iron. The fact is that the tunnel lining with tubings, clinging to which I climbed to the very top so deftly, exists only in the Sorting and Cul-de-Sac tunnels. Otherwise there are no tubings anywhere in Snezhinsk subway!

   Yes, I ran for a reason, and ran to the Sorting tunnel, the only place to escape from inevitable death, because the walls of the entire Ring Tunnel are completely smooth, and cables go everywhere only at the human height.

   Why, I thought, this knowledge, which helped me at that critical moment, never served as the subject of my thoughts and conclusions? Yet I perfectly saw the difference between the Ring and Sorting tunnels! And not just by the presence of tubings. After all, I always mentally called the Sorting tunnel "narrow" because its diameter is less than the diameter of the main tunnel. But only realizing the problem of tubings, I personally imagined the Sorting tunnel - and cold sweat broke through me.

   This is not Sorting tunnel with its standard six meters that is a “narrow” one, but the Ring that is the“wide” one!

   In the Snezhinsky metro, only two tunnels were typical for the Soviet metro construction - Sorting and Cul-de-Sac!

   But, you might say, the Snezhinsk metro was planned precisely as an experimental one, with a larger diameter, higher throughput, with tubings embedded inside the concrete vault ... Rubbish! Why not all tunnels have an “experimental” diameter? How the hell can there be an increase in throughput with the same track - the wagons will get thicker? And as for the termination ... As for the embedding, I can only say one thing.The Ring tunnel is all-metal.

   Yes, it was by hitting lime with a buckle that I discovered this. Then I scratched almost a hundred meters of the wall, and everywhere I saw this same yellowish-gray, brass-like metal. Not a single slit, not a single groove - at least to compensate for temperature changes. Everywhere the same ...

   And now I will try to briefly state my hypothesis, which you can perceive as you like. You can come up with your own - all or almost all the facts are now at your disposal. But first, hear me out still.

   Here is my main thesis.

   The ring existed long before the foundation of the city.

   It will go easier later. Let's start with aliens, although, in principle, you can take anyone: the ancient Atlanteans, and the Seven Wise, and the Celtic Druids, and Masons, and indeed, any subjects that you prefer. The value of this assumption will be approximately the same. So, once some creatures (having sufficiently advanced technology at their disposal) built for their incomprehensible purposes large tunnels in the depths of the Ural Mountains (or maybe then not even in depths, and they were not tunnels, but, say, something like a pipeline system ) Well, they built it for themselves, and then they either forgot about them, or they didn’t need them. Years, centuries, and even millennia passed, all these things, of course, were forgotten, because one after another the waves of resettlement of peoples, all kinds of Huns, Avars, Turks swept across the South Urals, until in the end the Bashkir ethnic group was formed, pushing out a number of Ugric peoples further north. But since the Bashkirs were not involved in mining, and their predecessors, on the contrary, were rather inclined to it, I dare to assume that these “white-eyed Chudes” were the first to discover the Ring, digging in the ground here and there. Of course, this could not but amaze their imagination, and - like for many ancient peoples - it would certainly have become either a shrine, or quite the opposite. Since, according to the mentality, as they say now, an object located in the ground was close to Ugric miners, it was more likely to become an object of worship. Which is probably what happened. After the Ugrians were supplanted by the Bashkirs, the secret cult, shrouded in all kinds of speculations, undoubtedly continued to exist for some time, which tabooed (“do not go”) this place for the Bashkirs (although, perhaps, the taboo was also connected with the fact that worshipers had long been defending their shrine with weapons in their hands, ruthlessly killing outsiders who entered here). Be as it may, but due to lack of information, the ban eventually moved to the household level, and the southern coast of Sinara remained unpopulated for centuries.Of course, from time to time some dashing Bashkir hunter or reckless Russian prospector wandered here. And it is possible that at some point one of these brave men had the opportunity to climb into the dark depths of caves and passages under the current surgical building. Whether he got mentally damaged or his nerves were stronger than those of our pampered contemporaries, but the rumor about the Ring wondered around the world until in Soviet times it reached ... Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria.

   Honestly, I bow my head before the truly bold deed of the Special Committee Chairman, who was not afraid to go tens of kilometers away from his main trip, to make sure with his own eyes that the Underground exists. It would be interesting, however, to find out how many of those who accompanied him survived at least past 1953? ..

   I am sure that Beria immediately appreciated the uniqueness of the find. It was only in the Soviet Union. This, though not immediately, not directly, promised a unique breakthrough in science, machinery, technology, and, therefore, would steadily lead to the strengthening of the power of the world's first socialist state. The only problem was that the information about this should in no way become the property of anyone.

   Perhaps the prospects for using the Ring at that time seemed dazzling, comparable only to the prospects of the growing nuclear industry, the secrets of which the USSR kept as the apple of an eye. Therefore, the level of secrecy of any information related to the Ring could not be lower than the atomic one.

   I insist that Beria has put this information an order of magnitude higher. How else to explain the plan, devilish in its cunning, to erect another Atom City over the Ring, and quietly engage in underground research in its shadow ?!

   Do you know what a legend is? No, not in the mythological sense, but in reference to a secrecy protocol. For example, a medium-capacity paint and varnish factory is being built to produce enamels and paints necessary for everyday life, and a gigantic production of chemical weapons is unfolding under it. Moreover, the workers at the paint and varnish factory may not suspect what is being done under them. This is called a legend, or cover.

   So, the city, which will later be called Snezhinsk, with its NII-1011, from which the giant RFNC-VNIITF will later grow, has become such a legend for the global Project to study the Ring!

   To this day, not one of the most cunning American analysts has doubted that the secret city of Snezhinsk was created specifically for the development of atomic weapons. Replace a small lie with a big one, Goebbels said, and then they will definitely believe you. It remains to add: hide under a huge secret a global one- and not a living soul learns about the global secret.

   Imagine that for forty years the inhabitants of Snezhinsk lived and worked surrounded by gigantic decorations, honestly and selflessly fulfilling their work and patriotic duty. Moreover, these decorations were active: weapons were constantly being improved, bombs exploded at the training grounds, new townspeople appeared in the maternity hospital, those who had finished their earthly path rested in the cemetery, and no one, no one suspected that this performance was being played out in the name of a certain goal, clearly understandable to someone ...

   I understand that it’s not easy and, most importantly, it’s very unflattering to imagine such a thing. To many this will seem simply insulting. Then I ask them: was it not insulting to you when you were forced to lie to your family and friends on the Big Land about what you are doing? Was it not insulting to you when you invented the reasons why your relatives, your old dads and moms cannot visit you? You were not offended when, from your submission, your children from a very young age learned to lie to unfamiliar uncles and aunts about their place of residence, albeit in the name of a good goal, as you considered it, but still - to lie? ...

   No, you were not insulted! Only because the state shared this lie with you. And when the state decided that one of you in this pair was superfluous (decided in the name of the common good, in the name of the highest necessity - can you really doubt it?) - then you felt offended ...

   Truth cannot be insulting.

   Now about the subway. Imagine: the fifties. Stalin and Beria are gone. There is a desperate struggle for power. Snezhinsk construction is in full swing. The first bombs are produced like a clockwork. All is well. The play is at full speed. And behind the screen, things are not going well.

   Those admitted have encountered a certain problem, the essence of which we will not go into for now, a problem that has demonstrated the utter futility of most expectations. In other words, the Project suffered a complete and crushing fiasco. What would you do in the place of those responsible?

   Declassify? What do you mean! How can you! I am sure that on all relevant documents there was (and still is) an indefinite signature stamp, and even the Secretary General himself could not do anything about it. And the money for the Project continued to come, and it had to be somehow capitalized ...

   I don’t know who could have come with this idea - true genius! But judging by the form of its embodiment, this was the idea of the smallest clerical rat admitted to the Project, who had become skilled in the search for suitable items of expenditure and had eaten a dog to write off the money remaining at the end of the reporting period. Judge for yourself! A project could be declassified only if the Ring ceased to exist. And since its physical destruction was very doubtful, an idea appeared to destroy it on paper. Simply giving it a different name.

   Do you feel the clerical twists? "To declassify object" X "for the lack thereof. Write off money from the balance of object" X "to the metro station named after GP Lominsky." And that’s all. Simple and ingenious. A stroke of the pen - and the incomprehensible Ring disappears, and in return appears the subway, necessary as air.

   And the subway was built. In the same atmosphere of extreme secrecy, since until the end of construction, sensitive facility "X" continued to exist. And if you figure out how much money was invested in it, you will clearly understand what hopes (in monetary terms) were placed on the Project ...

   You may ask: how do the giant badger and the tunnel hidden behind the wall fit into my hypothesis? Very simple. I proceeded from the assumption that the main task of the metro developers was to maximize the use of the existing spaces of the Ring. Considering that in the badger’s hole I saw a “non-tubing” nine-meter tunnel, taking into account the presence of trolleys in it, and also recalling the absence of trucks with exported soil on the city streets at the time of my childhood, I concluded that six stations were created at the junction of the ring of radial tunnels converging somewhere in the central part (this place, according to my calculations, is located under the Sunny store), and soil was exported (or rather, brought into the center of the Ring) from these radial tunnels extracted from the future stations locations. After the development of the cavities under the station, the radial tunnels were closed, and dumps of waste rock remained in the center.

   As for the badger, I assumed that several families of these animals had got here once, and in the absence of enemies, they gradually, from generation to generation, increased in size, acquired a whitish color and, possibly, lost their sight. In short, slowly changing, adapting to the environment ...

   Here, in general, my hypothesis, which I formulated at the beginning of this December. Everything I knew fit perfectly into this version. In particular, it logically explained that since the Ring existed independently of the city and was not originally planned to be used as a subway, it was for this reason that the existing metro did not affect part of the old quarters, and vital tunnels had to be laid in the direction of the Ninth using the usual "metro-construction" methods .

   The Mystery of Snezhinsk no longer existed for me. All that remained was the mystery of the origin of the Ring, which, it seemed, sooner or later I would be able to discover.

   Then it didn’t occur to me that I didn’t answer the main question: why wasn’t the metro construction completed?

   I did not know yet that the answer to this question would force me to reconsider all my previous theories.

The last trip

   I did not go down to the Underground until the general picture became completely (as I thought then) clear to me. And only then, I began to think about a new campaign.

   To tell you the truth, the memory of the badger still made me wake up at night, but it was just me trying to process this experience inside. In reality, I almost ceased to be afraid of this creature, assuring myself that the found tool - fire - was a reliable protection against the attention of treacherous underground creatures. In addition, I took a gas gun from a businessman I knew, relying, however, more on the sound of a shot than on the tear effect.

   My brief plan was as follows. Enter the radial tunnel through the badger passage, reaching the supposed center, to ascertain the existence of five radial tunnels and, as much as possible, to inspect the central part. I imagined the center as a kind of cavity where all six tunnels converge and in which man-made soil hills are piled up, punctured from top to bottom by giant badger burrows.

   I did not expect that this trip would be my last ...

   On the fifth of December, almost a month after meeting the badger, I again entered the Underground. I reached the mysterious bench without incident, not noticing a single extraneous track along the way. However there were more than enough tracks on the station itself. At first, I lay on my stomach for a long time, illuminating myself with a lantern and peering into the dark perspective of the tunnel visible in the hole. I didn’t notice any movement there, but, nevertheless, I was tempted to shoot a pistol there a couple of times, and with great difficulty I suppressed this not quite reasonable desire.

   After shoving a bunch of makeshift torches into the hole (five meter sticks wrapped in rags soaked in diesel fuel), I carefully set fire to the torch that remained with me (it flashed with a bright, smoky flame) and, putting it inside, waved it threateningly. There was no reaction, and with a groan I began to squeeze through a narrow gap.

   This was not the familiar Ring that I knew like the back of my hand, but something new, unknown, so involuntary trepidation swept me when shiny, yellow-gray arches opened up overhead. The tongues of fire, as if playing, were reflected and transmuted in the mirrors of the metal walls not touched by whitewashing - something else that distinguished this tunnel from the other tunnels of the Ring! Without releasing the torch, I got up from all fours and, picking up a ligament lying on the floor, hooked it onto a bar specifically attached to the gates for that purpose. Then I stood for a while, bracing myself, and carefully moved into the passage between the two rows of trolleys. A lantern hung on my chest, I held a pistol in my right hand, and a torch in my left. The torch blinded me, so I kept moving it a little back.

   Fifty meters later, the trolleys were left behind, dissolved in the dark, and with them the sense of security vanished. I walked between two narrow gauge railways, peering ahead and counting the steps. There was something I did not like much, but I could not say what it was.

   About ten minutes later, a dark spot appeared, which became darker and darker as the surrounding walls of the tunnel became brighter, and I realized that I was approaching the exit, beyond which the darkness unattainable to my lantern was thickening.

   The tunnel has ended. A gigantic hall swung open before me, the size of which I could not estimate, but could, rather, only feel. Its floor remained at the same level as in the tunnel, and the ceiling went somewhere forward and upward. Shining the lantern, I found that a wall of the same yellow-gray metal (or alloy?) extends to the right and to the left.

   It seemed that my assumptions were justified. The radial tunnel brought me into the central cavity. Judging by the distance I walked from Workers station, this cavity was no more than two hundred meters in diameter, as I had imagined. But there was something that completely did not fit into my picture.

   In this gigantic hall there was nothing even remotely like the mountains of excavated soil!

   The hall floor was covered with something that I initially mistook for a years-old layer of dust. However, taking two or three steps from the mouth of the tunnel (it seemed to me that the floor was slightly lower to the center of the hall), I was convinced that this substance can hardly be called dust in the usual sense of the word. The grayish substance under my feet did not rise into the air like dust, but flowed like water, closing at the ankles and leaving no trace. In density, it resembled ashes. Its weightlessness and fluidity were strange and ... unpleasant!

   Forcing myself to go to the center of the hall, hiding in the dark, was scary. I wanted to stick to the wall, so that if necessary I would press my back against it and repel the attack of an unknown enemy. Therefore, upon reflection, I decided to go left, as planned, to make sure there are other radial tunnels.

   Putting the torch in my right hand and the gun in my left, I slowly walked along the wall, now and again looking back and listening. After just a dozen steps, I realized that the wall was rounding, and after about a hundred meters, the mouth of the tunnel opened wide, apparently going towards the Ural station. After another hundred meters, I found another tunnel of the same kind.

   My assumptions continued to come true. One hundred meters at six exits - six hundred meters, I began to count. This is the circumference of the central hall. "2πr." Therefore, it is easy to calculate that the center is not more than a hundred meters from here. 100 meters. Fifteen seconds there, fifteen back.

   With these numbers, I convinced myself to tear away from the wall and decide to explore the region that was lost in the darkness. However, other calculations began to climb into my head. I began to calculate cubic meters of soil, which once occupied the place of modern stations, and mentally dump these cubic meters into the hall, which is spread out in front of me. It turned out that there should be so much ore, that even if the center is littered with it to the ceiling, then there should also be plenty of it on the periphery of the hall where I was now. But - where is it?

   Maybe, after all, the soil was not brought here? No, definitely here, the trolleys clearly point here, some of them even remained full. Or maybe ... Maybe in the center of the hall is the shaft of the mine, into which all the extracted rock was dumped?

   The torch burned out, but I did not light a new one. I must make up my mind. Gently tapping a burnt stick in front of me, I moved forward.

   The floor under my feet began to drop significantly, first abruptly, so that I stumbled and almost fell, and then more smoothly. Ten meters later I walked knee-deep in a flowing grayish substance, which almost did not impede my movement, but for some reason felt noticeable on my nerves. There was something in it like a lurking living creature, ready to suddenly attack a lone traveler and devour him. Nerves, nerves ...

   Gradually, a distinctive vertical outline began to emerge, dimly gleaming in the light of my lantern. Stepping closer, I saw a column going to the ceiling, mounted on a powerful, about five meters in diameter base, the metal surface of which was slightly above the level of grayish rubbish, into which I sank almost to the waist.

   I came close to the base and just in case poked a stick at it. Nothing happened. Raising a beam of a lantern along a column, at the height of a five-story building, I found the ceiling of the hall. The column, as it seemed to me, touched the dome, and if there was any gap there, then it was probably very insignificant. Putting the pistol and the burned torch on the base, I leaned on it with my hands and tried to climb up.

   And then I heard a sound. The sound coming from the colossus, which seemed to be a dead piece of metal. And then I saw a ray.

   No, first a bluish-white dot was lit on the surface of the column, about two meters from the base, which flickered for a few seconds, then fading, then flaring up, and then a beam began to extend from this point. Precisely so, to extend forward. Like a radio antenna. But it was a ray, a blue ray; it slightly scattered the darkness around, still remaining no thicker than a spoke. Its end slowly, as if reluctantly, went towards the walls of the hall, invisible to me. About a minute passed. The beam, flickering, continued to hang in the air, when suddenly the tone of the still emitting sound changed sharply, and the beam seemed to glide down along the column, turning into a plane. I watched, hypnotized, as a foggy streak grew, and on it, like on a screen, a bluish radiance flickered and flowed . It took less than a minute for the beam to reach the base, and a luminous two-meter track, stretching from the column into the darkness of the hall, froze to my right in the air. And at that moment the tone changed again, and I was horrified to find that the plane began to rotate around the column, forming a luminous segment of space in the air, increasing with each passing moment and approaching me ...

   In the next instant, everything started moving like in a sped up film.

   Some growling, wheezing ball fell out of the luminous emptiness, which burst into dust with a splash, jumped out of it, darted into the darkness with a guttural scream and, having moved in a large arc, reappeared at the base from the other side and froze in the light of my lantern, staring at it with the frantic pupils of its round eyes, and everything dropped inside me, because it was not a badger, but some kind of scary monster resembling a huge toad covered with wool with a throbbing throat and saber-shaped fangs protruding from the mouth, and all thoughts about a fire or a gun flew out of my head, because there was such savagery, such rage was in this creature that it seemed that nothing could stop it, and the next moment it jumped, but I ducked, almost dived into a grayish filth, and the toad, having rolled around the base, fell somewhere behind me, and I rushed to the left, trying to leave a column between myself and this monster, but it jumped again, and for a moment I felt its hot, stinking breath, and with all my strength rushed forward, but my path was blocked by a glowing a piece of space, and I had no choice but to fall on all fours, crawl under it (the thought of running through it seemed crazy to me!), and panting from the gray powder that clogged my mouth and nose, I jumped up, turned around, and through a translucent canopy, unfolding already in a quarter circle and continuing to unfold towards me, I saw a bloodthirsty monster who, falling to the floor, jumped at me through a glowing fog at the very moment when Something weaved from the air gently touched my forehead ...

Face in the mirror

   I came to my senses, lying on the base of the Column. All was quiet.

   I remembered what happened to me until the moment when the beast jumped on me.

   And I clearly remembered what I saw later ...

   The first person I met on my way home that morning was a neighbor from the opposite apartment. I greeted her, but she looked at me strangely and passed by. Opening the door, I felt that she had stopped on the platform between the floors and, turning around, caught her strange, intense look. She hurried down.

   This could alert me, suggest something, warn, but I did not pay any attention to the fleeting episode, and therefore was completely unprepared when, having thrown off my dirty clothes and proceeding into the bathroom, I saw an unfamiliar face in the mirror!

   This shock cannot be understood by the mind. It must be experienced. I was wise enough not to look at my reflection anymore, and reasonable enough to convince myself that I was inexpressibly tired, that I was damn dirty, and I just need to wash myself, shave and relax so that my familiar features are reflected in the mirror again. I needed time to recover. Just a little time. My underground journeys taught me how to live, taking everything that happens to me for granted. Therefore, snorting in the shower and fiercely tormenting myself with a washcloth, I completely calmed down and was mentally ready for anything ...

   The face in the mirror was mine. But fifteen years older ...

   I remember your bewildered faces when I said that I was born in 1961. You wanted to ask something, but, on reflection, left it for later. A simple calculation told you my age is 37, but you believed your eyes more, that I could not be younger than fifty years old.

   I'm really thirty-seven. I can show you the documents, although I know that this is not proof.

   No, I have neither AIDS nor cancer, as my friends whisper behind my back, ready to pity me in advance and mourn my premature death. And I do not use drugs - which is also rumored. All these rumors amuse me very much ...

   I can also add that I did not experience any particular shock to turn gray overnight. Look, I have lots of black hair.

   I just got older.

   It is not only my face that has changed. I really feel like fifty. The joints ache, the heart tingles, the liver aches in the morning. I go up to my third floor panting. A week ago I visited an ophthalmologist and immediately ordered glasses, and the day before yesterday, for the first time in my life, put them on. These are good glasses, comfortable.

   If you want to feel sorry for me or express your condolence - do not waste words. I do not feel like a victim of circumstances. This is life. Which, I repeat, must be taken for granted.

   From the optometrist, I went to the psychiatrist and talked a little with the man. I found out that I was mentally healthy and asked if I could get a certificate. He prepared a pen and asked about the organization to which such a certificate should be provided. I could invent anything, but said that I personally needed such a certificate. Here our conversation lost its ease, and I heard a strange question: "Is something bothering you?" “But you recognized my mental health without asking this question,” I said. He removed the pen and said that my request is somewhat unusual, and, as a rule, such certificates are issued only at the request of interested organizations. “In other words,” I concluded, “the fact of requesting such a certificate already speaks of some kind of psychic anomaly ... Well, fine. I will bring a request. But after I receive a certificate from you, I will tell you that under Snezhinsk the is a huge dungeon in which terrible animals live. Will my story affect your diagnosis? " He looked at me with a strange expression, and I realized that I had gone too far, considering it best to leave immediately. Leaving, I noticed that he was looking at the cover of my medical record, as if remembering his surname better. Or maybe he was struck by the year of my birth?

   I don’t think that the rumor about my abnormality came from there: a medical secret is a medical secret. It seems that I myself provoked this rumor, in two or three places having mentioned what was not worth talking about. Strange affair. When I was a boy, not a single person knew about my campaigns underground, not one of my closest friends, not a single girl whose imagination I had to impress at any cost. Although, I remember very well, at times the temptation was simply unbearable ... Then, as a child, I was still able to keep my secret intact. And now ... My natural restraint is increasingly cheating on me, perhaps my nerves are really not in order. However, the fact is clear: they whisper behind my back, washing my bones, although if it weren’t for this whisper, you would not even know about my existence. And about everything else too.

   What's worse, I felt quite a close attention to my person. And I guess where it can come from. The first warning was the disappearance of all the photographs taken underground from the apartment. And there were a lot of them, probably a hundred or even more. When I caught on, I discovered that not only the photos were missing, but also some of the schemes that help me navigate underground. Although this last loss does not play a special role for me.I feel the surveillance. Ordinary, banal surveillance. Do not rush to attribute to me a persecution mania, if only for the simple reason that this surveillance does not bother me at all. I have already said: I'm not afraid of anything. And to convince you ... Take a look at the window (a good pun for your newspaper, isn't it?). You see there, on the Tsiolkovsky boulevard some eccentric walking in the frost of thirty degrees? So, he’s not an eccentric. It's his job ...

   Damn it all. I want to summarize something.

Time over the Sarcophagus

   Pride has let me down. I told myself that I had explained everything. Facts that did not fit into my scheme were considered insignificant. But how could I not understand that primitive empty tunnels underground would not have attracted the attention of Beria? I had to understand that there should be something else. The omnipotent minister could not help but be interested in the story of monsters falling out of nowhere, because behind these monsters he managed to discern the fact of the existence of a door to another world and the prospects connected with it! .. And that was the basis for the super-secret Project!

   But knowledge is not given in vain. The project was stifled not because of its, as I initially thought, hopelessness, but because of a disaster, the scale of which can only be guessed at. The door had a secret. Spatial changes in the Ring were accompanied by temporary changes - which, moreover, are not limited to the limits of the Ring!

   I could have guessed this earlier, without checking on my own skin the fact of rapid aging. Why, why the hell was I so condescending to the information about the ban on settling here, explaining the taboo as natural-religious reasons? Only now I realized that it was really deadly to live here: the column worked, and the “radiation of time”, as I called it, acted even on a surface where life expectancy was much shorter than at a safe distance from the “damned” place. Here it is - the "Sinar phenomenon"! Only now, in the general array of what I know, I fit the bashkir legend orecorded in the Kyshtym region. It is similar to the legends of many peoples about the day spent in the enchanted kingdom, which turns into years in real life. Only here it is the other way around: the proud Sagandyk, having fallen behind his comrades and hunting in a forbidden place, returns to the fireplace a deep old man in whom no one can recognize the young batyr ... I myself am a living embodiment of this legend ...

   You, who began to fill up the Column, please forgive me. Now I know: this did not happen after the start of construction, but even before the thought of the metro came to someone’s head. And this was connected not with the problem of garbage collection, but with the most intense struggle for life. At some point, a catastrophe erupted, clearly showing the danger lurking in the center of the Ring, and the explorers of the entrance to another world, with their knowledge and capabilities, tried to isolate the already existing city from an unknown radiation that causes old age and death. Remember Chernobyl. Remember the sarcophagus above the Fourth block. Remember how much health and lives its building took, remember and kindly mention these people ... Here, in Snezhinsk, a feat was accomplished, comparable in heroism to the feat of the Chernobyl victims and the liquidators of the Mayak chemical plant accident. A feat that perhaps no one will ever know. No one will know how many people — scientists, engineers, workers — have grown old and died in front of their comrades, gaining fatal “doses” of years in a few minutes of work near the Column. Doing what was supposed to be done ...

   Once again: forgive me. Forgive me for thinking. Because at least in my reasoning I was somewhat unfair to you ...

   Perhaps at first the “radiation of time” was completely blocked by thousands of tons of soil, and experiments showed that everything was “clean,” and therefore a crazy thought crept into someone’s brainless mind about the construction of this unfortunate metro, and no one thought that the Column, possibly even under the Sarcophagus, continues its unknown work ...

   (Lord, instruct us, set us on the right path and reveal, when, when, when, finally, we will stop building kindergartens near reactors, build schools on radioactive burial grounds, build sanatoriums near poisonous rivers, when we truly know that we live on Earth in the name of something more than momentary self-interest and fuss - and, perhaps, until we personally realized this, is it better for our hands to completely dry out than to create such madness? ..)

   When I came to my senses, having prostrated myself on the base of the Column, I found a handful of dust in place of a pistol and a burnt out torch. That slippery, grayish dust ...

   Yes, the Sarcophagus above the Column did not work. Hour after hour, day after day, destroying, crushing, evaporating the mountains of the soil that buried it (maybe even feeding it), the Column continued to operate; and the moment came when the hopes of erecting Sarcophagus has collapsed - the radiation again burst out ...

   "The adventure failed. Thanks for the attempt ..."

   Construction was stopped, access to the Underground was blocked, and the city ...

   The city was left to its own devices.

   Again and again I ask myself the question: why did this happen?

   I do not believe that the Higher Ups and Decision Makers did not have enough reason to understand the degree of danger from the Ring. And I don’t believe that there were not enough funds to evacuate the city and erect it in a new place. And not that there were not enough decades to do this.

   If they were missing something, it was only ordinary decency.

   The city in which thousands of people lived, worked, loved, was left to its own devices. To die.

   Of course, it could not be compared with instant death in the explosion of a neutron bomb. If near the Column a person grew old and died in a matter of minutes, then above ground, death was no longer so obvious - life simply shortened. And who in our God-cursed country might be interested in an increasing number of early deaths? Snezhinsk residents themselves? Well, curious ones, if any, were put in place by a reminder of the regimen requirements and the specifics of production, by chance, but very meaningfully nodding at the fish bodies of bombs - say, we do not construct irons here! The scenery also reeked of death ...

   But the more I think about it, the more often a terrible thought visits me. It seems to me that the city was not abandoned, but explicitly left. Left for well-balanced, sober reasons. There was no end to the Project. Research continued. And continues to this day. Someone writes monographs. Someone is defending candidate and doctoral degrees. Closed state prizes are awarded to someone - “for studying the influence of tau radiation on the human body and studying the possibility of hereditary transmission of the signs that arose in the first generation”. The field for research is truly unlimited.

   Fifty thousand people ...

   "Authority is disgusting, like the hands of a barber."

   I see a question on your faces. What to do? To run? To save ourselves? Try to bury the Column again? Blow it to hell? Who to hope for? Who to rely on? Who can help us?

   I will answer the last question later. As for the rest ...

   It is useless to bury the problem in the ground or move away from it to the side. The problem must be solved. So, one way or another, the city should cease to be a hostage. But not the hostage of the Ring, as you now thought, but that secrecy that surrounds us from all sides. And not even so much the external, formal, sickening to the stomach one, as the one that has accumulated in our souls and is simply called a lie. Its snows swept our city, covered it with a weightless, but reliable blanket, covered it with an impenetrable veil, not allowing us to look at ourselves from the outside, making it difficult to soberly evaluate our deeds and actions. And it is precisely in this, as it seems to me, that the reason for all our current turmoil lies.

   Uncle Kolya said: a person should always be aware of what he is doing. Be well aware.

   Yes, the Column, sows death and gives rise to monsters, but, I am sure: all these are external, secondary traits. Therefore, don't you think that the one who first decided to hide them from the world simply put a barrier on the way of understanding the essence of the phenomenon - and thereby doomed us to suffer from these side effects? And don't you also think that, having got used to living in an atmosphere of half-truths, and sometimes even outright lies, we, we ourselves unwittingly helped him in this?

   The Column is not evil, it is only a soulless mechanism. You would not approach a nuclear reactor, but this does not mean that it is conceived entirely to the detriment. You just need to understand how to use it correctly.

   And further. Behind every mechanism there is the mind. Remember, when I woke up, I discovered a handful of dust. All that remains of the torch and the pistol.

   But I myself did not become dust!

   This is encouraging.

   And it makes me hope that my last trip to the Underground will not truly be the Last.

   For all of us.

   I remember well what I saw after the monster that jumped on me again disappeared into the blue fog. Therefore, it seems to me that I know how to answer your last question. I know who can help us. I will tell you how to find him. First you need to go out to the streets of Snezhinsk, walk along its pretty, snowy streets, inhale its clean, frosty air, look around, smile at oncoming girls, help the old woman bring her bag, help the child across the road, and then, without hurrying, get to "Jubilee", go down to the left of two wells on its eastern slope, go through, climb, crawl to a discreet metal door, enter a short corridor, squeeze into a narrow hole, go down two hundred steps, wave to Kurchatov, jump from the platform to the track, walk about one and a half kilometers on the sleepers, climb onto the Workers platform, crawl under the third bench on the left, pass the long train of trolleys, step into the flowing dust of the hall, approach the Column, be patient and wait for the blue fog - thinking, not hesitating, without delaying a moment to plunge into its shining, enveloping depths and at the same time feel strong, reliable hands of support, and, opening your eyes, see in front of you young, fervent, cheerful people, so similar to those depicted on mosaic a panel of the Snezhinsk metro, and then you just need to look more closely at their faces in order to be amazed to realize that these are the very people who fill the streets, boulevards and squares of the city, these are our friends, relatives, acquaintances, only in their eyes there is no trace of spiritual confusion, disappointment, grief, callousness, there is no trace of pain and fatigue, hatred and humility that seemed forever, none of this, everything disappearing like dirty snow under the sun, like black ice cracked by spring water, like a lying mask being torn by the wind, disappearing, and there remaining one dazzling blue radiance of the forever young soul of Snezhinsk, radiance that merges strength and kindness, joy and spirituality in itself ... And at that moment, at this moment of bright awareness and amazement, a warm, enveloping heart wave finally, the long-awaited understanding will flood, that they, Snezhinsk folk, countrymen, citizens, brothers, just them, only they, only they, they, and no one else, will be able to help us in all our troubles, in all our sorrows and burdens, only They can help us. Us - and themselves! ..