Path book 1-7 Igor chapter 2

"I'm not arguing, Michael. I'm not arguing... I'm just worried about my brother."

"Shall we have a drink? Would you like some cognac?"

"What? The real one? Terran?"

"Yeah! Moldovan! Maybe not the best, but still. A friend gave it to me, my friends on Earth bought it, and they sent the box to me. Ah... pour it. I'll try again.

The father went into the house, and Anker stared at the sky with a kind of detached look. His emotions were filled with longing and fear, but there was a hint of hope somewhere. That's right, Uncle Anker is a normal man. Kind, hardworking, good-looking, straight arms. Dad is very pleased with him. And Hegemony is just such a dump with slavery from the lower castes, with bonded contracts... wolfish capitalism in all its glory. I once asked him, "Uncle Anker, why do your people put up with all this, and not take up arms and restore order in the country?" He replied that only overseers, police, army and family members of corporate heads can have weapons in the Hegemony. The rest, if caught with a gun, immediately die. Well, except for the pirate squads, those are actually supported and under the roof of the same corporations. In general, hopelessness. That leaves the Batarians to run anywhere, mostly to the Omega.

"Da-ad! Da-ad! Look how I drew a Barsik!" Gina came skipping up to him.

"Well, let me see," Coel took the album and stared at the drawing with admiration.

"Do you like it?" Avanti asked, looking lovingly at her father.

"Very!" Anaker replied and hugged his daughter tightly to him.

He loved his daughter. I loved her so much that I could feel it from afar. My father loves me very much too, but here it was just painful. Gina feels it and twists the ropes out of her father just like that. Even now, he's clutching her so tightly, as if he's afraid she'll disappear.

"Dad! You'll strangle me!" Gina wheezed.

Then my father came out of the house, holding a bottle and two glasses in his left hand, and a saucer with sliced lemon in his right. He put everything on the table, sat down in an armchair, opened a bottle that made a "pou" sound, and poured the golden liquid into glasses.

"For luck, Anchor! Your brother will need it!"

" Good luck, Michael!"

They clinked glasses.

Avanti is already back next to me on the porch, and again she is drawing something on a new sheet, periodically glancing at me. Her emotions are filled with fun and some kind of... adoration. Why she treats me like this, I just don't understand. Can she feel me? When I was the Messiah before, children and teenagers always stuck to me.

* * *

I myself am red-haired and green-eyed, and my hair is such a bright color that I stand out among the kindergarten kids like a fly agaric on moss. Seen from afar. And my eye color is malachite green, bright and saturated. The doctors were perplexed at first, they said that people do not have such an eye color. Dad also kept wondering who I was like, there had never been any redheads in the family, either on my father's side or on my mother's. The father himself is light-haired and blue-eyed, a true Northerner. Mom has dark blond hair, with almost steel-gray eyes. And all the brothers, who are more like their father, who are like their mother, I'm the only one with red hair. Although I'm not offended. I'm always red-haired when I come as the messiah. But it's the first time I've had such greenish eyes. Damn, they almost glow in the dark.

Anyway, we decided to check it out. They took my blood, went to a hospital in the city, did an analysis with the construction of a model for deciphering the genetic code, and got a blue-eyed blond man. We were very surprised, rechecked, and the result remained unchanged.

Then Uncle Dahi and Aunt Ratnet got caught up in professional curiosity: How can this be? We picked up the mother's medical record, checked all the events during pregnancy and found out that, at the sixth month, an accident occurred at the enrichment complex: a pipeline with some kind of terrible chemical reagent for extracting element zero from the rock broke! A lot of intelligent people were poisoned, it's a good thing they didn't die. Well, then my mother worked in a factory emergency room and, helping the victims, she also got poisoned. That's how this reagent worked on me. How many arguments did we have in the kitchen about this?... Exposure to the "zero element" seemed to be a plus, but so far no effects have been noticeable. Anyway, it's not bad for me to be a redhead. I've already gotten used to my fiery hair. And my red wings look beautiful on her background.

"Hey, hey! Igor! Ava-anti! Let's go for a walk!" there was a loud shout from the gate. Nasar was swinging on it like on a swing.

"And where will we go?" Jean asked.

It doesn't matter. Let's go to Uncle Aegikh, let him tell us a story about the Fleet.

"Come on!" I say and throw the album on the porch. Avanti puts hers carefully, before closing and putting the pencils in the box. Keep an eye on them! I hear my father's voice and, turning around, I see a Barsik trotting after us.