Path part 1-6

I swam up to Ham, put my hand under his head and began to calm the guy down in a quiet, calm voice.

"Ham, calm down, relax, you're tense, so you can't just lie on the water. Listen to my voice, I'll try to help you. (Oh, for the umpteenth time). Do you remember when we went fishing in the summer?"

"Is that when you set Vas'ka on the brothers?! How can you forget something like that!" Ham burst out laughing.

"Here. Do you remember how we used to lie on the shore in the grass and look at the clouds and figure out what they looked like?"

"Yeah, I remember! You also named the Earth's animals, everyone was wondering how you knew so many of them!"

"Here. Now close your eyes! Closed it?"

"Yes, I did."

"Remember that day. Imagine that you are lying on the grass and looking at the blue blue sky, clouds are floating across it..."

The guy relaxed, his feelings became calm, his arms and legs floated and swayed on the surface.

"I imagined one that looked like what's-his-name, but I remembered an elephant!"

"Well done! How do you feel now?" I asked, but I knew perfectly well that there was serenity and peace in Ham's feelings. I held his head with my fingertips and he quietly swam after me in the shallow water of the pool.

"Eugene." Ham whispered, "Little fox! It's like I'm flying, it's so cool!"

"You're not flying Ham, you're floating."

"Am I swimming?!"

"Swim Ham, swim!"

Then I was overwhelmed by such a strong feeling of delight, and it was as if a string had been stretched and snapped with a thin tinkle, and I felt a wave of answering feeling of wild, uncontrollable joy rising from inside me. I laughed out loud, and Nain was laughing and shouting next to me, and he was whistling and hooting.

"The fox cub swam to the depths." Ham said softly.

"Won't you be scared!?"

"I'm not afraid anymore, I'm not afraid at all, Eugene!"

Ham turned over in the water and not quite skillfully, snorting and splashing water, swam to the deep part of the pool. I rushed to catch up with him, because if he gets scared again, it will be difficult for me to get him out. Damn, he's crazy!

I caught up with him only at the very depth, he lowered his face into the water and lay on the water like that. Diving under it, I saw a look of blue eyes full of delight, looking down into the depths of the water. Ham looked at me, smiling. I swam close, basking in the feeling of delight and gratitude of the young Turian. She surfaced next to him, and Ham looked up, snorted, and smiled.

"It's so beautiful, Little Fox, it's... It's so cool to swim, almost like flying!"

"We swam to the exit of the Ham. You've had enough for today."

"Whatever you say, Zhen."

After getting out of the pool, I came across Dakar's thoughtful gaze, and the doctor's emotions were calm and seemingly doomed. She walked up to him and looking into his bright blue eyes asked:

"Uncle Duck, I did it! Do you see?!"

"Yes, I see Eugene! And I also see that your experience cannot be shared."

"Why?"

"Because I do not know any other empaths, not among humans, not among Asari, and even more so among Turians, I have not even heard of their existence, and you alone cannot teach an entire race."

"But! The guys overcame their fear by themselves, by themselves! I only helped them!"

"No, Eugene, not by yourself! It was you who defeated their fear, you and no one else. The device showed it clearly."

"And what should I do next? I thought this experience might be useful to all Turians? But it turns out that he is useless... I can't teach you all!"

"No, you can't. And don't! It's enough that you taught my boys and Nain. And everyone else... Well, our race has never been able to swim, and I think it will continue to live without this skill. I will not send the report. It will only draw unnecessary attention to you. Let's go home, Eugene.

When they returned, the whole company went into the Tanir's house, and Nain, barely taking off her shoes, rushed to Kaadi with the words.

"Mom, Mommy! She did it, she did it! They swam, both Here and There, it's so cool! Isn't that right, Mommy?!"

"Really, honey." Kaadi came out into the hallway and looked at us curiously. "Well, children, can I congratulate you on your success?"

At the same time, the Tamil assumed the proud pose of a Roman senator, folded his arms on his chest and looked into space.

"Yes, Mother, I've learned to swim!"

Ham, on the other hand, just walked up to his mother and, looking at her with completely happy eyes, said in a low voice.

"Mommy, that's just great! It's like flying, I just don't know how to tell you how I feel! You spread your arms and fly, and there's a blue distance below, and it's so easy."

Kaadi hugged her eldest son, pressed her cheek to his head and said.

"Clever son."

"It's not me Mom, it's all her! Our Eugene."

We are sitting at the kitchen table drinking erg, such a Turian fruit tea, with buns, Kaadi looks lovingly at us all eating buns with both cheeks, at the gloomy, thoughtful Dakar. A frozen statue with a bun in one hand and a cup of ergo in the other, staring into space with a frozen gaze of blue eyes.

"Did you make the Dakar report?" Kaadi asks.

Dakar shuddered, focused his gaze on his wife, and answered in a low voice.

"Yes, it is, but it is pointless to send it."

"Why?"

"Because we don't have another Eugenia Shepard. Not with us, not with anyone else. And without her, the whole idea is a waste of time. And I decided that I would draw the attention of the hierarchs, and even the Asari matriarchs, to it if the information came out, and it would! This is not at all what she needs now or in the future either."

"And she won't leave here?!"

"I don't think so. But just in case, I'll talk to Reyan and Mikhail. Well, it's worth connecting Tael, he's a great master at hiding various information out of the blue."

"You know best, Duck. Do as you see fit." Kaadi looked at me with an unusual warm feeling. "Thank you baby, you're a smart girl."

I was so embarrassed, I even blushed.

"Oh, nonsense! You're friends, and we can do everything we can for friends. As my dad's says."

"A good life credo. Stick with him!" Duck says and runs his hand through my hair.

The doorbell rings from the hallway, Ham and Tam get up from the table and run into the hallway, the doors hiss and Deniska's loud voice is heard.

"Well! Is there a movement?"

"Otherwise! We've learned, both of us!" A Tamil voice is heard.

"Honestly!" It's already Leshka voice. "Well, the beauties! Ahh! Well done! Take five, bro!"

Clapping of hands and loud friendly laughter of four guys can be heard. Slender arms wrap around his neck, and Nain's hard, hot cheek is pressed against his cheek.

— Let's go to my room at the Base and chat, I need to practice, that's what Rien says.Are you coming?

— Let's go.

Chapter 7.

January 01, 2359

1:15

I look out the window, it's snowing again, large soft snowflakes slowly swirling around covering everything with a fluffy white blanket. So we celebrated the beginning of the new Fifty-ninth year, shouting and laughing, we ran around our Christmas tree, set off fireworks and burned torches. They sang songs. It was easy and I was possessed by a kind of soft serenity, it's been a week since I stopped having my terrible dream. And I thought that maybe everything would still work out, well, there can't just be bad things in life. Haymon gave me a great gift for the new year, said that he had shaken up his piggy bank, asked his father for money, persuaded his mother and bought me a hunting knife at a gun shop in Gagarin! I picked up the handle, though it grew, but it was quite in my hand, probably Kaadi helped. Along the slightly curved black metal blade, 12-13 centimeters long, there was an intricate pattern of thin silver lines that curled closer to the guard into the inscription in Turian "claw". The handle is made of reddish polished wood, comfortable grip. On the butt of the handle is the head of a mythological grinning beast. The sheath is made of brown leather with straps attached to the arm or leg. I always go with him now. This doesn't surprise anyone, Mendoir is a young colony, and everyone here, both children and adults, is armed. After 5 kilometers from the city, a natural wild territory begins, and wild animals in the city limits will not surprise anyone. The brothers have been carrying light pistols since they were seven years old, this is a battery-powered railgun with ten charges in a clip, the bullets are conical with notches of 10 mm. The initial velocity of the bullet is only 300 m/ s, which does not give a strong recoil, but the stopping effect is enormous. When a bullet hits, it crushes into a pancake with a diameter of 20-22 mm, and I personally saw how such a bullet broke a fifty-piece board. It is not necessary to explain what will happen to the same snuffl from the impact of 2 or 3 such bullets. By the way, in all the thirteen years of the colony's existence, the colonists never shot at each other with weapons, neither adults, nor even children. I wonder what the advocates of the ban on gun ownership of the population in that Russia, from a previous life, would say to this... Time is passing and in three months I will be five years old, four of which I remember completely, and we'll see what the new year brings me. As they say, we'll chew and see...

Illustration https://disk.yandex.ru/d/cJ6EbqhKlsQpjw

https://samlib.ru/img/j/jager_j_s/putxnagolgofu/index.shtml — Illustration from Yager

Eugene (Mendoir June 2360)

A hectic year. (Part one)

June 10, 6:00 a.m.

I do gymnastics by the window in my room, Deniska does the same thing in the courtyard, only his complex is much more complicated. Weights, a metal pole, and heavy dumbbells are used. For the past six months, the elder brother has been torturing himself in the mornings, this is called preparation for admission to the cadet corps of the Alliance Air Force. Boys and girls aged 14 and up to twenty are accepted there, and they are chased in the tail and in the mane. Those who do not fly out become toothy wolves in the service of humanity. Four Naval cadet corps train the elite of the Terran Air Force. Next year, the older brother will go to gnaw naval science in his father's footsteps. Slow movements of my arms and legs, flexibility exercises, weights on my arms and legs have long been familiar to me, sweat is running down my back in a cold trickle, a voice with a pleasant double harmonica is heard from the street, Ham is here! Now the guys will run away for a cross-country run, five kilometers along forest paths in the morning. Best friends, rivals, ringleaders of all the pranks in the town, my own and sworn brothers. They are laughing, flashing white smiles in the morning sun. The gate slammed, they ran away.

I sit cross-legged in the middle of the room and put a box of colored glass balls in front of me, a small emotional shield drives away the morning languor and makes my mind clear and clean. Reaching out with my consciousness to the stream of power spread around, the dark stream penetrates my consciousness, fills my body with a hum, makes my nerves ring like strings, and a barely visible blue-green halo flashes around my body. I look at the balls, making them fly up one by one, and spin in a circle around the room, now all the balls are spinning around me, coiling into a spiral, the main thing is not to lose concentration. I carefully monitor each flying ball with my senses, a moment of loss of concentration can cost all the balls falling to the floor. And yes, I am a biotic... It's also on my long-suffering mind.

It came out a month ago, that day my father decided to replace the seal on the window in my room, the old one cracked and started leaking. He dragged a folding ladder from work, put it up to the house, just enough to reach the roof, took a bag of tools and climbed. The girls and I were sitting in the courtyard, Gina and I with albums on folding chairs, and Nain was hugging a Bars and a Polkan right on the grass. We had an open-air performance, and our artist and I painted Nain from life. Although the difference between my work and Gina's works is like between propaganda posters and Raphael's works. I just have a Turian girl hugging a cat and a dog, and Gina's looks like they're alive, just frozen for a moment, a Barsik squinting with pleasure, lifting his head and opening his mouth. Polkan spread his paws, exposing his light belly, his eyes rolled back, and his tongue hung out of his mouth like a pink snake. Suddenly I felt a growing sense of fear, glancing at the house, I saw how the folder, along with the glass, began to slowly but surely fall. Apparently, he removed the fasteners from the glass and the huge panoramic double-glazed window was simply squeezed out into the street by the pressure drop, and his father couldn't hold it. I clearly realized that if my father fell, a double-glazed window would crash on top of him, and it would be scary to even think about how it would end! For the past six months, somewhere on the edge of my perception, I noticed something incomprehensible, strange, some kind of hazy dark haze, which clearly smelled of something incredibly powerful and ancient. It all went through my head in a split second. Horrified, I jumped out of my chair, knocking it over, and reached for that haze, which in response reached out to me, touched me. Pain shot through my nerves, it seemed as if a mighty, rumbling stream rushed inside me, my whole body was filled with strength, it seemed to me that I could lift the whole house! I held out my arms, and they were dim but distinct, even in the light of day, glowing with a blue-green light. She pushed this force from herself to her father, who was pressed back together with the glass. The father did not lose his head, snapped the locks back on and took a deep breath. I could clearly feel his relief. The force continued to seethe in me, demanding an exit, and I pushed it into the sky, not knowing what to do. A roaring stream of power hit the clouds from me, and a clearly visible circular gap began to form in them. The flow went on and on, and with it the pain grew, when it became unbearable, the flow somehow thinned and dried up. I screamed in pain and fell to my knees. My father turned around on the stairs, looked at me and understood everything. After sliding down the stairs, he ran towards me.

"My daughter! Hold on, my little one!" I heard it through the growing buzzing in my ears. Black flies flew into my eyes, turning into black spots as I walked, and everything was covered with darkness and silence.

I didn't seem to be unconscious for long, when I woke up, I felt myself being carried in my arms, my father's cheek with clearly visible stubble hairs loomed in front of my eyes, my father was filled with fear and despair. He was coming up the stairs to my room, and I could hear my mother's sobbing voice from the kitchen, and Ray, looking worried. He's probably calling an ambulance, a thought moved sluggishly in my head. I felt terribly weak all over my body, there was no pain, but even to breathe in it took some effort. My father turned his face to me, and there were tears in his eyes.