Чтение онлайн

Many, many days have passed, and maybe even months. Although he knew how many days there were in a month, he did not know from what time and from what month to start the chronology, and in such a situation there was no need for him to do this. According to his approximate calculations, more than 4 months have passed since his return. The days began to shorten. This indicated the approach of winter. The first signs of Eva's pregnancy also began to appear. She got a little fatter in figure, and every day she took a long walk in the fresh air near the cave. They were both so happy inwardly, but they didn't admit it to each other. So the days passed, the weather became increasingly cloudy and cooler. One day, as usual, they came to the spring. She collected earthworms and edible herbs, and he collected firewood between small stunted trees. When the work was finished, Eva said;

– There are already fewer worms and edible herbs here. I will go down, further along the stream of the spring, perhaps I will find other places where we will get food, at the same time I will take a walk, and you, (it should be emphasized that after the night when Adam first kissed Eve, they switched to "you") take all this, get water and go to the cave.

Adam grumbled, barely audible, almost in a whisper, "the matriarchy has begun," however, he nodded his head to Eve in agreement, but immediately the thought flashed through his head that " while Eve is not in the cave, I will take a notebook and read a little." With such thoughts, he came to the cave and quickly got down to business. I lit a torch, went down and took out only a notebook from the hiding place, leaving other items next to the notebook there, I tightly closed the hiding place with a lid. It made it easier for him to hide the notebook, even if Eva accidentally came early. With such thoughts, with a notebook in his hand, he climbed up the cave to the exit of the cave. But Eve was already waiting for him there by the fire. She had on her hands his extraterrestrial clothes and shoes, which he threw away after returning to Earth. Adam stopped and froze. After all the ordeals of extraterrestrial life, he liked living with Eve so much. And although they lived on primitive conditions, they lived in human, mundane conditions of life and now he would never replace this earthly life with Eve with an alien, comfortable, but life alone. He was so happy that he had long forgotten about these things. It didn't even occur to him that one-day Eve would accidentally find his clothes and shoes. She looked him straight in the eyes, and in her looks you could read the question "why was I deceived, did not tell the truth, who are you?". There was no point in hiding the truth from her any further, and he began;

– I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I'll explain everything now. I just thought that you would not believe me, that I am a person from the past, i.e. from a past Earthly life. Ya Ya. I'll start now…

Eva sat down by the fire and for the first time since they met, she began to cry. Probably, she was very offended that a loved one was hiding the truth about himself from her. He calmed her down in every possible way and kept saying;

– Dear, beloved, you are very smart and when I tell my whole story, you will understand everything and forgive me.

And without waiting for Eva to calm down at least a little, he put his arm around her shoulders and began to talk about how people used to live on earth, about the earth's civilization, about the peoples who inhabited the Earth, about the animal world, about birds, about the achievements of science and about when and how the catastrophe occurred on Earth. Then he told that he was an astronaut, during the thermonuclear war, he was on the ISS in near-Earth orbit with other crew members, and then he was saved by aliens and after three hundred years of extraterrestrial life, he returned to his native Earth. She listened in silence. Whether she understood all this or not, he did not know, but she did not ask any questions. The story lasted until late at night. They didn't even have dinner. So he finished his story and in his story described in general terms the forever lost human civilization. He understood that there would be many more questions, because to tell in general terms is one thing, but to explain and explain the previous achievements of humanity in detail, to Eve later, is another and will be very difficult. "After all, there is a beginning, and everything else will get better later," he thought and offered Eva a rest, promising that tomorrow he would read to her the notes left by her ancestors, and she would also be taught to read and write so that she could write and read herself.

She stood up in silence, took a stone thicket in her hand, drank water and looked in the direction of Adam. In the light of the dying torch, it was impossible to see the reaction of her face, but in her gaze Adam felt that his story had made a double impression on her. But without saying a word, Eve went up to Adam and hugged him tightly. There was something about it, an inexplicable pleasant feeling, a feeling of closeness to a loved one, and she suddenly spoke;

"I knew before that you weren't the person you pretended to be. After all, you always shouted excitedly in a dream, uttered various words, including those that I did not understand, "space, ship, crew, planet, war", sometimes even cried during sleep. I really didn't want to offend you, because you are the only person who is close and has already become a family for me, and I don't want to lose you. I was just waiting for you to tell me the truth yourself.

After these words of Eva, he knelt down in front of her, hugging her waist, uttered a single phrase;

– I'm sorry.

CHAPTER

5

History of survivors

We woke up in the morning and Adam no longer felt guilty for lying to Eve all this time. Together they cooked food and after breakfast, Eva, as usual, went out for a walk. Adam began to read the notes. The notes were made in a very small handwriting (apparently the person who left this manuscript treasured the paper very much) and began as follows: "I, Sokolov Andrey Leonidovich, consider it my duty to leave to posterity detailed information about all the misadventures that happened to us, because after the catastrophe on Earth, in incredible conditions, we survived, and the human race continues on Earth."

From this, Adam concluded that these notes were made by the author much later than the nuclear disaster. In addition, the handwriting of the manuscript, although the notes are made in a very small handwriting, seemed very familiar to him. Since Adam did not fully remember his biography, he thought that perhaps he had studied at the same school with the author of these records in the past, or it seemed familiar to him from the fact that he had not read the manuscripts in his native language for a long time. But, this was not the main thing, the main thing now for Adam was the content of the notes left, and from the fact that the handwriting was very familiar and legible, the notes were read to him without much difficulty, even very easily.

Further, he learned from the records that a group of students from Moscow State University consisting of ten people came to the Gorno-Altai Republic to see firsthand and, if possible, study the so-called "New Cave" recently discovered in these places. The cave, as described in media reports, existed before, but speleologists learned about the existence of the cave only after a series of small earthquakes that recently occurred in these places, when the entrance to the cave accidentally opened due to earthquakes. After hearing about the new cave on television and reading about it on the Internet, they decided to see this cave with their own eyes and explore it. Before them, for a very short time, only speleologists who study caves visited here, and they accidentally discovered this cave when they were studying other caves in these places and made a sensational message on television that there is a large underground lake in the cave, that previously unknown waterfowl live in the lake. This message of speleologists was so interested in this group of students who were romantically inclined, who, at the call of their hearts, gathered from different faculties who had not even known each other before, but met later, that is, directly during the hike. And in order to get ahead of other specialists, that is, biologists, historians, geographers and speleologists, who were also going to explore a new cave soon, they quickly equipped themselves, in their opinion, with the necessary equipment for descending into the cave and came here to see the underground lake and the animals living in it with their own eyes. According to the author of these recordings, it was so interesting and romantic that they felt like pioneers and discoverers of something, from their point of view, very important. Inspired by such romanticism and enthusiasm, as the author writes, they did not even take simple precautions and safety measures for descending into the cave and in cases of possible unforeseen circumstances or emergency situations directly inside the cave. So they did not even leave those on duty on the surface, as it is necessary and necessary in such cases, and took with them only a small amount of necessary equipment and auxiliary things, that is, a small axe, two lengths of rope, 15 and 10 meters long, a light scuba diver's suit and a knife. And from food, water in three 5-liter plastic bottles and not a large amount of canned provisions, and then just in case they stay there a little longer than they expected and they will have to eat there, in the cave. And everything else, that is, all the rest of the food, all the outerwear and other things they brought with them, except for smartphones and other personal things that they habitually carried with them, were left in tents in a temporary tent camp, set up outside on the surface, at the entrance to the cave. According to the author, they were not going to stay here for a long time and distributed their time in such a way that they allocated only a day to stay here in the camp and descend into the cave, just to see the underground lake and if it turns out to see waterfowl animals there, fix them on the cameras of their smartphones. Then take a collective photo in the cave, as a sign of proof that they, after the speleologists who discovered this cave, were the pioneers here. After that, they had to return to study at the university and brag about this campaign in front of friends, peers and students. That's all, they set aside four, five days, for an extreme case, a week, if it suddenly turns out that they are delayed on the way due to weather or other reasons. Only in this was all their youth optimistic and adventurous romanticism. That is why, and also because they had not previously studied new caves and for the same reason did not know and did not even think that they might encounter various kinds of difficulties in a previously unexplored cave, so they did not prepare seriously and thoroughly for this event. They were driven only by energetic youth enthusiasm and romance, and they took the descent into the cave, a kind of romantic-adventure extreme game.

Adam, for a short time, closed the notebook, picked up a photo of the students. I looked at the photo. Only nine people were captured there, that is, four girls and five guys. And in Andrey's notes, it was about ten students. "Where is the tenth? Perhaps he, that is, the tenth person who photographed all the others, did not enter the frame himself? " thought Adam and then, putting the photo aside, began to read the notes further.

Further, the author wrote that Before going down to the cave, so that the descent into the cave and our entire further excursion would be clearly organized and successful, all the members of the group, after consulting among themselves, despite my objections, chose me as the leader of our hiking group. So, under my leadership, the descent into the cave began. We, by the light of lanterns, going down the slope down the cave and walking about one kilometer, and perhaps a little more than a kilometer, reached the shore of an underground lake. On the shore of the lake, we found traces of a camp of speleologists, where they stopped for a short time and then apparently turned back, since they trampled only there, within a radius of twenty, twenty-five meters, and the tracks did not go further to the right or to the left. After making a short stop here, we decided to continue our journey further. At first we wanted to go along the lake shore to the right, but the flat surface of the lake shore continuously narrowed as we moved forward, and very soon, according to my approximate calculations, after walking about forty meters, we came across a high, insurmountably steep stone block hanging over the water. This meant that there were no paths further along the coast in this direction. We came back where we started on the right. Here one of the girls, probably very tired of walking, suggested to stop, there is a camp here, from here and start exploring the lake. However, many people did not agree with her opinion and proposal. We, that is, everyone else wanted to go further, to see and learn more than the speleologists who had been here before us. With such intentions, we continued our way along the shore of the lake, to the left side. The surface of the lake shore was stony flat, but with turns and bends sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, and the distance to the side walls of the cave on the way of our journey then narrowed, then widened, however, we no longer encountered insurmountable large obstacles on the way in this direction. And after walking along the shore of the lake for about eight hundred meters, we came out into a wide, daylight-lit area. It was a wide area on the shore of an underground lake, surrounded by very high mountain rocks, which, in its outline, resembled a very large, one-tenth open dome, observatory, with a diameter of about four hundred meters at the base. Moreover, the open part of the naturally created dome was located in the southern side of the mountain and the sun's rays penetrated and fell in a narrow strip on a small part of the lake shore, on the water and, as if reflected by a plume from the water surface, one end reached a small island located in the middle, that is, by daylight of the visible part of the lake. On the island and on the shore of the lake where we were, there were densely growing some exotic, tropical small plants that we had not seen before and unknown to us, similar to reed plants that grow closer to the equatorial part of the earth, but significantly different from them in their appearance and shimmering with a very transparent bluish-green appearance, leaves. The water in the lake slightly smelled of some strange smell to us. The air in the cave was a little moist, as after a short rain in the spring, but we were very easy to breathe, which meant that there was a little more oxygen in the air than usual. Despite the month of November, the cave was very warm and cozy. Before we had time to look around properly, such a bright glow was visible from the open part of the dome that it became blinding light under the arches of the dome of the cave. At that moment, all the members of the group thought that a meteorite had fallen near the cave. Without paying special attention to this event, we decided to set up our temporary camp here, so that we could then start exploring and exploring the cave and the underground lake from here. However, after some time, when we had not even had time to properly settle in and distribute the responsibilities of each member of the group, a powerful earthquake suddenly began. The tremors sometimes intensified, sometimes decreased. Waves began to rise in the lake and the water began to flood the shore of the lake where we were. Under such circumstances, it was very dangerous to stay in the cave. We should have saved ourselves. Under these conditions, we urgently decided to climb back to the surface as soon as possible. On the way back, after going up the slope almost half of the way, we learned that the narrow place of the way out of the cave was filled up with stones during the earthquake. So the way back was closed for us, and the earthquakes continued with strong, then small tremors. We didn't have time to establish the scale of the blockage on the way back out of the cave, since the ground was shaking all the time under our feet. Occasionally, from the depths of the earth came muffled, but at the same time reflected in our body with unpleasant sensations and premonitions of a terrible disaster that had already occurred on the surface of the Earth, dull, muffled sounds, as if the Earth was moaning in pain. By the light of lanterns, we found a narrow, not deep opening in the cave with a low integral stone ceiling and entered it. So they protected themselves from falling random stones on their heads. Everyone was wondering "is it really so catastrophically bad there, on the surface, maybe an asteroid or a large comet fell" Cut off from the world, being in a cave, we could not know what happened on the surface and we could only wait. The earthquake continued. We were rocking from side to side, as if we were at sea in the cabin of a ship during a storm. Time passed, but the earthquake continued and it seemed that there would be no end to it. Therefore, in order to save the batteries on the lanterns, we turned them off. No one asked any questions, they sat in the pitch-black cave darkness, pressing their bodies together, in silence. Sitting in the pitch darkness, without waiting for the earthquake to end, from fatigue and from the nervous strain we experienced, we all fell asleep there.

Then the author wrote; I woke up and first of all turned on and looked at the time in my smartphone. It was already 10 o'clock the next morning. The earthquake continued, but the strength of the tremors has already decreased. Having woken up the others, he made a roll call. Everyone was alive and well. After waiting a little more time, we decided to go back down to the lake. We came out of the opening, looked around by the light of lanterns, made sure that the cave withstood the earthquake and came to the part of the cave that was open from above. But it was darkly dark there, but the visibility was quite distinguishable. At first, we thought that it was just morning, but the time in smartphones showed the same time, that is, 13 hours 21 minutes of the day. From the open part of the dome's vault, only the movement of gray fog was visible. Then they realized that when the earthquake started, in a hurry to leave the cave as soon as possible, they forgot all the provisions on the shore of the lake. The shore was flooded with water then and now, when the earthquake ended, the water went back and all our provisions went into the lake along with the water, except for two containers with water, which we took with us. Despite the fact that no one from the group had eaten anything for more than a day and a half, they drank only water, no one complained of hunger. I personally had no appetite at all. I think others have too. Everyone had the same idea on their mind "how to get out" They looked around, there was only the water surface of the lake, going deep into a dark cave, an island and high smooth steep stone blocks forming a natural dome. The height distance to the open part of the dome is presumably at least one hundred and twenty meters. With our equipment, we'll never get there. If we assume that a large asteroid or some other large cosmic body has fallen to the Earth and the scale of the catastrophe is large, then we will soon have nowhere to wait for help. Now, if we had left the duty officers on the surface, although there was no cellular mobile communication working here in the mountains, they would have somehow helped us get out of the cave or brought help. In this matter, I blamed only myself, because as the senior of the group, I made a gross mistake to ensure the safety of the group's trip to the cave. Before descending into a previously unexplored cave, I had to anticipate the occurrence of such unforeseen circumstances, such as our current situation, and take measures to ensure the safety of people, well, at least in the form of leaving those on duty on the surface.

If before that we all treated all our difficulties and adventures from the point of view of romanticism, only now has the full horror and hopelessness of our situation reached the consciousness of each of us. One of the girls began to cry, remembered her mother and other relatives that she did not even warn them about the trip, so that later she could surprise them in the form of showing photos and videos taken in the cave. But she was quickly reassured by the other girls. We decided to discuss the plan of our actions to save ourselves. We will never get to the open part of the dome with our equipment. This was no longer subject to discussion. Whether the waters of the lake come out of the cave, and even if it does, how will it check whether the lake is deep, what creatures live in it, whether they are dangerous to humans, in general, there are a lot of questions. Our only hope was a light scuba diver's suit, a mask and a tube that we brought with us to dive into the water and study the wildlife of the lake. But in such circumstances, diving into the lake for a long time for examination and finding a way out of the cave in the dark part of the cave, without reliable equipment, meant certain death. While we were discussing the plan of our actions, small dark heads of some waterfowl animals could be seen above the water surface and immediately plunged into the water, but we did not even pay attention to them now. Since our future fate depended on the right decision we made. It was impossible to delay in this matter, since it was clear that we would not last long here without food and water. Finally, we decided that while the batteries of our lanterns did not run out, we should look for another exit or disassemble the blockage and clear the way back to the exit. Everyone was strictly forbidden not to turn on even smartphones unnecessarily, in order to save batteries, whose flashlights would also be useful. We were divided into two groups. The first group of three guys had to look for another exit from the cave, if there is one, another, a large group of seven people, including all the girls, had to clarify the scale of the blockage and begin to disassemble the blockage and clear the way out. With such goals, both groups simultaneously began to climb up the cave, back to the exit. The groups did not have to split up, since they did not find any branches in the cave before the place where the cave was filled up, which meant that there was simply no other way out. When we examined the place of the blockage by the light of lanterns, it turned out that the path was blocked not only with stones of different sizes, which we could remove, but also a huge oval, almost round stone, the size of a small truck. This large stone during the earthquake probably broke off from the place where it was before and, due to inertia, rolled down from above. And as he rolled down, accelerating strongly by inertia, he immediately got so firmly stuck in the narrow passage of the cave. This was indicated by the fact that the stone, firmly resting on all sides against the side walls, on the floor and on the ceiling of the passage, with its entire mass, like a cork, tightly closed the narrow passage, and it was clear that even if we removed all the other stones lying ahead, we would not be able to remove a large stone that was stuck tightly in the passage. It was so depressing and depressing for the psyche of each of us, as it put an end to our salvation from imprisonment-the author wrote.