104
TALES FROMTHE FUTURE
then Dasha, baffled.
“Oy,” Dasha suddenly exclaimed. “I completely forgot. I have to go take
care of something important. It’s my friend, Verunka, who’s spinning the
hands. That’s what we agreed. If I forgot. I have to go.”
Two guards blocked the exit from the study.
“What will you forget, Dashenka?” Ivan Nikiforovich asked his daughter.
“I forgot to go to the homestead where my friend Verunka lives and
stroke her little flower and water it. Otherwise it’s sad without caressing. It
likes to be looked at tenderly.”
“But the flower isn’t yours, after all,” Ivan Nikiforovich commented to his
daughter. “Why can’t your friend stroke it herself? Her own flower?”
“Papa dear, Verunka and her parents went on a visit.”
“A visit where?”
“Somewhere in Siberia.”
Exclamations by those present, uttered nearly in a whisper, were heard on
all sides.
“She’s not the only one!”
“What abilities does your friend have?”
“She’s not the only one!”
“How many are there?”
“How can they be determined?”
“We must take immediate measures for each such child!”
All the exclamations subsided as soon as an elderly, graying man sitting
at the edge rose from his seat. This man was senior in rank and position not
only among the people present in Ivan Nikiforovich’s study. He was chair-
man of the Russian Security Council. Everyone turned toward him and fell
silent. The gray-haired man looked at Dasha sitting in her little wooden
armchair and a tiny tear rolled down his cheek. Then the gray-haired man
slowly walked up to Dasha, dropped to one knee before her, and reached out
to her. Dasha stood up, took a step, and picking up the hem of her skirt,
dropped a curtsey and put her little hand in his palm. The gray-haired man
looked at her for a while, then bowed his head, and respectfully kissing
Dasha’s hand, said,
