105
MAY THERE BE GOOD ON EARTH
“Forgive us, please, little goddess.”
“My name is Dasha,” the little girl replied.
“Yes, of course, your name is Dasha. Tell us, what must be on our Earth?”
The little girl looked with surprise into the elderly man’s face, drew close
to him, cautiously wiped the little tear from his face with her palm, and
touched his mustache with her finger. Then she turned toward her brother.
“Kostya, you promised to help me be with the lilies in Verunka’s pond. Do
you remember your promise?”
“Yes,” Kostya answered.
“Then let’s go.”
“Let’s go.”
Dasha stopped at the doorway after passing the guards, who had parted
before her, turned to the man still kneeling on one knee, smiled at him, and
said confidently,
“What must be on Earth . . . is goodness!”
Six hours later, speaking at an expanded session of the Russian Security
Council, the gray-haired chairman said,
“Everything in the world is relative. Relative to our generation, the new
one is akin to gods. We must come even with it, not it with us. All the milit-
ary might of the planet, with its unique technical achievements, proved
powerless before this one little girl of the new generation. Our task, our
duty, and our obligation before this new generation is to clear away the
trash. We must apply all our efforts toward clearing the Earth of all
weaponry. Our technical achievements and the discoveries embodied in the
most modern and, as we thought, unique military complexes turned out to
be unnecessary junk in the face of the new generation, and we have to clear
it away.”
