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MAY THERE BE GOOD ON EARTH
The child raised his little face again, and looking up at the president tugged
at his trousers again and said, “Pee”—and he squatted a little.
“You’ve picked a bad time with your ‘pee.’ And you’re also very hard to
please,” the president said, quickly picking the child up in his arms and apo-
logizing to the journalists, and headed to the door, saying as he went, “We’ll
be quick,” and he walked out.
On the screens of hundreds of millions of televisions, the television cam-
eras showed the children playing, drawing, and talking to each other. Most
often they showed the president’s podium, where no one stood. And then,
little Dasha rose from her seat. She took her chair, dragged it to the presid-
ential podium, climbed on the chair, looked at the journalists and into the
camera lenses aimed at her, straightened the bows on her braids, and began
to speak.
“My name is Dasha. Our president is a nice man. He’ll be right back. He’ll
be back and he’ll tell you everything. He’s a little nervous. But he’ll be able
to tell everyone how good it’s going to be everywhere on Earth and that no
one should be afraid of us. My brother Kostya told me that people are afraid
of us children now because I blew up the big new missiles. But I didn’t just
want to blow them up, I wanted to keep my papa from leaving us for long
times and for my papa not to think so much about these missiles and not to
look at them. He should look at Mama. She’s better than all the missiles.
She’s so happy when Papa looks at her and talks to her. But when he goes
away for a long time or looks at missiles, Mama is sad, and I don’t want my
mama to be sad. Kostya, my brother, is very smart and sensible, and Kostya
says I’ve scared lots of people. I won’t blow anything up anymore. That’s
not interesting at all. There are other things to do that are very important
and interesting. They will bring joy to everyone. And you will take apart the
missiles yourselves. So that no one can ever blow them up. Please don’t be
afraid of us.
“Come visit us. All of you. We’ll give you all life-giving water to drink.
My mama told me how people here used to live. They went about their busi-
ness, built different factories and plants, and got so carried away that all of
a sudden there was no life-giving water left. The water got dirty, and they
