Fardwor, Russia!

XIV

HENNADY PETROVICH FISHCHENKO, without asking for it, but not denying it either, turned into his own kind of sales manager—he chatted with clients, kept a schedule of the days and weeks ahead, and he even joked with them, saying, “There’s no place in the queue until the end of next month, lady, but your calf will grow all by himself during this time, and you won’t have to pay.” Rumor of the magical serum spread with a rapidity that pleased Karpov: it was neither too frenzied nor too calm, and his worst nightmares—and yes, even Karpov had nightmares—of an endless space filled with so many animals that he wouldn’t know where to put them all remained only nightmares. Now that some time had passed, you could probably say that Karpov had been, of course, simple-minded, because crowds of pigs and goats isn’t a nightmare, but abundance; whereas a nightmare is when you are being talked about a kilometer from your shack and you don’t know anything about it.

In the meantime, in a two-story, red-brick building exactly one kilometer from the shack at a table in a parlor by a fireplace (a yellow, strange-looking coquina fireplace), sat two men, red-faced, looking one much like the other. One of them had just arrived from the regional center, the general director of the Holy Rus’ Meat-Processing Corporation, Valentin Vyacheslavovich Rusak, while the other, the red-brick building’s owner, Nikolai Georgievich Filimonenko, ataman of the regional Cossack Council, was one of Rusak’s five main meat suppliers. They had heard the news at the same time from different sources that some goon in the institute town was growing piglets into whole pigs in a week’s time, and they both called the other at once—and got busy signals. Both Rusak and Filimonenko were alarmed by the news, and now they were trying to combine their forces to understand how this might affect their business.

Even if it turned out that the miracle would be limited territorially to only the town and the closest surrounding suburbs, the city market (they call it a “bazaar” around here) would be oversaturated with cheap meat within a month; and Valentin Vyacheslavovich considered that fine, because the cost of meat would cheapen, while the price of Holy Rus’ kielbasa would not—no, therefore his expenses on raw materials would go down, but the profit would stay the same. Nikolai Georgievich agreed—yes, the meat at the bazaar would become cheaper, and he, of course, would lower the asking price for Valentin Vyacheslavovich, but we’re both smart men here, and we understand that “if the miracle will be limited territorially,” it won’t work, and the best scenario would be that meat traders would come to the town for the meat, and most likely for the serum, not only from this region, but also from the Kuban, and from the Don, and from other places as far away as Chechnya. At the word “Chechnya,” they fell silent, because they remembered well what had gone on here before the first campaign, when the bazaar and, generally, the whole local market was controlled by Chechens. That was awful, though it was brief.

“Maybe you should consult with the boys in Moscow?” Filimonenko asked hesitantly, and he was right to be hesitant; Rusak waved his hands: whoa, whoa, the moment they realize they don’t need our meat, they’ll come in here and take the serum for themselves, and within six months some Mikoyan would show up with kielbasa for two twenty, and that would be it, we wouldn’t be able to do anything. Filimonenko nodded, reached up for a bottle of Praskoveya cognac on the shelf and poured some out; there sure were some things to think over.