ULTIMATUM

I.

At 4. 30 a. m. Ivan B. 's chronic pyelonephritis roused him for
the fifth time out of his bed. The ailment made him slip
barefooted in his galoshes and run out into the yard.

Dawn was galloping across the billowing hills. The melancholic
wail of a cow and the hysterical cry of a famished goat could be
heard.

Pyelonephritis is a terrible disease, and Ivan B. had every
chance of feeling the whole weight of his situation when he
entered the narrow, open-air loo. The pain returned and for the
hundredth time he repeated his fervent promise to go to the
cowshed and hang himself. Hanging seemed a sweet pleasure
compared to the pain. He felt almost dead, and relaxed in the
sweet silence of death, away at last from it all.

Precisely at that moment a heavy wing flapped above him, a
terrible stench enveloped everything and all the light of the
nearing dawn vanished. Death had probably taken the trouble to
pass over his head just to show him what it was like, and, in
fact, to hint that he shouldn't be so keen on it after all. Ivan
B. felt as if he had left his body for a moment, and immediately
returned back, struck with fear. Fear pushed him out into the
yard, which was choke-full with early cucumbers, all worth their
weight in gold on the market.

In his bid to keep up with the Joneses and outdo his neighbors
Ivan B. had scattered nitrates and herbicides at will, which gave
his cucumbers an avid green color and delighted the eye of the
uninitiated. The basin with ammonium nitrate was just one more of
his inventions. In the evening you put small cucumber inside, and
in the morning you took out large cucumbers ready for the market,
blessing chemistry all the while.

Ivan B. and his family shunned the ammonium vegetables like the
plague, of course. He tried not to think about the anonymous
customers who dearly paid for the vitamins, as ammonium nitrate
was these days called. But the Lord is just and retribution came.
Its name was pyelonephritis.

Right now he felt like throwing up. He lifted his fearful eyes to
heaven. There was something wrong with the dawn. It was neither
blue nor pink, but rather had the same color as the waste waters
flowing into the river from the chemical factory, that pride of
the town. Vile oily light drifted in rags around the owner of
several acres of cucumbers. It was lit up by blood-red lightnings
mixed with swampy green. It stank.

Ivan B. felt the fear taking a good grip and shaking him. He
staggered with trembling knees to his copper-studded gate. It
opened up on a small square. Something was lying on it.

The thing was as big as the ancient biplane which scattered
chemicals on the fields and poisoned the birds and the bees; it's
wingspan was longer than a factory chimney, it had jagged edges
and was equipped with monstrous eyes as big as the dried-up wells
in the vicinity. Huge talons, terrifying and archaic, tore at the
cobbles, and, to top it all, it spat fire.

When the flames singed his eyebrows Ivan B. cried out feebly and
ran, seeking refuge among the cucumbers. But the garden was
quietly perishing, scalded by the fire which the thing on the
square continued to spew.

II.

Serafim M. was dreaming of butterflies. He was running through a
peppermint meadow in his shorts. Since his appointment as
director of the chemical factory he had often dreamt of catching
trout in the so-called river, which was a veritable cesspool in
reality.

The director was a law-abiding citizen and, on one hand, any
unfulfillment of the factory's plan jolted his heart, while on
the other, his heart was just as jolted when he caught sight of
the horrifying consequences of the plant's activity. In this
vicious cycle he sweated and tormented himself, hoping for a
single mercy from Fate - to be offered a higher posting somewhere
else as soon as possible.

Recently he had been haunted by ecologically oriented nightmares
between three and six in the morning. He dreamt he was being
visited by one Grannie Mara, who had risen from the dead to
stroll about for a bit. After seeing her fill, the grannie found
him in his sleep, pierced him with venomous eyes and solemnly
cursed him. The curse was implacable.

She was followed by old men in hooded cloaks, carrying shepherd's
crooks, who shrilly demanded to know what had become of the
pastures, why the cattle was puny and where the fish in the river
had done. Serafim M. entered into his role of director and
imperiously sent them off to seek an answer elsewhere. But the
visitors closed in on him with their crooks. The horror of the
midnight beating gave Serafim M. severe palpitations. To top it
all, yellow smoke swept into the room, hung above the bed, filled
out, wrapped itself around his neck and quite realistically
started choking him. In odor and color the smoke resembled that
which the factory spewed out 24 hours a day.

"Mercy!" The director cried.

"Take a pill", mercilessly said his wife, who was used to his
screams and slept on.

He took some and obediently went to sleep, but the noose of
yellow smoke wouldn't leave him in peace. It was impossible to
tolerate any longer, so the director abandoned his night's rest
and stepped out into the yard to distract himself. It was only a
dream, he half-heartedly mused while strolling around. That's
when he heard a scream. It sounded as if somebody had peeped
straight into Hell.ell.

Immediately after that Hell itself came down on the town. Its
heat caused everything to boil, to writhe and steam. While losing
consciousness, the director of the chemical plant clutched at the
life-saving thought that he was still dreaming.

III.

"I'm packing! I'm getting our of here! Right now!" Krassimir kept
telling himself. "This allergy is killing me, I can't stop
scratching myself, I look like a pig down with the measles!"

Despite being a scientist Krassimir H. had never seen a live pig
in his life, let alone one suffering from the measles. His only
contact with pigs up to now had been on the occasions on which he
had eaten pork. He did not really like pork, in fact, preferring
chicken in its stead. But somebody had told him that the broilers
were fed various mixtures with a sound helping of antibiotics in
them. This prevented them from getting sick, but those eating
their meat became an easy prey to viruses. Meaning: may God keep
you from pneumonia or a bad flu, your body has gotten used to the
medicines in the meat and will not react to the real ones when
needed.

Be that as it may, Krassimir H. reflected naively, I am concerned
with space, not with chicken or pigs. Perhaps I could present a
petition to the people breeding them? A petition definitely
insisting that they stop feeding me with rubbish. I will reveal
the mysteries of space to them, and they in return will give me
pure things to eat.

But the proposed treaty remained unratified since the respondent
party was obviously not interested in the secrets of space.

Not long ago some loonies had approached Krassimir H. in his
official capacity of a young scientist. They waved pictures of
something round and shiny in the sky. At first Krassimir H.
behaved cautiously, then slightingly, attempting all the while to
show them that he did not wish to have his time taken up by
pictures of basins flung up in the sky. It's not a basin, the
loonies insisted, but a saucer. A flying saucer. A UFO. Crammed
with extraterrestrials. They want to establish friendly bilateral
relations with us. Although they are greener than the average
human, they are probably cleverer than the average human as well.
"So what?" Krassimir H. had asked.

Then the looniest of them all, obviously the leader, had told him
that the ETs might want to clean up our air, our rivers, our soil
and our relationships. To do away with nitrates, herbicides,
AIDS, bombs, chemical weapons, etc., to bundle them off to
distant forests or, to put it scientifically, to neutralize them.

Krassimir H. was being offered the role of mediator between them
and us.

The young scientist had closed his eyes and had wearily imagined
how he would ascend a tall platform to mediate between the
loonies with the basin, the green beings, and his bosses,
scientific celebrities one and all. He foresaw himself being
catcalled, despised, dismissed and sent off to a culinary college
where nobody gave a damn about physics and where he would be
asked to cook mixed pig-chicken dishes.

Gathering his wits about him, blinded with rage and horror, he
had uttered those justly-famous words:

"Get out, imbeciles! This cannot be because it can never be!"

But he suffered the stress badly, took leave of absence and
escaped to the small town. He had there an aunt who was a good
housewife and who, he hoped, would help him become both
physically and mentally stronger. His easily hurt psyche felt the
need for a firm hand and a proper guidance through space and
time. The only problem was that, apart from giving him a headache
with the town's gossip, his aunt fed him strange brews of broiled
nettle in the firm conviction that she would thus thicken the
blood of her frail nephew.

Last night, however, he had read in a magazine that nettles
tended to store all the topsoil's poisons. Ashen-faced, he had
asked his aunt where she gathered the fabled nettle and when he
found out that she did so along the river, he had nearly fainted.
The most poisoned soil in the area was along the river.

That's why his mind, instead of soaring now, was clouded and
constantly filled with images of the loonies with their basin. He
had even started hallucinating. He saw the loonies taking
position behind the house, pointing automatic equipment at the
sky in order to photograph the basin-saucer and present the
snapshot as the ultimate proof of the presence of the green
beings.

He had to get away, to get away from it all as soon as possible.
At dawn Krassimir H. tried to do some waking-up exercises, but
his troubled mind told him not to fool around but rather to take
a peek through the window instead. He obeyed his urge
unquestioningly and approached. The window panes were misty, as
if he was looking into a sauna.

"Open up!" Ordered his blurred by so many heavy metals mind.

Krassimir H. obeyed. He saw a giant animal lying on the square,
clearly ferocious by the look of it, which fiercely clicked its
elephantine teeth and spewed fire. His intolerance, nightmares,
and now monstrous visions of this kind: all this caused Krassimir
H. to sink into an uncontrollable frenzy. He felt sure he was
going mad, had perhaps already gone mad.

"Well, that's what happens when one refuses to mediate," a steely
voice pounded inside his head.

IV.

During the next few hours, filled with cries of DEAR ME, GOOD
HEAVENS, GOODNESS GRACIOUS, and chaos, the inhabitants of the
town realized that The Thing In The Square was definitely a
dragon. This one seemed to be a rather ordinary type of dragon,
differing greatly from the three-headed ones described in the
notes of local folklore expert Mityo L., a retired teacher.

Feverishly turning over the sheets scrawled with his quivering
old-timer's handwriting, he had discovered that according to
stories and legends, a dragon, once it sets its mind on
something, is a vengeful and unyielding beast. Dragons were known
to have terrorized vast territories in the past. People placated
them by offering various foods: wheat, oats, foals and cabbage;
dragons did not particularly care for pigs, as with their
intelligence they undoubtedly knew to what a high cholesterol
content of the blood this would lead. With the passage of time,
however, dragons degenerated morally and started insisting on
young girls being brought to them as well. Valiant heroes
appeared, who wanted to stop this custom, but invariably lost the
battle, being badly armed and poorly trained ideologically. There
are descriptions of face-to-face encounters with a dragon in
which the heroes drop to their knees and beg for mercy, after
which they are allowed to run away, leaving the young maidens as
miserable chamber-maids in the cave palace. Such were the
tragedies of the unenlightened past, handed down to us in sad
songs.

Mityo L. memorized two sayings, among other things, which
appeared to him ambiguous and strangely suited to the moment.
They went thus: "A closed mouth catches no flies" and "He who
evil hatches, evil catches".

Unable to see any way out of the situation at hand, Mityo L.
became the first source of rumors about the dragon. Other,
equally unpleasant ones, also circulated, though. It was said
that the town was completely cut off, as tons of rock had dropped
out of the blue onto the two roads which linked it with the
world.

So the town found itself completely, utterly, and hopelessly in
the possession of the dragon.

V.

Once the dragon landed in the square, the first thing it did was
to devour the light and leave the population in darkness, as
dragons have always done in stories immemorial. It then started
running to and fro, imagining probably that the people were
bringing back the daylight with their lanterns, torches and
candles. At nine o'clock in the morning the dragon spoke with a
human voice:

"Attention, please! A state of siege is now declared! I am the
dragon of your district. I have slept for one hundred years and I
would have slept for another hundred if you hadn't filled up my
cave with smoke. I was forced to take measures as that smoke is
poisonous."

After the announcement the animal seemed to fall into a light
slumber, although it still continued to spit fire. The gathered
multitude held an impromptu meeting during the short break and
pushed the factory director into the foreground, hoping that be
would think of some means of salvation. He, however, continued to
be in a semi-deranged state and the only thing his executive mind
was able to come up with was the suggestion of inviting the
dragon in for a treat. There were different kinds of vintage
French brandy and Swiss chocolates in his office for similar
occasions. He was indignantly pushed aside by the people, who
realized that he was of no use and never had been.

Then an old woman with a wooden flask came to the fore and
announced that she would go to the dragon even if it were to
devour her. And even if it did, she said, it would only rid her
of her arthritis, asthma, diabetes, heart trouble, loneliness and
the lack of multi-vitamins in the drugstores. She dumbfounded
everybody, so that no attempt was made to stop her.

The old woman approached the dragon, gave it a sip of the local
fire-water and the two struck up a lively conversation. They let
their hairs down and wept on each other's shoulders, figuratively
speaking, of course, and remembered things of the past. Meanwhile
the old woman scratched the dragon's back and everyone could
clearly hear it purring like a lion's cub.

All heaved a sigh of relief, but it turned out to have been
premature. After the brief respite, the dragon very firmly and
clearly spelt out its ultimatum to the town:

 1. Get the hell out of here with their factories and smoke. It
felt the smoke damaging its central nervous system and was not
responsible for its doings.

--------------------------------------------------------------
,         -
  --------------------------------------------------
-------

2. A tiny bird, which flew around the world and was known as a
usually reliable source had reported that the region's
vegetables, which it pecked from time to time to restore its
vitamin deficiencies, had been sprinkled with granulated poisons.
These had caused forth the above-mentioned disorders, in addition
to allergies. Right now he felt such a terrible itch below his
wings that, the dragon underlined once more, he was not
responsible for his actions.

 3. The birdie had also reported that a certain Krassimir H., a
scientist, was currently residing in the town. The person in
question was to step out in the square and publicly denounce the
words he had recently spoken: "This cannot be, because it can
never be!" A green man had approached the dragon asking for its
help. At this stage, the green man had sadly said, the most
important thing was to get the men of science to stop saying "no"
to everything, but rather to convince them to accept the foreign
aid which was being offered, as the green man knew all that was
knowable about the Earth and the laws which govern its existence.

 4. The dragon felt pity for the human beings in the grip of the
factory chimney and from now on was taking them under its wing.
The protected people would once more turn into children of
Nature, they wouldn't suffer any nasty illnesses, they would sing
and dance, they would no longer have the desire to climb up the
corporate ladder at any cost and the devil take the hindmost,
while envy, that terrible vice, would disappear forever.

5. The dragon endowed the innocent, the blameless, the ones
hitherto pushed into the background, with the gift of flying. Now
everyone would finally find his place in society and things would
return to normal.

That was it! Any questions?

There were none. But, suddenly, some people waved their arms and
rose into the air, giggling like mad. The people flying around
were by no means many. The multitude, left wingless, watched
them, pinching itself and rubbing its eyes. The ability to fly
separated the righteous from the sinners and, as was to be
expected, threw a chasm between them.

VI.

"You've gone mad!" Green Man Number One yelled.

Green Man Number Two accepted the bellowing of his superior
calmly: he did not blush, he did not wring his hands, and his
blood pressure obviously did not rise. This completely maddened
Green Man Number One.

"Saboteur!" he concluded with disgust and went to lock himself in
the Spiritual Reanimation Cabin.

The flying saucer was hidden on a mountain peak in the only place
where the acid rain had spared the pines.

Green Man Number One, the head of the scouting expedition,
considered the whole wretchedness of the situation. His
subordinate had obviously gone crazy with a reformist deviation
and his clouded consciousness had caused him to create the
speaking hologram of a dragon. Besides this, he had endowed his
chosen ones with the ability to overcome gravitation. He had thus
violated all The Rules of all the flying saucers which dropped in
from time to time on this planet.

Green Man Number One had to admit that the small planet, shoved
in a sleeve of the galaxy, had greatly evolved in its
self-poisoning activity, and that unpredictable damage was likely
to occur in the near future.

The tiny planet had always appealed to him and the damage done to
it pained him, but still, he was an old stellar salt, a leader
who commanded respect, and he could not let mere emotions sway
him from the Rules of Flying Saucers. The mess, however, had to
be straightened out right now. But how? Where, damn it, could
they possibly take their dreadful factories? And how could they
remedy the ozone holes, the poisoned air and water? Anyway, in
the final analysis, this was the business of the planet's
inhabitants. The Rules explicitly stipulated that the task of the
flying saucers was only to observe, while staying as invisible as
possible and generally keeping a low profile.

Non-interference, no matter what! And suddenly this paranoiac on
board, those people fluttering in the air and the talking dragon
on the square! Good Lord!... Green Man Number One was trying to
get back to normal. The Spiritual Reanimation Cabin winked at
him: it was playing a Chopin waltz and reciting love poems by
Mme. de Stael and Marguerite de Navarre... but relief wouldn't
come.

Green Man Number One jumped up and set out to bring into line
that provocateur, that paranoiac stellar pirate, that two-bit
violator of the Rules. He would give him an ultimatum: liquidate
the consequences of his irresponsible action as soon as possible
and subject himself to surgery by the ship's robot, who was to
cut out the sensitive strings inside him for good, or else...
Otherwise he would be chucked out to roam the planet. There were
red, yellow, white and black people on it, but no green ones. He
would be caught and it wouldn't be funny...

This ultimatum brought their total up to two. The ultimata
clashed in the green air, piercing it sharply and mercilessly.
VII.

At 4. 30 a. m. Ivan B. 's chronic pyelonephritis roused him once
again from his sleep. Shuffling about in the yard in his
downtrodden galoshes, he promised himself to visit the doctor.
These excruciating pains were insufferable. The doctor would
prescribe some antibiotic, that's all they ever gave you.
Antibiotics did something to your stomach. Ivan B. would take the
doctor three crates of cucumbers lavishly sprinkled with
nitrates. An eye for an eye.

Krassimir H. scratched himself in his sleep. Allergic rash had
appeared on his belly. His sleep was heavy. A green man had
entered his dream and was whispering in his ear:

"Here I am! You aren't going to say now that I cannot be because
I can never be, are you?"

The young scientist whined and scratched his skin harder and
harder.

Serafim M. dreamt that he was being boiled in a cauldron in Hell,
while the fire was being fanned by all the inhabitants of the
town. To top of it all, they were funneling the dense smoke from
the factory chimney into his nose, while they themselves had
donned on gas masks.

The dragon in the square started deflating like a picked rubber
toy. It melted and disappeared until nothing remained of it.

Around dawn a mass epidemic broke out in the town. A lot of
people milled around the square, yelling that they were able to
fly and had just done so. Their relatives immediately took them
to the doctor who turned to science for support and, together
with Krassimir H., unanimously declared that the people had only
dreamt of flying.

"Look!" Somebody cried out suddenly and pointed at the sky.

The figure of a dragon floated above the town, flapping its
wings, clicking its elephantine teeth and spitting fire. But a
wind came out of nowhere and the dragon started dissolving. A
flying saucer flashed behind it.

The saucer dipped about as eloquently as possible in order to
show that it was not a vision, after which it vanished with
indescribable leaps and bounds.

Green Man Number One was writing a report in the Spiritual
Reanimation Cabin, blackballing the actions of his subordinate in
simple words. But Green Man Number Two had nevertheless
outsmarted him by making a farewell flight in the saucer,
dropping yet another dragon hologram on the town. He had been
forced to wipe out the incident from the memory of the
townspeople, but he had done it with a calculated carelessness,
which had resulted in disconnected memories among those who had
taken an active part in the night's events. Green Man Number Two
watched the planet sadly. He knew that he would never see it
again. There was no doubt that he would never be permitted to set
a saucer on it again. He hoped that he had at least done
something for the planet. He hoped that the dragon's ultimatum
would be remembered by somebody.

The flying saucer bounced around the sky like a tennis ball,
found an ozone hole and passed through it into the outer reaches
of space. Krassimir H. pinched himself, came forward and told the
multitude that that which they had seen they had not seen at all,
because it couldn't have really happened.

At that moment, the sun, which had been trying to break through
the deadly smoke of the factory chimneys, lit everything up.

Above the town a new day had dawned. 