Trains in these parts went from east to west and from west to east ...

And on the sides of the railway in these parts lay great desert spaces - Sary-Ozeki, the Middle lands of the yellow steppes. Edigey worked here as a switchman at the Boranly-Burany junction. At midnight, his wife, Ukubala, crawled into his booth to report the death of Kazangap.

Thirty years ago, at the end of forty-fourth, Edigheus was demobilized after a shell shock. The doctor said: in a year you will be healthy. But while he could not work physically. And then he and his wife decided to go to the railroad: maybe there will be a guard or watchman for the front-line soldier. Accidentally met Kazangap, got into a conversation, and he invited the young to Buranny. Of course, the place is difficult - deserted and waterless, surrounded by sands. But all is better than to gallop without shelter.

When Ediguy saw the passage, his heart sank: several houses stood on a deserted plane, and then on the steppes from all sides ... I did not know then that he would spend the rest of his life in this place. Of these, thirty years - next to Kazangap. Kazangap helped them a lot at first, gave a camel for milk, gave a camel from her, who was named Karanar. Their children grew up together. They became like relatives.

And they will have to bury Kazangap. Edigheus walked home after the shift, thought about the upcoming funeral and suddenly felt that the earth shuddered under his feet. And he saw how far in the steppe, where the Sarozeksky cosmodrome was located, a rocket rose in a fiery tornado. It was an emergency flight in connection with an emergency at the joint Soviet-American space station Parity. Parity has not responded to signals from the joint control center - Obtsenupra - for more than twelve hours. And then the ships immediately started from Sary-Ozek and from Nevada, sent to clarify the situation.

... Edigey insisted that the deceased be buried in the distant Ana Beyit cemetery. The cemetery had its own story. Legend has it that the Zhuanzhuans who captured Sarah Ozek in past centuries destroyed the memory of prisoners by terrible torture: putting on the head of breadth - a piece of rawhide camel skin. Drying under the sun, the width squeezed the slave's head like a steel hoop, and the unfortunate lost his mind, became a mankurt. Mankurt did not know who he was, from where he did not remember his father and mother, - in a word, he did not realize himself as a man. He did not think about fleeing, did the most dirty, hard work and, like a dog, recognized only the owner.

One woman named Naiman-Ana found her son, turned into a mankurt. He grazed livestock. I didn’t recognize her, I didn’t remember her name, the name of my father ... “Remember your name,” my mother pleaded. “Your name is Zholaman.”

While they were talking, the woman was noticed by the juanzhuang. She managed to escape, but they told the shepherd that this woman had come to steam his head (at these words the slave turned pale - there is no worse threat for mankurt). The guy was left with a bow and arrow.

Nyman-Ana returned to her son with the idea of ​​convincing him to flee. Looking around, I was looking ...

The arrow hit was fatal. But when the mother began to fall from the camel, her white handkerchief fell first, turned into a bird and flew with a cry: “Remember, whose are you? Your father Donenbai! " The place where Naiman-Ana was buried began to be called the Ana-Beyit cemetery - the Mother’s repose ...

In the early morning, everything was ready. The body of Kazangap tightly swaddled into a dense nightmare was put into a towed tractor trolley. There were thirty kilometers one way, the same back, and the burial ... Ahead, Edigei rode in front of Karanar, indicating the path, a tractor with a trailer rolled behind him, and an excavator closed the procession.

Different thoughts visited Edigheus along the way. I recalled those days when he and Kazangap were in power. They did all the work that was necessary at the roadside. Now the young are laughing: old fools, they ruined their lives, for what? So it was for what.

... During this time, the Parity survey was carried out by the arriving astronauts. They found that the astronaut parity service station disappeared. Then they found a record left by the owners in the logbook. Its essence boiled down to the fact that those working at the station had contact with representatives of extraterrestrial civilization - the inhabitants of the planet Forest Chest. Lesogrudniks invited earthlings to visit their planet, and they agreed without informing anyone, including flight leaders, because they were afraid that for political reasons they would be prohibited from visiting.

And now they reported that they were on the Forest Chest, talked about what they saw (the earthlings were especially shocked that there were no wars in the history of the owners), and most importantly, they conveyed the request of the woodcutters to visit the Earth. To this end, aliens, representatives of a technically much more developed civilization than the earth, proposed to create an interstellar station. The world did not yet know about all this. Even the governments of the parties, informed of the disappearance of the astronauts, did not have information about the further development of events. Waited for the decision of the commission.

... Meanwhile, Edigheus recalled one old story, which Kazangap wisely and honestly reasoned with. In 1951, a family arrived - a husband, a wife and two boys. Abutalip Kuttybaev was the same age as Edigey. They did not get into the Sarozeksky wilderness because of a good life: Abutalip, having escaped from the German camp, ended up in forty-third among the Yugoslav partisans. He returned home without a loss of rights, but then relations with Yugoslavia deteriorated, and, learning about his partisan past, he was asked to submit a letter of resignation of his own free will. Asked in one place, in another ... Many times moving from place to place, the Abutalip family was at the Boranly-Burany junction. No one seems to have imprisoned forcibly, but it seems that they have been stuck in sarozeks for life. And this life was beyond their power: the climate is heavy, wilderness, isolation. For some reason, Edigey was sorry for Zarip. But nevertheless, the Kuttybaev family was extremely friendly. Abutalip was a wonderful husband and father, and the children were passionately attached to their parents. At the new place they were helped, and gradually they began to take root. Abutalip now not only worked and took care of the house, not only fiddled with his children, his own and Edigey, but began to read - he was an educated man. And he began to write for children memories of Yugoslavia. This was known to everyone on the road.

By the end of the year, the auditor arrived, as usual. In between, he asked about Abutalip. And after some time after his departure, on January 5, 1953, a passenger train stopped at Burannoye, which didn’t have a stop here, three got out of it and arrested Abutalip. In late February, it became known that the defendant Kuttybaev had died.

Sons were waiting for the father to return day after day. And Edigey persistently thought about Zarip with an inner readiness to help her in everything. It was painful to pretend that he had nothing special to experience! One day, he still told her: “Why are you so plagued? .. After all, we are all with you (he wanted to say - I).”

Here, with the onset of cold weather, Caranar again became enraged - he began to rush. In the morning, Edigheus was to go to work, and therefore he released the atan. The next day, news began to arrive: in one place, Karanar scored two male camels and repelled four queens from the herd, and on the other, he drove the owner riding from the camel. Then, from the Ak-Moinak junction, they asked him to pick up the atan by letter, otherwise they would shoot him. And when Edigei returned home on horseback at Karanar, he found out that Zaripa and the children had left for good. He brutally beat Karanar, quarreled with Kazangap, and then Kazangap advised him to bow at the feet of Ukubale and Zaripe, who saved him from harm, preserved him and his dignity.

That’s what kind of person Kazangap was, whom they were going to bury now. We drove - and suddenly stumbled upon an unexpected obstacle - on a fence of barbed wire. The soldier on guard informed them that he had no right to miss without a pass. The head of the guard confirmed the same and added that in general the Ana Beyit cemetery is subject to liquidation, and in its place there will be a new microdistrict. Persuasion did not lead to anything.

Kazangap was buried near the cemetery, in the place where the great cry of Naiman-Ana had.

... The commission, which discussed the proposal of the Forest Chest, meanwhile decided: to prevent the return of the former cosmonaut parities; refuse to establish contacts with the Forest Chest and isolate the near-Earth space from a possible alien invasion with a missile hoop.

Edigey ordered the participants in the funeral to go on a driveway, and he decided to return to the guardhouse and ensure that he was listened to by the big authorities. He wanted these people to understand: you can’t destroy the cemetery on which your ancestors lie. When there was very little left before the barrier, a bright flash of a formidable flame shot up nearby. That took off the first combat missile robot, designed to destroy any objects that came close to the globe. The second one rushed after it, and more, and more ... The rockets went into deep space to create a hoop around the Earth.

The sky collapsed on his head, breaking open in clubs of boiling flame and smoke ... Edigheus and the camel and dog accompanying him, frantic, fled away. The next day, Buranny Edigey again went to the cosmodrome.