Nikita ivanich was short, with a puny body, scruffy beard, and beady eyes like a chicken. But what a head of hair-yikes. In the Oldener Times, before the Blast, he was an old, old man who coughed and was about to die. He loved to tell Mother the story; if he told her once he told her a hundred times, like it made him proud. And then, he'd say, the whole shebang goes kaboom and blows to kingdom come-and here I am. I'm alive and well, he'd say, and haven't the slightest intention of dying, Golubchiks. And you needn't try to persuade me otherwise.

Mother didn't have an intention either, but those damned firelings tricked her. After Mother died, it wasn't like Nikita Ivanich changed, but he didn't talk so much, and he started to avoid people. It was easy to see why: you could count the Oldeners in a flash, there were hardly any left except for Degenerators, who aren't really people, and with today's Golubchiks, that is, with us, you can't talk the same way. When it comes down to it, the Oldeners don't understand our words, and we don't understand theirs.

Sometimes they babble and chatter such drivel, like little kids, I swear. When Mother and the old man were still alive, the housekeeping ran better. They kept fowl, put up powdered wor-rums, and there was Kitty to catch mice. Mother was lazy and slow. Summer was the time to put away eggs for kvas in winter. Everyone knows when fall comes the fowl head off south, but who knows if they'll come back? So you have to be on your toes.