© Copyright Victor Pelevin

1
"Get lost."
"???"
"Like I said, get lost. Let me watch."
"But what is it you are watching?"
"Oh God, what an idiot... The Sun, OK?"
Sixfinger looked up from the black turf covered with food, sawdust and
peatcrumbs. He squinted and stared upward.
"Well... We live and live -- but what for? A mystery of ages. And did
anybody even begin to grasp the thin, thread-like nature of the suns?"
The stranger turned his head and stared at Sixfinger with disdainful
curiosity.
"Sixfinger," he immediately introduced himself.
"I am called Hermit," the stranger answered. "Do they say that in your
Socium? About the thin, thread-like nature?"
"It's not `my Socium' any more," Sixfinger said and suddenly whistled:
"Look at that!"
"What?" Hermit asked suspiciously.
"There, look! A new sun just appeared!"
"So what?"
"In the center of the world it never happens. Three suns together..."
Hermit chuckled condescendingly.
"Once I saw eleven at once. One was in the zenith and five more in each
epicycle. Although it wasn't around here."
"Where was it then?" Sixfinger asked.
Hermit kept silence. Turning away, he went aside and chopped off with
his foot a piece of food from the ground, and ate. A gentle warm breeze and
the reflection of the two suns in grayish-green planes of the distant