"Isaac Asimov - Fantastic Vo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

That was the way it began. It didn't matter, Morrison decided afterward, that he had been in that particular room -- that he had not been alert -- that he had been intrigued enough, flattered enough to be willing to go with a woman who said she needed him.

She would, after all, have found him wherever he had been and would have seized upon him and would have made him listen. It might not have been quite so easy under other circumstances, but it would all have gone as it did. He was certain.

There would have been no escape.

2.

He was looking at her in normal light now, and she was less young than he had thought. Thirty-six? Forty, perhaps?

Dark hair. No gray. Pronounced features. Heavy eyebrows. Strong jaws. Pleasant nose. Sturdy body, but not fat. Almost as tall as he was, even though she was wearing flat heels. On the whole, a woman who was attractive without being beautiful. The kind of woman, he decided, one could get used to.

He sighed, for he was facing the mirror and he saw himself there. Sandy hair, thinning. Blue eyes, faded. Thin face, thin body, stringy. Beaky nose, nice smile. He hoped it was a nice smile. But no, not a face you would want to get used to. Brenda had gotten entirely unused to it in a little over ten years, and his fortieth birthday would be five days past the fifth anniversary of the day his divorce had been made final and official.

The waitress brought the coffee. They had been sitting there, not talking but appraising each other. Morrison finally felt he had to say something.

"No vodka?" he said in an attempt at lightness.

She smiled and looked somehow even more Russian when she did so. "No Coca-Cola?"

"If that's an American habit, Coca-Cola is at least cheaper."

"For good reason."

Morrison laughed. "Are you this quick in Russian?"

"Let us see if I am. Let's talk Russian."

"We'll sound like a couple of spies."

Her last sentence had been in Russian. So had Morrison's reply. The change of language made no difference to him. He could speak and understand it as easily as English. That had to be so. If an American wished to be a scientist and keep up with the literature, he had to be able to handle Russian, almost as much as a Russian scientist had to be able to handle English.

This woman, Natalya Boranova, for instance, despite her pretence that she was not at home in English, spoke it readily and with only a faint accent, Morrison noticed.

She said, "Why will we sound like spies? There are hundreds of thousands of Americans speaking English in the Soviet Union and hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens speaking Russian in the United States. These are not the bad old days."

"That's true. I was joking. But in that case, why do you want to speak Russian?"

"This is your country and that gives you a psychological advantage, does it not, Dr. Morrison? If we speak my language, it will balance the scales a bit."

Morrison sipped at his coffee. "As you wish."

"Tell me, Dr. Morrison. Do you know me?"

"No. I have never met you before."

"And my name? Natalya Boranova? Have you heard of me?"

"Forgive me. If you were in my field, I would have heard of you. Since I have not, I assume you are not in my field. Should I know you?"