"Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. The snail on the slope" - читать интересную книгу автора

to leave,just you."
"I'm always like that," said Pepper. "I always do the opposite. Anyway,
why should a man always be simple and straightforward?"
"A man ought to be teetotal," announced Acey, sniffing the joint of his
index finger, "what d'you think, eh?"
"I don't drink," said Hausbotcher. "And I don't drink for a very simple
reason, one that anyone can understand. I have a liver complaint. You can't
catch me out, Ace."
"What gets me about the forest," said Acey, "is the swamps. They're
hot, get me? It turns me around. I just can't get used to it. You plop in
somewhere . . . then you're off the brushwood road. There I am in my cab,
can't climb out. Just like hot cabbage soup. There's steam coming off it and
it smells of cabbage soup--I tried a mouthful once, but it's no good, not
enough salt or something . . . no, the forest is no place for a man. What
more do they want to know about it? They drive their machines on and on into
it, like a hole in the ice--and they still write if off, and down they go,
and they still. ..
"Green odorous abundance. Abundance of colors, abundance of smells.
Abundance of life. And all of it alien. Somehow familiar, a resemblance
somewhere, but profoundly alien. The hardest part was to accept it as alien
and familiar at one and the same time, derived from our world, flesh of our
flesh--but broken away, not wishing to know us. An apeman might think the
same way about us, his descendants, grieving and fearful . . ."
"When the order comes out," proclaimed Hausbotcher, "we shall move some
real stuff in there, not your lousy bulldozers and landrovers--in two months
will turn it all into ... er ... a concrete platform, dry and level."
"You will turn it," said Acey. "If you don't cop one in the jaw, you'll
turn your own father into a concrete platform. For straighforwardness sake."
The siren started up thickly. The glass in the windows rattled and
above the door a massive bell hammered out, lamps flickered on the walls,
while above the counter a large sign lit up: "Get up and leave!" Hausbotcher
rose hastily, adjusted his watch and without a word went off at a run.
"Well, I'm off," said Pepper. "Work to be done."
"Time to go," agreed Acey. "Time's up."
He divested himself of his quilted jacket, rolled it up neatly, and
moved the chairs so as to lie down, using the jacket as a pillow.
"Tomorrow at seven, then?" said Pepper.
"What?" asked Acey in a drowsy voice.
"I'll be here tomorrow at seven."
"What d'you say?" Acey asked, tossing about on the chairs. "Place is
going to the dogs, bastards," he mumbled. "How many times have I told them
to get a sofa in here. . . ."
"To the garage," said Pepper. "Your truck."
"Ah-h. . . . Well, to do that thing, we'll see. It's not that easy."
He tucked up his legs, stuck his palms under his armpits, and started
snuffling. His arms were heavy and a tattoo could be glimpsed under the
hair. "What destroys us" was written there, also, "Ever onward." Pepper made
for the exit.
He crossed an enormous puddle in the backyard on a board, skirted a
mound of empty jam-jars, crept through a hole in the fence, and entered the