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

the entrance: "Forest Directorate." I stood before this notice with a
suitcase in my hand, dusty and dehydrated after the long journey, reading
and re-reading it, and felt weak at the knees, for now I knew that the
forest existed and that meant that everything that I had thought about it up
till now was the toyings of a feeble imagination, pale impotent falsehoods.
The forest exists and this vast, somewhat grim building is concerned with
its fate.
"Kim," said Pepper, "surely I'll get into the forest. I'm leaving
tomorrow, after all."
"You really want to go there?" asked Kim absently. "Hot green swamps,
irritable and timorous trees, mermaids, resting on the water under the moon
from their mysterious activity in the depths, wary enigmatic aborigines,
empty villages . . ." "I don't know," said Pepper.
"It's not for you, Peppy," said Kim. "It's only for people who've never
thought about the forest, who've never given a curse about it. You take it
too much to heart. The forest, for you, is dangerous, it will trap you."
"Very likely," said Pepper, "but after all I came here just to see it."
"What do you want the bitter truth for?" asked Kim. "What'll you do
when you've got it? What'll you do in the forest, anyway? Cry over a dream
that's become your destiny? Pray for it to be different? Or, who knows,
maybe start to re-work what there is and must be?"
"So why did I come here?"
"To convince yourself. Surely you realize how important it is--to be
convinced. Other people come for different reasons. Maybe to see miles of
firewood, or find the bacteria of life, or write a thesis. Or get a permit,
not to go into the forest but just in case: come in handy sometime and not
everybody's got one. The limit of their little intentions is to make a
luxury park out of the forest, like a sculptor producing a statue from a
block of marble. So they can keep it trim. Year in, year out. Not let it be
a forest again."
"It's time I got away from here," said Pepper. "There's nothing for me
to do here. Somebody's got to go, either me or all of you."
"Let's multiply," said Kim and Pepper seated himself at his table,
found the wall-plug by feel, and plugged in the Mercedes.
"Seven hundred and ninety three, five hundred and twenty-two by two
hundred and sixty-six, zero eleven."
The machine began to chatter and leap. Pepper waited for it to settle,
then hesitantly read out the answer.
"All right. Clear it," said Kim. "Now, six hundred and ninety-eight,
three hundred and twelve, divide for me by twelve fifteen. . . ."
Kim dictated the figures, Pepper picked them out, pressed the
multiplier and divider keys, added, subtracted, derived roots, everything
proceeded as normal.
"Twelve by ten," said Kim. "Multiply."
"One oh oh seven," dictated Pepper automatically, then woke up and
said: "Wait, it's lying. It should be a hundred and twenty."
"I know, I know," said Kim, impatient. "One zero zero seven," he
repeated. "Now get me the root of ten zero seven. . . ."
"Just a minute," said Pepper.
The bolt clicked again behind the curtain and Proconsul appeared, pink,