"Arcady And Boris Strugatsky. Prisoners of Power" - читать интересную книгу автора

A week ago, when the new prisoners formed in front of the barracks, Zef
had gone up to Maxim and selected him for Ms 104th Sappers Unit. Maxim was
delighted. Not only did he recognize the flaming red beard and square stocky
figure at once, but Zef recognized him, too, in that suffocating crowd of
convicts in checkered prison uniforms, where no one gave a damn about anyone
else.
Besides, Maxim had every reason to believe that Allu Zef, the once
eminent psychiatrist and an educated, intelligent man, unlike the
half-criminal rabble jammed into the train's prison car, was connected
somehow with the underground. And when Zef led him to the barracks and
showed him his bunk next to one-armed Vepr, Maxim thought that his future
had finally taken shape. But he soon learned he was wrong: Vepr didn't want
to talk. He listened that night with a vacant expression to Maxim's rapidly
whispered story of the group's fate, the tower's destruction, and the trial.
"Sometimes it turns out differently," he muttered through a yawn and then
turned over and went to sleep. Maxim felt let down.
Then Zef climbed onto his bunk. "Stuffed myself to the gills," he
announced to Maxim, and without beating around the bush began to badger him
crudely and brazenly for names and information. Perhaps he had once been an
eminent scientist, an educated man; perhaps he had even been a member of the
underground; but that night he impressed Mac as being a well-fed provocateur
who, having nothing better to do before going to sleep, had decided to
harass a dumb newcomer. With some difficulty. Maxim managed to get rid of
him, and long after he heard Zef snoring healthily, he lay awake recalling
the many times he had been deceived by people and events on this planet.
His nerves were spent. He recalled the trial, obviously prepared well
before the group had even received the order to attack the tower; he
recalled the written reports of some filthy informer who knew everything
about the group, and, perhaps, had been a member of it; and he recalled the
film taken from the tower during the attack, and his shame when he
recognized himself on the screen: there he was, firing away with his
submachine gun at the searchlights - more precisely, at the stagelights
illuminating the actors of that horrifying play. In the tightly sealed
barracks - suffocating, stinking, and crawling with vermin - rehabs raved
in their sleep, while in a far comer, in the light of a single candle, other
prisoners played cards and shouted hoarsely at each other.
The following day he felt let down again: this time by the forest. It
was impossible to take a step without running into steel: dead steel, rusted
through; lurking steel, ready to Mil at any moment; invisible steel, aiming
at you; mobile steel, blindly plowing up the remains of roads. The soil and
grass reeked of rust, and radioactive puddles had accumulated at the bottoms
of hollows; birds didn't sing but wailed hoarsely, as if in their death
throes. There were no animals, nor was there woodland stillness. To the left
and right explosions pounded and thundered. Gray cinders eddied among the
branches, and the roar of worn engines drifted through the forests on gusts
of wind.
And so it had gone: day - night, day - night. In the daytime they
worked in the forest, which was not really a forest but an old fortified
region. It was crawling with military devices, armored cars, ballistic
missiles, rockets on caterpillar treads, flamethrowers, and poison-gas