"Arcady And Boris Strugatsky. Prisoners of Power" - читать интересную книгу автораthat these countries harbored the most aggressive designs. They sent in
saboteurs and spies, provoked border incidents, and were preparing for war. The purpose of such a war was not clear to Guy. He had never really given it any thought. For him they were simply enemies to the north. That was all he needed to know. To the south, beyond the borderland forests, lay a desert, land that had been totally defoliated by nuclear explosions. The desert covered the territories of a whole group of countries that had once been the most active militarily. No one seemed to know what was happening in those millions of square miles, nor were they interested in knowing. The southern borders were subject to constant attack by hordes of half-savage degens who infested the forest beyond the Blue Snake River. The problem of the southern border was an extremely critical one. It was so rough that the Fighting Legion's elite forces were concentrated there. Guy had served there for three years and told many incredible stories about his experiences. It was possible that other countries still existed further south of the desert, at the other end of the planet's only continent, but they kept themselves well isolated. On the other hand, the Island Empire, on three mighty archipelagos in the arctic zone, constantly made its menacing presence known. A huge fleet of white submarines, equipped with the latest technology of destruction, plied the radioactive waters with their crews of specially trained cutthroats. Like phantoms, the submarines terrorized the coastal regions with their unprovoked shellings and raiding parties. The Legion had also to turn back the White threat. Maxim was shaken by this picture of chaos and destruction. Here was a extinguishing itself once and for all. Maxim heard Rada's calm and terrible account of how her mother had received the news of her father's death. Her father, an epidemiologist, had refused to leave a plague-ridden region, and since the government in those days had neither the time nor the means to cope with an epidemic, a bomb was simply dropped. After her mother's death, young Rada, to support little Guy and helpless Uncle Kaan, worked eighteen hours a day as a dishwasher at a deportation center, then as a chambermaid in a luxury hotel for speculators. Later she spent some time in prison. After that she was unemployed and had to beg for several months. Maxim heard Uncle Kaan's story, too. Unc, once an eminent scientist, told how the Academy of Sciences had been abolished during the first year of the war and the Battalion of His Imperial Majesty's Academy had been formed; how, during the famine, the founder of evolutionary theory had gone insane and hanged himself; how they had made broth from grasshoppers and weeds; how a starving crowd had attacked the zoological museum and seized specimens preserved in alcohol, for food. Maxim listened to Guy's ingenuous tales of the antiballistic missile towers; how cannibals stole up to the construction sites at night and kidnapped rehabs and Legion sentries; how ruthless vampires - part human, part beast, part dog - struck in the darkness like silent ghosts. He listened to his ecstatic praise of the ABM network, built at great sacrifice during the final years of the war. By defending the country from the air, the ABM network had halted enemy operations. Even today, the ABMs were their |
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