"Arcady And Boris Strugatsky. Prisoners of Power" - читать интересную книгу автораcountry home somewhere. But now his dusty book-crammed study served as
bedroom and what have you. Secondhand clothing, loneliness, oblivion. A sorry state. Guy pushed the easy chair closer to the TV, stretched out, and began to watch the screen drowsily. Mac sat beside him for a while, then rose silently, and disappeared into another comer. He browsed in Guy's small collection of books, selected a textbook, and began to leaf through it. After Rada had finished the dishes, she sat down beside Guy and crocheted, glancing up at the screen occasionally. All was peaceful and serene. Guy dozed off. He had a ridiculous dream: he caught two degens in a railroad tunnel, began interrogating them, and suddenly discovered that one of them was Mac. The other one, smiling gently, said to Guy: "All this time you've been making a big mistake. Your place is with us. The captain is just a hired killer. He's no patriot. He just likes to kill." Guy was crushed by doubts, but then sensed that everything was about to become crystal clear. Just one more second, and all Ms doubts would vanish. Ibis strange situation was so agonizing that his heart skipped several beats, and he woke up abruptly. Mac and Rada were quietly chatting about trivial things. About swimming in the sea, about sand and cockleshells. A thought suddenly occurred to him: was he really capable of doubling, of vacillating? What did the doubts in his dream mean? Could they happen during his waking life? For some time he tried to recall the dream in all its details, but it slipped away like a bar of wet soap. Relieved, Guy passed it off as nonsense. The TV program was boring, so Guy suggested a few beers. Rada went to the kitchen and brought two bottles from the refrigerator. They drank and Mac had absorbed an entire textbook on geopolitics in the preceding half-hour. Rada was delighted, but Guy refused to believe it. He insisted that a person might be able to leaf through it in half an hour, but certainly not read it and assimilate it. Impossible! Mac demanded a test and they made a bet: the loser would tell Uncle Kaan straight to his face that his colleague Shapshu was a superior intellect and a brilliant scientist. Guy opened the book at random, found questions at the end of a chapter, and read: "Explain our government's moral magnanimity with respect to northern expansion." Mac answered in his own words but correctly summarized the text, adding that in his opinion moral magnanimity had nothing to do with expansion; he viewed the entire problem as stemming from Khonti's and Pandeya's aggressive regimes. Guy scratched his head, turned several pages, and asked: "What is the average cereal yield in the northwestern regions?" Mac laughed and said that there were no data for the northwest. Guy's inability to trip up Mac delighted Rada. "What is the population pressure at the mouth of the Blue Snake River?" continued Guy. Mac stated a figure, cited an error in calculation, and did not fail to add that the concept of population pressure troubled him. He couldn't understand why it had been introduced. Guy started to explain that population pressure was a measure of aggressiveness, but Rada interrupted him. Guy, she said, was deliberately changing the subject, trying to squirm out of their bet because he realized how poorly he was doing. Dismayed by the prospect of confronting Uncle Kaan, Guy stalled for time by starting an argument. Mac listened for a while. Then, out of the |
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