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

country 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
chatted, and in the course of their aimless conversation it came out that
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