"Arcady And Boris Strugatsky. Prisoners of Power" - читать интересную книгу автораreal general. Before the war he had j been a worker on an assembly line,
then was admitted to a school for junior officers, fought in the infantry, and finished the war as a captain. He knew Captain Chachu well and had old scores to settle with him - there had been some sort of trouble right after the war. Anyway, he had been pursuing Chachu for a long time without success. Although he was attached to underground headquarters, he frequently fought in operations and was a good soldier and a competent commander. He enjoyed working in the underground but could scarcely imagine what the future would be like after victory. Actually, he really didn't believe in victory. A born soldier, he adjusted easily to any and all conditions and never looked beyond the next ten to twenty days. His ideas had been picked up haphazardly, a little here and a little there; from one-armed Vepr, from Ketshef, from headquarters. But the ideas hammered into him at the school for junior officers remained foremost in his consciousness. Expounding his theories, he would display a strange mixture of opinions: the power of the wealthy must be overthrown (this from Vepr, who Maxim assumed was some sort of socialist or communist); engineers and technicians should be our country's leaders (this from Ketshef); cities should be leveled and we should live in communion with nature (from some bucolist at headquarters). All this could be accomplished by absolute obedience to one's superiors and with considerably less discussion of abstract subjects. Maxim had clashed with him twice. Why destroy towers, sacrificing courageous comrades, time, money, and weapons, contended Maxim, when the towers would be restored in ten days anyway? Everything would continue the same as before, except that the inhabitants of neighboring villages would be clearly to Maxim why they engaged in these diversions against the towers. Either he was concealing something, or he himself did not understand why they were necessary. He would repeat the same phrases on each occasion: orders are not to be discussed; every attack on a tower was a strike against the enemy; people must not be prevented from fighting back or hatred would corrode them and they would have nothing to live for, "We must find the Center!" Maxim would insist. "We must strike at the Center with all our forces at once! What kind of brains do they have at headquarters if they can't understand such a simple thing?" "Headquarters knows what it's doing," the General would thunder. "In our situation, discipline comes first! We don't need any anarchists, thank you. Mac, everything has its time. You'll get your Center, too, if you live long enough." Still, the General respected Maxim and eagerly sought his help when radiation strikes caught him in Forester's cellar. "I'm still against it," said Memo stubbornly. "Suppose they pin us down with their fire? Suppose we need six minutes rather than five to do the job? It's an insane plan." "We'll be using linear charges for the first time," explained the General. "Using our old method of tearing through the barbed wire, the fate of the operation will be decided in three or four minutes. If we catch them by surprise, we'll have one or even two minutes to spare." "Two minutes is a long time," said Forester. "In two minutes I could strangle them all with my bare hands. If I could get my hands on them." "Yeah, if we could get our hands on them." Green grimaced. "Right, |
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