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

Mac?"
"Mac, don't you want to say anything?" asked the General.
"I already have. The new plan is better than the old one, but still
poor. Let me do the job myself. Take the risk."
"We won't go into that." The General was irritated. "And that ends the
matter. Do you have anything practical to add?"
"No," replied Maxim, regretting that he had reopened the discussion.
"Where did you get these new pills?" Memo asked suddenly.
"They are the same as the old ones," explained the General, "but Mac
managed to make them a little more effective."
"Ah, yes, Mac..." Memo's disparaging tone made everyone feel uneasy. It
conveyed the notion that here was a greenhorn, not really one of them, an
alien who might even be setting them up.
"Yes, Mac," said the General sharply. "Enough talk. The order is from
headquarters. Obey it, Hoofer!"
"I am." Memo shrugged his shoulders. "I'm opposed to it, but I'm
obeying it. What else can I do?"
Maxim looked at them sadly. A completely heterogeneous group. Under
normal circumstances it would probably never occur to them to associate with
each other. Ex-farmer, ex-criminal, ex-teacher. What they were about to
undertake seemed so senseless; in a few hours most of them would be dead and
nothing in their world would have changed. Those who survived would have, at
best, a brief respite from those excruciating pains. But they would be
wounded or exhausted from the ordeal. They would be pursued like dogs and
would have to hide out in stifling holes. And the cycle would begin again.
To act in concert with them was folly, but to abandon them would be
unconscionable. He had to choose the former. Maybe that was the way you had
to work here if you wanted to accomplish anything. You would have to endure
folly, senseless bloodshed, even treachery. What miserable, stupid, evil
people. But what could one expect from such a miserable, stupid, evil world?
Folly springs from weakness, and weakness from ignorance, from ignorance of
the correct path. It's impossible that the correct one can't be found. "I've
tried one already, and it was wrong. It's evident that the one I'm about to
take is wrong, too. Who knows, I might choose the wrong one again and again
and find myself at a dead end. To whom am I trying to justify my actions?
And why should I? I like these people and I can help them. For the present,
that's all I need to know."
"We'll split up now," said the General. "Hoofer, you go with Forester.
Mac with Green. Ordi with me. At twenty-one hundred we meet at the boundary
marker. Don't take the roads; go through the woods. Each of you is
responsible for your partner, so stick together. Let's go now. Memo and
Green first." He brushed the butts onto a sheet of paper, rolled it up, and
put it in his pocket.
Forester rubbed his knees. "My bones ache. It's going to rain. That
means a fine night for us - good and dark."

11.
They had to crawl from the edge of the woods to the barbed wire. Green
crawled ahead, dragging a pole with a linear charge and swearing at the
barbs pricking his hands. Behind him crawled Maxim with a sack of magnetic