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

esteemed public. I remember... the studio was the brainchild of Kalu
Swindler, who was a little crazy himself. Swindler is long since gone, but
his wild idea lives on. The director's testimony indicates that Sim was an
ideal subject and it would be extremely desirable to have him back. Oh,
what's this? Transferred to the custody of the Department of Special
Research in keeping with order number such-and-such on such-and-such date.
Ah, here it is - the order, signed by Fank. H'm, I smell Strannik's hand in
this. No, let's not jump to conclusions." He counted to thirty to calm
himself, then picked up the next thick sheaf of papers: Abstract From the
Records of the Special Ethnolinguistic Commission's Inquiry Into the
Possible Mountaineer Origin of M. Sim.
Abstract From the Records of the Special Ethnolinguistic Commission's
Inquiry Into the Possible Mountaineer Origin of M. Sim.
Still thinking about Fank and Strannik, he began to read mechanically.
Suddenly he found himself absorbed in the material. It was an intriguing
study. All reports, evidence, and testimony related in any way whatsoever to
the question of Mac Sim's origin had been brought together and discussed:
anthropological, ethnographic, and linguistic data, and analysis of that
data; the results of radiation phonograms, mentograms, and the subject's own
drawings. It read like a novel, although the conclusions were very meager
and cautious. The commission did not relate M. Sim to any known ethnic group
on the continent. (Attached was a separate opinion, written by the eminent
paleoanthropologist Shapshu, who saw in the subject's cranium a remarkable
resemblance to the fossilized cranium of so-called ancient man. The latter
had inhabited the Archipelago more than fifty thousand years ago.) The
commission confirmed the subject's complete psychological normality at the
present moment but assumed that he had recently suffered a form of amnesia
in conjunction with considerable displacement of real memory by a false one.
The commission conducted a linguistic analysis of the phonograms preserved
in the Special Studio's archives and came to the conclusion that the
language spoken by the subject at that time could not belong to any known
group of modern or dead languages. Therefore, the commission believed the
language could have been a product of the subject's imagination (fish
language), particularly in view of the fact that the subject, according to
his own statement, no longer remembered this language.
The commission refrained from drawing conclusions but was inclined to
believe that in Mac Sim it was dealing with a mutant of a previously unknown
type. "Clever ideas come to clever minds at the same time," thought the
prosecutor enviously. He rapidly scanned the special opinion of Professor
Porru, a member of the commission. Himself a mountaineer by birth, the
professor reminded the commission of the existence of a semilegendary land,
Zartak, in the mountains' remote reaches. It was inhabited by a tribe, the
Birdcatchers, who still had not received the attention of anthropologists.
Mountain peoples in contact with civilization claimed that the tribe was
skilled in the magical arts and could fly without mechanical aids. According
to stories he had heard, the Birdcatchers were unusually tall, possessed
extraordinary physical strength and endurance, and had brownish-gold skin.
All these facts coincided with the subject's physical features. The
prosecutor toyed with bis pencil above Professor Porru's statement. Then he
put the pencil aside and said aloud: "I suppose those pants would fit in