"Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. The snail on the slope" - читать интересную книгу автора

"What d' you mean how? What're you talking about? Who else if not
Pepper? Not me, eh? And not you. . . . We're not calling in Hausbotcher,
Claudius-Octavian."
"Stop it," said Kim, slamming his palm on the table. "Get back to work
and don't let me see you here in working hours again. Don't make me lose my
temper."
"All right," said Stoyan hastily. "Okay. I'm off. You'll hand it over?"
He placed the bouquet on the table and ran off, shouting as he left:
"and the cess-pit's working again."
Kim picked up a broom and swept all the droppings into a corner.
"Mad fool," he said. "And that Rita. . . . Now calculate the lot again.
To hell with them and their love affairs. . . ."
The motorbike started banging nerve-rackingly under the window, then
all was quiet, with only the piledriver thudding behind the wall.
"Pepper," said Kim. "Why were you at the cliff this morning?"
"I was hoping to catch sight of the director. I was told he sometimes
does physical jerks there. I wanted to ask him to send me but he didn't
come. You know, Kim, I think everybody lies here. Sometimes I even think you
do."
"Director," said Kim, ruminating, "you know that's an idea. You're on
the ball. You've got guts. . . ."
"All the same, I'm leaving tomorrow" said Pepper. "Acey's taking me, he
promised. Tomorrow I shan't be here, official."
"I never expected that, no," continued Kim, unheeding. "Plenty of guts
. . . maybe we should send you over there, to sort things out. . . ."



Chapter Two
Kandid woke and thought at once: I'll go tomorrow. At the same moment
Nava stirred in the other comer.
"Are you asleep?" she asked.
"No."
"Let's talk, then," she suggested. "We haven't spoken to each other
since yesterday evening after all. All right?"
"All right."
"First you tell me when you're going."
"I don't know," he said, "soon."
"That's what you always say: soon. Soon, or the day after tomorrow.
Maybe you think it's the same thing? Well no, you've learned to talk now. At
first you mixed everything up, mixed everything up, mixed the hut up and the
village, grass and mushrooms, even people and deadlings, mixed them up you
did and then you'd mutter away. We couldn't make it out, couldn't understand
a word. . . ."
He opened his eyes and stared at the low, lime-encrusted ceiling. The
worker ants were on the move in two even columns, from left to right loaded,
right to left empty. A month ago it had been the other way around, right to
left loaded with mushroom spawn, left to right empty.
A month hence it would be the other way again unless someone told them
to do something else. Dotted here and there along the column stood the big