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

new detachments of Maidens, got it?"
Ears fell silent and dropped to his haunches. The lilac cloud had
dissipated. The old man impatiently tapped Ears on his bald pate. He blinked
and rubbed his ears.
"What did I say?" he asked. "Was it a broadcast? How's the Accession
going? Progressing or what? And you don't go to the field, Dummy, at a guess
I'd say you're going after your Nava, but your Nava ..."
Kandid stepped over the pot of grass-killer and hurried on.
The old man was no longer audible--either he'd got caught up with Ears
or else he'd gone into one of the houses to get his breath back and have a
bite to eat on his own.
Buster's house stood on the very edge of the village, There an
embattled old woman, neither aunt nor mother, said with a sneer full of
malice that Buster wasn't at home, Buster was in the field and if he was at
home, there'd be no point in looking for him in the field, but as he was in
the field, why was he, Dummy, standing there for nothing?
In the field the sowing was in progress. The oppressive stagnant air
was saturated with a powerful range of odors, sweat, fermenting fluid,
rotting grain. The morning harvest lay in great heaps along the furrow, the
seed already beginning to sprout. Clouds of working flies swarmed over the
pots of fermenting fluid and in the heart of this black, metallic-glinting
maelstrom stood the elder. Inclining his head and screwing up one eye, he
was minutely examining a single drop of whey on his thumbnail. The nail was
specially prepared, flat, polished to a gleam and cleaned with the necessary
fluids. Past the elder's legs the sowers crawled along the furrows, ten
yards apart. They had stopped singing by now, but the heat of the forest
still oohed and aahed, obviously now, no echo.
Kandid walked along the chain of workers bending and peering into the
lowered faces. Finding Buster, he touched him on the shoulder and Buster at
once climbed out of the furrow without question. His beard was clogged with
mud.
"Who're you touching, wool on yer nose?" he croaked, looking at
Kandid's feet. "Somebody once touched me like that, wool on yer nose, and
they took him by his hands and feet and threw him up in a tree, he's up
there to this day, and when they take him down he won't do any more
touching, wool on yer nose. . . ." "You coming?" asked Kandid shortly.
"Course I'm coming, wool on yer nose, when I've prepared leaven for seven;
it stinks in the house, there's no living with it, why not go, when the old
woman can't stand it and I can't bear to look at it--only where are we
going? Hopalong was saying yesterday we were going to the Reeds, and I
shan't go there, wool on yer nose, there's no people there, in the Reeds,
never mind dames. If a man wants to grab somebody by the leg and throw him
into a tree, wool on yer nose, there's nobody there, and I can't live
without dames any longer and that elder'll be the death of me. . . . Look at
him standing there, wool on yer nose, staring his eyes out and him as blind
as a mole, wool on yer nose . . . somebody once stood like that on his own,
he got one in the eye, doesn't stand anymore, wool on yer nose but I'm not
going to the Reeds, just as you like. . . ." "To the City," said Kandid.
"Oh well, the City, that's another affair altogether, I'll go there all
right, specially as I hear tell there's no City there anyway, that old