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

rolling his idiotic brown head. His eyes keeping roving and he doesn't stop
grinning. Who are you grinning at, you scum? Oh, how I'd like to smash my
iron first into that toothy grin. But no, I must not: such behavior is ill
befitting a legionnaire. After all, he's a lunatic, a pitiful cripple. He
can never know real happiness. He's blind, worthless, half-human. And that
red-haired bandit is squirming in the corner in unbearable pain. You lousy
criminal, here's a kick in the ass for you. Up on your feet, scum! Stand at
attention when a legionnaire sings his marching song. Here's something for
your empty head and your filthy face, and your insolent eyes. Take that, and
that!"
Guy flung Zef back against the wall and, clicking his heels, turned to
the captain. As usual after such fits of ecstasy, his ears rang and the
world floated and swayed pleasantly before his eyes.
Corporal Varibobu, blue-gray from the strain, coughed, holding his
chest. The doctor, sweaty and flushed, drank water greedily straight from
the pitcher and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. The captain frowned
vacantly as if trying to remember something. Red-haired Zef, looking like a
pile of dirty rags, writhed in pain. His face had been battered to a bloody
pulp and he was moaning weakly. And Mac Sim had stopped smiling. His face
had stiffened: his lips were parted as he stared at Guy, wide-eyed.
"Private Gaal," said the captain. "Something I wanted to tell you -
hold it, Zogu, leave me at least one swallow of water."

3.
Maxim woke up with a heavy head. It was stuffy in the room; the window
had been closed all night again. With the city so near him, it was senseless
to open the window. A grayish-brown cap of noxious fumes was visible over
the city. The wind carried them here, and neither distance, nor his
fifth-floor room high above the street, nor the park below offered relief.
"God, how I'd love to take an ion shower now and leap stark naked into our
gar- den - not into this foul, rotting garden with its stinking fumes, but
into ours, near Gladbach, on the shore of the Nirs. I'd race ten miles
around the lake at top speed, swim across it, then walk along its bottom for
about twenty minutes to exercise my lungs. Then climb up the slippery
boulders. " He jumped up, opened the window, stuck out his head into the
drizzle, inhaled the damp air, and coughed - the air was full of industrial
wastes, and the rain- drops left a metallic taste on his tongue. Cars
whizzed by along the nearby superhighway. Below, beneath the window, wet
foliage gleamed yellow, and something glistened on the high stone wall. At
the city's edge, as usual, thick columns of poisonous smoke curled lazily
from two high stacks and drooped toward the ground.
A suffocating world. A miserable, sick world. So bleak and sad. Like
that government office where people, suddenly, without rhyme or reason,
howled and sang themselves hoarse. And Guy, such a fine, handsome young man,
completely unexpectedly had beaten Redbeard Zef to a pulp. And the victim
hadn't even resist- ed. An unhappy world. A radioactive river, a ridiculous
iron drag- on, polluted air. And that clumsy two-tiered metal box moving
along on wheels, spewing pollution. And its slovenly passengers. And that
barbaric incident in the metal box on wheels, when rude people reduced an
elderly woman to tears with their boisterous laughter and gestures and no