"Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Poor cruel folk" - читать интересную книгу автора

- God! The King wishes to speak to you! Forgive him and listen!
The room fell silent, no-one dared to breathe. The King contemplated:
when the great flood happened, and the earth burst, Prostyaga asked God to
help, and God came down from the sky as a ball of flame on the same day, and
that night the earth closed up, and the flood disappeared. It means that
this is how it will happen today. You were late uncle, Your Highness, you
didn't manage. No one can help you now...
Agar straighned up. The lay brothers that supported him, jumped away,
turned with their backs to God, and covered their heads with their arms. The
Kind saw, how Agar stretced his clasped hands and put them on Gods chest.
God's eyes lit up. The King snapped his jaw from fear: the eyes were big and
different -- one was snakish-green, the other white, as bright as light. One
could hear how God started to breathe, heavily, with crackling, like
consumption. Agar backed away.
- Speak, - he whispered. It looked like he was unsettled as well.
The King lowered to all fours, and started to crawl to the eminence. He
did not know what to do or how. And he did not know how he should start and
whether he should tell the complete truth. God breathed heavily, weezing,
suddenly he started to whimper, quietly and thinly - scary.
- I'm the son of Prostyaga -- said the King in despair, smothering his
face against the cold stone. -- Prostyaga died. I ask protection from the
conspirators. Prostyaga made mistakes. He did not know what he was doing. I
have fixed everything: calmed the people, became great and unatainable, like
you, I gathered an army... And the treacherous Buht is disrupting my plans
to conquer the world... He wants to kill me! Help me!
He raised his head. God, without blinking, was looking in his face with
green and white. God was silent.
- Help me... - repeated the King. -- Help! Help! - He suddenly thought,
that he is doing something wrong, and that God is indifferent towards him,
and inopportunely remembered: they said, his father, Prostyaga, did not die
from a heart attack, but was killed here, in the temple when the killers
came in, with out asking permission. -- Help!.-- he screemed desperatelly.
-- I'm afraid to die today! Help! Help!
He hunched up on the stone tiles, biting his hands from an unbarable
terror. Differently-eyed God hoarsly breathed above his head.
- Old vermine, - said Tolya. Ernst was quiet. On the screen, through
the sparks of static an ugly black shape of a human lay splattered on the
floor. -- When I think, Tolya spoke again, -- that if not for him, Alan and
Derek would be alive, I want to do something, that you never wanted to do.
Ernst shrugged his shoulders and moved to the table.
- And I always think, - Tolya continued, - why didn't Derek shoot? He
could have killed all...
- He couldn't , - said Ernst.
- Why couldn't he?
- Have you ever tried shooting at a human being?
Tolya made a wry face, but didn't say anything.
- Well that's what it was, - said Ernst. -- Try to imagine it. It is
almost as disgusting.
A sorowful howl was heard from the loudspeaker. "HELP HELP I AM AFRAID
HELP..," the auto-translater was writing.