"Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Roadside Picnic (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"Nothing in particular," I said. "Someone squealed on me, that's all."
He looked at me kind of strange, hopped off the sill, and started
walking up and down. He ran around his office and I sat blowing smoke rings
in silence. I was sorry for him, of course, and I felt bad that things
hadn't worked out better. Some cure I came up with for his melancholy. And
whose fault was it? My own. I tempted a baby with a cookie, but the cookie
was in a hiding place, and the hiding place was guarded by mean men. . . .
Then he stopped pacing, came up close to me, and looking off to the side
somewhere, asked awkwardly:
"Listen, Red, how much would a full empty cost?"
At first I didn't understand him. I thought at first that he was hoping
to buy one somewhere. Where would you buy one? Maybe it was the only one in
the world and besides he couldn't possibly have enough dough for that. Where
would he get the money from? He was a foreign scientist, and a Russian one
at that. And then the thought struck me. So the bastard thinks that I'm
doing it for the greenbacks? You so and so, I thought to myself, what do you
take me for? I opened my mouth to tell him off. And I shut up. Because,
actually, what else could he take me for? A stalker is a stalker. The more
green stuff the better. He trades his life for greenbacks. And so it looked
to him that yesterday I had cast my line and today I was reeling him in,
trying to raise my price.
The thought made me tongue-tied. And he kept staring at me intently,
without blinking. And in his eyes I saw not contempt but a kind of
understanding, I guess. Then I calmly explained it to him.
"No one with a pass has ever gone to the garage before. They haven't
laid the tracks to it yet. You know that. So here we come back from the Zone
and your Tender brags to everybody how we headed straight for the garage,
picked up what we needed, and came right back. Like we just went down to the
warehouse or something. And it will be perfectly clear to everyone," I said,
"that we knew ahead of time what we wanted there. And that means that
someone set us on to it. And which of us three that could have been--well,
there's no point in spelling it out for you. Do you understand what's in
store for me here?"
I finished my little speech. We sat staring into each other's eyes,
saying nothing. Suddenly he clapped his hands, rubbed his palms together,
and announced in a hearty tone:
"Well, if you can't, you can't. I understand you, Red, and I can't pass
judgment. I'll go alone. Maybe it'll go fine. It won't be the first time."
He spread out the map on the windowsill, leaned on his hands, and bent
over it. All his heartiness seemed to evaporate before my eyes. I could hear
him muttering.
"Forty yards, maybe forty-one, another three in the garage itself. No,
I won't take Tender along. What do you think, Red? Maybe I shouldn't take
Tender? He does have two kids, after all."
"They won't let you out alone," I said.
"They will," he muttered. "I know all the sergeants and all the
lieutenants. I don't like those trucks! They've been exposed to the elements
for thirty years and they're just like new. There's a gasoline carrier
twenty feet away and it's completely rusted out, but they look like they've
just come off the assembly line. That's the Zone for you!"