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

"I don't want an abortion. I want to have your child. You can do what
you want, go off to the four corners of the world. I won't keep you.
I listened to her and watched her get heated up. And I was feeling more
and more stunned. I just couldn't make head or tail of it. There was this
nonsensical thought buzzing in my head: one man less, one man more.
"She keeps telling me that a baby by a stalker will be a freak, that
you're a wanderer, that we'll have no real family. Today you're free,
tomorrow you're in jail. But I don't care, I'm ready for anything. I can do
it alone. I'll have him alone, I'll raise him alone, and make him into a man
alone. I can manage without you, too. But don't you come around to me any
more. I won't let you through the door."
"Guta, my darling girl," I said. "Wait a minute...." I couldn't go on
talking. A nervous, idiotic laugh was welling and breaking me up. "My
honeypie, why are you chasing me away then?"
I was laughing like a village idiot, and she was bawling on my chest.
"What will happen to us now, Red?" she asked through her tears.
"What will happen to us now?"

2. REDRICK SCHUHART, AGE 28,

MARRIED, NO PERMANENT OCCUPATION

Redrick Schuhart lay behind a gravestone and looked at the road through
a branch of the ash tree. The searchlights of the patrol car were combing
the cemetery and once in a while one caught him in the eyes. Then he would
squint and hold his breath.
Two hours had passed and things were still the same on the road. The
car was still parked, its motor throbbing evenly, and kept scanning with its
three searchlights the rundown graves, the lopsided, rusty crosses and
headstones, the overgrown bushy ash trees, and the crest of the
ten-foot-thick wall that broke off on the left. The border patrol guards
were afraid of the Zone. They didn't even get out of the car. Near the
cemetery, they were even too scared to shoot. Redrick could hear their
lowered voices once in a while, and once in a while he could see the light
of a cigarette butt fly out of the car window and roll down the highway,
skipping along and scattering weak red sparks. It was very damp, it had just
rained, and Redrick could feel the dank cold through his waterproof
jumpsuit.
He carefully released the branch, turned his head, and listened.
Somewhere to the right, not too far, but not too close either, there was
someone else in the cemetery. The leaves rustled there once more and soil
crumbled, and then there was the soft thud of something hard and heavy
falling. Redrick started crawling backward, carefully and without turning
around, hugging the wet grass. The beam of light swung over his head. He
froze, following its silent movement, and he thought he saw a man in black
sitting motionless on a grave between the crosses. He was sitting there
openly, leaning against a marble obelisk, turning his white face with its
black sunken holes toward Redrick. Actually Redrick did not see him clearly,
nor was it possible in the split second he had, but he filled in the details
with his imagination. He crawled away a few more steps and felt for his