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

place. There are new stalkers now, created by cybernetics. The old stalker
was a dirty, sullen man who crawled inch by inch through the Zone on his
belly with mulish stubbornness, gathering his nest egg. The new stalker was
a dandy in a silk tie, an engineer sitting a mile or so away from the Zone,
a cigarette in his mouth, a glass with a pleasant brew at his elbow, and all
he does is sit and monitor some screens. A salaried gentleman. A very
logical picture. So logical that any alternative just did not come to mind.
But there were other possibilities--the Sunday school, for one.
And suddenly, from nowhere, a wave of despair engulfed him. It was all
useless. Pointless. My God, he thought, we won't be able to do a thing! We
won't have the power to contain this blight, he thought in horror. Not
because we don't work well. And not because they're smarter and more clever
either. It's just that that's the way the world is. And that's the way man
is in this world. If there had never been the Visitation, there would have
been something else. Pigs always find mud.
The Borscht was lit up and gave off a delicious smell. The Borscht had
changed, too. No more dancing, no more fun. Gutalin didn't go there any
more, he was turned off by it, and Redrick Schuhart probably had stuck his
nose in, made a face, and left. Ernest was still in stir and his old lady
finally got to run the place. She built up a solid steady clientele; the
entire institute lunched there, including the senior officers. The booths
were cozy, the food good, the prices reasonable, and the beer bubbly. A good
old-fashioned pub.
Noonan saw Valentine Pilman in one of the booths. The laureate was
drinking coffee and reading a magazine he had folded in half. Noonan
approached him.
"May I join you?"
Valentine turned his dark glasses on him.
"Ah," he said. "Please do."
"Just a second, I'll wash up first." He had remembered Mosul's nose.
He was well known there. When he got back to Valentine's booth, there
was a plate of steaming sausages and a mug of beer--not cold and not warm,
just the way he liked it--on the table. Valentine put down the magazine and
took a sip of coffee.
"Listen, Valentine," Noonan said, cutting the meat. "What do you think,
how will all this end?"
"What?"
"The Visitation. The Zones, the stalkers, the military-industrial
complexes--the whole lot. How can it all end'" Valentine looked at him for a
long time with his blind black lenses.
"For whom? Be specific."
"Well, say for our part of the planet."
"That depends on whether we have luck or not. We now know that in our
part of the planet the Visitation left no aftereffects, for the most part.
That does not rule out, of course, the possibility that in pulling all these
chestnuts out of the fire, we may pull out some thing that will make life
impossible not only for us, but for the entire planet. That would be bad
luck. But, you must admit, such a threat always hovers over mankind." He
chuckled. "You see, I've long lost the habit of talking about mankind in
general. Humanity as a whole is too fixed a system, there's no changing it."