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

Valentine shrugged.
"You're barking up the wrong tree, Richard. I don't like to indulge in
empty fantasizing. When the subject is something serious, I prefer to revert
to healthy careful skepticism. Based on what we've already received, a whole
range of possibilities is raised, and I can say nothing specific about it."
"All right, let's try another approach. What do you think you've
already received?''
"You'll find this amusing--very little. We've unearthed many miracles.
In a few cases, we've even learned how to use these miracles for our own
needs. A monkey pushes a red button and gets a banana, pushes a white button
and gets an orange, but it doesn't know how to get bananas and oranges
without the buttons. And it doesn't understand what relationship the buttons
have to the fruit. Take the so-so's, for example. We've learned how to use
them. We've even learned the circumstances under which they multiply through
a process similar to cell division. But we still haven't been able to make a
single so-so. We don't know how they work, and judging by present evidence,
it will be a long time before we will."
"I would put it this way. There are objects for which we have found
uses. We use them, but almost certainly not the way the visitors use them. I
am positive that in the vast majority of cases we are hammering nails with
microscopes. But at least we're using some things--the so-so's, and the
bracelets to stimulate life processes. And the various types of
quasibiological masses, which have created a revolution in medicine. We have
received new tranquilizers, new types of mineral fertilizers, a revolution
in agriculture. But why am I giving you a list! You know this at ]east as
well as I--I notice you wear a bracelet. Let's call this group of objects
beneficial. It can be said that mankind has benefited from them in some
degree, even though it should never be forgotten that in our Euclidean world
every stick has two ends."
"Undesirable applications?"
"Precisely. Say the use of so-so's in the defense industry. But that's
not what I'm talking about. The action of every beneficial object has been
more or less studied and more or less explained. Our technology is holding
us up In fifty years or so we'll know how to make them ourselves and then we
can crack nuts to our hearts' content. It's more complicated with the other
group of objects--more complicated because we have found no application for
them, and their qualities within the framework of our present concepts are
definitely not understandable. For instance, the magnetic traps. We know
that they're magnetic traps, Panov has proven it very wittily. But we don't
know the source of such a powerful magnetic Field and what causes their
superstability. We don't understand a thing about them. We can only weave
fantastic theories about properties of space that we never suspected before.
Or the K-23. What do you call it? The pretty black beads that are used for
jewelry?"
"Black sprays."
"That's it, the black sprays. That's a good name. Well, you know their
properties. If you shine a ray of light into one of those beads, the
transmission of the light is delayed and the delay depends on the bead's
weight, size, and several other parameters. And the unit of light coming out
is always smaller than the one entering. What is this? Why? There is a wild