Sarjnor puffed in aromatic smoke, glanced through the video screen to where a bright double sun shone low above the planet, and a fleeting sense of sympathy for a huge creature whose remains were still lying on a black scorched plain swept over him. This creature cherished its life so much that it never occurred to him to entrust it to anyone else's own concerns.
Jay williams
Play with somebody
Translation from English I. Pochitalina
Children usually gathered in front of the school near the emergency lock, behind a mountain of boxes with spare parts and food. Through the muddy film of the dome, a sandy landscape was seen from here with a chain of low hills on the horizon, and on the right, nearby, one could see the upper spongy branches of the mushroom forest growing in the deep canyon of the Grand Canyon - the children called the ravine by the name of a huge crevice on Earth. They knew both about the Earth and the Great Canyon from their lessons in social disciplines.
The first in the appointed place appeared, as always, Nick. He was approaching in short dashes, ready at any moment to repulse the enemy attack, which today was the Comanches. He hid behind a huge box with the inscription: "Devices SFKh IPST-8852. PLEASE CARE CAUTION!” A stone-tipped arrow whistled above his head. He began to slowly make his way between the drawers:
At that moment, someone shouted:
- Bam! You are killed!
It was Snooki. He climbed onto the topmost drawer and aimed at Nick from a shotgun, which was made of an aluminum tube and a piece of styrene.
Nick rushed to the side.
- You missed! He shouted angrily. - to you! Are you ready!
“It's not fair,” Snooky complained. - Every time you are shot at, you say that by. Why don't you let me ever kill you?
- Oh shit! - said Nick. - What does it matter? Who wants to play these kids games?
Snooki, who was only seven years old, looked at Nick with admiration.
“You're right, damn it!”
Nick looked through the tightly stretched film of the dome.
“After school, I will go to the ravine again,” he said.
- To the ravine? Truth?
- Sure! After all, no one knows.
- What doesn't he know? Judy asked. He and O-Sato had just approached the boys, holding hands.
- The fact that we are going out.
- Ah, that's what!
“Will you come with us?” - asked Nick suspiciously.
- May be. If O-Sato wants to.
The Japanese woman shrugged.
- I need to work at home with a slide rule.
Other children began to come in: the Dalgley twins, nine-year-old John Bessemer, Firdusi's brother and sister, and little Justinian Brando, who was only five years old.
Judy gently hugged Sally Firdusi.
“Where's Virginia?” She asked.
- In the bed. She has a tumor.
- She will die? Justinian asked, looking at the girls with huge blue eyes.
“Of course not, silly.” Only adults die from tumors.
Nick turned away from the guys, looking longingly through the transparent film of the dome. Judy went up to him and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“What happened, Nick?”
- Nothing.
- If you want, I will go with you to the ravine. And the rest of the guys, too.
- I do not care. - He turned and looked at the girl, biting his lips. - I'm tired of living here! Every day the same thing: school, lessons, old games. Constant moralizing: do not leave the dome without a mask, go outside only accompanied by adults, remember that you are from the Earth. Tired of it! - He angrily kicked a thin film, immediately after which the red sand began. - I'm tired of playing cowboys and Indians, robbers from Sherwood Forest! I'm tired of eating some canned food! There, outside, life ...
He again looked at the scarlet and crimson branches rising from the ravine just a few hundred meters from the town.
“They're alive, really alive,” he whispered. “Not that it's stupid fiction, or old movies, or boring books.” Play with someone ...
At school, Nick felt much better. Monsieur Bernstein was a good teacher and did not recognize boring subjects.
“I teach you life,” he repeated tirelessly, and the children never knew what they would be talking about the next day or even the next minute. Monsieur Bernstein knew five languages perfectly and liked to instantly switch from one to another to check the students' attention. Sometimes during the course of one lesson he went from geometry to psychology, from algebra to philosophy, and everything was so interesting and fascinating that the classes went unnoticed.
The lessons were over, and the children went to dinner. After dinner, the younger ones were put to bed. O-Sato sat in the classroom with his slide rule, John went to the observatory. Judy and Sally Firdoussi went to the library, and Snooki and Camille Firdoussi engaged in chemical experiments that interested them more and more. Left alone, Nick wandered into the main dome and stopped near the No. 1 air lock.
A truck with iron rushed past, and the driver shouted:
- Hey, son, do not twist underfoot!
Nick went closer to the gateway, and from somewhere on top came the voice of an electrician:
“Hey man, don't try to leave the dome without a mask.”
Nick turned away resentfully. Son. Guy. They are all so big, so confident, preoccupied. Nick wanted to cry. He pressed himself against the wall and began to make his way to the emergency lock. Removing his breathing mask and medicine bag, he grabbed the hand wheel. After a few seconds, he was inside the airlock, and after another half a minute the outer doors of the airlock parted with a hiss, and Nick found himself on the other side of the film.
The soil was dry and grainy and crumbled like sugar under the soft soles of his loafers. The boy went quickly, ready for the attack of the Enemy, who could order him to return every minute. The air was fresh and clear, and Nick inhaled it deeply, feeling a new life pouring into him. He remembered the musty air inside the domes, saturated with the smell of disinfection, and his face blurred in a happy smile. Finally, Nick went to the edge of the ravine and slipped into it, immediately disappearing among the orange leaves.
The ravine was almost half a mile wide and stretched towards the distant hills there, on the horizon. Like a deep scar, he cut through the malleable soil of the planet. The ravine was not deep, but life was in full swing in it. Even the air here was some other: it smelled of plants, life. This life-giving aroma came from everywhere: from pale blue leaves and yellow flowers descending from tall trunks, and from green bushes smelling of lavender, and even from the rubber trunks of mushroom trees. Tiny winged insects rumbled buzzing in all directions. No one will find him here. The boy jumped up like a frisky kid and jumped down the slope of the ravine to where long articular worms swam in the silver-pink water.
All these insects and animals had their own names like Aquilegia and Chrysomelis, names invented by them by adults and not having any meaning. Nick and the other guys called them in their own way: Fringed Burdock, Yellow Chihuahua, The Nutcracker, as if wanting to show that plants and insects were alive. Squatting on the edge of the stream, Nick carefully tickled a straw of one of the nutcrackers floating in the water, and laughed joyfully when he began to wriggle, trying to dodge, and finally, with a barely audible click, split into two halves that floated in different directions.
The boy stood up and stretched. Then he headed downstream, watching vigilantly if something new had appeared during the time that he had not been here. The bad mood disappeared without a trace - now he was finally at home among his friends.
He stepped into a clearing, overgrown with squint - thin feather-like plants that densely covered the bank of the stream. Thin stalks bent under the weight of solid double fruits - brown balls decorated with a pair of funny white eyes. The boy walked a few more steps, spreading the stems, and suddenly stopped. A few meters away, a silver snake ate the fallen fruit of a squint. The boy
knew that jokes were bad with silverfish - sometimes they can bite great. He carefully plucked a pair of cross-eyed fruits and began to move slowly toward the snake. She saw the boy and crawled back a little. Nick crouched down and held out her palm to the fruits.
Serebryanka gracefully arched her neck and tilted her head, first to one side, then to the other, as if in thought. Suddenly, from somewhere above, there was a flapping of wings - the snake dived into the water with lightning speed and swam downstream. Nick dropped the fruit and stared at the alien with eyes wide open in surprise.
The creature, sitting a few meters from the boy, looked like a big amazing owl - exactly like in his textbook on natural science. Huge eyes with long fluffy eyelashes, soft furry torso. Her wings, large as sails, were folded behind her and rose above her head; hands with tiny monkey fingers lying on a thick tummy. The owl was no more than two feet tall. Just below a pair of huge, surprised eyes was a tentacle coiled up in a spiral.
Nick has seen these creatures more than once, but from a great distance. Once he managed to sneak closer to such an owl and watched how, with her black tentacle, she “shot” into a large snail and killed her.
But this owl seemed completely tame. She turned her head left and right, as if trying to better examine the boy. Finally she calmed down and made a sound like a quiet laugh.
Nick froze in place, afraid to frighten away the owl, and only quietly said:
- Hello.
“Hello,” the owl answered, and, thinking, she added some kind of pounding sound: “Tsk, tsk.”
Nick repeated the sound:
- Tsk, tsk. Hello
The owl jumped closer. Tilting her head to one side, she burst into a stream of clicking, clinking and chirping sounds. And then, quite unexpectedly, she said in a clear human voice:
- Do not forget to take the mask!
Nick burst out laughing.
The owl lifted up a tiny pen and extended a brown, wrinkled finger - well, just like Monsieur Bernstein when he was about to say something important.
The owl squeaked:
- Tee!
“I understand you,” Nick nodded. “You want to say one.”
- One! - repeated the owl. - Tee!
- Tee! - Nick squeaked in response.
The owl extended two fingers:
- Tee! Tee!
“Two,” said Nick.
“Two,” the owl agreed, and laughed very thinly.
Nick immediately remembered the old fairy tales about the elves. They probably laughed the same way.
And at the same moment, as if completing a laugh, drowning him, a pistol shot rang out.
The body of an owl flew into a fountain of feathers. Drops of dark liquid fell on the boy's face and hands. The owl was lying among the squint, one long fluffy wing was stretched somehow awkward, like a broken umbrella, thin legs with tiny claws pitifully raised to the sky.
The boy's father ran down down the slope, pale, clutching a pistol in his hand. Nick looked at him and said, choking on sobs:
- What for? What for?
A strong hand of the father grabbed the boy by the shoulder.
“Nothing happened to you?” He shouted through the mask. Without waiting for an answer, he jerked the boy to his feet. - You are crazy! Don't you know that animal bites are fatal? The unfortunate doctor Mirsky grabbed one such thing ... the poison of her tentacle ... And you didn't even take the mask!
“No, she's not at all like that!” - sobbed Nick. - Dad, she's good, I talked to her ...
Father, not listening, shook his shoulder.
- Thank God that I managed to find you. This is probably not your first time here?
“We go to the ravine all the time,” the boy answered, continuing to cry bitterly. - Dad! Leave me here!
- "Leave me"? I will leave you! What's going on with you? You walk around here as if it's a courtyard ... somewhere in Illinois.
His voice broke. Tears streamed down his face. He froze in place, still squeezing Nick's shoulder, then took a deep breath and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Taking out a spare mask from his pocket, he handed it to the boy.
“Put it on,” he said quietly.
The boy did not see anything because of tears. He felt the mask with his hand and obediently put it on. The sharp smell of disinfection made him breathless.
“Forgive me, Nick,” my father said. “I was very worried about you.” After all, there are so few of us! We must be extremely careful.
Nick raised his head. Through tears, his father's face seemed distorted and hostile. In the boy's head, where no one could see it, the words beat: “I hate you! I hate you! ".
The man put the gun in the holster.
“Let's go home, son,” he said. His hand reached for the boy, and Nick instinctively recoiled.
A tiny feather, golden with a red border, stuck to the boy's shirt. He carefully took it with a wet hand from tears.
“I'll be back,” he thought, “I will definitely be back,” and turning, he went up the hill after the stranger, his father.
Norman Spinrad
And a fire will break out ...
Translation from English Yu. Zhukova
200 days to an hour "h" ...
In my opinion, the guys were obviously perverted, but there is nothing to be done, perversion is the main bait for the public, and we all stand on that. And if I don't want the “American Dream”, which broadcasts its programs on television, to beat Mandala, I must forget that it turns me off from some things and try to surpass competitors by all means. And therefore, not even an hour passed after I opened the Four Horsemen, and they were already sitting in my office and conducting business negotiations with me.
The "Riders" ranked according to their rank according to their internal hierarchy. Near the table there is a star of the group, guitarist and singer Stony Clark: flaxen hair to the shoulders, dark glasses in a steel frame, eyes when he took off these same glasses - by golly, these are only seen in the morgue: according to rumors - a rare viper, according to mind - a seasoned psychopath. Behind him was the drummer Hare: the hood of the “Apostle of Satan” - a swastika and everything else that they have laid on, with the naked eye you can see that the addict, the gaze of a wholly maniac.I, considering it, thought: interestingly, is he actually the “Apostle of Satan” and came to the group, seduced by this rag with swastikas, or is he a musician and dressed him up for the opportunity to speak to the public? Then “Super Niger”, he called himself that, and everything was in all seriousness: short straight hair, a sweater a la Stokley Carmichael14, on a woven leather strap around his neck - a shrunken human head, bleached with liquid shoe polish. This same “Super Negro” worked for them in the wings: sitar, double bass, organ, flute and so on. And finally, Mr. Jones. A creepy person, I haven't met anything similar in any rock group, and enough of these groups have passed through my hands.Mr. Jones was a light artist with them, and he sat at the synthesizer and controlled the electronics. Forty years old guy, no less, dressed in the spirit of the early hippies. They say he worked in the Rand Corporation 15, but then left there. Oh-ho-ho, and with whom only our brother, the owners of nightclubs, do not have to deal!
“So, guys,” I say, “you, of course, are a great strange group, but your eccentricities suit me.” Where did you work before?
“Nowhere, grandfather,” Clark answers. - We are newborns. I used to trade drugs at Haight Ashbury16. Hare was a drummer in the orchestra of some rhythm-plastic ballet troupe in New York. Supernegr considers himself a reincarnation of Charlie Parker17, and we do not argue - it is useless. And Mr. Jones - he is keeping quiet more and more. Maybe he is a Martian, who knows. Our group has just formed.
A curious thing: an orchestra that does not have its own impressionario can be hired for nothing. The guys are excessively talkative.
- Great! - I say. - Therefore, I am your discoverer, very happy. Nobody knows your group in Los Angeles now, but I think you will do the job. Perhaps you should take
a chance and take you for a week. You will play from one in the morning until closing, that is, until two. Let's start on Tuesday, on Sunday our institution also works. I cry four hundred.
“Are you a Jew, by any chance?” Hare asks.
- What ?!
“Take it easy,” Clark told him. Hare relented. “This is it,” Clark explained to me, “that four hundred is not money in general.”
“We won't sign the contract if it has an option18,” Mr. Jones said.
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