Read Online Definitely Maybe by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky - Free Book Online

door slammed and Weingarten, still avoiding looking at any of them, squeezed back to his chair, gulped down a shot of vodka, and said hoarsely:
    “And then?”
    “There’s no more. Then I went up to Vecherovsky’s. The creeps left, and I went up there. I just got back.”
    “And the redhead?” Weingarten asked impatiently.
    “I told you, you blockhead! There was no redhead!”
    Weingarten and Zakhar looked at each other.
    “All right, we’ll assume that’s the truth,” said Weingarten. “That girl, Lidochka. Did she make any offers?”
    “Well, I mean,” Malianov laughed nervously, “I mean, if I had wanted to, I could have.”
    “Jeez, you jerk! I don’t mean that. All right, what about the investigator?”
    “You know, Val, I’ve told you everything, just as it happened. Go to hell! I swear, a third grilling in one day!”
    “Val,” said Zakhar indecisively, “maybe this really was something different?”
    “Don’t be a fool! How could it be something else? He has work; they don’t let him do it. What else could it be? And besides, his name was mentioned.”
    “Who mentioned my name?” Malianov asked, with a sense of foreboding.
    “I have to pee,” the boy announced in clear bell-like tones.
    They all looked at him. He examined them one by one, climbed off the stool, and said to Zakhar:
    “Let’s go.”
    Zakhar smiled sheepishly, said, “Well, let’s go,” and they disappeared behind the bathroom door. They chased Kaliam off the toilet seat.
    “Who mentioned my name?” Malianov asked Weingarten. “What’s all this about?”
    Weingarten, head bent, was listening to what went on in the toilet.
    “Hell, Gubar’s really gotten stuck,” he said with some sort of sad satisfaction. “Really stuck!”
    Something churned slowly in Malianov’s brain.
    “Gubar?”
    “Yeah. Zakhar Gubar. You know, even twisting someone around your finger …”
    Malianov remembered. “Is he in rocketry?”
    “Who? Zakhar?” Weingarten was surprised. “No, I doubt it. He’s a master craftsman. Though he does work in some closed place.”
    “He’s not military?”
    “Well, you know, all those places are to some degree …”
    “I’m asking about Gubar.”
    “No. He’s a techie, with magic hands. Makes computerized fleas. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that he is a man who approaches his desires with care and thoroughness. Those are his very words. And, buddy, it’s the truth.”
    The boy returned to the kitchen and climbed back onto the stool. Zakhar walked in after him.
    “Zakhar, you know, I just remembered. Snegovoi asked about you.”
    And Malianov saw for the first time in his life just how a person turns white before your very eyes. Turns as white as a sheet.
    “About me?” Zakhar mouthed.
    “Yes. Last night.” Malianov hadn’t expected a reaction like that.
    “Did you know him?” Weingarten asked Zakhar softly.
    Zakhar shook his head silently, fished for a cigarette,spilled half the pack on the floor, and hurriedly started picking them up. Weingarten croaked: “Well, buddies, this is something that needs …” and poured some more vodka. And the boy spoke.
    “Big deal! That doesn’t mean anything in itself.”
    Malianov shuddered again, and Zakhar sat up and looked at the boy with something like hope.
    “It’s just a coincidence,” the boy went on. “Look in the phone book, there’s at least eight Gubars in there.”
    Excerpt 11.…
Malianov had known him since sixth grade. They became pals in the seventh grade and shared a desk all through school. Weingarten didn’t change over the years, he just got bigger. He was always jolly, fat, carnivorous, and always collecting something or other—stamps, coins, postmarks, bottle labels. Once, this was when he was already a biologist, he decided to collect excrement because Zhenka Sidortsev brought him whale excrement from the Antarctic and Sanya Zhitniuk brought back some human excrement from Penjekent, not