Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - I'm Going to Meet My Br

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Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Molecular Cafe - I'm Going to
Meet My Brother
Vladislav
KRAPIVIN
I'M GOING TO MEET MY BROTHER
Molecular Café Compilation
Mir Publishers Moscow 1968
Translated from the Russian (The translator is not indicated)
___________________________________________________
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
Watch for the "Magellan"
I
Whoever has been to Konsata must remember the steep narrow steps down the
cliffs. They start from a colonnade at the top and lead down to the sea. At the
bottom there is just a narrow strip of shore between them and the water. Covered
with porous rocks and shingle, this strip stretches along the yellow-white cliffs from
South Valley right up to the North Point, where the obelisk to dead astronauts
pierces the sky like an inclined needle.
It is a pleasant spot to collect the coloured stones rounded and smoothed by the
waves, and to hunt for the fierce black crabs. The boys from the school whose
grounds lie to the south of Ratal Cosmodrome, always stop here for a while on their
way home. They cram their pockets with treasures whose value adults never have
understood, and never will, and then run up the steep steps, which they prefer to the
escalator that climbs the cliff a hundred yards or so further on.
At the time I'm writing about I had just finished a paper on the third expedition to
the Amazon basin. Now for a whole month I could read the ordinary books I had
missed from pressure of work.
I would take a book of poems, or a collection of Randin's stories, and go to the
top of the Old Steps. The place was deserted. Grass grew between the flag stones
and birds had built nests in the scrolls of the heavy capitals.
At first I was all alone at the colonnade, but later a tall dark man wearing a grey
jacket of strange cut started coming there. To begin with we took no notice of one
another as though by mutual agreement. But as hardly anyone else ever came there,
and we were meeting every day, eventually we began to salute though we never
spoke to one another. I read and the stranger, who seemed to have something on his
mind, was too preoccupied to want to strike up a conversation.
This man always came in the evening. Then the sun hung over North Point,
behind which rose the white buildings of Konsata, the blue of the sea was beginning
to fade, and the waves were taking on a grey metallic hue. To the east the arches of
the old viaduct would be tinted pink by the rays of the evening sun. The viaduct lay
at the end of Ratal Cosmodrome, as a memorial of the days when planetary liners
had not yet been adapted for vertical takeoff.
The stranger would seat himself on the plinth of one of the columns and, sit there,
chin in hand, in silence.
He brightened up only when the schoolboys appeared on the beach. Then he
would stand on the top step of the stairway and watch them at play until a fair-haired
lad in a black-and-orange striped jacket would spot him and dash up the steps. Each
time he would rush at such speed that his striped jacket, which he had flung over his
shoulders, would stream out like a gaudy banner.
The gloomy stranger would change visible. He would cheerily meet the boy, and
the two of them nodding goodbye to me would go off, discussing their affairs with
animation.
At first I thought they were father and son. But one day I heard the boy shouting
to someone as he ran: "I'm going to meet my brother."
Later I learnt, from the brothers' conversation, that the elder was called
Alexander.
What ensues took place about a week after I first saw Alexander. He came along
at the usual time and sat down by a column, whistling a strange and somewhat harsh
tune. I was reading, but without much concentration, because I knew Valentine
Randin's "Song of the Blue Planet" almost by heart. From time to time I looked up
from my book to glance at Alexander and it seemed to me that his face was
somehow familiar.
There was a slight breeze. As I was turning the pages of my tattered book a loose
page blew away and fluttered over the flags. It came to a stop almost at Alexander's
feet. He picked it up and got up to give it to me. I got up as well and met in the
middle of the colonnade.
This was the first time I had seen him so close and I found he was younger than I
had thought. The wrinkles between his eyebrows gave his features a stern
expression, but now he was smiling and the wrinkles had gone.
"Your book isn't very interesting it seems?" he said, giving me the page.
"It's just that I know it so well." I didn't want the conversation to end here, so I
remarked, "Your brother's late."
"He was going to be late today, but I had forgotten." We sat down together.
Alexander asked me to let him have a look at my book. I was surprised he did not
know Randin's short stories, but I said nothing. As he opened the book and laid his
palm across the pages to keep them from blowing away, I noticed a white forked
scar on the back of it. He caught my glance and said: "It happened out there... on
Yellow Rose."
Immediately I recalled everything. "The Snow Planet?" I exclaimed. "Alexander
Sneg!" (Sneg-snow.-Tr.)
The unusual broadcasts, and special numbers of magazines with pictures of Sneg
and his three companions-were all recent history, and all over the world people had
spoken their names with admiration.
Before me I saw a man who had returned to Earth three hundred years after
setting out from it. That in itself was not astonishing-after all "Banderilla" and
"Mousson" had also been in space for more than two centuries. And though the
story of the photon frigate in which Sneg had returned was more unusual than that of
the others, I was not thinking of that just then.
"Alexander," I said, feeling I had come up against a strange riddle, "surely three
hundred years... and the boy is not more than twelve. How are you his brother?"
"I know you're an archaeologist," said Alexander after a pause. "You must feel
time better than others. And understand people. Will you help me if I tell you
everything?" "I'll try to help you."
"Only three people, besides myself, know about what I am going to tell you. But
they cannot help me. I badly need your advice. Only, where shall I begin? Though
really, it all began on these steps."
II
It all began on these steps.
For the first time since the death of his parents Naal had come down to the
seashore. The sea, brilliantly blue and foam-flecked and bordered by the great curve
of the white town, was gentle and sunlit, as though no ship had ever perished in its
depths.
Naal went down to the water. The nearer he got to the sea, the faster he ran down
the steps, until finally he was rushing headlong toward the vast blue expanse with its
sparkling spray and salty breeze.
He tripped over a stone and fell. He had not hurt himself badly, so, biting his lip
and limping, he continued his descent. Like all boys, Naal believed salt water was the
best cure for scratches and grazes, and had kicked off his sandals and was on the
point of entering the water when, among the stones that were washed every now and
again by the ripples, he saw a big black crab. Involuntarily he jumped back.
It is one thing to give way momentarily to fright, but quite another to be a coward.
So in order to test his courage and revenge himself on the crab for his fright, Naal
determined to catch the black hermit and throw him far out to sea.
The crab, apparently sensing danger, scuttled off and hid himself among the
stones.
"Look out for yourself!" muttered the boy. He was engrossed in the sport and
began to turn over a stone.
The flat stone splashed into the water, and the crab, seeing that he had been
discovered, scuttled away even faster. But Naal was no longer looking for him. On
the wet shingle he had seen a small blue box, round and smooth, like a water-worn
stone. Where could it have come from, to be washed up on this shore by the sea?
The boy sat down on the shingle and examined his find. The box was tightly
sealed, and Naal spent all of an hour scratching at it with the buckle of his belt before
he was able to prize open the lid. Inside, wrapped in an old piece of paper, lay a
strange badge: a golden spray with gleaming stars scattered among its leaves. The
stem bore the single short word: "Search".
Naal was so absorbed in his examination of the badge that he forgot about the
paper, and he would not have remembered it if the wind had not blown it on to his
lap. He smoothed the crumpled paper out and saw that it was a page of a very very
old magazine. Water had not soaked through into the box and the paper was not
spoiled.
Naal began to read it deciphering the old type with difficulty, and his face
suddenly became very serious. But he went on reading, and at the bottom of the
page found words as startling as the loud and sudden twang of strings.
When the schoolboys came to the shore two hours later, Naal was still sitting in
the same place, his elbows resting on a sun-warmed rock watching the white crests
rising along the coast.
"We've been looking for you," said an older boy. "We didn't know you'd gone to
the beach. Why are you alone here?"
Naal did not hear him. The wind had grown stronger and the waves were getting
louder. Do you know the noise of the waves? First there is a swelling sound as the
wave comes rolling in. Then it breaks and crashes on the rocks, and the water
spreads out and, hissing, sweeps up the shore. And it is followed by another.
III
Nothing in particular distinguished Naal from the other schoolboys in the South
Valley. Like all the others, he was fond of swinging high and dangerously close to
the gnarled and twisted trees, and of playing with his ball in the sunny copse. He was
not very fond of studying the history of the discovery of the great planets. He could
run faster than many of the boys, but was not a very good swimmer. He would join
with pleasure in any game, but, he never came first. Only once had he done
something that not everyone could have done.
A springy branch of a bush growing near the shore had torn the badge from his
shirt, and the golden spray with its blue stars had fallen into the sea. Through the
transparent water he could see it sinking to the bottom. Without a moment's thought,
Naal had dived from the six-foot embankment, by good fortune missing the sharp
rocks below.
He soon came out on the beach, holding the badge in one hand, and without
saying a word started squeezing his shirt out with the other.
No one knew where he had got this badge and why he treasured it so much, but
no one questioned him. Everyone can have his own secrets, and since the loss of his
parents Naal seemed to have grown much older and did not always answer the
questions of his classmates.
Outwardly nothing very much had changed in his life since he learned of his
misfortune. Even before, he had lived most of the time at school. Both his father and
mother were authorities on ocean deeps and were often away on expeditions. But
now he knew that the bathyscaphe "Reindeer" would never return and never again
would someone appear at the end of the walk to whom he could rush at top speed,
forgetting everything else in the world.
Months had passed. There had been quiet mornings with school lessons, and
days full of sun and noisy games, and sparkling rain. Perhaps he would have
forgotten his grief. But one day the waves washed the small blue box ashore by the
Old Steps. Wherefrom, he had no idea. Only it was not a relic of the lost
bathyscaphe.
At night, when the windows reflected the orange gleam of Ratal Lighthouse, Naal
would get the crumpled page out from 'the blue box. He needed no light: he knew
every line by heart. It was from a very old magazine, published about three hundred
years ago and it told of the setting out of the photon frigate "Magellan".
The textbook on the history of astroflight spoke of this ship briefly and dryly: the
"Magellan" had set out for one of the yellow stars with the aim of finding a planet
like Earth. Apparently, the crew had used information about this planet, obtained
from the wrecked frigate "Globe", which had not been correct. The "Magellan"
should have returned after a hundred and twelve years, but there had been no news
of it. The young astronauts, stirred by legend and lacking experience, had obviously
perished without achieving their aim.
The textbook didn't even give their names. Naal had learned them in the page he
had found. The captain's name was Alexander Sneg.
Naal had heard from his father that' one of their ancestors was an astronaut. And
when, on the beach that day, he had read the name "Sneg", he had felt both pride
and resentment-resentment at the textbook for its dry and probably incorrect words
about the cosmonauts. There may have been many reasons why the frigate was lost.
And was the crew to blame?
"What if they didn't find anything when they reached that yellow star and
continued their flight? What if... what if they're still flying?" thought Naal, arguing
with the book. But at this thought he suddenly screwed up his eyes, as though
frightened by his own thought. He conjured up the long shady walks in the school
park and at the end of it a tall man in the silvery jacket of an astronaut, a man to
whom he could run, forgetting everything else in the world.
And what if he returned? He might still return. Time passes many times slower in
a spacecraft than on Earth. What if the frigate returned? Then Naal would meet, not
an ancestor, not a stranger from another century, but a brother. Because at the
bottom of the page from the magazine the had read what someone had said to the
crew of the "Magellan": "Don't forget the old names. You'll return in many years'
time, but the grandsons of your friends will meet you like friends. The grandsons of
your brothers will become your brothers...."
Naal realized that all this was pure fantasy. Yet he vividly pictured to himself how
it would happen. It would be morning. He saw this morning clearly-the bright sun,
already high overhead, and the sky so blue it was reflected on the white buildings,
the white clothes, and the silvery sides of the frigate. Auxiliary rockets had just
landed the spacecraft gently on the field of the cosmoport, and this huge
astrofrigate-a glittering tower with a black crest one hundred and fifty metres
摘要:

ArkadyandBorisStrugatsky-MolecularCafe-I'mGoingtoMeetMyBrotherVladislavKRAPIVINI'MGOINGTOMEETMYBROTHERMolecularCaféCompilationMirPublishersMoscow1968TranslatedfromtheRussian(Thetranslatorisnotindicated)___________________________________________________OCR:http://home.freeuk.com/russica2Watchforthe"...

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