Аркадий Стругацкий - The Inhabited Island

This absurd attitude to the material reduced Maxim to cheerless speculation; it gave him the impression that Hippopotamus was not a professor at all but merely a mentoscope operator, preparing material for the genuine contact commission, whom Maxim still had to meet, and when that would happen remained unknown. Which meant Hippopotamus was a rather primitive individual, like the little kid in War and Peace who was only interested in battle scenes. And that was galling. Maxim represented Earth, and—honestly and truly!—he really had every right to expect a more serious contact partner.

Of course, he could suppose that this world was situated on an intersection of certain unidentified interstellar highways, and that aliens were a common occurrence here. Such a common occurrence, in fact, that they no longer bothered to set up special, authoritative commissions for every new arrival but simply pumped the most impressive information out of him and left it at that. One argument in favor of such an assumption was the efficiency that had been demonstrated by the men with bright buttons, who were clearly not specialists, in coming to grips with the situation and dispatching the new arrival to the appropriate destination. Or perhaps some nonhumanoids who had been here earlier had left such bad memories behind them that now the local population regarded any alien visitor with categorical distrust, and in that case all the ballyhoo being kicked up over Professor Hippopotamus’s mentoscope was no more than a facade, a pretense at contact, a way of dragging things out until Maxim’s fate was decided by certain higher authorities.

One way or another, this is a total disaster for me, Maxim decided, gagging on his final piece of food. I have to learn the language as quickly as possible, and then everything will become clear.

“Good,” said Fish, taking away his plate. “We go.”

Maxim sighed and got up. They walked out into the corridor. It was a long, dirty-blue corridor, with long rows of closed doors, exactly like the door of Maxim’s room, on the right and the left. Maxim had never met anyone here, but on a couple of occasions he had heard strange, agitated voices from behind doors. Perhaps other aliens awaiting their fate were kept here too?

Fish walked in front with a broad, male stride, as straight as a ramrod, and Maxim suddenly felt very sorry for her. This country clearly still had no concept of the beauty industry, and poor Fish was left entirely to her own devices. With that sparse, colorless hair protruding from under her white cap, those huge shoulder blades bulging under her white coat, and those hideously skinny legs, it must be impossible to put a brave face on things—except perhaps with beings from other planets, and even then only with the nonhumanoids. The professor’s assistant treated her disdainfully, and Hippopotamus took absolutely no notice of her; the only thing he ever said to her was “ Yyy ,” which was probably his version of the intercosmic “ Ehhh …” Recalling his own far-from-generous attitude toward her, Maxim felt a sudden pang of conscience. He hurried to catch up with her, stroked her bony shoulder, and said, “Nolu a fine girl. Good.”

She glanced up at him with her dry face, looking more than ever like a startled bream face-on. She removed his hand, knitted her almost invisible brows, and declared in a severe tone of voice, “Maxim not good. Man. Woman. Mustn’t.”

Feeling embarrassed, Maxim dropped back again, and they walked to the end of the corridor like that. Fish pushed open a door and they found themselves in the large, bright room that Maxim had dubbed the “reception area.” The windows here were tastelessly decorated with rectangular grilles of thick iron bars, and there was a tall, leather-upholstered door that led into Hippopotamus’s laboratory. And also, for some reason, there were always two strapping, rather slow-moving representatives of the local population who sat by that door, without responding to any greetings and appearing to be in a permanent state of trance.

As usual, Fish walked straight through into the laboratory, leaving Maxim in the reception area. As usual, Maxim said hello, and as usual, the men didn’t reply. The door into the laboratory was left slightly ajar, and Maxim could hear Hippopotamus’s irritated voice and the loud clicking of the activated mentoscope. He walked over to a window and looked out for a while at the misty, wet landscape and the forested plain, dissected by the express highway, and at a tall metal tower that was barely visible in the rain, but he quickly grew bored and walked into the laboratory without waiting to be asked.

Here, as usual, the air had a pleasant smell of ozone, the duplicate screens of the mentoscope were flickering, and the bald-headed, overworked assistant with a name that was impossible to remember and the new Russian nickname Floor Lamp was pretending to adjust the apparatus while in fact intently listening to the ruckus. Sitting in Hippopotamus’s chair at Hippopotamus’s desk was a stranger with a square, peeling face and red, puffy eyes. Hippopotamus was standing in front of him with his feet planted wide and his hands on his hips, leaning slightly forward. He was yelling. His neck was bluish-gray, his bald patch was blazing a bright sunset purple, and spray was flying out of his mouth in all directions.

Trying not to attract attention, Maxim quietly walked through to his work seat and said hello to the assistant in a quiet voice. Floor Lamp, a nervous, hassled kind of individual, recoiled in horror, his foot slipped on a thick cable, and Maxim only just managed to grab his shoulders in time. The unfortunate Floor Lamp went limp, his eyes rolled back and up, and the blood completely drained from his face. He was a strange man, and hysterically afraid of Maxim. Fish appeared out of nowhere with a little bottle, already opened, that was immediately held up to Floor Lamp’s nose. Floor Lamp hiccupped and came back to life, and before he could slip back into oblivion, Maxim leaned him against a metal cupboard and hastily moved away.

On taking his place in the scanning chair, Maxim discovered that the stranger with the peeling face had stopped listening to Hippopotamus and was instead intently studying him. Maxim amiably smiled. The stranger inclined his head slightly. At this point Hippopotamus slammed his fist down onto the desk with an appalling crash and grabbed the phone. The stranger took advantage of the pause that followed to utter several words, of which Maxim could only make out “must” and “mustn’t.” The stranger picked up a sheet of thick, bluish paper with a bright green border off the desk and fluttered it in the air in front of Hippopotamus’s face. Hippopotamus peevishly waved it aside and instantly started barking into the phone. “Must,” “mustn’t” and the incomprehensible “massaraksh” gushed out of him like the bounties flooding out of a horn of plenty, and Maxim also caught the word for “window.” It all ended with Hippopotamus angrily flinging down the receiver and bellowing at the stranger several more times, spraying him with saliva from head to foot, before shooting out of the room and slamming the door behind him.

The stranger mopped off his face with a handkerchief, got up out of his chair, opened a long, flat box that was lying on the windowsill, and took some kind of dark clothing out of it.

“Come here,” he said to Maxim. “Get dressed.”

Maxim looked over at Fish.

“Go,” said Fish. “Get dressed. Must.”

Maxim realized that the long-awaited turning point in his destiny was finally arriving: someone somewhere had decided something. Forgetting Fish’s admonitions, he immediately pulled off the ugly coverall and arrayed himself, with the stranger’s help, in the new attire. To Maxim’s mind, this attire was not remarkable for either its beauty or its comfort, but it was exactly the same as what the stranger himself was wearing. He could even have surmised that the stranger had sacrificed his own spare set of clothes, since the sleeves were too short while the trousers hung down behind like a sack and kept slipping off Maxim’s hips. However, everyone else present found Maxim’s appearance in his new clothes very much to their liking. The stranger muttered something approving and Fish, softening the features of her face—as far as that is possible for a bream—stroked Maxim’s shoulders and tugged the jacket down on him, and even Floor Lamp flashed a pallid smile from his refuge behind the control desk.