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Аркадий Стругацкий: Wanderers and Travellers

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Главный герой рассказа братьев Стругацких «О странствующих и путешествующих» занимался тем, что под водой помечал септоподов — тварей из подкласса двужаберных класса головоногих моллюсков. Поставив метку на одном (и единственном за этот день), он вылез на берег отогреваться. На берегу сидела его Машка и неизвестный тип (как выяснилось, Леонид Андреевич). Леонид Андреевич развалился на траве и, увидев стрекозу, выдал вслух серию размышлений о том, что есть разум на самом деле и не можем ли мы, люди, быть как септоподы объектом исследования для неведомых нам существ. Более того, он даже привел живой пример в лице себя: как оказалось Леонид Андреевич, вернувшись из космического рейса, где он стал свидетелями невероятного и загадочного эффекта — «голоса пустоты», — сам стал источником радиоволн...

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He covered his eyes with his hand and started humming a tune. Masha had her eyes fixed on him and waited. I was waiting, too, mentally sympathizing with him: it is hard to work when your job hasn't been properly defined. Very difficult. You grope about in the dark and you get no pleasure, or satisfaction. I had heard of these astro-archaeologists. It was impossible to take them seriously-and no one did.

"But there is reason in cosmos," said Gorbovsky suddenly. "There's no doubt about that. I know that now. But it isn't what we think it is. Nor the kind we expect it to be. And we're not looking for it there. Or not the way we ought. In fact, we don't know what we are seeking."

"That's just it," I thought. "Not that, not there, not that way. That's not serious, comrades. Just childishness-looking for the traces of ideas that once floated about in the air."

"The Voice of the Void, for instance," he continued. "Have you heard of it? I don't suppose so. Half a century ago people wrote about it, but now nobody mentions it any more. Because no progress was made, you see, and since no progress has been made, perhaps there is no Voice? We've got plenty of these cock-sparrows, you know,- they know nothing themselves about science, because either they're lazy or haven't been educated properly, but they have heard that Man is all-powerful. He's all-powerful, but he can't make head or tail of the Voice of the Void. Dear, dear, dear-what a disgrace! We can't, we won't! What cheap anthropocentrism!"

"What's the Voice of the Void?" asked Masha softly.

"It's a very curious effect. It can be perceived in certain directions in Space. If you switch your spaceship receiver over to automatic reception, sooner or later it will tune in to a strange transmission. You hear a calm, impassive voice repeating the same phrase over and over again in a strange expressionless tongue like the language of fish. It has been picked up for many years and it always repeats the same thing. I've heard it and many others have heard it, but not many talk about it. It's not very pleasant to think about. You're an unthinkable way from Earth. The Ether is empty: there are no atmospherics, nothing but slight rustling sounds. And suddenly this voice is heard. You're on watch, alone. Everyone's asleep, everything's quiet and eerie-and then you hear this voice. It's very unpleasant, I assure you. There are recordings of it, and many people have cudgelled their brains and still are to decipher it. But in my opinion it's futile. There are other riddles. Astronauts could tell a lot, but they don't like to." He fell silent and then added with a kind of melancholy insistence: "You've got to realize- it's not simple. We don't even know what to expect, you see. We can meet them at any moment. Face to face. And you know-they can turn out to be immeasurably higher beings. People talk about collisions and conflicts, or about different conceptions of what is human and good, but I don't mind that. I'm afraid of an unparallel humiliation of humanity, of a gigantic psychological shock. We are so proud, you know. We've created such a marvellous world, we know such a lot, we have penetrated into the Great Universe, where we are exploring, discovering, studying, investigating-what? For them this Universe is their own home. For millions of years they've been living there, as we've been living on our Earth, and they can only wonder at us-what are these beings doing here amongst the stars?"

He broke off suddenly and jumped to his feet, listening to something. I started involuntarily.

"That's thunder," said Masha softly, gaping at him, open-mouthed. "Thunder. There'll be a storm soon."

He was still listening and scanning the sky.

"No, it's not thunder," he said at last, and sat down again. "It's a liner. See it, over there?"

A bright streak flashed across the blue pile of clouds and vanished. And again there was a faint rumbling in the sky.

"And now sit and wait," he said, incomprehensibly. He looked at me and smiled, but in his eyes there was a look of sadness and suspense. Then it passed and his eyes again took on their former trusting expression.

"And what do you do, Stanislav Ivanovich?" he asked.

I decided he wanted to change the subject, so I started telling him about the septopods. That they belonged to a sub-class of a dibranchiate, class of cephalopods and represent a special, hitherto unknown, family of the order of octopuses. Their main features were a reduction of the third left tentacle, opposite the third hectocotylized right one, three rows of suckers on the arms, a complete absence of coelome, an extraordinarily powerful development of the venous hearts, the maximum concentration for cephalopods of the central nervous system, and various other, less important, peculiarities. They had been discovered not long before, when a number of them appeared off the east and south-east coasts of Asia, and a year later they were being found in the lower reaches of the great rivers-the Mekong, Yangtse, Hwang Ho, and Amur, and also in lakes that were a fair distance from the sea-coast-in this one, for instance. And this is remarkable, because ordinary cephalopods are highly stenogalinaceous, and even avoid the arctic waters with their reduced salinity. Also, they hardly ever come out on dry land. But the fact remained: septopods feel quite happy in fresh water and they do come out on to the shore. They get into boats and on to, bridges, and not long ago two were found in the forest about thirty kilometres from here. – Masha was not listening-she had heard it all from me before. She went into the tent and brought out the 'minivox' and switched it to automatic reception. She was obviously impatient to pick up the Voice of the Void.

But Gorbovsky was paying great attention to what I was saying.

"Were those two alive?" he asked. "No, they were found dead. The forest here is a game reserve. The septopods had been trampled and half-eaten by wild boar. But they were still alive thirty kilometres away from water! The mantle cavity of both of them was stuffed with damp weed. That, apparently, is the way they lay in a certain store of water for their journey across dry land. The weed was of the species that grows in lakes. There is no doubt that these septopods had come from these very lakes and were on their way deeper into the country to the south. I must mention that every single specimen so far captured has been an adult male. Not a single female, nor young septopod. Probably the females and the young cannot live in fresh water or come out on dry land. It's all very interesting," I continued. "As a rule, you know, sea animals only alter their mode of life so completely during the breeding season. Then instinct forces them to go to quite unaccustomed places. But here there is no question of breeding. Some other instinct is at work here, more primitive, perhaps, and more powerful. The main thing, now, for us is to trace their migration routes. So I spend ten hours a day at the bottom of this lake. Today I marked one. If I'm lucky, I'll mark another one or two before evening. At night they become extraordinarily active and seize everything that comes near them. They've even been known to attack men. But that is only at night."

Masha had turned the radio on as loud as possible and was revelling in the mighty sound issuing from it.

"Quieter, Masha," I said, and she turned it down.

"So you mark them," said Gorbovsky. "That's interesting. How do you do it?"

"With generators." I extracted the cartridge from the marker and showed him an ampoule. "With pellets like these. In each one there's a generator which can be heard under water at a distance of twenty or thirty kilometres."

He took the ampoule carefully and examined it closely, and his face became sad and old-looking.

"Very clever," he murmured. "Simple and clever."

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