We / Мы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

I-330 was somewhere behind me, near the closet. Her unif rustled, fell. I listened, all of me listened. And I remembered… no, it flashed upon me within one hundredth of a second…

I had had occasion recently to calculate the curve for a street membrane of a new type (now these membranes, gracefully camouflaged, were installed on every street, recording all conversations for the Office of the Guardians). And I remembered the rosy, concave, quivering film, the strange creature consisting of a single organ – an ear.

I was such a membrane at this moment.

A click of the fastening at the collar, on the breast still lower. The glass silk rustled down the shoulders, knees, dropped to the floor. I heard, more clearly than I could see, one foot step out of the bluish-gray silk pile, the other…

The tautly stretched membrane quivered and recorded silence. No: sharp blows of a hammer against the iron rods, with endless pauses. And I heard – I saw her behind me, thinking for a second.

And now – the closet doors, the click of an opening lid – and again silk, silk…

“Well, if you please.

”

I turned. She was in a light, saffron-yellow dress of the ancient model. This was a thousand times more cruel than if she had worn nothing. Two pointed tips through the filmy silk, glowing pink-two embers through the ash. Two delicately rounded knees…

She sat in a low armchair. On the rectangular table before her, a bottle with something poi-sonously green, two tiny glasses on stems.

At the corner of her lips a thread of smoke – that ancient smoking substance in the finest paper tube (I forget what it was called).

The membrane still quivered. The hammer pounded inside me against the red-hot iron rods. I clearly heard each blow, and… and suddenly: What if she heard it too?

But she puffed calmly, glancing at me calmly, and carelessly shook off the ash – on my pink coupon.

As coolly as I could, I asked, “Now, listen, if that’s the case, why did you register for me? And why did you compel me to come here?”

It was as if she did not hear.

She poured the liquid from the bottle into her glass, sipped it.

“Delicious liqueur. Would you like some?”

It was only now that I understood: alcohol. Yesterday’s scene flashed like a stroke of lightning: the Benefactor’s stony hand, the blinding ray. But on the Cube above – this body, prostrate, with the head thrown back. I shuddered.

“Listen,” I said.