Gorbovsky listened to the end and said, “That has to do with the content. But what about the form?”
“A good beginning,” Slavin said professionally, “but it turned sour toward the end. Is it really so difficult to think of something besides that spoiled child of yours?”
“Yes, it’s difficult,” Gorbovsky said.
Slavin turned over on his stomach. “You know, Leonid,” he said, “Lenin’s idea about the development of the human race in spirals has always struck me. From the primitive communism of the destitute, through hunger, blood, and wars, through insane injustices, to the communism of endless material and spiritual wealth. I strongly suspect that this is just theory for you, but I come from a time when the turn of the spiral was not yet completed. It was only in movies, but I did see rockets setting fire to villages, people in flames, covered with napalm. Do you know what napalm is? Or a grafter—do you know about that? You see, the human race began with communism and it returned to communism, and with this return a new turn of the spiral begins, a completely fantastic one.”
Kondratev suddenly opened his eyes, stretched, and sat up. “Philosophers,” he said. “A bunch of Aristotles. Let’s hurry up and wash the dishes, and then go swimming, and I’ll show you the Golden Grotto. You haven’t seen anything like it, you many-traveled old men.”
Macmillan’s Best of Soviet Science Fiction
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Roadside Picnic and Tale of the Troika
Prisoners of Power
Definitely Maybe
Noon: 22nd Century
Far Rainbow / The Second Invasion from Mars
The Ugly Swans
Kirill Bulychev Half a Life
Mikhail Emtsev and Eremei Parnov World Soul
Dmitri Bilenkin The Uncertainty Principle
Vladimir Savchenko Self-Discovery
Copyright
1962, translation 1978
ISBN 0-02-615150-2