Free Definitely Maybe by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky Page B

a pencil? Yes, here you are, she replied, taking the needed articles from her purse. Thank you so much, he said, now please write down your name and phone number. They had a wonderful time on the Riga seashore and parted quietly—it seemed never to meet again, pleased with each other and no strings attached.
    And now she appeared on his doorstep with the boy and said he was his son. She had been married for three years to a very good and very famous man, whom she loved and respected deeply. She could not explain to Gubar why she had come. She cried every time he tried to find out. She wrung her hands, and it was apparent that she felt her behavior was immoral and criminal. But she would not leave. The days that she spent in Gubar’s ravaged apartment were the worst part of the nightmare. She behaved like a sleepwalker, talking all the time. Gubar could understand the words, but there was no way he could make any sense of them. And then yesterday morning she woke up. She pulled Gubar out of bed, led him to the bathroom, turned on the water full blast, and whispered an absolutely unbelievable tale into Gubar’s ear.
    According to her (in Gubar’s interpretation) it seemed that since ancient times there had been this secret, semimystical Union of the Nine on Earth. These were monstrously secretive wise men, either very long-lived or immortal, whowere concerned with only two things: first, that they gather and master all the achievements of every single branch of science, and second, that they make sure that none of the new scientific-technological advances be used by people for self-destruction. These wise men are almost all-knowing and practically all-powerful. It is impossible to hide from them, and it is no use fighting them. And now this Union of the Nine was taking on Zakhar Gubar. Why him—she did not know. What Gubar was supposed to do now she didn’t know either. He had to figure that out for himself. She only knew that all the recent unpleasantnesses he had had were a warning. And she was sent to him as a warning too. And so that Zakhar would remember the warning, she had been ordered to leave the boy with him. Who gave the order she didn’t know. In fact, she knew nothing else. And didn’t want to know. She only wanted to be sure that nothing bad happened to the boy. She begged Gubar not to resist and to think twenty times before taking any action. And now she had to go.
    Weeping, her face buried in her handkerchief, she left. And Gubar was left with the boy. One on one. What took place between them until three in the afternoon, he didn’t wish to tell. But something did happen.
    (The boy had a brief statement on the matter: “I straightened him out is all.”) At three p.m. Gubar couldn’t stand it anymore, and he called and then ran over to see Weingarten, his closest friend.
    “I still don’t understand a thing,” he concluded. “I listened to Val and I listened to you, Dmitri. I still don’t understand. Maybe it’s the heat? They say it hasn’t been this hot in two hundred and fifty years. And we’ve all gone mad, each in his own way.”
    “Wait a minute, Zakhar,” Weingarten said, frowning. “You’re a stable person, so don’t start hypothesizing just yet.”
    “What hypothesis!” Gubar said unhappily. “It’s clear to me without any hypothesis that we won’t come up with anything here. We have to report this to the right place, that’s what I say.”
    Weingarten gave him a withering look.
    “And where do you propose we report this information?”
    “How should I know? There has to be some organization. Some local agency.”
    The boy giggled loudly, and Gubar shut up. Malianov pictured Weingarten reporting in at the appropriate agency, telling the interested investigator his tall tale of the red-haired midget in the tight-fitting black suit. Gubar looked rather funny in the same situation. And as for Malianov himself …
    “Well, fellows, you do what you like, but the police