We / Мы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Why weren’t they isolated, exterminated? With us…”

’Yes, with us…” I began, and suddenly she burst out laughing. I could see that laughter with my eyes: the resonant sharp curve of it, as pliantly resistant as a whip.

I remember, I trembled all over. Just to seize her, and… I cannot recall what I wanted to do. But I had to do something, anything. Mechanically I opened my golden badge, glanced at the watch. Ten to seventeen.

“Don’t you think it’s time?” I said as politely as I could.

“And if I asked you to remain here with me?”

“Look, do you… do you know what you are saying? In ten minutes I must be in the auditorium…”

“… and all numbers must attend the prescribed courses in art and sciences,” she said in my voice. Then she raised the blinds, looked up; the fireplace blazed through the dark windows. “I know a doctor at the Medical Office, he is registered with me. If I ask him, he will give you a certificate that you were sick.

Now I understood. At last, I understood where that whole game of hers was leading.

“So that’s it! And do you know that, like any honest number, I must, in fact, immediately go to the Office of the Guardians and…”

“And not �in fact’?” – sharp smile-bite. “I am terribly curious – will you go to the Office, or won’t you?”

“Are you staying?” I put my hand on the doorknob. It was brass, and I heard my voice – it was also brass.

“One moment… May I?”

She went to the telephone, asked for some number – I was too upset to remember it – and cried out, “I shall wait for you in the Ancient House. Yes, yes, alone…”

I turned the cold brass knob.

’You will permit me to take the aero?”

“Yes, certainly! Of course…”

Outside, in the sunshine, at the entrance, the old woman was dozing like a vegetable. Again it was astonishing that her closegrown mouth opened and she spoke.

“And your… did she remain there by herself?”

“By herself.”

The old woman’s mouth grew together again. She shook her head. Evidently, even her failing brain understood the full absurdity and danger of the woman’s conduct.

Exactly at seventeen I was at the lecture. And it was only here that I suddenly realized I had said an untruth to the old woman: I-330 was not there by herself now.