Book-12 Gravity cyclone novella - стр. 15

– Why, journalists? the lieutenant continued coolly, not paying attention to the enraged general. – The article was written by V. Selena, – to which the general did not answer, he stared unblinkingly at the glass of the visitor's glasses, becoming covered with crimson spots. The doctor watched with curiosity the changing appearance of the owner, what he thought at that time, it was easy to guess. Such metamorphoses are not pronounced by ear. Especially generals, seasoned in the brew of service crossings. Both were silent. The pause dragged on. Finally, the doctor spoke up:

– May I leave?

– Go! – barked like an angry lion, the general, waving his left hand, a gesture very reminiscent of the blow of an animal's paw on a rabbit driven into a dead end. At the same time, the general's wide cheekbones and round chin wrinkled into a funny grimace, full of evil wrinkles. When the massive office door closed behind the visitor, the general took an abandoned magazine from the table, rolled it up into a tube, and, patting the blue general's stripe on his right leg, walked to the window. From anger, thoughts were confused in the general's head, one more absurd than the other. It’s better not to know what was going on in the general’s convolutions, only one thought clearly and distinctly turned out to be correct:

“Yes, the generals will dismiss me if I fall for the bait of this jerk. And Smirnov is also good, behaved very stupidly. I would be ashamed report a meeting, and even with humanoids. Unjustified risk, could put an end to his career, it's good that he was lucky, the policy has changed. And you must be a fool, a fool, but he rose to the rank of colonel. Well, nothing we are fix it, expel it as a major.” Outside the window, a cypress tree stood like a slender minaret, soaring into the sky. The general has been observing for the fifth year how the tree under the window grows, and it has overgrown with ties, like this cypress with branches. And to make the colonel a major, it was as easy for the general as for the sparrow outside the window to fly from one cypress branch to the next. The general turned away from the window. The decision ripened in his head. He took off his cap from a hanger in the corner of the room and left the office.

The doctor was young. After graduating from medical school, he was among the best sent to the Spaceport. From his senior colleagues, he heard that there is not life there, but earthly paradise. And so, having entered the earthly paradise, the young man was given a look around. For six months he, among twelve comrades, wandered around the town in the hope of getting a job as soon as possible, but the command seemed to spit on them from a big hill, as the captain, the head of the personnel department, said.