at the meeting once… And in general I had a strange feeling that he, this Arkady, somehow knew something more, and knew it in advance. After all, Gorbachev reported object to the Commission about Zhitkur-9 not instantly, but when he had already signed his resignation. In January of ninety-one… The soviet Union was already finished.
(Laughs)
– That moment everybody lost the gift of speech. Yeltsin whacked his chair into the wall, consequently Primakov dropped the glass with kefir… And Gorbachev is just sits there, calm, blinks, fidgeting with a pen in a hands… So, this Arkady Strugatsky, in my opinion, didn't even change his face expression… Set that aside. Listen, ufologist, I lied to you, listen! Gaidar was not even there, at the first meetings! But Strugatsky already was present. He already attended the meetings in eighty-nine, Pavlov was there, Ryzhkov, Khryuchkov, of course, and no Yeltsin in sight, I had been flying from Ukraine… At Yazov's call.. Exactly!
– It is strange.
– Do you understand? Even I do not know everything, okay? Officially, I was transferred to Kapustin on the fifteenth of November, and on the twentieth, the first meeting of the Commission was held with Yeltsin invited as the president of the RSFSR. Because this was still the Soviet Union, not CIS… But Nazarbayev, yes, was already the president. Of the republic. And he was worrying a lot. Such a horror was happening in the Kazashsky Corner of the Zone. The terrifying walls of the fire, this plasma lava… Well, you saw the movie.
– Mm, well… And the name “Kazashsky”, did everybody call it so from the very beginning?
– I do not understand.
– “Kazakh” would be correct. Kazakh Corner, Kazakh Curve.
– Fuck knows. It just happened so. Actually, I never thought about it.
– By the way why did the main word not catch on if everything was by Strugatskys?
– What main word?
– Stalker.
– Stalker? Is this your question? A-a-a fuck kn… Set that aside, I remember! This Natanovich also asked me… it was disturbing him. That is when we were drinking with him later, already in ninety-five or ninety-six, when I was in Moscow for the last time… Why are you smiling, writer? Understandably that it was interesting for him… It did not catch on because of Americans. It's something offensive, from English slang. Wanker, or something like that. Sat that aside, I remember. A peeping tom. A sexual blackmailer, accordingly. Rubbish. So it did not catch on. And then you, ufologists, immediately appeared in the Pre-Zone, at that time there was an extraterrestrial craze among the people, and there, among you, ufologists, climbers and tourists of all sorts, so the “track”, “traverse”, all this, too. Well “track” is “track” and, accordingly, “trackers”. And it happened. In my opinion, therefore that is how. As for me, I prefer “walkers”, as we, military men, used to say. And aliens. Although there is a subtlety. Well, you know.
– I see. I'm very interested in the intensity called the “Mother's cracks”.
– How did you say?
– The “Mother's cracks”.
– It’s the first time I've heard it. And what is this called scientifically?
– I don't know.
– The first time I've heard it. I bet trackers told you tales again, right, writer?
– It seems not.
– Ok then. Don't you hammer my dying head with nails. Ask precisely,about me.
– Yeah… Who did you meet with first regarding the aliens? Surely with Petrovich? The famous conference in Two Pipes?
