LITMIR.BIZ

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carry a plasma pistol, as well as any other equipment I can't explain the origin of. Consequently, I will have to hide my spacesuit, my personal weapons, and other equipment I have, except for the ones that can be worn discreetly, which I also have. Thanks to pilot foresight – we all prefer to have a backup targeting and navigation system and communications equipment, independent of the fighter, but able to work in conjunction with its computer as a last resort. In my case, they are contact lenses on which, if necessary, information is projected from a dozen pea-sized devices that are placed in various organs and tissues of my body. For example, in my palms, under the skin behind my ears, in my liver, kidneys, and even my heart.

      Together, these components are actually a very peculiar computer, the parts of which are somewhat separated in space, which does not prevent them from working as a unit. But our scientists have never learned how to stick anything useful into the brain – practice has shown that it is not necessary to do this, it is not good for man. In general, I will have something to surprise the locals, even without showing them high-tech devices.

      Now the minuses and problems. The main thing is that I am nobody here. I came from nowhere, I do not fit into the local social environment, and it is very specific here and extremely suspicious of outsiders.

      I found myself in a state that kind of suffers a paranoid disorder and suspects that almost every other citizen is an enemy and a spy, and I can hardly avoid confronting its security forces. That is, I need a clear and consistent legend. Of course, the technical level here is low, even the photos on the documents are flat, black and white and of such quality that it would be better if they did not exist at all. There are no unified databases at all, and those that do exist are on paper. In other words, it's just paradise for a rogue scout, from which I am not much different at this stage. But here's the trouble – I don't have the means to make fake documents even of this quality.

      The specialists at the lunar base, of course, would have done it in no time, but the designers of the escape capsules and combat suits didn't think to equip their products with such devices. I could, of course, try to use someone else's documents, but I have to get them somewhere, which is not so easy to do in peacetime, and the age and sex must coincide, as well as the appearance, at least in general terms. And with this approach, it's easy to miscue on any little thing related to the biography of the character whose ID I'm trying to appropriate.

      As I pondered all this, I was at the same time masking the crash site of the escape pod, in which I carefully packed all the things I had decided not to take with me. Naturally, I had no clothes suitable for the local environment, so I had to stay in my flight suit for the time being, that was worn under the battle suit, especially since the late spring in these latitudes did not promise any serious cold weather. The place where I found myself was a remote taiga, so I didn't have much trouble camouflaging a not-so-large capsule.

      After about an hour, I checked everything again and made sure that communication with the computer left in the capsule and with the satellites in orbit was functioning properly, then I had the satellite closest to my landing point take a picture from orbit to make sure that the pilot of some plane that happens to be in these parts would not notice anything curious. The taiga had reliably swallowed up the wreckage of the fighter and the escape pod, but in a couple of places the largest debris still gleamed in the sun, and I decided to plot my route in such a way as to pass by them and finally eliminate traces of my invasion of this world.

      After checking the map, I just shook my head: I was in the Tuvan People's Republic, not just anywhere. This strange state was formed in southern Siberia four years after the communist upheaval in Russia. Having survived the troubled times of the Civil War, the capture by Admiral Kolchak's troops, and the subsequent Chinese-Mongolian intervention, the republic, not without the help of the Red Army, proclaimed its independence, which was recognized by the Soviet Union and later by Mongolia. Almost the rest of the world considered this territory part of China, and refused to recognize the TPR. However, despite its formal independence, power in the republic belonged to the local Communists, who regarded Comrade Stalin as their older brother and teacher.

      With my European appearance, it was not so easy for me to go unnoticed among the local population. However, there were also enough Russians in the Republic, and I intended to turn this fact to my advantage.

      I wasn't going to hole up in the taiga. According to predictions made by our scientists-historians with the help of the lunar base computer, it appeared, that very soon Comrade Stalin's aggressive and dangerous Western neighbor would wage war against the USSR. And, like, he has every chance of putting the Soviet Union in a very uncomfortable position, for after the revolution in this large country, under the wise leadership of the Leader and Teacher, there are, to put it mildly, ambiguous, events, so that all its many tanks and planes may not help in organizing a proper repulse to the foe.

      The prospect of the mad Adolf winning and taking over much of the world did not please me at all, and that is why I originally chose Soviet Union as the landing site. My scientist friend's colleagues did not eat their bread in vain, and were rarely wrong in modeling the future of pre-space civilizations. Their calculations suggested that the brunt of the war with Hitler would fall precisely on the shoulders of Comrade Stalin and the citizens of his country, rather than on the shoulders of the Anglo-Saxons, who had already been actively fighting Adolf in Europe, the Atlantic and North Africa for two years. And on the eastern frontiers of the Soviet country, from time to time samurai Japan also looks toward Siberia, remembering the wrongs done to it at Lake Khasan and the Khalkhin Gol River. It is true that these bellicose yellow-faced characters now have much more problems with the looming American oil embargo, without which the island empire will be dead in a year if not a month, so it is unlikely that they will get into a fight with the Soviet Union. But even if war comes only from the west, the key events that will determine the fate of this world, will take place here.

      The taiga on my way turned out to be really dense, but a couple of dozen kilometers from the drop point the satellites saw an abandoned Old Believers' farmstead, to which I was now approaching. Given that I needed a believable legend and at least some local clothes, it certainly made sense for me to check the place out.

      I had no experience walking through the taiga, so my speed left a lot to be desired. I had to go, as they say, using general erudition, since pilot training did not devote much time to the problems of survival in the forests and jungles of the oxygen planets, to say the least.

      I reached the lodge when it got noticeably darker. The place really turned out to be long abandoned. Those who once lived here apparently went into the taiga and never came back. There could be many reasons for this. There were plenty of dangerous predators around, and I had more than once praised myself for that I had decided at the last moment to bring my standard pistol.

      The horizontal pole fence had long since lost its battle with the rain and wind, and in many places it was gaping holes. Things were no better with the outbuildings, which stood on the perimeter of the vast yard overgrown with grass and young trees. It didn't take long to examine them. If there had ever been anything of value in those animal barns and pens, it was now just shapeless piles of decay.

      The house was somewhat better preserved. The thick logs held up for now, and the owners had renewed the roof, apparently just before they disappeared. The door was a little warped, but it still seemed pretty solid. It was bolted from the outside, but there was no lock, so I, after a bit of fiddling with the rusty bolt, I entered the long-abandoned dwelling.

      Apparently, only one person lived here. It looked like this house was once inhabited by a large family, but then, evidently, something happened. Maybe illness, or maybe something else. But in the end there was only one owner left. The house had two living rooms, a hallway, and something like a kitchen, although I could not identify with complete certainty the purpose of this elongated room. The roof was leaking in many places and some of the furnishings were hopelessly ruined, but some things have survived.

      After a thorough search of the crudely made furniture, I found myself in possession of a pair of pants that fit me relatively well, shapeless but warm enough, three shabby shirts, some very old but neatly stitched quilted jackets, several shifts of strange-looking underwear, and, most important, a bunch of yellowed papers that clearly served as identity documents and social status documents for the locals.

      I

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